Who Is In For Dinner?

I’m reading the research paper my daughter wrote at the end of her placement year about the impact of parenting on sexual risk-taking in young adults and trying to identify my own style and wondering what it did to my kids.

During a conversation while she was working on it she said, rather more assertively than felt comfortable, “You weren’t authoritative parents.”

I remember feeling that “permissive” might not have been all that great either.

While I embrace the warm and nurturing aspects the implied absence of boundaries, which I recognise in almost every situation I can bring to mind, makes me question whether I damaged my children or whether I just did what I’d experienced myself.

My mother used to extol the virtue of letting us take responsibility and find our own way through things but there were times when I could have done with some limits and intervention, even if I didn’t realise it at the time.

My father didn’t even take responsibility for himself so there wasn’t much guidance in that direction.

So as my children have reached their twenties it has become clear that parenting appears to be as much about luck as judgement.

My children have emerged as responsible, sensitive and thoughtful adults but I’m not sure I can take much credit.

I begin with good intentions, imagining a harder boundary than the one I end up imposing partly due to a need for approval, and partly from a useful awareness that not every battle is worth fighting.

When they were children and staying at friends’ houses other parents wanted to know which movie they were watching and would veto any choice they felt unsuitable, but we always let it slide.

It seemed unwinnable and unnecessary to censor the uncensorable.

A few years later when my son, still a child, was galavanting around “Grand Theft Auto” on his Playstation shooting prostitutes and stealing cars by flinging unsuspecting drivers from their seats with abandon I hoped my judgement hadn’t been off.

Once they’d grown up I repeated the same strategy with the dogs.

“The puppy is not going to be allowed on the sofa,” I remember saying before the first one arrived.

Now we hoover out the beds to get rid of the dog hairs before getting into them, and I sit wherever there is space as the dogs spread out on the sofa.

“We’re going to train that out of you,” my daughter says as the puppy sits crying for a bit of leftover parmesan after dinner.

“Don’t worry Nell, she’ll be moving out soon,” I tell the dog.

Both children will soon be gone and I’ll be left to wonder how well we have prepared them for what comes next.

“It’s going to be a shock when you’re having to pay all your own bills and cook all your own meals,” I call while I’m simultaneously emptying the dishwasher and watching that the pressure cooker doesn’t explode with the dinner I’ve prepared.

Then there won’t be anyone to make dinner for and my increasingly pathos-ridden text won’t be required,

“Who is in for dinner tonight?”

Five mundane words that represent the last vestiges of whatever effective parenting I have managed to deliver.

“No thanks,” is the increasingly predictable response.

While I’m chatting with my daughter my wife texts to say that she will be home shortly.

“I’m wearing tights,” she adds, which we understand as code for “Please put the puppy in another room so I don’t get torn to shreds due to our inability to stop her from getting overexcited when we come in.”

She changes her mind and says, “Don’t worry, I’ll do what Beth does.”

My daughter and I look at each other and smile.

“There’s no point in her trying that. It only works with me because I’ve always stopped her jumping up,” she says.

My wife comes in and the dog goes berserk.

“Biscuit, biscuit,” she keeps saying repeatedly as she tries to make it into the kitchen without her clothing in ruins, the dog ignoring her pleas and scrabbling desperately for attention.

“It’s like she’s shouting her safe word but nobody told the dog,” my daughter laughs.

Maybe the children will fill in the gaps that I left, there are signs that they already have, which is, after all, the important task of shaking off the inevitable inadequacies of our parents.