by Ron Fournier
The original sin of parenting is the baggage we drag into it. Each of us, every mother and father, was once an awkward kid chasing daydreams across the years. Then life interrupted our hunt. None of us is a Disney princess or a superhero. Our families don’t resolve their conflicts playfully and prayerfully around a noisy dinner table in exactly 60 minutes. We’re not all pro athletes, Ivy League graduates, and Nobel Prize winners. We didn’t take over Dad’s company or inherit Mom’s grace on the gymnastics mat. We’re too tall or too short, too fat or too skinny, and more mediocre than we had hoped we’d be. We rush into parenthood just in time to compensate for our shortcomings.
We send out our children not as they are but as we think they should be. And, oh, the props: contact lenses, braces, acne cures, and designer clothes…prescription drugs, therapists, beach weeks, and tutors…SAT prep, sports trainers, internships, and summers abroad. Some parents hit the DNA jackpot and their kids meet or exceed their wildest dreams. For most of us that doesn’t happen. Most of us are average, and we raise average kids. They ride the bench, worship Star Trek, develop paunches, or grow hair in odd places. Mothers and fathers don’t want to admit they’re raising ugly or awkward ducklings. Rather than accepting these gifts—our brilliantly unique children—we reshape them.
I know a mother and father on the West Coast who never got over their high school A-list envy. They spent thousands of dollars on pictures for their daughter Sandra’s senior year, come-hither shots by a professional photographer, and thousands more on a prom dress and senior trip, all despite the fact that the father was out of work and borrowing money from family. After graduation, Sandra lost her motivation, lost contact with her friends, dropped out of college, and forever pined for the past. “She peaked in high school,” her aunt told me.
We project so much upon our kids in part because we pour so much into them. Starting in the early 20th century, when a child’s role in the family shifted from economic necessity (working on farms and in factories) to economic burden (thanks to laws against child labor), parents looked to their progeny for emotional affirmation. Modern parents fret and sweat and regret over their children to the extent that they become, as Carl Honoré wrote in Under Pressure, “an extension of the parental ego—a mini-me to eulogize around the water cooler or on Web sites.”
I plead guilty to the mini-me mind-set. Years ago, a colleague reminded me that Take Your Child to Work Day was coming up. “Are you bringing Tyler?” she asked. “I’ve heard so much about him.”
“He can’t get out of school,” I lied. The truth was, I worried that his social awkwardness would be embarrassing.
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The pressure is also external. For instance, popular culture is a conveyer belt of expectations. Movies, television, books, magazines, advertisements, and websites—so many websites!—portray parenting as a high-stakes competition for bright, gorgeous, athletic, rich, happy, polite, funny, charismatic kids, packaged and assembled by The Perfect Parents.
If you owned a TV in the last few years, surely you saw Gerber’s life insurance ad. It featured several young couples seated around a table, drinking coffee and chatting. “So, has anybody actually started saving for college yet?” one man asks the other couples. Cue parental anxiety about education, personal finances, and the economy. The ad drove me nuts. First, it induced pangs of guilt about the little planning Lori and I had done for our kids’ futures. Hey, honey! Do we have insurance for the kids? College plans? Friends who like coffee? Second, it angered me, because life as a parent is fretful enough without a multinational company preying on your fears. The ad’s subtext is clear: If you bring your newborn home from the hospital without a college fund, you suck as a parent.
The more I thought about the ad—and the millions of messages like it coursing throughout popular culture—the more I saw the trap set for our kids: Outsizing expectations is big business in America. You’re going to college, kid, and it better be a damn good one. We got a Gerber Life College Plan!
Even when popular culture and commercialization get it right, the scripts put our lives to shame. There’s a scene from Parenthood in which Max’s father explains how he adjusted to the boy’s insect fixation. “I wish that he had been more into baseball than bugs. But that’s not how it turned out,” Adam Braverman told his brother, a new father. “So now I’m into bugs.” How many parents watched that scene and asked themselves: Why can’t I be more like Adam? Other than me, I mean.
There is another major source of parental expectations. Dreaming big is how mothers and fathers seize control from chaos, which is the essential ingredient of parenting these days. An unforgiving global economy and the Great Recession are punishing families, and kids today arguably have the worst economic prospects of any generation in eight decades. Even more, communication technologies expose them to the darkest corners of humanity. The Internet and ubiquitous media hasten children into adulthood with images that glorify sexual promiscuity, violence, commercialism, greed, and vanity.
This is a scary time to raise kids, and with that anxiety comes the temptation to smother our children in expectations. “Contemporary hyper-parenting is a true product of our times,” wrote authors Alvin Rosenfeld and Nicole Wise in The Overscheduled Child. Edwards, a child development professional and the mother of two young children, said she should know better—and yet she heard “the clock ticking,” her ambitions roiling, from the first day of her pregnancy. “It’s sort of natural, though damaging, to put enormous pressure on these kids before we send them out into this world,” Edwards said, “and to demand perfection almost from day one.” Before day one, actually.
Heidi Murkoff’s book What to Expect When You’re Expecting is considered the pregnancy bible, a global blockbuster that, according to her website, spawned a series of books “to help guide parents through preconception, pregnancy, parenting, and beyond.” Soon-to-be mothers and fathers can register at Murkoff’s site and get updates to help track their baby’s progress, gain access to message boards where hand-wringing parents trade advice, and receive e-coupons for diapers, vitamins, educational software, and other products appealing to parental palpitations.
If expectations are a trap, whattoexpect.com is honey bait. An interactive graphic on its homepage allows parents to toggle along a timeline from “One Week Pregnant” to “3rd Year” and compare their child’s progress to the site’s expectations. Underlying each how-to story is an unspoken critique.
• 5 Weeks Pregnant: “How Big Is Your Baby?” (Translation: Your baby looks sort of small. Is it okay?)
• 10 Weeks Pregnant: “Ways to Nurture Your Relationship.” (You need to get along better with your kid!)
• 17 Weeks Pregnant: “What Your Baby Can Do This Week.” (What’s your baby not doing? There might be something wrong!)
• 39 Weeks Pregnant: “Prepping for Childhood.” (Dear Lord, you’re not ready to be a mom!)
The Internet is awash in the business of bearing perfect babies. Ads and ad-supported content nag parents: Play music near the womb (classical, not country), talk to him (soothing tones, adult words), read to her (the classics, ideally), touch the mother’s belly and feed her lots of omega-3 fatty acids. One article had 25 tips so contradictory and complicated that my stomach hurt by the time I got to this nugget: “Stay relaxed and stress-free.”
Relax. It might help to realize we’re not the first generation of parents to raise kids in scary times. To pick a period in history, the late 1800s and early 1900s presented parents with challenges that echo ours. First, wrenching economic change (from a farm-based economy to an industrial one) left millions of workers in the lurch and transformed the family structure. Income inequality grew, social mobility declined, and the public lost faith in a broad array of social and political institutions that previously had buoyed families.
New technologies like the telegraph and automobiles were transforming American life while complicating a parent’s work. For instance, sociologists linked incre
ases in teenage pregnancy to the popularization of cars (and their ubiquitous rumble seats), which gave young men and women unprecedented freedom from parental supervision. New media of the day—newspapers, magazines, popular books, radio broadcasts, traveling preachers, salesmen, and promoters—exposed children to “a continuous barrage of exotic ideas and projects,” according to Middletown Families, a landmark analysis in 20th-century sociology. Insatiably in search of new audiences, 19th- and early-20th-century journalists sensationalized crimes, such as the random murder of a Chicago boy by Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb.
Thanks to scientific and social advances, it was, like today, the safest and most rewarding time yet in human history to raise a child. And yet mothers and fathers at the turn of the 20th century felt anxious and adrift, certain of only one thing: the world awaiting their kids would be quite different from their own.
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Tyler was not ready for the world that awaited him, Dr. Quinn told us the day she diagnosed him. Just 12 years old, he was showing signs already of depression due to the ostracism experienced by most Aspies. “Life is getting worse, and worse in a hurry, for him,” she said.
Lori squeezed my hand. I stared at the powerless train and a single puzzle piece lying at my feet—misfits of a tidy office. “He’s sad,” the doctor continued. “Nobody understands him. Kids make fun of him, and he’s left out.”
There was good news, Dr. Quinn said. Tyler had found a way to cope. While others might find his constant joking to be off-putting, he was using humor as an outlet. Dr. Quinn giggled. “Do you know what Tyler said when I told him he needed to show more empathy? He gave me a big, confident smile and said, ‘I know. I’m working on that.’ ”
We thanked the doctor, left her office, and walked into the parking lot, where Lori sprang on me her idea for a father-son project. “Now it’s time to step up,” she said before we got to the car. “Tyler would feel valued if you took the time to take these trips with him.” On the drive home, Lori’s muffled sobs almost drowned out her grim prediction: “He’s going to be so lonely.”
Her pleading unearthed a deep wellspring of shame. If I had been home more, would we have diagnosed Tyler sooner? When I was home, did my preoccupation with the job steal attention from my boy? Did the girls also suffer for my ego? Did my marriage take a backseat? And why didn’t Tyler already feel valued by his father? Lori is a wise woman. I think she knew it was time I started questioning myself. And so began what I called guilt trips.
NORMAL
“Did I Grow Up According to Plan?”
Washington, D.C.—We started slow and close to home—five miles away, to be exact—at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Lori wanted our first trip to be at the place where I spent most of my time away from our kids. When the invitation came from the White House for the 2010 media holiday party, Lori handed me the unopened envelope and said, “I’m not going this year. Take Ty.”
That was two weeks ago. Tyler and I are now standing in line at the party, a gold-fringed red carpet beneath our feet and a crystal chandelier above our heads. A tuxedoed waiter offers Tyler a flute of cranberry juice. “Nope,” Tyler says. The line inches closer to President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, who are posing for pictures with members of the White House press corps, a decades-old tradition meant to ease tensions between reporters and the reported. Critics consider this press party a prime example of Washington’s incestuous culture. They’re right, but that’s not the point of this story. This is about my boy.
A lithe waitress presents Tyler with a tray of bacon-wrapped shrimp. “Uh-uh,” he says, turning to a table of cheese and crackers and loudly proclaiming, “Are you kidding me?” Each time he refuses the food, I tell my 13-year-old, “Be polite, son.” It’s been six months since Tyler was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. He doesn’t know when he’s too loud or when he’s talking too much. He can’t read facial expressions to tell whether somebody is happy, sad, or bored. He has a difficult time stepping outside of himself to see how he is viewed by others. Was he rude to the waiters or just honest? Tyler doesn’t always know the difference. He is what polite company calls “socially awkward” or “a bit off.” Bullies call Tyler “weird.” Even I don’t always know what to make of him.
I’m not just embarrassed about his manners; I’m embarrassed about being embarrassed. After all, this kid would do anything to please me. I expect him to behave; he does. I expect him to respect his mom; he does. I love sports; he hates them, but he plays for me. Guilt and helplessness gnaw at any parent—most deeply for a father like me, whose expectations exceed his common sense, and who for years missed and ignored signs that his child needed help.
Tyler and I inch toward the Green Room, in line with blow-dried TV anchors and stuffy columnists. He’s practicing his handshake and hello: “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. President. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. President. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. President.” When the couple in front of us steps forward for their picture, my teenager with sky-blue eyes and a soft heart looks up at me and says, “I hope I don’t let you down, Dad.”
What kind of father raises a son to worry about embarrassing his dad? Worse, how could I be so pathetically unable to help my boy? I want to tell Tyler not to worry, that he’d never let me down. That there’s nothing wrong with being different. That I actually am proud of what makes him special. But we are next in line to meet the president of the United States in a room filled with fellow strivers, and all I can think about is the real possibility that Tyler might embarrass himself. Or, God forbid, me.
It is now our turn. The president shakes my hand while Tyler approaches Mrs. Obama. “Still playing hoops?” the president asks me, recalling the pickup game we played during the 2008 presidential campaign. “Yes, sir,” I reply as we pose stiffly for pictures. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Mrs. Obama gently brush Tyler’s bangs from his eyes and lean in for a hug. I worry for a moment that Tyler will pull away because he’s not comfortable with being touched, especially by strangers. But he embraces the First Lady, wishes her a merry Christmas, and then shuffles to his left to look her husband squarely in the eye and shake his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. President.” My stomach clenches as I realize the problem here isn’t my son. It’s not even autism. It’s me.
Sitting knee to knee at a coffee shop counter, Stacey Bromberg and I stared self-consciously out a window onto a strip-mall parking lot while she ripped scraps of cardboard from the sleeve of her cup and cried. “I guess you never think of the possibility of something not being—for the lack of a better word—perfect.” Bromberg is the mother of two elementary school children, including a son, Gavin, who struggles with attention-deficit disorder and social skills. “It’s been hard on the family,” she said. “Hard on our marriage.”
From a speaker directly above our heads, Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” gave way to Simple Plan’s “Perfect.” The mythology of excellence is so pervasive in our culture that its Greek chorus chased me down at a Starbucks. “Did I grow up according to plan?” a young man asks his father in the song. “I’m sorry I can’t be perfect.”
Stacey ignored the music, blew on her coffee, and continued. “He doesn’t fit in at school,” she said. I asked how Gavin’s issues were hard on her marriage. Nothing major, Stacey replied, “but we don’t always agree on what to do for him.” Gavin’s doctors wanted to sharpen his focus with medication. Stacey fought against them. Her husband, Adam, was more open to drugs. Gavin broke the tie. “I like who I am,” the fifth-grader told his parents. “I don’t want to change my personality.”
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Why do we struggle so much over what makes our children different? Despite the fact that all of us are less than average at most things, we don’t want our kids flirting with society’s Mendoza line. Smaller than normal…taller than normal…heavier than normal…skinnier than normal…sicker than normal…weaker than normal. For nine months, expectant mothers an
d fathers worry about childhood deafness, dwarfism, Down syndrome, and various other physical and learning disabilities that could dash their dreams. Sexuality is another bugaboo. Straight parents expect to have straight kids because that’s what they know—and because they think being gay in America is harder than being hetero.
The most primal of parental expectations is the desire to see your child accepted, to avoid the dastardly a-words: atypical and its caustic cousin, abnormal. Lori had an endearing way of expressing this desire. “All I want,” she said during each of her three pregnancies, “is a baby with ten fingers and ten toes.” In other words, no defects. Stacey and Adam Bromberg would not use the word defective to describe Gavin any more than Lori and I would use it to describe Tyler. We love our boys. But let’s be honest: When your children aren’t anything like you—or like anything you expected—you struggle to understand them, which makes it more difficult to connect with them.
In his bestselling book, Far from the Tree, Andrew Solomon analyzes families with children who are disabled, gifted, or otherwise different from what their mothers and fathers expected. Parents, he concludes, must ask themselves this question: Do I simply accept my kids for who they are, or do I push them to become their best selves? Solomon wrote, “My mother didn’t want me to be gay because she thought it wouldn’t be the happiest course for me, but equally, she didn’t like the image of herself as the mother of a gay son.”
Her son is gay. Solomon’s book destroys one of the biggest myths of parenting: A “normal” kid is better off than one who is different. In fact, he argues, we’ve all got our quirks. “The exceptional is ubiquitous; to be entirely typical is the rare and lonely state,” Solomon wrote. “As my parents had misapprehended who I was, so other parents must be constantly misapprehending their own children.”