By the time this post is published, Dear Husband and I will have dropped Sophie off in Boston for her first semester of college. It’s been a wild few years for anyone who has kids. But the pandemic and all its associated tribulations have given me time to ponder parenthood. And I think I’m starting to develop a theory on the hardest part of being a parent.
If you had asked me 18 years ago what the hardest part of being a parent was, I would have told you “no sleep” and “keeping the baby alive.” And while both of those things are definitely hard, after almost two decades of parenthood, I have a different view.
A little background: I grew up in the 70s and 80s, when parenthood was a very different thing. There was no such thing as “helicopter parenting.” The idea that my parents would have micro-managed my or Kate’s life is laughable! Don’t get me wrong- they loved us and they provided for us. But once we got much beyond middle school, the parenting part of their lives was largely over. We were on our own- to determine our path, make our decisions, and start our own lives.
I spent most of my 20s in a state of perpetual anxiety. Not only about my life choices and my finances (or lack thereof), but also knowing that I was almost completely without a safety net. If I lost my job, couldn’t find another one, had some tragedy befall me, I was on my own. My family members either didn’t have the resources to help me out. Or simply had no desire…they didn’t think it was their role to continue to provide a safety net into my “adulthood.” Their parents certainly didn’t; why should they?
This led to a lot of stress and anxiety on my part- a lot of extreme risk avoidance and some poor decision-making. But on the upside, those dark days and years made me the person I am today. Extremely self-reliant. Financially conservative. Resilient.
And this is where the hardest part of parenting comes in. It’s knowing that there is a line between providing a safety net for Sophie (good) and giving her too much cushion (bad). I wish I could have had enough of the deprivations and stresses of my early adulthood to become who I am, but did I really need quite so many? Did it have to be THAT hard? And understanding where that line is for Sophie is the hardest part these days.
She needs to depend on herself, while knowing that we will be there to catch her if something dreadful happened. And I don’t want her to count on us too much, or she might get too soft and entitled.
I listened to a lovely podcast with Emily Oster the economist; her answer to what defines modern parenting was “helicopter parenting.” It’s pernicious and it’s awful. But those of us who grew up in an earlier generation know that there is a happy medium between the “hands-off” parenting we experienced and being helicoptered. And the hardest part of being a parent is finding that middle ground. It’s something I will grapple with for the next decade.
