So, Dr. Wife led me to this brutally honest article about parenting and how/why it doesn’t make you happy and I thought of one particular aspect that doesn’t get covered in it that has to do with an amazing lecture by Jane McGonigal I heard at SXSW (natch) a few years ago.
One of the key points is the idea that positive psychologists have boiled down happiness to four aspects:
1. Satisfying work to do
2. The experience of being good at something
3. Time spent with people we like
4. The chance to be part of something bigger
Now think for a moment about point number two. I know that one of the key frustrations I have as a parent is that, by definition, you can never be an expert. You know Malcom Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule? Well, you can’t get that as a parent because by the time 10,000 hours have gone by the very act of parenting has changed radically. (The closest you could get would be someone involved in professional child care, but even they have problems raising their kids.)
So the main frustration I feel as a parent is that I never feel like I’m good at it. If my wife has a question on a particular aspect of raising Kiran, I have no idea what the answer is. I can only make an educated guess (and that’s on a good day) but I never feel like I’m giving an authoritative answer the same way I feel when I’m giving someone advice about the web or talking about movies or even just giving someone directions to Dunkin’ Donuts.
And this is exacerbated by the fact that usually when there’s a decision to be made, a question to answer, it’s urgent. Why is the baby crying? We’ve tried x, y, and z. What is the answer? To have to give a shot in the dark answer at a time when you feel it is your duty as a parent to Know with a capital K what to do is disempowering and a little heartbreaking because the people you feel like you’re failing are very, very important to you. (I should clarify that my wife and I make these decisions together, which is awesome, but still, feeling like you have jack to contribute to that conversation is disheartening.)
This is not to say that raising a child is a wholly miserable experience (and the article makes that distinction as well). In fact, I experience three out of the four aspects of happiness defined in that lecture pretty regularly. But 2? Almost never.
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