The Dark Road

I wanted to write about a few things that this course has forced me to re-examine. First of all, I have come to see my own parents as people first and parents second—something that I believe is impossible unless your perception has been altered regarding the nature of parenthood in general. This has helped me better understand that it is as impossible to be a perfect parent as it is to be a perfect child or a perfect person. Perfection is something nice to work toward, but it is not something to literally attempt to become, no matter what it is you are doing. I believe that this is the sole reason parents write so much about anxiety and guilt: because parenthood is seen by society as the most important job humans can do. Somewhere along the way, perfection became the standard for parenting. So when I find myself blaming my parents for not being perfect I wonder once again how many mistakes they made, really.

Secondly, I’ve come to realize how much advertisement and the media seem to obsessively focus around mothers as targets and subjects, leaving the fathers curiously exempt from scrutiny. Just turn on the television during the day and you will see what I mean: an overwhelming barrage of ads show why choosy moms choose Jiff or why mom should buy this laundry detergent over another. You would be hard-pressed to find an ad for dish soap featuring dad’s dishpan hands! It appears that this is one area of culture which has definitely not been altered by the waves of feminism since the 1950s. The women in the Bitch in the House wonder why their husbands/boyfriends seem to be oblivious to housework. The answer could be that there are little to no media images featuring men doing domestic duties. Men are simply not “taught” that housework is something to master and get a handle on. I find this somewhat bizarre in the year 2008, this side of the 21st century.

Finally, it amazes me how much having a child seems to take from a person. Even Neal and Regina Pollack—two folks who definitely fought hard to maintain their individuality in the midst of parenting—came away changed in crucial ways, guilty, self-remonstrative and wondering at their parental credentials. While they did seem in certain ways to very much love being parents to Elijah, they still fell down all the same dark roads the other parents we read about did before them. I think this shows us that, no matter how much we read about parenthood, or how many papers we write on the topic—we will not know how much it will change us until we do it. It appears that no matter your intelligence or education or professional aptitude, parenthood takes tolls that are impossibly heavy. I suppose soon-to-be parents should just suck it up and get ready for a bumpy ride no matter how “ready” they think they may be.

I hope that when I decide to become a dad that it is out of a deep desire to nurture someone else and not to merely bring fulfillment to myself. I have learned that once you have a child your life ceases to be your own. And parenthood is not something you just can stop doing when you get tired of it. Parenthood is forever.