4199

What, indeed.  Many of us may have grown up in a household
made up of a mother and father, but today’s families are living works of art in
diversity.  In my own circle of
friends  parents are grandparents; single
parents; foster parents; same-sex couples; different race- or religion couples;
adoptive parents and people who are childless but parenting every neighbourhood
child with equal parts delight, common sense and ice-cream.

Needing to Be Needed

Time magazine recently broke the
astonishing news of a pregnancy-pact among high-school girls in a small town in
Massachusetts.  The girls, all aged sixteen or younger, had
agreed to become mothers and take care of their babies together, and eighteen
of them are now pregnant.

Apart from the very real physical risk to
such young women during pregnancy and birth, the social connotation to young
girls becoming mothers speaks so much of a need to be loved; to have someone
who will want, need and depend on them exclusively.

“Life’s Longing for Itself …”

And therein, for me, lies at least part of
the answer to the midwife’s question: 
being a parent cannot be about narcissism.  Having a child so that we can see ourselves
in them; so that we have someone to love and need us; or in order to relive
parts of our own lives in a different way can only be hurtful to the child and
disappointing for the parent.

Kahlil Gibran speaks beautifully of this
when he says: 

“Your children are not your children.  They are the sons and daughters of Life’s
longing for itself.  They come through
you but are not from you, and though they are with you yet they belong not to
you …You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in
the house of tomorrow which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.”

Living Consciously

The mothers I know are diverse:  they have run marathons, triumphed over
illness, ascended corporate ladders, graduated with honours and campaigned for
justice.  They are united in one thing
only:  whatever they’ve achieved, being a
parent is harder.

A small person screaming until he turns
purple very easily gets even the calmest and most self-possessed adult to the
point of despair on a bad day.  If we’ve
had the baby in order to feel loved or special, we’re absolutely not going to
feel it then!

Having a child, especially a baby, is a
reminder that we were once babies and children. 
To be able to contain their hurt, fear and anger is to be able to see
those emotions in ourselves. 

And that’s
a lot of what I believe parenting is about: 
being willing to have our children mirror to us those parts of ourselves
– inadequacy or anger, fearfulness or need to control – that still need healing
in some way.   

That same midwife calls children “the
essence of heaven”.  And so they are, for
they bring the opportunity not to live our lives over, but to live them better.