Trad rightist family fetishism and upscale trendy (mostly-)leftist helicopter parenting are two sides of the same base-metal coin. A parent’s obligation to his child is pretty much infinite, and one of the most important parts of that obligation entails not demanding that his child’s existence validate his own choices / ego / ideology. If you are fundamentally dependent on that relationship for your own needs, you will pervert it to suit yourself.
If you think that the highest purpose of your existence is raising a family…you would be well-advised to find a better highest purpose before you actually go raising a family. I know what it is like to be raised by parents whose most fundamental selves and aspirations are tied up in being parents. I do not recommend the experience.
Yeah, not a fan of this take. Though sympathy of course.
1. There are 7 billion humans. Most of them are not going to find a top priority that is better than “raise your children.” If you find a job where your contribution really matters, great. If you are an artistic innovator, great. How many people is that? If you’re a hair stylist who lives 5 miles from where you grew up and is part of a community theater then a) great and b) your kids are probably the most important thing in your life.
I guess it matters on what you mean by “dependent on that relationship”, but I’m not sure what you think it WOULD be okay to be dependent on if not that.
Make not your garden upon your joy, yeah, but then what will you?
2. There’s been a lot of discourse lately about not doing things for people because they make you feel better, compared to how they really benefit the other person. And there are examples where this is clearly true. But it can’t be a universal maxim that guides all our relationships: we don’t have access to what genuinely benefits other people, we only know our own perception of them. We are ALWAYS going to treat people ultimately on how it feeds our own identity. A firefighter rescues people because that is how they see themselves as a firefighter. What’s useful is some line between “reasonably limited to our own perspective and information” and “ignoring the separate needs of others.”
You don’t have to be a great artist, or to have an awesome career, to have a foundational identity beyond your family relationships. If you’re sufficiently invested in your community theater troupe or your model train setup or your raiding guild or your Rotary Club or your meditation regime or your mastery of the Talmud or your existence as a Wild and Crazy Guy, if the you that exists inside your head is fundamentally rooted in any of those things rather than in your parenting, then…your relationship with your child doesn’t become an exercise in narcissistic defense.
(Some of those things are better than others, of course. There are dangers to external rootedness of all kinds. But anything is better than being rooted in your kid.)
[EDIT: Being totally indifferent or hostile to your kid is not better. This happens a lot less than people natively think these days, or so I believe – most forms of horrible parent-child conflict grow out of someone caring too much, in the wrong ways, rather than not caring enough – but it does happen and it would be monstrous to dismiss it.]
Your second point is sophistry in effect (although presumably not in intent). Yes, on some ultimate level everything we do is filtered through ourselves, good parenting is going to come out of wanting to be a good parent, hi-ho. For practical purposes, Ginnungagap lies between “this is a thing I do” – or even “this is a mega-important thing to which I have devoted a big chunk of my life’s time and energy” – and “this is who I am.”