Twenty-five Cents Worth of Bad Parenting

Six Year Old Child: Mommy, May I go out and play?

Mommy: Shut up! We only had you to save the marriage.

***

The except above is as far as I’ve gotten in my new book, Parent Ineffectiveness Training: How to Ensure that your Child Grows up to be, at the Very Least, Miserably Unhappy, Quite Possibly a Burden to Society. I’m concerned about finding a publisher because:

1) The acronym, P.I.T. is clever, but may not, in and of itself, sell all that many books. And the title, Parent Ineffectiveness Training: How to Ensure that your Child Grows up to be, at the Very Least, Miserably Unhappy, Quite Possibly a Burden to Society may be a little long.

2) That’s all I’ve written

3) Bad parenting just isn’t that funny. Who would want to read a book about bad parenting? Frankly, I don’t even want to write any more than these two lines.

But I do have some–hopefully–more insightful questions: From what kind of parents do the healthy children come? The simple answer: loving, married, sober, middle class families where both parents take off work to coach soccer seems simplistic, inadequate, and easily refuted:

You and I both know lovely children whose parents are not all that supportive. And we know kids who are a mess whose parents are as supportive as can be.

You and I both know lovely children who are the products of divorced, blended, and other kinds of families. And we know kids who are a mess whose parents are happily married.

You and I both know lovely children whose parents have issues with drugs and alcohol. And we know kids who are a mess whose parents are clean and sober.

You and I both know lovely children whose parents have no money at all. And we know kids who are a mess whose families have enough money for whatever they want.

You and I both know lovely children whose parents don’t coach soccer or even attend the games. And we know kids who are a mess whose parents are active and involved in the children’s sports.

The question, “What makes a good parent?” is beyond the scope of these short columns. I suspect that the interplay between these few factors mentioned and dozens more might begin to give us some insight.

But I just want to address bad parenting. B-A-D. An analogy, if I may. The following is an actual conversation between a math teacher and a student aged 17.

Me: What is the decimal equivalent of one fourth?

Student: I don’t know.

Me: One fourth is the same as a quarter.

Student: Uh huh.

Me: How many pennies are there in a quarter of a dollar?

Student: I don’t know.

Me: A quarter of a dollar is twenty-five cents. So one fourth written as a decimal would be…?

Student: I don’t know. Point one four?

***

What is the parenting equivalent of not knowing that 1/4 = .25?

Here’s one from a highly educated, happily married, professional woman in her late 40s: “I don’t know why our 22 year-old daughter is pregnant again with the child of her mid-level drug dealing boyfriend. Her substance abuse issues–lots of Xanax every day–are moving toward chemical dependency and there’s no pre-natal care whatever. I don’t know why she has a problem with drugs. Whenever we smoke pot with her, we tell her to only use it in moderation like we do.”

It’s easy to point a finger, throw a stone, at this misguided mom. She smoked pot with her daughter? It’s no surprise that the daughter is addicted to Xanax. I’ll be interested to hear your stories of bad parenting producing healthy kids and good parents whose kids are a mess,