Comments on: Parents: No, you do not have to Try Your Very Best

By: My parenting style did not make my motherhood a prison; my society did « Raising My Boychick

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 09:20:55 +0000

[...] Parents: No, you do not have to Try Your Very Best [...]

By: Angela Gail

Angela Gail — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 12:54:47 +0000

Great post! I’m reminded of a study I heard about but now can’t find (which drives me crazy) in which monkeys were kept in plain cages, ultra-deluxe enriched cages, and cages that had a minimal level of enrichment. The monkeys in the “good enough” cages did just as well as those in the “ultra-deluxe” cages, and both did much better than the plain cages.

I think we forget this in parenting. Parents need to give children a safe environment, shelter, food, love, and some basic enrichment. That’s good enough. More might be better, but maybe not measurably better when you average everyone out. And no matter what you do some day they are going to be really pissed at you.

[And sorry for quoting hearsay research, and hearsay research that involved killing monkeys at that. Bleh.]

By: sannanina

sannanina — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 18:48:22 +0000

I love this post. And the opposite side, too, is this: my parents were incredible, yet one of the things I treasure most about them is that they DID make mistakes. Because when I inevitably feel like a royal screw-up after some less-than-stellar moment, I look back and remember that I came out, not merely okay, but grateful for my parents and loving them; that I had a wonderful childhood; and that my parents, too, made mistakes. And tried to right them when they realized it.

Some years ago I had a wonderful counselor who herself had a somewhat difficult but loving family. She once told me that “perfect parents never could have prepared her for an imperfect world”.

By: Jo

Jo — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 16:39:58 +0000

And that narcissistic threadjack was entirely to agree with you that Judging Other People’s (Women’s) Parenting Is Bad. Feel like I lost the point there, but maybe that’s just being flustered re: my own blog.

By: Jo

Jo — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 16:37:51 +0000

I’m getting that sort of vibe from a thread on my blog right now, where the commentary took a completely different turn than I’d hoped. In trying to talk about how adults could attempt to accommodate children in public spaces (restaurants, airplanes) instead of ostracizing all children because some children sometimes are disruptive, the commentary felt a lot like “oh, I’m sure you’re just fine, but OTHER PARENTS let their kids run wild, etc.”

I just want to holler “Just because you don’t agree doesn’t mean they’re not parenting! You’re not going to agree with every parent’s decision, ever!!!”

Seriously. You can’t TELL when someone’s just reached the end of their rope and they’re “not caring” because they’ve been caring all day long with no break (and in the case of airplanes, no room to maneuver).

By: cathy

cathy — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 13:59:22 +0000

“, I also struggle with it. I’m have no doubt my abusive parents thought they were “good enough”, for example. ” Yes, I am right there with you. In fact, I know my father expects gratitude for his abuse and neglect and my mother blames me. I was a ‘difficult child’ you see, what with the undiagnosed autism and all, so she acts like that excuses hitting me on a daily basis for years (the only physical or social contact my mother had with me most days, the ‘fight’ was almost always over my hair, brushing hair has always been an agony for me and she would not let me cut it short or shave it no matter how much I begged, in large part because she wanted me to be more femme).

I understand that there is a huge difference between my sister who allowed her baby to start food earlier than it was ‘supposed to’ and my father thinking that getting drunk and going to a drive with a shotgun and three small children in the car, and that this post is referring to the former, but it does call for the questions Rosemary posits.

By: Slee

Slee — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 13:41:39 +0000

My only concern, because I agree with what you’re saying about impossible goals and expectations, is that a borderline neglectful parent might think “see? I can just kinda show up and that’s good enough.”. That said, I don’t suppose they’d bother to read an article on parenting.
I do think we’re being programmed to set impossible goals and standards of effort which, through our inevitable inability to meet we create more obstacles to healthy child development as well as obstacles to mental health. So sing it, sistah.

By: St. Louis Smart Mama

St. Louis Smart Mama — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:41:16 +0000

If anything, in my experience, attachment parenting has led me directly into a more free-range style of parenting as my kids grow out of infancy/toddlerhood. Because I know them so well, it’s easier to tell when they need me to let go, and to be comfortable doing so. And they’re more comfortable exploring the world on their own than, for example their cousins who have been raised very differently . . .

By: Arwyn

Arwyn — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 07:12:13 +0000

Kimberly — one day I’m going to write a post titled “Free Range Parenting and Attachment Parenting Are Not Opposites”. Because I get really, really sick of them being cast as such.

By: Arwyn

Arwyn — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 06:56:02 +0000

Annie: I agree, for the most part. Although I think good enough, for me, is enough as an end state — I want so much for my child but I don’t have to make sure he has everything. So I have a pretty high standard for good enough, but by definition, good enough is enough for me as a “result” (if there can be said to be such as a parent — as others have pointed out, who are children are is still largely out of our control; we have influence, at best, but there’s no way to ensure the outcome that we want).

I love this:

It is about figuring out how to manage the day to day challenges of parenting, so that the good parts outweigh the bad parts, and so that I don’t feel like I’m going to collapse at the end of the day.

in part because it reflects that parenting, for me, is about the process. I didn’t babywear so he’d be a Nobel Peace Prize winner (though I think it can help nudge toward compassion), I did it because I liked it (and thought the occasional discomfort was worth it), he liked it, and it helped our attachment (our relationship) in that moment — which set us up for later successes, too, but that was almost more an afterthought at the time.

And yeah, sometimes we slog through the hard stuff (frequent night wakings and long crying spells) for a more ultimate goal, but to me that ultimate goal is still “good enough”. I just don’t think that, for instance, the long-term effects of CIO were good enough when I had another option (not everyone does all the time — sometimes we just don’t have more to give, and risk far worse things if we have to stay up one. more. night).

And now I’m feeling like I’m rambling, but — yeah.