David Anderegg - Worried All the Time: Rediscovering the Joy in Parenthood in an Age of Anxiety

Critical Acclaim for Worried All the Time

As the head of counseling at Phillips Exeter Academy, I work with adolescents and their families. Ive found that this book provides a clear, thoughtful, and intelligent way to approach parenting issues. It explores the deeper issues that are often evoked in parenting and reminds us of the complexity of the parenting process. I will recommend this book to friends, colleagues, and families with whom I work.

Jeanne Stern, Director of Counseling, Phillips Exeter Academy

Dr. Andereggs delightfully articulate, easy-to-read book has given me, as a worried mom, permission to relax and have the confidence to parent from the heart. Im calmer and happier and I know my kids are thrilled that I read the book. Thank you.

Neale S. Godfrey, Chairman, Childrens Financial Network Inc.

A wonderfully calm and balanced discussion of modern-day adolescent issues and parental responses to the adolescent process. Dr. Anderegg dispels many of the current myths that make us a generation of worried parents. He assures us our kids are not in crisis, they are safer than we might think, most will be admitted to colleges that will provide fine educations, and the vast majority will develop into fully functioning adults. So put the Valium back in the bottle and read [this] book. Youll feel much better.

Jay Elkin, Ph.D., consulting psychologist, The Fieldston School

Dr. Anderegg has captured a phenomenon of our times: reactive, protective, anxiety-driven parenting that may do more harm than good for our children. He reminds us to think in context, to remember our values, and to attend to the psychological health of our children.

Ann R. Epstein, M.D., codirector, Infant Mental Health Program, Boston Institute for Psychotherapy, and lecturer in psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

An excellent and fascinating analysis of the reasons parents seem to feel excessively anxious about bringing up children in the 21st century, combined with down-to-earth advice as to how to take a more balanced second look at the real and less-than-real risks facing todays youth.

Jennifer Lewis, M.D., pediatrician, child development consultant, and author of Dont Divorce Your Children

The first-ever intelligent book of its kind. Parents who read this wonderfully thoughtful book can put away their Valium and take their kids off Ritalin.

Christopher Bollas, Ph.D., author of The Shadow of the Object and Hysteria

Rediscovering the Joy in Parenthood
in an Age of Anxiety

DAVID ANDEREGG, Ph.D.

FREE PRESS
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FREE PRESS
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Copyright 2003 by David Anderegg

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

First Free Press trade paperback edition 2004

FREE PRESS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales: 1-800-456-6798 or business@simonandschuster.com.

Manufactured in the United States of America

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THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE HARDCOVER EDITION AS FOLLOWS: Anderegg, David.

Worried all the time : overparenting in an age of anxiety and how to stop it / David Anderegg.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. ParentingPsychological aspects. 2. Anxiety. 3. Anxiety in children. I. Title.

HQ755.8.A53 2003

649.1dc21 2003040867

ISBN 0-7432-2568-6
eISBN: 978-1-451-60397-2

0-7432-5587-9 (Pbk)

Many people helped this book find its way into the world. Among the most helpful early on was Henry Meininger, my editor and friend, who first gave me an opportunity to write about children for an audience outside my immediate professional family. Gareth Esersky has also been a sensitive and judicious guide who has helped me find a place from which to speak.

Rachel Klayman and Elizabeth Stein, my editors at Free Press, have been unwavering in their attempts to rescue me from my own excesses of word and argument.

Rob Peterson, the Head of Berkshire Country Day School, and his extraordinary teaching staff have welcomed me into a community dedicated to the task of thinking clearly about children and what they need, and I am grateful for their embrace. I am also deeply grateful to the hearts of BCD, Gwen Connolly, Sandie Taylor, and Jennifer Drees.

I am indebted to my encouragers at Bennington College, including Steven Bach, David Rees, and especially April Bernard, an unswerving literary conscience and an extraordinary teacher and friend.

My thinking about children and families has been influenced by many colleagues, especially my friend Jane Sobel, whose wise counsel about child therapy has been invaluable over many years. Most of all, I wish to thank my wife, Kelley DeLorenzo, who never fails to astonish me with her depth and sophistication in our unending conversations about children.

This book is dedicated with love to Robert and Anita Anderegg, my first teachers

As a therapist, my job is to ask questions. It is what I do all day long. My patients, both children and adults, sometimes have surprising answers for my questions, but there is one that no one has been able to answer to my satisfaction. The question is: why are contemporary American parents so worried about their children?

The way I ask this question usually goes something like this: Your children are smart, healthy, and cute; your family is fairly well-off; there are no huge storm clouds on this horizon so, what are you so worried about? The more general form of the question, however, is: why, even in times of relative peace and relative plenty, do American parents worry so much about their kids?

One simple answer to this question is: Parents have always worried about their kids. Thats what parents do. It is in the nature of parents of every species to protect and foster their young, and since thats their job, thats the thing they worry about the most. There is a reason why a protective mother used to be called a mother hen: hens do the same thing, protecting and worrying about their chicks.

But hens have a pretty hard life, compared with most of us. Keeping their chicks fed and protected requires, of hens, enormous amounts of energy. My question is why since keeping children alive, fed, and protected from danger seems to be a lot easier for us than for most other animals and certainly a lot easier for us than for most parents in all of human history, do parents now worry so much? Why does it feel so hard?

Here we come to the first big bump in this long and bumpy road: the history question. Is it true that we worry more than others have worried, or that we worry too much? The answer to that question depends upon how one reads the Zeitgeist. I believe we do worry more than parents used to worry, and we worry more than we need to. Of course, I am a person to whom people bring their worries. If I were a rock star or a field botanist I might not have this point of view, but parents worries are what I encounter daily, and the experience I bring to this project is twenty years worth of parents questions.

One could argue, then, that as a child therapist, my view of the Zeitgeist is necessarily skewed. Since I consult all day long with people who are by definition