Raise your hand if you?ve had to lower your parenting standards during the pandemic. Raise the other one if you?ve ever faked a bathroom break just to hide from your kids. Keep both hands up if you feel your soul slumping in defeat any time a Sourdough Mom?that?s what I call moms on Instagram who use words like ?activated yeast? while I use words like ?McCain Superfries??posts pictures of steaming homemade loaves.
At least one of Beverley Rauch?s hands is likely up. More than a year later, the mom of two still isn?t sure how she got through that first traumatic lockdown, when she had to juggle a brand new demanding job?divisional vice-president of HR at luxury retailer Holt Renfrew?with her seven-year-old daughter?s home-schooling and her three-year-old yelling for her mom to wipe her bum during conference calls. ?There were days where my husband and I sat down and I said, ?OK, which one of us is going to have to quit our job"?? Pandemic or not, if you have kids, you?re no stranger to chaos. So when I first heard the phrase ?good-enough parenting,? I felt palpable relief, then curiosity, then outrage: Why isn?t this a household term" A movement"
Turns out good-enough parenting has been around since the ?50s, when the term ?good-enough mother? was coined by British paediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott. He used the term to describe the necessary process whereby a mother, who starts out hyper-responsive to her infant?s needs, naturally relaxes her re...