Couples who want to raise happy and successful children should spend less time striving to be perfect parents and prioritise their own relationship instead.
In a new book, U.S. family therapist David Code warns that children become demanding and dissatisfied if parents obsess over all aspects of their lives.
Couples who want the best for their children should focus less on becoming the ideal parent and spend more time nurturing their own relationship.
Devoted parents do not necessarily produce happy children, Mr Code argues in the book To Raise Happy Kids, Put Your Marriage First.
The claims are the latest salvo in an increasingly fiery debate over child-rearing.
The TV and radio presenter Kirsty Young recently said the ‘cult’ of pushy parenting ‘sickened’ her because it was ‘the real modern disease’.
‘Parents today are preoccupied with children as an extension of their own success,’ she said.
Meanwhile psychologist Dr Madeline Levine criticised ‘helicopter’ parenting – where parents ‘hover’ over their children’s every move – for contributing to depression and anxiety.
Over-involved parenting was a thinly veiled attempt to correct what had gone wrong in the parents’ own lives, she argued.
The conclusions appear to be reinforced by Mr Code’s book, which says children suffer from being given too much attention.
‘Today’s number one myth about parenting is that the more attention we give our kids, the better they’ll turn out,’ said Mr Code, a family therapist and writer for the Wall Street Journal.
‘But we parents have gone too far: our over-focus on our children is doing them more harm than good.
‘Families centred on children create anxious, exhausted parents and demanding, entitled children.
‘We parents today are too quick to sacrifice our lives and our marriages for our kids.
‘Most of us have created child-centred families, where our children hold priority over our time, energy and attention.
‘But as we break our backs for our kids, our marriage and self-fulfilment go out the window while our kids become more demanding and dissatisfied.’
He believes unhappiness among children could stem from the surfeit of attention they receive.
‘That’s why children seem to have many more problems nowadays than we did, or our parents did,’ he said.
‘By killing ourselves to provide a perfect, trauma-free childhood for our children, we’re wasting our energy. The greatest gift you can give your children is to have a fulfilling marriage yourself.’
Mr Code also claims that any worries parents have about their children are much more connected to their anxieties about their marriage than they realise.
‘We often believe we just don’t have time for our spouse. But when two parents drift apart, often one parent will drift closer to the kids,’ he said.
‘We parents convince ourselves that putting our children first is child-friendly, but we make two main mistakes by doing so.
‘First, it becomes harder to respect and enforce the boundaries that shape a child’s character, so he simply badgers his parents until he gets his way. Future bosses and spouses may not be so patient with this behaviour.
‘Second, we put tremendous pressure on our children to fulfil our emotional needs, which may lead to the child acting out.
‘This draws even more attention to the problem, as parents seek a diagnosis and physicians increasingly rely on medicating children.
‘What had been a molehill becomes a mountain, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that can cripple the child’s development.’
But parents who admit they put their marriages first risk public censure.
Author Ayelet Waldman triggered fury after admitting in 2005 she loved her husband more than her children.
‘It would be wonderful if it could be established once and for all that the children of these marriages are more successful and have happier and healthier lives than children whose mothers focus their desires and passions on them,’ she told the Observer newspaper.
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