Parents existed since Eden - 'parenting' is a recent addition

I am a reviewer for Amazon.com, and frequently provide reviews for books in advance of their publication. One which I looked through this week was Amy Wilson's "When Did I Get Like This?" Amy is the mother of three, the eldest of whom is six, and, though her book is largely humour, somehow I could just feel her tension (despite her love for the kids) in analysing everything that is presented as "good parenting" at the moment. I may have laughed at her description of filing applications for a child of three to enter pre-school, but on another level I found it rather tragic. Heaven knows that 'child psychology' presented problems for years, but today's new mother has to worry about whether diluted apple juice (which breaks the current 'water only' trend) will give children diabetes - and does one tell a daughter she is pretty, thereby fostering positive 'body image,' or fear that doing so will cause her to grow into a pre-modern female who thinks everything hinges on her appearance? Parents have quite enough to deal with just in the genuine responsibility they assume - they hardly need bizarre guilt!

I have no children, and my friends are now grandparents - but I am aware that those of my own generation had their share of 'new' worries. (I'm sure that parents have had basically the same worries since mankind existed - and, until recently, had a far greater worry in whether their children would live till adulthood. But I doubt that they thought there was a magic formula to produce perfect children, or guilt over every supposed lapse.) Though my friends, mercifully having reproduced before Internet forums and the self-help aisle, didn't have to deal with health kicks, paranoia over everything their children ate (there are Internet sites which would make just about anything one consumed seem as poison), and "developmental goals" which pushed for reading at the age of nine months, they had to fret over, for example, whether a child would have sufficient 'bonding' if dad hadn't been present for a delivery.

Any realistic teacher would know that which pupils are the brightest, the laziest, the most easily distracted, the most talented, whatever, has nothing to do with whether a child is aged 10 years plus a week or 10 years and nine months. Yet, with children being in classroom situations at the age of two, it's tragic that parents are in a knot over whether a "2.6" has sufficient maturity, or a "2.9" will be taller than the others. (...It just struck me that if, today, I entered a classroom full of kids of 13, I'd probably be the shortest, but be that as it may.) I'm glad I lived in an era when children that age were free to 'hang out' with other little ones. I'll never be accused of a lack of respect for learning, I'm sure, but isn't there much that we learn - including how to deal with others, or how to develop our interests, or just how to have fun, provided that 'dancing' doesn't have to be 'body movement awareness' - on our own?

This has nothing to do with the book I mentioned, but the idea that one can create a 'designer child' through 'parenting' frightens me less than that of selecting 'designer' sperm or ova for one's embryo. (I'm not a moralist, and not qualified to comment on the morality of in vitro - I'm speaking on a more basic level.) I've known brilliant parents whose five children were average (or lower) in intelligence, and vice versa. There is no guarantee that a concert pianist will have kids who have musical gifts, or that an athlete will have children fit for the Olympics. But, especially during my 'far off' youth when many people had large families, and everyone knew those who did, it was clear that these things are a roll of the dice. I shudder to think of how disappointed parents may resent a child who doesn't possess the traits they specially ordered. (Even when one gets what one thinks one wanted, it can backfire. The genius IQ can mean Albert Einstein or Adolf Hitler.)

Were I to try to record here what I think of eugenics, I frankly would become ill.

I hate sounding pious (especially because I am indeed), but I believe we need to remember the identity each of us has as being in God's image, and of how we were dignified in Creation and in Christ's taking on this nature. We all have our gifts, all are flawed - and we can neither order or programme the former nor avoid the latter.