Louis Michael: The changing lot of the parent

My dad said something interesting to me recently. We were talking and he suddenly said: “what am I going to do?” and when I asked him what was wrong he just replied, “I have four children all in their twenties.”

For context I’m the youngest of four children. My parents had their first child a few years after they married, my second sister came a year and a half after her, then my brother, and finally myself, putting seven years between the oldest and youngest.

Now on the surface it may seem as if I’m completely unqualified to write this column, because I’ve never been a parent. I know nothing of what it must feel like to have a baby and watch it change from a totally dependant, innocent little child into an autonomous, opinionated, fully functioning adult. Going through all that once would be life-changing enough, let alone four times.

But as I pondered my dad’s dilemma I began to empathise with a position I had never been in.

I imagined what it must be like to create a human being

I imagined what it must be like to create a human being, to wait all those months to finally meet it, to love it the second you see it. To decorate the room and read all the parenting books, to trade adult conversation for ABCs, to get used to the smell of sick. To get up in the middle of the night to the sound of screaming, to get used to nothing but the sound of screaming, to feel as if you’re about to snap because of all the screaming, and then to look into their eyes and remembering why you put up with the screaming.

I imagined what it must be like to have a person, a life, an entire world in your care, and to feel the responsibility to ensure that that world is given all the sufficient knowledge, support and love in order for it to flourish and become vibrant and joyous.

And then I imagined what it must be like for those worlds to begin resisting your gravity, to start drifting away from your orbit. Suddenly the system you’ve had in place for so long, that you’ve strived so hard to keep in perfect working order, is breaking up. And suddenly you’re forced to face up to the fact that this was all temporary.

On thinking on my dad’s dilemma I’ve decided that as children become adults, parents must adjust to the end of their first phase and transition into a new phase where their primary duty is no longer to protect, but rather to support. But there’s nothing wrong with this. How many films have you seen where the supporting character stole the show?