Today, Lisa Belkin tackles the concept of over-parenting at Motherlode.  She cites a paper to be published later this year in The U.C. Davis Law Review by Gaia Bernstein and Zvi Triger that gently mocks Intensive Parenting (as they call it), needling at mothers for using the Internet as a parenting resource (ahem) and suggesting that over-parenting is creating a generation of co-dependent, clingy kids.

Belkin doesn’t flat-out condemn over-parenting, but she admits that modern parents often have trouble letting go of our kids.  She writes, “I think the point of parenting is to guide children toward independence. The goal, starkly put, is for them to stop needing you.”  As for how to reach that goal?  “The road from here to there is different from child to child and parent to parent,” she says.

Wait, you mean there are no answers?  There is no sure-fire method by which to raise The Perfect Child?  Then what are we all doing on the Internet? Continue reading »

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We’ve all read the advice to constantly stimulate your baby with talk — keeping up a ceaseless stream of updates and information, packing in every possible teachable moment. And quite frankly, sometimes I’ve even annoyed myself with the constant chatter: “Yes! Now we’re going to go get milk! Yes! The milk jug has BLUE on it! Milk comes from COWS!”

Apparently, I’m not the only one rolling my eyes and thinking “will you LISTEN to yourself, woman?” (Much as, I should note, I do love talking to them and think it’s helped them both develop good verbal skills). Susan Goldberg, writing for the New York Times “Complaint Box” blog, describes this phenomenon thusly: Continue reading »

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We’re in an era of what seems to be unprecedented information about parenting. Books, magazines, newspaper columns, and even websites like this one bubble over with advice and opinions about what you “should” be doing for your kids and more to the point, how they should be.

It’s enough to make us crazy. If you’re susceptible to the endless marketing barrage aimed at parents and the constant rush of advice books whose authors aren’t selling anything but themselves, you can really get into a lather. If you’re Continue reading »

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Now that the world’s finally caught up to what we at Babble already knew – namely that “bad” parenting doesn’t have to be all that bad – CNN is giving us a scapegoat.

It’s the economy, stupid! Continue reading »

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