The Mistakes That Parents Make

Parenting models serve the family. The family doesn’t serve the model.

A mother holding her child
(Getty)

Even though we’re on the brink of the midterms, I want to take a break from politics to talk about something that might just be more emotional and more contentious—parenting. Last week, The Atlantic published a fascinating piece by Nate Hilger called “Stop Pretending Intensive Parenting Doesn’t Work.” His thesis was simple: Intensive parenting may be exhausting, and it may be difficult, but it can make a real difference in kids’ lives.

In addition, intensive parenting possesses its own internal (and relentless) logic. When you love your kids—and you have the resources to make meaningful choices—then every fiber in your parental being is telling you to find better schools, live in better neighborhoods, and seek out the best resources for your kids that money can buy.

Yes, you can go too far (and some parents certainly do), but is there a better investment of your time and resources than in your children, the very people you love more than your own lives?

I read about intensive parenting, and it makes intuitive sense. But then so does a different approach. In May, Elliot Haspel wrote in praise of what he called “good enough” parenting. Intensive parenting, he argued, can create exhausted parents and anxious kids. The essence of “good enough” parenting is realizing that there is a “point beyond which attempts at further optimization cause more harm than good.” The “good enough” parent realizes “there are many ways in which kids can have happy childhoods and emerge as healthy, conscientious, successful adults.”

This approach also has its own obvious logic. We all know that our resources—including time, money, and emotions—are finite. Pushing both parent and child carries with it inherent risks. How many burned-out parents do you know? How many stressed-out kids, who strain under the weight of great expectations?

I could cycle through other parenting models as well. I was raised with what we’d now call more of a “free range” style. I roamed the neighborhood at will (so long as I was home for dinner and curfew) and did not turn to my parents to resolve my childhood conflicts. We worked it out—or didn’t—on the basketball court or on the playground. This freedom wasn’t the result of parental indifference (my freedom had sharp limits), but it was every bit as intentional as “intensive” parenting, “good enough” parenting, or any other parenting strategy conceived and debated online.

The longer I live and the longer I parent—I have three kids and one grandchild—the more I’m convinced that the precise parenting model matters far less than whether children have parents who care enough to have a model. The love that creates the model is the most indispensable element of parenting.

It’s not that strategies don’t matter at all. Each has its own benefits and drawbacks. But parents who worry about their strategy as if it will make the ultimate difference in their kids’ lives are pouring their emotional energy into misplaced concern. In fact, excessive worry (or pride) about parenting models carries its own parenting risks.

I’ve seen excessive worry about parenting models lead to sometimes erratic or drastic parental reactions to adverse events. Kids hit a bump in the road, and everything inside a parent will scream, This isn’t working. Big changes in parental demeanor or parental approaches can create their own crises. Kids will see a parent panic, and their own anxiety will rise.

Excessive pride is perhaps even more dangerous. Perhaps under the influence of books, fads, peers, or preachers, parents will adopt unyielding parental philosophies. Indeed, at the extreme edges it can sometimes feel as if the parents view the success of their children as a personal validation: I know how this works. I know how to raise a kid. In this circumstance, when the parent yields, the parent believes he fails.

A subset of prideful parenting is political parenting. The parenting style isn’t just about childhood flourishing; it’s about raising new members of your political tribe. The model is designed to produce conservatives or progressives, and it won’t yield from the project in the face of resistance because, once again, when the parent yields, the parent believes he fails.

The bottom line is that parents should understand that parenting models serve the family. The family doesn’t serve the model.

I’ve got parenting on my mind because I just finished a lovely afternoon walking through the Harvard Law School and Harvard Divinity School campus with my oldest daughter. She wants to go to the law school. Her husband wants to go to the divinity school. Last week, we visited Columbia.

All of this sounds very much like intensive-parent, achievement-oriented boilerplate. But it’s not. My daughter will go to law school as a young mom. She got married after her freshman year of college to her high-school sweetheart. They had their first baby when Camille was a senior. She’s pregnant and due to have their second child in March.

They have a beautiful, loving little family, and they moved back in with us after she graduated. We’ve got three generations under one roof—until they leave us for the next phase of their lives. Which model does that fit?

As I walked the campus with Camille, I thought back to a different essay that I read in a very different time. The year was 1998, and parenting debates were every bit as lively then as they are now. The essay was in The New York Times. I don’t remember who wrote it, and I can’t even quote it enough to find it when I search the Times’ website, but I remember its essence.

Parenting is confusing, it said. Experts give conflicting advice. But be of good cheer. The heart of parenting is a relationship—where parents teach kids, but also kids speak to parents. They will listen to you, but you should also listen to them. And over time, you will tell each other how to thrive.

David French is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and the author of its newsletter The Third Rail.