Tough Love

 

Ten years ago I wrote this blog post called “My LonelyQuadrant,” in which I explored how my default parenting style differs from that of Free-Range Parents, Helicopter Parents, and Tiger Parents. Since then, social media and cell phone use has proliferated, we’re living through a global health crisis and a national racial reckoning, and cultural battle lines have created a mood of divisiveness, outrage, and stress. What a time to parent! 

All of this (*waves arms wildly around*) certainly makes it harder to feel good about one’s parenting, what with all of the uncertainty and stress and fear. But I don’t think it has fundamentally shifted how I want to approach parenting our three kids. Maybe it is the height of hubris or stupidity to not adapt with the times. But hear me out. 

It is certainly tempting to demand less and protect more. The level of difficulty our children have to bear today means that thriving is harder than ever, so it feels humane to reset expectations and push less. And the sheer pervasiveness of dangers they must navigate taps into our inherent parenting reflex to shield and soothe. 

There is room for all of this. I do all of this, and often wish I did more and better. But the opposite reaction also feels like good parenting too. 

Life is inherently hard, full of struggle and uncertainty and change and conflict. Comfort and peace and stability are worthy things to seek out, so I am not advocating for masochism or stoicism. But neither is it good to cocoon from the vagaries that make up real living, with all of its mess and tumult. 

It is not a coincidence that life is churning harder than ever at the exact time that there are an unprecedented number of leisure pursuits we can escape to (and ease of accessing them). Life is hard, and most of us most of the time seek to numb ourselves from it all, and the marketplace is more than happy to oblige, with a proliferation of entertainment options in long form and in short snippets (280 characters, 30 seconds). There’s nothing wrong with a moderate enjoyment of “guilty pleasures.” But there’s something wrong when we no longer want to live in the reality of the world outside those escapes.

 Parenting is loving kids into adulthood. That foundation of care, self-worth, and stability goes a long way to a healthy outlook on and approach to life. But we know that sometimes love hurts. Vaccine shots hurt but are necessary to protect us from diseases. Physical and mental training is arduous but yields progress as athletes and scholars. So the metaphor extends to the hardships of life, which we as parents must give our kids room to sit in, bear, and work through, even when that means pain. 

As much as it hurts when my kids hurt, I shudder even more if they enter adulthood feeling that either life is all about ease, or that it is too scary so they’d rather withdraw into fantasy worlds. I shudder even more if they are unable to bear any hardship in learning something or advocating for something, because invariably anything worth learning or advocating for requires some hardship to succeed in. And I shudder even more if all they know is that every privilege has been handed to them, because they will either act as if the world continues to owe them that comfort or have a dismissive and ungrateful attitude about those privileges. 

I second-guess myself all the time, even about this post and the self-reflection it represents for my approach to parenting. But I think, however imperfectly I’ve articulated and actualized it, I’m on the right track. I love my kids, and I love that my love is helping them get ready to be adults. I just need to remind myself that that love must sometimes be tender and sometimes tough, and that avoiding the tough is not love and it is not for their good.