We were bored and she enquired about my kid and was curious to see some pictures. I was showing my kids picture and talking about different kiddo’s antics. She laughed listening to the stories and noticed something and said “wow you seem to be passionate about your kid. I met another mom and she was not interested in her child. Well, she does give food on-time and takes care of all that (meaning the logistical part) but then goes away and doesn’t take part in child care”
I thought through my response carefully especially because she was in her early 20s or late teens and was only exposed to stereotyped notions of both parenting and mom’s responsibilities.
- In my teens, I would have not have understood that behavior and probably had similar opinion
- In my 20s, I definitely had some inkling of hard work it takes to be a parent and what skills are required for being a caregiver and already a believer in non-aggressive parenting – even-though I had not yet discovered different respectful parenting philosophies.
- However only after I became a mom, some more insights and thoughts started formulating to more reality
Knowledge and tools:
We study throughout childhood and master various skills but none of the topics involved child psychology or about caregiving or about parenting or even about being a adult in the real world. In the past, while this was not a necessary topic to read in school and you can easily watch and learn these skills while being raised in a herd/village/close-knit community or joint family. Current generation have less chances of learning by observation and not to mention our instincts heavily overridden by media and society pressures.
Caregiving is a skill – while it can be learned like any other skill – it does need investment to ramp up – just like any other skill. While you can learn on the job, and make mistakes and learn from mistakes – which is all part of being a parent, some decisions need strong will, knowledge, background, education (not literary education), resilience, and mainly support. And resilience and support is what many of us lack in current world.
I slowly and carefully tried to explain to her
“There can be multiple reasons on what you are seeing:
1. It is highly likely you saw only a inkling of her life and based on what you say she is already caring and loving but we cannot expect everyone to behave the same way with respect to parenting. There is no perfect formula for being a parent or caregiver, everyone has different views of what it makes to be a good parent or caregiver and they are probably focussed on their views of a good parent. (PS: this is also referred to as a love language and everyone’s love language is different and many times it is not obvious)
2. Not everyone has to be caregiver, not everyone wants to be a caregiver as their primary role or maybe not every one has caregiving instincts or passion by nature, but since most of them are forced into these roles, it is hard to be passionate about doing it. Many are not even aware that parenting is a choice nor given that choice
3. There is heavy stereotyping that only moms are good caregivers and it is only mom’s responsibility to nurture the child in all aspects of life and give up her other aspirations. We are a long way to change this.
4. Plus there is also postpartum emotional changes – which is not talked about a lot – and when someone is going through that, it is going to be very hard to be passionate about parenting. At that point most of us switch to survival mode – which is keeping everyone safe and healthy with minimum intervention.“
She could not believe what I said (I was surprised she listened patiently even though with a confused expression, the expression widening with each point)- she was in her early 20s and may go through parenting soon (based on what she shared), and yet she was not aware of any of these.
The part about people not choosing to be a parent was the most shocking for her and I had to soften the impact and redirect her. Such a term does not even exist in her world. She kept saying ‘why, why wouldn’t someone not want to be a parent’
Why is someone passionate about parenting talking about this
Do you know what is one of the worst thing in the world that can happen to a child? A child who is despised the second they are born…
Not after they grow up and did not meet their parent’s passion and goals, not after they grew up and disappointed their parents in some way, but the second they were even conceived or born.
Many do not talk about this – we live in a happy bubble where parents are ideal and love their kid more than anything else, where parents are well equipped and ready to face it, where parents know what their passion, goal and mission in their life is, before they are thrown into parenting.
We are blissfully unaware of many of the struggles parents and child go through because it is enforced on them when they are not ready in many or any of the aspects
We throw anecdotal evidences like ‘just do it and rest will fall in place‘ or to be more precise, ‘you must do it’ or ‘your life purpose is to be a parent’ or ‘everyone does it‘ or ‘we have done it so well in the past generations, why are you complaining’ instead of ‘Prepare emotionally, physically, financially’ which is one of the basic needs to help both parents and children.
In fact, if you read many of click-bait articles on parenting struggles, it rarely talks about tools to navigate parenting and rather post triggering contents about parenting.
What we can do to change this?
This is a hard question. On one end, if we talk about struggles – we are perceived as being pessimist or sensitive, on other end, if we brush the struggles under the carpet, it could become toxic positivity.
It is hard to find a happy medium to educate ourselves and our future generations on this. However we can definitely start someone and be honest and factual about life, parenting, sacrifices it takes to be a parent and equip ourselves to be prepared about it.
It can start from not forcing someone to follow the age-based or society based formula on aspects of marriage, partners and raising kids. It can start from not forcing our beliefs on someone else.
It does not matter where we start or how we start, we definitely need to start having these conversations with our future generations!