THE RIGHTFUL RISKS OF MOTHERHOOD by Gloria Furman for Core Christianity
Mighty to Save
As we remember eternity and embrace death for Christ as gain, then our lives will change. One change I predict is that we will stop helicopter mothering ourselves and the people around us.
To helicopter mother is to hover over others with the intent of controlling them and/or the circumstances surrounding them. You’ve probably heard the term “helicopter mom” in regard to how some moms tend to obsessively overparent their children. Child psychologists in the West have been documenting this as a social trend and publishing their opinion papers online. Sometimes grim forecasts are given for children who are parented in this manner: depression, anxiety, poor performance in school, and financial issues. In her article “Helicopter Parenting—It’s Worse Than You Think,” Hara Estroff Marano worried that with the rise of helicopter parents, “independence took a great leap backward.”She reasons that when we eliminate risks for our children, we will “rob kids of self-sufficiency.” Marano, a psychologist, believes that the state of parenting is “worse than we think.” No woman wants any of these things for her children or for the people she is nurturing.
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I’ve heard Christian parents say that they loathe that trend, but we must recognize a problem that’s even worse than the loss of independence that Marano and others bemoan. The greater concern about helicopter parenting is not that children will not learn independence, but that we will inadvertently model to them that God’s faithfulness is not dependable. Because we’ve bought the story that the best things in life are health and youth, financial security, and self-confidence, which comes through subliminally in our helicoptering. In our mothering efforts we do everything “in our power” to get and keep those things for ourselves and our kids. The overarching consequence of obsessive over-parenting is simply that in our failure to live out the truth of the big story, we fail to pass on that big story. What is this helicopter parenting subconsciously teaching our children about God, themselves, and his call to spread his glory to every corner of the earth? In our disciples’ eyes it may seem that God, who is so big, so strong, and so mighty, is really no bigger than we are. God is not mighty to save; Mommy is.
Taking Gospel Risks
Are we in danger of becoming so preoccupied with eliminating risks in our children’s world that we neglect to encourage them to take risks for the gospel? For now, forget about the question of whether we let a child go down the twisty slide, eat a breakfast cereal with artificial coloring, or cross the street. Consider the noble quest of crossing cultures for the sake of the gospel. Are we parenting in such a way that our children will one day not hesitate to say, “I think Jesus is calling me to follow him into [fill in the blank: a hard place, a risky ministry, a university with less prestige for the sake of being close to a local church, etc.]?”
