The Real Purpose of Parenting

I was gulled by the title into downloading The Real Purpose of Parenting as an audiobook from Audible. Here are a couple of Amazon reviews that we can be pretty sure were not placed by the publisher:

It seems I’m the dissenter – but I started to hate this book. First, the author could have made his point in 15 pages, but the book is interminable (at just 196 pages) – presenting anecdote after anecdote, some of which are, as far as I can tell, barely relevant. Second, the presentation is pretentious and the prose tiring. Third, the book seems so intent on making a very specific point that it tramples over a considerable amount of potentially useful ancillary material. Difficult to read, sloppily written, a touch arrogant. With those gripes in mind, the author’s primary argument is perfectly valid, but not original (Brain Rules for Baby males the some point, in one sentence, 3 years earlier. . .). Bleghh.

As soon as Dr. Dembo started talking about how ridiculously centered our culture is on winning at all costs, and the fact that we don’t give our children any space to fail and learn, I found myself shaking my head in agreement. The trouble is, the author outlines the problem eloquently, and repeats it ad nauseum, but never really makes good on his claim to tell us what the alternative is, at least not in a realistic way. Yes, he does offer some examples from his own practice, but I suspect the half dozen examples or so are only the ones that had relatively happy endings. … I invested some seven hours listening to the Audible.com version, and believe a good blog article about listening to your children more and having more respect for who they really are and what they want and are capable of, would have achieved just as much.

As with most titles in the self-help section, the reviewers are correct in that a 15-page essay would convey the same information. The book was narrated by the author, though, and it was kind of interesting to hear just how convinced of his own importance a psychologist could be. (Actually it is unclear exactly what credentials make the author “Dr. Dembo”; he isn’t listed at healthgrades.com or vitals.com and a Google search didn’t reveal what his educational background might be. On the third hand, there is no research evidence that PhDs in clinical psychology are more effective than minimally trained laypeople at providing talk therapy.)

Dembo opens the book by attributing most of America’s problems to Dr. Benjamin Spock, the author of a 1946 book that Dembo seems to think was used as a bible by American parents (how many of them bothered to read even one book on parenting? and how many Americans actually follow the Bible for that matter?). According to Dembo, Dr. Spock told Americans that their children should be constantly reinforced with positive experiences, thus building their self-esteem. Dembo says that the result is children who are terrified of failure, afraid to try, and prone to cheating and/or lying in order to avoid or cover up failure.

What’s the solution though? Send a child to Poland on an exchange? (see Smartest Kids in the World: Poland for “In Poland, the lowest grade was always one, and the highest was five. After each test, he waited to see if anyone would get a five; no one ever did. No one seemed surprised or shattered, either. They shouldered their book bags and moved on to the next class. Kids in Poland were used to failing, it seemed. The logic made sense. If the work was hard, routine failure was the only way to learn. ‘Success,’ as Winston Churchill once said, ‘is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.'”) Dembo doesn’t say.

The anecdotes that Dembo provides are mostly of parents who don’t bother listening to their children and push them to live the parents’ dreams. Eventually the child snaps, quits college, and goes to work at a blue collar job. But what about Tiger Mom? She pushed her daughters to achieve academic and musical success and it apparently worked out wonderfully. If being an American means aspiring to collect SSDI, take OxyContin, and play Xbox, what is so bad about parents pushing children to do something other than than follow their natural inclinations? Usually in the families that Dembo describes there are multiple children and all but one actually did achieve what the parents hoped for. Shouldn’t we look at statistics rather than anecdotes to figure out what is likely to work out best for the average child?

One area where Dembo’s advice seems sound is, if your family has gotten to the point where everyone is riled up and shouting all the time, it makes sense to establish a set of laws (he calls it a “family constitution,” but really it is more like a legal code) that can be applied dispassionately. Reflecting the fact that every American who isn’t addicted to opiates is addicted to electronic devices, all of the suggested punishments are removal of phone/tablet/computer/Xbox privileges. So instead of yelling at a child for doing something bad, remind the child of the previously agreed-upon rule and punishment (“consequence” in the doublespeak of the book). Parents should have the demeanor of a police officer writing a speeding ticket.

Dembo’s experience is with families functional enough to get down to his office and pay his bills. Thus they tend to be upper-middle-class two-parent households, hardly representative of the modern U.S. (see “Fewer than half of U.S. kids today live in a ‘traditional’ family” (Pew Research)).

This book does raise the question of whether there are any good books on parenting per se. Are there any good books on interacting with other adults? How To Win Friends and Influence People? If there aren’t good books on how to have successful interactions with other adults, is it reasonable to expect that there should be good books on how to interact with children?

Readers: What else is out there in this subject area?

Related:

• The Nurture Assumption, a research-based book that concludes the main influences parents have on children are (1) genetic, and (2) choosing a neighborhood (thereby choosing a peer group)