Excerpts

Parenting needs a paradigm shift, plain and simple. The American dream of parenthood -- the ideal that we're taught to seek and live out -- doesn't come close to matching the reality, and that disconnect is making us miserable. Fewer than 5 percent of American families employ a nanny. Most parents don't spend over five hundred dollars on a stroller, or use cloth diapers. Hell, most mothers don't even breastfeed for longer than a few months, despite all of the hoopla over breast being best. What is being presented to us as the standard of parenting -- through books, magazines, and online media -- is really the exception. The truth is much more thorny, and not nearly as glamorous. Americans are desperate to figure out why, exactly, they are so dissatisfied and anxious over parenthood. They seek advice from every Tiger Mother or bebe-raiser to help with their parenting woes. But looking to other cultures -- or, more accurately, generalizations about other cultures -- is a fruitless search for a quick fix. American parenting is too complex to lead one to believe that a brutal schedule of piano lessons or a croissant will magically erase the nuances and troubles that go along with raising children. Parental leave policies are woefully inadequate -- if not nonexistent -- at most American workplaces, and many mothers worry about losing their jobs or being forced onto the "mommy track" once their child is born. Parents are paying exorbitant amounts of money for child care, and feeling guilty to boot about dropping their kids off. Social expectations about what constitutes a good or a bad mother haunt every decision, and the rise of the parental advice industry ensures that moms and dads feel inadequate at every turn. Our children bring us joy (most of the time) but the parenting hurdles -- whether systemic or personal -- are still there, unchanging. Parents can no longer smile pretty, pretending that the guilt, expectations, pressure, and everyday difficulties of raising children don't exist or that the issues that plague so many American families can be explained away in a how-to guide. Fifty years ago, Betty Friedan wrote the groundbreaking book The Feminine Mystique about "the problem that has no name" -- the everyday domestic drudgery that made a generation of women miserable. Today that problem has a name (and quite often, poopy diapers). The problem isn't our children themselves; it's the expectation of perfection, or, at the very least, overwhelming happiness. The seductive lie that parenting will fulfill our lives blinds Americans to the reality of having kids. Excerpted from Why Have Kids?: A New Mom Explores the Truth about Parenting and Happiness by Jessica Valenti All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.