Richard Quest is a British CNN correspondent and a nice guy. He showed up at my hospital a few weeks ago with a cameraman. He was doing a show about brothers and sisters and how they shape our adult personalities. The high point was to be a discussion of his own family, based on a videotape of them having a picnic together. But first, Quest interviewed me.
I can’t remember the exact questions he asked. But my overall impression is that he kept trying to get me to take a hard stand. “Isn’t it so,” he asked (and here I’m paraphrasing), “That the conflicts we have with our siblings when we’re children inevitably blow up again when we’re adults? Don’t all brothers and sisters end up, at some level, hating each other?”
With each of these questions, I found myself pushing back. Sure, early conflicts sometimes simmer under the surface. But on the other hand, many people actually grow up. They learn to see the old conflicts in a different light. They learn to take personal responsibility for the choices they make in life. Most sibling relationships are a mixture of love and resentment, loyalty and competitiveness. How this mixture turns out depends on the temperaments and talents of the children, their birth order and spacing, their individual relationships with their parents, and many other factors. In other words, it depends.
I think my refusal to make simple, definitive statements drove Quest a bit crazy.
Later on, we talked about the latest edition of Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care, which I co-authored. Quest wanted to know what was different, exciting, and new in the book. Like any good journalist, he was looking for “the story.” But again, I disappointed him. “There are lots of new sections in the book,” I said, “But the main thrust isn’t new at all. The main point is that there are very few absolutes in parenting. Parents need to know how children develop, and how different parenting choices are likely to affect that development. But in the end it’s the parents who have to make the choices. Baby and Child Care has never been about telling parents what to do.”
This time, I knew I was driving Quest crazy, because he told me so. “If I were a parent,” he began, “I’d want answers.” And I had to agree. I think most of us parents would be happier with cut-and-dried answers. Lots of books promise them. But I don’t think these answers, whatever they are, actually work. Parenting is not like baking a cake; you can’t just follow a recipe.
Quest and I parted. I don’t know how he felt about the afternoon — a bit frustrated, I’m guessing — but I had had a great time. He was fun to talk with. More importantly, he helped me to think more clearly about parenting.
Now I wonder, what do you think? Do parents need simple answers and prescriptions, or is it more helpful to appreciate how complicated this business of raising children really is?
