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I was in Conch: a café-slash-record store so nonchalantly cool it was made from rustic balsa wood and hemp sacks, with a conch shell on the counter. There was a hipster at the next table – well, of course there was! – looking like a well-groomed lumberjack. This Bad Dad had the ultimate accessory – a toddler.
And the toddler was dressed in some witty/amusing/ironic outfit. There were mini Doc Martens. There was the obligatory amber bead necklace. In the same way you feel liberated to talk to people when they are walking their dog, even a scary dog, I felt entitled to talk to this dude, whose strato-spheric coolness ratio was not calibrated anywhere near mine. And so what did I say? Just about the most annoying thing any parent can hear. These are the words that came blurting out: “Oh, you must make sure you appreciate them at that age, before you know it they’ll be all grown up.” Argh. Following the laidback hipster code, he just insouciantly preened his beard.
But really, Deborah? Do you not remember how annoying it is when someone says you should be grateful for your kids? And what does it mean, exactly? An admonishment? A criticism you are not loving them enough if you can’t be appreciating their glorious-ness every moment of every day?
The reality is no one is grateful for their children all of the time. It is disingenuous to say you appreciate them when they get out of bed for the 30th time in the night or when they go red in the face and scream in the PlayStation aisle of The Warehouse. Let’s be real and honest about how we feel about our kids. They are not Little Lord Fauntleroys or glad game Pollyannas. And we’re not perfect parents either.
Maybe the view you must worship your children took hold about the time children became harder to procure, the later we left reproducing. I say this as someone who is grateful to Fertility Associates for helping me to get pregnant – and knows the financial and emotional costs involved with IVF. Babies became a luxury accessory about the time women started becoming elderly primigravida, which sounds like a high-cal dessert but is alarmingly any woman having her first baby after the age of 34.
And now the idea children are precious jewels we should be continually dazzled by seems to have firmly taken hold. But children are not little works of art, narcissistic reflections of their parents’ grandiosity. This unhealthy idea seems to foster an unrealistic attitude that parents are capable of being flawless and endlessly patient too. That puts even more pressure on us; as if we need it.
Numerous studies have shown parents who report higher levels of parenting stress are more likely to be authoritarian, harsh, and negative in their interactions with their child. And parenting stress, far from making you try harder, actually decreases the quality of the parent-child relationship.
It is far more comforting to subscribe to the notion of the ‘good enough’ parent. How much do we love psychologist Donald Winnicott, who came up with the phrase, partly to defend ordinary mothers (and fathers) from the intrusion of ‘experts’ and also to offset the kind of idealisation of perfect mothers you see on Mother’s Day cards. In that view, the fantasy mother is supposed to be perfectly in love with the fantasy baby, the wellspring of beauty and goodness. Well, stuff that! Sometimes kids are just downright pains in the butt. And it might help if we just admitted it.
Psychologist Jennifer Kunst says the good enough mother (or father) is a three-dimensional human being. She is a mother under pressure and strain. She is full of ambivalence about being a mother. She is both selfless and self-interested. She turns toward her child and turns away from him. Winnicott even dares to say the good enough mother loves her child but also has room to hate him. She is real.
“Real mothers are the best kind of mothers (and the only kind!),” Kunst says. She argues it takes an imperfect mother to raise a child well. Children need to learn about life through real experiences. They need to learn to deal with disappointments and frustrations. They need to overcome their greed and their wish to be the centre of the universe. They need to learn to respect the needs and limitations of other people, including their mothers. And they need to learn to do things for themselves.
Maybe children need to know their parents are not always grateful for them. Because they are not perfect blessings, they are mixed blessings and that’s just fine. And if you want to understand the mottled reality of loving your child but sometimes admitting they drive you crazy, hang around with parents of special needs kids. You’ll see what it really means to love your child.
As the song lyric goes, “All of me, loves all of you, love your curves and all your edges, all your perfect imperfections.”
Parents with autistic children who barely sleep and spread nail varnish all over your bed will tell you sometimes our kids will have lots of edges. Dig a little deeper and all parents will admit sometimes it is downright impossible to be grateful for your children. But love is stronger when it expands so we can love even the unloveable.
So let’s stop telling people to be grateful for their children. Next time I see a hipster dad with his kid, I’ll just smile and say, “You’re doing a great job.” Kids are not fantasy objects to be venerated. Let’s just see children as real, and real annoying sometimes. Oh, and when it gets too hard, remember they’re so beautiful when they’re sleeping.
Words by: Deborah Hill Cone
Photographs by: Getty Images
