Let Me Not Always See the Same Hands

Would you sell your 14 year-old daughter to marauders for $20 so you could score some drugs to support your careening habit? Of course not. Your child is less likely to be accepted to law school never mind live a contented life if she is employed as a forced sex worker overseas. Full marks for ticking the “and anyway I’m not a crack head” box.

Next Question: would you insist that your daughter marry the abusive, drunken scion of the wealthy landowner whose acreage adjoins your own ancestral fiefdom? Even if you needed money to pay back your looming gambling debts?

Well done if you chose, “do I LOOK like the Earl of Trockenheim?” from among the answers. Of course my daughter can marry whom she chooses even if he is not landed gentry.

Question Three: Would you push your daughter ahead in school, make her start when she was four years old rather than five? Because you were tired of doing the parent thing? Because you need to get the crops in?

A+ if you remembered that you haven’t actually lived on a farm in several generations.

Question Four: After an arduous rowing season replete with 5:00 am practices, weightlifting, running, and endless hours on the water, your daughter does not “make weight” for the finals. Without her knowledge, do you grab her pony and lop it off with a rusty machete so that she drop that last half pound and compete?

Good for you if you said that the majority of the emergency hair cut decision should remain with the person attached to said hair.

And lastly: What do you do when you hear your baby crying. Do you think, “How is she going to learn to comfort herself if we’re constantly cuddling, comforting, and changing her?” When your husband gets up at 2:00 am, do you admonish him by saying: “It’s an ugly world out there. Do you imagine for one minute that the United States Senate Subcommittee is going to be sensitive and nurturing when they are asking her questions about the culpability of her troops in a foreign insurrection?”

All the right answers can be summarized with the following two simple precepts:


1) err on the side of agency, that is, letting your daughter make her own decision. Gentle guidance and suggestion? Yes. Grabbing her from behind and cutting off her hair? Not so much. 2) Err on the side of nurture.

That way, on the rare occasion when you do have to enforce your will on your kids (inoculations against measles, mumps, and rubella, for example) you will be thought of as that large person who has your child’s interests at heart, who helps them figure things out, who wants what is best for them, not as that Fascist jailer person who is always forcing them to do stuff.

Otherwise, it’s hard for the kids to distinguish where they end and where you begin.

Last scenario: Your 14 year-old daughter has amassed forty dollars babysitting for the snarky, high energy, pre-school twins down the street. She wants to use her hard earned samoleans to purchase a “my little pony” a.k.a. overpriced, plastic, worthless piece of garbage that will break in five minutes anyway and-here’s the worst of it–GIVE said overpriced, piece of junk to the very four-year-olds from whose parents she received the money in the first place when you and I both know that those kids won’t be appreciative for a New York second and obviously that money would be better spent on books and school supplies or invested and what about the college fund and who does she think she is? (Whew!)

Should you refuse to drive her to the store explaining in no uncertain terms why it is inappropriate and ill-advised to throw away her money on such a poor choice of gift and worse choice of recipient? Or should you-after a brief explanation of your thoughts–allow her to make a small mistake at a young age to help her avoid larger mistakes subsequently?

Because the step from choosing a plastic toy to choosing a college, career, husband is shorter than can possibly be imagined. And–as counter-intuitive as it sounds–the less you force her to do things now, the less you’ll want to force her to do things later.

The history of parenting is a march from treating our kids as property–farm hands, chattel–to viewing our children as the greatest gift of all, to be valued immeasurably and loved unconditionally.