For those who don't already know, I'm a mother of a 7-year-old boy.
I don't really write about parenting, or about my son much, but that's in part because I think it's important to keep my identity as a person separate from my parenting. While I don't glorify parenthood, it is a very personal and profound experience, and it surprised me because I was very arrogant about what it meant to be a parent, before I was one. As a non-parent, I had zero fucking clue, but I was so sure I did.
I was so certain I didn't want any children. I'm so, so glad I got to have my son.
I actually believe--much the horror of some stay at home mom's I have met--that my child is not who I am, nor is the act of parenting him an identity for me to take on. He will be with me temporarily, and after he is fully adult and autonomous in his function just as much as in his heart, he will have a life outside of my own. My own life will go on with or without him as a regular part of it, whether he choices to keep his own mother as a close friend or not.
My son owes me nothing, since he did not ask to be born to begin with, I brought him here through my choices. I am here to guide another human being into full autonomy.
Parenting is the act of guiding a human who lacks knowledge of how to use their free will into becoming a human that possesses the knowledge of how to use their free will.
Put simply: Human beings start off as children by simply having free will, but we grow by learning how to use it.
I must guide my son from his first stage, possessing free will, to the final stage of effectively using his free will to reach his own goals.
The Knowledge Problem
Unfortunately, he lacks knowledge that I currently have, he can do himself great harm or kill himself without meaning to. He can miss the mark, fail to reach his desired ends, and the younger he is, the more dangerous his will is, because it involves less knowledge. He can seer his own flesh on the stove, slice into his hands, fall off an edge that is high enough up that it would kill him, drown, etc. In fact, all of those things he nearly did, but my Parent Fu reflexes stopped them from occurring (well, except for the time he crawled into the bathroom and proceeded to cut himself with a razor within 30 seconds of me looking away from him--boys are determined to find dangerous objects).
The struggle of a parent who doesn't believe in authority or violent, anger-based coercion (like hitting a child), is knowing that you have to use physical action at times to prevent your kids from doing things that will kill them, at least when they are very young, because they don't have knowledge of how to use their will. One example of this was having to yank my son quickly and uncomfortably away from the edge of a deep pool he was just about to jump into as a baby.
Being a parent means not just understanding that your kids have wants and desires, and trying to help them meet those.
Being a parent is understanding that your kids have a lot of momentary wants and desires that are based in a massive lack of knowledge about reality, and that unbridled Free Will absolutely will not get them to their own goal, if anything it will get them exactly what they didn't expect or want (it will usually get them killed). At age 2, the goal isn't much beyond "want to touch, want to jump, want to grab", and the actual result if they get their way is likely hospitalization or death.
This is why it feels very much as though children are property, even though they are not. They don't earn, have their own value they produce, and all their property is actually mine, which I bought and provided for. I have to remember that they do not understand physics, reality, other humans, and that they want to stay alive and thrive just like I do, but they do not yet know how to do that.
My role is always to guide, not to control all outcomes or control all inputs.
I have to protect by eliminating true threats of accidental death or injury, and I only use my parenting power to do that because I am protecting their ability to develop their own free will and use it for their own ends later on in life, once they possess enough knowledge to do so.
Those Pesky Parents Were Right, Goddamnit
I absolutely could not have accurately known or guessed ahead of time whether I wanted a kid, until I actually carried one and birthed him.
Why?
Because becoming a parent has fundamentally ALTERED who I am, it changed me the very day I gave birth, and was changing me while I was carrying him. If you're a healthy person emotionally, on the most basic level, it changes you in a way you cannot guess ahead of time or understand or prepare for.
The other humbling thing was learning that all grand notions of being a "good parent" are NOT at all easy, not easy to define, not simple or clear cut, and not easy to even put into practice.
Most irritatingly of all, every cheesy thing I heard about how awesome being a parent is... is totally true, no matter how much I thought I knew better.
I didn't know what the hell I was talking about.
I now understand that no one really knows until they are one. I almost missed out on what is one of the most profound and meaningful experiences in this life, because of immature arrogance.
I now believe that I needed to irresponsibly fuck up my birth control and have a baby "on accident" with my then-husband or I would have missed out on something immeasurably awesome.
I wasn't prepared, and thank goodness for that. My "prepared" mind wanted to control everything and shut me out of an amazing experience, out of my own selfishness.
Almost no one is truly prepared to have a kid. Preparedness, security, and planning "well" for bringing a kid into the world are mostly grand delusions, though they can do some good. The reality will still laugh at plans and smash them a lot, as most parents who DID try to prepare can now tell you.
Parenting Totally Fucking Rocks, Even Though It's Work
I find I dislike all the jokes about parenting that make parenting sound like it's a nightmare to non-parents.
It is not a nightmare, not ultimately. Parts of it are hard, and scary. But so is hiking mountains. And I still do that.
Difficulty does not detract from the satisfaction and beauty, and it's like the passioned mountain climber who keeps going despite physical wear, pain, and struggles. Those are temporary, irrelevant discomforts that pale in the light of the amazing JOURNEY. Any healthy parent doesn't give a damn about the struggle in an ultimate sense, even if a moment sucks, because they are in love with journey, in love with the child.