108 Sermon Illustrations on Childrearing

Christians must see children as gifts from God, not as projects, understanding family life as a crucible for holiness, not an experiment in happiness.

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NEW YORK MAGAZINE had a fascinating article about children and happiness. Not the happiness of children, but the debate over whether having children makes for parental happiness. Looking first to the sociological and psychological data, the picture looks bleak. According to the current scholarly consensus, parents are more likely to be depressed than non-parents, and parents report themselves as less happy as well.

In her article, “All Joy and No Fun: Why Parents Hate Parenting,” writer Jennifer Senior wonders aloud why parents seem to be less happy than non-parents, but simultaneously claim that parenthood is such a great thing. What is the disconnect?

“From the perspective of the species, it’s perfectly unmysterious why people have children,” writes Senior. “From the perspective of the individual, however, it’s more of a mystery than one might think. Most people assume that having children will make them happier. Yet a wide variety of academic research shows that parents are not happier than their childless peers, and in many cases are less so.”

Trust me on this — you really do not need to read through those academic research papers. Here is a summary: The “scholarly consensus” is that children and parental happiness just do not go together. According to the data, parents are less happy than non-parents, parents of infants and toddlers are especially not happy, single parents are less happy than married parents, and mothers are less happy than fathers. Except, that is, when it comes to single fathers, who are the most unhappy of all.

And yet, people continue to insist and hope that having children will make them happier. Why? “One answer could simply be that parents are deluded, in the grip of some false consciousness that’s good for mankind but not for men and women in particular,” Senior explains.

There is good reason to doubt the value of much social science research and many psychological studies. Nevertheless, taking the data at face value is an interesting exercise in thinking about the nature of parenthood and the question of human happiness.

In the most important section of her article, Jennifer Senior tellingly suggests that what might have changed is the way we view children and parenthood. In her words, “the possibility that parents don’t much enjoy parenting because the experience of raising children has fundamentally changed.” This is where her article becomes especially important.

She writes:

Before urbanization, children were viewed as economic assets to

their parents. If you had a farm, they toiled alongside you to

maintain its upkeep; if you had a family business, the kids

helped mind the store. But all of this dramatically changed with

the moral and technological revolutions of modernity. As we

gained in prosperity, childhood came increasingly to be viewed as

a protected, privileged time, and once college degrees became

essential to getting ahead, children became not only a great

expense but subjects to be sculpted, stimulated, instructed,

groomed. (The Princeton sociologist Viviana Zelizer describes

this transformation of a child’s value in five ruthless words:

“Economically worthless but emotionally priceless.”) Kids, in

short, went from being our staffs to being our bosses.

Interestingly, Senior introduces this article with a spectacularly horrifying account of a mother trying to cajole her eight-year-old son away from the computer in order to do his homework. The account comes from the massive film project undertaken by the UCLA Center on Everyday Lives of Families. These hundreds of hours of recorded middle-class family life show over and over again that many, if not most, parents see themselves as constant negotiators with their strong-willed children. The absence of parental authority and control is genuinely horrifying. One UCLA graduate student described the experience of watching the recordings as “the very purest form of birth control ever devised. Ever.”

What Jennifer Senior actually chronicles in her essay is the fact that parents now see children as projects to be developed. These children — especially those in middle and upper-middle class families — are constantly en route to one practice or another, subjected to class after class, and pushed into the level of academic and social success that their parents think absolutely necessary for success in life. These parents feel guilty if they allow a single opportunity for organized play or a learning activity to pass.

Yes, parenthood HAS changed. Many parents DO see their children as described by Senior — as “subjects to be sculpted, stimulated, instructed, groomed.” Parental authority is replaced by constant power struggles, lest the children be psychologically warped by a parent who stands in authority. Discipline is replaced by never-ending negotiation. The peace of the home is replaced by constant activity and frenetic energy. The earliest years of a child’s life are increasingly filled with organized activity and institutional settings.

No wonder parents are less happy now. Add to this the very important insight Senior offers about the age of parenthood. As she suggests, when couples postpone parenthood for so many years, building careers and social lives and professional profiles, parenthood can seem more an interruption than a blessing.

Senior cites psychologist Jean Twenge, “They become parents later in life. There’s a loss of freedom, a loss of autonomy. It’s totally different from going from your parents’ house to immediately having a baby. Now you know what you’re giving up.”

The Christian understanding of children and parenthood just doesn’t fit these categories. The first problem is the isolation of happiness as the major concern. Interestingly enough, the Bible doesn’t seem overly concerned with human happiness. One reason for this is surely that happiness is just too passing as a perception, and too inadequate as a category. In a fallen world, the wrong things will make us happy or unhappy. Add to this the fact that we seem to be largely incompetent at making ourselves happy, or even at knowing what will make us happy. Go figure.

The second problem is the fact that marriage and children now appear on our cultural screen as personal choices, rather than as the norm and expectation. Once these responsibilities are transformed into choices, the only reason to choose them is if we believe they will make us happy. If we do not find ourselves adequately compensated — especially in emotional terms — for making this choice, we assume it was the wrong choice.

The third problem has to do with the changes in parenting that Jennifer Senior documents in her essay. From a biblical perspective, these are not healthy changes. When children gain control of the household, the home is robbed of order, health, and peace. The child is robbed of what he or she needs most — a loving parent who is undeniably in authority.

Christians must see children as gifts from God, not as projects. We should see marriage and parenthood as a stewardship and privilege, not as a mere lifestyle choice. We must resist the cultural seductions and raise children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and understand family life as a crucible for holiness, not an experiment in happiness.

And when it comes to happiness, we must aim for something higher. Christians are called to joy and satisfaction in Christ, and to find joy in the duties and privileges of this earthly life. Every parent will know moments of honest unhappiness, but the Christian parent settles for nothing less than joy.

A recent letter to columnist Carolyn Hax of The Washington Post seemed straightforward enough. “I am a stay-at-home mother of four who has tried to raise my family under the same strong Christian values that I grew up with,” the woman writes. “Therefore I was shocked when my oldest daughter, ‘Emily,’ suddenly announced she had ‘given up believing in God’ and decided to ‘come out’ as an atheist.”

The idea of a 16-year-old atheist in the house would be enough to alarm any Christian parent, and rightly so. The thought that a secular advice columnist for The Washington Post might be the source of help seems very odd, but desperation can surely lead a parent to seek help almost anywhere.

You usually get what you expect from an advice columnist like this — therapeutic counsel based in a secular worldview and a deep commitment to personal autonomy. Carolyn Hax responds to this mother with an admonition to respect the integrity of her daughter’s declaration of non-belief. She adds, “Parents can and should teach their beliefs and values, but when a would-be disciple stops believing, it’s not a ‘decision’ or ‘choice’ to ‘reject’ church or family or tradition or virtue or whatever else has hitched a cultural ride with faith.”

That is patent nonsense, of course. Declarations of adolescent unbelief often are exactly what Hax argues they are not: rejections of “church or family or tradition or virtue.” Hax does offer some legitimate insights, suggesting that honesty is to be preferred to dishonesty and that such adolescent statements are often indications of a phase of intellectual questioning or just trying on a personality for style.

Hax then tells this distraught mother that she “didn’t throw out what my childhood, including my church, taught me; I still apply what I believe in. I just apply it to a secular life.” In other words, Hax asserts that she maintains many of the values she learned as a child in church, and simply applies these values now to a secular life.

“How can I help my daughter see that she is making a serious mistake with her life if she chooses to reject her God and her faith?,” the mother asks. Hax tells the mother to accept the daughter’s atheism and get over her “disappointment that she isn’t turning out just as you envisioned.”

What else would you expect a secular columnist who operates from a secular worldview to say?

The real problem does not lie with Carolyn Hax’s answer, however, but with the mother’s question. The problem appears at the onset, when the mother states that she has “tried to raise my family under the same strong Christian values that I grew up with.”

Christian values are the problem. Hell will be filled with people who were avidly committed to Christian values. Christian values cannot save anyone and never will. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not a Christian value, and a comfortability with Christian values can blind sinners to their need for the gospel.

This one sentence may not accurately communicate this mother’s understanding, but it appears to be perfectly consistent with the larger context of her question and the source of the advice she sought.

Parents who raise their children with nothing more than Christian values should not be surprised when their children abandon those values. If the child or young person does not have a firm commitment to Christ and to the truth of the Christian faith, values will have no binding authority, and we should not expect that they would. Most of our neighbors have some commitment to Christian values, but what they desperately need is salvation from their sins. This does not come by Christian values, no matter how fervently held. Salvation comes only by the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Human beings are natural-born moralists, and moralism is the most potent of all the false gospels. The language of “values” is the language of moralism and cultural Protestantism — what the Germans called Kulturprotestantismus. This is the religion that produces cultural Christians, and cultural Christianity soon dissipates into atheism, agnosticism, and other forms of non-belief. Cultural Christianity is the great denomination of moralism, and far too many church folk fail to recognize that their own religion is only cultural Christianity — not the genuine Christian faith.

The language of values is all that remains when the substance of belief disappears. Tragically, many churches seem to perpetuate their existence by values, long after they abandon the faith.

We should not pray for Christian morality to disappear or for Christian values to evaporate. We should not pray to live in Sodom or in Vanity Fair. But a culture marked even by Christian values is in desperate need of evangelism, and that evangelism requires the knowledge that Christian values and the gospel of Jesus Christ are not the same thing.

I pray that this young woman and her mother find common hope and confidence in the salvation that comes only through Christ — not by Christian values. Otherwise, we are facing far more than a young woman “making a serious mistake with her life.” We are talking about what matters for eternity. Christian values cannot save anyone.

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Carolyn Hax, “Daughter’s Turnabout on Religion Shakes Mother’s Faith,” The Washington Post, Friday, September 7, 2012. http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/daughters-turnabout-on-religion-shakes-mothers-faith/2012/09/04/1e6ead68-f3a9-11e1-a612-3cfc842a6d89_story.html

I discussed this matter in The Briefing. Listen here: http://www.albertmohler.com/2012/09/10/the-briefing-09-10-12/

I have always had respect for the great 19th century evangelist, Dwight L. Moody. He was the Billy Graham of the 1800s. He was also a very caring father. His son Willie reported that it was not unusual for his father to come to one of his children lying in bed late at night and say something like this: “Are you awake? I can’t go to sleep till I talk to you. I’m sorry I lost my temper.”

As a teenager Willie wrote this tribute to his famous father: “Other kids tell me they cannot go to their dads and just talk and hope to be understood; they say they can’t because their dads are ‘always right’ and they are ‘always wrong’. They can’t talk to their dads the way I can talk to you. I could always talk to you. You always understood. There was nothing I could not tell you.”

When ‘I’m sorry’ isn’t enough, take these steps to encourage healing and reconciliation.

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Many families endure fights, says Susan Kuczmarski, an expert on family relationships who teaches at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, but some of the feuds linger, and the chasms that separate parents and their adult children are among the most painful.

Joshua Coleman, is co-chair of the Council on Contemporary Families who runs a webinar for parents who want to improve relations with their adult children. He sees so much of this problem that he calls parent/adult child estrangement a silent epidemic. “Nobody wants to talk about this,” he says.

And yet people are more than willing to share their stories online. Coleman’s web forums are teeming with questions from parents seeking answers about how to heal. The Experience Project hosts a support group for parents of disaffected children. The stories are heart-wrenching — no matter how old the children, the parents want them back in their lives.

Ties That Do Not Bind

Unfortunately, when the hurt has been going on for a long time, simply saying “I’m sorry” isn’t enough. “First you have to recognize what caused the rupture,” Kuczmarksi says, “and you might not like what you find.” Perhaps you crossed a line. Or maybe you said or did something that your child experienced as deeply wounding even if you never intended to hurt her.

The other possibility is that you might discover — or be forced to finally acknowledge — that something is “not quite right” with your child. Rick Casey, who refused to underwrite his son Evan’s fantasy of a post-college “year of spirituality,” cannot make peace with him a decade later.

“I could have afforded to pay for the trip. But I thought it would build his character if he worked for a bit and saved money to help finance it,” Casey says. “Instead he got furious at me. Every six months I suggest we have dinner. He’ll pick a really expensive restaurant and I go along with it because I think, Maybe he’s past his anger and wants a relationship. At the end of the meal, though, he’ll push his chair back, tell me how I ruined his life, call me a tightwad — even though I’m paying for dinner — and walk out in a huff.”

Sometimes an adult child’s behavior is so bizarre that there might be a personality disorder or mental illness at play. Rick speculated, reluctantly, that his son may be clinically depressed since he hasn’t been able to stick with a job for more than a few months.

Sometimes you never know what’s really going on. Martha Reilly had a pretty good relationship with her son, Adam — until he got married. “Emma’s family is quite rich — we thought they looked down on my second husband and me because we’re schoolteachers who live modestly,” Martha explains. “At first Emma would invite us over for holidays, yet none of her family would speak to us. When we asked Adam what was going on, he just shrugged. Then he said he was annoyed with us for being so petty.

“The invites stopped coming. Eventually Adam stopped visiting us too,” she continues. “We see him rarely anymore, and when we do, he’s a different person — nervous, agitated.” Martha expressed concern that Emma seemed to be controlling her son.

“I called him to say we were sorry that we had spoken negatively about his in-laws,” she said. “He shouted at me, ‘You just don’t get it.’ He’s right; I don’t. But I am worried about his mental health.”

Steps Toward Forgiveness

No matter how severe the alienation, family experts believe that adult children can come around to forgiving their parents (unless, of course, the parent was abusive or complicit in abuse). “You just have to lower your expectations and take it slowly,” Kuczmarski advises. When “I’m sorry” isn’t enough, think about your own behavior and try different forms of rapprochement that go beyond words.

• Try to understand. Even if you’re convinced you’ve done “nothing,” you have done “something.” After all, you are the parent. You were (and continue to be) a powerful figure in your child’s emotional life. Sometimes there’s a nugget of truth in an adult child’s complaints. For example, your behavior may have inadvertently suggested to one child that you favored the other — regardless of whether you felt that way. So the first step to making amends is to listen carefully to what your child is trying to tell you.

• Don’t be defensive. “Nothing can dilute an apology more than self righteousness,” Kuczmarski says. How can you expect your child to believe you mean you are sincerely sorry if you follow the apology with words that indicate you believe you’re right while your child is wrong?

• Put it in writing. Sometimes a letter works better than a conversation. “Words on paper can be read over and over so your child can absorb your apology,” Kuczmarski says.

• Be humble. It takes a lot of gumption to admit you’ve made a mistake. Plus, you’re modeling positive family behavior. Kuczmarski believes families should talk out problems and be honest about their feelings.

• Avoid engaging. Should your adult child feel the need to continue the fight, let her know that, for you, the argument is over. That might irk her because she’s still angry, but in the long run it can have positive consequences. You are less likely to say hurtful things in response to the child’s anger. Also, retreating from the battleground reinforces that you want to make peace.

• Find an intermediary. Perhaps you can persuade a friend or family member to approach your child with your olive branch. She may be more receptive if she hears from someone else that you would like to mend the break, Kuczmarski says. Be aware, however, that you are asking a lot here, since your surrogate could become a lightning rod for your child’s rage.

• Persevere. It may take many talks or letters to bring around an alienated child. But years may eventually wear away their defenses or soften their anger. You might also want to suggest counseling sessions (which you will pay for). If you don’t live in the same city, perhaps you can find a therapist who works with Skype.

In the meantime, if your child continues to rebuff your overtures, keep in mind this is an opportunity for you to focus on yourself. “Even people who have healthy relationships with their adult children enter a stage when they don’t need to focus so much on parenting. So give yourself permission to put the estranged child heartache on the back burner while you enjoy new experiences,” Kuczmarski suggests.

Even as you’re doing that, though, never give up on your child. “The next communication may be the one that sparks a reconnection.”