You know those Ze Frank videos?
(If you don’t, what is wrong with you? Go click now. Then come back here when you’re done in the rabbit hole.)
Please imagine this blog post read in Ze Frank’s voice.
Here are true facts about Parenting.
Parenting is the process of promoting and supporting the physical, emotional, social, and intellectual development of a teeny tiny bebeh from infancy to grown ass adulthood.*
This means parents are basically responsible for absolutely every aspect of another human being for at least 18 years and probably more like 25 years, because we now know that’s the age when people’s brains mature enough to stop doing idiotic things every other bloody minute. And even though we know people don’t stop doing idiotic things until the age of 25, we are still convinced all those things they do before then are somehow the fault of their parents. Maybe because of what parents do, maybe because of what parents don’t do. It’s really a crap shoot.
Parenting takes all the stress and anxiety about your daily life–paying your bills, going to your job every single day (yes, every day), cleaning your house, occasionally scheduling a dentist appointment or changing your oil–and adds to it all the stress and anxiety of someone else’s life, a wee person who relies on you for literally everything.
Because of this, parenting is the highest paid profession in our world.
Just kidding, people are crazy enough to do this for free.
You see, one of the dirty parenting tricks is to convince the next generation–those teeny tiny bebehs–their life will have no meaning unless they, too, someday become parents.
Parents do this as payback for the 18 to 25 years of stress, responsibility, and agony they endured as they watched their child grow, especially during middle school and high school. Parents gather in secret support groups and plot how to get back at their children by ensuring they, too, become parents.
Intensive parenting for 18 to 25 years is a human construct, which makes you wonder which species is really the most intelligent on the planet. The cuckoo bird tricks other birds into raising her bebehs by sneaking her eggs into other nests. Mother hamsters often eat their own offspring. The Hooded Grebe takes care of the first chick to hatch, but leaves the others behind. Perhaps multiples are too much trouble.
If you ask a human parent what they like about their all-consuming, anxiety-provoking, completely-unpaid job, they are likely to spew some words about unconditional love and fulfillment.
But next time someone goes on and on about the intangible rewards of parenting and how they pity people without bebehs, remember: parenting is not for the weak. Although it might be for suckers. And masochists.
/JK
(NK)
Sarah E. Stevens 