The One Big Thing You Can Do for Your Kids

No matter what challenges we face as parents, we can all see the evidence before our eyes. Look at your children. Observe them. Talk to them. Are they happy? Are they thriving? We are subjected to so many influences—especially other people’s opinions—that we forget to simply look at our families and see what’s working and what’s not. If something i

A good enough parent is one who cares for their child and tends to their needs without expecting perfection of either themselves or their child. In fact, Winnicott and others argue that a good enough parent is actually more effective than a “perfect parent” (whatever that means) because perfectionism has no place in a healthy relationship between p

Alison Gopnik notes that the word “parenting” was essentially never used until the 1950s, and only became popular in the 1970s. For nearly all of human history, people grew up in environments where they observed many people caring for many children. There was plenty of local wisdom and no need for parenting experts.

organized people can do to prepare themselves for having children. They can buy all the books, observe friends and relations, review their own memories of childhood. But the distance between those proxy experiences and the real thing, ultimately, can be measured in light-years. Prospective parents have no clue what their children will be like; no c

A “happy” child was never and nowhere the aim of parenting. An industrious, useful child; a malleable child; a healthy child; an obedient, mannerly child; a stay-out-of-trouble child; a God-fearing child; an entertaining child—all these varieties, yes. But the parental fallacy has trapped the parents also in providing happiness, along with shoes, s