Breaking Omerta
The way we talk about parenting fucks us up
I’m going to break omerta. Becoming a parent makes every part of your existing life worse. Your marriage. Your work. Your personal pursuits. Your friendships. All of them suffer. All of them change. Most parents become sophists trying to argue around this reality.
“No really, it’s so wonderful!”
We’re lying. Or at least, we’re not telling the whole truth. All of the above is an accurate reflection that I—and, I suspect, most parents—can attest to. But there’s another piece of the puzzle, one that complicates things. While every aspect of your pre-parent life suffers with the arrival of the lil endless pit of wanting, there’s this new aspect of your life too. And that new part of your life is amazing. And awful. Rewarding. And mindless. Joyful. And relentlessly dull.
It is all of these things. A single laugh from the little one makes it worth it, but there’s no doubt that things change and become harder.
Sometimes, I resent it.
And I resent even more the avalanche of “well, you just need to get your priorities straight” that comes after saying as much. Most of all, I am troubled by the voice in my head—a voice that sounds like my prepubescent self—whispering mournfully, “you said you’d be around for your kids more.”
All of us develop ideas of what kind of parents we’re going to be. I have a pet theory that we overcorrect for our own parents’ mistakes, creating shockwaves of miscalculated care down the generations. I’ve learned that, much like with courage, we only learn whether we will live up to our internal idea of ourselves when the moment comes.
Pay attention to what people do, not what they say. That’s as true about ourselves as anyone.
I’ve learned a lot about myself since McNugget came screaming into our lives a little over a year ago. Some of these things surprised me (although, in hindsight, I’m not sure why).
I like to work. Now, I include working on my book and writing in general here, but I don’t think I had fully come to appreciate how much I’ve come to love working after I began working for myself. I get antsy to get back to it.
I will sacrifice sleep to pursue things I care deeply about.
I love spending time with McNugget.
I get sick of spending time with McNugget faster than I am proud to admit.
That temper I spent decades getting under control? Well, turns out I’m still Irish.
I don’t mind the boring work of having a child: mixing formula, changing diapers, making baby food. Mindless activity can be enjoyable.
I’m wildly inconsistent in terms of my patience for the boy. I can go for four days as primary caregiver. I can also lose my shit after an hour and need to walk away.
I understand why parents resort to mindless TV/insta/tiktok consumption. I’m holding out with podcasts, but who knows.
None of this is particularly important. All parents have some sort of list like this. The takeaway that I want to leave you with is this: none of this is coherent. There’s no central narrative. It is just survival and a grudge match of competing desires and obligations.
Lost in that grudge match? You. If you allow it.
When I open up about this, I’m told by everyone but my wife to suck it up. That it’s temporary. That I have it lucky, really. That I’m now responsible for a little soul and that I have to live for him. All of that may be true. But you know? Fuck it.
I don’t want to live for my son—or my wife, siblings, or friends. I want to live for me. They have their own lives to live. My obligation as a parent is to raise a little person to be able to live for himself. To help him connect his idea of himself with the way he lives his life. To not fuck up so badly that his overcorrections for my mistakes are catastrophic down the line.
Yet we live in a society that meets saying such things aloud with approbation. Say it anyway. Once more with feeling. Follow the bouncing ball:
Now everybody—
McNugget is adorable. I coparent 3 kids (10, 14, 16) and have been told by everyone that I was in the "thick" of it for the past 15+ years. The thick never ends. They say time goes by quickly (days are slow, years are fast, yadaaaaaaa) but it is all very slow and when it is "done" (it is never done, this is eternal) I will be very old. I parent feast and famine style (it's more complicated than every other week) and it is exactly how that sounds - all the good and bad at once, and then none of it. And repeat. I know I am a better parent than what I came from. But my parents were the perfect parents for a writer, so how can I complain? And I never would have been this funny without all this pain. So I say mess him up but teach him all those big words you know along the way so that he can write a really great novel.
It has been awhile since I was in your shoes, Owen. My daughter is 21. However, I still remember most of it … including the forgettable parts.
You say this about the early days: “And that new part of your life is amazing. And awful. Rewarding. And mindless. Joyful. And relentlessly dull.”
I think that is all true as an absolute value. Individual parents, of course, perceive these things differently. Some focus only on the awful, or the less-than-wonderful; others have so many things going on besides parenting that they may not perceive much at all, not even the truly joyful.
With distance from your current perch, I can say that I remember the totality of it more than fondly. It is probably more rosy than in the moment.
Two other quick observations.
—First, I like your generational over correction point. There were a number of times growing up where I made a mental (or verbal) note that I would do this or that differently than my parents.
—Second, despite this urge to correct, your point about survival mode is well made. I can’t recall anything I said I would change because so much of parenting was (and still is) meeting the moment. There is no past or future, there is only now, and in the now I need to take specific action.
Interesting post. Cheers.