Something to be proud of?

So, here’s how it all began. My friend and I, and our respective partners, went out for a drink. We got to talking about how you spend so many young adult years trying to figure out what you want to do with your life, and neither of us thought that as we near the end of our twenties we would still be trying to answer that same question. At some point in this conversation I mentioned that I was only now starting to incorporate “raising your children” as a legitimate career option, a legitimate path for at least one part of your life. I had always thought that child rearing was just something that you did in addition to whatever else you do with your time—which is not to say that I ever, even for a fleeting second, thought that being a stay at home parent was not work, or not hard, or not desirable, I just never thought that it was a legitimate and/or respected career path. (Perhaps I was right on at least one of those points). As soon as I said this my friend jumped, and said “see, I disagree, I don’t think that raising your kids is anything to be overly proud of. People do it all the time, and we don't need to be giving out gold stars for that”

(Now before you go getting all cranky with my friend, you should note that we were talking over drinks, among friends, very good friends, and we’re the forthright variety of friends.)

So, on followed an interesting but prematurely digressing discussion on whether being a stay-at-home mom was actually a career option, and/or whether it should be. Before too long, our conversation had shifted to other loosely related topics and we let this one go, but the idea itself has lingered in my mind, and in order to set those final thoughts free I share them with you here:

Supervising a child, ensuring that he or she doesn’t maim or kill him/herself or anyone else before late adolescence may not be anything to be overly chuffed about. Sure, millions of people do that every day, all over the world. But, I suspect that raising a child is a task in another category.

Let me explain what I mean by “raising.” I mean nurturing growth, fostering critical thought and intellectual development, enabling and guiding a young person to (to borrow the army's slogan here) be all they can be. And yes, also to supervise the meeting of their most basic physical and mental needs through late adolescence. To do all of that, I believe, is a very different job than the basic supervision that happens all too often. And indeed, I believe it is something to be mighty chuffed about.

I think the actual grit of raising children, the stuff that changes the job from a part-time affair to a full time affair—the fostering of intellectual growth, teaching awareness and intention, self-control and personally guided self-growth—these sorts of things are so undervalued and unexplained to the average person in North America (I can't speak for the rest of the world) that most people don't even realizing what’s being missed, or briskly glossed over, in the rearing of their children. The result: millions of people never challenged to meet their personal capacity, not engaged in their own lives or the world that surrounds them. In short, not living up to their potential.

The job of raising children appears to be punted around in our society, from parents, to nannies, to teachers, to extra curric providers, and so forth. And although all of these people may well play critical roles in child rearing and development (personally I happen to feel that everyone plays a role in children’s growth), I think the glitch in our current societal approach is that instead of all of these people feeling that they play a key role, nobody thinks that they are responsible. Everyone is under the impression that it is someone else's job to cover the basics of human development. The end result, lost potential.

So I guess if I were to finish the conversation that my friend and I started I would say yeah, I think that raising children is a big job. And I think doing it in the fullest sense of the job description is definitely something to cheer about. And yup, I say it is absolutely a legitimate use of ones time, and further I would argue that it is also a legitimate career path (for those for whom it is financially viable, which is a whole other discussion unto itself). And while supervising a child through physical development may not be anything to give out gold stars for (although it may be, that too could be a whole other discussion), raising a child is something that really could change the world. Not in grand Nobel-prize-winning sweeping strokes, but in solid strides forward.

My vote goes for solid strides.