Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, we talk about the ridiculous notion that your job as a parent is ever done.
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My husband and I will be out hunting elk in Idaho this week. In fact, by the time you are reading this Wednesday’s newsletter, I’ll hopefully be hiking through trees and brush.
We’ve left the girls at home with my mother and stepfather. They live only about 12 minutes away, but they still stay at our house to make it easier for the girls. My mother created a menu for the week, recycling the girls’ favorite dishes. She made a list of desserts that she knows they love. We created a schedule to help them keep track of which days the girls have practice and which are game days. They have all the addresses and information they need to have a successful week while we are gone.
I feel incredibly grateful that they are willing to care for the girls while we are away. Anytime I ask my mother for help, she says yes. I truly can’t remember a single time since the girls were born when she said no to babysitting them unless she was already out of town. She even did it for me while I was remodeling my house, and she was remodeling hers!
It’s not like this for everyone, which is probably why I feel the need to sing her praises. I saw a post last night before bed that really highlighted just how blessed I am. A woman who calls herself “Prairie Housewife” said that when she asked her mother to watch her “good” kids so she could attend a conference, her mother agreed, but only with very strict conditions.
“I asked my (boomer) mom to watch my (good) kids during the day while I’m at a conference. She said yes, but in the same text:
-said she wouldn’t do it again
-made me feel guilty for asking her since she’s already so busy
-said she doesn’t have the stamina (she’s 64 and in good health)
-doesn’t want to “be in a disciplinarian role” and just wants to be Grandma
- is leaving early to make it back in time to attend a church function
-and says I need a reliable backup plan because she may bail last minute.”
This isn’t the first time I have seen this exact type of complaint. Boomer parents refusing to be there for their children. They want to be there for the “fun” stuff but not in the moments that truly matter.
Sometimes I feel a bit like someone who doesn’t have a dog in this fight. My parents would and do help. I’ve seen my aunts travel across the country to be there for their children. The example of the boomer mom or dad who refuses to do their duty is so far from my reality; what could I possibly have to complain about? But I also think that we cannot perpetuate this cycle. Someone has to stand up and tell this generation to wake up to the legacy they are leaving behind.
For each generation before them, the idea that you would spend all your wealth, leaving nothing behind to give your descendants a leg up, would have been unheard of. They have written villainous characters in famous novels about this sort of behavior. But now all we hear about it is this idea that “you can’t take it with you when you die.” So they have multiple homes, buy boats and other recreational toys, and then scoff at their children who are struggling to afford their mortgage. Not only that, but when someone like Prairie Housewife mentions how her mother reacted to her asking for help with the kids, this generation responds by telling her her mother has already done her duty. She’s raised her kids, and her job is done. Some even claim that it’s Prairie Housewife who is being selfish here, not her mother.
This reaction makes me want to line them all up and shake some sense into them.
What do you even mean, her job is done? Are her kids alive? Does she have grandchildren? Is she in good health? If the answer to all these questions is “yes,” then her job isn’t done. In fact, it’s not even close.
An important part of raising children is leading by example. You can tell your kids to live an honorable life, to serve God, to be financially responsible, but if you are not actively living that life yourself, the lesson probably won’t stick. They may end up doing all these things, but it won’t be because of you; it will be despite you. What kind of lesson do boomers think they are showing their grandchildren by not being there when their family needs them? It’s surely not that family is the most important part of their lives or that having children is a blessing.
The idea that your job as a parent could ever end before you die is the opposite of how things should be. It’s a complete distortion of family responsibility. And our society has to reject and correct it in future generations.
I’ve already told our daughters that I want them to marry good Texas men so they can live near me. I want to help them with their children. I want to be there for them in the moments when they feel overwhelmed by the changes in their lives. They will need help navigating this new life, just as they needed help learning how to be teenagers and adults. Who better to learn how to be a mother from than their own mother, who loves them so much?
They know they won’t catch me telling them my job is done. Instead, they will have a teacher and a guide for as long as I live.
Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to goodlife@dailycaller.com
Heard It Through The Grapevine:
This week’s grapevine will be a little different. I am only going to suggest you read one piece. Geoff Ingersoll is leaving the Daily Caller. It comes with some very heavy emotions for me because Geoff was the man who hired me. He took a chance on a stay-at-home mom with little to no writing experience, when the logical decision would have been to tell me no and send me on my way.
But he saw something in me that I didn’t even know was there. He encouraged me to hone my skills as a reporter and political analysis writer. We would argue back and forth in our editorial meetings about how I saw the political landscape as an everyday American mom, and how he saw it from his D.C. perch. I quickly learned that he wasn’t doing this to be confrontational but to remind me that even I could get caught up in a bubble if I didn’t fight it. I used to joke that he reminds me a lot of my dad. Both Marines. Both crass. But both would die for you.
The first opinion piece I ever wrote was on the social horrors of Covid. He personally edited it and walked me through where my voice was strongest and where my ideas needed more fleshing out. The piece went bonkers and was my highest-performing piece for the month. That’s when he fought for me to write more opinion. He worked with me and made me feel like I was a top priority, even though I knew I was just a minor piece of the Caller puzzle. But without him and his mentorship, this newsletter and my voice would be nonexistent.
Geoff writes about his time as the pirate king of the Caller ship. Please enjoy it and wish him well. State of Tuesday: LAST DRUNK STANDING
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And yet my Boomer brother and his wife have spend countless hours looking after their grandchildren when their now-single mother has to work. They also looked after his wife's mother who lost her mental acuity before she passed away, and his wife's alcoholic brother who couldn'[t even go to the bathroom without making a mess. And last week my mother had a stroke, and it was my brother who was on scene to help until things stabilized, because he lived the closest.
This isn't a generational issue, and it is stupid if not ignorant to make it so. There are people who help, and those that don't, and those that do so reluctantly and unreliably. It has very little to do with their year of birth.