THE PARENT TEST: How to Measure and Develop Your Talent for Parenthood

Some individuals have a greater aptitude for parenthood than others,"" Peck and Granzig assert, and they have devised tests to help individuals isolate potential strengths and weaknesses and determine the likelihood of their happiness as parents (compared to others who are considered ""successful""). Each chapter begins with a questionnaire on one aspect of parenting--motives, expectations, resources, personality traits--and then summarizes the patterns of answers commonly given by contented parents, including brief interpretations for key clusters of responses. For example, successful parents are more likely to allow certain concessions--broad TV access, Bass Weejun loafers--because forcing a child to be ""different"" becomes an excessive restriction. The questions cover areas as diverse as physical health, spare-time activities, and attitudes toward diapering. The 400+ test entries are weighted--those measuring maturity count more heavily than those involving less critical factors--and readers can tabulate their scores at the end. Whether aptitudes can indeed be ""developed"" (modifying motives, building parenthood skills like nursing and teaching) is a separate issue. The test format is somewhat overdone and the book seems more suitable as a springboard for discussion than an ultimate arbiter, but the text, less insistent than Peck's The Joy of the Only Child (p. 402), does concentrate on pertinent areas and raise important questions.