• home
• the author
  biography Q&A
• the book
  press release parenting strategies
• events
• media
• contact

Richard Weissbourd is a child and family psychologist on the faculty of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and School of Education…and a dad.

In The Parents We Mean to Be, Harvard psychologist Richard Weissbourd argues incisively that parents―not peers or popular culture―are the primary shapers of their children’s moral lives. While the morning papers and the evening news usually focus on the small number of parents who have clearly lost their moral compass, the problem is really much larger than that.

“Lots of us, in ways that we tend not to be aware of, can imperil our kids’ moral development,” says Dr. Weissbourd.

Through the author’s original field research a surprising picture emerges. While there is much that is encouraging about modern parenting, many parents are intensely focused on their kids' happiness and achievements and on being close to their children, but they are not cultivating morality in the same concerted, sustained way. Many parents are even conveying to kids that happiness and self-esteem are the foundation for morality, when the reverse is more often true: being a good and caring person leads to strong relationships that are the bedrock of lasting happiness.

Nor is the problem just a small group of achievement-obsessed parents. Many parents are sending hypocritical messages about achievement—telling their children achievement doesn't matter, for example, while flashing vocabulary cards at the dinner table—that erode their influence as moral mentors.

Weissbourd also takes up such provocative questions as:

• Should we be telling our children to be nice to others because then others will be nice to them, or to be good because it will make them happy in the end? What happened to morality for its own sake? Why don't we tell children to be good because it's right, because other people's needs are as important as their own?
• Why are first generation immigrant children faring better on every moral and emotional measure than their American-born peers?
• Why are so many parents morally regressing at their children's sporting events, and what can we do about it?
• Why are so many parents, teachers and sports coaches praising children constantly?

Additionally, Weissbourd explores the different pathways to becoming a moral person, and the variations in effective parenting practices, across race and class. The Parents We Mean to Be offers concrete strategies for raising aware and morally mature children, and reminds us how parenting itself is a tremendous opportunity for the moral growth of parents too.