4 Hidden Barriers to Parental Enjoyment

Parent ignoring Advice

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As a mother of five, I regularly engage with parents during various activities involving my children. The overwhelming nature of parenting is a frequently discussed topic. Parental complaints are often focused on dealing with children, but there are some major threats to parenting that parents mistakenly overlook when they are narrowly focused on children. Understanding these factors can empower parents with awareness to improve the parenting experience.

1. Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen

From the moment you learn you're expecting, well-intentioned individuals flood you with their often poorly vetted wisdom on how you should raise your children. Whether it's being told to hold your baby constantly or not at all, allowing screen time or strictly limiting it, the barrage of conflicting advice can leave parents feeling pulled in multiple directions.

The pressure intensifies as expectations from family members add to the mix. Balancing the desire not to disappoint those offering advice or gifts with the need to make personal parenting choices can be frustrating. This constant push and pull make it challenging to feel confident in deciding the best course of action for your family.

Living in the information age further complicates matters. Online resources provide a readily available source of information. The difficulty with using the internet is distinguishing between genuinely beneficial guidance, opinion-focused ideas, and attention-seeking information. Parents often find themselves in a sea of contradictory recommendations, struggling to navigate a path that aligns with their values and instincts.

2. Relying Too Heavily on Past Information.

Every generation looks at the current generation with concern and skepticism. I cannot count how many times I heard from elders as a child, and now as a parent, “When I was a kid, we did things differently.” Even as a kid, I experienced those words as a dismissal of the experiences I was having at the time. If parents are not intentional, they can get stuck in what they learned and experienced in their childhood that may no longer be relevant, instead of giving a voice to the present concerns of the child in front of them. This can create a disconnect in the parent-child relationship. Parenting becomes difficult when children do not see their parents as interested in their lives.

Using past information is not in itself problematic and serves as a baseline for knowledge. The difficulty comes when we do not approach the present willing to engage with it but look back to a time that no longer exists.

Sitting alone

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3. Parenting in Isolation and Lack of Social Support.

While parents receive lots of advice, modern parenting can often feel lonely. Research has often found increased feelings of isolation and loneliness among parents (Hall et al. 2020; Nowland et al 2021). Some reasons for this experience include:

• Fewer Americans live in the type of close-knit, supportive communities that were once common, which creates a barrier to support that can be difficult to overcome.
• Many of us find ourselves restricted by our very busy schedules from making meaningful connections.
• With major shifts towards more individualism, it feels inappropriate to bother others with our issues.

These factors leave parents feeling drained and alone. The saying “It takes a village to raise a child.” has never been truer.

4. Some Parents Give Up Before They Start.

The saying, “Parenting does not come with an instructional manual,” is often used as a reason not to be better prepared. If there is nothing I can do to guarantee my child’s success, why not just love them and hope for the best? This idea disheartens parents early on and often cripples how they approach parenting. Many parents resort to overparenting (being overly involved in their children’s lives) because they identify this behavior as loving them. The issue is that it can lead to poorly equipped individuals, and parents may feel baffled because they did everything they knew to do.

These barriers can be overcome. Addressing them head-on is the key:

1. Be clear about your parenting goals and values. Measure all advice against that. This requires being clear about this as soon as possible. If you are not sure about where you stand, it will be easy to get washed away in the ocean of voices that will try to direct you.
2. Focus on the child in front of you as well as the culture in which they are being raised. Sharing your life and experiences is useful; using those experiences to ignore the very present concerns that your children will endure is not.
3. Ask for help and prioritize social support. Social support is the single most important aspect of human health, both physically and emotionally. An 85-year-long study on longevity by Harvard found that relationships are the key to living a long, healthy life. Look past the individualistic culture's pressure to isolate, and focus on building relationships that fill you up.
4. Educate yourself. Parents often look to learn about parenting from the parents' perspective. The focus is often on how to get children to be quiet, listen to parents, follow their rules, etc. A better solution would be to focus on parenting from the child’s perspective. Understanding children is the key. With regard to brain development, childhood is light years away from adulthood, and learning about children will help us better serve them; in turn, they will be more responsive to us.

By addressing these often-overlooked threats to positive parenting, parents can empower themselves with awareness, creating a more fulfilling and enriching parenting experience. Ultimately, the key lies in being open to learning, embracing the uniqueness of each child, and fostering genuine connections within a supportive community.