Reflect

We all want to be good parents - possibly even the best parent we can be. But is this a good idea? My new book, Good Enough: A Framework for Modern Parenting, might suggest differently. In my review of the research and my own clinical and personal experience, I conclude that the messy middle of parenting might be where the important work is done in giving kids the best start in life.

It was Donald Winnicott, a paediatrician and psychotherapist working in the 1950s, who first introduced the term “Good Enough Mother” in those more sexist times. However, the intrinsic sexism doesn’t mean that the concept is invalid. Even then, Winnicott was railing against the professionalisation of parenting, and how too much instruction took women away from their intuitive good sense with their own babies and children.

I think poor Winnicott would be turning in his grave if he saw what has happened in the last generation or two! We have moved from the word “parent” as someone in a relationship with their child, to wholesale “parenting” as something parents have to do to children to get the best outcome. Parents are constantly supposed to be providing the best food, offering stimulating environments for early development, protecting kids from the dangers of the internet and screens, giving them opportunities for physical exercise and support, engaging them in a love of culture, reading, art, getting the best educational environments and support, providing firm boundaries and listening to their big feelings.

And of course, all of these things are important, but it seems that over the last two generations, since Winnicott, not only have there been enormous societal changes that mean that two-income families are an economic reality for most, but the number and scale of parenting standards we are encouraged to meet has grown exponentially. It can feel that we are expected to be full-time support staff to our children’s growth and development, as well as competing in the workplace. No wonder if you ask any parent how they are, they will say “busy” and “tired”. We have lost the importance of the word ‘enough’.

So, what if all those things are quite important, but that as parents, we only have to do them 'enough'? What if parents could take a compassionate view to their own parenting and a more relaxed attitude towards meeting lots of external standards? Would that mean that their children do better or worse?

Motivate

Within our do better and get more society, this is such a foreign concept to us that it takes some absorbing and unpacking. How can striving for the best with our children, not be best? Well, there are multiple different routes by which this has a negative impact, and I can only touch on a few here.

We know that a capacity to be in the present is key to happiness, and that early on kids do this naturally, whilst we, as adults, try to train them out of it. As toddlers, they might dawdle on the way to daycare to look at a snail, and with our busy agendas, we as parents are constantly having to say, “Come on”. Later, with our multi-task star charts and learning objectives, we get serious about training kids out of being in the present and into a future focus. When complex arrangements dominate the after-school schedule, it can be hard to do anything but rush and hurry kids along. And of course, some of this is necessary – part of the task of parenting is to socialise children into a school and work life.

But do we ever stop to ask – has this all got too much? Where is the point of ‘enough’ in all these good things we are offering them and trying to get them to do? And is there a point where all this busyness becomes counterproductive?

When I see strung-out adolescents, they feel overwhelmed with constant explicit expectations on them, the shoulds and musts, from home, friends, school and society. They have internalised a whole list of other people's expectations about doing well, getting to a Russell Group university, or achieving top grades. We then somewhat ironically and largely unsuccessfully, try to teach adolescents mindfulness skills, to be in the moment (a skill they held in abundance back in their snail-watching days).

For others, the constant pressure has left them disenfranchised from school or work. We know that school absenteeism is almost double the rate than pre-covid, and young people’s engagement in work has decreased. Where they can, young people and their parents are seeking diagnoses, perhaps to explain what actually is becoming commonplace – not being able to cope with the pressure society is placing on them. Teens feel like the problem is with them, that there is something wrong with them, that they can’t cope or manage – but when 1 in 5 has a probable mental health disorder, maybe the problems don’t lie internally within them, but in what we are asking of them?

To escape the pressure, both the over-workers and the disenfranchised groups go onto their phones, where they are again insidiously bombarded with more implicit expectations – of how they should look, what size they should be, how successful they should be, all the things they could buy and what it means to be a man. And so the pressure surrounding them - both explicit and implicit - mounts. This perfect storm of pressure around them can be the root of many mental illnesses.

All this striving for better and more can also have a negative impact by undermining our relationships with children. We make ourselves too busy and outcome focused to meet our children where they are – to ever join them in their wonder at a snail, for example. Parents also risk modelling perfectionism to their kids which - as modelling is some of the most powerful teaching we do - also leaves them at risk of developing perfectionism and more vulnerable to mental health conditions.

Support

Holding a good enough attitude in parenting is, strangely, a hard ask in today’s parenting environment because we are told and sold an outcome-focused childhood. From must-have products, to the best schools we should aim for, we are encouraged to strive for better and more, for ourselves and our children.

And of course, some teaching and guidance is important in raising children, but I would encourage all parents to look for a tipping point in your parenting where thriving turns into striving. We want interested, engaged kids, with enough stimulation and who are keen to learn, but we need to notice when this tips into tired kids being dragged from activity to activity, learning spellings in the car as there is no other time, before nagging them to eat their green beans. Parents and kids strung out, and too tired for anything but mindless scrolling, where we all absorb more standards to meet.

Rolling back, expecting and accepting less from yourself and them, frees up more time for meaningful relationships between you. There is a belief that we build self-esteem through achievement, and indeed some degree of competence and growth is important, but the main source of self-esteem will likely come to your children through their relationships with you and others. If you focus too much on ‘doing’, it leaves less space for you ‘being’ with them in a relaxed way that allows for open communication. When, for example, we invest too much time and energy in the nutritional quality of the food, we can become resentful of them moaning about it or not eating it, and that takes away from the mealtime as an opportunity to spend happy time together. Or reading: we can get so focused on them spelling out letters in a quest for them to learn to read, we suck the joy out of books and that relationship-building time. The ‘Good Enough’ parenting approach is about finding the right balance and prioritising relationships.

But the right balance doesn’t mean no rules or boundaries, because the third principle in the approach is ‘firm and kind’ parenting. Firmish parenting helps kids feel contained and safe because there is consistency and predictability. But being firm is not simple, because it is on diminishing returns particularly in the tween and teen years (my book covers 0-18 years, and looks at this in more detail at every age stage). Also, finding kindness within firm is important. We need to think about how we have rules and boundaries, whilst maintaining warmth and humour. It seems to me that it is a particularly hard task with the pressure of screens and the internet, where parents struggle to set boundaries without coming down as what I call ‘sledgehammer firm’ (“I’ll take the phone away”). This, of course, stops tweens and teens talking to us about any problems that they face on their phone and allows a sub-culture to exist where there is no adult input – as was illustrated in the devastating drama Adolescence.

Parenting is the hardest, and most rewarding, job we will likely do, and because it is hard we seek certainty and guarantees. But, of course, with parenting these don’t exist. There can be no instruction manual for the infinite variety of situations and experiences you will face. But being a good enough parent isn’t about having all the answers, it’s about having principles to guide you through the joy and the challenges. Through my thirty years as a psychologist and twenty-four as a parent, I think the three ‘Good Enough’ principles can be that guide.