What would you do for your child? “Anything,” most parents would answer without a second thought.
But in New York magazine last week, Lisa Miller asked: Is that really such a good idea?
Miller chronicles all the dubious things that parents do on a regular basis these days to give our children a leg up.
In a piece that’s been recommended a few thousand times on Facebook and inspired responses in Slate and other publications, she warns that much of modern parenting actually “obscures clear ethical reasoning.”
Why else “would an otherwise conscientious couple decide to hold their perfectly normal kid back a year, except that she’ll be much older than the other kids in the class and thus that much better at sitting still during tests?”
“Why else does a father volunteer to coach Little League and then put his son in the cleanup spot? Why else do parents do their children’s homework night after night, except that they fear that without ‘help,’ the kids would fail or falter or fall behind?”
As Miller rightly notes, our kids aren’t blind to all this.
When they get to be old enough, they’re all too aware that we’re trying to give them an edge. So, no matter what we tell them about everyone deserving an equal chance, we parents are putting our fingers on the scales. Whether it’s hiring an SAT tutor or using connections to get our kids into a better college, we are not always “playing fair.”
Our excuse, of course, is that it’s a rough world out there, a tough economy, you know; we just want to make sure our kids get a good job and have a happy life. But let’s face it. The people giving their kids these advantages are not the parents of the future unemployed. And whether they’ll be happy is an entirely different question.
So what’s the alternative? In an essay in Christianity Today, Jennifer Slate, a mother of three, describes her decision to move from a 4,000-sq.-ft. suburban home with kids in private schools to one in the poorest public-school district in Charlottesville, Va.
The vast majority of her children’s classmates now live below the poverty line; the parent-teacher organization has an annual budget of $800. The other kids didn’t have books at home, their parents don’t speak English, they can’t afford sports uniforms.
But Slate decided that God wanted her in this community to help. And she found other Christian families, rich and poor, who decided to make the same commitment. “I began to make decisions about my children’s lives in a different way. What if I didn’t only think about the fabulous life I could make for my three? What if I stood up for not only what was good for mine, but was good for all?
“What size car would be big enough to carpool other kids? What sports league should we play in so that everyone could participate? Could my husband and I set aside time to coach teams that they could join? Could we pick up extra granola bars every week? Could we make sacrifices for others to have a childhood experience equal to our own?”
This radical vision of ethical parenting is something that few of us will sign up for — who’ll put other kids’ well-being ahead of their own children’s? But her story does remind us of what’s missing in how many of us raise our children. It’s not just God, it’s a community with common standards of behavior.
We assume every other set of parents is cutting corners the same way we are — or worse. We figure the other parents are all hiring SAT tutors, using their connections to get kids into college, giving them advantages any way they can. And so we do it, too. We’re in a race to the bottom.
Say what you will about the oddness of Jennifer Slate’s approach. But the rest of us may be engaged in a more difficult task: parenting alone.