Being a Parent Doesn't Make You a Damn Hero
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Parenting involves taking care of your children in the best ways possible, despite dealing with toothaches, bed-wetting, acne, attitudes, hormones, stomach accidents, tantrums, 24-hour X-box marathons, nose-bleeds, sneaking out of the house and sarcastic back talk.
It’s no doubt NO FUN sometimes, but it comes with the job. And kids don’t come with an instruction manual that explains to us as parents, how to be parents, so we either make do with what we got, or we don’t.
Some people deserve recognition in this world for what they do to serve mankind and its causes. Like joining the Peace Corp for 5 years to care for orphaned babies plagued with malaria in Uganda, or opening a shelter and taking in maimed and abused animals. People who work for important causes like these surely deserve recognition for the contributions they make. They set a great example for others in doing wonderful and charitable things and they deserve to be respected for going above and beyond what most people would never even consider.
Being a parent, especially a resentful one, doesn’t fall within this realm of charity and humanity, no matter how much we try to glorify it.
I was at a restaurant years ago and I remember overhearing a discussion a man was having with who I assume was his legal rep, while I was hurriedly inhaling my bacon cheeseburger and root beer float. There they sat, at the table across from mine- the man looking emotionally beat up. His face long and squelched, the tears almost ready to burst out of his eye sockets in the same explosive way fluid bursts forth from grape-sized blisters on the backs of sun-burnt albino pigs (not a sight to behold).
It wasn’t surprising to see the legal rep hardly look up at him at all, but would rather etch out scribbles on a pad. Aside from the discerning look on his face, he looked like an average guy in jeans and a t-shirt, having lunch at a diner at noon on a weekday. He began to rehearse what sounded a lot like script, some musings the legal rep probably encouraged him to exaggerate. A lot of the things he said stuck out for me in my mind in the same way I can still taste the vanilla froth in my root beer.
“I have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars of support money, some handed directly to the children, most garnished for their mom, medical bills, braces, -I’VE SEEN AND PAID FOR IT ALL. I’ve lived through 2 ex-wives who were both spiteful, who wanted to do nothing more than keep me from the kids. In both cases, I didn’t fight for custody because I believe all children need their moms… I wouldn’t do that to my children. But I did want to see them EVERY chance I had. All my exes cheated on me… Nonetheless, I stayed around for the kids, as best I could, in between working 2-3 jobs at the same time. I wanted another life and family… but I had to work. And I still continue to try…”
Wow.
Here is a guy who has had 3 wives, with whom he made the conscious decision to father a succession of kids. Yet, he has the same all-to-common sob story you’ll hear blaring across diners on quiet weekday afternoons, echoing along the walls inside family courtrooms, and being whined about behind thin bedroom walls in the middle of the night. The constant barrage of people who gripe about wage garnishments, shelling out thousands for daycare, and paying for diapers and dislocated elbows is a never-ending pain in the rear end that’ll never be put to rest.
You support your kids. So what? BIG EFFING DEAL. It is your obligation to take care of your kids because they are entitled to have everything that is afforded to them. It is your responsibility to put clothes on their backs, to pay for school lunches and to take them to the dentist. It’s up to you to pay for football uniforms and textbooks and strep throats. They didn’t ask to be born and you owe them your damned pitiful life without question or reason. You raise them because that is what you are supposed to do.
Good parents raise their children in spite of all the perceived rotten and inconvenient things irresponsible parents try diligently to avoid. And you’ll never hear them complain about doing it, not one single time.
It’s pretty despicable that people think that tending to the moral obligation of being a parent offers them some congratulatory pat-on-the-back and some sympathy and leniency in the eyes of society –often in lieu of the fact they don’t pay child support and clog up the taxpayer-funded court system when their wages have to be garnished. If you paid like every parent should, there would be no garnishment. Since when does being a responsible parent merit some kind of outstanding achievement award?
IT DOESN’T.
Stop playing the victim, own up to your end of the deal and quit crying about it. Parenting involves supporting your children, fiscally, emotionally, physically and socially. If you can’t shell out these basic necessities, don’t have kids. It’s that simple. And if you do decide to have them, DO YOUR BEST TO RAISE THEM. But don’t expect the rest of us to congratulate and commend you on what is essentially your damned job.