| | | | The Challenge of Modern Parenting |
By Seth Mullins
Over the last few decades, our culture has become less and less clear about its messages to parents and other guardians and educators of its children. Parents often experience doubts or guilt regarding the decisions they make for their children’s sake because they receive so much conflicting advice from various “experts” in the field of child rearing.
Much of this confusion is a result of the rapid changes our society as a whole has been going through. We’ve discarded a lot of old notions about what the roles for men and women should be, but we haven’t always been able to replace the models that we’ve done away with. Basically we have embarked upon an age of experimentation. We’re working mostly with both helpful and not-so-helpful input from other parents and teachers who are in the same boat as we are.
We’re likely to have an easier time throughout this period of trial and error if we can shed the belief that we must be perfect parents the first time around. The life of the family is a learning experience not only for children but also for their guardians. If we are gentle with ourselves then our lessons will likewise be gentler. We’re going to be venturing into a lot of unexplored areas with our children, and we’ll need to trust our gut feelings and intuition. We may have firm notions about doing everything contrary to the ways that our parents did them, or we may encounter situations where their tried and true approaches seem to work best. What is most important is that our love and compassion for our children be the forces that govern our decisions. If we are to do without role models and scripts throughout our lives as parents, then our hearts must be our guides.
Dispensing with the old blueprints for how mothers and fathers should raise their children can be seen as a fruitful phase in the growth of humanity. We have an opportunity to try new approaches that could potentially work better than the methods that previous generations have used. This process will go a lot smoother for us if we can let go of the expectation that we be completely enlightened parents. Redefining our identities as men and women is a task that requires leeway and a little room for error. Journeys into unknown territory often involve taking two steps forward and one step back.
We swell with pride in seeing our young ones make their first baby steps. Why not, then, take a little pride in our own?
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