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

by Diane Ehrensaft

Book Overview

Vividly encapsulating the absurdities, heartbreaks, and possibilities of contemporary child rearing, this book shows how parents today are all too often caught up in a guilt-driven pendulum swing between parenting too little and parenting too much. Dr. Ehrensaft helps us imagine a society where we can overcome the treacherous balancing acts of work and family demands; where good-enough replaces perfect parenting, harriedness is traded for harmony,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1572304502
• ISBN13: 9781572304505
• Release Date: April 1999
• Publisher: Guilford Publications
• Length: 263 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.6" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

"Just say NO" to Spoiling a Child!

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.

An incisive look at today's confused parenting methods

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.

Crucial reading for parents today!

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!

Too long in coming!

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.

Very useful for modern parenting, for fathers and mothers.

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.