This month I am excited to feature my favorite book about parenting: All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood by Jennifer Senior. It is important to note that this is not a self-help book and does not have any how-to parenting tips. Rather, it is written by a journalist who is curious about the question of how children affect their parents.
Senior talks about how parenthood takes a toll on parents in a different way than it did in most of the modern era leading up to World War II. She talks about three major shifts—that parents have more choice than ever before about when and how many children to have and that many parents have fewer children and have them later in life than before. She discusses how this leads to higher expectations about the parenting experience and more awareness of what you’re giving up to become a parent.
She also writes about how the demands of work, childcare, and chores, while more equitable between moms and dads than ever before, are also more straining than before as families are putting in more hours at the office and are also spending more time with their kids, leading to greater overall stress.
Finally, and most importantly, she talks about the transformation of the child’s role over time—the relationship is no longer reciprocal as it was in an agrarian society where children were expected to help on the farm. Now it is asymmetrical, with kids no longer an asset that contributes to the family’s financial wellbeing. This means that parents count on kids being future assets, which requires a big emotional investment over the course of their lives with no guarantee of “results”.
The book is full of really interesting research and insight, and it also validated the way I feel about parenting a lot of the time. The title is my favorite. Parenting brings me so much joy, but in the day to day, hour to hour caregiving, it’s often not that much fun. I love reading social science research that helps me gain clarity about my personal experiences and this book does such a good job of that. Check it out soon!