What makes a perfect parent?!

My first reaction after reading this chapter was that I definetly didn't enjoy is as much as I thought I would from what I got from the title of the chapter. I mean, don't get me wrong, there were some interesting parts, but overall, I did not enjoy it that much.

The chapter dealt with analyzing what made people good or bad parents. He said that fear is a major factor when it comes to parenting, and with this I totally agree with him. Just from what I have learned and saw over the years. The one part that I found interesting in this chapter was how he compared two things and the one that seemed more dangerous was the one that was least dangerous. As when he compared a young girl Molly not being allowed to go over to the house with a gun, but allowed to go over to the house with the swimming pool. The statistics to backup his information was that in a given year, there is one drowning of a child for every 11,000 pools in the US, and there is 1 child killed by a gun for every 1 million-plus guns. So therefore; children are more likely to die from a swimming pool than a gun, but why do we think of a gun being more dangerous to a child? I really like how this situation made me think...I found it very interesting.

Now the downside parts of this chapter for me. Overall, I just thought that this chapter was a lot of common sense and things that I already knew, and/or could figure out on my own. The whole part about things that do and do not strongly correlate with test scores, I knew which ones did and didn't affect them. Around this time in the chapter I found it a little hard to read and get through so this is the part that I struggled with.

All and all, the major thing that I didn't like with this chapter is his whole basis of the chapter...what does and does not make a good parent. NO ONE is a perfect parent, there are no perfect people, therefore; no perfect parents that create perfect children. I understand with all the different information out there on this and books and everything that he was trying to analyze it and break it down, trying to find some underlying reasons, but overall I just didn't really appreciate the chapter. I guess because I think it's pointless to talk about what makes a perfect parent, because there is no such thing as one.

Steph :)