Comments on: Children Vows

By: The Little Things · A Different Audience

The Little Things · A Different Audience — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:36:55 +0000

[...] Friday, an older post of mine (Children Vows) was published at Mamapedia Voices (welcome, new readers!) and I had a completely new blogging [...]

By: Objectivist Roundup #114 « Reality Talk

Objectivist Roundup #114 « Reality Talk — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:18:30 +0000

[...] Mossoff presents Children Vows posted at The Little Things, saying, “My husband and I thought very carefully before we [...]

By: Bill Brown

Bill Brown — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:55:56 +0000

My wife and I laugh at the things we believed about parenting before we had kids. Well, mostly we just laugh about the things *I* believed since she was an elementary school teacher and had observed a lot. Several things that I thought would be important have turned out to be insignificant and other things that I thought we’d have to explicitly instill in our children have happened as a matter of course.

The main thing I have learned about parenthood is that your primary role is to model the good. If you lack integrity (or are inconsistent about it), I think your children will pick up on the differences between how you act and what you say. Prior to children, I was much less cognizant of my integrity–now I must make sure that it is visible and explicit. That includes naming my foibles (like temper) and working on them in a manner that they can see.

By: Lynne

Lynne — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:36:53 +0000

Thanks for sharing your explicit statement. I wouldn’t say you were clueless in any way. Priorities can and should change according to reality. It’s funny that you didn’t remember the specifics of #4 – it was my favorite (may be due to being divorced or the ages of my older children: 21 and 16).

My adopted albeit less philosophical sounding statement of parenthood is this: If Mama ain’t happy – ain’t nobody happy. Of course this means that I must be happy with the pursuits I’ve chosen, or work to alter my course of action.

It’s no accident that the requirements of a rational human being work nicely with the requirements for being a good parent.

By: Tori

Tori — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:20:26 +0000

I think these are a great idea. I’m sure we will opt to write some of our own.

By the way–you really should do that honeymoon trip to Italy! We did it at the end of July and it was amazing. Once Samantha and your future second child are old enough, I think it could even be an incredible and educational family trip.