Beka’s Reviews > The Kids Are All Right: Parenting with Confidence in an Uncertain World > Status Update

"Try new experiences as a family. Take risks together. Finding our way through a new + strange world forced us to see ourselves in a different light. We witnessed our children, + they witnessed themselves + us, working through challenges --having to do meaningful problem solving in a new-to-them culture + environment."

"In our society there is selective obliviousness about the value a parent provides to the community by raising a child. Our culture + economy absolutely depend on parenting + caregiving work but refuse to compensate it.

It's really high-value labor, but it's largely unpaid + unrecognized. Our entire economy is built on the expectation that women will continue to do this unpaid work."

"You're not a failure if you want help as a parent, or if you want a work schedule that accommodates parenting. Those are not unreasonable things to want.

What's unreasonable is that we've been conditioned to think that these hopes or expectations reflect a personal weakness instead of a systemic issue."

"There are two systemic issues that we spent a dozen really challenging years trying to resolve:

the cultural expectation of rigid work schedules, and the cultural expectation of raising children in isolation."

WHEWWW.

"A lot of stress and anxiety falls away when we accept that we are parenting the children we have, not the children we were, not the children we anticipated, and not the children we imagined."

"Understanding that your child is not you and that their childhood is not your childhood can feel strange.
Some of the most stressful times we've experienced as parents have been when we went off the script that we were raised on. And we don't think we're alone in this."