You Are a Good Enough Parent
Have you ever felt like you weren’t a good enough parent, according to whatever standard? Our culture has a way of making us feel not good enough. And when we don’t feel good enough, we don’t even strive for our best.
Table of Contents
What Is a Good Enough Parent?
First, let’s see why we need to talk about being a “good enough” parent.
Insecurity
We have a tendency to be overly critical of ourselves, and that is true, especially for parents. We compare ourselves to other people’s appearances – notice that I am saying “appearances” because we compare ourselves to what we see on the outside. We also compare ourselves to some standards that exist or we think exist about how we “should” be doing things. And this can put a lot of stress and pressure on us.
Societal Norms
At the same time, we live in a society that values perfection. There doesn’t seem to be much room for error, mistakes, or “imperfections”. In other words, we are expected to conform to a set of arbitrary standards.
Children’s work and performance in school are scored and graded, at home, their behavior is given “consequences” or rewards, at work mistakes are frowned upon, in the best-case scenario, commercial products are rated, and posts and videos on social media are measured in likes and hearts.
Make a mistake, and the whole world berates you publicly on social media and shreds you to pieces.
There isn’t much tolerance for humanness in our world.
Related: 20 Self-Care Practice for Busy Moms
Control
As you’ve probably noticed, we are very hard on ourselves and on others. We are maybe even harder on our kids. The reason for this is that we fear that they might be judged by others. And we know that being judged hurts. We don’t want our children to feel this pain. And we don’t want ourselves to feel the pain of watching our children suffer. So we want to make sure that they “do everything right”, so others have nothing to complain about.
Good Enough Is the Opposite of Perfection
All these attitudes of criticism and control are related to an idea of perfection that we have to live up to.
Of course, we know that perfection does not exist. It is a mere creation of the human mind, which can vary according to different cultures or individuals. It is not absolute.
In particular, perfection cannot exist within a human being. Because every human being is so different from another, there is too much variation to be able to establish an absolute definition of perfection that is universally accepted as valid.
Additionally, human beings are constantly evolving and growing. And learning and growth happen only by making mistakes. So perfection makes no sense in the context of human existence.
Embrace Imperfection
The beauty of accepting our imperfections is that we gain more compassion not only for ourselves, but also for our children, our parenting partners, and other parents.
When we accept that we are exactly where we are supposed to be in our development and that we are ever-evolving, not static beings, then we begin to see ourselves and our children as complete and whole beings. We are exactly as we should be at this moment. And we take each day one step at a time.
The “Good Enough Parent” Archetype
There are many experts and parents who have pointed out how damaging it can be to have such high standards and expectations of ourselves. So the “good enough parent” archetype appeared as a reaction to the perfectionist tendency.
However, I don’t think many of us know exactly what this “good enough parent” looks like.
In his book, A Good Enough Parent, Bruno Bettelheim defines the good enough parent as someone who does not strive to be perfect and also does not expect perfection from his or her children.
Ok, this makes sense. To a certain extent. It sort of absolves us of the pressure to do everything right and perfectly. However, it doesn’t really create a concrete image in my head.
My Definition of the “Good Enough Parent”
For a few years, I have been trying to figure out what “good enough” really means, and I have finally come to a conclusion.
Being a good enough parent is to advance from level 1 to level 2. Simple. No?
Let me explain.
The Scale of Awareness
Let’s imagine that we are on a scale of awareness from 1 to 10. And, looking back at our childhood, we conclude that our parents were at a 1. That means they made parental decisions from a place of relative unconsciousness, following patterns of behavior and reactions handed down to them from their parents and culture. As a result of the way that we were parented, we are now at level 1 of awareness. So when we become parents, that’s where we tend to parent from. We start at level 1.
Well, my goal is to go up to level 2. If I am successful in becoming more aware of the patterns that I inherited from my parents, then I can advance to the next level. So that means that my kids will start in life at level 2 of awareness. And that is success and growth. This means that my children will begin parenting their own children at a higher level than I did.
How to Advance on the Scale
So how do we go from level 1 to level 2? The progress entails three things:
- Learning parenting skills
- Creating what Dr. Dan Siegel calls insight. This helps us to make sense of our past and childhood so that we are less likely to repeat the mistakes that our parents made
- Developing an awareness of the present moment helps us to notice ourselves when we’re about to follow a pattern so that we can break the cycle.
Therefore, in order to parent better than our parents did and better than we ourselves did yesterday, we need three things: parenting skills, understanding of our past, and awareness in the present. This is an ongoing learning process.
So, as you can see, becoming a better parent, a good enough parent, involves our own growth and insight, which will make for a better parenting experience.
Should We Aspire to Go From Level 1 to 10?
Level 10 represents the highest level of development that each of us can reach, and it is different for each individual.
Can you go from a total newbie, not knowing how to hold a tennis racket, to a Grand Slam champion in a matter of days or months, almost instantaneously? I will guess the answer is “no”. No one becomes a champion overnight.
First of all, it’s impossible to jump from a 1 to 10. What you can do is go step-by-step.
Each level of skill and development requires a lot of work and effort to master. So, even though going from a level 1 to a 2 seems like such meager progress, it is in fact a lot of dedicated work.
Also, I think it is harder to advance on this scale of awareness the lower we are on it. It actually gets easier as we get to the higher levels. The more awareness we develop, the easier it is to grow even more because the work we have done acts as a support that we are building on. It becomes a pyramid that offers stability to our growth process.
Are Good Enough Parents Complacent?
If we are not intentional in our parenting, and we take these ideas as mere slogans, they do have the potential to make us complacent. As a result, we may not try hard in our parenting.
Being a “good enough parent” doesn’t mean I will not work on controlling my reactions, or that now I can unleash my anger on my kids whenever I feel like it. It doesn’t mean I don’t have to get up in the middle of the night to comfort my child when he has nightmares.
When we become complacent, we make no progress. We get stuck at the same level of awareness, or lack thereof, that our parents were at.
Parenting is hard and it requires a lot of work. Being good enough does not mean we do a mediocre job.
Instead, we try our best, we push ourselves out of our comfort zone, and we force ourselves to grow in the areas that our children show us we need to grow. And every day we become a better version of ourselves. We come closer to who we really are. Parenting is a journey we take within ourselves. And it’s a long road that we don’t get to complete in just a few years.
In Conclusion, My Parenting Goal
Being a “good enough parent” doesn’t mean I will not mess up my kids. Even though that would be amazing. It simply means that my parenting goal is not to parent perfectly, but rather to parent a little bit better than my parents did.
So, I hope that the next time you or anyone else doubts your parenting, you will raise your chin and emphatically say, “I am a good enough parent. In fact, I am a really good parent!”
