How Parenting Guidance Needs to Change

The Art and Science Of
Written By Emily Edlynn

Parenting Is Not a Trend

Like most new mothers, I worried about every phase of my pregnancy and fretted over every infant “first.” One gift of exhaustion was NOT having the energy to research every little question. To cope, I reasoned that women had been mothers since forever, and I am not so special to be completely unlike all women in the history of humankind. It would be okay, I told myself many times a day, or hour. But somewhere along the way, we as a culture have lost confidence and trust in our instincts.

There is a reason that human beings have not gone extinct due to bad parenting – we are biologically wired to care well for our children so they stay alive, for the sake of our species. I think modern life and a hundred years of formal parenting “guidance” have chipped away mightily at our core survival instincts. Most of us do know what we’re doing if we tune out all the noise.

Following up on my recent post about Why Parenting Guidance Needs to Change, this piece focuses on How. It’s a pretty big question for an itty, bitty blog post, so I break it down as compactly as possible:

  • We need to use science in parenting more responsibly and cautiously.

  • We need to reshape the culture of parenting guidance.

Just like our favorite HGTV franchise, or Queer Eye episode, it’s time for a parenting guidance make-over to keep up with modern reality.

Science in Parenting: Proceed with Caution

Science in parenting (and psychology) has a complicated past, including blaming mothers for everything. So, how does science play a role in parenting trends, and what needs to change?

In many ways, the science of parenting has elevated our modern parenthood to be more effective and compassionate. Good research has brought about some seismic changes in our parenting over generations that are better for our children, like the well-accepted fact that spanking is harmful and ineffective, and that children should be (really) seen AND heard. We don’t want to completely abandon the gifts good research has to offer us.

In other ways, the inundation of studies and headlines creates more chaos, confusion, and pressure. At the end of the infinite google search, a parent could read every single research study related to parenting, and still have no clear idea what to actually do in their family with their child.

What also seems to get lost is that much of what we stress over has no huge treasure trove of evidence behind it. Do I yell too much? Maybe. I know it’s not effective and signs of my own moments of weakness, but how much is it actually harming my children? There is no long-term study of hundreds of families examining what is probably typical yelling in most families (not hostile and cruel, to be clear), to see a trend of negative outcomes for those children as adolescents. This would require comparing with another sample of hundreds of families who do not yell. Good luck finding them! (More on yelling in the future; less is better, but “weak moments” do not ruin a lifetime relationship.)

As a social scientist myself, I realized in my early years of motherhood that much of the “evidence-based” parenting advice was actually . . . not.

One cardinal sin is mixing up correlation and causation, such as social media causing the rise in adolescent anxiety just because rates have increased over the same time period that social media has become a fixture. Another example is using findings from research with what we call a “clinical population” (a population with high risk, such as parents with history of abuse and neglect) and applying this to the general population. Generalizing results like this is not kosher, but it happens a lot in the field of parenting guidance.  

Big change needed: Parenting experts everywhere need to use science more responsibly to truly support parents rather than using it to instill fear, anxiety, and self-doubt (eg, formula feeding will not cause lower IQ than breastfeeding!).  

Parenting Culture at Large

There’s good reason parenting books and resources remain popular and plentiful. We crave guidance, and in this day and age when that guidance comes quickly at our fingertips searching the internet, we will consume a lot of it. I have read the anthropological analyses of how parents have lost their compasses by no longer living in villages with elders. I’m not an anthropologist or sociologist, but I can see how we are replacing our wise elders with the pursuit of expertise from strangers. As one who could be considered an “expert,” I’m not arguing against that pursuit; I’m challenging the quality, substance, and true benefits of what we find.

It’s Not Working – For the Parents

As described in Jennifer Senior’s aptly titled analysis of modern parenting, All Joy and No Fun, a highly child-centered focus has dominated the last three decades. This is likely a response to the popular punitive and controlling parenting style that came before, but the pendulum has swung too far, leaving out the most critical ingredient to parenting guidance: us.

“Instead of talking about the kids’ buckets, ours have to be filled up first, and there’s no one to do that for us but ourselves.  ”

We work more, parent more, and stress more than any previous generation of parents, and it has ramifications for our health, physical and mental. It’s too much, and we are crumbling under the pressures. These ramifications trickle down to negatively affect our children. We need to change the universe of modern parenting guidance to be more compassionate and realistic, supporting us so we can more fully support our children. When we are better, our children do better.

Most parenting guidance focuses on the child’s experience and how we can change our parenting to change our children, but I propose we flip the script to focus on the experience as a parent. What if we geared parenting guidance toward strategies parents can use to understand and embrace their most authentic parenting self, imperfections and all, while working on facing parenting challenges with greater calm and confidence? Instead of talking about the kids’ buckets, ours have to be filled up first, and there’s no one to do that for us but ourselves.  

Shift the Lens: Parent First Parenting

Let the record show I’m coining this concept here and now: Parent First Parenting. (I googled and didn’t find it anywhere else; yes, I’m a real legal eagle.) I propose this new way of conceptualizing parenting guidance by following a framework of ten parenting principles, which I will describe over the coming months.

In a nutshell, Parent First Parenting is a new approach to put yourself first in ways that help you take better care of your kids. Over the next few months, I will elaborate on these key parenting principles that will give you tools and strategies to take on parenting with calm and confidence. You will be better so your children will be better-off. I'm going to include some psychology concepts and research but don't worry, I'll explain it all so you won't feel like you are back-to-school in a boring science class.

As we constantly strive to do and be ideal versions of our parent selves, let’s celebrate and embrace our imperfections. With the right support, we can strike that delicate balance of finding our capacity for change and growth, while not crippling ourselves with feelings of guilt and inadequacy. I truly believe that as long as we show up for our children every day the best we can, they really will be okay. We don’t need research to “prove” it.

Resource List

Examples of responsible, compassionate, and practical guidance:

Emily Edlynn
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