Parenting at the End of the World As We Know It
“My children will live a story that I cannot write and cannot control. It will be their story. To become a parent is to feel, every day, the weight and hope and terror of that fact. ”
When I read something that strikes a chord, I often wonder about the conditions under which the sentiment was set to words. Where was the author? What was happening around them? Was anyone nearby? Was it rainy or bright? Silent or soundtracked? Did the words glide onto the page? Did they rush and shove each other? How involved was the backspace key?
So I'll just cop to the fact that a whole lot of deleting preceded whatever winds up in this blog entry. The excessive erasing wasn't a function of jumbled thoughts or clunky words. Rather, this composition process was rough because I was trying to write about parenting while parenting. A mother and author, I'm technically always writing-while-parenting. But in this case, I was writing from a coffee shop in our little rural town, across the table from my kiddos who are, once again, out of school. There's no one else to mind them while I work — a situation that isn't as slippery as it was when they were wee — but there's only so much self-entertaining kids ought to do. (They, too, need the very same things we've been gathering in praise of: time, care, rest, myth, aid, joy, sociality, community).
I did try to set up a playdate because the inverse property of pre-teen kid math is enabling: more kids = less effort. The trade-off isn't too bad: sure, you'll have to listen hard to hear your own thoughts over the din, but you won't get interrupted every 48.2 seconds. Unfortunately (for me), their friends are either out of town visiting family or on fabulous Spring Break vacations. We are not.
In fact, we have been fully here. Extra present. Building a chicken coop on the land we steward. Making home for the Gallus gallus domestici who offer us eggs in exchange for pasture and protection. We'd already put in several long days of hard-but-rewarding work when an icy rain rolled in. Not wanting to turn my "child laborers" off the endeavor of experiential learning or sour them on farmstead infrastructure projects permanently, I decided we'd decamp to the cafe as a little treat.
On the short drive into town, NPR told us about that a lethal heat wave in West Africa and provided anti-reassuring advice about how to reduce the risk of boiling your insides. I felt the vibe in the car shift and heard my 12 year old mutter, "Those who contributed the least face the worst." I beamed a little and felt my heart swell just a bit. Then I caught myself: Sure, I'd rather they have a climate justice lens on the world than not... But I'd really rather that they didn't need to. Because my kids could do without their professor-mama giving them yet another lecture on climate breakdown, I just quipped about how I wouldn't mind a heatwave of the non-lethal variety and was longing for some spring sunshine.
When we arrived, my increasingly self-sufficient children placed the order, gathered the utensils, and filled our water glasses. Their reasonable choices — one appetizer and three sandwiches, drinks, and a cookie (plus a generous tip) — cost me a pretty penny. 8746 of them, to be precise. So while it was mostly local and all delicious, I don't suppose we'll be eating outside of the house again anytime soon! (Especially not if it's going to cost me more than I'd make in the hour of writing time I've bought myself.) I smiled while doing the household budget math in my head and, suddenly moved to stress-eat, I snuck a few french fries from my kids' plates. They feigned offense before plopping several more fries on my plate. The only price for their generosity was some good-natured chiding about my habit of ordering a side salad and then pilfering their potatoes. That morphed into a lively (though not especially rational) debate about whether it would be possible to cut and fry a whole potato into a one long crispy string.
When our bellies were full, my kids pulled out their books. Now things would get quiet. I'd be able to put words to my never-not-there certainty that I would be a mother. I could also detail some of the never-not-surprising ways that I inhabit that role as I try to stay on the right side of the line between gentle and indulgent. Or how I am continually considering whether my instincts are too informed by the biases of late modernity. Or my worries about whether my choices are curved too completely around a desire to make sure that my children don’t get too attached to that which won't last. I scrawl some notes about wanting to touch on the tensions that arise between co-parents. I want to let you know that even when both parents are collapse-aware and communicative, each adult's version of responsive parenting doesn't always line up with the other's. It's tricky to align parental priorities when you are squinting at a presently unimaginable future. But as soon as I strung that sentence together, the next interruption began. I resisted actually listening until I realized that the words were a read-aloud and the text was a particularly perfect nugget from one of our favorite stories, Peter Brown's The Wild Robot:
“You do want him to survive, don’t you?” said the goose. “Yes, I do want him to survive,” said the robot. “But I do not know how to act like a mother.” “Oh, it’s nothing, you just have to provide the gosling with food and water and shelter, make him feel loved but don’t pamper him too much, keep him away from danger, and make sure he learns to walk and talk and swim and fly and get along with others and look after himself. And that’s really all there is to motherhood!”
I squeezed the hand holding the book, wondering what gives kids their uncanny ability to make a moment. "Can I see that for a second?" I said, grabbing without really waiting for an affirmative reply. (Mental note: Consent matters. Set a better example.)
As I was transcribing, it got quiet again and the younger one had nothing to distract him. That's when the couple at an adjacent table got to talking, not at all quietly, about the bound and brutalized bodies of children recently exhumed from mass graves in Gaza. (This was really not the delightful diversion I'd hoped for. But it did point toward a much more painful perspective on the parent-child relation.) As I handed the book back to my tender-hearted 10 year old, I could see that I had to stop again. Because he has more than enough awareness of and sadness about the omnicide, his eyes were brimming with tears. I locked eyes with him as he slotted these new sordid details into their sickening places, adding ever more to the story of a world being ripped apart at the seams. As I got up from my chair the younger pair next to me seemed to sense what they'd set off. The smiled wanly. I chose not to glare at them. Every part of me needs more people to be horrified by the deliberate extermination of a people and of the next generation. So I just wrapped my arms around my baby's soft body, let his tears soak into my shirt, and felt him sigh into me.
Who would wrap anything but their arms around a terrified child?
Parenting in deeply troubled times is heartbreak and heartbeat.
Heartbreak and heartbeat.
Heartbreak and heartbeat.
Heartbreak and heartbeat.
This certainly isn't the best sales-pitch for modern motherhood or fatherhood. Because my aim here is neither to convince nor to discourage, that may be just fine. Instead, I'd like to approach the topic of parenting by allowing two things to be true at once: (1) parenting can be an extraordinary, fulfilling, even completing aspect of the human experience, and (2) the life of a person who does not procreate or raise children is also complete.
That's right: making and sustaining a life of one’s own, finding and nurturing community, and channeling the care you are capable of providing into the living world can make for a wholly meaningful go-round as a human. (Yes, even one with a uterus.) It is legitimate to have no need or desire to bring new human life into a crowded, wounded world. Yet, some of us — whether acting upon primal instinct, through the kind of love that begs to participate in creation, via rational calculation, or by happenstance — find ourselves wanting or having children in our care. Some parents are keenly aware that the entire lives of our children will unfold in an era of collapse. And sometimes those same parents also see their children's lifetimes as a period of radical possibility.
Heartbreak and heartbeat.
The very few headlines and think-pieces on the narrower topic of modern parenting and climate breakdown emphasize either (i) a sense of existential crisis among younger adults grappling with ethics of procreating and their own decisions around whether to become parents at all, or (ii) the fears and anxieties of parents wrestling with how to prepare their beloved children for the end of the world as we know it, often while trying their best to provide for their families in an time of scarcity, separation, and decline. By this point, I've read (or at least skimmed) a lot of this "literature." Not much of it moves me. These pieces are almost inherently defensive. They seem to be written (perhaps unconsciously) for the purpose of justifying the procreative choice one has already made or to make peace with the myriad in/consequential choices that a parent makes every day. While I very much enjoy the brief moments when I feel like I'm doing really right by my kids, I don't ever imagine that the path we're walking together maps the only passable route through the double-unknown of Parenting At the End of the World As We Know It?
Heartbreak & heartbeat.
I'm not interested in making a listicle on how to raise children in time of global crisis. I don't want to debate the merits of various parenting styles. And I certainly would never try to supply an answer to the question of whether any person should procreate. Instead, I'm feeling moved to call questions and convene conversations about a particular form of care — the kind that involves children, isn't done for a wage, and doesn't ever quite conclude. I'm eager to hold space for folks who share curiosity about this topic but differ in their relationship to it. During our next EcoGathering we'll begin to guide each other and explore the roles we can each play, across the many stages of human life, in extending the human story. So I hope you'll turn up for this one regardless of whether you are or might want to be a parent, whether you are expecting or empty-nesting. Because I am certain about one thing. The children need and deserve so much more of our true love so that they too can bear the heartbreak and keep the heartbeat.
