Parenting experts have praised 'second best parenting' for giving parents a more realistic outlook on family life - but what is it and how can it help to empower parents?
You open Instagram and see yet another mumfluencer making her kids' breakfasts from scratch before they've even woken up for school; you watch as your neighbours seamlessly ferry their children out the door and into the car without so much as a tear or tantrum; you look around and are forced to wonder why everyone else seems to be able to parent perfectly when you just can't figure it out.
The comparisons leave you in a detrimental cycle. Why try at all if you're not going to get it perfect on the first try? It's a classic example of black-and-white thinking and, according to one expert, it's what's stopping many parents from being the best parents they can be.
“When we are giving advice in parenting, we tend to be absolutist: There is the best option and then everything else," economist-turned-parenting-expert Emily Oster told HuffPost. "[But] When we tell people that it’s the ‘best or the rest,’ we do not allow for them to choose smartly among the rest."
This is where her idea of 'second best parenting' comes from. The term 'second best' is used a lot in economics, meaning quite simply your best second option if the first perfect option is not achievable.
Bringing that idea over into parenting, the term keeps much of its original meaning. Oster explains, “The idea of ‘second best’ is to recognise that within the category of ‘other options,’ some are better than others. The second best is the best option that we can achieve.”
It seems like common sense when it's laid out like that, doesn't it? But, in actuality, in can be hard to remember. “We’re told the best snack for our kids is, say, a whole apple and a glass of water. But what if your kid doesn’t eat that? We don’t help people pick well among the options their child will eat," Oster says.
"You’d be forgiven for thinking that once you’re going to applesauce, you might as well give a pile of cookies. But actually those aren’t the same.”
What Oster wants parents to do is forget perfect and go for best. It's so much more freeing, she says, the embrace the many shades of grey that the world we live in is made up of, rather than focus only on the black and white.
If you can't - or more understandably don't want to - wake up at 5am to bake bagels from scratch to give your kids a healthy breakfast, try the second best option and give them an equally healthy breakfast with store-bought bagels. Has it made much difference? We highly doubt it.
In other family news, these are the 3 common phrases used at mealtimes that are damaging to kids, according to an expert. And, "I regret doing too much with my kids when they were babies" - our parenting writer Lucy reveals why she wishes she'd embraced lazy parenthood. Plus, here's why people with autism are ‘160 times more likely’ to drown than those without the condition.
