Fathers and mothers have lost the idea that the highest aspiration they might have for their children is for them to be wise... specialized competence and success are all that they can imagine.
The science can tell you that the thousands of pseudo-scientific parenting books out there - not to mention the 'Baby Einstein' DVDs and the flash cards and the brain-boosting toys - won't do a thing to make your baby smarter. That's largely because babies are already as smart as they can be; smarter than we are in some ways.
Family involvement is a valuable thing and playing together actively can be the '90s version of it. Instead of just watching, you can do it together... something we don't spend enough time on. We can motivate and excite each other about fitness.
I'm not the first to admit that raising a child in Park Slope, Brooklyn, can bear an embarrassing resemblance to the TV show 'Portlandia.' My wife and I try to have some ironic distance from the culture of organic, chemical-free parenting, but we're often participants.
I would like to do another piece of fiction dealing with a number of issues: Lesbian parenting, the 1960's, and interracial relationships in the Lesbian and Gay community.
It's a great mistake, I think, to put children off with falsehoods and nonsense, when their growing powers of observation and discrimination excite in them a desire to know about things.
I've been lucky enough to live through all the things that are supposed to give meaning to our lives, like parenting, grandparenting, art, celebrity. All these things you expect meaning to come from, and sometimes it comes when you're not expecting it.
Parenting is the hardest thing I have ever done. I tried to find the balance between the strict, traditional Chinese way I was raised, which I think can be too harsh, and what I see as a tendency in the West to be too permissive and indulgent. If I could do it all again, I would, with some adjustments.
You know, parenting is so personal. And we're all afraid that we didn't quite get it right. And it feels like the stakes are so high. By we - what if we made a mistake?
Tiger parenting is all about raising independent, creative, courageous kids. In America today, there's a dangerous tendency to romanticize creativity in a way that may undermine it.
I do not think there was anything abusive in my house. Yet, I stand by a lot of my critiques of Western parenting. I think there's a lot of questions about how you instill true self-esteem.
I think there are many ways to raise great kids. From what I can tell, Ayelet Waldman's kids are interesting, strong, and happy, and if that's the case, that's good parenting.
My son was five months old, and I built a makeshift studio in my living room so that I could do the attachment parenting approach and write the record at the same time. That was fortuitous, that we could build that in the house.
