But a new book promises that parents can be happier if they make some small tweaks in their mindsets and routines. And happier parents make for happier children, even if more chores are involved, says KJ Dell'Antonia, a mother of four and author of "How to be a Happier Parent," released Aug. 21.
(Buy the book at a 34% DISCOUNT by clicking here. Or, in Kindle version at a a 48% DISCOUNT by clicking here Sales help fund JWR.)
Dell'Antonia, who lives in Lyme, New Hampshire, is an attorney-turned-writer who previously wrote and edited The New York Times' Motherlode blog from 2011 until 2016 and continues to write for the Times' Well Family section. She's also written for Common Sense Media and Slate.
As her family expanded, Dell'Antonia became interested in how parents could derive more pleasure from family life, given that it consumes several decades of our adult lives. "I don't want to spend that time in a haze of resigned exhaustion, longing to be or do something else. I want to raise my family, have my life, and love almost every minute of it," Dell'Antonia writes.
Culling research from parenting and happiness experts, which she combined with wisdom gleaned from more than a thousand American parents, Dell'Antonia devised 10 mantras "basic rules that applied again and again" that helped boost her own satisfaction with family life. The mantras include: "If you see something, don't always say something," "You can be happy when you're children aren't" and "What you want now isn't always what you want later."
Using these principles and making other adjustments in her family's daily routines, Dell'Antonia says she's gone from a 6 or 7 on a 10-point happiness scale (10 being the happiest) to a 9 or 10. She spoke recently with The Deseret News about her research, including why you shouldn't be involved with your children's homework and why everyone in your family should go to bed earlier, starting tonight.
The interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Why does parenting make so many people so distressed when we have these wonderful tools and conveniences that our parents and grandparents didn't have?
KJ Dell'Antonia: We have managed to create this real culture of overparenting, where there's this sense that when you have children, everything you do needs to be geared toward their betterment or their happiness. In many places, it's also competitive. That sense that other people are doing more, I think, is omnipresent for all of us.
The first chapter of your book is called "Mornings are the Worst." Why is that, and what can parents do to make them better?
KJD: Mornings are hard because everybody has to be somewhere earlier than anybody wants to be anywhere. For the most part, we have very little control about that. The bus comes when it comes, school starts when it starts, your job starts when it starts. There are two things that we control that we can use to make things quickly better. The first one is boring and annoying, and that is, very simply, go to bed earlier.
Taking a hard look at what we're doing in the afternoons and evenings is a really good way to get better mornings. There's a big difference between a child who has had 9 hours of sleep and a child who has had 6½ hours. It's night and day.
The other thing is that mornings feel incredibly important and high stakes. You've got to get the kid to school, and he needs to be on time, and he needs his violin and his gym shoes and his homework and six manila folders and two cans of green beans. It feels super high stakes. But it's not.
There's nothing at stake. Zero. If your child is late for school and has no violin, no homework, no green beans, whatever, he'll be fine, and more importantly, you'll be fine. There is no need for this to affect your day at all. You can let the kids be responsible for all their things, and you can take your own emotional, heightened reaction right out of the equation.
In the book, you say parents can change the way they feel about homework, and be happier. That sounds easy, but feelings are hard to change.
KJD: It is hard. But every teacher and principal and school administrator I talked to had the same thing to say about homework, which was, when we make it our job to see that it gets done, see that it gets back to school, or look it over to see that it gets done right, we have taken away the point of the homework. It defeats the whole point when we take on the burden of it.
Worse, it can really mess with your relationship with your child because suddenly you are the homework cop, and nobody wants to be the homework cop. Nobody loves the homework cop.
One of your family's rules is "one family, one meal." What does this mean, and why is it important?
KJD: To be a short-order cook, to me, is a real contributor to unhappiness. So, in our family, what's on the table is the food, and while we make sure there's always bread or rice or something everybody is going to agree on, I'm not going to get up and make someone a peanut-butter sandwich.
There's really lovely research that says, especially when our kids are in school, the time that all people who live in the same house spend in the same room is really concentrated around mealtime and the kitchen. You want to find ways to relieve that stress. For me, that's planning. It may be a meal service, if you can afford one. It may be saying to your partner or teenagers, "Tuesday and Thursdays are on you; just give me your ingredient list, you're making dinner for us all." This is a big chunk of time we're spending together. What can I do to make it less stressful for us?
But if that's not an area of unhappiness in your life, then, sure, make them a grilled-cheese sandwich.
Of your 10 mantras for happier parents, which do you think is the most important?
KJD: This literally varies from week to week. Right now, because one of my children is having a really emotional transition back to school, the mantra "You don't have to go in there" is key. It's a reference to physical space. One of our kids used to have temper tantrums in a closet. You don't have to go in there emotionally.
Just yesterday there was some back-to-school thing we needed to go to, and I went to remind the child that we had 20 minutes, and I was met with this barrage of "I don't feel like it," really unpleasant. And I just said, "OK, see you in 20 minutes." And I left. And in 20 minutes, the child appeared dressed and ready to go. If I had gone in and said "Don't talk to me like that" or any of the emotional responses I could have offered, I don't think we would have ended up where we did.
The other is "What you want now is not what you want later." We are really working on chores at the moment, and what I want now is to go downstairs and unload the dishwasher myself. But what I need to do is make the child whose job it is to do the dishwasher. We need not only to get the kind of help that we need, but also to raise children who will help others as they move out into the world. There are no elves that come and do this work. You don't want to raise the college roommate who says, ‘But I put the dish in the sink.'
Did you really once take the wrong child to the dentist, or is that an anecdote that came from your interviews with other parents?
KJD: I have absolutely taken the wrong child to the dentist. I have four children, and if all I've written on my calendar is "dentist" … well. They very kindly cleaned that child's teeth anyway. As I told my daughter the other day, I'm a happier parent, not a better parent.
(Buy KJD's book at a 34% DISCOUNT by clicking here. Or, in Kindle version at a a 48% DISCOUNT by clicking here Sales help fund JWR.)