What defines parenting? Parenting, the process of raising children and providing them with protection and care in order to ensure their healthy development into adulthood. Good parenting is an accumulation of actions and interactions that you have with your child. It is driven with purpose and end goals in mind. Good parenting aims to develop in children character traits like independence, self-direction, honesty, self-control, kindness, and cooperation. Parenting has three essential components. Firstly, care protects children from harm. Care also encompasses promoting emotional as well as physical health. Secondly, control involves setting and enforcing boundaries to ensure children’s and others’ safety, in ever widening areas of activity. Parenting does matter—of course it does—just not in the overly complicated, competitive, anxiety-ridden way most of us have been led to believe.

Bridgit Peter

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