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Can Myers-Briggs testing make us better parents?
by Helaine Olen
February 26, 2007
Janet Penley, the former marketing and advertising executive who pioneered Myers-Briggs use for parents in the late 1980s, believes many maternal difficulties lie in the gap between societal expectations and personal temperament. Like me, she stumbled onto personality testing when she was searching for ways to lessen her irritability around her children.
"I was preparing a birthday party for my six-year-old son when he came and messed up the plate and napkin settings," she recalled. "I shrieked at him."
She now calls that shriek her "aha moment."
Penley found the Myers-Briggs personality scheme so effective a tool for managing her emotions, energy and time, she was soon adapting the test for mom's groups, developing specific diagnostic questions for parents, many of which are in her recently published book, Motherstyles: Using Personality Type to Discover Your Parenting Strengths. Want to see how you'd be classified if your home was a corporation? Take one
of these Myers-Briggs tests: HumanMetrics, ColdBoot, CognitiveProcesses, PersonalityTest.
Then read about your parenting style here:
ISTJ Responsible and security conscious, they are extremely loyal. As parents,
they are meticulous homemakers who make sure their children obey societal rules.
Their downside: They can be intense perfectionists who can experience difficulty
coping when a situation calls for flexibility and less than ideal solutions.
ISTP Highly practical and realistic, they love action and despise advance planning.
As parents, they are non-authoritarian but can have trouble providing their children
with needed emotional support.
ISFJ Systemic and meticulous, they are duty bound and honor their commitments.
As parents, they put their children’s needs before their own and show love
in practical ways, such as home cooked meals. However, this type can take on
so many family and homemaking tasks they can feel taken for granted.
ISFP Quiet and friendly, they exude gentle concern for others. As parents, they
are endlessly giving and excellent at making children feel special and loved.
But they find saying the word “no” difficult, which leaves them vulnerable
to giving too much without getting enough back in return.
INTJ Independent and self-confident, they are forceful and determined in getting
their own way. As parents, they are excellent at supporting non-conformist children
but do best in one-on-one interactions.
INTP Innovative but logical thinkers, they despise following schedules. As parents,
they excel at answering children’s “Why” questions but the
full-on chaos of family life can simultaneously irritate and exhaust them.
INFJ Strongly empathetic and creative, they use their excellent interpersonal
skills to avoid conflict. As parents, they provide strong emotional support but
tend to expect too much of themselves and others.
INFP Gentle yet idealistic, they rely on impressions and not logic to size up
a situation. As parents, they love events such as picnics and days at the beach
that make for happy memories. However, they are so conflict adverse they can
have trouble implementing decisions and standing up to authority figures such
as teachers.
For more, check here.
When I take the exam Campbell mails me and the test in Penley's book, both categorize me as an INTP — Introvert, Intuitive, Thinker and Perceiver. Over the next several days, I spend hours Googling my type online, where there is a seemingly infinite amount of information about it and the other fifteen types. According to our profiles, INTPs need significant time alone and often are compulsive readers. We're highly logical and analytical but (surprise!) hate structure and anything resembling advance planning. We love research. However, we are not particularly adept at what are generally referred to as "people skills" and "organizational abilities." We are notoriously tactless, nitpick excessively and are congenitally incapable of taking "no" for an answer. I experience my "aha" moment before I even sign off. This is me. When, for example, I research children's party sites for so long I can't even book a date within two weeks of Jake's birthday even though I can reel off facts about every party locale within 10 miles of my home, I'm demonstrating classic INTP qualities. And the fact that I've been known to read the label on a jar of tomato sauce if nothing else is around — while my children are screaming at me for their dinner? Ditto.
As happy as my explorations made me, personality testing has its critics, who argue the tests are ridiculous. Hocus pocus. Unscientific. Upwards of forty percent of those taking the exams will get a different result the next time they answer the questions, says Annie Murphy Paul, the author of The Cult of Personality Testing. The self-reporting mechanism of Myers-Briggs and similar tests is exactly what make them so dubious — and so attractive. "Personality tests work by making statements that people agree with," Paul notes. "Who doesn't want to hear about ourselves?"
A psychologist friend, hearing about my interest, was equally skeptical. "You might as well go read your horoscope," she said.
I didn't mention I already do. Daily.
I excitedly make plans to attend my first Myers-Briggs moms group. I want to share my "aha" moment with other mothers to see if they too have experienced MB-induced epiphanies.
At our first meeting, Campbell, our facilitator, is encouraging. "Personality is a hidden diversity. The family is the first multicultural unit we are in," she says. Sounds good to me. I'm finally a fan of political correctness.
"We need to accept ourselves so we can relax with our children," says one of the other moms.
©2007 Helaine Olen and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Helaine Olen's writing has been published by The New York
Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Salon.com, AlterNet.org and
LiteraryMama.com, where she is an associate editor. Her first book, Office
Mate: The Guide to Finding True Love on the Job will be published this fall. She
lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. |
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