The Parents We Mean to Be: How Well-Intentioned Adults Undermine Children's Moral and Emotional Development

Richard Weissbourd

May 2009 · HarperCollins

About this ebook

A wake-up call for a national crisis in parenting—and a deeply helpful book for those who want to see their own behaviors as parents with the greatest possible clarity.

Harvard psychologist Richard Weissbourd argues incisively that parents—not peers, not television—are the primary shapers of their children’s moral lives. And yet, it is parents’ lack of self-awareness and confused priorities that are dangerously undermining children’s development.

Through the author’s own original field research, including hundreds of rich, revealing conversations with children, parents, teachers, and coaches, a surprising picture emerges. Parents’ intense focus on their children’s happiness is turning many children into self-involved, fragile conformists.

The suddenly widespread desire of parents to be closer to their children—a heartening trend in many ways—often undercuts kids’ morality. Our fixation with being great parents—and our need for our children to reflect that greatness—can actually make them feel ashamed for failing to measure up. Finally, parents’ interactions with coaches and teachers—and coaches’ and teachers’ interactions with children—are critical arenas for nurturing, or eroding, children’s moral lives.

Weissbourd’s ultimately compassionate message—based on compelling new research—is that the intense, crisis-filled, and profoundly joyous process of raising a child can be a powerful force for our own moral development.

Ratings and reviews

After reading this book I come to realize that parenting is a such big job but many of us have very little or none preparation to put those big responsibilities on our shoulders. Let alone succeed in doing it. This is a book to help us prepare or, if you're already in it, to bring perspective that we often overlook. The price is too much for our kids, for our young generations if we refuse to change our destructive behaviors, if we refuse to grow. Thanks for writing this eyes-opener book.

About the author

RICHARD WEISSBOURD is a child and family psychologist on the faculty of Harvard’s School of Education and Kennedy School of Government. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, and Chicago Tribune. Weissbourd is the author of The Vulnerable Child, named by the American School Board Journal as one of the top ten educational books of all time.