You want your kids to feel loved—and to be happy, healthy and reasonably well-behaved. Nothing is more important. Advice about how to achieve this comes at you from every corner: playground moms, media, your in-laws. You may be one of those people who demand perfection from yourself in everything you do, especially this. Or you may be someone who fixates on the gap between what your ideal of parenting is and what you can actually achieve. The sad irony is that the harder you work at and worry about being perfect, the more miserable you can make yourself—and the likelier you are to raise kids who are anxious or down on themselves, psychological research has shown.
“If you are a perfectionistic parent, know you are not alone!” says clinical psychologist Erica Lee of Boston Children’s Hospital. As cultural changes in Western countries emphasize competitive individualism, younger men and women increasingly feel that others demand perfection from them, and they demand it of themselves, including when they parent. Studies consistently reveal perfectionism’s links to anxiety, depression and other ills. “Holding yourself to an ‘all or nothing’ standard can induce feelings of anxiety, overwhelm and shame [you], make you more critical and rigid, subtract from your joy and fulfillment as a parent,” Lee says.
Mounting research shows that, when people are perfectionistic about their parenting, their children are also at risk of these emotional problems. “Perfectionistic parents tend to raise perfectionistic kids, which can increase [kids’] risk for depression, anxiety, self-criticism and self-harm,” Lee says. Recently scientists have identified which perfectionistic parents are most at risk of suffering serious emotional consequences—and also when setting superhigh standards might benefit parents and kids.
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