Sometime between when we were children and when we had children of
our own, parenthood became a religion in America. As with many religions,
complete unthinking devotion is required from its practitioners. Nothing in
life is allowed to be more important than our children, and we must never speak
a disloyal word about our relationships with our offspring. Children always
come first. We accept this premise so reflexively today that we forget that it
was not always so.
In our recently published book, Sacred Cows, we took on our society’s nonsensical but
deeply ingrained beliefs surrounding marriage and divorce. We often get asked
whether we will next address the sacred cows of modern parenting, at which
point we ask the speaker to please lower his voice, and we look nervously over
our shoulders to make sure that nobody has overheard the question.
To understand the frightening power of the parenthood religion,
one need look no further than the 2005 essay in The New York Times by Ayelet
Waldman, where the author explained that she loved her husband more than her
four children. On “Oprah Where Are They Now,” the author recently
reaffirmed the sentiments reflected in her New York Times article, and she
added that her outlook has had a positive impact on her children by giving them
a sense of security in their parents’ relationship.
Following the publication of her essay, Waldman was not only shouted down by
America for being a bad mother; strangers threatened her physically and told
her that they would report her to child protective services. This is not how a
civil society conducts open-minded discourse. This is how a religion persecutes
a heretic.
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The origins of the parenthood religion are obscure, but one of its
first manifestations may have been the “baby on board” placards that became
popular in the mid-1980s. Nobody would have placed such a sign on a car if it
were not already understood by society that the life of a human achieves its
peak value at birth and declines thereafter. A toddler is almost as precious as
a baby, but a teenager less so, and by the time that baby turns fifty, it seems
that nobody cares much anymore if someone crashes into her car. You don’t see a
lot of vehicles with placards that read, “Middle-aged accountant on board.”
Another sign of the parenthood religion is that it has become
totally unacceptable in our culture to say anything bad about our children, let
alone admit that we don’t like them all of the time. We are allowed to say bad
things about our spouses, our parents, our aunts and uncles, but try saying,
“My kid doesn’t have a lot of friends because she’s not a super likable
person,” and see how fast you get dropped from the PTA.
When people choose to have children, they play a lottery. Children
have the same range of positive and negative characteristics as adults, and the
personalities of some children are poorly matched with those of their parents.
Nature has protected children against such a circumstance by endowing them with
irresistible cuteness early on, and by ensuring that parents bond with children
sufficiently strongly that our cave-dwelling ancestors didn’t push their
offspring out in a snowbank when they misbehaved. Much as parents love their
children and have their best interests at heart, however, they don’t always
like them. That guy at the office who everyone thinks is a jerk was a kid once
upon a time, and there’s a pretty good chance that his parents also noticed
that he could be a jerk. They just weren’t allowed to say so.
Of course, Ayelet Waldman’s blasphemy was not admitting that her
kids were less than completely wonderful, only that she loved her husband more
than them. This falls into the category of
thou-shalt-have-no-other-gods-before-me. As with many religious crimes,
judgment is not applied evenly across the sexes. Mothers must devote themselves
to their children above anyone or anything else, but many wives would be
offended if their husbands said, “You’re pretty great, but my love for you will
never hold a candle to the love I have for John Junior.”
Mothers are also holy in a way that fathers are not expected to
be. Mothers live in a clean, cheerful world filled with primary colors and
children’s songs, and they don’t think about sex. A father could admit to
desiring his wife without seeming like a distracted parent, but society is not
as willing to cut Ms. Waldman that same slack. It is unseemly for a mother to
enjoy pleasures that don’t involve her children.
There are doubtless benefits that come from elevating parenthood
to the status of a religion, but there are obvious pitfalls as well. Parents
who do not feel free to express their feelings honestly are less likely to
resolve problems at home. Children who are raised to believe that they are the
center of the universe have a tough time when their special status erodes as
they approach adulthood. Most troubling of all, couples who live entirely
child-centric lives can lose touch with one another to the point where they
have nothing left to say to one another when the kids leave home.
In the 21st century, most Americans marry for love. We choose
partners who we hope will be our soulmates for life. When children come along,
we believe that we can press pause on the soulmate narrative, because
parenthood has become our new priority and religion. We raise our children as
best we can, and we know that we have succeeded if they leave us, going out
into the world to find partners and have children of their own. Once our gods
have left us, we try to pick up the pieces of our long neglected marriages and
find new purpose. Is it surprising that divorce rates are rising fastest
for new empty nesters? Perhaps it is time that we gave the
parenthood religion a second thought.
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