Paranoid Parenting: Abandon Your Anxieties and Be a Good Parent is a book by the Hungarian sociologist Frank Furedi, published by Allen Lane in 2001 (ISBN 0713994886) . A revised edition, Paranoid Parenting: Why Ignoring the Experts May Be Best for Your Child, was published by A Cappella Publishing in 2002 (ISBN 1556524641).

Contents

Introduction

1. Anxious parents: battery children
2. Relentless advice
3. The assumption of parental incompetence

Chapters

1. Making sense of parental paranoia
   1. The precautionary approach to parenting
   2. The erosion of adult solidarity
   3. A poisonous atmosphere for parenting
   4. The code of mistrust
   5. The flight from children
   6. Parents on their own
2. The myth of the vulnerable child
   1. The denial of resilience
   2. The burden of bonding
3. Parents as gods
   1. The inflation of the impact of parenting
      1. Eating disorders
      2. The 'terrible twos'
      3. Student anxiety
      4. Failure in school
      5. Depression
      6. Low IQ
      7. Violent behaviour
      8. Psychological damage 1
      9. Psychological damage 2
   2. The myth of the Mozart effect
   3. Parenting before children
4. Parenting on demand: the new concept of childrearing
   1. Parents as full-time lovers
   2. Parents as therapists and healers
   3. Parents as teachers
5. Parenting turned into an ordeal
   1. Is there a parenting time famine?
   2. Can never do enough
   3. Parenting as an ordeal
6. Why parents confuse their problems with those of their children
   1. Parent identity
   2. Emotional investment in children
   3. The emptying out of adult identity
   4. Weakening of durable relations
   5. Uncertain attachments
   6. I could not live with myself if...
7. Confusions about facing up to adulthood
   • The depreciation of adulthood
8. The problem of holding the line
   1. Drawing the line
   2. Discipline
   3. The smacking debate: evading the issue
   4. An invitation to overreact
9. Unclear rules: prejudice masquerading as research
   1. Starting from scratch
   2. Unclear rules: conflicting advice
   3. Prejudice masquerading as research
   4. Moral confusion
10. Professional power and the erosion of parental authority
    1. Creating demand for 'support'
    2. Disempowering parents
    3. What professionals really think of parents
    4. Cannot be taught
11. The politicisation of parenting
    • Not the business of the state

Conclusion

• What can we do?

External links

• Frank Furedi

  Official website

• Penguin Press

  'Publishing structure' section of the Penguin UK website