The Parent Trap
“The truth is that years ago, before this generation of mothers was even born, our society decided where children rank in the list of important things,” writes Rachel Jankovic.
Children rank way below college. Below world travel for sure. Below the ability to go out at night at your leisure. Below honing your body at the gym. Below any job you may have or hope to get. In fact, children rate below your desire to sit around and pick your toes, if that is what you want to do. Below everything. Children are the last thing you should ever spend your time doing.
I sense this current in our culture sometimes. It’s more than a feeling in the atmosphere. Our whole economy is based on the assumption that in a nuclear family, both parents work; in a single parent family, the single parent works. It takes commitment to go against that, and it takes sacrifice.
I called my parents on Valentine’s Day this week and they were getting ready to go out to breakfast. After I hung up I thought about how my idea of my parents is in terms of their role as my parents. But really, although being a parent is something that lasts forever, the focus on it as your main activity doesn’t. They had their own lives before I came along, and after the nest emptied they found their footing just fine as a couple leading their own lives again. Now they’re in their seventies, and over 2/3 of that lifetime has been spent without children as a central focus.
So it will be, probably, with me. These years when being a mother is my main role will merge back into a life that looks a lot like it did before children came along. To be sure, it has been permanently enriched and redirected by these two beautiful daughters who are teaching me so much about love and value and God and how it’s not all about me. But it won’t always be focused with so much energy on caring for them and providing for their needs. I’ve chosen to focus on parenting and education for these years; all the other stuff will still be there waiting when these years are past.
In the meantime, there is a dying to self during these years. There is great joy too, whether our culture acknowledges it or not. I like where Jankovic ends up in her post:
Live the gospel in the things that no one sees. Sacrifice for your children in places that only they will know about. Put their value ahead of yours. Grow them up in the clean air of gospel living. Your testimony to the gospel in the little details of your life is more valuable to them than you can imagine. If you tell them the gospel, but live to yourself, they will never believe it. Give your life for theirs every day, joyfully. Lay down pettiness. Lay down fussiness. Lay down resentment about the dishes, about the laundry, about how no one knows how hard you work…There is more joy and more life and more laughter on the other side of death than you can possibly carry alone.
8 Comments
Amy @ Hope Is the Word
What a lovely post, Janet. Thank you.
Jeane
So true. Just the other day my older daughter asked me a question that culminated in my telling her how I’ve given up certain hobbies and passtimes because they just don’t fit in with two little kids. She thought it was sad but I don’t mind at all; the years with my children are short compared to the years I will have with empty rooms in the house when they’re grown…
Annette
Thank you so much for your post.
My husband and I have been married over 30 years. Our 2 sons are in their late 20’s, the older with a family. I worked most of the years they were growing up, but quit when they were in high school. I began taking care of my parents at that time. My dad, at age 90, has made his home with my husband and I for almost 11 years. My mother died of end-stage Alzheimer’s in 2008. Since I was 19 I’ve either cared for children or parents, I could feel sorry for myself, instead these years have been rich in an education that could have only been brought about by laying aside myself and instead doing for others. Caring for elderly parents in some ways is similar to caring for children, but in many ways it is different. It has required much more patience, perseverance, fortitude. At each step, God’s grace has been sufficient. I could never have done this task without His grace, and in His power and strength.
Because I am a homemaker/caregiver, most people have no idea what I do, they don’t understand, they don’t “get it”. I think though I’ve finally let go of trying to make other’s understand what I do and why. I read a book yesterday with a great quote that I’ll share that really speaks to me on this subject.
“A challenging relationship can be our schoolhouse, the means by which we become conformed to His will, until we are finally living in, by, and for Him alone.”
Barbara H.
Beautiful! Though it doesn’t feel so beautiful “in the trenches.” I need near constant reminders that this life is supposed to be about serving others.
Carolin Migliazzo
I have recently been learning in a painful way that I have elevated my role of mother into a place that it should not be….I have raised my children, sacraficed for them, lived selflessly, etc. I recall the first time my kids challenged me was when they were in high school, they said “Mom, you need to get a life”. What they meant is my world revolved around them and they were moving on and wanted me to move my world beyond theirs. I realized that I needed to model giving to others, not just my family; I needed to model a life that contained a variety of interests; beyond their interests. Just as we want our children to have lives that are well rounded, so we as mothers need to model lives that are also well rounded.
In CS Lewis’ “The Great Divorce” Chapter 11, he tells of a mother whose son passed away as a young child. Her life was consumed with grief and dedicated to keeping his memory alive. She resented her husband and other children for not sharing in her level of grief. When she went to heaven she wanted to see her son, saying surely God will not withhold him from me now, I have been a devoted mother to him. But he was withheld from her for exactly that reason…her motherly love was a possesive love, “he is mine”. She had to be reminded that we are all first God’s creatures, that no one belongs to us, we only belong to God. I am beginning to consider my role as Mom in the same way we are to relate to all of God’s creation. We are called to be stewards, hired to manage and care for the needs of others. Like Abraham and Isaac, do we understand that each of us belong only to God?
Janet
You might find the book ‘Parenting is your highest calling and 8 other myths that trap us in worry and guilt’ interesting. It’s a book by Leslie Leyland Fields.
I wouldn’t argue that parenting is our only calling, and I’m not really capable of focusing on motherhood exclusively, even though I don’t work outside the home. I have too many other interests. But I would argue that children should be higher on the priority list than many of our cultural norms suggest.
The Great Divorce is a favorite of mine. Many great truths there.
DebD
Beautiful. Thank you Janet.
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