Parent Face

A recent rash of suicides on the University of Pennsylvania campus has been blamed in part on what students call “Penn Face.”  These are high-achieving young men and women who feel they have to keep up certain appearances – of happiness, beauty, popularity, and/or success – even if on the inside they are struggling with self-doubt, depression, or suicidal thoughts. 

College can be such a vulnerable time.  Mental health issues often manifest themselves in our late teens and early 20’s, and can be exacerbated by being away from home, facing real adversity for the first time, or drowning in a culture of anxiety and pressure and performance. 

As a father of children who will eventually go off to college, and who may be at higher risk of mental illness, this is a terrifying reality to look ahead to.  So Amy and I are doing our best as parents to make sure our children are building the resiliency they will need to survive an increasingly dangerous and complex world.

But part of the preparation is not just getting stronger, but learning to accept weakness.  For much of surviving the challenging college years, and any stressful period of our lives, is about having enough self-awareness and self-worth to raise our hands and say “help!”  I say self-awareness because you need to be in touch enough to know you need help, and I say self-worth because you need to believe that you’re worth the help you need.  Conversely, how lonely and terrifying and disjointed it is when your inner reality clashes with what outward “face” you feel you need to show the world.

A big part of parenthood isn’t how we actively parent our children but how we conduct ourselves before our children.  Whatever instructions, exhortations, and lessons we may impart to them about how they should conduct their lives are fundamentally shaped by the extent to which they reconcile with how we conduct our own lives.  And for many of us parents, living in the first era of social media, we are guilty of our own carefully curated outward appearances.  “Parent Face,” we might call it.

To be sure, social media lends itself to the highlights.  Family vacations, birthday parties, our children’s successes in the classroom and on the sporting field: social media is tailor-made for elevating these things.  Social media isn’t meant to be the entirety of our lives, just like photo albums and scrap books in past generations. 

But if social media can create and strengthen the social connections we have at our disposal, then we can use those connections to have real moments with fellow travelers in the journey of parenthood.  Moments of vulnerability, of crying out at our breaking point and finding comfort knowing we’re not alone in our feelings and pains. 

And, who’s to say we can’t be a little more vulnerable on social media?  Of course, one must consider what is appropriate, and respect the privacy of our children, especially as they grow older and establish their own presence online.  But neither do we need to think that our online personas must be an impenetrable feed of sunshine and kittens. 

At times I have summoned the courage in this space to speak what I feel, what I suspect others feel, in a raw and unvarnished manner.  That I am brought to tears thinking of how vulnerable my children are in the world, subject as they may be to violence and sexism and racism.  That I daily feel that the performance Amy and I have rendered as parents has fallen short of what will allow them to be healthy and happy.  That while I always love them, way too often I don’t like them and/or find a way to take out my own frustrations on them.  Ugh, parenting is so fraught. 

The same wonderful mechanism that allows us to celebrate our birthdays and bucket list travel experiences and work successes, which in the process has made our world feel more connected and more manageable…can we use that same mechanism to shed our “Parent Face” and commiserate over our shared burdens and fears and mistakes?  I sure hope so, and will give extra thought going forward to practicing just that.