Interview: John Rosemond

Parenting expert John Rosemond is an author, speaker, and columnist who takes a counter-cultural and common-sense approach to parenting.

 "My children come first." Are these appropriate words?

Child-rearing is absolutely the biggest responsibility a couple can take on. But it's essential that the focus stays on your marriage.

Position the marriage as such that the children pay attention to you.

This is a radical idea now. It wouldn't have been radical at all up until the age of psychobabble.

People used to understand that you cannot effectively disciple a child unless the child is a student. That requires that the child pays attention to you.

Most parents are paying so much attention to the children that the children never get the message that they are supposed to be paying attention to the adults.

How has parenting changed in the last fifty years?

The main difference is the micromanagement of children.

I would say that the cutting point was the late 1960s/early 1970s when they started turning to professionals for child advice.

The main difference is that prior to the professional child rearing age, parents didn't micromanage their children.

Children used to be expected to do their own homework. Now their parents sit beside them at the table to help.

Today's children really aren't learning the sub-skills that children learned in my era.

It was a better time for children, because they were able to learn by trial and error.

What is your advice for stepparents?

The problem in the American stepfamily is that the stepparent is oftentimes a second-class citizen in the family.

The problem is that people are paying more attention to the prefix step- than they are to the word family.

The rules shouldn't change. This is not two different ballgames.

When people start acting like this is a different ballgame, the stepparent starts feeling like his primary responsibility is to befriend the children, which is absolutely wrong.

The primary job of the stepparent is to be the best husband or best wife that they can be.

What do you see as the main thing that has broken down the family?

One of the main things is television.

In most families, people watch television more than they talk to each other.

This is something that my wife and I discovered when our children were 10 and 6. The television interfered with our ability to communicate with each other.

We went without a TV for 5 years, and the positive results were absolutely astounding.

It's certainly not the only thing that has changed the face of the American family, but it's certainly a large factor.