"The fear of failure is so great, it is no wonder that the desire to do right by one's children has led to a whole library of books offering advice on how to raise them"
About this Quote
Bettelheim captures a defining anxiety of modern parenting: the sense that one wrong move could blight a child’s life. When the stakes feel existential, parents reach for certainty, and a booming industry of manuals promises it. The explosion of advice literature signals genuine devotion but also an erosion of confidence. Without extended family networks or shared cultural scripts, many parents feel alone before a complex task and turn to experts to manage their fear of failing.
As a psychoanalytically informed educator and the author of A Good Enough Parent, Bettelheim often argued that the quest for perfect technique can crowd out what children most need: a steady, empathic relationship with an adult who is present and reflective. The desire to do right becomes tyrannical when it is driven by fear rather than by understanding. Then the child can be treated as a project to optimize, with the parent anxiously calibrating every choice according to the latest authority. Under those conditions, the manuals are not aids but scripts that suppress parental judgment and the ordinary trial and error through which care deepens.
The phrase good enough, echoing D. W. Winnicott, is not a counsel of neglect but a release from perfectionism. It suggests that children are resilient when met with reliable love, clear boundaries, and room to grow, and that mistakes are inevitable and often instructive. Fear of failure cannot be eliminated by more information; it is better metabolized by cultivating trust in the relationship and by observing the particular child rather than an abstraction.
Bettelheim’s observation also anticipates how social pressures amplify parental fear: competitive schooling, public scrutiny, and the constant comparison of other families’ curated lives. Advice can be valuable when it widens perspective and empathy, but it should remain a tool, not a master. Doing right by one’s children, in this view, means accepting uncertainty, staying present, and letting the bond guide the method.
As a psychoanalytically informed educator and the author of A Good Enough Parent, Bettelheim often argued that the quest for perfect technique can crowd out what children most need: a steady, empathic relationship with an adult who is present and reflective. The desire to do right becomes tyrannical when it is driven by fear rather than by understanding. Then the child can be treated as a project to optimize, with the parent anxiously calibrating every choice according to the latest authority. Under those conditions, the manuals are not aids but scripts that suppress parental judgment and the ordinary trial and error through which care deepens.
The phrase good enough, echoing D. W. Winnicott, is not a counsel of neglect but a release from perfectionism. It suggests that children are resilient when met with reliable love, clear boundaries, and room to grow, and that mistakes are inevitable and often instructive. Fear of failure cannot be eliminated by more information; it is better metabolized by cultivating trust in the relationship and by observing the particular child rather than an abstraction.
Bettelheim’s observation also anticipates how social pressures amplify parental fear: competitive schooling, public scrutiny, and the constant comparison of other families’ curated lives. Advice can be valuable when it widens perspective and empathy, but it should remain a tool, not a master. Doing right by one’s children, in this view, means accepting uncertainty, staying present, and letting the bond guide the method.
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| Topic | Parenting |
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