Bundles of joy but little fun as parenting becomes a high-performance pursuit
Parents do not lack guidance on how to feed, sleep-train, discipline, socialise and educate their children. We have more material comforts than our own parents, and more resources, which we expend on our children. In just one generation, children have moved from the periphery of our lives to the centre, with the result that many parents are constantly fretting over whether they are doing enough to maximise their offspring’s potential.
In her new bestselling book All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood, writer Jennifer Senior, pictured below, looks at today’s culture of intensive parenting, and ponders the issue of whether we might be better off focusing on our relationships with our children instead of obsessing about moulding them into high-achievers.
Senior, a writer with New York magazine, says that since the advent of modern childhood — since “parenting” became a popular verb, especially — child-rearing has become a high-performance pursuit. In tandem with this, she argues that as the age at which parents have their first child has risen, so mothers and fathers are less prepared for the shock that comes when they have to sacrifice their freedom and independence to parenthood. Women are having their first children a decade or more later than their own parents — ESRI figures show the average age of first-time mothers in Ireland in 2012 was 30.
“Babies have become the last thing you do, the last in that chronological list of milestones — you graduate from college, find a place to live, find a partner, marry your partner, buy a house, settle into a career, and then you have a baby,” says Senior. “People tend to look forward to that the way Jane Austen heroines looked forward to marriage. They’ve romanticised it in a way which is unhelpful because it’s this end point that we’re all racing towards.”
Senior’s book comes with the caveat that she is dealing with middle-class parents, although many of these will have come from working-class backgrounds and grown up in an era in which the approach to child-rearing was far more authoritarian. Children then were given orders and directives whereas now, parents are more likely to give choices and negotiate.
“My parents had me when they were 22. They raised me with that ‘because I said so’ thing. Their style was much more authoritarian whereas I catch myself soliciting opinions from my son. I think something in between the two is good.”
We are all now familiar with the concept of ‘helicopter’ parenting whereby children’s schedules are packed with extracurricular activities. There is concern that such overscheduling makes children anxious and deprives them of the benefits of unstructured and imaginative play. Senior shows how such overzealous planning places stress on parents, who spend most of their ‘free’ time ferrying children from one activity to another. As one mother told her: “I planned a career that would allow me to work part-time because I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. And I am never at home.”
Senior refers to a survey of more than 1,000 children, aged eight to 18, which found just 10% wanted more time with their mothers and 16% wanted more time with their fathers. However, 34% wished their mothers would be “less stressed”.
The stress of modern parenting is also affecting couples’ relationships. The writer Nora Ephron famously said “Having a baby is like throwing a hand grenade into a marriage”. Senior’s book backs up this assertion to a large extent. She says many couples embarking on parenthood believe children are “matrimonial enhancers”. But while couples with children are less likely to separate, their relationships are much more prone to conflict.
A major source of stress and disagreement is the division of labour once children arrive. Senior found that even when men and women worked roughly the same number of hours each day, women, on average, still devoted nearly twice as much time to “family care” — housework, child care, shopping, chauffeuring — as men. The larger part of a mother’s child care was consumed by “routine” tasks such as toothbrushing and feeding, while fathers were more likely to get involved in “interactive” activities like playing ball.
“Division of labour is a massive issue for parents,” says Senior. “You have to figure out some accommodation between what’s fair, possible and reasonable. Writing the book definitely changed my approach to dividing chores with my husband. I cited a study where the research team noticed the parents who had worked out a fine, detailed contract, while they were pregnant, about who would do what, were much happier, even when their children were in high school. You can do that at any point along the way. You can say to your spouse or partner ‘Okay, it’s Tuesday and on Saturday, I’m going to need two hours to work and one hour to exercise’. And if you tell them ahead of time, they are so much less angry than if you are quarrelling about it in real time. Otherwise you are just having this passive-aggressive fight divvying out the spare hours and your kids are silently noticing.”
Senior observes that in an age when children are not only planned but aggressively sought, through fertility treatment, adoption and surrogacy, many parents expect their offspring will bring them unending happiness. However, those who embrace the duty and sacrifice involved are probably at a great advantage. She suggests parents would be better off acknowledging the fact that “you simply have this binding obligation. You’re there to serve and that will be that. There’s another cultural force at work where we all think we have to be happy all the time. I’m not sure when that emerged.”
Senior has a six-year-old son — how has writing the book informed her own approach?
“Something that helped me was learning about the neuro-circuitry of little brains and reading about the barely developed pre-frontal cortex of a child. They can’t conceive of the future, which means they spend their lives in the permanent present. I stopped negotiating with my son once I realised he had no capacity to negotiate. There was a moment I used in the book where one of the parenting instructors said to his class: “Listen, no three-year-old is ever going to say ‘Gee, Mom, you’re right, that’s a really good point’.” I thought, ‘Oh my God, that is so true’. I feel like parents shouldn’t read parenting guides, they should read neuroscience books, they would be so much better off.”
There is no doubt being a parent is hard work and brings stress, heartache and worry but ask any mother or father if they regret having a child and the answer will usually be a resounding no — the moments of joy will always outweigh the mundane realities. Senior refers to the distinction the psychologist Daniel Kahneman makes between the “experiencing self” and the “remembering self”.
“How I related it to parenting was that your experiencing self, moment to moment, might not like it very much, you might be very stressed out in the moment, you might be arguing with your spouse in the moment, you might be nagging your kid to put on his shoes or stop playing that video game. But in retrospect, people love nothing more than having parented, they say it’s the greatest source of meaning and joy in their lives. What I do now is I try and write down the funny things my kid says, I try to take more pictures so that my remembering self is optimised.”
Senior sums it up with an anecdote from a psychology professor. He recalls getting up at 3am to watch television with his children when they were sick. “I wouldn’t have said it was too fun at the time but now I look back on it and say ‘Ah, remember the time we used to wake up and watch cartoons?’”
Such moments, whether rose-tinted or not, are the ones that will linger in our memories — and those of our children — long after they have left our care and forged their own lives.
Why waste precious hours fretting about their futures when we could just be enjoying their company and unique perspective on life? Perhaps it’s time we eased up on our children — and ourselves — and instead rediscovered the fun of parenthood and what we can learn from our children about living for now.
* All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood, by Jennifer Senior, Little, Brown, €20.50; Kindle, €8.99
In 2004, five researchers, including Nobel Prize-winning behavioural economist Daniel Kahneman, did a study showing which activities gave 909 working women in Texas the most pleasure. Child care ranked 16th out of 19, behind preparing food, watching TV, napping, shopping, even behind housework.
* In 2008, 72% of college-educated women (in US) between the ages of 25 and 29 had not yet had children.
* In 1971, a trio of researchers from Harvard observed 90 mother-toddler pairs for five hours and found that on average, mothers gave a command, told their child no, or fielded a request (often “unreasonable” or “in a whining tone”) every three minutes. Their children, in turn, obeyed on average only 60% of the time. This is not exactly a formula for perfect mental health.
* In 2009, four researchers analysed the data of 132 couples from a larger study and found that 90% of them experienced a decline in marital satisfaction after the birth of their first child.
* In When Partners Become Parents, published in 1992, the pioneering husband-and-wife team of Carolyn and Philip Cowan reported that nearly one-quarter of the 100 or so couples in their longitudinal survey indicated their marriage was “in some distress” when their child hit the 18-month mark.
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