Jayne Ruff and Aarthi Prabhakaran are co-authors and editors of the book “Imperfect Parenting: Honest Stories from Global Parents” published by LetsAuthor Books last month. The book is a collection of real-life stories written by twelve parents from different parts of the world, a community of authors who share their journeys with parenting. 

Jayne and Aarthi talk about their book and the circumstances that changed their perspective and life as mothers.

First, the inevitable question – how did you come up with the idea for such a book and how long did the process of preparation, choosing the authors and collecting the stories take?

JAYNE: The book has been on an 18-month journey. Initially, it was just five of the now 12 authors who came together – all strangers to each other – to explore whether we could create a collection of stories sharing the highs and lows of parenting in today’s fast-paced, often chaotic and ever-changing world. Despite not knowing each other, we quickly found a common connection in the joys and frustrations we have and continue to face raising our children. We hoped that sharing our experiences openly and honestly through the book would offer our readers this same sense of comfort and familiarity too.  

Along the way, we recruited another seven authors, each with their own unique parenting stories to tell. Every author we brought on board shared our passion for creating a global movement, empowering parents across the world to speak up about the positives and the challenges of parenthood. By the end we had authors contributing from the UK, India and the USA.

We took an unconventional route to publication. Working with our publisher, Let’s Author, we Crowdfunded the cost of getting our book out into the world. It was incredibly encouraging to see just how much support we received from our early backers – it quickly validated the need for a book of real-life stories, shared first-hand by parents, exploring a diverse range of perspectives from the early parenting years, life with teenage kids, and the transition to becoming a grandparent.

AARTHI: Like any ideation process, the book also went through multiple title revisions, while the core value that we wanted to share with the world remained the same as Jayne has mentioned. It took almost a year to arrive at the title that we have now “Imperfect Parenting”, a title that is representative of what the 12 of us had to share with our readers and unanimously agreed upon. 

All the stories are different personal experiences, but do they have any common point at the end?

JAYNE: The overarching message throughout the book is that there is no such thing as a perfect parent! While our stories touch on a broad range of parenting experiences – from juggling small kids and a big career, raising an autistic and non-verbal child, single parenthood, and experiencing post-natal depression and anxiety… to name a few – every chapter commonly talks about our mistakes, lessons learned, and the emotions experienced, in the hope that doing so normalises the ups and downs of parenthood for others.  

When we become a parent, I think we perhaps underappreciate just how much we will grow alongside our children – which means we’ll make many mistakes along the way. This is part of the continuous learning journey. Our stories end by outlining some of the key learnings each author has taken from their own unique experiences of parenting so far, which the reader may find a helpful guide from which to think about how they approach navigating the next stage in their parenting journey. 

AARTHI: The other aspect of commonality is that, despite the authors being at different phases of their parenting journey and learning along the way, they are still learners and accept that, this learning will be ongoing all through their life as change is a constant. With change comes learning and adopting new ways of doing things. 

How different is the social, traditional and national context in the stories? And how are all these backgrounds important for the parents?

JAYNE: Our book draws on the experiences of parenting across Eastern and Western cultures. We hear about generational differences in parenting and the different experiences of parenting within specific personal contexts. I believe this richness of experiences is what makes the book so special!

As a co-lead author, I had the privilege of reading each contributor’s story as part of the editing process. While there were certain stories I could instantly connect with and relate to, I took my greatest learning from the chapters where the stories were quite different to my own. Yagya’s moving story on raising an autistic and non-verbal child gave me a wonderful perspective on the value of connection with our children and had me in tears each time I read it! Preetha’s raw and honest story of raising her son as a single mother in India was such an inspiration to me as a parent of two boys. And Anu’s experience supporting her LGBTQ+ child gave me a lot of insight into how to encourage my children to be inclusivity advocates from an early age.

We set out to create a sense of connection with other parents, regardless of where they are in the world. I believe we all – as co-authors – have come to appreciate that while we may all have different parenting styles, be at different stages of our parenting journeys, have varied cultural backgrounds and different parenting contexts – we all have a lot of shared experiences and opportunities to support each other too.

AARTHI: Having had a nomadic life as a child and as a parent of two children, I have had the privilege to experience, in real-time, both Eastern and Western cultures. With this personal experience, as a co-lead author, reading the chapters of Jayne and Chandrika, both practicing professionals in the field of psychology who talk about self-doubt when it comes to their abilities as a parent wanting to break the generational patterns (especially the harmful ones), as well as the dilemma of not being able to give one hundred per cent to both their professional and personal life, made me see that the west and the east are not so different when it comes to such every day challenges one goes through. Denise’s chapter was something that I was able to relate to in my early days as a young parent in a western country, a new environment, where I missed my village of support that I needed, especially in those early years of parenthood. 

You say the book it's not a guide or an advice manual, but how does it ultimately help parents and the challenges they face?

JAYNE: We wanted to create a book that was free from judgment. That celebrated the fact that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to parenting. That encouraged parents to feel empowered to make choices that best meet the needs of their families, rather than what they felt they ‘should’ be doing based on what they see externally on social media, hear on their parenting What’s App groups, or read in the news. 

Through storytelling, this book aims to bring back connection. We talk not just about what we have done (and not done), but how it has felt. This raw emotion is often missing from more traditional parenting books and yet is at the heart of what makes parenting both incredibly rewarding and endlessly tough. We hope that sharing our stories in this way will normalise many of the challenges facing parents today so that they feel less alone in the feelings they may be experiencing.

Stories can also help us to understand ourselves better. We do not expect readers to agree with and act on everything they read in the book. Rather, we hope that by immersing themselves in each story, they can take inspiration from the points that resonate whilst also considering their own story and what genuinely matters most to them as a parent. I’m so proud of my co-authors, who have bravely and vulnerably shared the emotional ups and downs of their own experiences in the hope that doing so will offer support and reassurance to others. 

AARTHI: I am in perfect agreement with everything that Jayne has said, especially the last part on the co-authors.

What is your advice as a parent and as a psychologist?

JAYNE: That there’s no one-size-fits-all solution and no perfect way to parent. Try to cut out the noise and stay tuned into what matters to you and your family. This is something I talk a lot about in my chapter on ‘Raising Happy Children and Balancing a Meaningful Career’.

Accept that the choices you make may look different to other families around you, or how you were raised. Accept that making these choices can often be hard! It’s not easy to choose between working late or being home for bath time or to decide whether you spend the weekend with close family friends or at home recuperating after a long week. The choices can be tough, but feeling like you are making a conscious move in a direction that’s meaningful to you is more empowering than trying to do it all and feeling like you’re doing nothing ‘right’.

Take a step back to identify the values you want to live by – as a parent and as a person – and what it looks like to live by this day-to-day. One of the most important values in my life is to have a positive impact on the people around me. If I’m feeling overwhelmed, I’ll pause to take a breath and consider which of the many plates I’m spinning will help me have a positive impact on the people around me (my kids, my family, my colleagues, my clients) within the time and energy parameters I have available to give, and therefore which plates I’m going to permit myself to put down for the time being. I find this approach incredibly liberating, and I often encourage my clients to explore its value to them too. 

AARTHI: Children do as we do, and not as we tell them to do. They learn by imitating the others around them. So, it is important that we first learn to follow the standards that we set for them or expect from them. Being a conscious parent does not mean we are calm and composed all the time. It just means that we take a step back to observe the chaos, pause when overwhelmed, acknowledge our emotions (all of them) and then respond appropriately as the situation demands. Non-judgemental healthy conversations help build healthy relationships and hence healthy individuals. Be the Change is the message that I would like to share through my chapter. Unless we as parents change ourselves as the role models of what we expect our children to be, they are only going to mirror how we currently are. So, when you see your child doing or saying something, pause and assess if in some way you or the people around your child were directly or indirectly modelling it for the child to pick it up. Then have a conversation with your child about it. 

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Elena Koprtla is from Skopje, Macedonia and currently living in Zagreb, Croatia. She has a PhD from the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb. She has worked in the cultural editorial board of several media channels in Macedonia, as a book editor and coordinator for an art festival.