PHILOSOPHY FOR PARENTS

Holly Hamilton-Bleakley - 26 Jun 14

There is a view, I’ve noticed, that is shared by many in our society: looking after children is ‘nothing’. Or, it’s ‘something’, but not a very valuable ‘something’.

Sadly, this is a view which even I myself have had in the past. It took a good, prolonged case of post-natal depression after my first child was born for me to understand that I did not value the huge effort it was taking to raise my child.

The key to overcoming that depression was to change my whole mindset about what was important and what was not. As I tried to do that, I started to see our culture in a way I had not seen it before. The idea that looking after children was ‘nothing’ was much more prevalent than I had noticed previously. In fact, I started to realize that it was implicit even in some of the great philosophies upon which our modern, western societies have been built.

The best way to explain more about how I came to this realization – that some of our society’s formative philosophies do not value parenthood – is to tell the story of what happened to me, both emotionally and intellectually, when I became a mother.

Before I had children, my husband and I were students at the University of Cambridge. When I got pregnant half-way through my PhD studies, I believed deep down that bringing a child into the world was going to be ‘nothing’. So many people do it, how hard could it be? I would be able to carry on with my life pursuits in pretty much the same way after the baby was born. And I got the impression from my fellow academics that they thought along these lines as well: having a baby was OK, as long as it didn’t change anything – that is, as long as it was ‘nothing’.

During my pre-baby PhD studies, I especially loved political philosophy. In Cambridge at that time there were a group of scholars who were interested in the origins of the political philosophy of liberalism, which espouses the importance of individual rights and individual liberty.  I was passionate about freedom and rights, and I was fascinated by how these ideas developed in our culture. I spent my time going to lectures, and thinking and writing deep thoughts in a very big library about what it meant for a human being to have a ‘right’, and to be ‘free’.

When my daughter was born, I went into what could best be described as a state of shock. I simply hadn’t understood how radically my life would change with parenthood. I had lost my time, energy, mobility, and most importantly, my freedom. I started to slip into depression.

The flip side of depression is anger, and indeed, at this time I also started to feel very angry. I wasn’t angry at my baby – I was angry at the message that raising a child was ‘nothing’, that motherhood was an inferior role taken on by inferior people, that it was OK to be a mother only if you could do it without having to sacrifice anything. If this was nothing, then why was it the most challenging thing I had ever done?

My thought process went something like this: ‘Why is having a child only OK if it affects nothing else in one’s life? I have a human being here. Losing my time, energy, mobility and freedom are the sacrifices required to raise a human being. If I don’t raise this human being, I will have to pay someone else to do it for me. But why should I value their efforts toward my child, when I don’t value my own? What is valuable about raising this person? What is valuable about raising any person?’

I didn’t have time to attend many lectures anymore, or even to sit in the library for hours on end. Those were luxuries I could afford now only in very small amounts.

When I did attend lectures, however, they didn’t seem relevant to me in the same way as before. I would sit and listen to graduate students and academics who I knew didn’t have any children talk about freedom and rights. Yet, now that I had been inducted into parenthood, I started to view human beings with different eyes. Something was missing from these academic discussions. It’s important to talk about freedom and rights for human beings, but did any of these people know how much work it was to raise a human being?

Surely freedom becomes meaningful when we can choose a certain way of life, and we can only exercise our choice when we are rational enough to have a conception of what is good in life. Yet, we don’t automatically develop our reasoning about what is good. We are taught to develop this reasoning by those who raise us, and that takes a lot of sweat and tears. But there was no mention in these political philosophy lectures of family or parenthood.

That’s when it began to dawn on me: In our society, we value ‘the individual’. We value individual rights and individual freedom. Yet, we do not seem to value the process of raising ‘the individual’. We seem to think that will happen naturally, without much thought or effort on the part of anyone. So, we do not value ‘the individuals’ who raise ‘the individual’. Those of us who raise ‘the individual’ are invisible, unimportant. This is what I call the ‘liberal paradox’.

All this happened nearly 16 years ago. I’ve studied a lot more philosophy since then, and I am happy to say that it’s not all bad – there are philosophers who do not take for granted the process of raising a child.

For me, Aristotle stands out as one of these philosophers. The more I read Aristotle as a parent, the more I appreciate him. Liberalism focuses on the freedom that human beings should have to pursue what they want, but Aristotle focuses on what is good for human beings to pursue. He is interested in how human beings become rational enough to know what is good. And he believes that how a person is raised makes all the difference to her ability to reason about what is good and what is bad. For Aristotle, childhood matters.

I am still passionate about freedom and rights. But I am vexed by the ‘liberal paradox’. I think we’re deluding ourselves if we emphasize the importance of freedom and rights, and yet at the same time give no real recognition to the massive effort that good parenting requires.

When you see good parenting, either by others – or yourself – do not take it for granted.  Notice it, applaud it, cherish it.  For parenting is not ‘nothing’. On the contrary, the efficacy of our western values of freedom and rights rest upon people who try to do it properly.

Holly Hamilton-Bleakley

View profile for posts, events and more info