The Rise of Parenting

I just finished I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron, which is a pretty funny book, especially if you are over 30 and feel physically different than you did at 25. The chapter Parenting in Three Stages is also pretty funny, especially the first part, where she describes the rise of “parenting.”

Here, she mentions how simple parenting used to be: “You love your children, you hang out with them from time to time, you throw balls, you read stories, you make sure they know which utensil is the salad fork, you teach them to say please and thank you, you see that they have an occasional haircut, and you ask if you did their homework.”

She talks about babies being born with a personality that won’t change. “For a certain period, this child would live with you and your personality, and you would do your best to survive each other.”

Then she talks about the rise of “parenting,” which she describes as “Parenting was a participle, like going and doing and crusading and worrying; it was active, it was energetic, it was unrelenting. Parenting meant playing Mozart CDs while you were pregnant, doing without the epidural and breast-feeding our child until it was old enough to unbutton your blouse.”

This makes me wonder where I stand on the parenting spectrum – between the largely hands-off parenting of yesteryear compared with the involved helicopter parents of today. I’m not sure because I think I have some of both tendencies.

One thing that has always been on my mind since River was born is the Buryat belief that no matter what you do, kids will grow up and be who they are going to be. This is reinforced by my reading of Freakonomics, which basically said that almost nothing you do will be of any use, especially compared with the power of the child’s peer group. Among the factors that most-influenced success in children were not attendance at music classes or large amounts of quality time, but things like the mother being over 30 when the first child is born and having a lot of books in the house (the amount of time spent reading them doesn’t matter). These type of things are givens, not actions that take time and investment.

Yes, I suppose I can say I’ve been freaky about making sure he’s eating fresh and wholesome foods. I want him to have access to a potty (I don’t think a daycare that didn’t allow cloth diapers would be good for us). I’d like him to have as much individual attention as possible in his first year. I want him to feel safe and secure and to experience new things. But that’s about it. I worry very little about other things.

When I think ahead of what’s to come in his life, I want to be involved. People tend to argue that they become very involved in their children’s lives for the benefit of the child. But I recognize that I may not be getting involved for his benefit. He’s happy with anyone who is having a good time with him. The benefit is mine. Because it brings me joy to participate in his life.

The point at which my participation has a negative effect on him is where I need to draw the line and step back. I imagine that is hard to identify though.

One of the editors of Parenting magazine defended her helicopter-parenting in a recent issue, saying that she’s advocating for her children because she wants the best for them, because her parents weren’t able to do so, and because she can. She mentioned advocating for them in school. But from my brief period as a schoolteacher overseas, I saw especially active parents as doing a disservice to their children. The children learned that they didn’t really have to work hard, they didn’t have to achieve, because their parents would lobby the teacher or the administrators to their benefit.

The main benefit I see in very involved parenting is the child feeling the parent’s concern and love. I wonder if that will have the positive effect of strengthening families. As the parents want their children around for longer the usual 18 years, perhaps the children will also want to be around their parents. Perhaps more Americans will value proximity to their families over opportunities available far away. Maybe more children will repay their doting parents by taking active care of their parents as they age instead of relegating them to the care of strangers or institutions.

The Pain of Labor

We’re coming up on River’s nine-month birthday soon. He’s almost been out of the womb longer than he’s been in it. And as time passes, truly, the memories of how intense the pain of labor was fades.

Yes, it was really, really, really painful. In fact, it was traumatically painful. I believe that if anyone had gone through my same experience in any situation other than childbirth, they would be in long-term therapy. I still haven’t looked at the video shot moments after giving birth. It’s scary to me, freaky, surreal.

But the intensity does diminish with time. It also seems more worth it as the baby develops and brings more joy into our life. And as my friends give birth, they don’t post pictures of blood or recordings of screams. They post smiling photos with babies, making it seem easy, blotting out what it took to get there, almost allowing me to think that it must not have been that hard.

Shortly after I gave birth I spoke with a friend who had a baby about two weeks after me.

“No one tells you what it’s really like, do they?” I asked her, hearing the shock and trauma still in her voice.

“No, they don’t at all,” she said.

One reason no one might have told us is that it’s pretty hard to describe. I wonder if that is part of the biological wonder that keeps people reproducing. I expected that to happen, so I tried to take notes, as many as possible. I knew I’d forget and I wanted the confirmation of what had occurred.

I figured it was natural for the memories to fade for me. But I was very surprised the other day when Mark commented, “Wow, that so was so long ago that River was born. Eight months already. It seems like forever.”

I liked this passage in I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron, how she acknowledges that the pain can’t be described, but that doesn’t diminish it’s reality, even over time.

"Speaking of the pain of labor, which I seem to be, I would like to interject a short,
irrelevant note: Why do people always say you forget the pain of labor? I haven't forgotten
the pain of labor. Labor hurt. It hurt a lot. The fact that I am not currently in pain and
cannot simulate the pain of labor doesn’t mean I don't remember it. I am currently not
eating a wonderful piece of grilled chicken I once had in Asolo, Italy, in 1982, but I
remember it well. It was delicious. I can tell you exactly what it tasted like, and except for
the time when I returned to the restaurant six years later and ordered it again (and it
turned out, amazingly, to be exactly as wonderful as I remembered), I have never tasted
chicken that was crisper, tastier, or juicier. The song has ended, but the melody lingers on,
and that goes for the pain of labor--but not in a good way." (pg. 44)

At the same time, some of my friends have reacted so positively after labor that it makes me feel like I must have done something wrong. One, whose father recently passed away, beautifully compared the hospice care to her midwives that assisted with her at-home birth: “We have found many parallels between the care that we have received from the hospice nurses for the past 10 days, and the care that [we] received from the midwives who attended [our daughter’s] birth at home…All of these wonderful caregivers ushered us from one life stage to another, and showed us that both birth and death can happen in a setting of comfort, privacy and quiet peace, in the presence of grace and the absence of fear.”

Even though I can’t imagine having gone through that experience at home, reading that made me wish I could. I wondered whether any situation could have erased my fear. Another friend, who wanted to avoid an epidural, but who used an IV, stadol and electronic fetal monitoring, who had blood spray everywhere when her placenta ruptured, said she felt so powerful and so proud of herself for pushing the baby out. Within weeks she was already ready for another. I feel weak for my reaction of holy crap, and owwwwie.

Given that I felt EVERYTHING as soon as the baby started to descend, I feel like I know what the end part of natural birth is like. I just had a good six or so hours rest beforehand with the epidural. It’s hard for me to imagine getting through it without that rest. And I didn’t feel proud of myself or strong. I thought – holy s**t that was horrible. I felt deceived in thinking that the worst was over once I received the epidural. I lay on the table for over two hours while they sewed me up (I hear that is an incredibly long time, perhaps my doctor was especially slow and inexperienced). I was upset that I had no pain control at all at the worst moment. I thought if I ever did this again, I’d try to arrange a meeting with the anesthesiologist and ask what could be done differently.

It’s only as River grows and develops and makes me smile again and again that I come to think it was worth it. One day of pain was worth the many days of joy and wonder and being able to look at the world again in a fresh light. Nevertheless, I agree with Ephron. I think I will always remember the intensity of the pain, even if I can’t accurately describe it, in the same way I remember some of my best dining experiences.