|
Raising Parents
Reverend Darcey Laine
May 5, 2002
Palo Alto, CA
How incredible it is to be responsible for someone's life; to make choices about immunizations, medical tests, academic tests, what foods will make up a body, what ideas will form a mind. According to Eric Erickson, I as a parent have the opportunity to walk with my infant son as he faces his first challenge, deciding whether to trust or to distrust this world.
The experience of becoming a mother leads me to feel like a mother lion, a protector, a veritably biological calling to make the way smooth. I feel the awesome responsibility simply not to crush the beauty, innocence, life in an infant or child. How can we even imagine the immensity of a transition from the protected life in the womb to breathing air, to discover language. Your hand reaches out to hold something, but before you can grab that fluffy bunny, there are neural pathways to be established, muscle to be grown and trained.
I sometimes fear that as adults we see only the fluffy bunny, the trappings of innocence and safety, neglecting to see the life wrenching transformation that lays inside a first day at school, a first date. The transitions of childhood and our teen years are some of the most dramatic in a whole lifetime. And to the parents falls the responsibility of being present, nurturing, boundaring and encouraging throughout this intense introduction to what it means to be alive in this world.
But this mother lion in me comes to life not only when I hear the cries of my own child, but whenever I see or hear of those who travel this road unsupported and alone. Knowing how hard it is to be away from my son when he needs me, I can't help but feel deep empathy for all those who don't have the benefit of a living wage, who must choose between their children's financial well being and the well being of their children's souls, hearts and minds.
Unfortunately there are too many stories in 21st century America of an erosion of societal and cultural support of those who care for others. I am going to talk primarily about dependant children and their parents, but I would argue that there are deep parallels for those who care for adult children, or for aging parents, or for anyone who is called to care-giving.
For example, A woman living far away from her own family and friends, expecting her first child lamented that her husband had been sent out of the country for a month during her third trimester. In compensation for this his company would allow him to take his 2 weeks vacation after the baby was born. I was incredulous, and cited the Family Leave Act which requires companies of a certain size to allow employees to take up to 5 weeks leave on the birth of a new child, or to care for another family member in times of crisis. She explained that the company had made it clear that in a time of economic recession people who took advantage of this legal right might find themselves laid off. She added, "with housing costing what it does, most of us are only 1 or 2 mortgage payments away from losing our homes."
I also find myself called in a new way to the statistics and the stories of Welfare reform as we now know it. That a mother or father has a minimum wage job and participates in the consumer economy is elevated without any regard to who will care for their children, who holds in their hands a whole generation of Americans while their parents work often 2 or 3 jobs. In Wisconsin, for example, singles mothers must start paying off their state child support 3 months after their child is born. Childcare, however, is conspicuously absent or inadequate in many of these programs. This web of legislation seems to value commerce over the work of parenting. These laws and programs are clearly forgetting, that every parent is a working parent.
Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Cornell West in their book The War Against Parents, propose that children and parenting are increasingly unsupported at this time in history and in America in particular. They remind us that during the 1950s which were kind of a heyday of community support of parenting, government gave deduction of $6500 in 1996 dollars. Additionally the GI bill and Highway act subsidized education and housing. Thought today's average cost of raising one child through high school is $145,000 without including college tuition and expenses, fiscal support is no where near the level it reached after world war II. Hewlett and West support the theory that we value the work done in support of the consumer economy far greater than that in support of children and others who need our care. It will probably not surprise us that, according to Economist Edward Wolf, over 30 years amount of parental time has dropped %13 But it should shock you to know that child suicide, crime, obesity and depression are on a rise, while the number of hours in a work week climb, while the safety net for families with dependant children has been removed. This imbalance calls to us as a community working for justice and compassion since as Hewlett and West have stated "The full development of a human being requires something much deeper and more complicated than food and water; it requires sustained and sustaining love. According to the psychiatrist Willard Gaylin, ‘It is necessary to care for a child with love, in order to initiate a similar capacity in the child.'"
Consider this story Cornell West tells from his own life: I remember meeting one of these disconnected tortured youngsters at a talk I gave at a community center in Newark New Jersey. After the event, a young man sixteen or seventeen years old came up to me and said, "Professor West, I hear you're a pretty smart brother, you write this deep stuff, it must take a lotta talent and a lotta work to do something like that. Well I've got talent too. I'm the smartest guy in my class. But the rub is, I can't find any motivation. I don't see why I should try to do what you do. More and more I feel I belong on the streets, hustling, dealing, and hurting like everyone else. That's the way to survive where I live." He then asked a question. "Brother, what made you want to keep doing all that hard work, what made you believe in some kind of different future?" So I talked about my dad encouraging and disciplining me, my mom reading poetry to me, my older brother helping me with my homework, and my younger sisters cheering me on. The young man listened closely and then, in obvious pain said, "Here's the score – I'm in this world by myself. My mother's strung out and tuned out. I have brothers, but I don't know them, and as for my father, where he is nobody knows. I sure have never seen him." (p. 42-43)
So what can we in this room do to elevate parenting, to raise it up into our caring attention?
We can begin by paying attention to the parents of children and youth right here in our church community. Let us consider the words of the dedication service when we recognize children who are new to this world and to our congregation. This is the covenant we have been making with one another:
"Will you, the members and friends of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto, welcome this child into your religious community; will each of you promise her your loyalty; will you open your hearts so that the fullness of love's well can be continuously accessible to her? Will you help her grow into a creative and responsible member of the whole human family? And will you stand by her parents in their awesome task, supporting this family through all the growing, learning, and loving that lies ahead?" And as a congregation you answered "we do"
These are high ideals to incorporate into the daily life of this community, but this is our covenant with our children, with their parents and with one another. Because the pain and joys of childhood are real, because the life of a child is a serious responsibility, lets take caring for our children seriously. While we can't take our children's pain from them, as a religious community we can challenge ourselves to give our children the tools to deal with life. We can help them find meaning, develop their natural curiosity and sense of awe, and to live their values on the playground as well as in the adult lives they will someday assume. Moreover, it is our job to carry for them the hope or even faith that they can do it, that they can create something beautiful with their lives and with the world we leave them. We do this in our children's classes, our worship, and by knowing them one person to another.
But there is something more, which may be unique to this moment in history. Whereas parents of the past asked their church for specialized for their children so they could have a moment to center and focus on their adult lives, I believe that in this 60 hour a week commerce driven culture, those who are actively parenting crave ways for the whole family to be together in a pro child, pro-elder non-ageist environment.
Not all people are called to be parents, at this moment in our lives or in this lifetimes. But I believe we are all called to remember that interconnected web which ties us one to the other. We cannot afford to underestimate the importance of an Uncle, an Aunt. In a culture where family is fragmented across a continent or across the world, let us honor all these connections, cousin, Grandmother, step-father, family friend. Each of you, whether you are now actively parenting or not, is part of this complex web of relationships, each of which has the power to support the fragile life of a child who is learning to walk, an elder who struggles with Alzheimer's, a young father who questions a culture valuing his office work more than his fatherwork.
May we covenant as a community, to raise up parenting as a treasured value, as a movement for good in the world, so that we can witness and affirm this good work around us, so that when our own eulogy is spoken those we leave behind will honor us for all the work we have done nurturing, and caring and setting boundaries. And perhaps if our community values parenting, then when we ourselves are old, our children will know in their lived experience, the importance of caring for those who cannot care for themselves, and we as elders will be raised up for our lifetime of caring, will be held in a web of sisters and uncles and friends and grandchildren.
But I am also hopeful that the work advocating and witnessing for those who nurture our future will extend beyond the ground of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto. As Cornell West's story reminds us, the inequities and fraying safety nets throughout this country need our attention. Now is the time for us to be lions in the political world since the welfare reform program I spoke about earlier, called "Temporary Aide to Needy Families" is in committee now and must be renewed by September. If you believe that what mothers and fathers and grandmothers and aunts do is real work, ask your Congressmen to craft more family friendly legislation. Knowing that "The experience in other countries clearly shows that subsidized quality childcare can do far more to encourage poor woman to work than any number of punitive threats," encourage your representatives to support legislation like the 2002 Children first act which would allow childcare to be exempt from the 5 year assistance maximum. If you believe that people without great financial resources should have an opportunity to be with their newborns as they begin this life, as with their own parents when they are facing end of life, advocate for legislation like the Right Start act of 2001 introduced in the House and Senate which would provide matching funds for family-leave programs nationwide.
How awe-some it is to be responsible for someone's life. whether that someone is a swaddled newborn, a little boy standing up to a bully an elder spending their last days we are all responsible how incredible that is
Closing words:
I close with these words often used on the occasion of child dedications around the country:
As members of this congregation it is our task to strengthen each other in every high resolve. This must apply to the infant, the child and the youth as well as to the adult. Therefore, we will do our best to make of this meeting house a home wherein these children may learn that love, patience, honesty, courage, beauty, joy and service to humanity are real values, shared and sought after by real people. And that our hearts will always be open to these persons in their failures as well as their triumphs. This do we covenant with them and their parents."
What is your reaction to this sermon? Please send comments to Reverend Darcey Laine
|