Parenthood: the unending fear
‘ONCE she was born I was never not afraid. I was afraid of swimming pools, high-tension wires, lye under the sink, aspirin in the medicine cabinet... I was afraid of rattlesnakes, riptides, landslides, strangers who appeared at the door, unexplained fevers, elevators without operators and empty hotel corridors. The source of the fear was obvious: It was the harm that could come to her.”
Joan Didion wrote that in Blue Nights, her memoir about the life and death of her daughter Quintana.
Rearing children can be the greatest source of joy in life, but it can also be the most fearful, the most uneasy, experience we will have. Parents have always been afraid. They’ve been afraid of the Charleston, of jazz, of reefer madness, of mini skirts, of sex, of the sexual revolution, of bicycles home from the dance, of drive-in movies, of discos, of sleepovers, of teenage boys and their hormones, of teenage girls and their hormones. Every generation of parents has had their fears, and sometimes we look back now and laugh. And sometimes that makes us discount the fears we have now. We worry we are just being old-fashioned or fuddy-duddy. But the truth is we all know there is something wrong. There’s something different now. We know there were always anxious children, and we know we are quicker to label things now, but still we know that there is something wrong in this modern world that is making so many of our young people so anxious.
We know there were always bullies and we know there were always bullied children, sad children, leftout children, children who weren’t robust, children who seemed fine but weren’t. But still we know it’s that bit harder now. We know they always had secrets, but somehow the secrets seem more dangerous now. We know there were always bad influences and undesirable friends, and we know that you could never control what kids would do all the time, and who they were with, and what they heard. But somehow it all seems more toxic now.
Somehow, in an age when we try to protect our kids and limit their freedom more than ever, they seem to be in more danger. Somehow, all the bad things seem to be amplified now, and they pass like a virus between the kids in a secret world. If Joan Didion was writing now, she would perhaps say: “Once she was born I was never not afraid. I was afraid of the internet, of social media, of her growing up too fast, of a whole world of pressure and secrets there in her phone and in her bedroom that I know nothing about, of not knowing what was going on with her, of thinking she was fine, that she had friends and was chatty, and she seemed happy, but she was not.”