The Drama of Parenthood

I watched an episode of the new drama Parenthood last night. I thought it would be an enjoyable, if vicarious, commiseration over the profound and absurd of parenting.

Parenthood portrays the family lives of the various siblings of the Bravermans. As I watched, I laughed with the mom whose teen daughter communicates primarily through superbly refined eye-rolling, I empathized with the father who wants to be noticed by his young autistic son, and I got irritated with the grandparents playing Wii with the grandkids when there is still homework to be done.

But in the end I also found myself dismayed. Throughout the episode the mom of the teen daughter struggled to be "cool" in her daughter's eyes. Of course, the daughter wants nothing to do with her own mom and spends most of her time at her BFF's house. On a rare occasion of finding her daughter and the BFF at her house, our Parenthood mom convinces her daughter to let her take the two girls to a concert. On the eve of the concert, our desperate-to-be-cool mom assures the mom of her daughter's BFF that she will be with the girls during the entire concert and make sure they are safe and responsible.

In response, the other mom waves her hand as if to blow off any concern and says something like, "Oh sure, whatever."

Suddenly it becomes clear to the discerning viewer why the teen daughter prefers the BFF's house to her own: lack of supervision. And the befuddled look on our mom's face indicates she now gets it too. And the mom is faced with deciding whether being "cool" is worth the sacrifice of properly supervising her daughter.

We all want to be the cool parents and to have the cool home where the kids congregate. But does this desire to be cool really require giving up supervisory rights? I would suggest (as would tons of good research and the experience of countless parents who have gone before us) that the opposite is true: Truly "cool" parents have fun with their kids and retain their parental authority.

But creating a place where teens can congregate and have fun while being properly supervised is a LOT of work. So, Mark and I have spent years getting to know the boys' friends and their parents and have, as a result, a network of "cool" homes where we know the kids are getting all the right supervision while still having fun.

Being one of the cool families requires sacrifice. It costs time, effort, space, and food...lots of food. It means we cannot go out when the boys are at our house with friends; it means we have to carve money out of  our food budget for feeding teens; it means going to pick up other kids and bringing them back to our house.

But there is one sacrifice no one in our network makes. None of us have traded being responsible parents for being "cool" parents. Indeed, we have all found ways to weave responsible supervision into our "cool" parenting.

And believe it or not, the kids do not shun any of us. Of course they roll their eyes at us, but they are also happy to hang out in our homes eating our junk food. And they talk with us and laugh with (read: at) us.

And none of the parents have to deal with the conundrum our Parenthood mom had to deal with, because the kids know they are going to get the same supervision no matter where they go.