Perfection and Parenthood

Prime the presses! A new study by Dr. Darcia Narvaez, reports Dr. Greg Popcak, tells us that "when children [aren't] given things like affection, free play and a warm home environment, they turn into adults with decreased social and moral capacities." On the flip side, it turns out that having affectionate parents and a stable home life leads to happier children who grow into happier adults.  Who knew?  I guess Dr. Narvaez' thesis that science can only tell us what common sense already knows is validated here.  

Okay, I'm sorry.  The snark is unnecessary, but I still haven't recovered from my anger at Dr. Popcak's last piece about breastfeeding.  I haven't read Dr. Narvaez's new study, which isn't out yet and is due to be reported in the journal Applied Developmental Science. But based on the summary, the evidence was gathered through surveys of 600 adults asking them to recall their childhood experiences. Adults who remembered their childhoods as more affectionate reported better psychological well-being. Again, this isn't at all a surprising result.

But, this result must raise the old correlation versus causation question: does a happy childhood directly cause happiness in adulthood, or does having a happy temperament help you remember your childhood as a happier one? Different experiences impact different people in different ways. A person with an anxious, depressed temperament might recall past experiences as more traumatic than someone with a more resilient personality. Even aside from the issue of how temperament and personality affects the brain's processing of events, how do you methodologically validate someone's self-reported experience?  Memories are notoriously malleable.  I know for a fact that I remember my childhood very differently than my parents do.  Neither one of us can verify the "truth" of the past.

There are also some serious metaphysical questions regarding the study's rather reductionistic assumptions about morality, and the equation of psychological well-being with moral goodness.  (I can think of quite a few saints - perhaps even the majority of them! - who would give the lie to that equivalency.)  But even aside from all this, I really have very deep reservations about anyone telling me that there's a certain set of things you must do in order to raise moral children.

Look, it's one thing to give advice or to have scientifically-based opinions on what will help our children be physically and psychologically healthy.  We do all want that for our children, and we do have a moral obligation to care for their well-being as much as it is within our power.  But so much of this talk tends towards making parenthood seem like an impossibly daunting task: if you can't, or won't, do x-y-or-z (be it breastfeed for two-plus years, or baby-wear, or co-sleep, etc.), not only are you endangering your child's medical health, you may also be damaging them psychologically and making it harder for them to be responsible moral agents!  And then we wonder why so many young people are opting out of parenthood, afraid of its responsibilities and terrified of doing it "wrong"!  

But the truth is, you can be an "imperfect" parent and still be a good one - even a great one!  That's because parenthood is not about mastering a skill set or performing some set of discrete tasks.  It embraces your entire identity as a human being.  And as human beings, we are all imperfect sinners.

Parenthood is not a job; it's a relationship between two imperfect, sinful people.  And there's no scientific formula for relationships.  Because relationships, in their deepest (and dare I say moral?) sense are beyond the bounds of science: relationships are about the mystery of two souls encountering each other.  

You are not going to be a perfect parent.  You are going to make mistakes - and that's okay.  You are giving your kids a chance to learn forgiveness and compromise.  You aren't always going to be able to put your kids' needs first - and that's okay.  You're teaching them self-sacrifice and empathy. 

But remember too: your child is also not a perfect child.  Catholicism teaches the truth of original sin, and even the most innocent baby carries its burden.   Your kids are going to make mistakes - and that's okay.  They are going to learn how to ask for forgiveness and how to accept mercy.  And you are going to lavish affection and love on your children - and that's okay, too.  Because then they will learn the limitless, unconditional love of God.

So yes, take from the science what you will.  But know also that parenthood, like any relationship, requires flexibility, adaptability, responsiveness, and discernment.  There is no one path to sanctity, and there is also no one path towards "good" parenting.  Good parenting comes when your strengths and weaknesses meet and intertwine with those of your child's, when you experience the fearful joy of knowing another as another, when you establish your own, intimate ways of sharing love and showing affection.  

There's no scientific study that's going to tell you how to do that.  And that's the true freedom - and challenge - of parenthood.

Singleness and Selfhood

I'm usually an avid NPR listener, but lately I've found myself having to shut the radio off in annoyance.  Today was one of those days.  Tom Ashbrook on WBUR was interviewing Rebecca Traister, author of a new book entitled, All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation.  Now, to be perfectly fair I didn't listen to the whole interview (because I turned it off), and I haven't read the book, so I don't know all of what Ms. Traister had to say.  However, I did read her NPR interview with Terry Gross.  And so I feel a bit more comfortable commenting on what I briefly heard on the radio this morning.

Tom Ashbrook raised the question that the choice to delay marriage is seen by some as a choice to prolong adolescence.  I wish there were a transcript of Mr. Ashbrook's interview, but Ms. Traister responded by saying, essentially, that she disagrees: delaying marriage means that you have to take on more responsibilities (like, for instance, learning how to do handy-man type jobs, managing one's budget all on one's own, etc.), and that means you're more "independent" and therefore more of an adult.  As she said in her interview with Ms. Gross:

. . . what happens is that men and women wind up living more independently in the world for more years, and both of them wind up accruing skills, both professional and domestic, so that by the time - if you're talking about hetero couples - by the time men and women are meeting and partnering and marrying, it's much more likely that the woman knows how to use a drill and do the laundry and the man she may be meeting and partnering with also knows how to do his laundry and feed himself and use a drill. . .

To me equating "adulthood" with a woman's ability to use a drill and a man's ability to cook is a rather doubtful proposition.  But all right, yes, I understand that she was making a broader point about independence and also about the ability for people to enter into marriages with a more balanced sense of how to share domestic labor.  And I do agree that we have done an awful job at teaching our adolescents these basic skills, meaning that they have to learn how to do them as adults.

But acquiring a certain skill set or even being "independent" is not what makes you an adult.  The reason marriage is (or was) seen as a marker of adulthood is because it is (or was) the most important commitment beyond one's self that a person could make.  It binds you to another for the rest of your life.  It is this sense of commitment that makes one an adult - this ability to make an existential choice to devote your life to someone (or Someone) bigger than yourself - that is the marker of adulthood.

Then Mr. Ashbrook raised the question of "selfishness," to which Ms Traister replied to the effect that we, as a society, have a hard time seeing women as people who have "selves" that need to come "first."  This is where I turned off the radio.  All right, yes, patriarchy and misogyny have stripped women of their sense of selfhood - I understand that, I really do, and it upsets me too.  But the idea that we can even have a "self" independent of commitment to others strikes me as fundamentally flawed.  We don't lose our sense of selfhood when we commit ourselves to another person in marriage - we find ourselves.

That's not to say that we have to get married in order to have full selfhood.  The Catholic Church, with its communities of celibate men and women, has certainly never taught this.  Even for non-religious, the Church has affirmed the single life as a vocation.  But regardless of our marital status, we do have to have a certain level of selflessness, and an ability to commit fully and entirely to another person (or Person), in order to discover who we really are - not what we can do or accomplish, but who we really are, our virtues, our vices, our deepest hopes and fears, the source of our hope and our faith.  We must die to self to find one's self.

We are defined by who we love, and making a commitment like marriage ought to be an affirming statement of such a definitive love.  Unfortunately in our society it often isn't.  So perhaps it's a good sign that some are rejecting a flawed institution.  Certainly the increasing numbers of people opting out of marriage should make those of us who are its proponents rethink how this institution is lived and experienced.  But I wouldn't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.  Marriage, at its best, isn't about nice feelings and finding someone who "complements your lifestyle" (or, as Ms. Traister puts it, who will "improve on the life" that you are building).  It's about growing in virtue, growing as a human being, learning how to love and give yourself to another.  And that's what's missing in the discussion.