MROZEK: The beatings will continue until morale improves

Andrea Mrozek is a Senior Fellow at Cardus.ca.Intensive parenting. It’s a phrase that got my back up the first time I heard it, which was in the context of Cardus, the think tank where I work, fielding a substantive survey authored by Lyman Stone about Canadian women’s fertility desires. We asked women who wished to have children, why they would not in the next two years. The top five answers included:I want to grow as a personDesire to save moneyNeed to focus on careerKids require intense careNo suitable partner.My immediate response to number four was to say, oh yes, with the fire of a thousand suns, that’s true: kids do require intense care. I believe Lyman then explained that “intensive parenting” is not the sheer weight of knowing that someone’s very life is in your hands. No — this is the intensity of thinking that to be a good parent, you must sign your children up for the right preschools, teach them four languages, take the right lessons, and generally spend a lot of money.Okay, I said. And I let it go. But thoughts of what intense parenting is, or means, continued to stew in my mind.Today, I return to the concept of “intensive parenting” because even since that survey, discussions of fertility have heated up. And “intensive parenting” often is denigrated as the big bad terrible thing that really looms large in young women today, reconsidering their own plans to have a family. This is what our own Cardus survey showed, and “intensive parenting” is often mentioned in media commentary on the subject, typically with the subtext that parents need to be less intense, and then the fertility enterprise would really take off.Then, just days ago, while this article was yet a draft, Lyman Stone wrote that Intensive Parenting Might Be Good (Sometimes)..My point then becomes even more important. Whether intensive parenting is good or bad is irrelevant. My point is that fears about parenting being too intensive do not result in lower fertility. Fewer kids result in intensive parenting. And once intensive parenting is established as the norm, it may perpetuate a low fertility climate.Courtesy of fewer kids, we have created an intensive parenting norm, which creates a climate of not wanting more kids. Further to this point, it is well nigh impossible in our current culture and country, where, thankfully, people are still mostly middle class, to have a small family and not be somewhat intense.Not all, but very many of those denigrating intensive parenting often have more than two children. Lyman Stone, demographer extraordinaire and Tim Carney, author of Family Unfriendly come to mind, and this short article ought not be interpreted as anything against them. But it may be that those who have many children at some point forget that the very same intensive parenting of the intense parenting crowd likely drove their early days with a then-only child. Just they then moved on, and on again, getting to the point of my dear friend with four kids who can “only do music, no swimming” this season because otherwise, their lives would be — what’s the word I’m looking for — intense.I am not striving to be an intensive parent. It opposes my worldview to work toward creating any kind of super child. I have no delusions whatsoever that type or place of schooling will contribute to life satisfaction for my kid, which I view as coming from a strong sense of vocation. Serving God, serving others — might be our informal family motto, which we are free to pursue without expensive inputs.But my personality leans toward intensity in many things, so how I parent my child is not exempt.Before I had children, I was this way when pet sitting, for crying out loud. Have you lost sleep dog sitting? I have. Was this small creature, who can’t talk, happy, content, well-fed and watered? I come by it honestly. I once witnessed my dad run out to buy new water for the goldfish we were “babysitting.” We could all see that the fish was ailing. It subsequently passed away, in spite of our best efforts. (RIP, YMCA Geneva Park Children’s Programs goldfish, RIP.).In a low fertility world where most children, thankfully, continue to have two parents, it starts with the fact that for many to most of us, the child has not one person who cares deeply about him/her, but two.For us, with our only child family, that means it is always two on one. Two people correcting manners. Two people with expectations. Two people enforcing chores get done.And intensity creeps up on me in other ways.Imagine my shock when I woke up not too long ago to realize we actually have an intense set of extracurriculars this season of life. I did not want it. Or even plan for it.Weekly: Swimming lessons. These are a must for survival. Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. A beautiful little program at our church, my daughter started when she was not yet in kindergarten. Piano lessons. Christmas brought the gift of a piano, and pianos are not toys. So we started music lessons. And finally, cross-country ski lessons this winter. An author I was reading (Leonard Sax) said you’ll have a good relationship with your kid if you teach them to do the things you love. I love cross-country skiing. Et voila. We entered into a season that is busy, if not intense.There is one thing and one thing only that would effectively help counter this intensity. I would be able to dilute the laser beam of my love for my kid by having another child. But I’m probably Type A enough to remain intensive with two. So then a third..When your heart beats outside your body with your child, as is so often the case for mothers in general, and me in particular, it is hard not to be intensive about it.Making matters worse is that North American culture is not relaxed. Working outside the home when children are small immediately ups the intensity inside the home, as parents struggle to counter the guilt that ensues from not spending time. And then as we spend less time, we know less what to do with small children, and what fills the hours we don’t know how to fill? Lessons of all kinds.I am all in favour of treating children as a joy and a blessing, because this is what they are. Seeing more children routinely in our everyday lives would reacquaint us with this fact.But to see children as a joy and a blessing, we need to have more children. But we can’t have more children because we are too intense about parenting the small number of children we do have.It is, as they say, a tough nut to crack.Until we break that one open, and I do always have ideas on that front, including “create and perpetuate a culture of earlier marriage” (stick with me for more advice that is very difficult/nearly impossible to follow outside religious communities), we can all be assured that parenting in general and mothering in particular will remain “intense.”If we consider it an imperative to increase fertility, we might simply say: the beatings will continue until morale improves.Andrea Mrozek is a Senior Fellow at Cardus.ca.

MROZEK: The beatings will continue until morale improves

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