Our Parents Raised Us Right…By the Seat of Their Pants
Paul Engleman
Chicago Sun-Times | October 9, 1996
"Parenting." The concept is a creation of my generation, the baby boomer generation. The word did not exist until we boomers assumed the position. But now that we're raising kids, no undertaking is more important.
Many new parents today find themselves shaking their graying heads in awe and asking, "How did our parents do it?" The answer is simple. They did it quite differently.
Our parents did not do parenting. They reared us by the seat of their pants and whacked us on ours when we got out of line. It was their lot in life to have a lot of kids, and they adapted to it with Darwinian aplomb, relying on such natural coping strategies as selective hearing and daytime drinking.
My mother-in-law, bless her heart, had seven little monsters in 10 years. I cringe at the thought, but she says she viewed her hospital delivery stays as "vacations." She also had more energy during her childbearing years because her doctor thoughtfully prescribed amphetamines to keep her spirit up and her weight down. I don't often turn to my mother-in-law for advice on rearing my kids, but there are many days when I wish I could get hold of her doctor.
Our parents were content to toss us into playpens and let us "exercise our lungs" for half the day. They fed us at feeding time, not on demand. Nutrition was not a matter of concern. We were coaxed from bottles to jars to cans. By the time we got to cans, if we didn't behave at the table, they had no qualms about sitting us in a corner and feeding us fish sticks with a sling-shot. They did not agonize about where to send us to school. They did not stop to wonder whether we should attend Wiggle Worm classes to smooth our transition to pre-K. When we were old enough, they sharpened us some pencils, packed up a peanut butter sandwich and dropped us off around the corner at the neighborhood schoolhouse.
That was it, that was all. But that was then and this is now. Times have changed, and so has rearing kids. It's a full-time occupation, critical business. And it comes, unfortunately, at a time when two incomes are required just to stay afloat in the perilous rapids of middle-class rafting.
There is no doubt that parenting today is harder than it was 25 years ago. But it can't possibly be as hard as some of us try to make it.
Paul Engleman is an award-winning writer and stay-at-home dad. "Diary of a Dad Housewife" by Paul Engleman is a new feature that will run Wednesdays on the Chat page.
Copyright 1996 Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.