Parenting

In “Facing the Wind,” a powerful article in today’s NY Times Magazine, Carvell Wallace writes about being a parent. Although I will never share his particular experience of being an African American who fears for his children’s lives, the way he described having teenagers was familiar to me:

               To be asked for life advice in one moment, and to be told you are a bad parent and have ruined your child’s life the next – this is what parenting is.

When my older daughter was 14, every conversation ended with “You don’t understand me and I hate you.” Every morning I went into my office and cried. Fortunately, she (and I) grew up.

Wallace’s article also made me think of the times as a college president I was expected to be a parent.  Faculty and staff often told me the college was a family. They expected me to care for and protect them. I understood this part of my role and enjoyed nurturing the personal relationships that made us thrive. In times like 9/11, an earthquake and the death of a beloved Vice President, my instincts were to keep students and employees safe and heal their pain.

But there were other expectations of me as well. I had fiscal responsibilities and at times had to make decisions that fractured the family, like laying off long term employees. I was the good parent one day, an unloving tyrant the next. And from my perspective, it felt like having a petulant teenager all over again.  A family can be dysfunctional.