Forget parenting books, classes and Dr Google: perfect parents don’t exist, so trust your instincts and get to know your children
Children don’t come with a manual, so don’t be swayed by the parenting industry, say Hong Kong psychologists; they advise parents to ignore the latest trends and the anxiety to be a good parent and do what feels right for the family
Search Amazon.com for books on “parenting” and it’ll suggest more than 100,000 titles.
Now consider the word: Parent. Parenting: a noun morphed as a verb. Raising children becomes an increasingly grown-up job, as evidenced by all those titles.
Parenting now intimates an important higher calling in a way that plain old raising kids just doesn’t.
Will all you monster parents just please stop screaming?
Are you looking, Amazon wants to know, for “parenting with love and logic”; “parenting from the inside out”; “parenting toddlers”; “parenting the strong willed child” or “parenting without power struggles”? Or all of the above? Most people just want to know how to bring up babies.
Parenting, it seems, has become a commercial, billion-dollar industry. The apparently infinite list of books on the subject grows ever longer every year with hot new topics: 2018 will see the publication of Thomas Lickona’s How to Raise Kind Kids, Katie Hurley’s No More Mean Girls, and the very contemporary The Art of Screen Time, by Anya Kamenetz, which will help parents “manage their children’s relationships with technology by taking part in digital experiences together”.
The books are augmented by parenting “gurus” – you can attend classes in being a better mother.