Who remembers that sing-song accusation we chanted at neighbor kids or classmates suspected of puppy love? You know, the one about “kissing in a tree” that culminated in: “. . .first comes love/then comes marriage/then comes Baby in the baby carriage.”
Just so, parenthood may simply show up on one’s to-do list. Graduate from college, check. Buy a car, check. Sign mortgage papers, check. Fight over the wedding guest list, check … you get the idea. On a graph it would look a bit like my 15-year-old’s math homework, a curve that follows a neat pattern if you correctly apply the formula for sine or cosine.
Perhaps that sounds harsh. I realize that this isn’t the way everyone’s life works out. I also realize that most readers of this publication really wanted kids and are dedicated to them. Sometimes, though, I get the disturbing feeling that some parents are a little dazed and confused about the whole enterprise. My hunch is born out by research that indicates that parenting contributes to dissatisfaction or depression in greater measures than it indicates likelihood of happiness. (Read Minnesota Public Radio reporter Nanci Olesen’s blog on the subject and check out the embedded links to the studies themselves at tinyurl.com/388jwn.)
Well, duh, parenting is difficult and stressful at times. And one day, when my kids have flown the nest, I will be as pleased as the next mom to reclaim my daily schedule and my stuff — say, my shoes, my sweaters, my hair conditioner — from the three people who moved in on my territory one by one beginning some 17 years ago.
But apparently, I’m something of a walking anachronism: I really feel happy and fulfilled as a mother. It’s not the only thing I do with my life, but it’s something I do pretty well and that often brings me a lot of pleasure and satisfaction. Maybe all those years of Catholic school enhanced my skill at the delayed-gratification thing.
Yet, as I interviewed parents and prospective parents about adoption recently (see the story on page 23), I had to reflect on my own motivations in parenthood. Why did I want to be a parent? What keeps me going as a parent? What are my highest values as a parent?
I’ve long believed that birthing children and raising them is, at a certain level, a bit egotistical. I admit it: I revel in my children’s looks, accomplishments, smarts. Even if I never played the flute, took an advanced placement test, or could sing a note, it must be somewhere in the genetic material, right? One kid has her great-grandmother’s nose. Another’s got his uncle’s gait. The third looks just like her daddy.
Look, sometimes the, ah, procurement stage of parenthood is harder for prospective parents than it was for me and my husband: you get snowed in one day in late October, you wake up happy, and you’re changing diapers in July.
Adoptive parents may have tried that route but met with the wall of infertility. Or they may be lesbian or gay couples who cannot possibly biologically reproduce, at least together. Or they may want to avoid creating a new human being when there are already billions on the planet, some of whom have neither parents nor much hope for a decent future. So they call up an agency and take classes and pay lots of money for social workers to come and ask them questions (not unlike those I asked), and interview their friends and family members, and check out their houses, and prepare a report, and choose whether to recommend them. They’re really far, far more thoroughly prepared for parenthood than I ever was.
I asked adoptive parents what motivates them, and they told me things like this: I had a terrific childhood and I wanted to share the things I enjoyed as a kid with someone else. I wanted to be a grandfather and let the grandkids eat from the sugar bowl as I did. I wanted to see life through the eyes of a child. We have a lot to offer, and there are lots of kids who need loving homes.
All parenting, if we’re open to it, involves transforming our own lives by becoming vulnerable to whatever life may bring. And we aren’t guaranteed a particular outcome. But we can resolve to enjoy the ride no matter what.
It seems to me that what adoptive parents, at least the really good ones, demonstrate best is that unconditional-love thing. Here’s what they know, to contradict a popular catch phrase: It’s actually not all about you.
First comes love. Then comes … well, who knows? Then comes, well, more love, if we’re lucky. Happy Valentine’s Day.
Kris Berggren’s sweaters and hair conditioner are never where she left them. She’s a Minneapolis writer who reported on lesbian and gay adoptive families for this issue.
