Parents Under the Influence: Words of Wisdom from a Former Bad Mother

Part American and part French, part memoir and part guide, this book offers a fresh, unique, and powerful perspective on the challenges of parenting and how to find a rewarding path forward for parents and children alike.

How should we raise our children? It should be a simple enough question to answer but in fact it is an intimidating and complex one. We often address it by deciding to do either exactly what our parents did or just the opposite. After that we rely on a cocktail of love and instinct, hoping it will be enough to overcome the difficulties ahead.

Far from having perfect free will, however, we are all under the influence. The child still within us confuses, influences, or undermines all our aspirations as parents and prevents us from sticking to the philosophy we initially hoped to follow. These unresolved emotions drive us to reproduce the upbringing we received, including the behaviors that have hurt us the most.

In Parents Under the Influence, Cécile David-Weill draws on her own parenting blunders and successes as well as concrete examples, case studies, and works of fiction to guide readers, helping them heal from the past and become effective, nurturing parents.

Cécile David-Weill is French and American. She published her first novel, Crush, under the name of Cécile de la Baume. The Suitors, her third novel, was published by Other Press in 2013. Until recently, David-Weill was a regular contributor to the French news magazine Le Point, with a column entitled “Letters from New York.” She was born in New York, where she currently lives.