103NONFICTION
Parenting is not
the boss of you
By Belinda Luscombe
“MY LIFE HAS MANY MISFOR-
tunes,” wrote French philosopher
Michel de Montaigne in the 16th
century, “most of which never hap-
pened.” Not coincidentally, Montaigne
is also considered the father of the per-
sonal essay, which has these 500 years
later begotten a populous line of litera-
ture: the parenting memoir in which
nothing terribly bad happens.
The newest arrival in this family is
Kim Brooks’Small Animals: Parenting in
the Age of Fear. The misfortune that befell
Brooks was that when she left her 4-year-
old son in a perfectly safe and cool car to
run into Target for less than 10 minutes,
someone reported it to the police, and a
warrant was put out for her arrest. Nasty,
but not life-threatening. She wrote an essay
in 2014 that went viral about how impossibly
judgy parenting has become, and received, for
her troubles, a whole lot more judgment.
Small Animalsattempts to assess how modern
American parenthood has become synonymous
with fear and has “made people worse, or at least,
worse to each other.” Brooks arrives at many
possible answers. Perhaps it’s because raising
children is a much more intensive and intentional
activity now than it has been. Or because the
media play up stories of the calamities that parents
visit upon children (and readers devour them), so
people are more apt to think kids are perpetually
in danger. Maybe America’s disavowal of state-
sponsored child care is to blame, because it often
puts parents, particularly mothers, in an impossible
squeeze. No matter which is true, with ever
present cameras and social media, what was once a
domestic matter is now very public.
The result is that parents live in fear of being
shamed—even highly educated, straight, white
parents like Brooks, who are aforded the beneit
of the doubt in a way low-income and minority
parents are not. And it changes how they behave.
IT’S ALL GREAT STUFFfor an essay, with the
perfect Montaigne level of narrowly averted
misfortune. As a book, however, it’s strangely thin.
Brooks seems to lack conidence not just in her
(perfectly valid) parenting decisions but also in
her own sprightly voice, and she quotes long and
tedious passages from experts, friends and social-
media acquaintances. Parents, time-poor as they
△
Two new books
examine why
parenting is not
nearly as fun as
it should beare, have scant need for a book-length recitation
of the ways in which child rearing blows.
The conidence that seems to have been shaken
out of Brooks and her peers might possibly be
restored by KJ Dell’Antonia’s cheerful, practical
How to Be a Happier Parent. Dell’Antonia worked
the parenting beat for the New YorkTimes while
raising four children on a New Hampshire horse
farm, which may explain her pragmatic outlook.
She identiies the main challenges of parenting
(not including judgment) and deals with each,
one at a time: mornings, discipline, chores, sibling
ights, screens and so on. She explains why each
dilemma is worse today and then ofers realistic,
often research-backed nuggets on how to reduce
the misery. Mornings are better if you get to bed
earlier. Chores will get done if you’re consistent
and don’t expect to be liked. Being a good parent
doesn’t require intervening in every sibling
scrap. One of her mantras: “You don’t have to
go in there.” None of her ideas is revolutionary,
but her cheerful assurance that these issues are
surmountable and that parents are up to the task
is like a restorative drink of fresh water in a sea of
misery. So many parenting memoirs read like an
employee whining about the boss;Happier Parent
reads like a CEO who rolls up her sleeves and says,
“Which problem’s next?”
Americans are not likely to give up judging
fellow Americans for their parenting anytime soon.
But with a little conidence, you can graciously
ignore them. You don’t have to go in there. □