I Will Not Have That…I Will Not Have It
Do you remember the Tiger Mom hoopla just over a decade ago? A Yale Law professor, Amy Chua, published a book titled Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom, contrasting Western parenting styles and Chinese parenting style, and the public response all but broke the internet. I didn’t read the book or watch the interviews, and only skimmed the myriad articles, but casually followed the outcry with amused interest.
When I was in divinity school I lived for two years with a Chinese American family and helped care for three children. Almost forty years ago now the family was featured in a national news magazine story on Chinese American parenting. Mother Elaine was quoted as saying, “to have a Chinese mother is to have a Jewish mother”, indicating the similarity of parenting across cultural lines. (A point Amy Chua also made in Battle Hymn of the Tiger, insisting that Chinese mothers don’t have to be Chinese mothers). A photograph accompanying the article, showing three year old Andy and two year old Margaret poring over a large book, provides a lasting source of private family amusement: what you can’t see in the published photograph is that the book was upside down.
Fast forward seven or eight years from the publication of the article and Elaine would tell me that if Andy told her, “Lisa said I could it,” ;she knew it was OK to give her permission for whatever ‘it’ was, because I was much stricter with him than she was. Fast forward another few decades and a few detours along the way, and Andy has a degree or two from UMass, Margaret holds one from Stanford, a baby sister Irene holds one from Cornell. The three went into business together and then went their separate but related ways. Andy owns a wine bar with a partner and also a mobile beer tap truck. Irene, a James Beard award winning chef, owns a dumpling factory and restaurant with a focus on locally sourced foods, and advocates for diversity, equity and inclusion and transparency in the food service industry. And together Margaret and Irene have published a cookbook and a second book about cooking to eliminate food waste. Elaine’s and her late husband Fred’s particular mix of Chinese American parenting supported by a revolving case of au pairs and assorted live-in babysitters of various national and ethnic origins seems to have accomplished what parenting should: children grown into independent, productive, socially conscious, healthy adults.
I will not have that S@#t. I will not have it.
Whether we are conscious of it or not, child psychologists and other experts in the field of child development tell us, whether we are conscious of it or not, this is the attitude we all want from our parents and others who parent us. As infants and toddlers and young children and teen-agers we crave clear and unmistakable limits consistently enforced by older, wiser, more experienced, even bigger, figures of trust. The experts tell us that limits make us feel secure. I think they also make us feel protected and teach us about accepting guidance and even seeking it out. Touching a hot stove may be a sure fire lesson in what to avoid touching next time. Touching a hot stove paired with the memory of a parent telling us countless times not to touch the hot stove begins to teach us that we don’t always have to learn things the hard way. That sometimes we can avoid pain, injury, heart-break, or embarrassment simply by recognizing that often mother/father/parent really does know best, and with that knowledge, eventually, maybe, respecting the limits they set.
Human nature being what it is, however, this matter of limits is complicated. As much as we may subconsciously long for limits, we run full tilt against them from the moment we can shrik in dismay. We text them sporadically and cautiously as we make our way through childhood. Trying out a swear word here or refusing to eat a vegetable there. And we mount full-scale rebellions as teens.
Then sometime a few years into adulthood a curious, infuriating phenomenon occurs: we begin to long for someone older, wiser, more experienced, perhaps even bigger and more powerful than ourselves to tell us exactly what the limits are. Not civil or criminal laws. Not employee handbook regulations. But parent stuff. The stuff we ask advice columnists:
Has my own child’s attitude crossed the line from ‘kids will be kids’ to harmful disrespect?
How many times should I allow that person to betray me/belittle me/let me down before ending a life-long friendship?
What can I reasonably expect from my partner in terms of supporting me in difficult situations?
How will I know when I’m ready to be a parent?
My job allows me to provide a wonderful life for my family, but it's killing me inside. Is it OK to make a change?
Has the time for life-giving measures come to an end?
Friends can advise us.So can teachers and therapists and ministers. Experts in finance and relationships and parenting and ethic have wisdom to dispense. But after a certain age no longer can we say, “sorry, I’d like to give pot a try but my parents would ground me for life., so, no, thanks.” After a certain age even if they are still living, even if they still want to try (and they almost always do), parents can no longer set and enforce life’s limits for us.
Most of us accept this passage with a mixture of gratitude and regret. Heady with the freedom of making it on our own and frightened to death of the lonely responsibility of doing just that.
I wonder, though, if as Billy Collins suggests in his poem, we can’t become both parent and child. Can we mother ourselves? Father ourselves? Parent ourselves? Can the parent witn us say to the child within us, “I will not have that Sh#t. I will not have it.”
Most of us are pretty good at looking out for those we love. We remind them to go to bed when they’re feeling poorly. We get indignant when they are slighted. We encourage them to take a shot at promotions or to follow their conscience and leave a position with an unethical company. We stage interventions when needed and throw celebrations when called for. Some of us, perhaps not all, but certainly many of us, aren’t nearly as good as looking out for ourselves.
So, here’s the question, this Mother’s Day: aren’t you, aren’t I, isn’t any one of us worthy of the same care we offer our loved ones? Shouldn’t we be loving enough to say to ourselves, when necessary, “hey! Wait a minute. I will not have that foolishness, that disrespect, that cruelty. I will not have it.”
It’s tough, of course. This is real life not television where an angel and a devil, or in this case, a parent and a child pop out and sit on each of our shoulders, one to tempt us and one to caution us. If we want the parent within to appear we gotta really summon them, we gotta give them permission to speak their mind, and we gotta listen to what they say.
Mother’s Day can be sort of a land-mine holiday–because, let’s face it, not all mother/child relationships are the stuff of Hallmark commercials. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, to mix my metaphors, of all the possible problems with a too all-encompassing, too enthusiastic, too indiscriminate celebration of mothers. We’ll tackle childlessness by choice, adoption, step-moms, fertility issues, gay parenting, non-binary parenting, children with multiple others and all sorts of other land-mines in other years.
In the meantime, there is this: you can be, for yourself, the exact kind of mother, parent you long for. Be a Chinese American parent or a Tiger Mom or a Jewish mother or a helicopter parent. Be a hip parent who offers a lot of leeway along with a few clear rules and a handful of funky ideas. Call in the help of nannies and mannies and aunties and au pairs, but retain your rightful authority as parent, and listen to your own heart’s parental wisdom. You know your child, the child within you, the best. You make the calls.
Back in college I stumbled into a job that had a profound impact on my life. My biology lab partner, who was a psych major, called me just days into summer break to tell me the place she was interning had a few openings and I should apply. That’s how I came to spend two summers with the Program for Exceptional Children with Communication and Interaction Disorders, part of Minneapolis Children’s Hospital. It provided a half-day programming for preschoolers on the autism spectrum, though back in the mid-1980s, in that setting at least, we didn’t use that phrase.
Most of the children were assigned a one-on-one tutor, a few had one tutor to two children, and the children in the concurrent sibling program had a slightly higher ratio of children to adults. The tutors were an assortment of psycho majors, education majors, special ed majors, students of children development, speech therapy and other related fields. And one odd person out with an English/Religion double major. Our work was closely supervised by a large staff of professionals in all those fields. We weekly inservice training on a variety of topics. And the daily journals we were required to keep were read by one of the professionals who would provide written feedback, support and critique. I can imagine how invaluable that level of practical experience and supervision was to the other tutors as they prepared for careers in their chosen fields.
As for me, I never intended to be a teacher or therapist of any kind, Even then I knew I was destined for a Unitarian Universalist pulpit. But that accidental summer job prepared me well for a series of part-time and temporary jobs as a respite care provider and paraprofessional in special education, not to mention for becoming a foster parent and an adoptive parent. My fellow tutors received academic credit. I got a small stipend and insight into the human condition that informs my personal and professional life to this day. There were important specific lessons, but the overarching one, the one I return to is this: almost everything that is good and effective and respectful and healthy in working with kids with special needs is in fact good and effective and respectful and healthy in working with any child, or adult for that matter. Lots of communication of intention. Care around transitions. Respect for autonomy. And clear limits, boundaries, and expectations.
Clear limits and boundaries and expectations are vital to parenting and teaching and ministry and to relationships of all kinds, but alone don’t make good parents or teachers or friends or internal guides. Good communication, care around transitions, and respect for autonomy are important too. Laughter, tears and the wiping away of tears, song and hugs and long-winded explanations, fanciful stories, tough questions and a solid ground of shared experience are just as important. But my premise still holds. And it holds for lovingly, effectively parenting ourselves.
Whether you need a parent to declare, I will not have that [nonsense], I will not have it, or a parent to wrap you in your tattered blanket and support your lolling head while showing you the moon, you have the parent you need within you. Whatever your gender, the best, precious-beyond-all-value gift you have to give this Mother’s Day and every day of your life is the gift of mothering yourself. May you give it with abundant love. May you receive it with unending joy. Amen.