Less Parenting, More Joy

From Design Mom blogger Gabrielle Blair and her husband, Ben Blair, a unique guide that subverts the concept of “perfect parenting” by embracing uncertainty.

Parents today are often filled with anxiety, overwhelmed with the feeling that every parenting decision carries paralyzing high stakes. The Kids Are All Right gives parents the tools to set these anxieties to the side and connect more meaningfully with their children and the actual issues they face. The book provides relatable examples and insightful frameworks to help parents approach parenting with confidence rather than reacting to cultural fears about screen time or college admissions.

Gabrielle and Ben Blair are the parents of six and have been raising kids for over two decades. Through the years, they’ve charted their own unconventional path: working from home before remote work was a thing; uprooting their kids four, five, six times – including a move to France where they enrolled in local schools without knowing the language. It’s been a unique parenting journey characterized by experimentation, trial and error, decisions prompted by financial or psychological necessity, varying levels of anxiety and tension, despair, and hope. This unique path turned out to be fertile soil for growing independent, resilient, and creative kids, and a family that is genuinely close and truly enjoys each other’s company.  

With this book they share how they did it, and show how we can too, and in so doing, offer a heaping serving of relief. They show how to let go of tired expectations of what it means to be a good parent; how to push back against the latest moral panic; and how to come to terms with the reality that the old rules won’t necessarily apply in the future. But more than pushing back and letting go, they show what it looks like to build thriving relationships that extend beyond the first 18 years.