Insights on Parenting (From People Much Smarter Than Me)
By Ryan Weber
Loyal readers of this column (shout out to all seven of you!) know that my parenting strategy could best be described as “flying by the seat of my pants” combined with a healthy dose of “fumbling through the darkness.” I feel lost despite frequently reading books like “The French Neuroscientist Monk’s Guide to Raising Punk Rock Kids Who Also Clean Their Rooms” and listening to podcasts like “Self-Satisfied Parents Explain How to Make Kids Thank You for Time Outs! (If Our Advice Doesn’t Work, It’s Your Fault, You Monster).” Shockingly, this advice never makes me feel like I know how to parent two kids.
As an academic nerd, I’m a sucker for expert hot takes and hot peer-reviewed studies (the more peer-reviewed, the hotter). But as an English academic nerd, I’m an even bigger sucker for pithy quotes that you can print in fancy font on mugs or refrigerator magnets. Authors, filmmakers and musicians usually capture the parenting experience more profoundly than I ever could. I’m moved by quotes like novelist Jacqueline Woodson’s description of a father: “He has never imagined a love as deep and endless as this.” I would have just written “Fatherhood is pretty great, y’all. 4.5/5 stars.” So I’ll share some quotes on parenting that have affected me, because frankly, I don’t have any parental wisdom of my own to impart. Plus, by including quotes, I have to write fewer words for this column (a trick I learned from the college freshmen in my composition classes).
When I read novelist Charles Yu write of a new dad, “You have been a father for approximately ten seconds and you know for certain that you will never be the same,” I think back to the moment my wife and I met our own daughter at 4:00 a.m. at Crestwood. We were completely exhausted (my wife more than me, obviously), totally overjoyed, absolutely overwhelmed. I had never made a whole person before; I could barely make a quiche. Our daughter peered at us through squinting eyes, still adjusting to the light, with a look that implied, “Are you sure you’re in charge here? Do you know what you’re doing?” I did not know what I was doing. But as Charles Yu writes, there’s no going back from parenthood. Becoming a father is a seismic change, like movies changing from black and white to color, Dylan going electric, Steve Urkel becoming Stefan Urquelle on “Family Matters.” Nothing will ever be the same again.
With the change comes worry. Anxiety has always been my favorite pastime, but parenthood elevated it into an Olympic event. I ruminate about how my kids could fall off the monkey bars and accidentally ingest perchlorate that seeped into the soil from rocket testing, which will stunt their growth so that they’re too weak to run from a hybrid three-headed rattlesnake/copperhead/cottonmouth that will bite them on Monte Sano and they’ll miss their SATs when they go to the ER and they’ll never get into Harvard and they’ll end up living in our basement in their 40s and making money by twirling signs to advertise an off-track betting parlor that also serves 50-cent wings on Thursdays. Then an asteroid hits Earth and pushes it into a black hole. So I identify with author Rumaan Alam, who describes a father’s cycle of endless anxiety as his children grow: “You told yourself there was an end to the worry. You told yourself it was sleeping through the night, then weaning from the breast, then walking then shoelaces then reading then algebra then sex then college admissions then you would be liberated, but this was a lie. Worry was infinite.”
Parental worry will never end, even when we send our kids to college so they can pad their own essays with quotes to get away with writing fewer words for their college professors. Even now, hugging my kids before I watch them walk to Blossomwood Elementary each morning, I think about how much the work of parenting involves gradually building our kids’ confidence so they can leave us. It’s a condition described by novelist Fatima Farheen Mirza, who writes about parents of teenagers, “It was a strange time in their lives: the children like paper boats they were releasing into the water and watching float away.” But even 10 years in, I already realize that parenting is never done. As the character Frank Buckman says of parenthood in the aptly titled 1989 movie “Parenthood”: “There is no end zone. You never cross the goal line, spike the ball and do your touchdown dance. Never.” Raising kids is a marathon, not a sprint. In fact, parenthood is one of those 100-mile ultra-marathons through the Mojave Desert where your toenails start falling off around mile 73 and you hallucinate that you’re being chased by a skeleton motorcycle gang. There’s my pithy parenthood quote. Print that out on a magnet in a fancy font and sell it at Bed, Bath, and Beyond next to the “Live, Laugh, Love” signs.
But the kids haven’t left yet, so I’m still at the daily grind of having no idea what I’m doing and giving contradictory advice on top of that. Whenever I tell my kids to stop wasting water right after I take a 15-minute shower, or tell them to stop eating sweets as I shovel Talenti gelato into my mouth straight from the carton, or tell them not to use “grown up words” right after I swear at bad drivers on 565, I think of novelist Michael Chabon, who summed up my whole situation succinctly: “I’m a father. Being a hypocrite is my job.” I use that line to justify myself when I tell my kids to not waste money right after I buy $50 fish oil recommended by actor Mark-Paul Gosselaar (that’s why he still looks so young, people!). So thanks, Michael Chabon, for helping me feel better about my own worst impulses.
I can see my flaws, but even more painfully, I can see my flaws manifest in my children. My kids take after me by worrying that they might have leprosy whenever their skin gets a little dry, or by repeating the same joke over and over again to diminishing returns, or by forgetting their coat at school after we consistently beg them please, please, please, whatever you do, for the love of God, please don’t forget your coat at school, please. In those moments, I remember one of my absolute favorite quotes about parenthood, from singer Ben Folds: “You’re so much like me. I’m sorry.”