‘A LIFELONG MINEFIELD OF DOUBT AND INSECURITY’
Diana Wichtel says parentsplaining is part and parcel of this judgmental world
Ihave been judged. At a mothers’ group with my voracious newborn, known as “the jaws of doom”, I hid my bottle of supplementary formula. Breast is best but sometimes you need to live to fight another day.
We have had to explain ourselves to other parents for letting our kids play rugby, for sending them to school instead of teaching them — God forbid — at home. For letting a 10-year-old watch an episode of The Sopranos. My bad. It’s still presented as evidence for the prosecution when my eccentricities as a mother are raised.
I have judged. In one baby group I attended, a mum insisted on changing even the most aggressively anti-social nappy in the middle of a circle of exhausted mothers trying to eat afternoon tea. There were the parents who believed you shouldn’t say “no”. One threatened to never leave our home because her toddler had bailed herself up behind a chair. We waited for the child to indicate she was ready to depart. Just pick her up, ignore the screaming and go.
Television has produced whole genres — Supernanny, the collected works of Nigel Latta — devoted to allowing armchair experts to feel superior to the parents of feral children named Tarquin. Now there is Three’s Parental Guidance, an Australian show featuring 10 sets of parents there to judge and be judged on their parenting styles. I have been a mother for more than 40 years. I have never heard of “New French” parenting. It seems to mean raising a child who will eat escargots. There are the inevitable Tiger parents, the Attachment parents, the Nature parents who bring up five kids in nature and live in one tent. Sorry, I’m judging. There is pastor Andrew and his wife Miriam. Their style is heavy on words like “strict” and “correction”. Judging again and it’s only episode one.
In loco parentis is expert Dr Justin Coulson. The show is about “changing the conversation” about parenting. All very well but it’s a reality show, which means there will be tears before bedtime — and not from the kids. The introduction to strict Andrew and Miriam is edited to focus on them barking instructions and Andrew silencing his kids’ conversation at dinner so he can read to them from the Bible.
Attachment parents Lara and Andrew speak in preternaturally calm voices. Their kids don’t have tantrums, they have “big feelings”. See little Raphael repeatedly kicking the family car. Their segment is edited to include such lines as, “Uh-oh, Raphy, we don’t hurt with knives.”
And yet beleaguered parents — are there any other kind, even if you live in nature? — should watch this show. In one stunningly revealing parenting “challenge” the children take over running things. The attachment children meet their parents’ emotional needs adorably. The children of strict Andrew and Miriam instantly morph into gleeful tyrants, speaking ominously of discipline, ordering their parents to their room, and hitting them with a wooden spoon. Uh-oh.
Later, tearful authoritarian Andrew seemed to be at least reconsidering keeping smacking in his “parenting toolbox”. The other parents, bristling with judgment, were asked who had ever smacked. Hands went up. No one’s perfect. A teaching opportunity for Dr Justin: research shows smacking doesn’t work. So did this episode.
It’s a reality show. There has to be a winner, which rather undermines the show’s other message: parenting is tough. Everyone is doing their best. See dads Tony and Brett, the self-described “only single-sex parents with two sets of twins born on the same day”. They survive four 9-year-old boys via rigid routine but the house is full of hugs and laughs.
The best lesson so far is one of the hardest to keep in mind over the parenting long haul. “What do you want your child to be?” purred Dr Justin. “You need to be that.” It sounds so simple. Yet, as every veteran parent understands, none of us really knows what we are doing.
Being a mum is the best thing I’ve ever experienced. It’s also a lifelong minefield of doubt and insecurity. You do your best. Whatever you do, you will be judged.