ALL JOY AND NO FUN by Jennifer Senior

For someone who’s not a parent yet this book can be alarming but also inspiring at times.

I really enjoyed the perspective on the many paradoxes of modern parenthood and it’s often the type of things you hear from parents: the lack of sleep, the never-ending workload, the tantrums and the chaos. However, no parent regrets having children because the joys are also there.

“Young children afford parents the opportunity to be our most human and to be adored unconditionally.”

It’s a bitter-sweet scenario where according to Senior, parents today juggle many new challenges such as:

• Focusing so much on protecting our children, they have become our “crowning achievements” and yet, they have never been less equipped to take life into their own hands.

• As a modern parent, making your life mission to set your children on the path to a successful and happy life can often come at the price of over-scheduling them, given the uncertainty of what you are actually preparing them for.

• The empowered and outspoken characteristics that parents encourage in their children can also lead to rejection and challenges towards parents themselves.

• Parents never before had to raise children in a more digitally connected word, and yet, kids today have never felt so lonely.

All in all, I’m a firm believer in the saying: “Look at what people do, not what they say”. Despite all the complaints and trouble parents report, they continue to have more kids.

Children will reflect and affirm the choices you’ve made as parents when they were younger and what they will grow up to become is, in part, because you raised them the way you did.

I can only imagine how tough but rewarding of a job this is.