Being a parent means you’re never quite your own person again, but that self-sacrifice can pull off a miracle

5 hours ago 2

I believe power trips and parenting should never mix, so I freaked out when the early childhood nurse told me that to my baby boy, I was a “goddess”. She meant he was dependent on me for everything, so I had to be everything to him, come what may. But the life divine didn’t come easily to me: my boy didn’t sleep much, so I didn’t either.

A decade on, I’ve seen the light. The nurse was right all along: parenting is a God gig. You don’t need to be a believer for something miraculous to happen when you become a parent: you go about becoming the god you don’t believe in, and your child’s personal guarantee that the world is a welcoming place.

To the extent that we can, anyway. None of us can completely ward off the darkness, including in ourselves. It takes courage for those closest to us to hold up a mirror to us that reveals our true selves. It’s one thing for peers to do that, but what kids offer parents is next level, searing, self-awareness. I’ll be blunt: I used to think I was a patient, kind person. Then I had kids and realised, Oh. I’ve only been passing for one.

Now I’m a parent, I sense how high the God gig stakes are. Parents create the climate of family life. Any of us who grew up in unstable or abusive homes will know how good kids have to get at, so to speak, forecasting the weather. Such parents are “playing God” in the worst possible sense: they behave as if it’s their world and everyone else, especially any kids, must live in it.

It’s the exact reverse of what should happen: the child’s needs should come first. This doesn’t mean never saying “no” to them, but it does mean parents will frequently say “no” to their own wants and needs to serve their child’s long-term flourishing. Good parenting is costly in all kinds of ways: financially, emotionally, physically.

The Christian concept of “kenosis” – an ancient Greek word meaning self-emptying – can be a helpful guide here.

The gist: power – even divine power – isn’t for lording over others, but for serving other people. It’s a counterintuitive vision but one that makes sense of raising children. Being a parent means you’re never quite your own person again, but that self-sacrifice can pull off a miracle: your child becomes a wonderful adult.

What’s endlessly tricky, though, is applying that kenotic lens to the sexes. As feminist economist Nancy Folbre archly observes of (often religiously) conservative family values, “The sacrifice of mothers – but not fathers – is held forth as an imitation of Christ.”

Folbre has a point. When caregiving is singled out as a uniquely “feminine genius”, for instance, this has a way of leaving women holding the proverbial baby indefinitely. In a world where women’s caregiving work is routinely underpaid and ignored, and where women do disproportionately more housework and kin-keeping than men, Christian talk of kenosis risks baptising all the ways our culture sets up women for mum martyrdom.

I don’t (yet) know how to solve that care economy conundrum. But if the self-sacrifice of parents in general and mothers in particular goes unrewarded, I find it strangely consoling that God gets how that feels.

Christian writer CS Lewis once observed that, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” Well, I believe in God as I believe in mothers. I don’t need to imagine the existence of someone who holds up the show for everyone every day and yet receives so little credit for it. The daily evidence is before my eyes.

I’m now on the lookout for all the ways dads do their God-thing too. Like Nick Cave, who once counselled a fan about how to avoid passing on his cynicism to his son.

“Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like – such as reading to your little boy or showing him a thing you love or singing him a song or putting on his shoes – keeps the devil down in the hole,” Cave wrote in his Red Hand Files. “It says the world and its inhabitants have value and are worth defending. It says the world is worth believing in.”

I love that. In ways big and small, the gods among us build our children’s worlds. How? By telling them that – as all parents say – everything will be all right.