The Gift of Failure

push and pull

save for the fact

swings back and forth

PARENTING IN A SIMPLER TIME

Parenting in Colonial New England was simpler in terms of its hierarchy of needs, defined as it was by risk and loss. Parents could expect to lose one in every ten children, even in the healthiest and wealthiest communities. In cities such as Boston, where urban poverty and close living quarters facilitated the spread of disease, childhood deaths were two to three times higher. When disaster struck, as it did during the 1677 smallpox epidemic, a fifth of the population died, most of them children. Parents to whom the sight of a dead child was “a sight no more surprising than a broken pitcher” were preoccupied with basic needs—the daily struggle for shelter, food, and safe drinking water—rather than the education, social life, and emotional health of their children. Reason, rather than emotion, dominated early American childrearing. The voice of parenting philosophy in Colonial America, as far as such a thing existed, was that of John Locke. Where today we explain why it’s not nice to bite the neighbor lady via a long-winded treatise accompanied by a supplicatory lollipop, Locke favored a simpler solution, one that stressed clearheaded reason over emotion, for “[l]ong discourses and philosophical reasonings at best amaze and confound, but do not instruct children.” Children were meant to be seen and not heard, and to always behave in the best interest

HOW FAILURE BECAME A DIRTY WORD: A BRIEF HISTORY OF AMERICAN PARENTING

AS A CHILD, I WAS obsessed with the Little House on the Prairie books. I wanted to live in a sod dugout on the banks of Plum Creek or a tiny cabin in the Big Woods under the strict but loving guidance of Ma and Pa Ingalls. I wanted to be Laura, who bravely roamed the dangerous and exciting world around her, and made plenty of mistakes as she made her way across the prairie. When she returned home to face the music, her parents responded not with anxiety and fear, but with interest in her adventures and an eye toward her education in the great big beyond.

I strove to be tolerant of my sister, just as Laura was of Carrie. When the extravagant gift I coveted did not appear under our Christmas tree, I reminded myself of the year Laura received only a small tin cup, a piece of candy, a small cake, and a penny, and tried to be grateful. Remnants of my “What would Laura do?” mentality survived into adulthood, and I could not wait to read the Little House books to my own children, to teach them about Laura’s world of clear-cut morality and balloons made of pig bladders. We read and relived their favorite moments—dribbling syrup on snow to make candy, coloring butter with the juice of grated carrots, and tracing patterns in the window frost with a thimble. I encouraged them to wander our not-so-Big Woods, even as I worried about bears and hunters and deep cellar holes. I did my best to be that reassuring, firm, and loving Ma for my sons.

Ma and Pa set clear limits and goals for their children. Right was right, wrong was wrong, learning arose from failure, and when parents had to discipline, consequences were swift and just. And so, when I became a parent, “What would Laura do?” became “What would Ma do?” and I strove to raise my children according to that ideal. I try to remember that their mistakes and failures are a necessary and inevitable part of their growing up.

The fact that I turn to the late nineteenth century for advice says a lot about how complex and confusing parenting has become. Ma and Pa understood that the job of a parent is to raise self-sufficient, capable, and ethical adults. I envy their clarity, because sometimes, I’m not sure what my job is. One day it is to be my son’s friend so he will feel comfortable enough to confide in me, the next it is to stand firm as an authority figure and teach him to write thank-you notes whether he wants to or not.

THE GIFT OF FAILURE. Copyright © 2015 by Jessica Lahey. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.