I commemorate this new page of this continuing and meandering Thought Diary with a reproduction of my younger son's self-portrait, which astonished me when he brought it home from his high school art class. It seems not inappropriate to offer thanks for the joys of motherhood, which has truly graced my life. I have been doing some reading in old journals, mainly seeking material for my new blog, Versalvere -- http://versalvere.blogspot.com/ -- and I was reading this morning from a 1985 journal in which I note my new, first pregnancy. I was 37 years old at the time. Paul was born the following April, 1986, and his younger brother, Julian, graced us with his appearance in September, 1989.

 

America is a difficult country for families and children. My journals are full of observations, most of them not very complimentary, about how parents interact with their children and allow their children to tyrannize over them. I recount a visit to some friends of my husband and tell something of their saga with their two-and-a-half year old daughter. "Indeed it was hard to get away from A.," I wrote, "who was always exhaustingly there." On the second night of our visit the child was up past ten at night and the next day she was exceedingly cranky, refusing to sit in her car seat and whining all the time.Finally I ( was it I who buckled her into the seat at last?) took action, and the child screamed for an hour and a half! "Poor little tyke!" - her mother's philosophy. "All I said to [the mother] at the time was, 'I feel that A. needs for you to assert your own will,' which was phrased as tactfully as I could. Later that afternoon [the mother] let slip, casually as it were, when A. was doing something to distract her attention, 'How lucky you are to have a mother who doesn't discipline you.' " What a strange idea of love American parents have. A life where others do not impact upon us is a life in Hell.

 

A few days later, after we returned home, there was more on the decline of authority in parenting. I wrote: "Robert went to the Bakery yesterday and tells the story of a couple with two children that he saw there. His first impression was that the father was someone 'confused by life.' The first thing he overheard was the girl (about 10) complaining to her mother about wanting to leave. The mother replied: 'We came because you wanted to come... the least you could do is to allow us to eat.' To allow? Robert exclaimed to me. Then the father said to the boy, 'Let's make a bargain. I'll buy you one of those monster toys if you'll get a haircut.' Robert was disgusted! He said the boy already had a sneer on his face. How could a child not feel anything but contempt for a parent under such circumstances?"

 

My husband had a very great gift for being a father. He was disciplined, authoritative, attentive, humorous, entertaining and imaginative, and read great quantities of great literature to the children when they were young.  I am hard put to recollect any incident in our children's childhood when they acted badly or even were less than a perfect joy to be around. As parents soaked in the spiritual-scientific outlook of anthroposophy, and as committed  to the Christian gospel as we were, though perhaps haphazardly, Robert and I regarded our sons as incarnating spirits. They had chosen us - and despite our failures and inevitable lapses, we took the task of their raising as a vocation and as a stewardship. I recall once, in Birmingham, leaving my children briefly with an old school friend. Afterwards she looked at me wonderingly, and said - "I actually had a real conversation with them!"

 

It is a sad commentary on American parenting that such a thing should be all but unheard of. The tyranny of the infantile has penetrated to all levels of our culture. It is bad enough to have to be exposed to it day after day in the media, the blaring of televisions and radios, and in the endless stream of trivializing commentary in the newspapers and by the 'talking heads.' But to have this insidious trivialization penetrate the sanctuary of the home and overthrow the natural bonds between parents and children is truly sad. Those who are committed to the raising of decent men and women must devote tremendous energy and spiritualizing thought to their lives in order to counteract the  waste-culture that America has become.