Sharon LambResenhas

The author is a psychologist and expert witness who evaluates parents and their children in cases where the courts and the child welfare system are trying to decide the best placement for a child. Much of the book describes her interactions with the children and parents and the tools she uses in making these life-changing decisions.

As though looking into a mirror while assessing these situations, she also evaluates her own role as a mother to two boys, one who falls victim to drug abuse, and she is forced to ask if she, herself, is a good enough mother.

Deeply insightful and thought-provoking!

It's always difficult to walk the line between judging and being judged. I am always interested in people who consider themselves above reproach to the degree that they feel comfortable enough to make these types of decisions. This book was deep and well-written and gave me insight into this profession and the the fallible people who work and mother between the two.½

A beautifully written, challenging memoir by a therapist who evaluates children and families for Vermont’s DCF to see where the children should stay or be placed. One of Lamb’s own sons struggles with a heroin addiction (which she denied for a while), influencing her musings on what it means to be a good enough mother and on when we should look at outcomes or behaviors, or some combination. I found it quite striking that she recounted an anecdote from Amy Chua’s well-known account of her “Tiger Mother” upbringing of her two children—Chua recalled ripping up a handmade Mother’s Day card because the art was too sloppy. If Lamb had been evaluating Chua, that could have cost her custody. But of course Yale Law professors don’t get the state evaluating their parenting in that way, and maybe it matters that they had stable employment and no obviously out-of-control addictions; maybe it matters that her daughters grew up to get good educations (hell, one of them is about to clerk for Kavanaugh). It was heartbreaking to read about “mothers who canot stand for their children to want them, to need them. In attachment terms, it brings to mind for them, to the unconscious mind, their own unreliable mothers.”

Lamb was surprisingly-to-me empathetic to men who were physically violent; at some points I felt she lumped yelling at, demeaning, and hitting children together. (She even says she doesn’t trust herself to gauge what’s an okay amount of male aggression—but what do we do with that?) I do think it’s a relevant question to ask whether a man who hits his partner can ever be trusted: is there really no coming back? Doesn’t it matter that his kids may well love him deeply and be harmed by being taken away from him, even if they also risk harm in staying?

The book got me to reflect on the vagaries of both fate and the state's attention. Life is unpredictable and so what happens may happen even if we do everything as well as we can (and nobody can, and there is no such thing as perfect mothering), and this extends to addiction as well. When Lamb notices that it’s almost impossible to distinguish between sham and real addiction treatment centers, if there’s even a distinction, it echoes her observations about the differences between good enough and not good enough mothers.

Part of my job is to review the reports prepared by social workers as they make decisions regarding the placement of children who have been removed from the custody of their parents. In doing so, I have always given great weight to the opinions of therapists and psychologists who evaluate the children, their biological parents, and their foster parents. Never before have I had the opportunity to consider what goes into those evaluations, how their performance affects the evaluators, and how the evaluators' lives might influence their opinions. Sharon Lamb's open and honest writing about her professional life, and how it influenced and was influenced by her personal life, is a revelation. Lamb could be any one of us, struggling to balance work and home life, worrying about how one affects the other, and deciding what to do when reality pulls us from the assumption that we have it all together. Lamb's honesty and easy writing style will give hope to any parent or parental figure who fears they caused or exacerbated their child's problems, and who struggles with how to respond. **I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.**½

I'm a strong believer in God sends you tools when you have a problem to fix. When I received the book The not good enough mother, I decided that since I'm an empty nester I will immediately read this book and write my review.
I started reading this not realizing that this was the tool to fix my problem! Sharon lamb writes about her experiences personally and professionally in working with women, children and creating or upsetting families through the DCF system.
Sharon shared so much of her thought process that it brought me out of my self-imposed prison of self doubt of motherhood. Especially being an empty nester raised two boys. One came with the marriage and the other we made from scratch. I associate with a lot of the parts of the not good enough mother and feel that this is a wonderful tool that everybody should have in their library toolbox. I found the Sharon lamb wrote a book that helps mothers the process our work our life, are flaws and our amazing moments. My takeaway of this book is that I learned from it, I State my parental flaws to my kids with apologies, and I enjoy the special memories we have and the great ones to come with a comforted heart.

I received this from library things early review. I read 70 pages and then could not finish it. The writing style is not for me.

Every parent wants the best possible for their child. They want to make sure that they grow up well, stay out of trouble, get great grades and have a better life then they had. Not only did Sharon Lamb want that for her child, but her job is one in which she consistently analyzes whether parents who’ve had their children taken away for one reason or another want this for their children. And as she has experienced throughout her career, parents are so very often battling addictions or conditions, sometimes through no fault of their own, that challenge their ability to provide what their children really need. And as so often happens, what you think only happens to other people, can turn out to lurk closer to home than you realize. For while Sharon thought she had done everything right, what with her training as a psychologist teaching her all about warning signs of addiction, addiction still found a way to worm in to her own son.

Suddenly the judge becomes the judged.

From this premise, Dr. Sharon Lamb takes a deep dive into a world of mental illness, addiction, the adoption system, and what it means to get and stay clean. Through a number of her own personal case studies and experiences, she is able to put a very personal and interesting spin on childhood and parenthood alike. Much of what we preach when it comes to what makes the “perfect” parent not only comes under scrutiny, but Dr. Lamb examines how these expectations are driving many families to an environment that proves to be detrimental and in many cases, pushes families to an edge that many fall off of into the abyss. What really gives emotional and additional depth to her in-the-moment type of reporting of the situation in Vermont is when she talks of her own son who falls victim to an opioid addiction that makes her question whether she can truly judge the fitness of other parents. This is ultimately a powerfully built memoir that gives renewed meaning to the idea that darkness can happen to anyone, no matter how much you try or how much you do to prevent it.

(I received a review copy of this book through a Librarything giveaway, but this did not in any way influence my review of the memoir.)

"The Not Good Enough Mother" was sometimes difficult to read, but it's a very important book.

The author , a psychologist, evaluates parents regarding their ability to regain custody of their children.. Most have drug or alcohol addictions. This book offers a very personal look at her own life with the opioid addiction of one of her sons. Very compassionate , well written.

I received a free copy of this book from Penguin Random House in exchange for an honest review.

I have a personal background that should have made this book really resonate with me. I've been in the family that was the praiseworthy ally of social services, and I've been in the iffy family that was under their microscope. I love the premise of the "good enough mother." The book is certainly angsty, with numerous excellent arguments and many sad stories to wring the heart.

However, I found three things lacking: the organization of the book, the paucity of research, and how the author expends so much writing vitriol on her own family that there is none left for bringing her mothering and the mothering of her clients together in empathy and partial solidarity--which is the selling point.

Subsections are badly needed. Instead, the book has vague, broad subjects for sections and many short chapters. Lamb seems to meander among a large range of topics, returning repeatedly to some themes. One would expect this to some extent, but the author needs to connect the dots. "As with Case A, we saw this phenomenon in Case B." The creepiest theme was the Man Sleeping on the Couch. I dreaded yet another Man Sleeping on the Couch cropping up in one of Lamb's stories, because he was like a character in a horror novel. He deserved his own chapter.

The book also needs some underlying research to reinforce the author's experiences as a social worker, something like "X of 10 children are removed from the care of their mother [citation]" to segue into a where-are-all-the-men-and-why-are-they-not-judged chapter.

The description of the book promises a big revelation in which the author re-examines her own mothering in light of her son's addiction, and then brought this humility into her practice. For this reader, this simply fell flat. Much of the energy of the book was expended during Lamb's son's rehab--her prose fairly crackles with incendiary rage during this part; and who can blame her, it cost $30,000--and so there was not much narrative force left for righteous indignation on behalf of her clients in light of her own experiences. It's always dicey to bring personal content into a book of social commentary, and better editing was needed to keep the tone more even.

I'm finding it difficult to review this book. On the one hand, the meandering writing style left me confused about exactly whom the author was discussing at times (herself? mothers she was evaluating? their children?) but it also had a lyrical quality that added to the overall affect of the book.

This is not a "feel good" book. This book will probably make you sad, and frustrated, and angry, and then sad again. This book is about a woman, herself a mother, who evaluates parents and recommends separating them (or not) from their children in cases of abuse, neglect, drug addiction, and other similar reasons. While discussing myriad cases she's been involved with, she reflects on her son's opiate addiction and how that reflects on herself as a mother. It does not attempt to answer any questions, but rather to reflect.½

This book explained the difficulties involved in experts' roles in assisting child protective service agencies' work regarding children and their parents when the parents place their children at risk by using illicit drug resulting in addictive behavior. Sharon Lamb, the author, very clearly articulated some of the difficulties experts undergo when evaluating children and their relationships to foster parents and birth parents to devise the best permanency plans for them when children linger in foster care longer than they should. Interspersed in this narrative, Dr. Lamb describes her son Willy's own drug addiction and her challenges in getting him into rehabilitation services as well as analyzing or trying to analyze, how Willy became addicted, questioning her own parenting abilities. This book is well written and helpful in describing different psychological testing instruments utilized by psychologists to help them evaluate parents. The significance of this book lies in the basic facts Dr. Lamb reaches that there are many grey areas when it comes to parenting and addiction. In addition, she shows how compassion is required when assisting the courts and lawyers in determining the best plans for parents. I recommend this book.

The Not Good Enough Mother by Sharon Lamb is a personal, highly recommended account pf a psychologist who evaluates the fitness of parents.

Psychologist and expert witness Dr. Sharon Lamb observes children and evaluates parents after the children have been removed from their custody. She observes and takes notes, assessing the fitness of parents in order to determine what is in the best interest of the child. Her evaluations will either recommend that the child be returned to their parent or that parental rights should be terminated, opening the children up for adoption. It is a decision that is not always clear.

As many of these parents struggle with addiction, Dr. Lamb's own son struggles with an opioid addiction, which makes evaluating other parents even more challenging on a personal level. Since mother's are often the ones being evaluated to determine if they are "good enough mothers," Dr. Lamb turns the question on herself, is she a "good enough mother?" She knows the daily struggle of an addict to remain clean. She knows the relapses, the lies, and the statistics as she tries to remain compassionate to those she is evaluating, while at the same time keeping above all else the best interest of the child. And, as a mother, she knows that mothers always look for blame in themselves when their children make bad life choices.

Individual situations and cases are discussed with an informative eye for detail and information about what she looks for and observes during various home visits and meetings. The result is a narrative that is both informative and heart-breakingly personal. As a professional, she needs to have boundaries and keep a sense of detachment while she also has a plethora of first hand personal experience with an addict. In concise language and succinct case/visit summaries, she provides details and information in a controlled, neutral manner, keeping her emotions in check, while informing readers what she does and of what she takes note. Her professional neutrality is almost at odds with her personal experiences, providing the reader with the sense of a dichotomy she experiences between her professional life and personal experiences.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Penguin Random House
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2019/06/the-not-good-enough-mother.html

I read part of this book and skimmed the rest. I read enough to be depressed about how marketing influences girls in our society.

I'm checking out on this one. I wanted to like this book more - but I am struggling to get through it.

The advice seemed very repetitious just a few chapters in. No rocket science here...if you care enough about raising girls to check out this book - then you are probably already on a good path.

I am sort of torn on this book. I really like the information presented and have been reading other books in this same genre. Since I've read a couple of similar books to this in the recent past, I'm pretty sure that's why I found it sort of difficult to read through. It was much drier than the other books.

I do like the information that was presented and agree that the media and large corporations are really messing people up, especially girls. I have started to really notice things more after reading this and others, but that I think can also be attributed to being pregnant. You don't notice a lot of things until it'll somehow effect you.

This book was nice because I think it allows for better dialogue between parents and their children. This particular book has some really good resources and suggestions on how to approach conversations. Overall, I like it although it can have some really tedious sections if you are familiar with the subject.

This is a collection of essays, most of them quite good, on the subject of forgiveness. The editors and authors note that forgiveness is quite popular as a subject for therapy, but most of them take a somewhat skeptical view, not dismissing the idea of forgiveness, but questioning whether it should be automatic.

One of my personal favorites is Jerome Neu's “To Understand All is to Forgive All – Or is It?” I have long considered that to be one of the stupidest of clichés. Neu points out that it is a mistranslated and out of context quote from Mme. De Staël. He argues that often when we understand someone's motives, they sometimes turn out to be base, and that we don't blame people whom we consider to be mentally ill, precisely because we don't understand their motives.

A point of departure for many is forgiveness-guru Robert D. Enright's definition of forgiveness “as a "willingness to abandon one's right to resentment, negative judgement and indifferent behavior toward one who unjustly hurt us, while fostering the undeserved qualities of compassion, generosity, and even love towards him or her.'” If that is the definition of forgiveness, I am going to be a lot less willing to forgive. Sometimes the only way to avoid a repetition of the offense is to avoid the offender. Sharon Lamb, in her introduction, states that the advocates of unilateral forgiveness, “try to make it clear that forgiveness is not 'condoning' or 'excusing' or 'forgetting' or 'denying'” the behavior, but “in actual practice, forgiveness expressed often fails to communicate to an offender this essential promise.” It is exactly for this reason that in her essay “Women, Abuse, and Forgiveness: a Special Case” that she does not advocate automatic forgiveness in cases of abuse. Janice Haaken, in her essay “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Psychoanalytic and Cultural Perspectives on Forgiveness,” adds: “The suspicion is that the valorizing of forgiveness is a seductive ideological cover for baser motives. As oppressed groups gain the strength to speak up and claim new rights, include the right to disengage from abusive relationships, the powerful rediscover the salutary virtue of forgiveness.”

One problem that becomes clear through the essays is that maintaining the distinction between forgiveness and pardon often requires a third party (e.g., the legal system) who metes out justice to the offender even though he/she is forgiven. It is therefore the case that often smaller wrongs, which seem more forgivable, cannot be forgiven, especially not as Enright defines the word, simply because avoiding the unrepentant offender may be the only way to protect oneself, even if one does not remain hostile . Janice Haaken argues: “For therapists who believe in a 'just world' – that emotional suffering is generally brought on by factors under control of the individual – the therapeutic process may focus too narrowly (and oppressively) on the need for a modification in the patient's attitudes.”

Many people believe, for religious reasons, that all offenses must be forgiven, the notion of repentance somehow having gotten lost, and they may not get much out of this book, but those who ponder this issue will find a lot to think about.

Summary:
This book concentrates on the effects of media and pop culture on girls. It specifically analyses how media and consumerism affects what they see, hear, read, and play. It looks at popular movies, songs, books, magazines, and games. This gave it a unique perspective. The goal is to teach girls how to reflect on their world and see how society is affecting them.
The majority of movies and programs girls watch promote gender stereotypes.

Personal Reaction:
I like how it incorporates pop culture into the lives of girls and explains the images and perceptions it feeds to girls and describes the effect this has on them. This book has a lot of great information and statistics.

Classroom Extension Ideas:
1. I would use this book for an "all about me" day where the students are able to share the kinda things they like.
2. I would use this book to teach lessons on stereotypes.½

Summary:
Player. Jock. Slacker. Competitor. Superhero. Goofball. Boys are recognized by images in the media that encourage slacking over studying; competition over teamwork; power over empower - ment; and being cool over being yourself. From cartoons to video games, boys are bombarded with stereotypes about what it means to be a boy, including messages about violence, risktaking, and perfecting an image of just not caring. Over 600 boys are surveyed from across the U.S., the authors offer parents and teachers a long, hard look at what boys are watching, reading, hearing, and doing. They give parents and teachers advice on how to talk with young boys about these troubling images and provide them with tools to help them be their unique selves.

Personal Reaction:
I really enjoyed this book. It has a lot of great information and statistics that you can share with young boys to encourage them to be themselves and not fall into the stereotypes that are portrayed in the world.

Classroom Extension Ideas:
1. I would use this book to have an "all about me" day where each student would be able to share the things that they like.
2. I would use this book to teach lessons on stereotypes.½

From the preface: "we've been told our world empowers girls by offering them anyting they want, including infinite sights and endless ports of call. In reality, it's a world designed by media and marketing executives that targets children as consumers, channels girls' desires, and entices them into predictable types: 'pretty pink dolls,' 'cute little shoppers,' and 'hott teens'."

Packaging Girlhood covers the influences on girls from roughly ages 3 through 17. The chapters cover shopping (the products available and how they are marketed), TV and film, music, books and extra-curricular activities. The final chapter gives sample conversations for parents when discussing culture with their daughters.

Although I was familiar with a lot of the authors' concerns, and they did repeat themselves quite a bit, I found this to be an extremely interesting and inspiring read. I think what made this book different from others that I've read on this topic is that there was always a psychological POV involved (including what it is about these products that appeals to the girls, but also the psychology of the marketers and of parents). I especially enjoyed the chapter on books, and the literary critique from a psychological approach.

I borrowed this book from the library, but I am ordering my own copy to keep as a reference.

Recommended for: obviously the parents of girls, but also anyone who works with girls, and anyone interested in cultural studies or consumerism. The authors have also written Packaging Boyhood: Saving Our Sons from Superheroes, Slackers, and Other Media Stereotypes.½

Lamb and Brown, both psychologists, came to harsh conclusions after they surveyed girls; sat through hours of Rugrats and Kim Possible television programming; scoured stores such as Hot Topic and Claire's; watched Hilary Duff movies; listened to Eminem and Beyoncé; visited MySpace.com; and read Caldecott books. The idea of "girl power was snapped up by the media," and "what it sells is an image of being empowered," argue the authors. Girls are offered two choices by the marketers: they are "either for the boys or one of the boys." Even rebellion is being packaged, "the resistance, that edginess and irreverence that once gave girls a pathway out of the magic kingdom." The book is incredibly readable and rises above others in the genre by giving parents concrete tools to help battle stereotypes. Lamb and Brown include lists of books and movies with positive role models and talking points to help your daughter recognize how she is being manipulated. The authors aren't trying to deny anyone princesses or pink; they just want girls to be knowledgeable enough to choose what will truly interest them.

Canvasses clothing, music, sports, entertainment, and other sources of messages that our boys get. Unlike girls, boys get the message that the world is made for them and that they are (or can be) powerful, but the emphasis is rarely on hard work, practice, and the benefits of learning to do something even if you don’t dominate the whole world. Thus, the authors argue, boys are deprived of any recognition of uncertainty; if they’re scared, they aren’t allowed to show it, or any other “soft” emotion—it’s all rage and occasionally tears of joy when the team wins. The only alternative to the hard, always-winning superhero is the slacker, who doesn’t care. This is especially destructive to boys’ ability to succeed in school. Their recommendations involve a lot of talking to your kids; I only wish I was confident that messages from parents would be enough to overcome all these other overwhelming archetypes.

This is one of the less handwringy books I've come across addressing the media's influence on children and teenagers. The authors give concrete examples of how parents can promote critical analysis in their children's lives as they navigate a media-saturated world. I would have liked to see more from them on this front in place of the sometimes-repetitive catalogs of various products marketing one of a set number of messages or identities. To their credit, their section addressing sexuality in music and media was the best I've read so far. Instead of taking a protectionist approach (we must defend our innocent daughters from any hint of sexuality!), they acknowledge that girls and women are sexual beings.½

This book should be required reading for anyone who has a daughter, plans to someday have a daughter, or is at all concerned with the well-being of girls. It gives a detailed and insightful breakdown of all the things that can mess with girls' heads, both the obvious (Barbie, teen magazines) and the things you might not pay attention to (boxes for board games, the lack of girl central characters in picture books). What I really love about the book, though, is it doesn't just say "All these awful things are happening to girls oh no oh no!", it describes ways parents can actively engage their daughters, even really little ones, in conversations about this stuff and teach them to be critical consumers. It made me excited to have smart, self-confident, savvy girls one day.

I appreciated the intent of this book but not the execution. I definitely want my two daughters to grow up questioning and defying the limiting messages and images media and marketers are feeding them, but after about 70 pages of this repetitive and sometimes abrasive read, I felt like I had gotten the gist. Some of the authors' findings were debatable and others, completely obvious. I think they could also stand to give parents and even very young daughters a little more credit, too. Many of us are already reading culture with a critical eye and, at least in my opinion, this book didn't provide many helpful new tools for doing that.