Changing for our Children

Reading Beloved, by Toni Morrison. I am struck by her terrible decision to take the life of her child rather than subject her return to the life of slavery. It got me thinking about what we do as Mothers to change the lives of our children so that they will be different from our own childhoods. I am in awe of parents who are able to say that they think their own family of origin was so good that they would like to emulate this in their own nuclear families.

I was raised by a single Mother in an urban environment. We did not have a close relationship to either her family of origin or that of my father. We were pretty much a closed unit into ourselves. I know that being a single Mother is the hardest job that anyone could have, but in our case, it proved problematic.

I set out with my own children to give them a life different than the one I had. I moved them to a semi-rural area with hopes that they would grow up surrounded by a sense of community. My husband and I have decent ties to our families, although I would like them to be stronger. We work hard on our marriage and hope and pray to stay together and provide our children with a strong foundation with which to move forward in this world.

We do our best to provide a structured environment for our children. Schedules and set rules and methods of discipline provide a framework that keeps life predictable for our brood. I guess I am often struck by the fact that it seems that people either loved their childhoods and try to emulate them for their own children, or hated them entirely and try to do everything different.