By Faye Barnhart | Contributing Columnist
The primary educators and caregivers of children are their parents. It actually does not take a village to raise a child, it only takes parents.
Parents can get some help with that responsibility by including other teachers in a school, childcare or Sunday school, but those institutions should only compliment what the parent is already teaching at home, as those institutions are employed or contracted by the parents and may be fired by the parents at any time.
The state may want to socialize children to be dutiful robots to a government-run social order, but parents have the responsibility to their children to stand in the way of that.
It is normal for parents to doubt their own abilities and think others may be better at it. The insecurities start when two lines appear on the pregnancy test. No one is ready to parent. You can’t be. Because the only way to be ready for parenthood is to do it. We can read parenting books and take parenting classes, and hopefully observe other parents, but every child is unique and every set of parents is unique.
And yes, there are always two parents. And grandparents. God designed it that way. God designed children to be conceived in love, delivered in love, and raised in love. When we go by God’s design, it is the best atmosphere for raising children possible. We are not in control when we have children, though having children is a delicate, miraculous process, and children fragile, so we can discourage the ability, but we are less in control of having children than we might think. We can only engage in the activity that can result in them. Anyway, I digress.
Few parents would say they have enough money or that it’s the right timing, whether they are too young, too old, or have been on hormones for so many years that they can no longer conceive. The time to have children is precisely the same time that young adults are also trying to figure out their other relationships, climbing the proverbial income ladder to prove themselves, and maybe even confused on their own compass of morals and platitudes to live by. Of course, these insecurities are preyed upon by opportunists to destroy their children and ability to have future children, even though more than half of children were not “planned” and planning children is about as scientific as planning a rainbow to appear in the sky.
Once pregnant, genetic testing is experimental, at best, with initial blood draws checking for abnormalities showing false positives up to 93% of the time, according to a recent study by the New York Times (New York Times, 2022). Follow-up tests are hugely expensive, painful, and cause risk to the child, so rather than spend the rest of the pregnancy in stress or cause trauma by aborting a perfectly healthy son or daughter with the risk of future infertility, perhaps living with the uncertainty until the child’s birth can grow patience and love in the adult much like as a child we waited for Christmas to see what kind of gift was under the Christmas tree.
As a parent, it’s also important to remember that it is normal for a child during puberty to feel uncomfortable in an adolescent body. It’s normal for a child to want best friends who are the same sex. Being best friends and caring about someone should not be confused with experimenting with sex. Yes, it’s important that they be taught to love everyone, and that love should not be confused with having sex. Nor should having sex be confused with loving someone. Children need the stability, comfort, and consistency in knowing that every cell of their body is either male or female.
In at least 6,000 years of humanity, God has never mistakenly put a woman in a man’s body, yet. It was only a few years ago that we were enlightened enough to realize a man was no less a man because he likes to knit and a woman no less a woman if she likes to repair cars. Instead of asking children if maybe they are one of 54 gender configurations, maybe it’s time we are the adults in the room to reassure our children that – like every generation before them – life gets better after adolescence, and they will be the man or woman they were intended to be, uniquely whoever they are. They don’t have to experiment with sex or question their gender to discover themselves. They can wait until they want to commit themselves in a relationship to someone whose anatomy is amazingly designed to compliment their own with the possibility of carrying on the human race to enjoy all the fun they want without all the stress of unhealthy break-ups and jealousies brought on by experimentation among adolescents who aren’t cognitively and emotionally fully developed, yet.
Children can know the stability in the home we provide for them and then create that stability in their own home. Even if a single parent, a parent can be very intentional who is in their child’s life, and the parameters around that child to help them with stability and understanding who they are as a man or woman. Children only have a short time to be innocent and be protected from the adult world of cares and atrocities that children do not have the emotional or cognitive ability to handle, yet. Let the adults be the adults and children be children.
We need to learn to be content with the uncertainties and insecurities that come with being human. We don’t plan when we’ll see a rainbow in the sky, and that’s part of the surprise and joy of it. It’s a shocker to many, but we really are not in control of our own lives as much as we may think. We can plan our actions, but have little control over the consequences of our actions. If wise, we consider what the consequences could be before we act, and we teach our children to do the same.
We as parents have a very short window in the overall life of a child to tell them who we think they are, to raise them in the way they should go (maybe not how they are bent to go, but how they should go), and give them the foundation of stability and instruction in how the world really works within an atmosphere of love. Actions have consequences. There is more to life than the here and now. We are planting seeds for what we want to harvest a lot of in the future. Our greatest goal for them should be more than a shallow goal of happiness, but rather their character and a bigger purpose that they can only discover as they respect and honor their Creator and learn to love others as much as themselves.
The best advice I ever received as a parent was “you can either invest now [into your children] or pay later.” Investing now is intense and short, but if you don’t, the rest of their lives can be really long and painful. When we invest in our children, they become people we really like as adults and don’t mind raising our grandchildren. We must be intentional in what we are teaching our children, and our grandchildren. Because that’s what love does. Uncertainties, insecurities, and all, we can all become better people in the process.
Faye Barnhart is a Life Affirming Specialist and Women’s Advocate of 19 years, served in a federal think tank on the co-occurrence of adult and child violence and in pregnancy care centers. A prelaw student and aid at the Colorado state capitol, she finished her degree and pursued a career in communications while raising children as a single parent. A follower of Jesus Christ, she is now married to a farmer in rural Colorado, mother of adult married children and an adopted special needs son, and grandmother to several miracle babies including a grandson who needed life-saving surgery at birth.
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.