Good is Good Enough

This week, we came across a Pew Research Center study on parenting in America. Among many fascinating statistics was one about the percentage of parents who say they are doing a “very good job.” While 39 percent of fathers thought they were doing a very good job, 51 percent of mothers thought the same. Millennial mothers gave themselves the best marks, with 57 percent reporting that they thought they were doing a very good job. 

This led us to ask ourselves why in the world we have to think we are doing a very good job at all. Can’t we just do a good job and leave it there? Why the superlative?

As parents, we constantly receive advice and input about how to be better, which mostly leaves us feeling like we are worse off than we had originally thought. One quick scroll through Instagram can make you feel like your 4-year-old is destined for lifelong basement dwelling, if you don’t make them a mermaid sandwich for lunch every day. This probably goes a long way in explaining why a recent survey conducted at Ohio State University reported that 66 percent of working parents are experiencing burnout after two years of COVID parenting. (We did not need a survey to tell us this but researchers gotta research).

Then, the New York Times published a Parental Burnout Quiz this week that we promptly took, and lo and behold, we both have “mild burnout.” But, as pretend social scientists, we know that the results of studies only matter insofar as their interpretation, and we decided that mild burnout was basically a failure. After all, this only means we haven’t worked ourselves hard enough to reach extreme burnout. Armed with the data to show that her parenting strife was not cutting it, Alexina volunteered to make fresh muffins for an end-of-school breakfast for both of her children’s schools. This required a 5am day-of baking session in addition to her job as her household’s main caregiver and sole breadwinner, but nevermind because now she has the honorable distinction of having extreme burnout. Congratulations, Alexina! Your medal is in the mail. 

This is sick and twisted, of course, so to cut ourselves some slack, we came up with a new and better quiz, for your quizzing pleasure:

1. Did you get up this morning? Yes/No
2. Do you love your child and want the best for them? Yes/No

If you answered yes to questions 1 and 2 or just to question 2, then CONGRATULATIONS!!! You are a good parent and that is unequivocally good news.