"Professional" Parenthood - Take 2

Dear readers, I thank you for wading into the riptide-laden waters of topic:parenthood on the last entry. If you will bear with me once more, I'd like to try again. This time I will drop the ruse and get more directly to my point.

I bet historians would verify that parenting small children has never been the most relaxing stage of life. (I think of Abigail Adams administering small pox puss on the blade of a knife to her own children, praying they will develop immunity rather than perish.) However, I want to make the case that our generation finds itself in a particular squeeze because, among other forces, we inherited a culture that does not value the work of parenting highly.

Because it's as hard to "see" our own culture as to see the air we breathe, it's helpful to encounter parents of other cultures who approach the role otherwise. I get this chance on a small scale when I drop my kids at preschool. There I've had the chance to befriend several orthodox Jewish women. They view their work as mothers as nothing less than fulfilling God's commandment; the children they bring into the world, raised well, will help deliver the Messiah, the final era of peace. I imagine this confidence in their mission must help when babies don't sleep or children quarrel: The task to guide new little people toward good and purposeful lives is the foundation of the culture and the bedrock of its survival. The secular world can make easy mockery of this sense of divine purpose, or criticize the strict gender roles that come with it. I would rather choose to take inspiration and figure out how to infuse it into the secular world.

So how does the secular world value parenting? With anxious consumerism, apparently. A number of cultural commentators such as Judith Warner and Erica Jong offer similar theories -- generally, that our generation of "organic-food obsessed" parents (especially mothers) are trying to achieve "perfection" in our roles as a "defense" against the forces of the world that feel "out of control," and that as a result we are riddled with "anxiety". I understand the book PARENTING, INC. (which I haven't yet read) makes the case that our generation is prey to corporate profiteers who make billions on our insecurity from such quack goods as Baby Einstein DVDs. Another band of commentators call us the generation "that doesn't want to grow up."

Hm. I'm interested in the words "control" and "defense" and "anxiety". I am not convinced that the world is a more dangerous place than it ever has been. Perhaps what is more dangerous now, however, is simply the fact of sticking your neck out to become a parent. Our parents' generation broke the mold of traditional parenting, but we haven't yet agreed what a better one looks like. So we are trying to reinvent the airplane while flying it - and taking a few surface-to-air missles in the process, often from each other.

From what I see, most of us are striving to be conscientious - not perfect - parents in a confusing time and place. Where there are two parents, most couples seem to be trying to balance parenting roles between the spouses more evenly than in the past, even when one (more often the mother, but not always) takes time off to parent full-time. We are trying to build on the best of what our mother's generation bled for -- more career options, equal pay, removal of judgment on women who work -- and take it to the next level, to share parenting roles more equally. But we are far from finding a peaceful equilibrium, with discontent more often turning inward toward self, spouse, kids than outward to our culture, where "family values" are claimed by a fundamentalist right and the rest of us are left, in the other great American tradition, to go it alone.

A working hypothesis: this belittlement of the value of parenting is the price we pay for advances made for women toward the outside working world a generation ago. Most employers do little to help new families; weakened extended family networks don't, or can't, do much either. Add the pundits making careers of critiquing the way we parent, then subtract the church or other religious belief systems that uphold the centrality of the job, and parenting can indeed feel like a sentimental exercise in folly. Also, the beautiful price many women pay for higher education is heightened expectations for career advancement, which most of my friends have discovered is unachievable -- even with great, supportive partners -- without paying the price of feeling like one hasn't been the parent one wants to be. Or for those who postpone the career, there is a gnawing feeling of professional inadequacy without the counter-balancing sense of achievement on the family front -- because, we learned, we mustn't "count" our work there or derive identity on the homefront lest we get stuck in that ghetto. Who wouldn't feel anxious?

The result, I fear, is that we are too often overwhelmed, distracted, discontented to respond as calmly and creatively as we might to what children, being children, bring up; moreover, we miss out on too many of the pearls our wee ones are offering us. Why? This state of mind is not dictated, in my observation, by whether one works outside the home or not; it's a pervasive stress on young families. Parenting tiny ones productively takes enormous emotional and physical energy, which is in too short supply because of the many other demands on our attention. (See NYTimes: "When the Mind Wanders, Happiness Also Strays" 11/15/10) It also requires a learning curve that we often miss. Instead of giving little ones the protected space to live in their Time, we push them to hurry up into ours because we feel like we have to -- a loss for everyone who bypasses a fascinating bug or doesn't stop to hear how the snow crunches under boots.

Our pre-verbal children absorb not only the words we use, but the tone and intention with which we use them, as we've learned to our horror in our house when they come back at us later! (Once again, see NYTimes "Ability Seen in Toddlers to Judge Others' Intent" 11/16/10). The earliest years are a precious and scarce time when not only is a child discovering who he/she is, but families are discovering who they are. We can accept that this is just "the way it is" in the early years, but couldn't it be better? When I float on my lotus blossom and consult the Dalai Lama, he smiles patiently and reminds me, "You and I and all beings were each other's mothers in previous incarnations." The whole karmic evolution of compassion in the universe depends on the experience of being a mother! It must be a job worth doing well.

My playful proposal to MPa/PaD degrees for parents of small children has attracted outstanding critiques that reveal the point more plainly: Do we want academic institutions judging our parenting performances? No. Do we need added academic requirements atop our stretched schedules and psyches? Definitely not. To the extent I have a serious intent, it is to give "credit" for the parenting as it happens and recognize role models in the field in order to do for the secular world what a religious culture does reflexively: To sanctify the work of making families and help us find ways to do it better.

Herein lies the poorly played joke: Graduate and Professional schools are modern secular temples where the upwardly mobile seek instruction and accept evaluation; invest money, time and effort in exchange for "credit"; and reach a place of standing in the economy and society. It is the final preparation for a productive, fulfilling professional life. The word "professional," afterall, comes from "profess," meaning to declare one's religious devotion." Parenthood lacks an equivalent preparation and elevated standing -- and yet what work requires more patience, knowledge, wisdom, giving, and commitment to the world beyond oneself?

My immodest proposal is that we declare the value of being as "good" (not perfect, not moralistic, but patient, loving, present) parents as we can be without making any apologies; we demand that our economy re-shape itself to pace careers more humanely, both for parents and young kids alike; and that we challenge our critics to come up with something encouraging to say about our efforts or creative to do on our behalf - or else stuff it!

While I've been writing, I could hear my neighbor through the wall rocking out on his guitar to the screaming delight of his two-year old. It must be Tuesday, his day "off" from "work" to take care of his son. Seems like a pretty holy way to spend a day to me.