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Guess What? You've Been Enrolled in The Parenting Game—Even if You Don't Know the Rules
BY ARLENE F. HARDER, MA, MFT
"Now the thing about having a baby—and I can’t be the first person to have noticed this—is that thereafter you have it."
—Jean Kerr, "Please Don’t Eat the Daisies," 1957
Everyone who chooses the immense responsibility of bringing a new life into this uncertain, complex world is automatically enrolled in The Parenting Game.
The goal is to maneuver, with love and minimum error, a small but rapidly growing human through a series of increasingly complex mazes—a process that often continues into young adulthood. When the game is over, the child will, hopefully, be an emotionally secure, resourceful, resilient, compassionate human being prepared to contribute to society in a positive way.
Unfortunately, as Michael Levine once observed, "Having children makes you no more a parent than having a piano makes you a pianist." Fortunately, the skills required of the parents, or others, raising a child are fairly simple. You only need patience, strength, wisdom, sacrifice, courage, perseverance, flexibility, love, loyalty, and a good dose of humor.
No one is ever fully prepared for The Parenting Game
In the beginning of raising a child, even though you've read books and been given advice by your mother and mother-in-law, your grandmother, your neighbor, and your friends, you have a lot to learn. And when you look at your sweetly sleeping newborn, you feel the capacity of this child to learn and grow, and, with unconditional love for your bundle of joy, you are determined to be great parents. You tell yourselves that you will be the calm center on which your child can depend—and you dream great dreams for the life entrusted to your care.
However, when your sweet dreams are interrupted at 2:00 in the morning, your parenting resolve is seriously challenged. For, as Amy Leslie noted way back in 1893, "No animal is so inexhaustible as an excited infant."
Later, when the child begins to walk and talk and explore the world, you quickly realize that the road to parenting is not going to be smooth. The challenges come on many fronts and if you survive all of them before your child turns thirteen, you discover life in the early years was easy compared with the trials and tribulations of the teen years.
No, it isn't easy raising children, even though it is your responsibility to raise them so they will someday have the skills they need to raise your grandchildren and to run the complex, highly imperfect world we've left them.
Today's parents face challenges our parents didn't have
Every generation is different than the one that comes before it, and each generation has stresses that others do not have. But today's parents have a number of significant challenges others have not had to face. For example, "The Parenting Game" is now played within the context of rapid change, globalization, potential nuclear and biological terrorism, environmental challenges of shrinking rain forests, water pollution, crowded cities, global warming—and advertising that reaches into the nursery for brand loyalty and pushes credit cards for an ever younger consumer.
For the nuclear family, the pace of modern life is more frenetic and time has become ever more precious. A life of unscheduled summers and dinner around the table every night is no longer on the radar screen. And it's been several decades since the average family consisted of two parents with mom staying home with the kids. In fact, today more than fifty percent of women with children under the age of one work for pay. Workweeks of 60 hours and more are still required of many employees if they want to have a job. In The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, Juliet Schor notes that in 2004, the average worker worked an increase of 170 hours per year (or four and a half weeks!) more than he did in 1984.
There are many reasons (such as the rising cost of housing) that pressure parents to work such long hours. But it is also true that, having been raised in a climate of ever more amazingly complex gadgets in a consumer-oriented society, parents feel their children must have the latest or they aren't doing their best for their child. However, the very technology for which they work so hard has driven a wedge into the nuclear family.
Cell phones, remote control, the Internet, cable TV, video games, TiVos, and iPods have allowed us easy access to information, entertainment, and people. Family communication that is deeper, richer, and spontaneous is crowded out by e-mails and voicemail. Without the opportunity to engage in slower, thoughtful dialogue, children turn to virtual companions and video games that further separate them from connection with real people.
Since young parents today were raised in a climate of technological marvels, they often fail to recognize how addicted we have become to packaged entertainment. As Christine Rosen writing for the "The New Atlantis" (Fall 2004) notes, the remote control is "light, easily manipulated with one hand, and responds to any immediate whim with the merest physical effort." Seductively this little device (one that is often the center of family squabbles over who has the right to use it) has addicted us to pleasure on demand.
With time in very short supply and with the distraction of instant entertainment, The Parenting Game has become more difficult for today's parents and for their children.
How can parents possibly meet the challenges of today?
What can parents do to influence how the game is played within their own family in this brave new technological world?
Well, as someone who has learned a great deal over many years as a parent, grandparent, and marriage and family therapist (see A Philosophy of Parenting Gained From Long Experience), I can tell you with confidence that you CAN meet the challenge of "The Parenting Game." You CAN get through parenting without a nervous break-down.
But hang on. You’re in for a rough, but ultimately rewarding, ride. Parenting, no matter what generation is in charge, is not for wimps.
© Copyright, 2005, Arlene F. Harder, MA, MFT
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