There are all sorts of resources on the internet about how reading science fiction and fantasy makes people have more empathy, literacy, leads to a lot of positive outcomes and children, for a variety of reasons. A lot of people learn things from the stories they read. I wrote an entire article once about science fiction and fantasy novels that help me understand history and archaeology and anthropology better. I don't talk a lot about parenting. On the internet, particularly not on social media. Social media is permanent, and I've read too many horror stories about the children of mommy bloggers, being upset because of what their parents wrote about them on the internet, and I want my kid to be able to control his own space online once he's old enough. Also there are a multitude of people who do a lot more with parenting blogs than I ever could and the world does not need one more person going on and on about how their individual parenting journey has put them in a position to give tips and trips and tricks. Every family is different. But what I do want to talk about is how fiction reading has made me better able to handle parenting, because the truth is, in modern middle class America in the suburbs, we have remarkably few opportunities to get role models from parenting, at least for me and my husband. Neither one of us have our cousins, and we were both born into a relatively small families where we didn't spend a lot of time around children growing up. Some of our friends are Greek or Iranian come from families that only recently immigrated to America, and their experiences are different. Their cultures, at least from the outside looking in, seem to trend more toward larger families with stronger ties. So for us, one of the reasons we read so many parenting blogs, research papers, books written was because we didn't know what else to do. But, self help books are inherently trying to to sell you on a philosophy or concept or a to do list. And a lot of the parenting blogs are just so sanctimonious or hopeful, or focused on self aggrandizement, that it's not the same thing as seeing your friends go through the problems and the pandemic has been particularly isolating because opportunities to join mommy groups have been till the ground and frankly a lot of them don't have a great reputation. So even though I have a lot of wonderful friends who are also parents it's been hard to learn from them because of the isolation on the pandemic. Compounding this is that there are remarkably few parents in fiction. And when you do see parents in fiction, it's usually at the end of the series we're having the baby as the happily ever after, and you don't see much of the struggle of parenthood. There were two exceptions to this idea that have really gotten me through the worst parts of trying to figure out how to manage with an infant or toddler. When my husband was at work, and there wasn't anyone to call for help. And one of them was Flowers in the Attic by V. C. Andrews, which is definitely no place to be at in parenting advice, by the way, and The Soprano Sorceress, by L. E. Modesitt, both of which had a remarkably similar image of a mother struggling to carry small children and suitcases across long distances. And even though I've read 1001 accounts of historical migrations and single mothers in America and their struggles. Nothing is quite as visceral and relatable to me as the character sketches in those books. And when I find myself sitting in the car, trying to figure out how to pick up a whole bunch of things that I need for my son, or trying to figure out how to get him home. Time for his lunch my car breaks down. I think about those stories among picking up her child, carrying her child 20 feet, putting her child down, going back, picking up the suitcases, carrying the suitcases 20 feet, and doing that for four miles. And I realize that my problems are solvable. A solvable problem is a lot easier to deal with than an overwhelming problem. The way to deal with problems is to break them down into their component parts. And for me the way to deal with my anxiety is to imagine the absolute worst case scenario, and how I will deal with that. As long as I can deal with the worst case scenario. I can deal with a slightly crappy one.