Thoughts on Parenting and Purpose

I wish I got more satisfaction from parenting.

I love my daughter, so much more so because of what happened to Chelsea. She’s been my rock through the hardest part of my life, the reason to get up in the morning and keep going even when I didn’t want to do so. At some point when she gets older, I’ll have to figure out a way to tell her that she saved my life. She’s also an absolutely delightful little human, and I love hanging out with her; every night before she goes to bed, I try and remember to tell her that she’s my favorite person, and I mean it every time I say it.

But still, I’m in this odd position of feeling these feelings, yet deriving very little satisfaction from the daily acts of parenting. This was true before Chelsea died by the way, when I was a stay-at-home dad: I just didn’t feel a great sense of satisfaction at getting through the day, more of a sense of relief. So while I can look at my daughter and feel good that she’s happy and healthy, I don’t feel the same sort of satisfaction that I might from some kind of work-related accomplishment, or from my relationship with Chelsea.

What’s crazy is that I intellectually understand how big a job parenting is: I worked out, fairly early on, that raising my daughter might be the most important contribution I make to the world, and I should take it seriously. But again, the daily acts of parenting (e.g., making meals, boundary-setting, cleaning up toys) don’t convey the weight of their potential importance.

On some levels, this is probably a good thing: carrying that weight around in every moment sounds exhausting and, thankfully, a lot of parenting happens through modeling how to live your life (which, at this point, kind of happens on autopilot). While I may not be as intentional about parenting decisions as I might idealize, the life playbook is sufficiently good that I can just be me, let E observe that, and have the confidence that she will be okay.

Also, deriving too much satisfaction from parenting seems like (at least for me) a path towards living vicariously through my kid, which I don’t want to do. Chelsea always had this saying, “you are responsible for your own happiness,” which speaks to the idea that you have to take ownership of what you can control and not rely too much on others for your happiness and sense of self. Clearly, relying upon a relationship with a child for my primary source of contentment/satisfaction is neither wise nor fair on her. So I need something else to give me fulfillment.

And yet, I’m in this weird position where, by necessity, the focus of life for the next 3–5 years is very much about providing stability for my kid. I made sacrifices to support the family when Chelsea was alive; I’ll have to make more sacrifices in the near term to provide E with the childhood she needs.

But I can’t shake the feeling that I’m borrowing against both my career trajectory and my identity to bankroll E’s childhood, and I always get nervous about incurring debt. Who knows, maybe it will be like sleep debt when she was a baby: you discover that you can do things you didn’t think your body could do with regards to sleep; maybe this experience will be similar in that my relationship to work and life will change for the better.

Still, I’ve always thought about my worth not in terms of past accomplishments, but in terms of work left to do, work being defined in terms of professional tasks, not personal ones. This period is scary because I worry that taking care of my daughter will box me in professionally, cutting off opportunities that might have presented themselves otherwise (I know: welcome to the life of every stay at home mom, ever…). And while I concede that parenting may be my life’s most consequential activity, I still want to continue helping people through my professional life. Maybe it’s a hold over from my 20’s, but I feel like I have a lot of important professional work left to do and I want to make sure I’m in a position to do that work. Hence, the fear of being professionally left behind because of personal responsibilities.

But that fear is irrelevant: those personal responsibilities are my primary focus, as my job right now is to be there for my little girl. I just wish I got more satisfaction from performing that job…