Parenting by Roseanne Barr

We are a generation raised by single parents, working parents, absentee parents, drug addicted parents, alcoholic parents, no parents. We are a generation raised by one who changed the world, rewrote all the rules, and then got a little lost. We were raised by a generation that was supposed to have it all, and, in trying for "it all" ended with bits of everything, and all of nothing. We are a generation of people who learned to parent from TV shows. The television was our babysitter, our friend, our constant companion. Some of us learned all we knew of intact family life from the TV.
Now we have become parents. And where has that left us? Always looking, always searching. We're a generation of parents convinced there is a right answer. There is a right solution. If we can just follow the recipe, just do everything right, then, and only then, our children will turn out ok. We are forever falling short. In the eyes or ourselves, and often other parents. We watch other parents like it's a TV show. We feel free to judge them like we would characters on a show. We are, somehow, convinced that, even though we can't figure out our own lives, we know the right answer for someone else's. We know what they should have done, what they should be doing.
Any parent (couple, person) who looks like they have it all together is missing something. They've dropped something. They're repressing something. No one can have it all, and do it all perfectly. We know this. We watched our parents try, and fail, to have it all. We have accepted that we can't. So either we do a few things rather well, or we do everything sort of ok. I have learned to accept that, sometimes, everyone surviving through the day is enough. Sometimes, it's not a matter of beautiful treasured moments, or loving every minute, of being aware that these early years will pass quickly, that I will look back some day longingly for a time when my children were my constant shadows. Some days it's simply a matter of managing not to kill each other before bedtime. Some days it's managing not to get in the car and run away.
Some days all we do is survive, and that has to be ok. It has to be ok, because it's the best I can do. We don't have beautiful days, or a beautiful life. We have beautiful moments interspersed in our daily chaos. We have "I love you"s at the end of the day instead of "I hate you"s. Sometimes.
I was talking to an old friend last night, and said I was doing, "parenting by Roseanne Barr." I realized how true it was. This isn't Leave it to Beaver folks. Ozzy and Harriet we are not. This is Roseanne Barr style parenting. In the trenches, survival parenting. This is harsh truth full of love, both soft and tough. This is realistic expectations, voided delusions. This is reality on a base level. There are no maids here, no cooks, housekeepers, or nannies. June Cleaver doesn't live here. We see the Brady Bunch, and the Cosby's, and all those other loving two parent households with their angelic children as the sham they are. This is not TV. This is real my friends, and my kids will pay the price for every single fuck up I make.
I swear. Sometimes there's spanking. There's yelling. There's punishments. Children get sent to their rooms. There is no early parole for crying. There is no magic word to fix broken items, or broken hearts. The house is dirty, the dishes aren't washed. I'm not sure I can define dusting, there are piles of laundry, and there are unhappy children. I'm supposed to end the list with love. I'm supposed to say, and there is a lot of love. Or, "my house is messy, but my children are happy." Bullshit. My children aren't happy. They hate me as much as they love me. It's my job to raise them into responsible adults, not entitled assholes. It's my job to keep them ALIVE to see adulthood. It's my job to teach them how to be a good person, even if it's not what is going to make them the happiest person. It's my job to teach them about delayed gratification, that you can't always have what you want, that doing the right thing doesn't always pay off, that being a good person can work against you, and yet, that you have to do it anyway. It is my job. And it's a hard job. No one appreciates the person who teaches us we can't have what we want. It's a thankless job. A frustrating job, an aggravating job.
Roseanne was always my favorite TV mom. I always thought she had it right. That there was truth in her show. I thought, "that's what it's like. It's not neat, and tidy, and happy. it's dirty and messy, and hard, and you hope that, at the end of the day, you've done enough to make it ok. And that's as good as it gets." This is as good as it gets. It turned out ok for her kids, right? They grew up to be ok. Not famous movie stars, or rocket scientists, but ok nonetheless. Except it isn't truth. It's a pretend world. Her pretend children grew up to have pretend ok lives. What will my real children grow up to have? I hope that if I love them enough. If I just love them as much as I can every single day, that it will be ok. That they will survive. That they will forgive me later. That we may not always be happy, but we will always be secure in our love for each other. That they will always know I'm here, to kiss a scrape, help clean up a mess, or kick their butts when they're out of line.
I am that friend too. I'm not everyone's cup of tea. I will call you on your bullshit. I will tell you what you don't want to hear, because I think that's real love. It's easy to tell people what they want to hear, to let them do what they want to do. It's easy to not argue, to bend, to enable. It's hard to tell the truth. It's hard to stand your ground. It's hard to tell your children they cannot have what they want. It's hard to listen to them cry. It's heartbreaking to be told they hate you. Easy love is cheap though. It doesn't take work, it doesn't take dedication. It just requires you to give yourself away. To turn yourself inside out to meet other people's demands. It allows people to believe that all they have to do is be difficult enough and they will get their own way. It allows children to believe they are entitled to their own way. This is cheap friendship and bad parenting. The world rarely cares what you are entitled to. It is mean, and cruel, and heartless, regardless. It is hard, it requires work. Lots of work. Sometimes people who work the hardest end up with the least. There is no reason for it, no justification. It's the luck of the draw. You can do everything right, and still fail, and it has nothing to do with you. The world doesn't care. Life doesn't care how hard you work, or what you deserve for your efforts. You get lucky, or you don't. But you still have to work. You still have to try. You still have to be a good person. You still have to treat others with kindness, even if life happens to be shitting on you. Because it's shitting on them too. Because we don't get to regulate anyone else's happiness just because they got lucky, even if they're a douchebag.
Or maybe, probably, I have especially difficult children. There are some people that will read this and marvel that I have such a hard time with it. That will wonder what my problem is. To them I say, "you don't have my children. And you don't have the right answer. You just got lucky. Be thankful and leave me, and the other other's of 'spirited' children, alone."
So there will be yelling, there will be screaming, there will be crying. There will undoubtedly be cussing. I will contemplate fleeing my home for another country and never coming back. There will be messes, and dirty dishes, and toys. There will be dog fur, and dust, and even spanking. But I will not flee. I will always come back, because I love my children. I love my family. I love my stupid, stupid dogs. And I will continue to hope that, at the end of it all, love has been enough.
We judge ourselves, and each other too harshly, too readily. We aren't a sitcom. Let's try less Brady Bunch and more Roseanne Barr. Let's pretend less and be more honest. This isn't a competition, it's a marathon. There are no prizes for coming in first, you just need to cross the finish line alive.

Yup, that looks right.