Purposeful Happiness
It’s June—the month of weekends commandeered by weddings and graduation celebrations. My baby, Katie, graduated from pre-school last week. She marched across the stage, picked up her “diploma,” and marched on. She seemed to march right out of infancy and her toddler years at warp speed compared to the glacial pace of life with my oldest daughter.
The first couple of months of life with our first baby, otherwise known as our new sleep deprivation unit, seemed like they would never end. Would I ever sleep for longer than one-hour increments of time again? When I wasn’t exhausted from feedings and burpings and washing mini loads of spit-up-ladened laundry in special enzyme-free baby detergent, I waited for everything: Her first smile. Her first tooth. Her first word.
Parenthood is like that the first time around. You read every volume of the “What to Expect” series and still don’t know what to expect. Richard Ferber tells you to put your baby on a feeding schedule and teach him to self-soothe himself to sleep in his crib. T. Berry Brazelton advises mothers to feed a baby “on-demand,” and William Sears advocates for the family bed in order to engender secure attachments for children.
If there was a mood to motherhood in my generation, columnist Judith Warner may have succinctly captured it with her book title, Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety.
We looked at every decision (Pacifier: rubber or silicone? Wrong! No pacifier at all!) and knew that the very destiny of our child hung in the balance. Parent wisely, and our kids might not use up their college savings on therapy. Make some careless mistake, such as, say, allow your child prodigy to skip a grade in school, and you might just have the next Unabomber on your hands.
Last week, the New York Times magazine, the cultural barometer of social trends, announced that the era of over-parenting is, well, over. Whew. Just in time for Katie to grow up under-parented!
Anxiety-parenting? Laissez-faire parenting? Maybe neither of them. Sociologist Tony Campolo once talked about interviewing parents about what they most wanted for their children and the answers generally boiled down to a single sentiment: I just want my child to be happy!
Sweet, but most modern parents go about this the wrong way, Campolo believed. Who are the happiest children? The ones whose parents lavished them with things, carefully built up their self-esteem and shielded them from unpleasant situations? No, those kids grew up self-absorbed, ill-prepared for life’s realities and generally unhappy as a result.
Happiness, Campolo believes, grows out of giving children a sense of purpose and place in the family structure and in society. Healthy self-esteem grows out of hard work to achieve something and the satisfaction of accomplishment. And true joy in life grows out of service to others—the family unit, the community and to the good of others over the focus on self. Want to be happy? Lose yourself in loving and serving others.
I’ve thought about Campolo’s philosophy a lot as I’ve raised my kids. And I believe he’s got a point. I want to raise happy kids… which is why Katie is graduating not only to the esteemed halls of kindergarten, but to more responsibilities and chores at home as well. I’m starting her on laundry duty in the morning.
