David recently posted this comment in another thread:
I try to talk candidly with my daughters regarding the pitfalls and benefits of relationships. I try not to say either do or don’t have sex prior to marriage. I try to talk about consequences for doing something without a good understanding of why and what will happen after. When the girls watched the movie “Juno” that became a good opportunity for discussing the difficulty of dealing with teen pregnancy and the confused reasons people can come to that place.
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The Heresy of the Perfect Parent
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008In the February 2008 issue of Sojourners, Kari Jo Verhulst examines The Heresy of the Perfect Parent. She asks “Will your own humanness really ruin your children for life?” I found this section especially thought-provoking:
This gospel of parenting my child to superlativeness - unlike the gospel and its inherent pull beyond kin and toward the stranger - justifies my own preoccupation with my own kind and thus falsely valorizes my tendency to live at arm’s length from my neighbor and surround myself with people who think, speak, eat, and now parent the way I do.
Ms. Verhulst describes well the dominant parenting philosophy in the conservative evangelical community I grew up in. The all-important task of parents was to protect their children from any negative influences or contrary ideas and to create a haven of safety, security, and uniformity. This left little room for social justice concerns or community activism.
But as Ms. Verhulst points out, an exclusive “focus on the family” is not the message of the gospel. Is it possible that by insulating our children too much we could hinder them from developing compassion or from understanding the true message of the gospel? If we abandon the heresy of perfect parenting, could we teach our children (and ourselves) more about grace?
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