Parenting: Goodness as happiness

I spent last night curled around my toddler, bowl in hand, waiting
for her to wake and vomit again. She had a miserable case of food
poisoning that kept us both in and out of sleep until the morning.

I was thinking about relaying this episode to a seminary friend who
recently asked me to “sell” him on the idea of children. Why have kids?
he wondered. For my friend, as for many of us, choosing to parent is a
matter of tipping scales. On one side is your economic, personal and
social freedom, and career goals that are easier to achieve without
children. On the other side is the fresh smell of a newborn, the fun of
parenting, and the hope of lifelong companionship with your children.
One day, perhaps, the scales will tip and the parenting side will become
more important than the unattached side. And then you have a baby.

I think Richard Weissbourd would want to challenge this kind of
discernment. Weissbourd is an education scholar from Harvard who writes
about virtue and childhood. His book is on my reading list for the summer. In a recent post on Motherlode
Weissbourd talks about the self-esteem movement in parenting. His
thesis is that self-esteem building now tops the list of values parents
want to pass on to children. And our children’s basic morality suffers
as a consequence.