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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Psychologists define perfectionism as a personality trait that is generally stable over time—although circumstances can inflame or calm it. They have also found that perfectionism is embedded in two core personality traits: high conscientiousness and high neuroticism. These traits, in turn, are linked to the two facets of perfectionism: “strivings” for high standards and “concerns” over perceived failures. Highly conscientious “strivers” tend to seek excellence in everything. They set up unachievable goals and try to meet them. On the other hand, people high in the trait of neuroticism, who focus more on their concerns—let’s call them simply “worriers”—are likely to have anxiety or self-esteem issues. They ruminate more on the gap between their ideals and the nitty-gritty of daily parenting, berating themselves for making mistakes.
Recently psychologists set out to understand how strivings versus concerns influence mothers’ and fathers’ identities as parents. In a study of 1,275 Polish parents aged 18 to 30, participants were asked to answer questions about how they felt about themselves as parents three times over the course of a year. They noted how much they agreed with statements such as “It is important to me that I be thoroughly competent in everything I do” or “If I fail at work/school, I am a failure as a person.”
The parents with most concerns about their performance felt the worst about themselves as parents. “Such parents experience greater uncertainty, dissatisfaction and even regret about their decision to become parents,” says psychologist Konrad Piotrowski, lead author of the study, who works at SWPS University in Poland. Parents who were primarily strivers with fewer concerns, on the other hand, felt better about themselves than those who ranked higher in concerns, as measured by perfectionism scales.
But it was rare even for strivers to have no worries. Strivings and concerns are two sides of the same coin; in most people, they co-occur. “Only a relatively small subset of parents—those who maintain high personal standards while experiencing minimal concerns or self-doubt—benefit from their trying to be the best,” Piotrowski says. “For most, perfectionism can ultimately lead to impaired functioning, increased stress and reduced satisfaction with parenting.”
Those are symptoms of burnout. A study of mothers of babies in Finland showed that two factors contributed most to burnout: outside social pressures to be a flawless parent and low self-esteem. Moms already suffering from low self-confidence were hit hardest by burnout, while more self-confident mothers experienced it less. (Generally, research finds that although perfectionist fathers can feel disappointed in themselves, cultural expectations of mothers as the primary caregiver leads them to hold themselves to much higher standards than fathers.)
A mountain of research has also established that parents’ insistence on being perfect themselves can damage their kids’ mental health. Fuschia Sirois, a social and health psychologist at Durham University in England, co-authored an analysis of 14 studies on the negative effects of parents’ perfectionism on children. Such effects are legion. Parents who are anxious about being imperfect may inadvertently raise their children to see mistakes as indicators that they are bad people. And modeling unrealistically high expectations can lead children to develop low self-esteem or a pervasive sense of failure.
For example, imagine a mother who has been called into school because her five-year-old daughter hit another kid. She feels embarrassed, like she’s been shown to be a bad parent. Afflicted with perfectionistic concerns, she feels ashamed, guilty and like a failure. Instead of asking her daughter what happened, she yells that hitting is bad and punishes the child. “That child is going to take that to heart,” Sirois says. “They’ll feel that there’s some sort of intrinsic flaw there, rather than bad behavior.”
Nevertheless, setting high standards for parenting, even unrealistic ones, can bring some benefits—as long as the parent is not weighed down by self-doubt and criticism, Sirois found in her analysis. In the hypothetical situation mentioned above, the mother is a striver, so when her child acts out, she may feel down on herself for not meeting her high parenting standards. But, working to do better, this parent might ask the daughter why she hit her classmate and explain how to use words, not fists, when she gets angry. Sirois found that such strivers were less likely to inflict emotional distress on their kids.
The Polish study showed another relative benefit for strivers: they were more likely than worriers to seek education about parenting, and at least some of them adjusted their standards downward to more realistic levels over the course of the study.
“This is a great result,” Piotrowski says, “demonstrating that interventions for parents (workshops, therapy) that allow them to take a more reflectiveand conscious approach to their own parenthood can free them from the rigid framework of perfectionistic expectations.”
The trick to taking this more conscious approach, experts say, is to notice when your expectations cause misery for you and emotional problems for your children. They note a few red flags:
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You judge yourself on an all-or-nothing basis. If you make a mistake, you see yourself as a failure.
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You brush off your successes. If other parents tell you how amazingly your kid behaved at a party, you can’t take it in.
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You observe that your child is not satisfied with their accomplishments because they’re worried they’re not good enough.
If you’re noticing these things, experts suggest you start by helping yourself:
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Talk honestly with other parents about your struggles. You will probably find that even some seemingly unflappable parents are also struggling.
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When you notice you’re criticizing yourself for not doing enough, remind yourself of some good things you are doing.
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Talk to yourself as if you were being a compassionate friend to another parent.
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If you feel you are drowning in a sense of failure, seek counseling.
Most of all, think about what’s good for your children overall rather than focusing so much on your own performance. “Model self-acceptance,” Lee says. “If it’s difficult to be kind to yourself, reframe it: ‘If I give myself more flexibility and grace, if my children are confident and able to tackle hard problems even when unsure, and if I offer them love and acceptance to help them give the same to themselves—then I am the “great” parent I’m trying to be.’”