The Parent Trap

 

(Guest Writer: Ashley Storrie)

Mother’s in Spain at the moment, she’s under a lot of travel stress and asked if possible, could I write her Sunday column. I agreed of course and have wracked my brain for something interesting to write about. I considered giving you my brief and highly detailed insights into what I call the “Geeksploitation” movement that is happening in popular media, I changed my mind. Instead as a follow on to mothers last column; I have decided to write about being somebody’s child in this time and this day.

 

Mother loves to remind me of how she gave birth to me, how painful it was, how when I came out I was unlike every other baby in the ward, how I was silent and how after 9 months of hating me she finally loved me. Terrific, the baby is born and now you must raise it in the best way you know how. You get an appointment with two lesbians in sensible shoes if you want a cat, if you want a baby just have a bit of intercourse then try your best.

 

There’s no proven method of raising a baby, in fact there are several quite staunch camps who all think they’re right. You’ve got the strict ones, the ones who try and minimize bodily contact, who ignore the baby’s cries and tend to put babies in prams out in the garden for hours (I’m getting this information from a documentary mum made watch… I stand by it). Then you have your tribal hippy folk, who take instruction from the ways of life in a tribe, strap their babies to them at all times and use instinct rather than routine to raise a baby.

 

To be honest I don’t think anything will make all that much of a difference… messed up teenagers and then adults in therapy will be the outcome. It doesn’t really matter whether you breast feed or bottle feed, or whether you use the Ferber method or just pick up Junior every time he/she cries. Yes it’ll have some kind of impact on the child but it’s not the be all and end all. We don’t stop needing attention when we learn to speak.

 

People put so much emphasis on how important the years we can’t remember are; can someone not tell these people that the 14 years that follow the “baby” stage are going to be far harder and memorable. I’m not going to remember that you left me screaming in a cot for 15 minutes. I am however going to remember the time you left me at Heathrow when I was 12 (true story).

 

Old people always tell me how good I had it, growing up in a time with mobile phones, computers and a huge selection of toys and games, are these things truly better, have the youth of today got it that good. Here’s the same sentiment from the eye’s of a youth “I have no freedom as my parents are constantly phoning my mobile to see where I am, what I’m doing and who I’m doing it with, The fact I’m computer literate means that everybody over the age of 40 in my house see’s me as their personal IT guy and the massive ranges of toys and games?  Well that’s just more stuff I’m not allowed.”

 

 Mother tells me often how she wishes I had her childhood, sans the poverty and abuse, how she spent summer days playing with her friends; not an adult in sight, how she went on adventures that lasted hours on end, how she got bangs and bruises and wore them like medals. My generation never got that, we got Play stations rather than roller skates, we got tamagotchies rather than a loyal pet, we got computer lessons rather than cooking and home economics and favourite TV shows rather than hobbies… the result, a generation with fewer skills, unable to boil an egg or understand the true responsibility of caring for another life. And here’s the clincher… we aren’t this way by our own doing, we didn’t invent the play station, we didn’t buy them at Christmas, we didn’t want a portable umbilical chord to be constantly one ring away from you. You… your generation made this stuff and handed it to us on a silver platter. We are demonised, we are called lazy and ill prepared, we are labelled greedy and shallow… you made us that way.

 

So I guess mother is right, as a parent you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. If you refuse the pressures of society, and don’t let your children play on computers, don’t allow them mobile phones, let them go off on Enid Blyton style adventures and don’t bubble wrap their little lives… they will resent you, they will say you never paid enough attention, they will complain you made it harder for them to fit in with their peer’s as they were denied their right to a “normal” and “cool” upbringing. If you do give into social norms and do shower your child with all the newest and coolest bells and whistles, if you do make your child stay close by, if you do inhibit your child’s natural adventurous urges to keep them safe… they will yet again resent you, they will say you spoiled them, say you made them lazy, say you stole their childhoods…

 

None of this matters though, nothing I’ve written as of yet really means anything of consequence because the fact stands that every generation of parents will cock up in some way or another. Every mother and every father is stuck between a rock and a very hard place. Every child will grow up to resent their parents for something, just like those parents resent their own. Bridging this gap, taking away the label of “parent” and “child” and explaining we’re all humans and make mistakes and more importantly admitting the mistakes made is so much more important that Ferberizing or breast feeding. Having an open and frank dialogue with your child in which you explain your worry and they explain theirs shows these children (regardless of age) that we are all humans, prone to error and more importantly programmed to love. Which when you come down to it is more important than Bratz dolls, new clothes and a PSP.

 

“We all make mistakes, the point of being a parent is trying to do right the things your own mum and dad did wrong” Janey Godley (repeatedly)