What We Want for Our Kids

Every parent dreams of having a mini-me. Ok, maybe not every parent…but most. Maybe not a carbon copy…but close. It’s weird because these same parents often aren’t that happy with themselves or with their own lives. Why would they wish the same on someone else? “Misery loves company,” doesn’t seem appropriate when talking about one’s kids!

According to American mythology, prior to some unspecified date near the end of the 20th century, every parent wanted their children to be more than they were. If they worked in a mine, they wanted their kids to work in offices. If they rented, they wanted their kids to be homeowners. If they didn’t make the high school football team, they wanted their sons to play in the NFL.

So we don’t want our kids to be like us after all? We want them to be more than we were. But we want them to be a better version of ourselves – not the best version of a self they choose for themselves.

My grandfather had a great expression: “I’m not the man I used to be…and never was.” That’s what kids are for! They are there to be the person we wanted to be but never were. We want them to be what we were…just better at it! 

If we measure our lives by what we didn’t earn, we want our kids to be prosperous. If we measure our lives by what we didn’t own, we want our kids to be landed gentry. If we measure our lives by our failures, we want our kids to be superstars.

We raise children as if they existed to continue…and complete…our dreams. Whether you want your daughter to be a lawyer because you were, or a Supreme Court justice because you weren’t, you’re still aiming to fashion her life in the image and likeness of your own. 

How dare we? Yes, I said ‘we’ because I’ve been guilty of this too! 

Not many heterosexual coal miners want their sons to be drag queens and not many ‘daily communicants’ want their daughters to be exotic dancers. But why not? Who are we to impose our life choices…or, more likely, our life accidents…on anyone else, much less on those we purport to love, especially when they are young, defenseless, and impressionable. 

With great hindsight, my spouse and I would probably say something like, “We want our kids to be good people, to be kind, etc.” It would be hard not to hope for that. And yet, who are we to impose even those values on them? Shouldn’t we let them find their own way, adopt their own values?

Of course we should project our values into the world, always by deed and, when appropriate, by word. That’s what it means to have values. And it’s ok, like Kant, to imagine that some folks, including our children, may witness our lives and voluntarily adopt some of our values for themselves. But if they don’t, do we have any right to be ‘disappointed’?

As we shuffle out of the spotlight and into the wings, we may decide that the things we thought very important in midlife are not so important after all. No matter how aggressively we distanced ourselves from our neighbors in our ‘prime’, we may come to realize that we all share a common fate. 

We face the prospect of aging, and ultimately of death, just as everyone else. We may come to define our lives, less in terms of our public triumphs, and more in terms of private moments spent alone or with another. At the end of the day, it all comes down to one question, “What’s it all about, Alfie?”

Lest you think I am pretending to have made a discovery, I direct you back to the Book of Job. Here was a man familiar with the vicissitudes of life! Unless you have been on the cover of Forbes, you have not tasted his heights; and I pray to God that none of my readers ever tastes his depths. Yet Job begins his opening soliloquy with a surprising conclusion: No greater calamity can befall someone than to die ‘without knowledge’. 

Spoiler alert: 40 chapters later, Job attains knowledge, but whether that’s the knowledge he’s been seeking and whether it satisfies him remain open questions. Either way, according to the book’s first commentary, included in the final text as Epilogue, Job resumes the lifestyle of the rich and famous…and once again graces the cover of Forbes; but I digress.

The problem is not what you want for your children; the problem is wanting anything at all. You say, “I want them to be themselves.” They will be! They will be what they will be. But that’s not what you meant, is it? You were talking about some intrinsic ‘self’ that supposedly lies buried in them that they are struggling to discover and express. News flash: There is no such self! And thank God for that! 

You are free to make yourself whoever you choose to be…and so are your children. Of course, you can’t make yourself be an NBA player, but you can make the most of being 5’ 5” and a total klutz. For better or worse, you will be yourself because you will make yourself the person you become. Who else could you be? Who else could your children be? Celebrate it!

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