Post-mortem
On idealism in parenting
For awhile now, I’ve been afraid my idealism was dying.
Afraid—because the deepest truth about me, true from the time I was really self-consciously me, has been my idealism—my sense that everything ought to be good and beautiful, the best conceivable, and I could make it so.
And dying—because I could feel myself becoming bitter; could feel a hard shell forming; could feel my smiles twisting into a sardonic edge.
I haven’t felt these dying pangs in every domain of life. I’ve felt it in one domain only, but arguably the most important one to me: parenting.
I’m a step-mom to an 11-year-old girl and a 9-year-old boy. They are hilarious, adorable, creative, incredibly smart—and I love them more than I imagined possible. I love them so much that, even though it is my most sacred and long-treasured dream, and even though there is ~nothing else that could stop me from pursuing it, I would give up my dream of having a baby and raising a child of my own if I were convinced the negative impact on them would be too great.
But the depth of my love has not been enough to maintain my idealism. Perhaps it has made maintaining it all the more challenging.
The problem isn’t that parenting is hard, or that step-parenting, in certain respects, is even harder. It is…but I relish the work. The problem is something inherent to the role of step-parenting.
Which is… actually there is no clear role.
As a step-parent, I am straddling two worlds. On the one hand, I am fully a parent. My scope of work is the same as a parent and, in countless day-to-day life activities, I am trusted and expected to assume full authority and make unilateral decisions.
In so many ways, my mission is the same as a parent—to help these children grow and live well, to set them up for success and happiness, to guide them through the challenges of life…and my actions in this work matter.
On the other hand, I am properly and necessarily a second-class parent, someone whose opinions, however well-informed or well-reasoned, are immaterial, someone who should not and cannot determine the overall course being set, and someone who, however passionately and rationally may believe some choice is best, has no right to make that call.
In so many ways, I feel less like a parent and more like a soldier fulfilling orders, someone who must swallow any objections and simply intone:
Mine not to make reply,
Mine not to reason why,
Mine but to do and die.1
The emotional toll of all this is hard to estimate. To simultaneously feel the full weight of responsibility on my shoulders … and to have my hands justly tied? To love to the point of distraction, to want the best and to fear the worst to the point of desperation … and to be justly relegated to the margins?
In one moment, I feel the claustrophobic frustration of a caged animal. In another, I feel like babbling in riddles, the expansive madness of Ophelia calling to me. Most often, I have a Byronic sense of tragedy, what Steinbeck and other authors describe as Weltschmerz:
An ache was on the top of his stomach, an apprehension that was like a sick thought. It was a Weltschmerz- which we used to call “Welshrats”- the world sadness that rises into the soul like a gas and spreads despair so that you probe for the offending event and can find none.2
But before succumbing to any mournful dirge, I wondered if there was something wrong with how I was thinking about idealism. Perhaps the problem is not the step-parenting role, or anything about the world at all, but with my idea of what it means to be idealistic, in general, and as a parent in particular.
Here are a couple load-bearing thoughts that have helped bring me clarity:
The ideal must be achievable
To be idealistic is to pursue achievable ideals. It’s not to seek the best as imagined in some mystic paradise, but to seek the best here, now, on Earth.
Seeking an impossible ideal is not the inspiring mandate of a visionary; it is the howling ravings of a madman.
Seeking the best possible in reality requires acceptance of the levers and paths available to you. Pining for an impossible method for achieving your goal is no better a form of idealism than pining for an impossible end result.
Setting ambitious, but achievable goals, and fulling seizing all the means open to you is what idealism consists of.
Successful parenting can’t mean achieving a particular outcome
As a parent, you need to have a vision of the good life. You need to know what a flourishing life entails in order to guide your decisions, choose your sub-goals, or estimate your trajectory. If you want to help your child grow and flourish, you can’t be apathetic about the outcome or ignorant about which outcomes are desirable or not.
But you can’t judge your success as a parent based on whether your child does indeed flourish as an adult… or achieve any outcome in particular at all.
For one thing, people have free will. You can’t force a person, even your own child, to think what you want them to think or to acquire the character you want them to acquire. And you certainly can’t determine their choices as an adult. Whatever you do as a parent, your child’s choices—especially as they enter adolescence and move into adulthood—are fully their own.
For another, there is no true “end point” or “outcome” as far as people are concerned. When should you stop to assess that you’ve met your goal as a parent? If your 18-year-old is happy with a promising career plan..or not? At 22 when they’re reeling from heartbreak and just made a drastic decision to drop out of school and do who-knows-what for who-knows-how-long? At 30 when they’ve finally settled down, seem more responsible, and are starting a family? At 45 when they’re going through a nasty divorce, and they’re filled with bitterness and remorse?
The arc of life is long. Mistakes will be made—perhaps dramatic and painful ones. Your child will take many turns, good and bad. But even people who hit rock bottom can find redemption. And even people who have everything going for them can hit the self-destruct button.
What does this all add up to?
I can save my idealism, but only if I fully recognize what is actually achievable for any parent and what levers I actually have as a step-parent … and … if I stop grieving for what is impossible to achieve and stop wishing for levers I can’t possibly pull.
I may not have the authority of a parent to make all kinds of decisions I might otherwise make, and I may not be able to ensure my step-children are always happy and successful and flourishing their whole life, but I can be ambitious and idealistic in my own role today. I can be ambitious and idealistic for example, in the:
relationships I form and the connection I maintain with my step-kids
home culture I help create
skills and attitudes I model and support at home
happiness and fulfillment I enjoy as a parent
looking out for opportunities and openings to have influence in bigger decision-making
Something has died at the end of all this, but it’s not my idealism. It’s certainly not my passion for parenting or my love for my stepchildren, not even my hope, however fragile, for the future, or my belief that I can achieve success in my own domain.
What has died is my pining for a heaven—for authority I don’t and can’t have, for control no person can have, for guaranteed success or trials without stakes. All this has indeed withered and died.
And good riddance. Its death has saved my soul.
Now trumpeter for thy close,
Vouchsafe a higher strain than any yet,
Sing to my soul, renew its languishing faith and hope,
Rouse up my slow belief, give me some vision of the future,
Give me for once its prophecy and joy.
O glad, exulting, culminating song!
A vigor more than earth's is in thy notes,
Marches of victory—man disenthral'd—the conqueror at last,
Hymns to the universal God from universal man—all joy!
A reborn race appears—a perfect world, all joy!
Women and men in wisdom innocence and health—all joy!
Riotous laughing bacchanals fill'd with joy!
War, sorrow, suffering gone—the rank earth purged—nothing
but joy left!
The ocean fill'd with joy—the atmosphere all joy!
Joy! joy! in freedom, worship, love! joy in the ecstasy of life!
Enough to merely be! enough to breathe!
Joy! joy! all over joy!3
The Charge of the Light Brigade, Alfred, Lord Tennyson
East of Eden, John Steinbeck
The Mystic Trumpeter, Walt Whitman
A beautiful piece, Samantha, and a suitable, soul-restoring resolution. I know that step-parenting is extremely challenging for the precise reasons you identify.