One day to just kick back

WARNING: No parenting experts were consulted in the writing of today's column

It is Presidents Day. The two teenagers are home from school. At 10:01 a.m., the 16-year-old is still asleep. I believe the almost-14-year-old is lounging on the bed in his ratty old pajama bottoms, watching a TV show sure to set his mind to atrophy, if not mayhem. We are not "doing" a blessed thing. We are not engaged in activity typically described as "productive" or "important." We are not piling into the car and zipping off to lessons, sports or Scouts. Truth is, we never did much of that anyway. After the first couple of seasons of youth soccer, it got to be less about the kids and more about parents sitting in lawn chairs comparing schools or wishing they were playing golf. In a word, boring. And the kids didn't like it much either. Girl Scout cookie sale drives grew to be too hectic and competitive. And I alienated too many friends at the office asking them to puh-leez buy some Thin Mints. Today, we vegetate. We have a few laughs, maybe even enjoy each other's company. That was supposed to be a big part of why we have children - the enjoying each other part. Parenting in the 21st century gets painted as so challenging, so complex, so frightening. Does anyone even like it anymore? I mention this having read last week's Newsweek cover story titled "The Myth of the Perfect Mother." It's an excerpt from a new book titled Perfect Madness by Judith Warner. Warner concedes she researched only the mass of mothers that is mostly white, middle- to upper-middle class and born between 1958 and the early 1970s. In short, that group of women privileged to have enough time, income and mobility to even be having this conversation. These women are so overscheduled and frenzied, so bent on perfect parenting they are losing their minds. Some are asking, quietly, why they ever had children in the first place. Women who work outside the home, women who stay home, it matters not. When did parenting grow so onerous? Warner maintains it's partly out of mothers' hands. Our middle-class world scarcely resembles that of our parents. Warner calls on the government to step up. Much economic pressure on the middle class could be alleviated, she writes, through "progressive tax polices that would transfer our nation's wealth back to the middle class." Thus, many parents would have more time for their families. The rest of her list is a no-brainer, but bears repeating: tax subsidies for corporations that encourage family-friendly policies; serious federal and state health and safety standards to improve the quality of child care. Because contrary to what many guilt-plagued moms believe, their exhaustion and fear of failure isn't all their fault. Government can help and government can hurt. Too often, in the case of assisting middle-class families, it's doing too little. We can also help ourselves. At some point, a parent who is bouncing along like a windblown tumbleweed from point A to Z has to stop. All by yourself. Someone — another parent, a church leader, a child-rearing "expert" — may have led you to believe that doing, and running and overscheduling leads to perfection. Nah. It only leads to insanity. That's why at this house we don't do much anymore. Especially on these rare and blissful holidays. We sleep in. We read comic books. We shoot hoops, totally unstructured. We hang. I am not sure we're progressing. But whatever it is we're doing, we're enjoying it.

Holly Mullen
22 February 2005

http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_2581286

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