Parenting never ends. It just changes, akin to when you get fired from a job but then get rehired as a consultant, with better hours and less responsibility.
I am thankful, however, not to be in the throes of parenting small people any more, not just because of the bone-deep exhaustion but because being a parent has grown ever more challenging.
When my first baby was born, the internet was also a baby, so we devoured books instead. We did so for all the same reasons that new parents, mostly mothers, doom scroll through endless pages at 2am, with search terms like “My baby won’t stop crying”.
Even in ancient times such as the 1990s, there were fierce divisions and parenting camps. Attachment parenting competed with strict scheduling; breastfeeders with bottle-feeders.
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Random strangers felt they had a pressing duty to comment on new mothers’ parenting choices just when they were most vulnerable from post-birth hormone surges.
Today, we have all that grotesquely magnified by the insane algorithmic dance of the internet, where one search on social media will push multiples of the same content at you.
Even if you are preternaturally calm, sleep deprivation will reduce you to a crumbling wreck like the rest of new parents.
Add the flood of feelings of protectiveness and unconditional love (or in the case of post-partum depression, the numbness and darkness) triggered by birth and the likely result is pervasive anxiety.
The internet is honed to exploit anxiety, to keep you scrolling for the elusive dopamine hit of finding the perfect way to burp a screaming baby. Once the crisis-driven first three months are over, the search may switch to ensuring that your child does not develop axe-murderer tendencies due to your poor parenting.
In the internet age, every predictable cycle takes place at warp speed. So I became aware of gentle parenting just in time for the backlash against it.
To be honest, it sounded great. What’s not to love about being a gentle parent?
Apparently, though, some manifestations come with the injunction to never use the word no, or stop, except in cases of dire emergency. It is all about using scripts to coach your toddler through big emotions, demonstrating empathy and offering choices.
That’s where the faintest trickle of alarm begins. Much of the backlash talks about children growing up as self-centred monsters but I am more worried about the toll on parents.
I have no parenting expertise except for a small sample size of four, who have not as yet demonstrated axe-murderer tendencies. (There’s still time.)
As a teacher, I watched parenting styles from a distance, a sample size of thousands, and not a whit more scientific.
All I learned is that nothing works with every child. For example, offering choices to one of my children often resulted in flat rejection of all of them.
One responded to logic. Another often took it as a personal insult. One hated conflict and literally ran away from it. Another felt that once a minor conflict emerged, thrashing it out until every nuance was examined was the only possible way to spend half a day. And so on.
Young parents are exhausted, and except for a rare few, really trying their best, in a society with individualistic priorities that make it difficult to be a parent. (Just because we are not as appalling as the US when it comes to things such as maternity leave does not mean we are family-friendly.)
People often live far away from their parents and their original communities. No wonder they rely on the internet and often feel even more overwhelmed when the influencer’s wisdom does not work on little Rían or Raya.
I have good news for parents that may appear like bad news. You neither have the power to fully shape your child nor the ability to do a perfect job.
Nor does childhood determine everything that subsequently occurs in a person’s life. We all know people who emerge from train-wreck families as decent, funny, caring human beings. We also all know parents who try their very best and the child still goes off the rails.
Babies arrive complete with strongly ingrained tendencies. While not immutable, most of the time, if we are lucky, we just succeed in softening the harder edges and polishing the better personality tendencies.
The other good news is that parenting is profoundly rewarding and there are things to learn from virtually every parenting approach. For example, maintaining as much inner calm as you can muster is helpful and learning to apologise when you fail is even more helpful.
However, many of the current parenting practices seem to invalidate any kind of parental intuition, much less intergenerational wisdom. Others presume that you have endless time, only one child, and international hostage negotiator levels of communication skills.
So perhaps what we need to do is turn our screens face down and acknowledge that parenting is a tough job that no one gets completely right, while also being grateful for the privilege of experiencing the fun, laughter and moments of sheer joy that parenting also brings.