The strength of parental love

Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More than Peers Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate. Knopf Canada, 2005. 320 pages.

Neufeld’s and Mate’s book paints a provocative, disturbing picture of our children’s current culture. “Peer orientation,” or a primary attachment to those of a similar age group, is identified as enemy number one. It is cited not only as a phase through which many teens pass on their way to adulthood, but as a condition that is affecting children in their early years and significantly impacting their development as they mature.

The authors react strongly against many of the popular parenting strategies based primarily on behaviour modification. They call parents back to connect with their children, and to remain engaged rather than prematurely pass the torch to peers or unconnected adults. This attachment with parents and nurturing adults is repeatedly emphasized as the only way to circumvent the powerful negative affects of peer orientation.

Neufeld also critiques strategies based on teaching children to make good moral choices as woefully inadequate. He claims that a peer-oriented culture creates a child whose survival is based on their ability to be “cool” or invulnerable, effectively losing touch with their emotions, creating “an insatiable appetite for drugs,” “stok[ing] the fires of aggression,” and extinguishing a natural curiosity toward the world, among many other ills. This book joins George Barna’s book, Transforming Children into Spiritual Champions, in calling parents to re-engage in the primary task of mentoring their children.

The first three parts of the book focus on defining and describing the reality of peer orientation, and establishing a framework for Neufeld’s view of child development. The last two parts focus on strategies for strengthening the relationship between parents and children, building a foundation for discipline and correction. Neufeld and Mate highlight the need for a community of connected adults to help the nuclear family unit raise a child.

I am not quite ready to accept the underlying portrayal of children as completely a product of their environment, nor am I ready to throw out all parenting strategies that focus on behaviour modification. However, I agree with Neufeld’s call for the pendulum to swing hard in another direction.

Relationships between parents and children must be nurtured more tenderly in a society that has become very adept at undermining that critical bond. This book brings a new perspective to the beauty and strength of the love of a parent for their child, and the impact of a caring adult in the life of a little one. I strongly recommend the book to parents, educators and those who minister to children.

Darlene Klassen is children’s minister at West Portal MB Church, Saskatoon, and the mother of four children.