No One Told You Parenting Was Going to be Such a Grind

It doesn’t have to be this way

Photo by Lesly Juarez on Unsplash

A woman moans on TikTok about the tedium of parenting. She used to hang out with friends; now she spends her weekends in a field, watching her kids go up and down a hill. She’s bored senseless. Not surprisingly, the video goes viral.

Woman on TikTok goes viral for video on what she wished she'd known about parenting

Everyone can relate. Parenting can be such a grind. But what people seem to forget is that it doesn’t have to be this way. Indeed, it didn’t used to be this way.

My parents didn’t watch us play in a field. They didn’t take us to a field. They took us to a tennis court where we were told to amuse ourselves while they played tennis with friends. When they were done, they might hit us a few balls.

If they came to one of our sporting events, they were most likely to be found chatting with friends. They were not obsessed with our performance. They were enjoying themselves.

Far from helicopter parents, they were more like satellite parents — kept in our orbit by the occasional tug of our needs. Everyone seemed happy…