Quinn - Parenting By Ikea and Becoming a Man (part 1)
This is from a journal entry I wrote sophomore year. I haven't published this before for any academic reason, but it's been on my mind since our discussion about coming-of-age ceremonies. I record a time that I pointed to as my "coming-of-age" moment. Two years after the moment, the line between adulthood and childhood is still as blurry as ever. I wonder if primal peoples feel the same tension. Declaring oneself to be an adult changes nothing physically or developmentally. Sometimes I certainly don't feel like an adult. Perhaps being an adult carries no unique feeling--outside of joint pain, that is. If that's the only feeling associated with adulthood, I'm definitely an adult. I digress. Here's the first bit of my journal.
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It is an incredible thing when parents begin to confide in their children. Previously, I’ve noted how discomfiting it can be to realize parents are as perplexed and improvisational in life as any other human on the face of the earth. Children often grow up believing their moms and dads are infallible and know exactly what they’re doing. Growing up comes with the realization that this perceived grand plan was nothing more than another imaginative creation of youth. I jokingly think that the best parents are the ones who can keep up this act the longest: the longer kids think their parents have life figured out, the better the parents are at parenting. Maybe I’m wholly misinformed; perhaps some parents actually do know what they’re doing when they raise their kids. I’m inclined to think the number of such parents is very low.
Half of me wants to say that parents are simply bullshitting their way through parenthood, but that seems inappropriate. I wonder why. All kidding aside, though, this term would, I feel, have a degree of accuracy to the struggle of a mother or father. However, the term ‘bullshitting’ is too disingenuous in connotation. Bullshitting insinuates apathy at best and disdain at worst toward the task at hand. Parents necessarily care about the job they are doing when raising their kids. I wouldn’t dare refer to someone who has children and cares nothing about them a parent. That kind of person doesn’t deserve to have kids, in my opinion. The problem in parenting isn’t in the desire to raise one’s offspring correctly, it’s in the ability to do so.
It’s easy to see why parents don’t know how to raise kids: they’ve never done it before. Ok, sure. Some parents have raised kids before. I get that sometimes grandparents raise their grandchildren for different reasons, and younger siblings gain from the experience the parents have had in raising their older siblings (which I think in many cases is negligible). There are other extenuating circumstances where parents come into their position with more on-the-job training than most couples. Good for them. Even in those situations, no amount of previous experience or preparation can truly prepare someone for parenting.
Raising a child is not like putting together Ikea furniture. Well, actually, there are a lot of similarities the more I think about it. Both operations can be incredibly frustrating. Both seemingly take forever. Both tasks inevitably require you to spend lots of money and have a vehicle capable of transporting a car full of crap. Past that, parenting is a far more complicated endeavor. Ikea furniture, while unquestionably beguiling, is not sentient. Nor is it constantly changing. Luckily for any prospective furniture assemblers, Ikea’s products are never toddlers or teenagers. The variety of furniture one could purchase and assemble is nothing in comparison to the diversity of each human being. Most importantly, and most seriously, no swedish-designed conglomerate of wood and metal can ever be the target of such great affection as a parent’s love for their child. Finally, Ikea products come with directions. Children do not, much to the chagrin of moms and dads everywhere. That’s why I described parenting as improvisational in the first paragraph. Without blueprints, you have to be quick on your feet and make stuff up as you go along.
Contrasting children with Ikea furniture is one of the more obscure tangents I have taken in a while. Alas, the point remains evident. Parenting is a daunting undertaking to start with, and unlike other jobs parenting doesn’t get easier the longer one has been doing it. In fact, it gets more complicated with each child. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never raised a child before or you’re a seasoned expert at parenting, minivan equipped and all. Whenever a new child is born, all bets are off. It’s impossible to raise two children the exact same way because no two people are exactly the same. Sure, Michael and Betsy Quinn started raising Taylor and Will Quinn before me, but neither of my bothers prepared my dear parents for their youngest boy. Why? Because they had never raised Patrick Bondurant Quinn before. Neither Taylor nor William was born allergic to dairy (and gluten apparently) and had chronic reflux. Neither of my brothers had my exact personality. My friend group was different. My talents and passions were different. My love languages are different. My style is different. My learning styles are different. The way I communicate is different. I could continue listing deviations and complications all night. These differences aren’t simply between me and my brothers. I am completely divergent from every other person who has ever been or will ever be alive. That’s kind of how people work. No one’s the same. Every parent faces this exact challenge with each of their kids.
Let me harp on the improv idea just a moment longer. It’s possible to practice improvisation. Take jazz, for instance. Learning how to raise a child is like a lifelong pursuit in becoming a master of a style of jazz. The problem here is, each child is a different style of jazz. Heck, some kids are completely different genres. Taylor’s Baroque, Will’s alternative rock, and I’m jazz fusion. If our father was Eddie Vedder, Will would be doing alright, but Taylor and I would be out of luck. Why? Because Eddie Vedder is the lead singer of Pearl Jam. I’m not saying Mr. Vedder is no good at classical or jazz. I’m sure with lots of time and effort he could be just as proficient in those genres as he is in his own. That is exactly my point. Every style is learned, and learning takes time. Music and parenting depart here, I fear, because I doubt in the existence of prodigy parents. It’d be absurd to think of anyone as the Mozart or Stevie Wonder of raising kids. Parenting is, quite frankly, infinitely more difficult that producing music. So I’ll put this improv analogy to rest.
......
It is an incredible thing when parents begin to confide in their children. Previously, I’ve noted how discomfiting it can be to realize parents are as perplexed and improvisational in life as any other human on the face of the earth. Children often grow up believing their moms and dads are infallible and know exactly what they’re doing. Growing up comes with the realization that this perceived grand plan was nothing more than another imaginative creation of youth. I jokingly think that the best parents are the ones who can keep up this act the longest: the longer kids think their parents have life figured out, the better the parents are at parenting. Maybe I’m wholly misinformed; perhaps some parents actually do know what they’re doing when they raise their kids. I’m inclined to think the number of such parents is very low.
Half of me wants to say that parents are simply bullshitting their way through parenthood, but that seems inappropriate. I wonder why. All kidding aside, though, this term would, I feel, have a degree of accuracy to the struggle of a mother or father. However, the term ‘bullshitting’ is too disingenuous in connotation. Bullshitting insinuates apathy at best and disdain at worst toward the task at hand. Parents necessarily care about the job they are doing when raising their kids. I wouldn’t dare refer to someone who has children and cares nothing about them a parent. That kind of person doesn’t deserve to have kids, in my opinion. The problem in parenting isn’t in the desire to raise one’s offspring correctly, it’s in the ability to do so.
It’s easy to see why parents don’t know how to raise kids: they’ve never done it before. Ok, sure. Some parents have raised kids before. I get that sometimes grandparents raise their grandchildren for different reasons, and younger siblings gain from the experience the parents have had in raising their older siblings (which I think in many cases is negligible). There are other extenuating circumstances where parents come into their position with more on-the-job training than most couples. Good for them. Even in those situations, no amount of previous experience or preparation can truly prepare someone for parenting.
Raising a child is not like putting together Ikea furniture. Well, actually, there are a lot of similarities the more I think about it. Both operations can be incredibly frustrating. Both seemingly take forever. Both tasks inevitably require you to spend lots of money and have a vehicle capable of transporting a car full of crap. Past that, parenting is a far more complicated endeavor. Ikea furniture, while unquestionably beguiling, is not sentient. Nor is it constantly changing. Luckily for any prospective furniture assemblers, Ikea’s products are never toddlers or teenagers. The variety of furniture one could purchase and assemble is nothing in comparison to the diversity of each human being. Most importantly, and most seriously, no swedish-designed conglomerate of wood and metal can ever be the target of such great affection as a parent’s love for their child. Finally, Ikea products come with directions. Children do not, much to the chagrin of moms and dads everywhere. That’s why I described parenting as improvisational in the first paragraph. Without blueprints, you have to be quick on your feet and make stuff up as you go along.
Contrasting children with Ikea furniture is one of the more obscure tangents I have taken in a while. Alas, the point remains evident. Parenting is a daunting undertaking to start with, and unlike other jobs parenting doesn’t get easier the longer one has been doing it. In fact, it gets more complicated with each child. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never raised a child before or you’re a seasoned expert at parenting, minivan equipped and all. Whenever a new child is born, all bets are off. It’s impossible to raise two children the exact same way because no two people are exactly the same. Sure, Michael and Betsy Quinn started raising Taylor and Will Quinn before me, but neither of my bothers prepared my dear parents for their youngest boy. Why? Because they had never raised Patrick Bondurant Quinn before. Neither Taylor nor William was born allergic to dairy (and gluten apparently) and had chronic reflux. Neither of my brothers had my exact personality. My friend group was different. My talents and passions were different. My love languages are different. My style is different. My learning styles are different. The way I communicate is different. I could continue listing deviations and complications all night. These differences aren’t simply between me and my brothers. I am completely divergent from every other person who has ever been or will ever be alive. That’s kind of how people work. No one’s the same. Every parent faces this exact challenge with each of their kids.
Let me harp on the improv idea just a moment longer. It’s possible to practice improvisation. Take jazz, for instance. Learning how to raise a child is like a lifelong pursuit in becoming a master of a style of jazz. The problem here is, each child is a different style of jazz. Heck, some kids are completely different genres. Taylor’s Baroque, Will’s alternative rock, and I’m jazz fusion. If our father was Eddie Vedder, Will would be doing alright, but Taylor and I would be out of luck. Why? Because Eddie Vedder is the lead singer of Pearl Jam. I’m not saying Mr. Vedder is no good at classical or jazz. I’m sure with lots of time and effort he could be just as proficient in those genres as he is in his own. That is exactly my point. Every style is learned, and learning takes time. Music and parenting depart here, I fear, because I doubt in the existence of prodigy parents. It’d be absurd to think of anyone as the Mozart or Stevie Wonder of raising kids. Parenting is, quite frankly, infinitely more difficult that producing music. So I’ll put this improv analogy to rest.
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