dads (and moms, and others)
So, here's the Father's Day entry. I remember once having a conversation with a father of a boy who was at the time probably 6 or 7 years old. I'm not sure how the conversation got to this particular topic but I remember explaining my speculation that parenthood is riddled with a blistering self-consciousness, a continual evaluation of one's own fitness as a role model for a child. And while this father thought that was an interesting point, he was quick to disagree -- he didn't watch his behavior with that kind of obsessiveness; to become a "role model" wasn't really his goal. He made sure he didn't swear in front of the kid-- it's not like he didn't monitor his behavior at all -- but in general, he said, his only aim was to be "real", to not pretend to be someone he wasn't.
Interpret that as you like, I can't remember how he elaborated on it. But here I leave a question for all fathers, all mothers, and anyone else who is or has been important in the life of a child. I'll ask you the same thing -- as soon as you assumed responsibility for that child or children, do you feel that you somehow changed your behavior in light of the fact that a developing person was always watching, always potentially assimilating that behavior? Did you adopt the style described above, avoiding all masks and pretense and self-righteousness, in the belief that the most important goal is to be genuine? Did you do a little bit of both?
Comments
Guess I have been mostly "real." What a heck of a role model--sorry Karin. Don't blame you for trying to be unlike me as much as possible. What do you think? Was I really there for you, or was I always too busy being a teacher?
Posted by: Jane | Junio 21, 2005 07:51 AM
Hi Mom,
I would avoid the angst. Maybe I should clarify the motivation for asking the question. I am taking the perspective of someone interested in the styles of parenting that I've observed, and how they have often countered my own intuitions of what styles people might naturally adopt. I was not at all thinking about my own experience as a person who had been parented. So, really, let's have no hand-wringing here, I just wanted to see if anyone had comments on their own experiences with kids, whether those kids were their own children or just placed under their supervision for some reason or another.
Posted by: Karin | Junio 22, 2005 05:52 PM
"kids ... placed under their supervision for some reason or another." As in classrooms' full of students? I was, in high school, such a "unreal" teacher that the students thought I surely lived at the school, sleeping in a locker and coming out during school days just to torture them!
You know that--my "hair never moved, even in a breeze!" No one imagined all the, oh-my-God-she's-human things I did.
College is entirely different.
Have I missed the point again--Fret, fret, fret!
Posted by: Jane | Junio 23, 2005 09:39 AM