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Speaker: Women can solve parenting problem
Photo
By Bob Jackson
BOARDMAN
Telling a room filled predominantly with women that the biggest problem in American parenting these days is, well, women, might not seem the best way to win an audience. But that’s exactly how John Rosemond lifted off.
“And it’s a problem that only women can solve,” said Rosemond, a nationally syndicated parenting columnist and author of 14 best-selling books on parenting.
He spoke Saturday during a parenting seminar at Boardman High School, sponsored by The Vindicator, Vindy.com, 21 WFMJ-TV and Boardman High School.
Rosemond said too many modern mothers fail to establish emotional and physical barriers between themselves and their children, choosing instead to become so completely enveloped and involved in their children’s lives that it becomes difficult to separate them.
“The mother/child relationship in America now is a perfect model of what we psychology types call co-dependency,” said Rosemond, eliciting knowing nods from the more than 100 people who attended. “Today’s women are obsessive/compulsive about their children.”
Raising children these days is “bad for the mental health of women” because it is “drenched with anxiety, drenched with stress, drenched with guilt, and drenched with resentment.”
He looked back some 60 years to the 1950s, which he said is when parenting methods were actually better and more effective, and said mothers today should strive to be more like that. He said mothers back then realized that their role as parent was more about leadership than being their child’s best friend and cheerleader.
“Parenting is leadership, and that sometimes involves making unpopular decisions and staying the course,” Rosemond said.
Rosemond said some people say motherhood has changed dramatically since the 1950s and ’60s because more women are working now than then. Women still worked in those days, he said, although they didn’t have the diverse career opportunities then that women have now.
“The diffference is that they didn’t come home from work feeling guilty about it,” he said.
He said mothers in the 1950s and ’60s understood that there needs to be boundaries between themselves and their children. “Without boundaries, there is no respect,” he said. “Boundaries are essential to respect.”
Rosemond said too many moms now see their children as extensions of themselves. If her child is disciplined or gets in trouble in school, the mom perceives it as her own failure. Rather than addressing the problem with the child, the mother becomes defensive and lashes out at the teacher, principal or whoever raised the issue.
“Moms hang their competency as a parent on their child’s achievements in school,” he said.
He said children of his generation, raised in the ’50s and ’60s, feared and respected women because they were raised to recognize women as authority figures. Children today are the “no-fear generation,” and tend to be less respectful. That, he said, has resulted in weakening of the educational system because children are less likely to respect and listen to their teachers.
“Kids back [in the ’50s and ’60s] went to school prepared to pay attention, do as they were told and do their best,” he said.
Dr. Harvey Kayne, a Youngstown psychologist who often speaks about similar topics, was among those in attendance and said he came to hear Rosemond because he enjoys reading his weekly column in The Vindicator, and because they share many of the same views.
“I think in general, parenting 50 or 60 years ago prepared children for the world better than it does today,” Kayne said.
He said some psychology colleagues have criticized Rosemond for his simplistic approach to parenting, but he believes there is something to be said for Rosemond’s philosophies.
“I like his no-nonsense, back-to-basics approach to parenting,” said Holly Kollar, a 34-year-old mother of two from Poland. “I just think he’s old-school. He does it like grandma would, and I like that a lot.”
Kollar, who has a 4-year-old and a 9-month-old, said she reads Rosemond’s column each week and has read a couple of his books. She agrees that moms today tend to “overthink” parenting and “make it more difficult than it has to be.”
“It seems like John Rosemond describes how our parents raised us, and he’s able to put that into words,” said Kristen Moore of Milton Township, who attended with her husband, Clint. The couple have two children, age 6 and 5, and said they look forward to reading Rosemond’s column every Sunday.
They’ve tried to apply his philosophies to their parenting, and said they attended Saturday because they wanted to meet and hear from him personally.
Rosemond spent about an hour before the seminar meeting visitors and autographing copies of his books.