Jennifer Senior: For parents, happiness is a very high bar
The parenting section of the bookstore is overwhelming—it's "a giant, candy-colored monument to our collective panic," as writer Jennifer Senior puts it. Why is parenthood filled with so much anxiety? Because the goal of modern, middle-class parents—to raise happy children—is so elusive. In this honest talk, she offers some kinder and more achievable aims.
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Video Transcript
When I was born,
there was really only one book
about how to raise your children,
and it was written by Dr. Spock.
(Laughter)
Thank you for indulging me.
I have always wanted to do that.
No, it was Benjamin Spock,
and his book was called "The Common
Sense Book of Baby And Child Care."
It sold almost 50 million copies
by the time he died.
Today, I, as the mother of a six-year-old,
walk into Barnes and Noble,
and see this.
And it is amazing
the variety that one finds
on those shelves.
There are guides to raising
an eco-friendly kid,
a gluten-free kid,
a disease-proof kid,
which, if you ask me, is a little bit creepy.
There are guides to raising a bilingual kid
even if you only speak one language at home.
There are guides to raising a financially savvy kid
and a science-minded kid
and a kid who is a whiz at yoga.
Short of teaching your toddler how to defuse
a nuclear bomb,
there is pretty much a guide to everything.
All of these books are well-intentioned.
I am sure that many of them are great.
But taken together, I am sorry,
I do not see help
when I look at that shelf.
I see anxiety.
I see a giant candy-colored monument
to our collective panic,
and it makes me want to know,
why is it that raising our children
is associated with so much anguish
and so much confusion?
Why is it that we are at sixes and sevens
about the one thing human beings
have been doing successfully for millennia,
long before parenting message boards
and peer-reviewed studies came along?
Why is it that so many mothers and fathers
experience parenthood as a kind of crisis?
Crisis might seem like a strong word,
but there is data suggesting it probably isn't.
There was, in fact, a paper of just this very name,
"Parenthood as Crisis," published in 1957,
