It’s weird. I never thought about the kind of parent I’d be, because I never wanted children. I ended up pregnant anyway at age 22 after my birth control failed and, living in Arkansas, still carrying around Christian guilt and, frankly, shell shocked? - we kept the baby. It didn’t hurt that I was close to graduating with my bachelors and we were comfortable for college students (at the time - I certainly wasn’t thinking ahead) and Arkansas actually does give welfare to poor pregnant ladies so it worked out, luckily. There are so many ways it could have blown up in our faces. On some occasions it did. We got to a point at the very beginning of my career, where I was only able to find ad sales jobs so I worked part time at Sonic , we had just transferred to a different state so my husband could finish his degree and there was a hold up with his financial aid and our word wasn’t good enough, of course it wasn’t, and we got evicted. Had to move across state again for a summer to live with his mom in her apartment with our then 2-year-old daughter. It wouldn’t be the last time, but we somehow survived. He got his degree in computer science and we were okay after that, mostly, but it was hard. It’s still hard, in a lot of ways, tbh. The one thing I never did was blame my kid, or see her as a burden. Now, 15 years old, I cannot imagine life without her or an existence where I could run our home like some kind of prison warden. I had no idea what to do with her when she was born, but locking our food away, even when it was scarce at times, or having my husband keep a log of her internet and phone, never occurred to me. I have let her have free rein on the internet and even her own computer from the time she was 7 or 8.
I’ve always just told her, whatever she wants to know, any question, if I don’t know the answer, I would look it up and try to disseminate it in a way she could easily understand. Because, God love my mom, she never meant to harm me but she would avoid answering my questions about anything real - sex, sexuality, any of it. It isn’t her fault, she was born in 1953 with ADD, and never finished school and all she was taught was in the Bible. What she couldn’t give me in information, she gave me in unwavering love and acceptance, and that’s what I’ve taken to my own approach.
So, when my daughter discovered fandom at around age 10, I could tell because she was Nervous about talking about what she watched on YouTube but I did not press her until she got into her FNAF phase and I could see she was immersed in its fandom, which apparently is pretty fucking “sus” for something targeted at 4th graders, and she was getting depressed. I don’t know exactly what bits of its media she was consuming, because it feels like a violation to go digging, even now. But I remembered what it was like for me, so instead, I just told her - anything you look at on the internet, I promise I won’t be shocked. I will not give you my username, but mommy is a bit infamous for her shitty erotic slash fics in the Spirk fandom. I told her she could tell me she likes to draw furries chained to pineapples and I wouldn’t bat an eyelash or judge her in the slightest. I DID ask her to take a break from FNAF, after we talked, and we bought her a cat, and she seemed to even out after that. Ever since though, she has never felt the slightest bit embarrassed to tell me about her shipping habits or the fact that she likes girls more than boys or that she sometimes just feels depressed without reason. A little trust, a little room to grow independently and unafraid, is all it took. We talk, we are friends, and so when I read these bullshit people talking themselves up about how they make themselves feel big by ensuring their children always feel small - I just don’t get it. You created this miracle - that any of us are here, basking in existence, is so existentially incredible - and instead of being taken with the process of watching this tiny little baby develop as a person, with their personality and their own understanding of their place in the universe, and not being grateful for that opportunity? Like, please just step in front of my pickup truck so I can make you one with the pavement and end your cycle of abuse.
IF, or WHEN, any of you decide it’s your time to be a parent, I wish you all the best and I hope you take the mistakes your parents made and instead of repeating them, you apply the actions you WISH they had taken. Be the change you want to see in the world.
