
New York Times bestselling author Glennon Doyle is unequivocal in her opinion on modern parenting.
In her new book Untamed, she describes how parents receive a ‘terrible memo’ from society as soon as our kids are born.
This memo says that our kids are our saviours and parenting them is akin to a religion. We must give them every opportunity possible and most importantly, we must never allow anything difficult to happen to them.
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According to Glennon, not only does this disastrous memo make us parents feel exhausted, neurotic and guilty; but it is also the reason why our kids suck.
Ouch.
The reason our kids suck, she says, is because we no longer allow our children to learn how to lose, or to struggle, or to be rejected.
We wrap them up tight to shield them from harm but all we are actually doing, she says, is overparenting and under-protecting them from the real world.
According to Glennon and the memo, parent is no longer just a noun but a verb and something we have to do ceaselessly.
“Think of the verb parent as synonymous with protect, shield, hover, deflect, fix, plan and obsess,” she says.
“Parenting will require all of you: please parent with your mind, body, and soul.”
I actually shouted ‘YESSSSS!” when I read this chapter in the bath as I relate wholeheartedly.
Not because I parent in this exhausting way all of the time, but because of the hideous guilt I feel for not parenting this way, all of the time.
As soon as my first sweet little baby boy arrived into the world, I felt the weight of what it meant to parent him, as if it was a religion.
I hid my fear and ineptitude at being a new mum and instead felt this weird pressure to constantly feel #blessed a lot of the time.
That damn terrible memo about the sort of perfect parent I needed to be, became the stick with which I beat myself when I couldn’t live up to it.
I wanted to cook all the nutritious things, play all the games, and be the constant supportive, engaged and interested cheerleader-mum I was supposed to be, but like Glennon says I just ended up feeling neurotic, exhausted and then guilty.