In which I watch a lot of bad movies

If you know me at all, you’ll know that I have an appallingly adolescent taste in music and movies. A large part of this is about emotional self-regulation. I really don’t need any more outside stimuli to feel angry, scared, or sad: the news are quite enough.

As a result, I watch a lot of young adult movies and listen mostly to music that was in vogue (pun intended) when I was a teen. I also tend to read through the synopsis of the movies I am going to watch before I see them.

[This is how I successfully enjoyed Moonlight and Black Panther, two movies I really wanted to watch but that I wouldn’t have seen half of, had I not already known what was going to happen. Otherwise, I’d have covered my eyes for the scary parts. You can judge but I’m going to keep doing it].

All of this to say: I see a lot of depiction of bad parenting. Or, as friends tell me, a fair representation of much actual parenting: top-down imposition of random rules, childish insistence (on the parents’ part) that their kids are but an extension of them, and, above all, limited effort to connect authentically with another human being.

Don’t get me wrong, I know that parenting is hard. This is why it should be a choice. I am also not making any judgement on my own parenting — that would be for my child to do.

I am sitting with the realization that this normalization of in-authenticity in the most deeply bonded relation imaginable — that between a child and their primary caregiver — is part of what has got us where we are. If we don’t believe it is necessary to overcome our own stuff to really relate to a child we have pledged to care for, how will we do it for others we don’t even know?

Parenting is a mirror of how we approach community. The depiction of “normal” parenting in popular culture shows us how we are currently doing on that score. And we can definitely do better.