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The Joys & Sorrows of Parenting
Fr. Santos G. Mena, S.J.

Posted Thursday, 26-Aug-2005 11:54 AM

      In one of those “home deliveries” that the Chicken Soup for the Soul caterers serve to people via internet, I recently read the story of this couple who were having problems with fertility.

      They had been married for several years and they had no children yet. They consulted several doctors and they were all pessimistic. Apparently, not only one, but both of them had fertility problems, until they went to this doctor, who had helped some friends of theirs with a similar problem.

      After listening to the couple, the doctor prescribed some drugs and gave them this advice to both of them: “Get more exercise, watch those foods that tend to slow you down: caffeine, sugar, alcohol. Look through magazines and cut out pictures of babies: bouncy, happy babies . Tape them on your bathroom mirror and your refrigerator. Go through baby books. Pick out names you’d like for your children, both girl and boy. Miraculously, the formula worked.

      When I read this story, I thought, how appropriate. The thought of bouncy, happy babies is what a young couple dream of. Babies are inspiring. And it is better that way. No newly-wed couple ever dreams of, or tries to visualize, their children as adolescents. That could be less inspiring, to say that least. For rearing adolescents often marks the lowest point in the business of parenting.

      Parenting follows an upbeat, downbeat, upbeat curve. It begins with parenting to babies and children. Babies are very demanding. Everything

has to be done to them. Babies cannot talk & cannot explain themselves. They can only cry. Funny, but a mother would always know what is going on with her baby. Yet, the more care a baby demands the more the parents love him.

      When a mother was asked which of her five sons she loved most, she replied: “The sick until he heals; the young until he grows; the absent until he returns”. Babies, in a word, are lovable. It is just a joy to have babies at home. Homeless babies are just too big, too quiet, too lonely.

      But as the boy grows problems begin to crop up. And when he enters adolescence – the terrible crisis of adolescence – it is the boy as a whole that becomes a problem. An adolescent still inspires love, pity for what he is going through, and the desire the help, but often he is far from being beautiful, and bouncy, and much less happy. In fact, most adolescents are dangly, lazy, and uncomfortable with themselves and with their parents.

      These are the years of those terrible report cards, of the long telephone conversations – and the corresponding expensive telephone bills; of cheekiness and rudeness, of stubbornness, and infatuation with that girl next door. Not to speak of more serious problems, like smoking, drinking, premarital sex, and perhaps even drugs. Not a very inspiring picture for a young couple to dream about.

      And here is where parents are at whose children are in high school age. This is the time when many parents ask themselves, “Where did we go wrong?” It would not be surprising if some parents regret to have married, and to have begotten children at all. It is the all-time low in parenting time to practice patience and self-control. For many parents this is a first experience with adolescents, and it is bad enough.

      I have been dealing with adolescents for the past forty years, not by ones or twos, but by the hundreds at a time, and I have learned one thing. Never to lose hope, it is a matter of having the right perspective. Just as it would be unrealistic to think that babies and children would always remain bouncy, and rosy-faced, and beautiful, it is unfair to adolescents to think that they will always remain stubborn, and fresh, and disobedient.

      Adolescents also grow up. Do parents realize that? They grow into fine, responsible young men, into smart, competent professionals, into doting parents, just the way we all did.

      These adolescents who now are giving us so much trouble with their thoughtlessness and irresponsibility, will some day do us proud. The trick is not to despair because of the present sorry situation in which our adolescents find themselves in, but to look forward to a brighter future, the second upbeat mood after the terrible downbeat experience of adolescence.

Fr. Santos G. Mena, S.J. is currently putting up the Xavier School Archives Center.

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