Customer Reviews

Spoiling Childhood: How Well-Meaning Parents Are Giving Children Too Much - But Not What They Need

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Parents who love Dr. Laura Schlessinger will love this book too! Ehrensaft zings into the fundamental psychological issues behind parenting styles of today's parents, and places them in a cultural and historical context. For the first time, I've read a book that identifies the pressures that contribute to my own parenting mistakes and pitfalls. By avoiding giving a cookbook solution to overcoming the expectations we place on our children, Ehrensaft forces readers to think about the motivations behind their own parenting styles, and thus to make decisions about how to make our children's lives less confusing. This book is an outstanding commentary on parenting today, and I am recommending it to my friends, relatives and clients, AND my children's teachers. If you are a parent in today's world, feeling confused, worried or guilty about your parenting style and its impact on your children, READ this book!

Ehrensaft describes sympathetically the guilt pitfalls facing parents in the modern two-earner family. Trying to balance work and family is confusing and often makes us anxious and harried fathers and mothers. As a result, she argues, we can easily over-pamper our children, over-invest in presents and ironically rush our children too quickly through their childhood. In clear and helpful prose and with many concrete examples, drawn from years of clinical experience and teaching as well as from modern psychological research, Ehrensaft offers parents insightful advice on how to be more relaxed and better parents to our children. Few things in life are more important. Well-balanced in lessons for fathers as well as mothers, this is a must read for current and prospective parents.

She takes some big unsubstantiated leaps about a pretty serious topic, parental aggression, in this book. Can she be serious that there is a link between a societal ban on hitting kids and the rise in child abuse? I think we need to see some hard research on that. If that's not bad enough, she also wonders whether there is something to be learned from her own mother, who freely called out to bisbehaving kids, "I'll kill you!" Although her concern for the inhibited parent may be justified, she doesn't seem to know when to draw the line on parental aggression nor give the reader a sense of appropriate ways to express anger. Thanks anyway, I'll pass on this one.

Diane Ehrensaft's fine book "Spoiling Childhood" offers real-life situations from her extensive clinical background to illustrate the bind in which today's "confused parents" find themselves. Highly "conversational" in mood, it aims to help replace parental guilt with "good enough," not perfect parenting. This refreshing book is the one to read if you or anyone you know has ever stopped to say "Wait a minute...I'm the adult here...why is it so hard for me to take control of this situation?" This book is so good I have contacted the author and arranged for her to speak to a parent group in our community this fall.

This is one terrific book that goes a long way toward easing the seemingly ubiquitous guilt of today's middle-class parents. I wish I had had it when my own children were younger, but I'm glad to offer it as a resource to parents who consult with me about their difficulties in setting limits with their own children. Ehrensaft clearly elucidates the toll on contemporary parents of many competing, often contradictory, pressures. While she recognizes that raising children might have been easier in simpler times, she does not advocate the impossiblity of retreating into an idealized world of certanties. Instead, she offers parents tools for helping themselves and their children toward healthy development in a world that can only become more complex. Highly recommended for parents, teachers, and therapists.

I found the tone of the first chapter to be so hectoring that I just couldn't keep reading. I don't doubt she has great advice, but I couldn't read the book. A scold. A very nice counter to this book, and one that I do recommend, is Loving Your Child is Not Enough, Positive Discipline That Works, by Nancy Simalin and Martha Moraghan Jablow. Same gist: children need clear, firm boundaries and rules. Different tones: most parents are too self-involved to take good care of their kids (Spoiling Childhood), versus parenting is difficult work, and here's how to hone your skills (Loving Your Child...).

This book was somewhat helpful, and I think it would be especially useful to first-time parents. It had a lot that I'd already learned growing up the oldest of 6 children and helping raise the youngest 4 of them, but for those who had a more "normal" upbringing themselves, this should be a good resource.

Dr. Ehrensaft has a gift for blending the clinical and emotional aspects of what children need as opposed to what they want. The importance of saying 'no' today for responsibile children tomorrow; sums up the insightful wisdom of this well written,heartfelt book. A 'just say no' approach to combat addiciton to instant gratification and materialism that produces the insatiable demands of children. Dr. Ehrensaft captures the value of setting limits as only a working parent can.

I recognized myself and my friends in many chapters of this book. What's interesting is that we are mostly stay-at-home moms who have also been afftected by the harried parent/rush-to-the-top syndrome that is modern parenting. After reading this book I was more grateful than ever that I do stay home with my children. I also felt more confidence in my parenting instincts and gained resolve to be a stronger parent. The most disappointing aspect of this book was Dr. E.'s conclusion. There was no recommendation that parents put aside their own ambition for a short time, at least while their children are not in school. The simplistic assertion that most parents work because they have to is bunk - most work to support a lifestyle that is heavy with new cars, huge houses, nice clothes and lots of dinners out. I know because many of my working friends are among this group. Dr. E.'s perfect work world is unrealistic and unfair. It's not up to the employers to take care of our families needs - that is our responsibility.