With a baby on the way in just a few weeks, I have all kinds of thoughts about parenting, but they are difficult to put in words – in part because this is one of the most deeply personal things we do, and also one of the things we have the most inflexible opinions about: in other words, it may not be a productive topic for public discussion. What one person believes is necessary for their children, another person believes is actually immoral (for me this comes up most clearly with economic questions – many people believe that the greatest gift they can give their children is privilege. Needless to say, I do not believe this). And conversations of this sort very quickly and easily, with issues so deeply personal, cause offense.
But one thing I think I can say is that I believe we are in the midst of a revolution in values and mores, one which I am, myself, going to try to resist. The revolution is this: my generation, I am certain, will spend less time involved in the raising of children than any other generation in human history. And the time we spend doing it will probably also mean less to us than it has meant to other generations. This latter part I fear even more than the former. I can force myself to spend time with my kids – but I have seen many parents who are frankly bored by their children, and don’t find it as meaningful as they would have thought. They are happy that there exists an education industry, and a daycare industry, and a vast child entertainment industry.
I hope to resist all these things, and in general I think the greatest satisfactions in life come from taking back the activities that the economic world of specialization is continually trying to take from us. Because in this way we get in touch with archetypal energies inside ourselves, the release of which is a deep source of satisfaction. We can be more than just Man the Worker: we can be Man the Builder, Man the Lover, Man the Priest, Man the Poet, Man the Toolmaker, Man the Finder, Man the Dreamer, Man the Animal, and so much more, if we give those portions of our lives a little sun and space and water.
And just as Man the Son is an archetype that is not just a personal relationship, but an entire stance toward the past, so Man the Father is a stance toward the future. I remember hearing Richard Rohr asking, “What have you really fathered?” and thinking it one of the ways of measuring a life. What life have you really created outside of yourself in the world?
As I say, I am full of these questions right now. But one piece of this resistance to economic specialization, and an attempt to vindicate the importance of parenthood, I see in the work of my friend Amber Scorah. This past summer her family suffered a terrible tragedy, and she has been transforming the grief from that event into an attempt to give parenthood in America at least the kind of protections it has in other wealthy countries, by seeking more robust parental-leave laws. It will be an uphill battle in a place which considers its main business to be business, but we will see what happens. I think the more likely option is that high-end companies will continue to improve their parental leave policies, but a single law will be difficult to enforce across the country. For Amber’s story, see her beautiful piece in yesterday’s New York Times’ blog.
I consider legislation of this sort one small part of a broader cultural effort to reclaim the dignity of parenthood. For people who work in the kind of companies which really can have better parental leave policies, I think this is a fight worth fighting.
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