Parenting Without a Manual
with Talyaa Liera
I'm Talyaa, the poster child for the concept that there's no one right way to be a parent. I went from stay-at-home attachment-parenting mom of four to being the non-custodial parent, working as a professional writer and channel-psychic. Let's talk about throwing away the parenting manual and exploding the myths and mystique of motherhood!
Check out my personal blog at Juxtapositioning.
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Once upon a time in our Mad Men-esque not-too-distant past, a non-traditional family was one where the mother worked outside the home. Later, bucking tradition meant single professional women having children, a la Murphy Brown, alone and husbandless (anyone remember Dan Quayle? Anyone?). Who needs a bicycle when you’re a fish, anyway?
Where is the traditional North American family headed now? Does your family fit the norm? Do you care if it does?
My situation is admittedly non-traditional. Am I alone in my non-tradition? Nope. There are two million non-custodial mothers in the U.S., with no two stories alike.
But this post isn’t about my family, it’s about yours. The New York Times says that despite feelings to the contrary we’re spending more time with our kids now than ever. And that’s quality time in activities like helping with homework and playing backyard catch. Memory-making time.
Couple that wee factoid with the facts that we’re sick of Jon and Kate’s endless bickering (not to mention Kate’s robotic performance on DWTS, did you see that?) and that we yawn over “news” that Michelle Duggar is leaving the hospital with her gazillionth child, and it clearly shows where we are pointing as the Family Of The Future.
My prediction:
- Families will get smaller. Four kids is a litter, and in the future we won’t be having four anymore. (I have four. I am obsolete.)
- Families will become tighter. Take old-style Family Game Night and add it to old-style The Family Bed and you get families who actually know one another. No more eating standing up in front of the microwave or on the way to soccer/ballet/cello/SAT prep. The family of the 2020’s (that sounds so weird, but it’s only ten years away so get ready) will, I dunno, talk to each other. Maybe via the Facepad (iPad + Facebook), but whatever. It’s talking.
- Kids will take back their freedoms. Remember the days when you could just wander around with a snaggle of seventh-graders for a summer afternoon? You were too young to work and old enough that you knew where the key was hidden in the backyard rain downspout (oops, I’ve just outed my family’s hiding place) in case you got locked out. You could operate a microwave and you knew where the TV remote was. What more could you want? Kids now are way too supervised (or way under-supervised, but that’s a whole different post). In the future we’ll turn the tables again and see where helicopter parenting went wrong.
What are your predictions for the future of the family? How closely does yours resemble that now?
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It’s hard to say what my family will become once we’re “complete” and out of the survival mode that is the first few years, but already we’re non-traditional in that we decided to have a baby, on purpose, before getting married (scandal!), and we also decided to take a financial hit by both only working part-time during our son’s first year so we could spend a lot of time with him. So far, being non-traditional is working out really well for us, especially since we don’t give a hoot what other people think of our unique situation. (I know a lot of other families who feel a lot of pressure to be “normal” depending on the standards set by their extended families/communities/religions/etc.)
Leah | April 7th, 2010 at 12:19 pm
I’m an older mom who never “found the right man” (yet) and adopted two girls who are 40 years younger than I am. We share a home with 3 other, unrelated adults (the “aunties and uncle”). They have reasonably close contact with extended family and friends with various family structures.
So what is the test of a healthy family structure? I think it’s a structure that (a) meets the kids’ immediate needs and (b) helps the children learn about the healthy options that will be available to them as they become adults. I feel that mature attention to their emotional and social needs is more important than conforming to a certain “ideal.”
My kids go to preschool, and from day one, they have been noticing that other kids have different family situations. I think that’s a good thing. It means they have enough awareness to ask and think about the differences and what, if anything, they mean. My kid has a sister, but not a father. Her friend has a father, but not a sibling. Is one situation better or worse than the other? Or just different, like so many other things about us are different? The wheels are turning. I’d rather have a child with lots of questions than one who takes everything for granted. But, I might not have thought this way if I had built my family the “traditional” way.
I don’t care what other people think about my choices, and I’ll do my best to raise my kids to be equally self-confident. However, I don’t believe in “anything goes,” either. Some choices are just not healthy, in my opinion.
As far as your predictions, I hope that family size - large or small - stops being considered everyone else’s business. Surely each of us has enough room for improvement in our own family lives that we needn’t take the time to judge the legal choices others make (especially if we aren’t asked to foot the bill for them).
SKL | April 7th, 2010 at 12:37 pm
As you alluded to, I think the pendulum will swing back, away from the helicopter parenting that is in vogue and more toward the slow parenting movement (of which I am a proponent).
And then it’ll shift again.
Ironic Mom | April 7th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
I think families with smaller #s of children but larger assorted, to borrow a term, framilies (friends who are as close to you as your own family).
A lot of people have friends as their emergency contacts, not blood relatives or even in-laws. People spend all their time in their friend circles and I see that increasing.
There is still this family model out there though. When my child sees the “mom, dad, boy, girl” structure she says “look! a family!” which is frustrating as we try to say, well that is the family in your storybook but look, your friend has TWO brothers, are they still a family? Your other friend has only sisters are they still a family?
Granted most kids figure it out earlier than mine but the fact is the archetype still exists out there.
Mich | April 8th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
Yay! I must be a Jetson. Let’s see…one kid with no chance of having more? Check. Quality time together on a daily basis? Oh yes. Family walks every night, family dinner, family TV time and of course, bedtime routines…Check. Willingness to allow “free range-ed-ness” in child as time and maturaity grows? Oh hell yes. I’m not spending my days being a taxi-cab, spending every dime on classes that will be wasted and spending every last nerve worrying about non-existent bogeymen. Get out and play and get yer ass in for dinner…just like the good ol’s days when Mommy was a girl. : D
I like this family of the future you envision. It suits us well!
Phe | April 13th, 2010 at 6:12 am