Parenting: A Cattle Drive or Tag-Team Wrestling?

Published December 17, 1987. Too often we become exposed to so many ideas on how to have successful marriage and families that we experience “overkill.” That is, we are bombarded with so much information we don’t know where to begin. So we suffer at home with what the business world calls “analysis paralysis.” We are so busy learning and assimilating knowledge we fail to perform even the most simple acts that can help attain stability and satisfaction in marriage and family life.

A few days ago Susan and I were having our periodic “lets-solve-the-family-problems” talk. We often have them before we get up in the morning. After we had reviewed the usual who is doing what to whom, Susan made an insightful observation. She said, “I believe that rearing children is done best on a one-to-one basis.”

I’ve been thinking about what she said and am convinced she is right. There are many things you can do in a family as a group. But her point was that many of the significant things that happen in a family are done on a one-to-one basis between parent and child. When all of our seven children were at home we tried to rear them as a group. So of the “herd” phenomenon. Much like cowboys and cattle drives portrayed on late night television. And guess what we learned. It didn’t work very well.

What worked with one child didn’t work with another. They are not only different in age and maturation but are also different in temperament and disposition. Our first approach to parenting was largely survival and control. We tried to do all things together at all time. We worked as a team – the cattle drive mentality – with her on one side doing her part to maintain peace and tranquility and me on the other side trying to do the same. At times we didn’t know if the cowboys were guiding the cattle, or if the restless cattle were determining the direction of the cowhands.

Now we are wiser. We have learned to divide and conquer and deal with the problems on a one-to-one basis. While most children do have a sense of family responsibility, they are, like many of us, more concerned about their individual lives. Even if they are concerned about the well-being of other family members, their own needs and wants are usually  more important to them as they mature and grow.

As Susan observed, we have found that most of the significant things we have done as parents are often done as individuals. There are times when Susan does best with a specific child or circumstance. And there are times when I might be the one to help the child work through a particular problem. And when one of us does our best and can’t seem to handle it very well, we step aside and let the other parent try.

Contemporary parenting to us now seems much like tag-team wrestling, also portrayed on late-night television. In the past we think we have had too many participants in the arena at one time. We now find one parent often works best in a given situation. And the skill now seems to determine which one of us it is. We then try, and if our individual approach doesn’t work, we step out of the ring and let the other person step in.

Children sometimes feel overwhelmed if both parents confront them or try to help them at the same time. Put another way, too many cooks with too many recipes can ruin the stew.