Week of February 18

Scarr’s notion: This is the notion that one does not need to stress over the nuances of parenting
or which style of parenting is best because as a mother/parent your biological predisposition is to
be the best parent you can be. Therefore, the small decisions or inadequacies along the way are
really insignificant. It is because of this that however you parent is “good enough.”

Evidence: If you think about yourself as a parent, or how your parents raised you… could you ever
picture a moment that if you were very cold, without hesitation they would give you whatever
clothing they had to keep you warm? It is examples such as these that testify to the theory, not
debates on whether or not to enroll their child into public school or not. The notion of being
“good enough” is a test to what parents do without even thinking about it. It is their biological
code that steps in to provide as much support and reassurance to their kids without even thinking
about it. For example, think of parents that have a newborn. Regardless of the fact both parents
probably have full time jobs, they get up every hour of the night the feed and soothe their screaming
child to sleep- sacrificing their own health, sleep and literal life just to make sure they kiddos are
okay. This biological response or tendency to want to be the best possible parent is exactly way you
don’t have to stress over the small stuff. Because in the end, as a parent you will sacrifice so much
for the comfort or love for your child, which is exactly why you don’t even have to try.

Argument: I agree with this notion to an extent. I do agree that there is a biological response that
kicks in when you have a child that drives you to be the best possible parent. However, after reading
about Erickson and Sullivan's theories, I do believe that parents can’t entirely rely on their parenting
gene. For instance, according to Sulivan, once a child reaches their early adolescence, they are
beginning to develop into their personalities and sexual identities and while a parents instinct may
be to smother them with love and fulfil every need they can imagine, the best thing to do is to step
back. With this being said, I think Scarr has a lot of validity with his theory however I think the
publication or publicity of this could do more harm than good for theories of parenting. Anytime
you give people a reason to do less more than likely they will. In this case, that may not be for
the best on a large scale.