James Breakwell - Bare Minimum Parenting: The Ultimate Guide to Not Quite Ruining Your Child

Also by James Breakwell:

Only Dead on the Inside: A Parents Guide to
Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

First published in the United States in 2018 by BenBella Books, Inc.

Published in paperback in Great Britain in 2018 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright James Breakwell, 2018

The moral right of James Breakwell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Paperback ISBN: 978 1 78649 696 6
E-book ISBN: 978 1 78649 697 3

Printed in Great Britain

Author photo by David Van Deman

Atlantic Books
An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd
Ormond House
2627 Boswell Street
London
WC1N 3JZ

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

To my wife and kids,
for always giving me something to write about.
Even when you shouldnt.

To my parents, for making me the person I am
today. Im not sure if thats a compliment or
an insult.

Contents

Chapter 1

A Call to Inaction

F acts. Figures. Hard evidence. Peer-reviewed studies. None of those things are in this book. This is a book about kids. Science is as powerless to explain them as it is to make you friends or get you laid. After studying children for generations, all that scientists know for sure is that scientists wont know anything for sure unless they get more grant money. And maybe tenure.

This lack of empirical data hasnt stopped countless experts from writing libraries of books on the right and wrong ways to raise a child. Their aim is to make you a better parent so you can make better kids who in turn make the world a better place.

Pass.

Why work harder to be a great parent when your kid will turn out just as well if youre a mediocre one? As for making the world a better place, the sun will swallow the earth in a mere five billion years. Its a waste of time to fix up temporary housing.

The world doesnt need another guide for raising children. In fact, it doesnt need another book of any kind. Reading can lead to eyestrain, headaches, and even war. Guess who made the best-seller list before he invaded Poland.

Clearly theres nothing more unethical than writing a parenting book. But people pay money for them, so I wrote one anyway. Trust me, no one is more disappointed in me than me. Except maybe my parents.

In my defense, this isnt really a book. Despite all the evidence to the contraryit looks like a book, it smells like a book, and I called it a book literally four sentences agoits actually an unbook. It exists solely to counteract the countless parenting books already in print. If those authors stopped publishing bad advice, Id gladly abandon my unbook as well. But I made some phone calls, and none of the other writers agreed to give up their careers just because I asked them to. I guess Ill have to write this unbook after all. There goes my weekend.

Heres the tricky part: Ive never actually read any of those other parenting books. All I know is that people who buy them go online and blame underachieving parents like me for ruining kids today. Thats pretty much the only thing the internet is good for. Well, the only thing its good for that doesnt lead to you clearing your browser history.

I get where those other parents are coming from. If I were them, Id hate me, too. Im doing everything wrong, yet the universe hasnt struck me down. My kids are on track to be self-sufficient adults all the same. Maybe my parenting approach works just as well as the overachieving one, but with less effort on my part. That sounds like the kind of thing other people might want to know about. I should write it downand sell it for a modest but fair profit. Operators are standing by.

How the Children of Different Kinds of Parents Turn Out

You made the smartest decision of your life just by picking up this book (and, yes, Im calling it a book again; typing two extra letters was exhausting). You see, this isnt a book about overachieving as a parent. This isnt even a book about achieving exactly the right amount. This is a book about doing as little as possible without quite ruining your child. The goal of bare minimum parenting is to turn your kid into a functional adult using only a fraction of the effort spent by over-achieving parents. Your kid will be just as good as their kidsif not better. Often, the easiest approach for you is also the best approach for your child. But if its not, be lazy anyway. Its good to be consistent.

Overparenting is killing kids today. Well, not literallyalthough I wouldnt put anything past health-food nuts. No one knows the long-term effects of kale. Many overachieving mums and dads assume the harder they work, the better their kids will turn out, but the evidence doesnt bear that out. In fact, most parents who do too much raise a child who amounts to too little. Those are the cases Ill focus on, not because theyre statistically relevant, but because they prove my point. Just dont accuse me of cherry-picking my data. Like my kids, Ill die before I touch fruit.

And, yes, you really do need this book to tell you how to do as little as possible. To avoid overparenting, you cant simply underparent. You must be strategically lazy. Many times, the course that takes the least effort today will create huge amounts of work down the road. This book is meant to save you time and energy overall. Parenting is all about the long game. It has to be. Kids grow up too damn slow.

Guilt by Association

If youre a parent, your guilt response is already kicking in. You feel terrible just for reading this far. What self-respecting parent would admit they DONT want to work hard for their kid?

A wise one, thats who. Theres no reason to feel bad about making something as easy as possible. Do you feel guilty when you solve a maths problem with a calculator instead of an abacus? Do you consider yourself a failure if you use a shopping trolley instead of holding thirty-five different items in your bare hands? Are you tormented by inner turmoil when you fly across the country rather than walking the whole way?

Of course not.

The only thing using a calculator or a shopping trolley or an aeroplane makes you guilty of is being human. Were not the fastest or strongest creatures on earth, but we are the smartest. Our survival as a species depends on thinking up ways to make life easier. The prize for doing things the hard way isnt self-satisfaction. Its extinction.

Bare minimum parenting is just another tool. Sure, there are other, more effort-intensive ways to bring up a kid, but those are just more difficult means of arriving at the same end. Raising your child the hard way doesnt make you a better parent, just a less evolved one. Why start a fire by rubbing two sticks together when you could use a flamethrower? Time for toasted marshmallows.

Citation Needed