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From the Book of
Children
introduction to the Book of
Children
Generous
Parents
Table of Contents
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The modern family is usually a
product of two people establishing a home with the support of their extended
families and community. The glue of family life is mate bonding and
reproduction. The inner drive to reproduce and innate tendencies to mate work
well in at least for some individuals but may be short-lived and often do not
sustain a couple through a lifetime of hard work, disappointments, hardships and
illness. It is a mistake is to assume that the initial push of falling in love
will sustain a couple through all the changes, challenges and adversities of
family life.
One of the common and poignant
tragedies of human life is that couples who fall-in-love and are privileged to
enjoy an episode of euphoria and devotion to each other will often end up apart
and grieving or will be transformed into bitter enemies. Lovers are on their
best behavior for a while and briefly act as if they had no tendencies or habits
that would interfere with perfect bliss. The first fight often signals the end
of the euphoric stage and progressively each person reveals all the
egocentricity, selfish tendencies and character flaws that he or she possesses.
One model of altruistic love is
parental devotion to children. The ideal mother is deeply bonded to her
children, is self-sacrificing and unusually attentive to the needs of her
children. While romantic love briefly contains the elements of maternal love and
may lead to lead to marriage, pregnancy and life-together, the biological basis
appears to be short-lived leaving the bonded couple in need of other motivations
and constraints to sustain their relationship.
The ideal mother attracts a
supportive man and sustains his interest in the children by providing affection,
sexual favors and sharing the labor of maintaining a home. The ideal mother’s
love for her children is unconditional and lasts a lifetime, but the love of the
father or fathers of the children is conditional and may be short-term. The
ideal father provides protection and support, devoting all his resources to one
mother who has given birth only to his children.
Sometimes, parents forget that
they were once idealistic young persons who yearned for a lover and a soul mate.
The young lovers dreamed of health happy children living in a cozy house with
flowers, pets and friendly neighbors. Falling in love and getting married
involves profound transitions so that the original premise of the relationship
is altered beyond recognition. The introduction of children places demands on
the time, energy and resources that most couples have never experienced before.
Parenting is not easy and successful parents should receive medals for
dedication and bravery beyond the call of duty.
The success of a family depends
on the ability of two people to sustain a caring and affectionate relationship,
even in the face of big changes and recurrent adversity. Some couples travel the
bumpy path with admirable equanimity. Most couples, in my experience, are
unprepared for all the demands of parenting and have repeated relationship
crises, ending in separation about half the time.
The transformation of a married
couple from lovers, to spouses, to parents involves major demands on the
couple's ability to cooperate and adapt to changing demands on their resources.
Success requires new learning and a continuous re-mapping of the participants
knowledge and behavior. You could argue that compatibility is determined by the
willingness and ability to learn and change, more than any pre-conditions or
biographical details of the couple.
There is a lingering an
assumption that the male will provide the home and the female will become a
full-time mother and do most of the work at home. However, more women are
employed, have careers and modern urban couples negotiate sharing arrangements,
sometimes with novel divisions of labor. Increasingly, both partners in a
marriage must work to support a family. There is often a discrepancy in the
wages earned and the time and effort expended by each parent, so that modern
couples must be unusually rational and fair to achieve an equitable division of
labor.
Similar people have an
advantage. In the best case, similar people can achieve higher levels of
cooperation than dissimilar people who fight over every decision that is made.
Conflict over the spending of money is dominant in the early years of marriage
and couples with similar backgrounds, expectations and earning potential will
agree more readily on what is desirable to buy and what is affordable. Couples
often fight over child-rearing methods and criticize each other’s handling of
children’s demands, disobedience and emotional outbursts. Parents with different
values and different expectations will continue to argue over child-rearing
methods.
Feeding children properly is
not easy and couples often have different views of what food is desirable to
eat. Children demand fast foods, junk foods, candies and desserts and will often
refuse healthy food. The easy path for one or both parents is to provide junk
foods and a television set. When a child becomes ill or acts badly, it is a
demanding task for both parents to cooperate with a rational diet revision plan.
Even when diet revision offers great long-term rewards, parents often fail to
sustain a healthier way of eating and will argue about every detail of the diet.
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