Moms and Dads, You’ve Been Duped

And why you should be glad about it

Over the last five years of raising two kids, my husband and I have found ourselves quietly questioning,

“Why didn’t anyone tell us that being a good parent would be this hard?”

All other parents I know have asked themselves some version of this before — “What were we thinking?” or “I didn’t sign up for this”. Yet, nobody ahead of us on this path breathes a word about how life-altering the parenting journey would be. On the other hand, they are generous in doling out assurances that eventually, it would all turn out to be rewarding. Why do people, who have our best interests at heart, omit critical information that would shape our decisions to start a family?

Parenthood, a clever scheme

Newly minted parents are inducted into the sweetest, most cleverly designed and the most successful Ponzi scheme of all times — parenthood! Since times immemorial, our ancestors have been recruiting their offsprings into the same scheme of propagating their genes, which they were themselves conditioned into. Blame it on biology, family, society, and culture.

This is how it works. Prospective parents are lured with tales of immeasurable reward at the end of the journey. The tradeoffs are, of course, downplayed by promising an elusive ‘balance’ which never really materializes. Once recruitment is accomplished, the prime beneficiaries of this scheme are its previous members, new grandparents, who are naturally ecstatic at the arrival of their grandchildren. Remember the immeasurable reward they were promised? That’s exactly what this is! Older members of this scheme benefit from the proceeds of newly recruited members. Does this not sound eerily similar to what we call a ‘Ponzi scheme’ in the financial world?

Our predicament

The truth is that nobody who is trained to think about decisions rationally, who has been taught to evaluate the costs and benefits of any decision, would opt-in to parenting. Things were probably very different when large, extended families lived under one roof and the village that it takes to raise a child was indeed available to do so. But today, the moments of joy in this journey are subtle and elusive while the frustrations are jarring and unavoidable. Parenting takes a toll on the new parents’ well-being, health and in some tragic cases, sanity, for years to come.

The luckier ones amongst us keep up our exacting parenting process by genuinely believing that everything is a phase and it will pass. Yet, for the dedicated parent, what we consider a mere phase, only evolves into another one more challenging and time-consuming than the one before. No wonder, the demand for parenting guidebooks, rulebooks, webinars, and seminars never dries up. No wonder, purposeful but exhausted parents punctuate every public space, if only we were to observe (in the pre-social distancing era, at least).

How ‘travel schooling’ our family gave us perspective

Travel schooling, or traveling with our kids around the world in search of educational experiences, slapped us hard with uncomfortable truths such as these. Traveling, living and learning with our children accentuated every aspect of parenting. The highs became even more marvelous and the lows plunged us into the deepest emotional trenches. Much like it is for parents caught in this phase of social distancing, we under-estimated how challenging it could be to engage with each other and our kids constantly.

Yet, it is also this endeavor that helped us find perspective and a sense of purpose. Around the mid-point of our year-long adventure, we decided to take a vacation from travel schooling. In the summer, we traveled to Alaska, our very first cruising experience with the entire extended family. Knowing that there is a kids’ club on the ship and plenty of activities for adults too, we were expecting a relaxing break from our intense months of travel schooling.

Upon enthusiastically looking through the activities in the kids’ club, we marched over only to discover that our two-year-old was just three months shy of the minimum age requirement. Upon hearing that her younger sister won’t be allowed in, my elder daughter refused to participate alone. We spent the week on a luxurious ship, but with not much to engage our girls. We watched our dream vacation turn into one where we had little time to ourselves. When my parents and in-laws offered to forgo some of their activities to take care of the children, we could sneak a few quiet moments. But we realized that we were exhausted.

I was livid with the travel agent for not sharing this critical information when booking us in. I was also furious at the staff for having neither activities nor trained babysitters on-board for children under three years. I was angry at everyone else on the ship who were mostly having a blissful time not even to be seen except during mealtimes.

However, not once did I feel the slightest resentment towards my younger daughter for being too young, or towards my older daughter for her admirable but inconvenient display of solidarity.

It didn’t even occur to me to be angry with them no matter how angry I was at a situation concerning them. And that is when, just like countless other instances before, I was reminded of how different the love I experience for my children is.

Our spiritual rite of passage

Through moments like these, an inescapable truth has dawned upon me. Parenting is an unfathomable, spiritual process. It is transformative because it overhauls life as we knew it, irreversibly. It is the death of the person we were before becoming a parent and the birth of a new ‘me’ who is so different that we often struggle to recognize her, let alone accept her.

Even so, the most understated reward is that parenthood is the only opportunity for most of us to come so close to experiencing unconditional love in the natural course of a lifetime. I deeply love many people I am blessed to have in my life. However, only when I became a parent, the seed of such fierce love, took root in my heart. And it keeps growing, even on the most frustrating of days.

Discovering within our hearts the capacity for such sublime love is a great spiritual milestone.

Our destinies must be thrust upon us

Admittedly, there are many other ways to experience spiritual transformation. But is any path for spiritual progress painless? Life is a string of events that augment our spiritual growth — falling in love, falling out of love, arguments, health shocks, physical challenges, pandemics, death. Honestly, compared with the ups and downs of parenting, would these highs and lows of life be any more palatable? Would you choose any of these if you knew beforehand exactly what they entail? Certainly not! No matter the promise of tremendous spiritual leaps. Most of us cringe even reading this list!

The truth is that as human beings, we have a primordial instinct to avoid pain. We are unequipped for consciously ‘choosing’ spiritual growth and the path it requires us to travel on. We may sincerely believe that spiritual evolution is the very goal of this life. Yet, we will not be able to make ourselves go through the experiences which are necessary for this process.

Our destinies must be thrust upon us.

So that we may fulfill our spiritual destinies, life must dupe us into living; and those who came before us must dupe us affectionately, into parenting.