In many ways, being a parent is a truly wonderful experience. But it’s also scary. And one of the things that keeps many parents up at night is the fear that their kids might grow up to be jerks.
Well, parents, there is good news.
Not only is there a lot of research out there aimed at helping parents raise non-jerks, but Melinda Wenner Moyer has read an awful lot of that research in order to write a book titled “How To Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes.” It is exactly what it says it is – an evidence-based guide for parents who want to help their kids grow up to become good people. And what parent doesn’t want that?
I recently had the opportunity to pick Wenner Moyer’s brain about everything from the boundaries of assholedom to how you distill bushels of research into an accessible guide for stressed-out parents.
Science Communication Breakdown: You’ve written about research and evidence-based parenting in high-profile publications for years. At what point did you decide that you wanted to write a book? And why?
Melinda Wenner Moyer: I’ve wanted to write a book ever since I was in journalism school (back in 2005). I’ve always loved digging deeply into topics; I tend to over-report stories. So my assumption was that book writing would be perfect for me. But it took me a really long time to figure out what my first book should be.
I dabbled with so many ideas, and most of the time, agents I spoke to just weren’t convinced they would sell. (I remember wanting to write a book about ticks and agents saying “Ticks? Nobody wants to read about ticks.”) It’s funny because when I came up with the idea for this book, I had actually just finished writing a proposal for another book, but it was one that I was becoming more and more skeptical about.
What’s interesting, too, is that over the years, so many people said to me, “Why don’t you write a parenting book?” And I always scoffed at the idea, for several reasons.
First, the idea of writing a parenting book felt kind of obnoxious to me. I hardly know what I’m doing as a parent, so why should I tell other parents what to do? The second was that I felt parenting wasn’t a “serious enough” topic for a science journalist to cover. (I’ll fully admit that the idea is rooted in sexism. There’s this idea that parenting journalism is low-value; after all, people call parenting writers “mommy bloggers,” and could there be a more denigrating term?) But one day, when I was out with my husband, I had a kind of eureka moment.
It was right around the time of the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, and Trump had just mocked Christine Blasey Ford on national TV. As a parent, I felt consumed by one question: How can I make sure that my kids don’t grow up to be assholes? I knew that other parents were asking this question too. And I also knew that as a science journalist, I could find answers. So when I was out at dinner with my husband one night, I said, out of the blue, “I should write a book called How To Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes.” And immediately, I knew that was it. I emailed my agent the next day and said “throw out the last proposal! I’m writing a new one.”
SCB: I feel like there are a million ways for someone to be an asshole. How did you decide which aspects of asshole-ness to include in this book, versus which things might be asshole-y, but didn’t fit into the book. Can you think of an example?
Wenner Moyer: I remember sitting down and trying to map out the key characteristics of assholery — and then reversing them to identify positive traits I could focus on. For instance, to me, selfishness is a key aspect of assholery, so I knew I wanted a chapter on how to nurture the opposite — generosity and helpfulness. Sexism and racism are other key asshole traits, so I wanted chapters on fostering anti-racism and anti-sexism. Other traits felt tangential but important. Like raising kids to be motivated — laziness isn’t integral to assholery, but it can be an element.
My decisions were also, in part, shaped by what I found in the research. If there was interesting, counter-intuitive research on a particular trait or relevant topic, that made me more likely to include it in the book. There are a few things I didn’t directly address in the book that I sometimes wish I had: How to raise kids who don’t whine, for instance, and how to raise kids who aren’t arrogant.
SCB: The book talks about behavior, and how parents can help shape the behavior of their children, across developmental stages. (“From tots to teens,” as the book’s subhead says.) That significantly expands the amount of ground you had to cover, research-wise. Why focus on such a broad range of ages, instead of focusing on a smaller age range: just preschoolers, just grade-schoolers, just middle-schoolers, etc.?
Wenner Moyer: I won’t lie; some of it is rooted in marketing. My publisher and I wanted the book to appeal to a large swath of parents. But also, as I dug into the research, I discovered that so many of the strategies worked well across various ages. Like talking to kids about sex: Yes, you’ll do it differently if your kid is four versus 14, but a lot of the foundational elements stay the same. You can and should talk to kids about consent at both ages, even though the conversations won’t be identical. So I realized that the book could truly be helpful to parents of kids of various ages.
SCB: Okay, so a question about how you organized information: you divided the book into a section titled “Traits” and a section titled “Strategies.” But the Traits section also discusses parenting strategies, and the Strategies section also discusses the various personality traits of children (and parents). So, what is each section really about, and why did you break the book up this way?
Wenner Moyer: At first, I wanted the book to be broken down entirely into traits, with each chapter explaining what the research says about fostering a specific characteristic. But I quickly realized that was too simplistic. Some of the reasons kids mis-treat peers and loved ones aren’t rooted in particular traits — they reflect something far more complex. Take, for instance, how siblings handle conflicts. That’s shaped by a lot of things, including how kids are taught to approach and resolve problems. It’s not rooted in a specific trait (although certainly, traits do shape kids’ behavior around siblings). The same is true of helping kids navigate the world of sex and consent. I wanted to provide advice for parents on how to navigate these complex issues, and when I dug into the research I realized that they were better addressed through broader parenting strategies rather than by trying to shape specific traits. So I decided to break the book into these two sections. But you’re right that there’s a lot of overlap.
SCB: The book includes quite a few anecdotes about things kids have done that would make most parents cringe. How did you get people to share these anecdotes with you? And, if friends shared them with you, how comfortable were they with you including them in the book?
Wenner Moyer: I changed the names of all friends and their kids who appeared in the book. (It’s easy to miss, but it does say this on the copyright page.) This felt important to me, especially since so many of the anecdotes involve kids doing unsavory things, and I wanted to protect their privacy. I think, too, that friends felt comfortable sharing anecdotes because they are familiar with my parenting writing. They knew I wasn’t planning to shame them, but rather to use the anecdotes to illustrate that kids do the damnedest things, and that’s normal and OK.
SCB: One of the points that you make early on in the book is that a lot of what we “know” about parenting is actually wrong. For example, some parents don’t talk to their children about race because they want their kids to be “colorblind” – but this results in kids exhibiting more racist behavior. What was the finding that was the most counter-intuitive to you?
Wenner Moyer: The counterintuitive science of talking to kids about race is probably the biggest one. I learned about it well before I wrote the book, but I knew that it had to be in there (and would be one of the longest chapters). Same with the research on sexism — when I first learned about the science linking seemingly innocuous things like gendered toys and expectations to sexist behavior (and even sexual violence), I was pretty floored. I also found the science on self-esteem surprising. I had no idea that the pressure on kids to succeed, and the ways in which we protect our kids from failure, could have such profound effects on their self-esteem.
SCB: Did working on the book change your parenting?
Wenner Moyer: Absolutely. It was a slow evolution though. I found that it took a long time for my newfound knowledge to translate into new behavior. I kept responding to things my kids did “the old way” and wondering why I couldn’t change. But then I started noticing differences, and I also started noticing changes in my kids, which was amazing. I mean, kids change with time no matter what, so it’s hard to say that the changes I observed are because of my parenting. But I think that they are, at least in part. I’ve become a more empathetic and less reactive parent, and that has helped me connect with my kids and support and teach them better. Certainly, I still respond to them in ways that I wish I didn’t. I still do things one way and think “Gosh, that was the opposite of what I should have done.” So it’s not like I’m a perfect parent — far from it. But I do feel like now I have a lot more strategies at my fingertips for handling situations constructively.
SCB: Generally speaking, time spent working on a book is time that you’re not spending on your regular work. Was that true for you, or did your freelance work overlap significantly with the book project? Basically, a lot of freelancers would like to take on book projects, but aren’t sure how to make ends meet while doing it. Was the advance enough? Did you have support from grants? Fellowships? Just started working gazillion-hour days in order to keep up with freelancing at the same time?
Wenner Moyer: I’m fortunate with this particular book that I could report most of it over the phone. So I didn’t have a lot of expenses other than the time it took me to report and write it. I kept writing articles even as I wrote the book, and I tried to streamline where I could — for instance, I remember interviewing a few sources for stories I was working on and, in the same interview, asking them questions for the book. So financially, it worked out OK. My income during my book writing year didn’t drop. But I probably did work longer hours than usual. Also: When considering finances, it’s important to keep in mind that you have to consider more than just the time it takes you to report and write the book. I didn’t realize just how much time a book takes even after you’ve written it — even after it’s gone through edits. Book promotion is almost a full-time job!
SCB: Do you think any of the editors you work with will read the book and say “Why didn’t you write this part for us?! It would have made a great story!”?
Wenner Moyer: Ha! I don’t know. I’m now at the phase where editors are reading it for excerpts, and what’s funny to me is that different editors all seem interested in different chapters. That makes me happy. I was worried that maybe one chapter would be “the most interesting” and everything else would feel too obvious or something, and it seems that’s not the case. Also, to be fair, I have covered some of these issues (albeit in less detail) in past articles. I’ve covered talking to kids about race for Slate and the Washington Post, for instance.
SCB: Most authors will tell you that lots of good stuff ends up on the cutting room floor: anecdotes, studies, and observations that just don’t make it into the final version. What’s something you loved that you just couldn’t fit into the book?
Wenner Moyer: You know, I didn’t really encounter this problem! I will say that the sex and consent chapter was one of the last chapters I added, and I’m so glad I did. At first I’d assumed that I could cover that ground in my sexism chapter, but then I realized no, they’re different. The sex chapter is, I think, one of the most important, so I’m happy that I realized I needed it in time to add it.
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