The Parent Trap: The Ties That Bind

Navigating emotional landscapes

Being a parent, a nurturing parent to be specific, must surely be counted as one of the most challenging tasks that humans undertake. Yes, there are empires to be built, milestones to achieve, worlds to conquer, and other zillion conquests to be made. These may be measured in tangible and quantifiable terms. None of which are applicable when it comes to parenting.

Is there any consensus on what or who qualifies as a successful parent? Should the word “successful” be used in the context of parenting at all? Are there any unsuccessful parents??? What rubbish! The ordinary benchmarks of ‘good’ and ‘successful’ seem so woefully inadequate when they apply to parenting.

Consider the responsibility itself—to be responsible for the welfare and well-being of another human life from infancy onwards. For most of us, parenthood is what happened to us.

Call me old-fashioned, outdated, out of touch with the times—the semblance of the only guide I had was Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care (which was gifted by a dear friend—note, not one I bought of my own volition) and, of course, advice from the veterans who experienced parenthood before me. Makes me wonder, did those of us who belong to a certain generation follow any instruction manual for parenting? Not that I am aware of.

My mother would have rolled her eyes in despair and bemusement if I had had the foolish temerity to have asked her about a parenting manual.

We navigated this unfamiliar terrain with one guiding principle alone—our own memories of childhood. A childhood where we most often were oblivious to the difficulties and challenges our parents would naturally have battled. Our upbringing was modest, stolidly middle class. We resolved and hoped we would never fall into the trap our parents had; we would be liberal (whatever the word means), and we would try to provide the best we can for our children. Little realizing then, but completely convinced in hindsight now, that our parents must have thought the same way.

That singular idea to me sums up all of parenting—to provide the best according to individual means. Each generation, I think, deludes itself into believing, “We perhaps got it right. This is the way to parenting.” Allow us our foolish indulgences. The absolute power to destroy vanity belongs to your own child, your flesh and blood alone. Ask any parent.

Perfection is denied to humans, and with our many flaws, each one of us carries the burden of our individual coping strategy for life. Nobody, nobody, bears the fruit of these accumulated traits more than our children (with the exception of our spouses, maybe). Our children then carry lasting imprints that we are most often completely clueless about.

I admit none of this is new; this is common knowledge. What prompts me to write this piece is my sense of bewilderment.

A conversation with a young friend turned out to be a rude eye-opener for me—she told me to be young today is to be anxious, to flounder, to experience disconnect with parents, and to have few to confide in. The generation gap, I admit, is a given in all ages. The young and the not-young have possibly always looked at each other with askance. This, for all eternity, has been the way of the world.

Perhaps the vast majority of young people are happy and thriving. I want to believe so. My concern is with those who are not, for whatever reasons.

As sickeningly, cloyingly cliché and naïve as it sounds, I wish, how I wish, that love was enough. All distance could be bridged by the knowledge that one is loved. When I hear about the wounding damages that words—those cruel barbs of language and lacerations to the soul—that are exchanged by children and parents lashing out in pain against each other, how I wish that healing and strength could be found in shared love as much as therapy.

Easier said than done, of course.

How does one prove love? There is, after all, no universal love language. Or is there? As parents we assume that to care, to provide, to nurture, to wish the best for, to support, and to encourage constitutes love. We do not dare presume to understand our children; at our best, we try to. Even if we fail.

At what point, then, does concern appear as control? Where does one end and the other begin? Indifference is not an option, because it would mean giving up. Is it even possible to give up on a fragment of your own self?

The instinct to protect is a life-affirming one. There is no life form that is immune to this instinct—natural science tells us that plants, trees, and animals all exhibit this behaviour.

How do we warn our children of the pitfalls of falling prey to false friendships? Undoubtedly friendship counts as one of the greatest fortifiers of life—it is a rich blessing that is conferred on human lives, but false friends can wreak havoc, as we all know. The question is, how do we teach our vulnerable young discernment? What about resilience? How do we nurture that? Accomplished our young may be. Tech-savvy and well-informed? A resounding yes to all. Yet, are these enough to sustain the vicissitudes of life?

Is that why we tell our children stories? To warn, to caution, to suggest rather than to preach. Rebecca Solnit captures it eloquently and powerfully in her book, The Faraway Nearby, where she says:

“Fairy tales… focus on the early stages of life, when others have power over you and you have power over no one. In them, power is rarely the right tool for survival anyway. Rather, the powerless thrive on alliances, often in the form of reciprocated acts of kindness—from beehives that were not raided, birds that were not killed but set free or fed, and old women who were saluted with respect. Kindness sown among the meek is harvested in crisis….”

Of course, disdainful cynicism can shoot this to dust. What stories and fairytales do, however, is provide a map to survive. Yes, monsters lurk around the corner; darkness looms. But monsters are not insurmountable, and daylight defeats darkness. Childhood is a state of being where we live on the wings of hope.

What happens when children grow out of stories? How do they deal with the many monsters with human faces when the darkness has a vice-like grip on their hearts?

What then? Search as I might—I have no answers. Sadly.