And I'm just treating children like people now. Also, the Parenting-Industrial complex, how capitalism birthed intensive parenting, and what about love?
That you so much for this! I'm just not that into parenting culture. Despite being a mom of four I find my fellow mothers, grandmothers, and trusted folks in my community are exactly the resource I need. I also, believe in trusting myself. I birthed these babies, and I fully believe I'm capable of raising them. That hasn't stopped the barrage of parenting content from finding me, of course. I have many friends who swear by Dr. Becky, and while I'm certain she's well meaning, I can't help but feel very at odds with her particular flavor of parenting ethos-- it reeks of too permissive if I'm being honest. A wise mother-mentor told me this discomfort is rooted in the reality that Dr. Becky isn't for me, it's to comfort and make feel good a particular kind of mother. That made all the sense in the world.
Love this so, so much! The best thing I did as a mother was what I termed a “parenting fast.” I took months off from all parenting content (which required deleting IG because it would not stop feeding me mom content). I couldn’t believe how much easier parenting felt when it was just me and my child, two people in a relationship, no other voice in my head. I also found that the single most helpful thing as a parent has been a mindful communication course I took, which applied to communicating with everyone. It’s almost like our children are small humans 😅
I am starting out as a postpartum care and education professional, and a decision I made a while ago was to have a clear boundary about avoiding parenting advice in my content and also paid work.
This article has really helped articulate WHY I stand by my decision. My goal is to support parents in their own values and intuition, not to give them another set of standards to live up to.
It is ironic that we turn to parenting advice to have a better relationship with our children, but the parenting advice can end up becoming a barrier to relationship with our children.
Other three big problems I have with PI complex (some of which you discussed):
1. Loading parents up with parenting advice and giving no advice or support on how to regenerate the kind of energy needed to enact the advice. As in, how to connect with a community of support. The best they do is encourage ‘selfcare’ which without a community of care is just another person to take care of and therefore a drain on energy.
(We say ‘take care of yourself!’ compulsively but when do we say ‘who is taking care of you?’ ?)
2. Related to above, completely ignoring the variation of systematic oppression and privilege the audience is bringing to their experience of being a parent.
2. Completely ignoring power dynamics between adults and children and particularly the power that parents have over children as legal guardians, controllers of money and therefore provision in the house etc.
Beyond ignoring power dynamics, so much parenting advice is about control. Even in gentle parenting. It’s like, ‘I didn’t like being yelled at and hit as a kid. So how do I make my kid do xyz without hitting or yelling at them?’ Without questioning the presupposition of coercion.
Wow Fran, what a comprehensive and in-depth look at parenting - its history and contemporary settings. Lots of food for thought in your post as well as the comments above. It’s funny how we ascribe to some parenting theory and deem it better than - no matter which! I’d like to say I’m just working WITH my kids and their needs and wants as little people but I’m probably massively influenced by what I read (listen to) on social media and otherwise. Hmm 🤔
I think we may have talked about allo parenting in the past. I’m reluctant to recommend yet another author, but looking at our ancestral evolution of care can be very helpful. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy wrote Mothers and Others. She is an anthropologist who studies our ape ancestors. Her discoveries are fascinating in the ways we historically shared care for young among multiple adults. This is highly unusual among primates, and yet, the benefits far outweigh the detriments.
I have not read her book, but I did listen to an interview.
I love how you point out the PI complex. I hadn’t thought of it that way.
Have you spoken to the way capitalism literally prevents us from co-parenting beyond borders of payment and marriage?
The design of housing in the west is set up AGAINST collective care.
It is designed for the sole purpose of vehicles and long distances to achieve goals of feeding and clothing one’s self.
I could go on and on about how housing and cities are designed to harm families, not help them.
So insightful! Alison Gopnik is wonderful. Perhaps what you are discovering is a natural evolution away from the modern capitalist idea of “parenting.” It fits so well with unschooling, caring for the planet, and generally looking at life differently from what we were raised with.
About 20 years ago, I heard Alfie Kohn speak about his concept of “unconditional parenting.” What always stuck with me was when he said, “It is WORKING WITH not DOING TO.” This made sense to me and I didn't feel like I needed instruction on specifics. However, the parents I was working with then had a hard time with the lack of specifics. Instead of more “parenting methods,” maybe it would help parents to see what working together with your children looks like (videos, social media posts, etc). I would love to read some stories of how you interact with your children and how it contrasts with traditional methods.
Exactly!! I’ll share a bit in my DItL this week :) I hesitate to share what we do because I don’t think I’m particularly good at it haha.. I make a ton of mistakes, I’m always learning, etc. but I feel like doing it is how we learn. There’s only so much you can actually learn from books!
“I don’t think I’m particularly good at it haha”. Wait…that’s the PI still interfering! Because at the end of the day your relationship and time together will be unique to you and there is no one right way to do it! And the fear of sharing because you make mistakes…oof. Sorry to highlight the insecurity Fran, but it seems that no matter what we do we somehow end up here (it’s just so insidious). I sent my kids back to Montessori and the kids there are all aghast at sugar, McDonald’s, video games and are very critical of other people (these parents really parented!) and my kids have come from unschooling and they spend their days on the computer and they eat a lot of candy and have a lot of autonomy and I always feel like I’m doing things wrong but this is just how we are as a family! We need a lot of alone time in our own spaces, and when we want to connect we do. If I listen to all the chatter out there it really feels like we are messed up but when I look at my kids we are all in a good place!
SO JUDGY!!!! But just because they are at Montessori doesn’t mean the parents aren’t fully entrenched in the system. I noticed the parents are always asking what more they can do at home (like maths and language) and the teachers are like…talk to them! Just talk and listen. Lol. The parents and kids are also always worried about the future (schools, grades, careers). Meanwhile we are like, don’t worry about any of that, whatever you do is for you only. It’s not to please us or your teachers. We are absolute outlier weirdos.
Yeah part of it is def my insecurity, and reluctance to share the failures or perceived failures, for sure. But part of it is also that actually, I’m still learning and bumbling along because I didnt have a model for what I’m trying to do, and also I don’t want to share bc I’m not here trying to tell people how to parent and I worry that it will come across that way, that I’ll sound judgy or like I’m putting forward a model of how it should be. So there is A LOT clearly tangled up in that, a lot to unpick! On the other hand I love when others share how they do things so there clearly is benefit in sharing out ups and downs.
So much of this makes much more sense in community. I have learned the most from hanging out with other parents and seeing how they interact with their children. There is some element of that that can’t be translated to a screen.
So much to unpack and I hope you know I was just highlighting how there are so many layers to everything and how even when we’re just trying to live and share it still ends up feeling loaded.
This is timely for me! Just yesterday I had the urge to unfollow all of the parenting experts I follow on IG and I couldn’t put into words exactly why, but felt that I was getting really tired of the noise. You’ve given me lots to think about!
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the outcomes of parenting - aka our children, how they live and act and work. Growing up in evangelical Christianity, if a child decided not to be a Christian as an adult, it was considered the worst failing of a parent ever. Somehow, it must be your fault - they straight up told parents that.
I walked away from all of that, but is what I’m pursuing now any different I wonder? In capitalism, the worst failing would be to raise a child who becomes an adult who doesn’t support themselves, who doesn’t contribute to society (aka make money to pay taxes and social security).
To be vulnerable, I think I’ve traded my parents deepest fear of their child not following Jesus for the fear that my kids won’t get a job that supports themselves. But what I find…interesting? Ironic? now is that people are working full time, sometimes multiple jobs and they STILL can’t support themselves.
Im not sure what my conclusion is other than to try my best to be present with my kids, stay in relationship with them, not have set outcomes in mind, and not catastrophize one of their current struggles into “but because they don’t do XYZ right now they won’t ever succeed in life”. (And by life I mean figure out how to survive in late stage capitalism America…which maybe they’ll decide to ditch that altogether and move abroad somewhere it’s not so bad. We’ll see!)
That's really interesting. I mean, to an extent worrying that our child won't be able to support themselves is a legit fear! Especially for anyone without much of a safety net. So i hear you that it can feel terrifying. On the other hand it's partly irrational, like you said, because the issue is not our children but a system that makes it increasingly harder to succeed. Oh my, things are bleak...
Fran, this really resonates. If we try to be a “good” parent using the models that might once have made us a “good” student or employee, we will look to outside authorities to define our role, and we will see our children as products that reveal our success in conforming to externally defined standards. Taking on “parent” or “mother” as an identity immediately places our children into an objectified role and makes them complicit in upholding and affirming our performance of said identity. I feel like millennials (I’m one, and not exempt from this) are highly drawn towards “evidence-based” parenting info, and I have lots of thoughts about why that’s problematic -- but I’ll spare you, Fran, and anyone else who bothered to read this comment! Thanks for the thought-provoking piece.
Thanks for the comment. And yes I hadn't thought too much about the identity piece but that's a really good point you make. I share your mistrust of evidence-based parenting/education info actually, and would love to know your thoughts if/when you feel like sharing!!
Reply instead of scrubbing magic marker off of walls in preparation for an upcoming move? Sure!! It goes something like this… in order for something to be “evidence based” there has to be… evidence. So, data. So, something to quantifiably measure. So, a decision about *what* to measure, and how. So, an implicit valuing of some “outcome,” or category of outcome, chosen by whoever compiled the evidence (or chosen even farther back in the chain, by whoever was measuring something for whatever reason). When I look at the aspects of my life that could be measured to contribute to any sort of data set, virtually none of them says anything about the meaning or quality of my subjective, lived experience; and in some cases, that “data” would actually be quite MISleading to someone wanting to learn about how my life feels to me. When it comes down to it, that’s what I care about: how my children’s lives feel to them, from the inside. So to make statistically-determined decisions about how to treat my children rarely makes sense to me outside of, like, straight-up medical decisions. Definitely not when it comes to education, or food, or things like “screen time,” or how to speak to them. End of rant, back to scrubbing walls! 🤣
This is a hefty invitation to reflection and analysis and I’m glad you took the time to share it with us. I’m gonna be mulling over your highly resonating ideas for a while.
This sentence stirred my lateral thinking, “I know what that feels like; looking outside of ourselves for answers, wanting someone to give us steps and scripts, needing to find a sense of community and shared values.” I connect the sentiment with the need for certainty that drives humans to trust certain authorities within communities tethered by high control religion. When you grow up being told the world is a scary place, nothing good can come from within yourself, or that children are inherently sinful and ever bent on manipulating adults, is it any wonder you anxiously approach the role of being a parent with a lack of confidence in yourself or the child and therefore turn to the religious version of the Parenting Industrial complex?
Marissa Burt (mburtwrites on Substack) and her colleagues are working on a project entitled “In The Way They Should Go,” analyzing precisely how parenting became an industry, or, in their words, “empire,” in the evangelical world. They also look at the impact that has had on those who grew up influenced by this cultural force.
The problem of the PI complex crosses the secular-religious divide and its well worth divesting from.
oh wow, Pascale thank you for raising this parallel. It's absolutely true that parenting experts sort of inhabit the space that perhaps used to be organised religion's. And it's so interesting to know that people are talking about this phenomenon in the evangelical world, i'm going to look up Marissa Burt now!
That you so much for this! I'm just not that into parenting culture. Despite being a mom of four I find my fellow mothers, grandmothers, and trusted folks in my community are exactly the resource I need. I also, believe in trusting myself. I birthed these babies, and I fully believe I'm capable of raising them. That hasn't stopped the barrage of parenting content from finding me, of course. I have many friends who swear by Dr. Becky, and while I'm certain she's well meaning, I can't help but feel very at odds with her particular flavor of parenting ethos-- it reeks of too permissive if I'm being honest. A wise mother-mentor told me this discomfort is rooted in the reality that Dr. Becky isn't for me, it's to comfort and make feel good a particular kind of mother. That made all the sense in the world.
Love this so, so much! The best thing I did as a mother was what I termed a “parenting fast.” I took months off from all parenting content (which required deleting IG because it would not stop feeding me mom content). I couldn’t believe how much easier parenting felt when it was just me and my child, two people in a relationship, no other voice in my head. I also found that the single most helpful thing as a parent has been a mindful communication course I took, which applied to communicating with everyone. It’s almost like our children are small humans 😅
That makes complete sense. Love your parenting fast idea!!
I benefitted so much from reading this article!!
I am starting out as a postpartum care and education professional, and a decision I made a while ago was to have a clear boundary about avoiding parenting advice in my content and also paid work.
This article has really helped articulate WHY I stand by my decision. My goal is to support parents in their own values and intuition, not to give them another set of standards to live up to.
It is ironic that we turn to parenting advice to have a better relationship with our children, but the parenting advice can end up becoming a barrier to relationship with our children.
Other three big problems I have with PI complex (some of which you discussed):
1. Loading parents up with parenting advice and giving no advice or support on how to regenerate the kind of energy needed to enact the advice. As in, how to connect with a community of support. The best they do is encourage ‘selfcare’ which without a community of care is just another person to take care of and therefore a drain on energy.
(We say ‘take care of yourself!’ compulsively but when do we say ‘who is taking care of you?’ ?)
2. Related to above, completely ignoring the variation of systematic oppression and privilege the audience is bringing to their experience of being a parent.
2. Completely ignoring power dynamics between adults and children and particularly the power that parents have over children as legal guardians, controllers of money and therefore provision in the house etc.
Beyond ignoring power dynamics, so much parenting advice is about control. Even in gentle parenting. It’s like, ‘I didn’t like being yelled at and hit as a kid. So how do I make my kid do xyz without hitting or yelling at them?’ Without questioning the presupposition of coercion.
Thanks for a thought-provoking piece!
Totally!! The self-care thing is a really good point, I truly can’t stand it when we’re told we’re clearly not doing self-care right 🙄🙄
🤮
Wow Fran, what a comprehensive and in-depth look at parenting - its history and contemporary settings. Lots of food for thought in your post as well as the comments above. It’s funny how we ascribe to some parenting theory and deem it better than - no matter which! I’d like to say I’m just working WITH my kids and their needs and wants as little people but I’m probably massively influenced by what I read (listen to) on social media and otherwise. Hmm 🤔
I think we may have talked about allo parenting in the past. I’m reluctant to recommend yet another author, but looking at our ancestral evolution of care can be very helpful. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy wrote Mothers and Others. She is an anthropologist who studies our ape ancestors. Her discoveries are fascinating in the ways we historically shared care for young among multiple adults. This is highly unusual among primates, and yet, the benefits far outweigh the detriments.
I have not read her book, but I did listen to an interview.
I love how you point out the PI complex. I hadn’t thought of it that way.
Have you spoken to the way capitalism literally prevents us from co-parenting beyond borders of payment and marriage?
The design of housing in the west is set up AGAINST collective care.
It is designed for the sole purpose of vehicles and long distances to achieve goals of feeding and clothing one’s self.
I could go on and on about how housing and cities are designed to harm families, not help them.
Totally those are really good points! I’m going to check out that book!
So insightful! Alison Gopnik is wonderful. Perhaps what you are discovering is a natural evolution away from the modern capitalist idea of “parenting.” It fits so well with unschooling, caring for the planet, and generally looking at life differently from what we were raised with.
About 20 years ago, I heard Alfie Kohn speak about his concept of “unconditional parenting.” What always stuck with me was when he said, “It is WORKING WITH not DOING TO.” This made sense to me and I didn't feel like I needed instruction on specifics. However, the parents I was working with then had a hard time with the lack of specifics. Instead of more “parenting methods,” maybe it would help parents to see what working together with your children looks like (videos, social media posts, etc). I would love to read some stories of how you interact with your children and how it contrasts with traditional methods.
Exactly!! I’ll share a bit in my DItL this week :) I hesitate to share what we do because I don’t think I’m particularly good at it haha.. I make a ton of mistakes, I’m always learning, etc. but I feel like doing it is how we learn. There’s only so much you can actually learn from books!
“I don’t think I’m particularly good at it haha”. Wait…that’s the PI still interfering! Because at the end of the day your relationship and time together will be unique to you and there is no one right way to do it! And the fear of sharing because you make mistakes…oof. Sorry to highlight the insecurity Fran, but it seems that no matter what we do we somehow end up here (it’s just so insidious). I sent my kids back to Montessori and the kids there are all aghast at sugar, McDonald’s, video games and are very critical of other people (these parents really parented!) and my kids have come from unschooling and they spend their days on the computer and they eat a lot of candy and have a lot of autonomy and I always feel like I’m doing things wrong but this is just how we are as a family! We need a lot of alone time in our own spaces, and when we want to connect we do. If I listen to all the chatter out there it really feels like we are messed up but when I look at my kids we are all in a good place!
So interesting to hear about how your unschooled kids are doing on e back in an alternative school - gosh Montessori can be so judgy right?
SO JUDGY!!!! But just because they are at Montessori doesn’t mean the parents aren’t fully entrenched in the system. I noticed the parents are always asking what more they can do at home (like maths and language) and the teachers are like…talk to them! Just talk and listen. Lol. The parents and kids are also always worried about the future (schools, grades, careers). Meanwhile we are like, don’t worry about any of that, whatever you do is for you only. It’s not to please us or your teachers. We are absolute outlier weirdos.
Yeah part of it is def my insecurity, and reluctance to share the failures or perceived failures, for sure. But part of it is also that actually, I’m still learning and bumbling along because I didnt have a model for what I’m trying to do, and also I don’t want to share bc I’m not here trying to tell people how to parent and I worry that it will come across that way, that I’ll sound judgy or like I’m putting forward a model of how it should be. So there is A LOT clearly tangled up in that, a lot to unpick! On the other hand I love when others share how they do things so there clearly is benefit in sharing out ups and downs.
So much of this makes much more sense in community. I have learned the most from hanging out with other parents and seeing how they interact with their children. There is some element of that that can’t be translated to a screen.
So much to unpack and I hope you know I was just highlighting how there are so many layers to everything and how even when we’re just trying to live and share it still ends up feeling loaded.
This is timely for me! Just yesterday I had the urge to unfollow all of the parenting experts I follow on IG and I couldn’t put into words exactly why, but felt that I was getting really tired of the noise. You’ve given me lots to think about!
Hehe I hear you, I’ve def had that urge on and off!!
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the outcomes of parenting - aka our children, how they live and act and work. Growing up in evangelical Christianity, if a child decided not to be a Christian as an adult, it was considered the worst failing of a parent ever. Somehow, it must be your fault - they straight up told parents that.
I walked away from all of that, but is what I’m pursuing now any different I wonder? In capitalism, the worst failing would be to raise a child who becomes an adult who doesn’t support themselves, who doesn’t contribute to society (aka make money to pay taxes and social security).
To be vulnerable, I think I’ve traded my parents deepest fear of their child not following Jesus for the fear that my kids won’t get a job that supports themselves. But what I find…interesting? Ironic? now is that people are working full time, sometimes multiple jobs and they STILL can’t support themselves.
Im not sure what my conclusion is other than to try my best to be present with my kids, stay in relationship with them, not have set outcomes in mind, and not catastrophize one of their current struggles into “but because they don’t do XYZ right now they won’t ever succeed in life”. (And by life I mean figure out how to survive in late stage capitalism America…which maybe they’ll decide to ditch that altogether and move abroad somewhere it’s not so bad. We’ll see!)
That's really interesting. I mean, to an extent worrying that our child won't be able to support themselves is a legit fear! Especially for anyone without much of a safety net. So i hear you that it can feel terrifying. On the other hand it's partly irrational, like you said, because the issue is not our children but a system that makes it increasingly harder to succeed. Oh my, things are bleak...
Fran, this really resonates. If we try to be a “good” parent using the models that might once have made us a “good” student or employee, we will look to outside authorities to define our role, and we will see our children as products that reveal our success in conforming to externally defined standards. Taking on “parent” or “mother” as an identity immediately places our children into an objectified role and makes them complicit in upholding and affirming our performance of said identity. I feel like millennials (I’m one, and not exempt from this) are highly drawn towards “evidence-based” parenting info, and I have lots of thoughts about why that’s problematic -- but I’ll spare you, Fran, and anyone else who bothered to read this comment! Thanks for the thought-provoking piece.
Thanks for the comment. And yes I hadn't thought too much about the identity piece but that's a really good point you make. I share your mistrust of evidence-based parenting/education info actually, and would love to know your thoughts if/when you feel like sharing!!
Reply instead of scrubbing magic marker off of walls in preparation for an upcoming move? Sure!! It goes something like this… in order for something to be “evidence based” there has to be… evidence. So, data. So, something to quantifiably measure. So, a decision about *what* to measure, and how. So, an implicit valuing of some “outcome,” or category of outcome, chosen by whoever compiled the evidence (or chosen even farther back in the chain, by whoever was measuring something for whatever reason). When I look at the aspects of my life that could be measured to contribute to any sort of data set, virtually none of them says anything about the meaning or quality of my subjective, lived experience; and in some cases, that “data” would actually be quite MISleading to someone wanting to learn about how my life feels to me. When it comes down to it, that’s what I care about: how my children’s lives feel to them, from the inside. So to make statistically-determined decisions about how to treat my children rarely makes sense to me outside of, like, straight-up medical decisions. Definitely not when it comes to education, or food, or things like “screen time,” or how to speak to them. End of rant, back to scrubbing walls! 🤣
This is a hefty invitation to reflection and analysis and I’m glad you took the time to share it with us. I’m gonna be mulling over your highly resonating ideas for a while.
This sentence stirred my lateral thinking, “I know what that feels like; looking outside of ourselves for answers, wanting someone to give us steps and scripts, needing to find a sense of community and shared values.” I connect the sentiment with the need for certainty that drives humans to trust certain authorities within communities tethered by high control religion. When you grow up being told the world is a scary place, nothing good can come from within yourself, or that children are inherently sinful and ever bent on manipulating adults, is it any wonder you anxiously approach the role of being a parent with a lack of confidence in yourself or the child and therefore turn to the religious version of the Parenting Industrial complex?
Marissa Burt (mburtwrites on Substack) and her colleagues are working on a project entitled “In The Way They Should Go,” analyzing precisely how parenting became an industry, or, in their words, “empire,” in the evangelical world. They also look at the impact that has had on those who grew up influenced by this cultural force.
The problem of the PI complex crosses the secular-religious divide and its well worth divesting from.
oh wow, Pascale thank you for raising this parallel. It's absolutely true that parenting experts sort of inhabit the space that perhaps used to be organised religion's. And it's so interesting to know that people are talking about this phenomenon in the evangelical world, i'm going to look up Marissa Burt now!
Thanks for reading!