Why Parents Don’t Get to Have Self-Esteem

I was talking to my sister about the changes in her life since she decided to commit parenthood. She said she never guessed that she and her husband could spend so much time analyzing their son’s last diaper efforts, or that climbing Everest would sound easier than taking him on a visit to his grandparents.

A while ago, I made just such a mistake when I decided to take three kids out to California. Following my usual travelling technique, we arrived at the airport considerably early so the kids would have plenty of time to lose their carry-on luggage. This put us all in a cheery traveling frenzy even before the announcement that our flight was being delayed because the restrooms were not functional.

Our fellow passengers in the standing-room-only gate area watched in horror as it sunk in that this crazed woman and her three small children were joining them aboard a jet with a coach section roughly the size of your average bathroom. They glared at me as the airline pleaded for people to give up their oversold seats and take later flights, but I pretended to concentrate on getting my son out from under a row of seats before he spilled more fruit punch down the legs of unsuspecting strangers.

At last we made it out to California. My brother picked us up in his new car so the girls would have something classy to throw up in. We went to my parents’ house, where I spent a couple of relaxing days trying to keep three non-swimming kids from drowning in their pool (required in even the meanest hovel in southern California.)

While there I committed a crime so horrible that its inevitable discovery shook my children into stunned silence – I never told them that we were near Disneyland. The sheer scope of such parental perfidy left them gasping, “A child could think you don’t love her…”

But I remained unmoved. I figure there is nothing further they can do to damage my self-esteem because I don’t have any left.

It’s funny – you graduate from school, get someone to actually hand you a paycheck, and you meet The One who is willing to sit around and discuss your wonderful qualities. Just when you start to believe in all this, there’s Mother Nature standing over you with her loaded Magnum: “Are you yuppie DINKS feeling lucky today?” Ker-blam! You’re parents.

Instead of cultural and world affairs, you now spend your time discussing what sleep used to feel like and baby bowel habits. I heard a woman say she’d been a mother too long when she noticed she was changing a dirty diaper with one hand and eating a peanut butter sandwich with the other.

Not realizing that the chief purpose of encouraging baby talk is to keep the child unintelligible for as long as possible, we were careful to teach clear enunciation and precise terminology, allowing our children to deliver publicly humiliating statements at will.

For example, I pinched my two-year-old’s neck in the top of her coat zipper once. Toward the end of church services the next day, I tried to take advantage of a lull to put her coat on her. “Mommy,” she shrieked amid the hushed congregation, “Don’t hurt me again!”

We had to find a new church.

Another time we had stopped for some toddler haute cuisine at Chez Big Mac when my other daughter inquired in ringing tones, “Mommy, why is that person so ugly?”

“That’s not a nice thing to say,” I hissed back in my best parental fury whisper.
“But, Mommy…”
“No.”
“But, Mommy, I was only…”
“NO!”
“But, Mommy,” she said, sobbing now. “I wasn’t going to ask again why that person is SO UGLY.”
“OK, what?” I relented.
“Mommy, WHY IS THAT UGLY PERSON SO FAT?”

Then there was the time the two-year-old asked me where her tail was. I explained that children don’t have tails. “Michael does,” she stated and pointed. I immediately explained about male and female plumbing differences. She was fascinated, and the next several days were spent speculating – loudly – on who had what where. This interesting period culminated in a visit to a crowded local restaurant where she was inspired to announce – at full volume to a spellbound roomful of diners – what MY daddy has and what MY mommy has.

This time, we moved to another town.