The Parents We Mean To Be: How Well-Intentioned Adults Undermine Children's Moral and Emotional Development

by Richard Weissbourd

Overview

A wake-up call for a national crisis in parenting—and a deeply helpful book for those who want to see their own behaviors as parents with the greatest possible clarity.

Harvard psychologist Richard Weissbourd argues incisively that parents—not peers, not television—are the primary shapers of their children’s moral lives. And yet, it is parents’ lack of self-awareness and confused priorities that are dangerously undermining children’s development.

Through the author’s own original field research, including hundreds of rich, revealing conversations with children, parents, teachers, and coaches, a surprising picture emerges. Parents’ intense focus on their children’s happiness is turning many children into self-involved, fragile conformists.

The suddenly widespread desire of parents to be closer to their children—a heartening trend in many ways—often undercuts kids’ morality. Our fixation with being great parents—and our need for our children to reflect that greatness—can actually make them feel ashamed for failing to measure up. Finally, parents’ interactions with coaches and teachers—and coaches’ and teachers’ interactions with children—are critical arenas for nurturing, or eroding, children’s moral lives.

Weissbourd’s ultimately compassionate message—based on compelling new research—is that the intense, crisis-filled, and profoundly joyous process of raising a child can be a powerful force for our own moral development.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780547248035
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	09/03/2010
Pages:	241
Sales rank:	1,168,601
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

RICHARD WEISSBOURD is a child and family psychologist on the faculty of Harvard’s School of Education and Kennedy School of Government. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, and Chicago Tribune. Weissbourd is the author of The Vulnerable Child, named by the American School Board Journal as one of the top ten educational books of all time.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

A Note on Methods xi

Introduction 1

1 Helping Children Manage Destructive Emotions 9

2 Promoting Happiness and Morality 37

3 The Real Danger in the Achievement Craze 61

4 When Being Close to Children Backfires 81

5 Moral Adults: Moral Children 99

6 The Real Moral Power of Schools 115

7 The Morally Mature Sports Parent 137

8 Cultivating Mature Idealism in Young People 165

9 Key Moral Strengths of Children Across Race and Culture 177

Conclusion: Moral Communities 195

Notes 207

Index 229

Editorial Reviews

…offers a nuanced, comprehensive analysis of the role of parents as moral mentors—and how an unhealthy closeness between parents and children can undermine it…Though there's a fair amount of therapy-speak here, Weissbourd also offers compelling evidence and vivid examples.
—The Washington Post

Nora Krug

Harvard psychologist Weissbourd (The Vulnerable Child ) delivers a direct, digestible wakeup call about the need for better moral instruction for children. Enlisting a battery of researchers to conduct interviews with students, teachers and parents mostly in the Boston area and the South, Weissbourd asserts quite forcefully and repetitively that by abdicating moral authority to popular culture and children's peers, by shielding children from their destructive behavior, by letting fathers "off the hook" and by insisting on children's happiness rather than their goodness, adults are failing their own children. Weissbourd looks at the role of shame in engendering children's destructive acts, and how it can result from parents' excessive expectations and fears of their children's emotions. Promoting an elusive notion of happiness sacrifices important lessons in empathy, appreciation and caring, while parents' self-interest continually "erodes the basis for community." The author advocates checking parents' overweening drive for achievement in our children, refraining from wanting to be their best friend and cultivating a healthy idealism. He cites a woeful lack of self-awareness by parents and the need for building alliances with teachers and other parents. His chapter on the "morally mature sports parent" is a sober reminder of why we want our children to play sports. Moral strengths and failures among different cultures are particularly explored in this strongly worded work that barely grazes the tip of the iceberg. (Mar.)

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