I sometimes listen to the podcast "Mom and Dad are Fighting" in which listeners write in to the show's three hosts to answer parenting questions. I subscribe to a few different advice podcasts, though I usually gravitate more toward the comedic. In this case, though, while the hosts Zac, Elizabeth and Jamilah don't take themselves too seriously, (especially when sharing their parenting fails), they do take their listeners seriously. They often agree and support each other but come at parenting with different experiences and perspectives.
In a recent episode, they heard from a person who does not have kids but who wants to support their friends who do. The writer reflected with disappointment and grief their experience of feeling uncared for and unsupported by their friends with children after a big accomplishment in their life. This hurt in a particular way because of the care they have always tried to show their friends and their friends' children. (I mean, this person without kids listens to a parenting podcast!) They wanted to know: is this just their friends? How should they talk to their friends about it?
I immediately thought about the church's history of either wringing out or hanging out to dry people in the church who don't have children. Weird how these two laundry metaphors both get at the way we take our childfree folk for granted, either assuming that because they don't have kids they have all the time and energy in the world for all the church tasks and roles OR planning events and activities only with children and their nuclear families in mind.
I think we do okay in our congregation at not making assumptions about people based on their age and/or life stage. I think we try to be inclusive. But I have had conversations with people in our church who feel like they have not been celebrated in the same way as their peers who are having babies or left out of conversations about aging when their peers are entering empty nest phase. I feel personally implicated. It's too easy to get busy with all the kid stuff and to gravitate to other parent-friends because our paths cross at kids' activities or in the school drop-off line.
If you are a parent, I hope you reach out to someone in your life who doesn't have children to ask what's been up with them lately, celebrate a milestone or offer encouragement. Having people in my own family's life and in our church who do not have kids, whether by choice or by circumstance, is a gift! Beyond the ways these child-free folks share themselves in love and care for us, they model for our children multiple ways of living full, connected, meaningful lives as adults that have nothing to do with raising children. It is so important to name their belovedness.
Elizabeth, Zac and Jamilah of "Mom and Dad" encouraged the letter writer to share their disappointment and hurt directly with their friends. But I hope that our friends and siblings in the church won't have to say something before we let them know how beloved they are in God's eyes and in ours.
No comments:
Post a Comment