Hello, Cruel World!
Melinda Wenner Moyer (UK); (US))
The unfortunate thing about parenting books is that, in my experience, once you become a parent you are too time-poor and exhausted to read them. As a result, my bedside table is stacked with parenting manuals of which I鈥檝e read the first five pages a dozen times before passing out.
If this sounds like you, the latest book by science journalist Melinda Wenner Moyer should be top of your pile. Hello, Cruel World!: Science-based strategies for raising terrific kids in terrifying times is designed as a research-backed guide to help parents equip their children with the tools they need to thrive.
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I should say upfront that I am a fan of Moyer鈥檚. Her first book, How to Raise Kids Who Aren鈥檛 Assholes, is of course sitting unread at the top of my bedside pile, but I do subscribe to her Substack, Now What, which I love for her non-judgemental, evidence-based approach to parenting.
This book offers more of the same. The chapters are short and readable, broken down into bite-sized sections, each giving you one piece of advice and the science to back it up. Moyer oozes empathy and can help you take a kid鈥檚-eye view on even their most infuriating behaviours.
Take, for instance, the challenge of raising kids in a world of political polarisation. How can we get them to be more open, unbiased and willing to consider other viewpoints? One way is to encourage curiosity and uncertainty from a young age. Children, as we know, are like young scientists. 鈥淥ne of their most important jobs is to make sense of the world around them,鈥� writes Moyer. This curiosity can often clash with an adult鈥檚 desire to get things done. 鈥淲hen you ask your child to clean their room, then find them thirty minutes later studying a spider in the bathroom鈥� it鈥檚 easy to dismiss their behavior as disobedience. But the underlying reasons for their distraction may be biological, benevolent, and evolutionary adaptive,鈥� she writes.
I put Moyer's advice into practice as my blood boils after asking my son five times to get his homework out
So, says Moyer, we need to respond to these (extremely frustrating) sorts of behaviours with empathy and support rather than a rollocking. I put this into practice when, as my blood is boiling after asking my son five times to get his homework out, I find him lounging on the kitchen floor pressing both pedals of the dustbin on repeat.
When I ask him what he鈥檚 up to, he tells me he wants to see whether one half of the bin closes faster than the other. 鈥淲hat did you discover?鈥� I ask, biting my tongue. 鈥淥ne closes faster than the other!鈥� he replies. I ask him why that might be so. 鈥淚鈥檓 not sure, maybe one has more friction than the other?鈥� And I have to admit Moyer might be on to something.
The chapters on gender stereotypes are particularly good, shedding light on the ways our behaviours as parents tacitly reinforce societal expectations of girls, but the issue I was most interested to get Moyer鈥檚 take on was technology, especially mobile phones and social media. Parents at the school gate are extremely worried about their effects on kids, thanks in part to the techno-panic driven by books like Jonathan Haidt鈥檚 The Anxious Generation. Here, Moyer brings her common-sense approach once more, picking apart much of the research cited by Haidt and others. As for access to phones and social media, Moyer has useful advice on how to decide when the time is right, and if you do take the plunge, how to set up healthy habits.
My only gripe, and it is a small one, would be the chapter on substance use, which takes a hard line 鈥渏ust say no鈥� approach. It may be my European sensibilities, but the research here feels weaker than elsewhere, and seems to contradict findings from other parts of the book, which tend to refute outright restriction. Of all the issues facing kids today, the one that really keeps me up at night is the future state of the climate, so I would have rather had a chunky chapter on that instead. Perhaps it will be in the next book.
By Moyer鈥檚 own admission, she covers so much ground that entire books have been written on most of the topics she spends a chapter on, so her coverage may feel a bit 鈥渓ite鈥� to some. But I appreciate it for its bite-size chapters and friendly tone 鈥� it is one book that won鈥檛 end up gathering dust on your nightstand.
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