Gail Root

Gail Root was born in 1949, when getting a television was the “coolest thing in the whole world.” She got spanked for misbehavior and ate pancakes on Saturdays. When she started her own family, things took a different tack.

“I was married 35 years and we lived in 28 different places,” she says. For most of that time, Root’s husband was in the military and the family, counting three girls, continued its nomadic pattern. When they landed in a new town, Root would get oriented by looking in the neighborhood for homes with strollers and toys out front. She sought out a chapter of La Leche League, or Army Family Services. As she puts it, she was looking for her village – other parents who shared her values and could help each other stave off isolation.

She says parents today need help managing the confluence of kids, marriage, careers and personal fulfillment because families are more disjointed and scattered. When she landed on the Monterey Peninsula 28 years ago, she was inspired to start a program within Pacific Grove Adult Education called Parents’ Place. It offered weekday classes in new parenting, kids’ art, time management, mom and baby exercise, and addressed more immediate needs like postpartum depression. But really it was just to create a village. And parents who needed it found it in droves.

Two years ago, Root retired from Parents’ Place. But she recently came out of retirement to serve as program manager for Parenting Connection of Monterey County, a similar program in Marina that serves primarily working families, run by her daughter.

Weekly: What’s the difference between Parents’ Place and Parenting Connection?

Root: My daughter saw the need to reach families who were working outside their home or needed classes [on weekends]. Also, Parenting Connection in Marina is easier for people living in Salinas, Castroville, Watsonville and Aptos. It’s a wider demographic. Parents’ Place definitely has plenty of SUVs in the parking lot.

What do parents need these days?

They need their village. They need to find other families and a nonjudgemental teacher to help them learn about how to make decisions for their families. Because we don’t live in a society anymore where the extended family is nearby.

You have grandparents enrolled, too. What’s your advice to them?

Grandparents need to learn sometimes how to keep their mouth shut. Grands think, “If my children do it this way, was my way not good enough?” Now babies sleep on their backs, not on their tummies. We know the value and importance of breastfeeding. My mother didn’t breastfeed me or my siblings. I breastfed all my girls; that doesn’t mean my mother wasn’t a good mother. There’s more information.

How do you approach controversial parenting topics like circumcision, natural birth and vaccinations?

The teachers we’ve selected are hopefully nonjudgemental. My job is not to tell you to have a birth with no epidural; it’s to provide information. If you don’t know your options, you don’t have choices.

I know a family with four boys. The first two were circumcised to “look like dad.” The parents got more information and changed their mind and the next two were not. A lot of times parents get confused with the books they read. I tell them to put the book down, sit at the beach, and think.

What are parents anxious about now?

Nutrition, eating, sleeping; we talk about sleep until the cows come home.

Self care. A lot of parents think if they’re good parents, they have to give every ounce of themselves to the child. Then they get burned out. The fearfulness and anxiety today is, “Am I doing enough?” Parents are stretched beyond breaking, particularly on the Monterey Peninsula where it requires [both parents] working outside the home.

What do you suggest to avoid burnout?

I say to the couple, “Why don’t you see about trading child care with a friend?” On a Saturday, go get a sandwich and sit at a park for an hour and talk to each other. That’s the beginning. They’ve been so involved with family survival that they’ve forgotten about themselves.

For more information on Parents’ Place, visit www.pgae.pgusd.org/parents; for more on Parenting Connection of Monterey County, www.parentingconnectionmc.org