I’m wrong about everything – just ask my children
First your children idolise you, then they see through you, then they forgive you. That’s how the parenting cliche goes. I remember when I first read it. The kids were really small, and I’d stolen 25 seconds from the ceaselessness to look at Twitter, which was all I ever looked at then. Before long, two sentences came to represent the absolute outer limit of my concentration span, and that, I’m afraid, is still true. The end of idolisation can’t come soon enough, I thought. Roll on seeing through me, bring forth scornful self-reliance. Sure, it will be sad when the magic of childhood is replaced by the cynicism of adolescence, but on the plus side, at least they’ll be able to travel unaided to the toilet.
I maybe didn’t give enough thought to what the process of being seen through would entail. It starts with the systematic, real-time dismantling of all authority. These are all the things I’m no longer to be trusted on, as of this weekend: what length hair should be; where to play badminton; which of geography and history is more interesting; categories of skin type (“oily” and “combination” are no longer in use, in the 21st century); anything to do with vegetarianism, or Ukraine, or animal husbandry; computers and phones; how to cross a road; the world of work; and the identification of insects. I didn’t even realise how much casual authority I had until it was all stripped away. I think I debased the currency by having too many strong opinions. Now I could have a full wheelbarrow of views and it wouldn’t buy me even a single slice of credibility.
I suggested we all take a new approach, work on the assumption that I’m ignorant of almost everything, and only mention the subjects on which I am still a trusted source. “The 1960s,” said one. “I wasn’t alive in the 1960s!” “OK, boomer,” said the other. “I’m not a boomer! I’m generation X!” “Boomer is more of a vibe,” said the first. “Being surprised by completely predictable things,” said the second. “I completely trust you to be amazed by things that aren’t amazing.”
It came at me quite fast, this shift from “oracle” to “person who is wrong about almost everything”, but I’m developing some adaptive strategies, such as “being wrong on purpose, to comic effect” and “not completely listening”.
Much harder to process is the cast change: for years, in the drama that is any household, the parents are the main characters, and the children have supporting roles, bringing cute moments and weird allergies to give texture to the narrative arc of the leads. Then, wham! One night, there you are, watching TV, perhaps you fall asleep a little earlier than you planned, perhaps the next generation stays up chatting
past midnight. However they managed to orchestrate this, it has happened: they are now the heroes. If anyone were to make a poster of us all, their names would be bigger. The process must have been incremental, so how did I not see it coming? Did it start when one was suddenly taller? Or when one of the short ones started having a bath of their own free will?
Economists say that the individual’s contract with capitalism is premised on seeing one’s children do better than oneself, and I always think: doesn’t that depend on the baseline? If you were rich already, would you necessarily long for your children to be richer? Could this be one of those things that economists are wrong about?
To see your children become the protagonist, on the other hand – to become, yourself, a footnote to their story, a stub in their Wikipedia entry, this was definitely the whole point. It’s the natural order of things. You sure as hell wouldn’t want it the other way round. So why is it so incredibly surprising? Oh right, I forgot: being surprised by completely predictable things – that’s my specialist subject.