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

"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." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Harvard psychologist Weissbourd argues incisively that parents--not peers or television--are the primary shapers of their children's moral lives. Weissbourd's ultimately compassionate message is that the intense, crisis-filled, and profoundly joyous process of raising a child can be a powerful force for parents' moral development.

Harvard psychologist Richard Weissbourd upends received wisdom that the biggest threats to our children's moral development are bad peer influences, violence on television, or parents who fail to teach values. Instead, he argues incisively that parents--often unknowingly--are eroding children's capacity for caring and responsibility.

Through the author's own original field research, including hundreds of rich and revealing conversations with children, parents, teachers, coaches, and counselors, a surprising picture emerges. The suddenly widespread desire of parents to be closer to their children often undercuts kids' morality. Parents' intoxication with their children's happiness is turning many children into fragile conformists who are easily threatened by others. And 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.

Like Coles and Kozol, THE PARENTS WE MEAN TO BE delivers a deeply insightful view of our children's moral landscape. Finally, Weissbourd delivers the good news, based on compelling new research, that the intense, crisis-filled, and profoundly joyous process of raising a child can be a powerful force for our own moral development.