MODERN childhood, as we know it, is less than a century old. Children have gone from contributors to the family income to enjoying full-time childhood, devoted to educational and emotional growth. Since WWII, with the introduction of child labour laws, childhood has completely transformed: the modern child is “economically worthless but emotionally priceless.”

As a result, parenthood has become a profession in itself with parents in general and mothers in particular spending more time and pouring more capital, both “emotional and literal”, into their children than when most mothers stayed at home. And in trying to make sense of this, parents now think of their children as “future assets” since they no longer are economic assets.

All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood, by New York Magazine’s contributing editor, Jennifer Senior, is a study of the “effect of parenthood on adults.” And the Introduction so aptly describes modern parenthood as “a high-cost/high-reward activity,” as just that, all joy and no fun! This, Senior says, is because adults now view children as “one of life’s crowning achievements” for which reason they have “heightened expectations of what children will do for us” making them a source of “existential fulfillment rather than an ordinary part of our lives.”

In the author’s words, this book is an attempt to look at “the experience of parenthood systematically, piece by piece, and stage by stage,” in order to understand “what parents today find so challenging about their lives.” And she does this by bringing together a large body of research, studies and surveys done post-WWII, intertwining this material in the daily lives of real families that she has spent time with over the course of her research. Having said that, she cautions that this work is not meant to offer “usable child-rearing advice.” Instead it’s meant for parents to be able to understand themselves and their behaviour as parents better. It’s a priceless body of work in that it outlines “what should you expect once your children are redirecting the course of your marriage, your job, your friendships, your aspirations, your internal self.”

In this extensively researched, brilliant book, Senior talks about the difficulties as much as the high rewards of parenthood in the different stages of a parent’s life. Chapters one and two focus on what Senior refers to as the two things that undergo “the most radical transformations once a child is born: our sense of autonomy … and our marriage.” Chapter three talks about the “unique pleasures that very young children can bring” while chapter four focuses on “the middle parenting years.” Chapter five concentrates on the least written-about parenting period, the adolescent years and chapter six looks at “what raising children means in the larger context of life.”

Why parents so strongly feel the loss of their autonomy, she writes, is firstly because society tells them that it’s their right and obligation to fulfill their personal goals and desires (not always realistic), and when these remain unmet they persistently blame themselves. “We can’t imagine our lives,” she quotes Adam Phillips, “without the unlived lives they contain.” Secondly, childhood behaviour poses a grave threat to parents’ “well-ordered lives”, so much so that that at some point or the other, they feel “overwhelmed by their children; feel that their children ask more of them than they can provide.”

Quoting several researches, Senior notes that from the onset, children put immense strain on their parents’ marriage, making it prone to conflict, contrary to popular belief that children are essentially “matrimonial enhancers.” She further writes that “children generate more arguments than any other subject” in the life of a couple and that the “largest source of post-partum conflict is the division of family labour.” It is not really about absolute equality as it is about “the perception of equality” with primary focus on “the division of child-care tasks” as opposed to their individual well-being.

Another very interesting point Senior makes is that people now go into a marriage believing that spouses are meant to be soul mates and this union combines “romantic love, emotional intimacy and togetherness.” It is no wonder then that the arrival of children is experienced as a disruption with the couple spending less and less time together, giving way to arguments, fights and general unhappiness with each other.

Senior writes that young children may be demanding and at times exhausting, but they “bring joy too” to their parents. And that is not only because they are born out of them and that they care for them and love them; but also because a) they liberate their parents from their ruts and “from their adult selves” and b) reintroduce them to “a world of forgiveness and unconditional love” that they have forgotten from when they themselves were that age. The “overscheduled parent” and the “rise of the useless child” are the focus of chapter four. Titled ‘Concerted cultivation’, it draws upon the extent to which parents are introducing and even push their children into after-school activities, and the harm this “overzealous planning” is having on the parents themselves. Stay-at-home mothers find themselves hardly ever at home and working parents are putting more and more time, energy and effort into their children’s extracurricular schedules. But it is parents, she writes, who are “complicit in the problem.”

In studying the forces driving parents to “these extravagant lengths”, she relates it to nuclear families and sprawled extended families and friends and how parents think that these activities are a chance for the children to socialise. Secondly, since children no longer have a predestined vocation, the “globalised child” is being introduced to an array of skills in preparation of any and every possible eventuality which can be understood as a “legitimate fear response” in reaction to the ever “shrinking economic pie.” This over-indulgence on the part of the parent is justified as “improving their children’s lives and nothing is really considered an excess.”

“When prospective mothers and fathers imagine the joys of parenthood, they seldom imagine the adolescent years,” writes Senior in chapter five, adding that the effects of adolescence on parents are most intense. Since the issues they face are so unique to each child that parents find themselves at their wit’s end in trying to deal with them: “… along comes adolescence, and you don’t know what to expect or how to handle it.” Moreover, in trying to protect the children’s privacy, they feel they are unable to discuss their predicaments with other parents, friends or relatives.

Another very interesting point Senior makes in this chapter is that teenagers are inherently risk-takers. Nature has meant them to be so in order to prepare them to fly the nest. And this behaviour brings immense stress to the parents’ marriage with “fights increasingly revolving around who the child is, or is becoming.”

All Joy and no Fun offers little advice but a world of knowledge and insight that is sure to benefit parents today and tomorrow. It demonstrates that parenthood needs to be understood as much as childhood, in order to establish a healthy, peaceful family life and at the same time highlights the profound ways in which children bring fulfillment to their parents’ lives. As a parent, I found the book to be an invaluable resource and a real joy to read especially because it brought to me the single most important thing any parent yearns for: validity.

All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood

(PARENTING)

By Jennifer Senior

Ecco Press, NY

ISBN 978-0062072221

320pp.