"Those who do not know how to weep with their whole heart don't know how to laugh either."
  --Golda Meir

Photo: Crushed Red PepperLearning to grieve, and to be comfortable with the grieving process, might not seem like a parenting skill. But grief is a part of every life, and how we handle grief has a huge impact on the richness of our family's emotional life. Our comfort level with grief also gives our children an important role model.

At times, there will be nothing we can do for our child except to sit with him and let him experience his grief: over a sports defeat, an inconsiderate peer, a dead pet, or even an ill or deceased loved one. To work through his grief, our child needs what therapists call a “holding environment,” and we are the ones who do the holding, both physically and emotionally.

If we are so uncomfortable with grief that we cannot allow our child to grieve, we give a destructive message that is far reaching. Accepting grief as a normal part of life is important for optimal mental health for all of us. The more we allow ourselves to grieve when necessary, the more joy we can feel.

Thankfully, grief is never interminable. Like all feelings, if we let ourselves feel it, grief swamps us, and then, eventually, diminishes. Not that grief ever disappears, but we can think of it as a slice of the pie of our lives:  at first an important loss pervades the entire circle of our life; but gradually the slice of our life in shadow becomes smaller and smaller.  Eventually, we can go on with our lives in a healthy way, although we may always revisit the pain of our loss.  But if we fend it off like an unwelcome visitor, grief doesn’t leave. It takes up residence like a shadow in our psyches, and we become stuck in its bitter influence. Unresolved grief compromises resiliency, threatening to burst out at even minor provocations, leaving us fragile and prone to depression.

Helping Kids with Loss and Bereavement

Our children, therefore, not only need to grieve sometimes, but need our help to do so.  We can best do that by accepting that children grieve differently from adults. They need rituals that offer safe space for grieving, and then a defined end point so they can play again and go on with their lives without guilt. 

The kids who successfully live through loss are the ones who find ways to feel connected to the person they've lost AND to go on with their lives.  Even children experiencing severe losses need time off from grief.  They need safe space, such as school, where they will not be reminded of their loss and can forget for a time.  They need to hear that we are there for them when they want to talk, and they need us to normalize talking about the loss, but they also need our permission to go on with their lives. They need us to create small rituals of remembrance, and to know we will help them keep the lost person alive but not insist that they grieve when they are trying to be happy.

I was asked by a parent recently, "Why do you talk about public policy?  Aren't you a child psychologist?"

I talk about public policy because as a psychologist I know how much babies and kids need their parents, and because as a mother I know how challenging it is for parents nowadays to live balanced lives and be there for their kids. 

Parents need to know that their intuition about how hard this is is correct, that we are trying to do what most previous generations have done only in the context of not only an extended family, but usually a whole village. 

And because if parents, who understand better than anyone, do not advocate social policies that support families in raising healthy children, then we cannot expect those policies to ever be adopted.  This is not a hopeless situation.  There are answers, better ways of living and raising our children.  Together, we can advocate for public policies that allow all childrens' basic needs to be met.

Imagine, for a moment, that we could all get what we needed.  Children could have parents who nurture them through childhood, who help them interpret the world and develop into emotionally healthy, fully realized individuals.  Parents could have balanced lives, interpersonally rich with family and friends, professionally rich with challenging and rewarding work.  Our society could have responsible citizens who function as contributing members of our democracy, actively working to enhance our country and our planet.

What would we need for that to happen?  

What children need: 
Parents who have the time to raise them, while working part time if they chose.
Parents who act like parents. 
Parents with whom they have a deep, loving relationship, rather than passing like ships in the night. 
Parents they can rely on to help them solve problems, to set limits, to learn to manage themselves.
Parents who listen, and who talk. 
Parents who make them feel safe.

What women need:
More than one parent raising children together
Part time opportunities for rewarding work in family-friendly workplaces
A culture that places a high value on child-raising.

What men need:
A culture that supports men as fathers.
Part time opportunities for rewarding work in family-friendly workplaces
A culture that places a high value on child-raising.

What families need:
A social support system throughout the public and private sectors.
A culture that stops pitting nonparents against parents.  
A tax structure that recognizes the value to society of child-raising. 
Healthcare.

What society needs:   
A culture that prioritizes people over profits, connection over consumption.
Shared custodianship of the future, where all of us together are invested in raising the humans to whom we will entrust our planet.

Ever wonder what that decision to get pregnant will cost you financially?
 
“Social-science research is often equivocal, but on the cost of parenthood to mothers in particular a truckload of research exists to establish how it limits economic options in every class. Mothers work less, earn less, and achieve less in the marketplace than fathers and than childless women. 

Child-rearing takes up enormous amounts of time—especially mothers' time. Taking into account child care, housework, and paid work, mothers work more hours than any other group. Even when both parents hold paid jobs, the mother usually takes primary responsibility for arranging child care, caring for the children during non-work hours and taking time off when children are sick or day-care arrangements fall through.

Mothers also shoulder the greater burden among single-parent families. More than 80 percent of single- parent households are headed by mothers, and more than two thirds of children of divorced parents live primarily with their mothers.

When mothers do remain in the work force, they earn less than other women. This gap persists even after controlling for age, education, work experience, and other attributes. Over a lifetime, mothers earn about five percent less per child than they would have earned otherwise. 

Mothers' economic disadvantage during their working years has repercussions into old age. Job interruptions and lower lifetime earnings reduce their private pensions and their Social Security benefits.

Although this situation reflects continuing gender discrimination, the economics of parenthood are not simply a byproduct of gender inequality. The fundamental problem is that child-rearing requires an irreducible minimum amount of work. Whatever the division of labor between mothers and fathers, continuity demands intensive time and energy from someone."

Wow!  From: What We Owe to Parents by Anne Alstott, Yale Law School.