“an essential roadmap for parents who want to make thoughtful choices that won’t inadvertently perpetuate injustice or discrimination, but that will instead lay the groundwork for a better, fairer future for all.”
—Melinda Wenner Moyer
Author of How to Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes
“an essential roadmap for parents who want to make thoughtful choices that won’t inadvertently perpetuate injustice or discrimination, but that will instead lay the groundwork for a better, fairer future for all.”
—Melinda Wenner Moyer
Author of How to Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes
Wanting What’s Best: Parenting, Privilege, and Building a Just World addresses the darker side of the common adage, “I just want what’s best for my child.” When privileged parents say that they “want what’s best” for their child, they don’t consciously add, “and not for other children.” Yet the practical effect of parents with privilege relentlessly pursuing their own child’s interests is that other children are left behind.
The book features interviews with dozens of experts and parents to help parents navigate some of the major decisions that they must make—about childcare, schools, how they use their time and money, and the legacy they hope to leave their kids.
It looks at two questions: first, what choices should individual parents make in order to stop perpetuating inequality? Second, what collective action can we all take as a society to make our systems work better for everyone? Sarah tackles the most uncomfortable issues in order to give parents the perspective and actionable guidelines they need in order to make more equitable decisions.
Wanting What’s Best tackles a powerful question: “What would it look like to fight for ‘other people’s children’ as if the future of your own child depended on it?”
Before you became a parent, you may have dreamed about all the wisdom you were going to impart to your child and all the valuable lessons you were going to teach. Then, you started the all-consuming work of actually being a parent, and all those ideals tend to go on the back burner in the hustle and bustle of the day-to-day.
My hope is that this short journal will give parents of any aged kids a chance to reflect on the role that pressure from our peer group, our families of origins, and the culture at large can play in our parenting decisions, and to think about what values are most important to us as parents and as people.
I’m Sarah Jaffe, author of Wanting What’s Best: Parenting, Privilege, and Building a Just World. As an attorney for children in the foster care system, I was tasked with advocating for the most vulnerable children in our nation. But once I became a mother, I was troubled by the stark difference between the lives of the children I met at work and the lives of the children I met in her parenting life. Was my only duty as a parent to get “the best” for my own daughter? Or did I have an obligation to try to make decisions that would help make a more equitable society?
In my search for answers, I interviewed parents and experts to understand the key issues in our educational systems (from child care to college), activism, and privileges like wealth, legacy, and inheritance. The result is a book that gives parents straight answers on some of the most complex issues we face, along with actionable ideas and questions to ask to help them make future parenting decisions with perspective, parity, and purpose.
