Too Much Advice Is Making Us Worse at Parenting |
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Too much expert advice can increase parental anxiety.
Parenting has shifted from a relationship to a “child-focussed project.”
Less information can help parents function more effectively.
“Can you see the ways that external advice can exacerbate parental anxiety by creating unrealistic standards and fueling a sense of inadequacy? It isn’t that it causes parental anxiety, per se, as parenting is naturally full of protective urges, but it certainly has played a significant part in amplifying parental overwhelm.”
“Can you see the ways that external advice can exacerbate parental anxiety by creating unrealistic standards and fueling a sense of inadequacy? It isn’t that it causes parental anxiety, per se, as parenting is naturally full of protective urges, but it certainly has played a significant part in amplifying parental overwhelm.”
This is a theme I explore in my upcoming book, The Parenting Paradox, in which I reflect on the correlation between expert parenting advice and uncertain parenting.
I recently participated in a podcast interview about over-professionalizing parenting. It’s a topic that resonates with me so it’s been good to have opportunities to name what so many parents are quietly experiencing as a norm—that raising children has shifted from a lived relationship into something that feels more like a complex, high-stakes profession.
Much of how I think about this has been shaped by Murray Bowen’s family systems theory, which highlights the impact parents have on emotional dynamics—not through techniques but through their own functioning.
For over a century, external advice and marketing have entered the parenting space, amplifying fears around children’s safety, education, and emotional well-being. This sits alongside many broader social changes, and not all of it has been negative. But what’s become increasingly clear is the correlation between expert advice and uncertain parenting, as historian Peter Stearns has noted. As I reflect in my book, “external advice can exacerbate parental anxiety by creating unrealistic standards and fuelling a sense of inadequacy.”
What strikes me in my work with parents and their helpers is how universal this experience is. Parents aren’t lacking care or commitment; they’re overwhelmed by the sheer volume of voices telling them how to care. Parenting, which once grew largely from lived experience in community and intuition, has increasingly become outsourced to external advisors.
We go looking for reassurance, but often come away with more doubt. In fact, we go to an expert for advice to solve anxiety, but end up feeding it.
At some point, without fully noticing, we begin to treat parenting less like a relationship and more like a project. We track, measure, assess, and intervene with a focus on our kids. When parenting becomes something to get right, rather than something to live into over time, it can lose its sense of direction and leave parents feeling overwhelmed.
I propose that the way forward is not through more knowledge, but through a kind of thoughtful reduction and reclaiming of our sense of self as parents. This is where the paradox begins to unfold. Perhaps the overriding paradox is that less information is more helpful. It allows parents to focus on how they relate to their child rather than stressing about how much they need to know.
This idea often meets resistance. We’ve been conditioned to believe that being well-informed is the same as being well-equipped. But in parenting, more information can crowd out our capacity to be ourselves—to be present. When we are less preoccupied with whether we are doing things “correctly,” we can pay closer attention to how we respond in the relationship in front of us. Parents can be reassured that they genuinely don’t need to listen to and read every new piece of ever-shifting advice.
What's a Parent's Role?
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Another paradox follows closely behind. Rather than increasing our focus on the child—on their emotions, behaviors, and developmental milestones—we are better served by shifting our attention to observing ourselves. When parents turn their attention to managing their reactions to their children, they don’t need to have all the latest information about their children’s development. This is not about neglecting children’s needs, but about recognizing the powerful role we play in shaping the emotional climate of the relationship.
There’s also an important tension here for those of us who work in the parenting space. I’m mindful that in providing resources to lend a hand to parents, I risk adding to the very noise of all the advice surrounding them. My guiding question for testing what I write is: Does it help parents to think and act for themselves rather than follow others’ directives?
The goal for parents is not stepping back too far but staying present in a way that provides both loving support and space for children to grow independence. This isn’t something that can be prescribed; it has to be discovered. It involves learning how to use external resources wisely, without losing sight of your own resourcefulness and values.
With a plethora of advice online and in the media, parenting has become more complicated than it needs to be. The pathway to less overwhelm will require reduced outsourcing to experts so that parents can recover trust in their own version of good-enough parenting.
These are some of the tensions I continue to explore in my book, particularly how parents can reclaim trust in their own way of being, rather than outsourcing it to the ever-expanding world of expert advice.
Stearns, P. N. (2004). Anxious parents: A history of modern childrearing in America. New York University Press.