Book Review: Becoming Good Parents: An Existential Journey

We have discovered that following these steps, of first explaining gestalt polarities and continuum model, and then directing the patient to create an image of the habitual, problematic experience, facilitates the patient's ability to access a desired or more powerful image....'

While 'Existential Hypnotherapy' allows itself to be informed by existential ideas and will be of use to hypnotherapists, it's title suggests an existential approach to therapy and could feel prickly for existential therapists.

Becoming Good Parents

An Existential Journey

Mufid James Hannush. (2002). Albany: State University of New York Press.

For all parents who for years have justified their inexpert and idiosyncratic childcare methods by reference to DW Winnicott (1965), Mufid James Hannush has a shock in store. 'Parenting' he tells us 'needs to be "good" and not simply "good enough"'. This bombshell, tossed into one of the most oft quoted and reassuring observations of parental psychology, is troubling enough, but there is more. Parenting, Hannush argues, is 'an ethical life project', calling for a constant striving towards 'moral vigilance' based on a clear and constant 'idea of goodness'. Any parent who hoped it was enough to ban Buffy and limit McDonalds is in serious trouble.

Hannush is a moralist and this book takes an unashamedly moral stand against any sort of fashionable ethical relativism: 'Becoming a good person' Hannush tells us sternly 'requires a constant struggle to overcome the ever-present possibility of wrongdoing or the committing of evilish acts'. And if this sounds a bit like a voice from the pulpit (or indeed from an even higher place), it is not untypical of the book as a whole.

Whether it is an existential book is a moot point. Certainly Hannush quotes from Rollo May and also explores Erik Erikson's and Heinz Cohut's work to uncover what they can tell us about psychological growth in the parent, but the book's subtitle: 'an existential journey' is an odd one as no personal experience is aired at all. Rather the book is full of statements, like 'existence... [exerts an] endless call to virtuous action' which seem a long way from the sort of open-ended self-exploration that might be expected on such a journey. Indeed many of his statements sound deeply unexistential: 'Parents are caring so long as they are guided, on the whole, by the goodness within them, and the ideal of goodness without'. Which makes me want to ask: What goodness? Where does it come from? How do we recognize it? And as someone who works with parents and tries to grasp the complexities and difficulties of coping and living as parents, I find it hard to guess what I might take from these words that might be useful to them, useful in any practical psychology/psychotherapeutic setting. Hannush does not answer such questions. Rather, with the aid of Iris Murdoch's philosophy he conjoins a sort of generalized existential outlook to what he calls 'pragmatic humanism'. Thus he describes humble people (humility being apparently a "good" quality): 'On the one hand, they are cognizant of the pointlessness of existence; on the other hand, they are mindful of its all-important value in its endless call to virtuous action'. A pointless existence that endlessly calls us to virtue… this is an intriguing notion but one that surely needs to be expanded and explored if it is to make even basic sense. But there is no exploration, no expansion.

Hannush bases much of the foundation of his argument for how we become good parents (by becoming good people), on Murdoch's assertion that 'Love is the perception of individuals'. In other words to love is to perceive others as individuals with independent, separate realities. This too is an interesting position – with echoes of Buber's (1937) words:

In the eyes of him who takes his stand in love, and gazes out of it, men are cut free from their entanglement in bustling activity… [and] step forth in their singleness, and confront him as "Thou".

But Hannush does not pursue the idea, he simply states it and moves on. And what he moves on to, and what takes up the majority of the book, are his reflections on one novel: Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1960).

Parts of Becoming Good Parents read almost as a homage to Harper Lee's story of Atticus Finch, single father, lawyer and all-round goodguy bringing up his children Jem and Scout in small town, Depression America. He quotes from the book repeatedly and repetitively and devotes the final chapter to a revisiting of its story. In TKM (as he calls it) he finds a moralism that is unequivocal: '[TKM is] about how hard it is to sustain one's goodness in the face of our precious vulnerability to the internal as well as the external forces of evil'. Atticus Finch prepares Jem and Scout for their own moral battles with what Hannush considers an ideal approach to parenting. He is attentive, while allowing the children to find their own space; he is imaginative, showing the children how to think themselves into other people's shoes; he shows compassionate detachment in his dealings with others; he exhibits humility, unselfishness, justice, truthfulness, cheerfulness, courage and wisdom. This is the model that Hannush wants parents to follow: present for their children but able to be separate; generous without smothering; critical but fair. Hannush seems in thrall to the book, captivated by its idealized vision of parenting, passionate in his advocacy of Atticus Finch, bitter in his rejection of the wicked Bob Ewell who threatens the family. Certainly there is no phenomenology here. We are given no examples of real children to think about, no observed reports, no verbatim studies. Hannush's own child Vera is mentioned in the dedication at the front of the book but never again. I found myself wanting to know more of Vera: how does she feel about her father's parenting skills, does she admire Harper Lee's Scout, or does she (as I do) secretly hope that the evil Bob Ewell will slaughter her and her equally righteous brother? An existential journey needs some sense of journeying, of passing through, of consideration for the view along the way. This book has none.

There are advantages to this approach of using one novel as almost the sole reference point for moral action – it is easy to follow and indeed to share (I went at once to read TKM), and it allows the reader to become involved in the moral dilemmas that Hannush is concerned with in a direct way. The downside is that these are not real people, all the moral lessons are learned from fictional characters in one author's creative imagining; and at times Hannush's commentary becomes almost superfluous. Lee's book is hardly complex and it's moral case is pretty transparent. It is hard to see what is gained by being taken through the book in this way, hard to know what Hannush is attempting here, beyond a glowing tribute to his favourite book.

In the end it is unclear who this book is for. The absence of any examples from life render it dry and unengaging for the parent who wants to improve his/her skills; the bald and unargued statements of moral principle render it philosophically empty; and the almost obsessional reading and rereading of TKM makes it at times closer to a sort of jumbled literary criticism than it is to a moral philosophy. At the end I felt I had not become a better parent, nor had I been on an existential journey. It failed in fact to do what it said on the tin.

Antony Daly

References

Buber, M (1937). I and Thou (translated by RG Smith). Edinburgh: T&T Clark.

Lee, H. (1960). To Kill a Mockingbird. New York: Warner Books.

Winnicott, D. (1965). The Maturational Process and the Facilitating Environment. London: Hogarth Press.