All Joy and No Fun

November 4, 2013
In 2010, New York magazine published contributing editor Senior’s feature of the same title with the telling subhead: “Why Parents Hate Parenting.” Here, Senior analyzes how children affect their parents from birth through adolescence, attempting to understand why middle-class millennial parents find this to be a “high-cost/low reward activity.” Three modern developments have complicated parenting: choice in family size and timing; flexible workplaces, with long(er) hours and inadequate sponsored childcare; and the transformation of the child’s role from “useful” to “protected” status. Senior utilizes academic studies and survey data about sex, marriage, pregnancy, childhood, sleep loss, earning power; she also cites data about why women and men approach parenting differently, and she also quotes many noted parent-child experts along the way. Her interviews with parents participating in Early Childhood Family Education classes offer different parenting styles and scenarios, and Senior adds a personal dimension, taking a good look at herself and her peers. In the end, readers will hopefully see the parenting journey as more about the children and less about adult emotions, that children’s behavior is culturally mediated, and that negotiating with a toddler is futile. While Jennifer Valenti’s Why Have Kids? addressed unmet expectations versus daily reality, this book airs the “I love my kids; I hate my life” litany of parents who, statistically, spend more time with their kids than the previous two generations. Agent: Tina Bennett, WME.

March 15, 2014

Journalist Senior's (contributing editor, New York magazine) new title will likely be shelved next to parenting books filled with do's and don'ts, but this isn't another "how to" book. Rather, it aims a social science lens at parents themselves and addresses questions such as: How does having kids affect our lives? Does it make us happier? Does it make us less happy? Senior profiles clans in Minnesota and Texas as she looks at the realities of family life. She doesn't shy away from the "no fun" aspect of her findings. Parts of the book feel bleak as we hear of strained marriages, parental guilt, and general exhaustion; the joy comes in the simple moments. Senior says, "By spending time with young children--building forts and baking cakes, whacking baseballs and making sand castles--we're afforded in some respects, the opportunity to be our most human." VERDICT Full of fascinating ideas and information about the family structure and its history, this work is sure to be of strong interest to parents, in particular, as they look for meaning beyond the day to day. [See Prepub Alert, 8/12/13.]--Mindy Rhiger, Minneapolis

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