Why does parenting suck so hard??
I've pondered this question for many an hour. It's perplexing in a way: most of us parents are pretty nice, kid-friendly, capable people who you'd think would make good parents (i.e. consistently treat their kids well and stay sane). Us parents certainly thought so: before multiple unrelenting years changed our tunes.
I will attempt to partially explain why parenting sucks so hard, using the metaphor of four job roles.
Parenting roughly breaks down into these four roles:
- The Manager. Plans what we are gonna do, where we are gonna go, when we eat, how we respond to kid complaints and requests and resistance and "they've taken 20 minutes to brush their teeth so far and still aren't done."
- Equipment Master. Responsible for answers to questions like: did we pack the shoes before leaving the house? What do we need to bring? Did we leave the goggles by the pool?
- Doer in Chief. Puts the sunscreen on, serves the food, packs the lunches, does the cleanup, drives the car.
- Attention Provider. Interacts with the kids: does all the playing and nagging and cuddling and responding. Examples: responds to "can I watch the tablet" and "daddy come wipe me" and "it's my turn to choose the treat first!," plays blanket forts, cuddles during Bluey, joins for bike time and dress-up.
Most of us are reasonably capable of filling most of these roles. The problem is three-fold.
One: but few are naturals at all four roles. Consider the hypothetical brother-in-law: playful and patient and long suffering, and could interact with the kids for ages. On the other hand, he's pretty terrible at managing: doesn't get them to bed on time, runs out of food and toilet paper because he lives only in the moment, doesn't clean up the kitchen.
Two: Trying to do more than one role at once, decreases performance in the other roles. Much as a master painter's works suffer when she tries to also juggle while painting, we do worse when we have to fill multiple roles simultaneously. Every so often we catch glimpses of this truth, in those small slices of time when the other roles fall silent. For example, at last all the utensils and children and food are all at the table at the same time and there's no night routine deadline immediately looming and the only task is to finish eating at some point in the next fifteen minutes: you suddenly exhale, laugh internally at the way your six year old is stuffing butter wholesale into their baguette with their fingers, and realize you're ready for once to respond calmly to whatever unreasonable demand or misbehavior next assaults your senses: cue a rare moment of attention provider excellence!
Third problem: IT'S TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR NORMAL HUMANS TO PERFORM ALL FOUR ROLES SIMULTANEOUSLY FOR MULTIPLE HOURS A DAY, DAY AFTER DAY, FOR YEARS IN A ROW, WITH THEIR SANITY INTACT. Let me emphasize this. It's too much to ask for normal humans to perform all four roles simultaneously for multiple hours a day, day after day, for years in a row, with their sanity intact. If there were four adults present performing the four roles, that would be one thing: but usually it's just 1-2 parents wearing all the hats. Which is exhausting. It's a burden on your mental health. It's oppressive. It's overstimulating. It's relentless.
When parents respond to these three problems, it's usually in one of three ways. First, by giving up: either on their mental health, or by disengaging or escaping from parenting in one form or another. Second, they adapt - say, by divorcing (so they get breaks) or shoveling cash at nannies and childcare centers. Or third, they get lucky - the other parent carries the load, the in-laws help out, or they're that rarest of human who can perform all the roles over time without losing their ever loving minds.
El fin
