Parenting

I don’t know how you do it? Well, I know how you do it but how do you do it after you do it.

Having a child (children) is a life transformation. Changing from being single to being a couple to being a family is the expectation of becoming an adult. It is the widely accepted rite of passage.

Even if the couple (for it takes two) had not planned on having a family, society presents the pressure that everyone else is doing it.

And once you do it, conversations change from politics and music to strollers and potty talk. Singles or “non-parents” were then out of the loop with former friends. They were not part of the club.

So here are these folks who were in a romantic relationship and poof! There is another player. A little person who cannot walk or talk but can scream and poop.

This new addition to the ‘family’ has their own requirements for medical care, clothing, furniture, entertainment, transportation and food. They require constant attention (more than a pet) until they are tall enough to attend a society of gathering children and place them through years of training and baby-sitting.

As a parent you are required to become a soccer mom or a coach or attend parents teachers night or a taxi service for every event or provide enough healthy food for every member of the neighborhood for birthday parties and sleepovers.

Your parents and their parents and all the other families will evaluate your teaching of morals, public appearance, proper behavior and community involvement. If anything goes wrong, you (as a parent) will be to blame.

All the while trying to keep your kids understanding life’s fallacies and miracles and listening to everything from heartbreak to bullying trying to give a logical solution, one must keep the family unit together.

I’ve heard once the little ones have move away and started their own crew that being a ‘grand’ parent is the best. Enjoy the cuteness then hand them back and send them home.

Sounds like a lot of work to me, so I bypassed the cultural repopulation clause.

Still I missed the drug overdose, the bad boyfriend, the car wreck, expelled from school, unwanted baby, imprisonment and all the other variables children bring from that one moment of passion.

I salute you parents. You are stalwarts of the community keeping the economy going with movies, houses, cars, clothing, food, phones just to entertain the next generation.