Before and After: The Parent's Reward

One of the most pitiful misapprehensions a parent can evince is dismay at their child's ingratitude.  I'm still a newcomer to this game but I hope fervently that I shall not become one of those dads bemoaning his teen taking everything for granted.  If you want gratitude get a dog.  

Instead the joy of children is in their unexcelled solipsism.  This realisation hit me forcefully with the arrival of our baby.  His beginning was an end for me.  And not the end of freedom, of impulsive weekends in Paris (like they ever happened), of disreputable nights bleeding sybaritically into days at Gerry's on Dean Street (yeah, not many of those either actually).  But an actual end.  Because to your child your life before their birth did not exist.  They may take an interest, they may not, they may trade exaggerated tales of glamour, tragedy or drama when they start dating but it's all second hand: your life become prologue.

Even more gallingly when life as you know it hits the buffers upon their arrival, when literally every moment is spent in anguish about the adequacy of your parenting they are blissfully, insouciantly, unaware of the comet thudding impact they have had.  Furthermore, adding insult to injury, when they become walking, talking reasoning beings they can't even remember any of it.

Summon up the earliest memory of your parents.  Now realise that preceding it were months, weeks, days, hours and minutes of self-sacrifice, of anxiety about your wellbeing, were you warm enough, fed enough, rested enough, stimulated enough and, of course, changed enough.  I would therefore like to take this opportunity to thank my ma and pa.  True it is there was quite a lot of delegation of the more liquid aspects of early parenting but even allowing for that I don't think I've done much by way of articulating, still less demonstrating, my gratitude for all that they did and, perhaps more importantly, forewent when I turned up.

And as night follows day so do thoughts of before turn to thoughts of after.  If nature is, God willing, uninterrupted your children will be your genetic legacy.  When you are dust and ashes your children will be your living history.  A more vital and visceral reminder of your mark on the world than any novel, painting, song or tweet ever could be.

It is in our parenting that we achieve the fullest revelation of our relationship with our parents as this illuminating article on attachment theory demonstrates and at the same time it is in our children that we see the future we shall never know, that is the paradox of parenthood and all the reward we should ever reasonably expect.

Blank Slates & Babies

'Treasure this special time, it passes so quickly' is something my wife and I have been repeatedly told in the last few weeks.  Given the annihilation parenthood brings of everything you once held dear  this advice seems absolutely absurd.  Even the routine of the irregular is lost forever when a child is born and the permanent twilight zone that new parents inhabit feels anything but special.  Having a baby is like the worst ever game of charades - every clue is crying and every answer milk.

And yet dimly I understand the meaning of these well-wishers.  A baby in its earliest weeks and months is the definition of a blank slate.  When we wonder why we procreate it is of course to satisfy primal genetic urges to replicate our DNA but there is also the enjoyment of moulding a miniature version of ourselves.  Anyone involved in a long term relationship knows how stubbornly resistant partners can be to seeing the world our way which is, of course, the right way.  Children are the perfect solution to the impasse which soon develops

How defenceless a newborn is; how completely dependent.  Few things are more amusing than a baby's startle reflex, especially when they sleep, but how completely inadequate a response it is to the hungry attentions of a predator.  Without us parents babies are just lunch to the nearest sharp toothed carnivore.  

And so in those first few weeks although a baby may wail a bit we can satisfy ourselves with how completely they will be attuned with our Weltanschauung (as my wife would say) when in just a few short months they can communicate.  But then how crushing the disappointment when finally the longed for moment comes.  Your child proves even more recalcitrant and unreasonable than your wife (NB your wife, not my wife).  How prone to the blandishments of TV advertising, how sugar obsessed, how contrary.

This is what people mean when they enjoin you to hold close every second with a baby because babies can't disappoint: in fact they can't do anything except babying.  What I especially enjoy are the expressions so loaded with meaning so utterly divorced from what the baby is at that moment experiencing.  My particular favourites are glances of importunate beseeching and earth stopping reproach.  A baby's face is an open book but all the words are unknowable.

It won't be long now before I discover the baby shares my wife's scorn for French baroque music ('too many bells'), that he favours a Full Windsor knot and that he doesn't like oysters.  Until then I am treasuring every minute.

Let's Talk About Sex Baby

My son is 7 weeks old today.  If I was writing this blog properly this would be all about sleepless nights, estrangement from the life I once knew and hilarious anecdotes about nappies.  Instead I have been thinking about other things.  In particular the burden of having 'the chat' with my son has been weighing heavily on me.  Many have observed that modernity has robbed children of their childhood.  But it's a prudent fact that no child is too young to be safe from the dangers of the world.  The baleful reality is that no matter how awkward it'll be for both of us I am just going to have to tell my son that Donald Trump will indeed be the next president of the United States of America.

I was put in mind of this topic by a friend lamenting on social media that she feels the time has come to tell her 5 year old daughter the facts of life and regretting that by doing so the Age of Innocence will be in full retreat.  It is almost certainly a hallmark of my inexperience as a parent that I am baffled by British birds and the bees anxiety.  If you find sex embarrassing, anxious making and shaming then I can see why telling a small child about it would provoke just those feelings in you and the child.  If on the other hand you think it is fun, wonderful but something worth approaching in an adult way there is a good chance you will communicate those attitudes to your offspring.

Children can't possibly understand adulthood but the mere fact that they are surrounded by giants suffices to give them a clue that theirs is not a permanent state.  Sex, drugs but maybe not rock'n'roll are properly left to adulthood or at least liminal adolescence.  Pretending they don't exist, however, is what in ages past left girls menstruating in horrified confusion.

Childhood is, nonetheless, undoubtedly a time of innocence and the preciousness of that is acknowledged universally.  Every child born is innocent of hate, of violence, of selfishness, of jealousy and of pride.  No parent worth the name would wish to introduce these concepts to their child until it is absolutely necessary.  Ignorance of the ills of the world is worth truly treasuring because it is an innocence that must and will one day be lost; ideally not until a child is old enough to reason with human fallibility.

I have no anxiety about one day telling my son where he came from.  In contrast I already have minor panic attacks about one day explaining how to reconcile atheism with an acceptance of the divine, whether monogamy is a virtue, and how to change the spark plugs.  

Economists often like to explain the complexities of macroeconomics by recasting the national debt in terms of household income and expenditure.  Bizarrely this approach has never translated as a prism through which presidential candidates can and should be assessed.  We like in Britain to ponder whether a politician is someone we could go for a pint with.  I venture that in future there should be a babysitter test for presidential candidates.  Of the many things I so ardently esteem about Barack Obama is that he so palpably understands and fulfils the responsibilities of a parent as this delightful sequence of images demonstrates, he is an adult who gets children, what they want and, much more importantly, what they need.

In contrast the next President is an adult who is a child and a child whose innocence of the sins of the world was long ago stripped from him.  And I'll bet that wasn't from having 'the chat' too tenderly.