Parenting observations on why we have kids in the first place.

Originally appeared on Medium

Introduction — A Brief History of Parenting

Most of history did not care about being a good parent. The opposite may be true, however: that the emphasis was on being a good child. There are the cliches of children being the equivalent of farmhands or dowry incentives. This is not a general absolute, but the reality remains that children had just as much of an economic and sociologic purpose as a relational one.

In brief, the history of parenting was concerned with creating children that can assist communal survival, live up to expectations, and produce value. It sounds pithy, but it is worth noting that survival was at stake. So, you punished errors, got them married, and guided them into a skill or trade that continued the legacy after your short life expectancy. The family was an economy — a household that depended on one another in order to continue. The point was the advantage each added to the home.

This all changed in what is referred to as the romantic age (at least in the technologically advanced and dominant civilizations of that time). I do sometimes wonder what would happen if we psychoanalyzed a 12th-century descendant of a peasant farmer. Would they be proliferated with trauma? Would they adamantly express how their parents never loved them? I bet not. These realities were not even considerations in such times of history.

I’m not claiming that expressing love to one’s children is bad or that such an individual’s probable trauma was satisfactory; or that this household experience was good. I just think it is worth noting that parenting has changed and our modern sentiments are actually quite new. They also aren’t always better.

Yet, the perception shifted and as the industrial era blossomed, children became something special. They were precious. No longer were they simply fit to work the land, they were valuable in and of themselves. However, while more primitive parenting practices were rife with objectification and, potentially, mental harm, the modern version of parenting has its own objectification that can be problematic, too.

All of that to say, for the first time as a sociological whole, parenting became about guiding children to fulfill their meaning and identity. The factors contributing to this shift are too many to cover here, but the shift should be noted. History went from children honoring their parents to parents seemingly serving their children.

In short, let’s just acknowledge that parenting in the contemporary world is different. It hasn’t always been this way. I’ll refrain from placing a moral value on either form, but I do think it is helpful, almost relieving, to see that there isn’t just one, general, absolute thing called parenting.

If there was, then we would simply need to unlock the secrets hidden amongst the cosmos to find the right way to parent. That would be nice. In contrast, interacting with parenting requires paying attention to how parenting is perceived; which leads to a more notable question every parent in every circumstance of parenting has to consider:

Why did you have children?

And what is the point of parenting?

If there is no plain, generic answer to these questions, our self-conscious wondering might be a product of the society we inhabit.

Part One — Two Parenting Perceptions:
Parenting is a Burden & Parenting is Perfect

Scanning the cultural horizon can lead to a very strange experience. If social media were to be our base data, there are two main sentiments that often get promoted.

One is that parenting is a burden. From honest, vulnerable acknowledgments to off-handed jokes about the difficulty. Children can be frustrating. Parenting can be overwhelming. Sometimes, it is noble to proclaim how hard of a time you’re having. More frequently, however, we hide behind the overbearing reality with humor. It’s as if parenting has become the contemporary version of “the old ball-and-chain.” We even use oppressive language to make light of such dire straits.

On the other hand, culture appears to imply that you aren’t always supposed to be honest about the difficulty. We see moments of what appears to be pure bliss with sculpted photographs and joyous videos. Are they always this well-behaved? No. I’m also willing to bet that the photographer didn’t capture the screaming and fighting that was likely endured to memorialize such a pleasant, singular moment.

We’re told that we need to be enthusiastic, proud, and happy all the time. Parenting is supposed to be the most meaningful endeavor of life. So, we rarely admit that it sucks.

We often pretend — or, even, glamorize the unglamorous — to maintain social standing within public perception.

Or, we deflect the enormity of lived reality with exaggerated, childish banter. We make light of a great heaviness.

The reality is that parenting is both unromantic and beautiful. It is not glamorous, but it is wondrously real and it resides with layers of complex dichotomies all bound together in the monotony of every single day. Whether through pretending or deflection, we work hard to keep from acknowledging that isn’t as great or as terrible as our projected portraits would leave us to believe.

We don’t handle this ambiguity well.

Part Two — Where Parenting Guilt Comes From

Society’s sentimentalism that dawned in the romantic age and that permeates through global technology — both of which are new to history — can be cruel. Especially with social media, we can develop a psychological asymmetry that we are the only ones who don’t have it figured out. Our children can be a nightmare, just like some person is bantering about, but that’s not the whole experience. Our children can be wondrous, just like we see in esoteric videos or edited versions of social reality, but our children can also be a burden.

Yet, what would happen if we all got to see the whole content of every household? What would we think of the parenting experience if we saw it all?

I’m guessing that we wouldn’t feel as guilty.

We would see that our moments or seasons of uncertainty and difficulty aren’t that abnormal. There’s a ton of emerging guilt for either feeling like a failure in comparison to everyone else or feeling like we don’t measure up to the expectations of the day (which, again, are new to history). But these are all based on comparisons; ones that are actually quite fabricated and manipulated by people attempting to attain the same semblancy of measuring up.

While there are many reasons, causes, and feelings of guilt, there appear to be some common ones in light of our current cultural modus operandi. My observation is that dealing with the guilt begins by, first, addressing the source of the guilt as a socio-historical byproduct. If there is no singular definition of good parenting that transcends all of history, our perception is a reflection of the world we exist in. The value you place on your parenting is, at least historically, subjective. It’s also vastly shaped by the standards put forth in public consciousness by people who don’t get to set the standard and might be offering an incomplete, edited, or self-deprecating view. We need to be honest about this.

With the current mode of expectations, there are also some very real reasons why we might not meet certain perceived standards.

First, you are a very limited human being with your own unique history (and baggage), your own mental, emotional, and physical limitations, and you only have to work with the tools that you’ve happened to generate in your parenting toolbox.

Second, you bring all of this to the infinite moments of interaction every single day. Literally, you and your children are in constant proximity. You get to see all of them and they get to see all of you. I don’t think we should expect this to go well. Our flaws and failures and boredom and tempers and mistakes and anxious questions and weird ideas and selfish tendencies are constantly right there for the members of our shared household to see. Being a part of a family involves knowing one another; including the messy bits.

There is this ambiguity about how we should relate to one another through the course of life. Is there a right way? Am I too strict? Too protective? Too lenient? Maybe part of the problem is that we see the messiness of another soul and look for the right answer when there isn’t just one right answer. There isn’t just one causation to the dichotomous experience. We want to substantiate our guilt with solutions that don’t necessarily exist.

Third — and this is particular to the current world we inhabit — a lot of guilt subsists in the difficult balance of relationships, self, and survival. We hear of parenting techniques, we hear of self-care, and we see the mountain of tasks that need to be done. You have to be a parent and be productive and be healthy. We have to juggle this insurmountable situation of every day and we just simply cannot. There are a million things we’re supposed to be; which leads to a million things to feel guilty for not being.

Hence, let’s just acknowledge the messy reality.

Dealing with guilt is a bit easier when we see where it comes from.

Part Three — Three Parenting Guilts

But what about some of the specific guilt beckoning amongst the average parent today? Well, there seem to be three that we, again, just need to be honest about.

We often feel guilty because we aren’t good at parenting.

It’s worth noting: According to who? Further, should we expect that we would capture the ideal of being a supposed “good” parent? Is that reasonable? And where does this standard we are trying to measure up to even come from?

However, in being honest, I wonder if this comes from the sense that we feel like everything is our responsibility with these wondrous souls placed in our care. We may even believe that it is wholly in our power to make our children happy and successful. Even though much of that outcome is exponentially out of our control, we feel guilty when we don’t.

As a result, every misspoken word or neglected memory is a sign of our failure. We have this anxiety that we are constantly doing it wrong. At its worst, we take this out on our children as social approval becomes a greater incentive than healthy realization and acknowledgment.

We feel guilty for not wanting to constantly be with our children.

There is a certain duality of experience that I, for one, am just going to name: Parenting is exhausting, and, yes, sometimes I just want to be away from my kids. I don’t feel good about that, but I don’t want to hide it either.

At the same time, I often yearn for them when they aren’t around. This isn’t just the notion of how fast our children grow up and time flying by and that we will miss these days. I get it. But sometimes I just wish I had a quiet evening and then I want them with me when the quietness finally comes. I want my own life, but I want to share it with those who share my blood and home.

We feel guilty that we sometimes resent our children.

Because, let’s again be honest, our children are just as imperfect as us. We’re not always good at the human venture of parenting and our children aren’t always good at the human venture of being children. It should be said that we may handle this complexity in ways that is not exactly healthy. I just wonder if the sense is actually avoidable or not.

Essentially, despite common rhetoric, parenting appears to be both positive and negative. It is deeply rewarding and excessively depleting, both exciting and tedious — sometimes in the same moment of life. There is something profoundly helpful in simply acknowledging these components of the experience in which we endure one another’s existence in constant proximity over time.

Yet, what do we do about them?

Part Four — Starting With Life Instead of Guilt

Let us return to the primary question — why did you have children in the first place? The answer to this will not eliminate the guilt. It may, however, put the guilt in its proper place.

When we have a proper sense of proportion to the socio-historic development of parenting, the limiting factors of our mortal lives, and the complexity of relationships, we may be able to accept the tenuous nature of parenting while still moving through this life and the world with vital hope.

Here, we find one of the only components of parenting that remains the same no matter the epoch of history or the cultural forces:

You had a child because life resulted from physical intimacy.

You know, when two people…

Seriously, however, a very human experience brought forth a human experience. What is (ideally) one of the rawest, meaningful expressions of human connection created a life. The concept of a child is one of the most mysterious, unadulterated experiences of being alive that is also absolutely essential to being alive. It is esoteric yet deeply physical and children are its unprecedented outcome. They are the physical manifestation of you.

Why did you have children? Well, they are a tactile expression of you being alive.

Amidst the guilt, the uncertainty, the burden, the wonder, the frustration, and the seemingly unquenchable expectations — do you start here?

Beginning with the apparent brute fact of life, I believe, puts the strange experiences of parenting in their proper place. The guilt can still be there, it just rides in the backseat of an endeavor that is much bigger than your apparent failures and your dichotomous sentiments.

Yet, also, when you begin from a place of life creating life, it ought to change what we as parents sense is the prerogative. Whether farmhands or special, little souls — our primary focus ought to be to nurture the joy of life that created life.

Your main job as a parent is to enjoy your children as a spectral wonder of the universe you now share.

See, the problem of being lathed with guilt about the particulars is that your children are more affected by the state of your presence than by what you do. If you are rife with anxiety about doing it wrong, they will live in response to your anxiety. If you seem to enjoy them, they will live in response to your joy; even if it is full of missteps, uncertainty, and messiness.

We need to acknowledge all of these moving pieces, but we also need to prioritize what we’re handling in the first place.

First, enjoy your children.

Then, worry about raising them.

Your fundamental attitude will determine the totality of the experience more than some theory, some societal sentiment, or some exasperation of guilt that is bound to occur within the heaviness of being a parent in the world today.