CHANGING THE SUBJECT

It is curious how sometimes my mind may go in the opposite direction and flip any situation. For example, the other day, while I was reading ‘East of Eden,’ I unearthed a quote:

‘Perhaps it takes courage to raise children.’

It was (and still is) evident that raising children is a complicated undertaking that, indeed, requires a lot of courage as well as time, effort, and patience. However, within the same second, it dawned on me that it takes greater courage to admit that you are not ready to raise children. It calls for bravery not to join the bandwagon of parents around you and start a family, unprepared for parenthood.

Several weeks ago, I listened to a podcast where people shared how they had been traumatized by their parents because the adults had not been apt to bring up children. They were either too immature or had not resolved their own childhood trauma. Frankly, the reasons varied — the outcome remained the same: such unfitness for parenting inevitably reverberated with kids.

Many heartbreaking stories were concerned with mothers. Dozens of young ladies revealed that they had been growing up with a narcissistic mother, who had given birth to them too early. Therefore, the majority of such mothers tried to make up for the ‘lost time,’ living vicariously through their children and, thus, depriving them of childhood. Some girls shared that their mothers had grown virulent towards them. For that reason, the women could not help competing with the young ones to prove that they were powerful and impeccable, debilitating the value of their daughters.

It incited a multitude of issues, including low self-esteem, the imposter syndrome, numerous eating disorders, anxiety attacks, etc., that the girls who spoke on the podcast are struggling with now.

The most disheartening part of the podcast was its conclusion. It stated that, in most cases, such arrogant behavior of mothers was rooted in their upbringing. Those imperious parents were raised with the same attitude from their parents. They had the same trauma and inadvertently imparted it to their kids.

Anyway, here is hoping that those girls will stop the dismal tendency. They have already acknowledged the problem (what their mothers never did) and are willing to deal with it.

So, what I am driving at in this post is that I wish all of us would be self-aware and reasonable before taking up responsibility for another life. Let’s not burden our future kids with our ‘issues.’