Parenting As A Verb
“A baby cries in the night, and you go to pick him up…What were you going to do, take a book off a shelf and read what some expert has to say? You lay your hand against his skin and just rub his back. Blow into his ear. Press the baby up against your own skin and walk outside with him, where the night air will surround him, and moonlight will fall on his face. Whistle maybe. Dance. Hum. Pray. Sometimes a cool breeze might be just what the doctor ordered. Sometimes a warm hand on the belly. Sometimes doing absolutely nothing is best. You have to pay attention. Slow things way down. Tune out the rest of the world that really doesn’t matter. Feel what the moment calls for.”
“Our parents never thought about parenting as a verb,” commented one of the women in my life story workshop last week. That idea has sat in my head since then as I thought about my mother, myself as a mother, my daughter as a mother, and my relationship with my granddaughter. Did I think of parenting as a verb?
Yesterday, I read the quote by Joyce Maynard in a 2014 memory from Facebook, a quote from the book Labor Day. I am struck by this piece about parenting, I wrote on Facebook, it makes me think how often we now turn to experts for advice.
I think of my mother and wonder, did she read parenting books? I don’t think so. So where did she get her parenting advice from as a 23-year-old new mother? I suppose from her mother and friends. And what about when she emigrated to Canada from the Netherlands at thirty with my father and three children, the youngest only six weeks old? We moved into a new housing development on the edge of farmland. She spoke limited English. She did not have a car. She had no friends. Day in and day out, she was alone with three young children while my father worked two jobs. Did she read parenting books? No, she did the best she could.
And, I reflect on my journey as a parent - the thrill of finding out I was pregnant and reading What to Expect When You’re Expecting. I had no time to read parenting books during the toddler years. I do remember the best parenting tip I ever received. My friend, Linda, a family life educator always said - never climb anger mountain together - a technique I continue to use - it also works with adults! I returned to work when my youngest started kindergarten, managing a family resource centre for eight years. When I later became an early years consultant, our medical health officer told me he was concerned how many parents he met did not know childhood milestones. I gathered a team of professionals, and we wrote Growing Together: A Guide to Help Your Child Grow and Learn. I am still proud that this booklet contained a section, Taking Care of Yourself. I continue to believe that if we support mothers, children will have better outcomes. I sometimes wonder what my childhood might have been like if my mother had received some support.
My mind wanders to parenting experts and the advice they offer. I dig out an article I have read previously by Olga Mecking, Parenting books are not really for parents but for the people writing them, and speak more to their own lives than our own. The advice dished out by these parenting experts, Mecking shares, flows from their personalities, their culture, and the limitations and biases of their eras and lives.
Preoccupied by his work she writes, John Bowlby, the father of attachment theory, left the care of his four children almost entirely to their mother. Benjamin Spock told mothers they should trust their instincts – and then wrote hundreds of pages giving them detailed advice. Even Philippa Perry, in a more recent book, The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read, states, "I wrote the book I wish I had read as a new parent, and I really wish my parents had read it." Mecking concludes that parenting books are not really for parents; they are for the people writing them.
Isn’t that how we make decisions, though? We draw on past experiences and, hopefully, some evidence-based research. And I wondered, even if we approached parenting as a verb - if our personal experiences have been traumatic, will they not impact our parenting? And if we turn to experts for advice, are we turning to experts who reach beyond their own personal lives and offer research grounded in evidence?
All I wanted when my children were young was to be a good parent. As they grew, and likely because of my work, I focused on parenting. Did I get it right? Nope, I made mistakes, most based on generational patterns. But I did see parenting as an action with consequences, and I hope this conscious approach helped me to be a better parent.
Buried in my emails this morning, the weekly newsletter from The Marginalian caught my eye - The Most Important Thing to Remember About Your Mother. Maria Popova begins this article with the following -
One of the hardest realizations in life, and one of the most liberating, is that our mothers are neither saints nor saviours — they are just people who, however messy or painful our childhood may have been, and however complicated the adult relationship, have loved us the best way they knew how, with the cards they were dealt and the tools they had. It is a whole life’s work to accept this elemental fact, and a life’s triumph to accept it not with bitterness but with love.