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No Roots
Thoughts on family and climate change
When my husband and I took the plunge and decided to become parents after eight years of marriage and a vow to never have kids, we fully intended to have a total of two children. We’re practical people, and having two seemed the most responsible, both for the kids’ socialization as well as the environment. (This was twenty years ago when I’d honestly thought sanity would prevail over greed and we’d be taking climate change more seriously by now. Alas, I was wrong.)
But reality intervenes in the best of intentions. Parenthood was hard. Really hard. As hard as the sleepless nights and crying can be on anyone, it’s even harder for those of us who have poor attachment with our parents to be parents ourselves. It’s more difficult to keep your patience when your parent wasn’t patient with you. It can be hard to sit and play with your own child when your parents didn’t do that with you.
That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy my daughter in those early years — I did. I have a ton of fond memories I wouldn’t change for anything. But I noticed in the stay-at-home mom club I belonged to for a while, there were two types of moms — empathetic, patient moms who didn’t seem to mind the whining and crying and snot, and the moms who were more frequently frustrated with, and dismayed by, motherhood.
