Children are a gift, not benchmarks of your success

Parents today spend almost twice as much time with their kids than parents in the 1960s did. And this intensive commitment is not simply the result of fathers taking on a greater role in childcare. Believe it or not, mothers also spend more time with their kids now than in the 1960s – even as women take on more work outside the home. Whereas historically child development was viewed as a natural process that required the participation of a larger community, raising kids today is considered a lifelong project that depends almost entirely on the parents. This creates a high stakes environment where every milestone and meltdown becomes subject to evaluation.

Perhaps not surprisingly, parents today report feeling significantly more overwhelmed and anxious than adults without children. In August 2024, the U.S. Office of the Surgeon General issued a warning that parental stress is an “urgent public health issue.” While there are a variety of potential reasons for the stress that comes with raising kids, social scientists suggest that a key contributor is the widespread belief that parents have a responsibility to go beyond providing a safe and secure environment for children.

The motivations behind intensive parenting are generally well-intentioned (it is good to want your kids to thrive). But at the same time, there are features of our contemporary culture that unhelpfully compound the pressure parents feel. Specifically, there seems to be a link between what the philosopher Byung-Chul Han describes as our obsession with productivity, performance and achievement, and the burden parents feel to optimize their child’s development. While there is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to do well in life, parenting becomes exhausting when a child’s “success” is too closely linked to parental “success.” Parenthood then becomes another job to perform and self-optimize, to the point where it obscures a more fundamental theological affirmation that children are a gift regardless of their accomplishments.

The amount of time parents spend immersed in digital life tends to reinforce the pressure parents feel. Social media cultivates a culture of comparison with an endless presentation of highly curated images of family life. And once the algorithm discovers that a “user” has children, it feeds an endless sea of influencers and information that directly speak to the anxiety and stress parents feel. While there can be good advice online, digital mediums often encourage the passive consumption of content that offers little more than a temporary release from the grind of intensive parenting.

A more contemplative way of life

The Christian faith has resources to push back on parenthood’s entanglement with achievement society – although I’d submit that not all theological traditions are equal in this regard. In my own Reformed tradition, there are some promising resources with an emphasis on the pervasive presence of grace in the world. However, in many instances, we uncritically baptize the cultural obsession with achievement under the auspices of the Protestant work ethic. As a helpful corrective (and perhaps even complimentary viewpoint), Christian contemplative traditions offer interesting insights and practices.

Contemporary notions of “contemplation” are often linked with mindfulness, meditation and centering prayer. The early and medieval understandings of contemplation, however, connote a much broader way of life. Contemplation was linked with monastic or religious traditions that sought to integrate practices of silence, stillness, slow reading of Scripture (lectio divina), and solitude – as well as rigorous philosophical study, commitment to community, charity and preaching. Critically, contemplative practices were not perceived as steps taken to achieve a certain spiritual status, but instead, practices that prepare a heart to receive God.

Helpful correctives

The language of “reception” is key to an understanding of the contemplative life. It implies that both effort and grace are needed, but it decisively tips the scales in favour of grace. Anything a person confesses, believes, thinks, prays or practices is secondary to the movement of God. As such, contemplative practices tend to invert the values of productivity and achievement in a way that can be helpful to parents (or anyone living in the achievement society): Silence and solitude counter a culture of performance and comparison. Stillness resists hyper-activity and the never-ending task of “producing” successful children. Slow-reading and rigorous study are correctives to the passive consumption of information online.

As a parent of three young children, I realize the idea of implementing contemplative practices can sound idealistic and unattainable. Finding the time and space for a more contemplative life can turn into one more thing to do – which only returns us to a mindset of productivity and self-optimization. Complicating factors even more is the fact that children are not known to enable practices of silence, stillness, slow reading or rigorous study. There are good reasons the early and medieval Christians associated contemplative life with monastic (celibate) life!

But over time, taking small steps towards adopting the rhythms and habits of a contemplative life can help remind parents of the sense in which their children are part of something larger than the things they achieve. Contemplative practices are counter-cultural acts of resistance to the norms and values of the achievement society. They can even help re-enchant parenthood by attuning parents to the grace that illuminates a child’s life beyond all measure.