My baby daughter did not come with an instruction manual. This was somewhat early in the Internet age, so it wasn’t just that the manuals had become digital downloads. I went into the hospital a Wall Street professional (for which I had gone to school and was required to pass a series of lengthy and rigorous tests) and came out a parent (for which I was required to do nothing more than provide an acceptable infant car seat). OK. So now what?
In other times or other families, perhaps I would have had the benefit of close-by relatives to help, to pass on practical and spiritual wisdom. But they were either far away or simply a blessed memory. My husband and I faced parenthood alone.
Acknowledging our status as starter parents, we sometimes referred to our daughter as "the first pancake," hoping we weren’t inflicting any permanent damage to this adorable and challenging creature in our care. We wanted to be good parents - to love her, take care of her, and teach her. Yet on many days we were done in by the physical and mental effort involved in simply getting through the day. At times we really did not know what to do to calm a wailing child, tame a tantrum, or make our home feel like a place of peace and comfort. As she grew, we felt unsure of how to impart values we believed in so that she would be ready to meet the world and take her place in it. We could have used a few good parenting lessons, some techniques and advice to help us shape our family life and help her grow.
So I was surprised to see a child development academic assert recently that “this prescriptive picture is fundamentally misguided,” and that “love’s purpose is not to shape our beloved’s destiny but to help them shape their own.” (“Manifesto Against Parenting,” by Dr. Allison Gopnik, The Wall Street Journal, Sat/Sun July 9-10, 2016). Her view? "We follow our intuitions, muddle through and hope for the best."
Muddle through and hope for the best? Pardon me for wanting more.
I do get it. I’ve seen the articles about tiger moms and helicopter parents. We parents can indeed go too far. But does that mean that all advice is part of some malevolent parenting industrial complex? Is the answer Gopnik’s somewhat laissez faire approach? Be more like a gardener, she advises, and let children grow as they will in a messy and dynamic ecosystem. Well, I’ve tried my hand at gardening, and in my experience a laissez faire approach to plants tends to lead to a lot of brown, dead things in the yard.
Maurice Elias, co-author of, yes, a parenting book, (The Joys and Oys of Parenting: Insight and Wisdom from the Jewish Tradition just out from Behrman House) takes a different view. “We view 'being a parent' as a sacred opportunity and responsibility,” he writes, “and so it makes sense for parents to seek guidance as they enact that role, particularly if such guidance is not coming from family interactions as in the past. Ultimately parents must make choices about how to relate to their children, partners, households, and children's peer and educational environments, and more. This will benefit, in the vast majority of cases, from more than intuition and hoping for the best.”
Dr. Elias is a professor in the Department of Psychology at Rutgers University, a contributing faculty member in its Department of Jewish Studies, and also the director of the Rutgers Social-Emotional and Character Development Lab. He and his co-authors, Marilyn Gootman and Heather Schwartz, both education and PJ Library professionals, have created a guide for making conscious, deliberate, and value-based parenting choices.
Their book demonstrates how today’s understanding of child development and the importance of social-emotional intelligence is illuminated and supported by thousands of years of Jewish writings and wisdom. It offers both inspiration and practical advice for parents seeking a way out of the confusion and exhaustion that can often characterize family life. With its focus on wisdom and practices that have proven helpful to generations upon generations of families the book helps them address the challenges of parenting while still embracing its joys.
The authors also describe problem solving as a highly learnable skill. They offer an eight-step technique that can be employed to just about any parenting challenge, allowing parents to model these skills for their children. With clearly articulated steps such as listening to one’s feelings, stating the problem, brainstorming, and looking for obstacles that might hinder an idea for a solution, the guidelines can help mend frayed tempers and foster feelings of cooperation.
That feels a whole lot better than muddling through.
The Joys and Oys of Parenting: Insight and Wisdom from the Jewish Tradition includes an extensive discussion guide that turns this book into a key resource for community and congregational parent learning groups and workshops.
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Order from Behrman House
