The Prepared Parent - Fact or Fiction?
How much time to we spend asking ourselves ‘Why do I want to have a child?’ And even more importantly ‘Why would a child want me?’
As I prepare for the arrival of our second baby at age 40, I find myself stockpiling a mountain of crib sheets. I buy school supplies for our eldest’s first day of junior kindergarten, yell Ikea requests to my husband, while frantically answering messages from the clinic before my maternity leave starts. It feels like cultivated chaos, all clouded with slight panic, doubting whether I am truly prepared for two children.
Eventually, I have to accept the futility of incessantly organizing ‘stuff’ and loosen my grip on the crib sheets. I summon the courage to come face to face with the question: are we really ready?
As I reflect on the decision making process around having children in the context of our current cultural norms, I become acutely aware of the absence of accessible, mainstream counselling and support for prepared parenthood for everyone - particularly before a child is brought into the world.
Planned parenthood is arguably one of the biggest life shifts that can be chosen. It is an enormous decision to bring another human into the world, and to take responsibility for our part in that person’s development and wellbeing. Engaged and invested parenting takes enormous resources - both mental and financial. Yet, most of us will spend more time (and get more support) researching education, career, cars, vacations and real estate than we do considering parenthood. Planned parenthood isn’t the same as prepared parenthood, and by prepared parenthood I don’t mean - do you have a nursery ready with plenty of crib sheets? Prepared parenthood might actually mean excavating for the truth of what we truly feel about children and childhood. How much time do we spend asking ourselves ‘why do I want to have a child?’ And even more importantly ‘why would a child want me?’
Consider the plethora of potentially uncomfortable answers. Am I concerned about what people will think if we choose not to have children? Am I afraid we will lead a lonely life? Am I birthing our future caregivers/financial providers? Am I filling an internal void? Often children are brought into the world as an achievement - a check box waiting to be ticked, next to ‘get married’ and ‘climb the career ladder’. The few brave souls that are thoughtful and honest enough to admit parenthood is not for them, are often judged negatively. Perhaps they are ahead of their time as thoughtful decision makers, and ironically, child advocates.
When I first considered parenthood, before my pediatric and childcare experiences, it was something I saw through the lens of ‘I should have/deserve/want.’ I did not think about why, and whether I am truly prepared to meet the needs of another person, in a culture that is generally unsupportive of healthy parenting. In the end, my husband and I did engage in multiple discussions around whether we are truly prepared to take on parenthood before we started the journey. Yet, this feels suspiciously like luck, or perhaps privilege, and I feel strongly that honest information and the space to discuss parenthood should be available to all.
Attuned parenting - that is a parent who can separate the needs of the child from their own, and has the capacity to both identify and fulfill a child’s core needs, is the single most important factor in child development in those critical formative years. With the onset of pregnancy, our world of consumerism, comparison, and social media ensures that our mental space is occupied with the design of the nursery, and whether we have all the right ‘mama and me’ matching outfits. Our capitalist norms will lead us to think about outsourcing childcare even before our child arrives, so we can get back to work as quickly as possible when they do. This culture is accepted as ‘normal’ but makes attuned parenting ever more challenging.
Compounding this, is the paucity of mainstream preparation for the stuff that actually matters - the needs and psychology of children, the long game of parenting, the changes in our personal lives and identity, and our ability of cope with reduced resources and increased need.
If there is no clarity around our reasons for wanting a child, a lack of awareness of their true needs and the difficult realities that come with it, what could possibly guide our parenting? If healthy psychological development is not the central tenet of parenting, and indeed of society as a whole, the consequence will show itself to everyone involved. After all, how we raise these little ones will reveal itself in the next generation of leaders, change makers and decision takers. And how we raise them, comes back to honest self-analysis, and an awareness of our own inner world.
After all my reflections, I have reached the conclusion that having children is less about what we gain, and more about what we give, and our willingness to shift perspective to see the world through the lens of our children. The truth is, much of being a parent is leaning in to change - a willingness to think about things differently, live our lives differently. A willingness to providing support when it’s uncomfortable and inconvenient: tears in the middle of the night; sickness in the middle of a work day or the day before vacation; the natural need for children to connect with us when we are most exhausted.
Although these thoughts and reflections are certainly less palatable than the sweet crib sheets and baby outfits I have accumulated, perhaps there is room for both. So as I grow more pregnant, struggle to put on my shoes and lift up my 3 year old, we decide to restructure our lives as much as we can around the health and stability of our family. I try to reach out for more help early on to create connection and reduce stress. We hire help with tasks that would otherwise take us away from parenting so we can fulfil our children’s innate need for closeness to us. My husband and I go through boring financials to make sure we can manage while spending as much time with our children as possible. We talk about how to prepare our eldest for both her school and her new sibling. We make an effort to ask each other for what we need, so we have enough emotional capacity to be loving to both children and each other when we are exhausted.
In the end, the crib sheets are still in a crumpled pile on the floor and I can’t find our matching outfits, but I finally feel ready.
Addendum: Our beautiful second daughter was born in August 2023. The journey of leaning in continues - there are still many Ikea runs, occasional yelling and a few matching PJs. I am also actively participating in therapy regularly and my biggest joy is celebrating and protecting the magical years of childhood for our children.
Neha Sharma is a Mum and a Pediatric Respirologist.
