Other Press – 2020
Part memoir and part guide, this book offers both insight and remedy to those parents who are unknowingly under the influence of their own childhood experiences, and unwittingly repeat their parents’ mistakes while believing they are doing the right thing.
How should we raise our children? It is an intimidating and complex question, and we often address it by deciding to do either exactly what our parents did or just the opposite.
After that we rely on a cock- tail of love and instinct, hoping it will be enough to overcome the difficulties ahead.
Far from having perfect free will, however, we are all under the influence. The child still within us confuses, influences, or undermines all our aspirations as parents and prevents us from sticking to the philosophy we initially hoped to follow. These unresolved emotions drive us to reproduce the upbringing we received, including the patterns or behaviors that have hurt us the most.
In Parents Under the Influence, Cécile David-Weill draws on her own parenting blunders and successes as well as case studies and works of fiction to guide readers, helping us heal from the past and become effective, nurturing parents.