Parenting Is Your Highest Calling: And Eight Other Myths that Trap Us in Worry and Guilt
Leslie Leyland Fields
WaterBrook Press, December 2008, 228 pp., $13.99, www.randomhouse.com/waterbrook
Leslie Leyland Fields, professional writer, commercial fisherwoman and mother of six, debunks nine myths of Christian parenting, making the case that children are not put on this earth to fulfill us; we aren’t here to be God to them.
The inherent complexity and difficulty of raising children, Fields asserts, should drive us to God rather than to grasp at formulas, pretending unconditional love comes naturally, idealizing a single family model as godly, or idolizing family itself. The depth to which some of these myths are ingrained becomes evident in the author’s own occasional inconsistency. Overall, her major points, scriptural examples and discussion questions offer an effective, affirming and hopeful counter to destructive myths our culture—and sometimes even our churches—subtly enforce.
