2017.02.05 What About The Children?

“And WHO will take care of the children?” The very tall bishop towered over me, looking down at me— and on me. His query was not curious, but aggressive. I cringed. The national church had just voted (1976) that women could be ordained priests. I wanted to be a priest in the Episcopal Church and this bishop put me in my “rightful” place: mother at home with kids. (I promise I did not fuzzy-up the photo.)

The Rt. Rev. Warren J. Hutchens, Connecticut

His question would prove my undoing. It would prove as well to be the Church’s rationale of choice for turning women, especially mothers, down as they tried to enter the ordination track.

This question is not unusual, or new, or over and done with. It’s loaded with patriarchal assumptions about the fixity of gender roles, many of which were not justified, not to mention sexist. Yet this question is alive and exclusively addressed to women, please note.

It’s now some forty years since that question froze me in my tracks. I pursued my vocational calling and have been an Episcopal priest since 1988. Besides being a priest, I am a mother, a counselor and spiritual director, a marriage partner, and yes, a writer—delighted to have read in Poets and Writers Magazine (March/April, 2016) an article “A Residency of Her Own” by Melissa Scholes Young. She ran into the same question I’d encountered in the church, but in a secular context. (To be honest, I think the categories “sacred” and “secular” are far less oppositional than people assume.) She was planning a month away from her family to get some time to write. Writing is her job, her income, and, yes, her soul-quenching passion.

What about the kids? Here is Melissa’s take:

“The problem with the question ‘What about the kids?’ is that it assumes the only way to care for my children is to be home, awaiting their needs. It also insinuates that, as a woman, child care falls solely on my shoulders—that my partner, perhaps because of his gender, isn’t as capable. The question also suggests that my children aren’t self-sufficient enough, physically or emotionally, to survive a month without me. I’m happy to say they are both. At eight and thirteen my daughters are becoming young women of their own, navigating choice, trying on ways of being, walking to friends’ houses and doing their own laundry.

What would Virginia (Woolf) say to the “what about the kids" question? She’d say it was my choice to become a mother, And she’d be right. She’d say it’s also an authentic choice not to, and she’d be right again, She’d pat my kids’ dear heads, high-five me for my success, and leave my girls outside my residency room’s door. Choosing to be a mother doesn’t mean I have to choose not to be a writer. It just means this complicated path is my own.    . . .

I didn’t stop being a writer when I gave birth; I won’t stop being a mother during my retreat.”



Now I can think of a million arguments against this action, as well as much praise for it. Choice is choice and it has consequences no matter how right or wrong it may seem to oneself or to others. It’s not so simple. It’s also rarely either/or.

No one asked Virginia Woolf this question when she sat alone in her study composing A Room Of One’s Own—not to mention the fact that Virginia Woolf had no children  and took her own life.

What about the kids?  (Here are children when I began my midlife breakout:)

The question haunted me all through the ordination process. To be a mother and a priest was not doable—a “dual vocation” the church committees and bishop called it. Nothing about fathers and not to mention the sexual orientation of some of the male interrogators who made these judgments.

I admit that when I made my choices my soul suffered much shame. I broke the sacred cultural rule about childcare and the centrality of mothering. It was Betty Friedan’s fault, and secondarily Godde’s, I told myself. But it was my choice. I handled it clumsily—with help from my then husband who fled the scene in his own way. I broke all the rules my mother ever taught me. Sins beginning in “a” were my favorites: adultery, alcohol, and abandonment. I hurt myself and those I loved most: my four children. I’m neurotic, so it took years to heal my shame. It was apparently less of a problem for Godde who supported and strengthened me all the way. Self-forgiveness, however, is easier to preach than to inwardly digest.

What about the mother? Few people ask about the well being of the mother, even today as abortion debates rage on. The choices are still framed as either/or although they are a complex blend of messiness one navigates with as much prayer, compassion and good council as possible. I did not choose against the children. I did chose the well being of the mother, and tried to balance things as best I could.

Change that matters, and, I dare say, such change is divine, always hurts. It hurts more for mothers and women because of cultural expectations and, yes, a womb. I broke away from the shell of my role as wife and mother—shattered my own comfort and my children’s. Humpty Dumpty affair.

“What about the kids?” lingered in my flesh for years.  (Here I am ordained priest by ten years:)

It took a very long time for me to stop apologizing. One of my daughters got fed up one day and said: “Mom, stop apologizing!” This same daughter later said, amidst tears: “Mom, religion took you away from us.” The other daughter called me a wimp, and we used up a whole box of Kleenex together in a therapist’s office. My sons were easier, don’t know why. Maybe because at the time of my breaking- out they were microscopically intent on managing their own social standing.

The only people qualified to answer the question: “What about the children?” are the children. Mine answered it with their own resilient lives, by hanging in with each other and with both parents, by establishing satisfying work lives, by tolerating all my apologies, by therapy and recovery meetings, and by making their own series of not-so-great choices and keeping on. None of us ever stopped loving each other. I never stopped being their mother. There is no way I can thank my children enough. 

I have answered this question by not asking it any more, and by living my own life and thriving in it.

 P.S. Just as I was composing this post I read an article in the Boston Globe (February 4, 2017) about self-care outranking childcare. Genevieve Shaw Brown, editor and reporter with ABC News, recently authored The Happiest Mommy You Know: Why Putting Your Kids First Is the Last Thing You Do.

Well now that is too either/or. Still, there’s a reason why airlines instruct people traveling with young children to put on their oxygen masks before helping the kids put theirs on.

2014.11.09 Suicide Prevention and Preventive Parenting

In the Nov/Dec, 2014 issue of Poets and Writers Magazine there is a piece by Kevin Nance about Charles D’Ambrosio, a writer who uses words to write with imagined sympathy about his father, who found no fathering within himself.  D’Ambrosio is the author of a new book of creative nonfiction essays called Loitering.

The article tells some of the painful story about a rejecting abusive father, two of whose sons attempted suicide, one succeeded the other survived. D’Ambrosio manages to conveys unimaginable yet imagined sympathy for a dad with whom he never could connect, despite efforts. The article revealed some information I had intuited, but not known, from an outside source about suicide dynamics and prevention. It also sent me a memory, one that told me I had an empathic heart—always a good thing to remember.     

I remember Bradford, the name I will give this cousin. He used to stand in a corner looking sad, if not gloomy, at the annual, command performance, family Thanksgiving gatherings at my grandparent’s home. I used to look forward to these gatherings. The food was plentiful, the grandfather of choice was there with his quiet chuckle and enormous cigar, and the variety of cousins were fascinating to observe. I was particularly observant of Bradford.

He was ten or more years older than I was. Even at young ages I knew he was moviestar handsome—thick black hair, dark brooding intensity, and large eyes. He was an amazing tennis player, I’d heard, and went to some prep school I’d never heard of. He was not approachable, at least by me. I was probably just as shy and introverted as he was, yet I didn’t feel as sad as he looked.

Bradford’s mother was what today we would call certifiable. She was an angry little woman, a jokster who thought nothing of tormenting her children with belittling remarks she thought were hilarious. I shudder to think how she might have been treated as a child. I also couldn’t understand why my uncle, whom I thought pretty decent and kind, did nothing to reach out to his son, at least that I saw.

One seminal story is enough. When Bradford was a teen his mother began to screech at the elevator operator in the  NYC apartment building to stop the elevator at once: “Stop, stop the elevator,” she shouted in front of several people. Then she turned to her son to say, “Bradford, we’ve forgotten your teddy bear.” Some personalities could slough this kind of humiliation off, but not sensitive Bradford who shrank from such assaults. It was cruel. I hated this woman. I refused to think of her as “aunt.”

We all grew up and life changed as it does. I didn’t think more about this until I heard from my parents that Bradford had committed suicide, in his late twenties I think. I remember my first nasty thought, something like “No wonder.” And I felt so sad, wishing I had tried harder to befriend him.

I know this is a small slice of life and I know few details. I know things were very much more complex than my own vicarious trauma for Bradford. I also know the family had a story and  a history that is not mine to know. Bradford’s siblings survived well enough. Now I’m sure that Bradford probably suffered from ongoing untreated depression, which, back in the 40s, was misunderstood and shamed, just as suicide was. Depression is a medical diagnosis but despair is not. It’s a spiritual diagnosis.

When Bradford died I had another thought I kept secret: “She won.” I don’t remember any funeral or further talk. I forgot Bradford, and I never forgot him. I hope he rests in peace in the vast embrace of God whose love, I believe, compensates for all the failings of human love.

The new information on depression and suicide I referenced above is relevant to Bradford’s situation. D’Ambrosio’s "killer" father tyrannized his household and created despair in his sons. But his mother taught him sympathy.

“Suicide is very often granting someone else that person’s wish. In this case I believe that to be true,” D’Ambrosio said about his father, to whom “the idea of family was heinous—antithetical, really to how he saw himself,” according to Jon Fontana who is married to one of D’Ambrosio’s sisters. Of course D’Amrosio’s father was terrorized by his own father, but does the beat have to go on?

According to the late Edwin Shneidman, a professor of thanatology at UCLA and the putative father of suicidology, “In one way, suicide is homicide to the 180th degree.” I thought of Bradford. I also thought of the book This Is How It Feels written from the inside of suicidality.

Of course this is only one perspective about the issue, but it is an important one to consider. Kudos to Charles D’Ambrosio for using his writing gift to write with such poignancy, authenticity, and, yes, compassion about the terrorism and tragedy he survived.

So what’s preventive here and where is the good news?

-I’m not planning anything rash, in case my interest in this topic alarms anyone.
-Parents always reject their kids to varying degrees; it’s usually not personal to the child.
-Schools address this topic with honesty. Promote mental health. Don’t wait for a tragedy.
-Consider preventive parenting/mindful parenting: If you are contemplating having children, disregard religious pressure and any literalistic interpretations or the biblical mandate to procreate. Rather, know yourself, and the mate who will parent with you, very very very very well, history and all— even if you need therapeutic help to accomplish this. Love isn’t enough. If you're not fit to parent in any way, be humble. Forget the Holy Family model—sweet, but dated.
-If you become a parent and can’t cope, don’t take it out on the child. To abandon is better than to destroy.
-Have conversations in church about the wisdom, or not, of setting up parental dynamics with God and clergy.  Is that really a healthy projection?  Jesus did grow up, remember.
-Pray for yourself.

I am filled with gratitude for my parents and all parents who do their very best, often against odds.  I give thanks for those who choose against parenting for good reasons, and with cost. I am grateful for myself, my former and present spouses, my children and theirs. Thanksgiving.