Self-Parenting in Adult Relationships

Libby Anne is one of my favorite bloggers around, particularly when she writes about positive parenting. Although I never intend to be a parent myself, I find her insights refreshing, but also applicable to all kinds of relationships beyond the parent/child one.

In a recent post about positive parenting, she had one line in particular that stuck out to me: “I would call for a different response, one where past mistakes lead not to dwelling on guilt but rather to resolve to do better in the future, and where mistakes aren’t glibly justified as acceptable rather than merely understandable.”

In this case, she’s talking about parents losing their temper with their kids. But this statement can apply to any relationship, and is just as often a problem in other circumstances: romantic relationships, friendships, or even professional relationships. People are really bad at both forgiving themselves and still taking responsibility. These two things can look contradictory. It turns out they’re actually complementary in really helpful ways.

Oftentimes we view mistakes as something that needs to be dealt with on an individual level: how do you approach your own mistakes? There are a fair number of techniques for how to deal with guilt and taking responsibility geared towards individual people. And in relationships we get some advice about mistakes when it comes to communication style (e.g. don’t use someone else’s past mistakes against them), but rarely do we think about how to deal with mistakes as a partnership.

In all relationships it’s important to recognize when you’ve hurt someone, lost your temper, behaved inappropriately, violated a boundary, or done something else that will damage the relationship. But those narratives make it easy to turn ourselves into awful monsters, or even to play a kind of a martyr card (“I’m the worst, most awful person ever” is really code for “reassure me that I’m good”). This can also lead into relationship tropes of who is the good one and who is the bad one. It’s easy to take on roles.

What isn’t as easy is admitting to a mistake and then working with the other person to constructively avoid the mistake in the future. What does that pragmatically mean? It means asking your partner (in whatever relationship) if they feel hurt or violated in some way and doing your best to rectify the current situation. Then it means taking the time to figure out why you did what you did. A lot of the time the ways we screw up with other people make sense. People get stressed out and tired, things push our buttons, other people are just plain hard sometimes. But even if something is understandable, that doesn’t make it justifiable.

So once you know the why you can look for ways to bypass that why. If you’re tired and cranky can you let your partner know in some way? Do you need to take space for yourself? Do you need to feed yourself or take a nap? It’s often easier to think about these things like you might think about parenting a child because the parts of us that lose our tempers are often rooted in childlike behaviors and patterns. What would you do for a little kid that was having a meltdown? Establish routine, make sure they’re fed and rested, and give them space to feel their feels.

And as adults we can go steps further to understand our own idiosyncrasies, heading them off at the pass. I get cranky when plans change at the last minute, so I try to make sure the people I care about know that and know to give me as much advance warning as they can when they want to do something. I also have worked to have backup plans or ideas in my mind. My boyfriend doesn’t like it when I’m on my phone or my computer when we’re doing something together, so he’s asked me to be clear about whether we’re just going to be engaged in parallel play style interactions or really be doing something together. In response, I have tried to be more engaged when we’re doing something together.

These things are work. They are the work of being responsible but also kind to yourself. Dwelling on guilt is harmful not only to yourself but also to your relationships. It’s easy to see relationship breakdowns as all one person’s fault or all the other person’s fault. If they didn’t do anything wrong, then I must be to blame. If I feel I did everything right, then it must be their fault for being hurt or upset.

Instead, imagine that each of us is trying to parent the kid version of ourselves. Sometimes we need some help with that parenting. And all of us make mistakes. It’s time to learn that what’s important is growing from it, not taking the blame.

Kid Free and Likely to Remain So

Arg. So I ran across a link to this article today about why it’s so very horrible to not have kids. I’m a bit miffed to say the least, as I don’t intend to ever have children and this person apparently thinks that this means I’m selfish and will be alone and uncared for in my old age. But here’s the problem: this article makes pretty much 0 logical arguments about what the actual problem with people who don’t have kids is. It suggests that they’re taking up valuable space where families with kids could have schools or be living in larger houses…but really the problems there seem to be bad access to education (not enough funding or bad layouts of cities) or not enough affordable housing for large families. The family of two living in the suburbs really isn’t taking away from other families, as suburbs are a privileged living situation in the first place and one of the larger housing markets. And if they’re miserable out there, isn’t that their own business?

 

It suggests that childless couples are heartless and want to ban kids from everywhere, or that they should go live some sort of crazy party lifestyle in downtown instead of living in the nice residential neighborhoods with schools. Well those are some pretty broad generalizations with no support to back them up, and if someone wants to live in an area with a school in it they’re completely entitled to do that. Honestly they’re putting in money to the school through taxes and local referenda and not using the resource, so I don’t see how it can be a negative. This suggests that a childless couple has nothing to contribute to a neighborhood which is highly insulting in my opinion.

 

As for the heartless idea, many childless couples actually love kids but don’t want them for themselves. Lots of couples with kids are actually really bitchy towards kids. So…that’s a pointless argument.

 

So as far as I can tell, this article gives no real reasons why it’s BAD for society to have childless married couples. It seems to hint that it might not be a choice that leads to happiness or fulfillment, but it also recognizes that happiness is subjective and different people might want different things, so…not sure what to make of that. However I can give you a multitude of reasons why I feel that it is ethical for me to remain childless.

 

1.The world in general has an overpopulation problem. We don’t know how to distribute our resources in an equitable manner. With this being the case, I think that it’s a better use of my energy and resources to try to care for the people who are already alive than to try to bring more people into the world. If I did want children, I would adopt.

 

2.I have a mental illness. This impacts my decision in a number of ways. First, I do not want to pass that on to any children of mine. I KNOW that all of my mental illnesses are highly heritable (particularly eating disorders) and if a child of mine ended up with one I would not be able to forgive myself. Second, I don’t think that I could be an adequate parent knowing how I react to stress. I would not want to bring a child into this world knowing that they have a high potential for mental illness and knowing that the stresses of raising a child would make me a less than ideal parent and potentially trigger relapse for me.

 

3.I don’t have the resources to adequately care for children and I don’t think I ever will based upon my career path. It’s unethical to bring a human being into this world if you can’t take care of them.

 

4.I feel that I can contribute more to my community in other ways. If I were to have children, I would be more likely to turn into one of those angry, bitter people who wants kids out of all restaurants. This may be selfish of me, but I think it’s entirely ok to be selfish enough to take care of your well-being. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact our world might be a little more ethical if all of us were willing to take a little more time to think about how we can care for our mental and emotional health.

 

Maybe I will never get having kids. That’s ok. There are people who will never understand what it’s like to be a married woman without kids (because if there’s something that’s frowned on in this society that’s it). There are people who will never understand having a mental illness or being black or being rich or being poor. Not all of us have to have all the same experiences. THAT’S OK. We can still respect each other and the choices that others make, and try to stand up for our own needs while taking others into account (so for example I’m terrified of kids. I might choose to go to a more upscale restaurant or a bar so as to avoid kids, but I would never try to get kids kicked out of a restaurant because I know that having kids can be tough and that’s rude).

 

We don’t need any more us vs. them logic, especially in terms of marriage, child-bearing, and family choices. We’ve got that from here to the moon. We’ve got stay at home moms vs career moms, we’ve got religious vs non religious, we’ve got married vs unmarried…what we DO need is more empathy on all sides and the recognition that each of us find fulfillment in different ways and contribute to society in different ways. I may never produce a brilliant child who goes on to do something awesome, but perhaps I will do some amazing organizing work that contributes to mental health access or to education access. Perhaps I will write something that touches other people. There are so many ways I could contribute to the next generation and I don’t to be pigeon holed as selfish because I have chosen not to use my reproductive organs.

Look at how happy I am up there without any kids and with someone who loves me. I think I’m doing pretty well.