This article is by Katy Padilla:
The latest reality competition show, The Parent Test, is yet one more venue for parents to both render judgment and experience shame for a role we’re all trying to do without clear guidance. By gamifying the many anxiety-producing choices and actions parents make on a regular basis, this show proves that parenting is a job we all strive to succeed at while failing miserably more often than not. Putting each family’s parent-child interactions on display for all to see and comment on only brings to life the very fear always in the back of our parenting minds — that someone is watching and judging our parenting decisions.
While there are moments of empathy and insight, the overall premise is what is most disconcerting to me — the idea that there is a “best” parenting style which we can deduce “Survivor” style through click-bait worthy challenges. Let’s not kid ourselves here. No matter how you want to do it, identifying the “most effective parenting style” is like finding the best cactus to embrace. You can choose the one with the least amount of thorns, but good luck finding one with none.
I recently experienced my own kind of parent test on a long–awaited weekend trip to Arizona with my girlfriends to celebrate all of us turning 40 this year. We had finally made it — both to Arizona and as successful, married, 40-year-old mothers. We sat around a table drinking wine and trying to make sense of our lives with a bold-print cacti wallpaper watching over us. Rather than a test of our parenting skills, however, it quickly became a test of enduring our aging parents.
It started with my friend Jessie’s loud declaration on the second night, “I don’t know what I’m going to do with my mother!” She slammed her phone on the table and started rubbing her temples as we all turned and waited to hear the latest addition to the back-and-forth texting drama that had been playing out all weekend with her mother.
“She convinced the doctor to give my daughter medicine even though he didn’t see any infection in her ears. My mom knows I only use medicine as a last resort! It’s like my mother intentionally chooses to disagree with me!”
The rest of us groaned and rolled our eyes in solidarity. All of us had left kids at home with someone in order to get away. Most of our husbands were in charge of the children for the weekend and each of us had gotten pinged at some point with a status update, a picture of what they were doing, or at least 9 questions about where to find water bottles or other kid paraphernalia necessary for going out. With her husband stationed in Kansas, Jessie had limited options. The only way she was able to come was by paying for her mom’s plane ticket to Hawaii, just so Jessie could fly to the mainland for 3 short days with us. Unfortunately, we were all learning that there were additional hidden fees to this plan.
“She kept saying she would never have left me and my brother for a trip,” Jessie continued, “and how a good mother stays with her kids. Then she cried at the airport when she dropped me off — cried real tears in front of my kids saying she couldn’t believe I was actually going through with it — actually leaving her and the kids!”
Now it was Jessie’s turn for real tears. Frustration turned quickly into sadness and grief over a relationship that had never quite been the same after her father died 20 years ago. Tissues, hugs, rubs on the back and words of encouragement came from our crew to affirm what a good mom Jessie was.
The affirmations were soon followed by stories of our own crazy parents. Parents who never knew how to show affection when their kids were growing up, and now can’t understand why their grandkids prefer the other grandparents. A mother who is so committed to her daily 8 hour workout routine that she can’t make time for the grandkids or even talk to her daughter when she calls. Parents who can barely talk to each other in a civil tone when other family members are present, much less when they are by themselves. A mother-in-law who texted our friend “Good morning!” every morning since the pandemic started. The audacity! Clearly an intervention needed to be called on that one.
It was a true test of parents and based on our assessment, all of ours were still failing 40 years later. As the parent horror stories continued, I fixated on the cactus wallpaper with its repetitive pattern of green and thorns. “Just think,” I began to muse. “Twenty years from now we might be grandmothers, too.” Nods and raised eyebrows made their way around the circle as the reality of elapsing time came into focus.
“So how do we prevent ourselves from being crazy parents or grandparents when our kids have kids?” The plea in Jessie’s voice was unmistakable as she posed her follow up question. “I mean, what can we do so that our kids actually want to have us around?” There was nothing but silence as we all considered possible responses. The large cacti on the wall waited expectantly for our answers.
Jessie’s question immediately brought to mind something I had heard Dan Allender, the founder and former president of the Seattle School of Theology & Psychology, say during a family counseling class years ago.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what parenting style you use — you will inevitably screw up your kids. As soon as they are born we might as well apologize immediately.” Allender then pretended to cradle a baby and say something like, “I’m so sorry for all the damage I will cause and the therapy you’ll require because of me.” I found myself joining the collective laughter in the lecture hall as my brain scrambled to make sense of two competing thoughts.
- That can’t be true. I’m sure there’s a way to not mess up your kids and I’LL be the one to find it.
- That is so true! It explains so much about me. (I hadn’t even started counseling at that point and I already knew my parents were sure to take center stage when I started talking.)
For the next hour I listened — riveted to learn all about the different parenting styles and types of problems they each created in children. I took copious notes as if writing it down would save me from any of the undesirable outcomes. Not being anywhere close to having my own kids, they got lost to time and I never actually referenced them again. Rather than notes, it was the image and sound of him apologizing to an imaginary baby that was seared into my brain.
Even then, way before The Parent Test or my kids were a part of this world, I learned there are no true winners in the game of raising children. The poet Philip Larkin said it even more succinctly (and crudely for some) in the first two lines of his poem This Be the Verse: “They fuck you up, your mum and dad / They may not mean to, but they do.”
A wise colleague, who also happens to be a grandmother, recently said to me during a moment of reflection, “Adults are just wounded children inside, right?” I couldn’t stop myself from nodding emphatically. At some point you realize that no baby has grown up without scars from their parents’ thorns. Even the parents watching another family’s footage from a “Parent Test” challenge will wipe away tears or cry audibly as they are reminded of one painful parental interaction or another from childhood. Every adult, in some way, is just a wounded child in a larger body. Our wounds are still there.
I mean, there we were in Arizona — 40-year-old children listing out the psychological damage done and still being inflicted on us by our parents and in-laws, while desperately searching for any solution to keep us from repeating it with our own children. We stared at our hands, the floor, or the wallpaper as each of us tried to share a piece of potential wisdom that might break the tortuous cycle. It was as if deep down, we knew there was no real answer. The cacti on the wall seemed to fade as we faced our own inevitable and endless thorns.
“It doesn’t matter what we do,” I whispered. “We just love them. It’s all grace.” Closing my eyes, the pattern on the wall blurred and shifted to an image of countless children — our parents as children, us as children, our children now, their children to come — all with arms raised and thorns exposed.
Grace. For all of them. For all of us.
