Parenting is the most competitive of careers - but why do we feel we have to keep children happy at all costs, asks Adam Brophy in the lead-up to National Parents' Week.
For those of us with even fleeting experience of childcare and school runs, the following is a common picture: 8.01am, harried Dad pulls up outside the creche in his 3-series Beemer to drop off little Eoghan, before powering down the road to the local Educate Together national school, where seven-year-old Imogen is proudly deposited. Later that afternoon, Imogen will be collected from school by a representative from Eoghan's creche and brought up to join him for the remainder of the day.
They will play and be entertained there until exactly 5.59pm, at which point Mummy's shiny Freelander will appear to regather the brood.
Both school and creche were carefully chosen because Mum and Dad knew at the outset that this level of supervised care would be necessary. They have each expressed a desire to spend more time with the kids; they daily experience a shudder of guilt for feeling unavailable and have even explored the possibility of one of them taking a career break. But they're doing well and know if they slip from the treadmill now, just at this crucial juncture when their positions within the company are approaching critical mass, their fingers will be crushed under the boots of the next wave of middle-management executives. You don't tread water and stay still in this climate. Put the head down, drive forward and stick the boot in where appropriate. Everyone knows taking time out to get to know your own children is a soft option, from which your career will never recover.
With their parents under that sort of personal and corporate stress, is it any wonder that Eoghan and Imogen are at the centre of a whirlwind of attention when Mum and Dad are free at weekends and evenings? Eoghan, at three, can swim unaided and swing a golf club. Imogen, already an accomplished ballerina, has sung a solo in her school Christmas revue and is showing a wonderful aptitude for tennis, according to her personal coach.
When Socrates said "the unconsidered life is not worth living", had he the slightest idea we would have to forgo the time to consider our own lives to ensure our offspring were granted perfect ones? The resulting insanity of this lifestyle choice is the central tenet of a new book by Annie Ashworth and Meg Saunders, The Madness of Modern Families. Co-authors of a number of works of fiction such as Goodbye, Jimmy Choo, their work encompassed the manic nature of maintaining a busy work and family life. With five kids between them, their publisher figured they were well qualified to comment on normal, structured, family mayhem.
"We certainly don't want to be seen as parenting experts," says Ashworth. "We're just mums who felt a need to raise certain discussion points. As adults, most of us believe we are competent enough to handle any given situation. But put a child in front of us for the first time, and we panic."
This panic causes us to want to keep the child happy at all costs, which instigates a sequence of events that moves through arranging spray tans for Communions, hiring limousines for seventh birthday parties, upgrading Playstations for Xboxes and culminates in the, now traditional, Leaving Cert holiday in Ibiza.
But why do we presume we have to grant every wish, or enrol in every class, or sign up for every sports camp? The notion of parental guilt proves to be a bit of a red herring. Research by the Future Foundation in the UK shows that, despite working more, we are now spending far more time on average with our kids than parents of the 1970s. But this may be because we refuse to let them out the door unsupervised, whereas 30 years ago kids could roam in tribes from dawn to dusk.
Ashworth also dismisses the guilt angle. "Call me cynical, but there's a huge amount of self-congratulation involved here. Kids have become projects for many people - their success reflects well on you. If someone says 'your child is musical/sporty/beautiful', what you hear is 'you must be a fantastic parent'." If you take that a step farther, for you to be a fantastic parent, your child must be more musical/sporty/beautiful than the next. Parenting, it becomes apparent, is the most competitive of careers.
"We have to move away from that sort of thinking; it's a world away from mine,' says Pat Rees, author of Practical Parenting - An Irish Survival Guide. Having spent 15 years writing an advice page for parents in Woman's Way magazine, and raising four children of her own, Rees decided to compile the huge variety of successful tips she had accumulated. The end result is a book that addresses certain familiar dilemmas faced by parents of children at all stages of development, and breaks down her suggested responses into easy, manageable chunks.
"For me, the whole idea of raising children is to make nice people for the world. To do that, sometimes you have to make decisions that will make you unpopular. But that's your job, to teach them boundaries, not be their best friend," says Rees.
Speaking to her, you get the impression that here is a woman who has bypassed the whole idea of "parenting as competition". At one point, she breaks off our phone conversation to give her teenage son a hug because "he came in from school looking a bit hurt". She emphasises the need to "love and respect" your children: "They're just little people. Imagine you had a camera on you speaking to them; would you mind someone else watching how you do it?"
How you communicate with your kids is a theme that also resonates with Rita O'Reilly of Parentline, a confidential helpline for parents and guardians that has been operating for more than 20 years. She believes there is overcompensation towards children by all parents, those working and those who choose to stay home. With more money and more choice, there has been a tendency to fill the adult-child relationship with gifts and learning, rather than simply allowing children to spend time by themselves, or with their peers, while the grown-up supervises from a distance. There may be more time spent together, but the child is not given the opportunity to explore the world outside their door, usually due to a climate of fear.
O'Reilly says that keeping a kid indoors, when there is no real danger, is "almost a statement by the parent saying: 'I'm minding my children more.' If you live in a suburban area, why not allow a kid travel to the shops by themselves? Explain that they must stay within a certain area, be back by a certain time and be aware of the rules of the road. Allow them to explore, knowing you are in the background."
If my own experience of raising kids has taught me anything, it is that I continuously feel a niggle of self-doubt at my efforts. While I am quite content to accept compromise, and sometimes mediocrity, in other areas, I feel responsible for every hurt a child of mine experiences in the world. Maybe, I tell myself, if I had prepared her better, she could have dealt with the situation in a different way. My rational side knows we all learn through mistakes, but my built-in, irrational, kiddie guilt can twist the knife and tell me her hurt was my fault. In a complete paradox, I want to pack her in bubblewrap, yet at the same time wish her to be the best at everything she does.
If modern families are mad, is it because we've never had it so good? With cash in one hand, and conscience in the other, we drive our families on like a pack of Munster forwards. With any luck, our kids will grow up and forgive us our well-intended interference.
• The Madness of Modern Families by Annie Ashworth and Meg Saunders (Hodder & Stoughton, £12.99). Practical Parenting - An Irish Survival Guide by Pat Rees (Ashfield Press).
• Adam Brophy writes the It's a Dad's Life column in The Irish Times every Wednesday; abrophy@irish-times.ie
