Livia Soprano: not a very good mother

Please follow this link to read my parenting manifesto, which seems to have changed url possibly due to blog maintenance- apologies. This is a later related post…

Rebel Dad has a cool blog going there. He started collecting parenting manifestos after Hugh Macleod invented his manifesto write-in thingy, has a whole bunch of them now, and he links to the one I posted here (which I did send to Hugh M, by the way, although he didn’t use it. I recall him mentioning somewhere the expression “touchy feely” with regard to unposted submitted manifestos. Maybe you can’t write about parenting in a positive or enlightened way without some people finding it ikky. Shame if so, as you could hardly meet a less sentimental parent than me, actually.)

Perhaps I should write “the stridently unsentimental parenting manifesto”. Hard-nosed realism without the usual insisting that of course all parents must spank and yell at their kids from time to time, to prevent them from becoming wild untameable monsters. On the other hand, if you think (as I do) that parenting is a job, a different thing from “the personal relationship you have with those people who happen to be your kids” (although they are related- it’s easier to guide and facilitate someone better when you know them intimately well), perhaps that job is essentially very simple indeed. You feed them, clothe them, take care of their health, facilitate their learning and development as much as possible.

Saw some Sopranos on A&E last night (which stands for “Arts and Entertainment”- a little jarring, for an English person, because A&E means “Accident and Emergency” in the UK, the official name of “Casualty”, in US words “ER”)- all that indebted-to-your-family-with-your-very-life (because if you act out of line, they’re going to, like, kill you) stuff. I clothed and fed you and this is how you repay me? etc. But those parts are just the deal when you decide to have kids- what else are you going to do, starve them for misbehaviour?

A lot of Western culture radically misunderstands and exaggerates the commandment about honouring your parents- it doesn’t actually mean signing your soul away in blood at all. Just being respectful. Sometimes that means respectfully not getting involved. Let’s all get over that. The fact that someone fed and clothed you does not mean they necessarily hold a specially close or treasured place in your heart as an intimate friend to whom you turn in times of trouble for wisdom or support. This is why kids who grow up with an absent parent miss out on something- a part of who they are, no less- and do benefit from any chance of getting to know that parent later in life. It’s why divorcing parents should not fight over who “has” the children (duh) (except where there is real risk of abuse).

Parenting isn’t hard. Great parenting that includes great growthful happy family relationships is hard. I guess we’re all aiming for the second one, but I don’t think it does any harm to refocus on how things have changed, and the fact that old-fashioned hard-nosed functional relationship-free parenting didn’t result in less stable humans being produced: the amount of mental illness we have now is actually greater. I may come back to this issue another time (reading some books on it at the moment).

UPDATE: I added the picture of Livia Soprano up there. She takes out a contract on her own son, Tony, no doubt to teach him a lesson in family loyalty…

another UPDATE: Dr Helen today on how the myth of the perfect mother tyrannises some women’s lives, thereby not exactly doing their kids a lot of good either. Sure. But also a great big OUCH for me personally, because I used to be a La Leche League counsellor myself. Like most of my colleagues, I considered the job to be about supporting breastfeeding mothers, not pressurising, tyrannising or otherwise treating them like dirt. Breastfeeding mothers need support in lots of ways. I hate that LLL has this reputation. I have also met preachy “natural” mums, been lectured for my own c-section failures, etc. It’s a bummer. Let’s not throw out normal childbirth, nursing your own baby etc with the despised Goddess Myth bathwater, though. And let’s not hate everyone who nurses past 2 weeks and talks about it positively; there are many happy mothers who are very glad they didn’t give up to due crappy pseudo-medical advice. Doctors aren’t the gods some people think they are, which is something parents need to discover for themselves too. (Medicalisation of childbirth and early parenting- huge controversial subject- plenty of over-emotional nonsense spoken on all sides, along with the good stuff).

Anyway, as far as bad mothers, we’re not exactly talking about Mrs Soprano with this one.

Hugh MacLeod started something with his 500-words-or-less manifestos idea. Unsurprisingly, he was swamped.

I’ve been a parent for over a decade now, and I take the job very seriously indeed. My parenting resume includes full time employment with a baby in daycare, attachment parenting (this is an early years approach), homeschooling, step-parenting, and in the last couple of years, long-distance parenting (which I could and would have lots to say about, if it seemed applicable to more than a tiny handful of people. At the moment, it feels like just me and Oprah columnist Lisa Kogan’s boyfriend Johannes, who spends 4 months a year with her and her daughter in New York, and the other 8 months with his teenaged son in Germany. I doubt it’s their first choice either, but when there are other parents involved and those other parents live thousands of miles apart, someone is going to be spending a lot of time on the phone.)

Currently, one of our four is homeschooling with us, one goes to school in Austin, two go to school in England, and Continental Airlines should be giving us free shares in their company. We manage. We do better than “manage”: I would say every single one of us is, overall, so far, G-d willing, happier than before our lives all changed (but that’s just me, they have brains of their own too and opinions may go up as well as down). And we keep working on making the hard things easier for them as much as possible.

So anyway, here is my parenting manifesto. I may not be the world’s greatest expert on every single family, but I definitely slaved my ass of earning the world pancake-making record for enough years to feel as entitled as anyone else on this planet to speak my mind on the subject. (Youngest Child eats almost nothing but. No efforts by anyone in the world have succeeded in changing this fact. We have Strong-Willed Genes.)

1. Take care of your own oxygen mask first. Kids need you healthy enough to show them this wonderful world. That’s your job.

2. Do not kid yourself: the 24-hour supervision, maintenance, education and support of a dependent intelligent creature is mind-bogglingly expensive in terms of money, effort, time, energy and choices. Get real, and be creative about it. Reprioritise, downsize, learn to enjoy subtle and simple beauty as much as the expensive, obvious kind. Outsource the boring crap, do what you care about. Repeat as necessary.

3. You have never been the parent of a (insert your child’s age to the day)-year old ever before. Get happy about constant change. It’s teaching you what you need to know.

4. When you notice your child is actually showing this wonderful world to you, be happy. You’re doing great.

5. Get into getting your hands dirty. Dirt is where the fun is, and fun is the reward for working your ass off.

6. There are three kinds of parent: those who continuously work their asses off and fail sometimes, those who occasionally work their ass
off and fail constantly, and those who alternate between the two.

7. When you fail stay calm, sort it out, and keep going. There is no learning without failing. Good failing is one of the most powerful things you can show your kids.

8. Pretending to be perfect may seem easier at the time, but to your children it constitutes misrepresention of the nature of the universe and humankind. Your kids get their reality from watching you. Take that seriously: live your truth.

9. If they hate you now, at least you can deal with it now. If they hate you later on, you may not even find out. Kids these days have friends all over the world. They won’t need to hang out with you forever.

10. If everything goes brilliantly they will forgive you anything, be your best friends, and probably look after you in your old age as well. The more you expect these things however, the less likely they become.

11. Your children are not your children alone: they have two parents (ideally) that’s not including add-ons). Be generous about this. Fighting over kids costs them their security, confidence, identity. Talk instead. Get professional help with talking if you need it.

12. In the end, your children belong only to themselves. Respect that, by getting to know them better throughout your shared time on this earth. There’s no better investment around.