"Hold On to Your Kids"

...does not have to be a conservative mantra.

This post is coming to you a little late because I was literally holding onto one of my kids last night instead of finishing this post — my toddler has a bad cold and needs some extra loving. The neat thing is watching myself be a different version of me this year than a year ago, and handle illnesses and the unexpected with much more ease! I hope this post lands in your inbox at just the right time. :)

One of the books I’ve been slowly working my way through is a book co-authored by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate called “Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers.” If you knew nothing about the authors, you might think it belonged straight on the Focus on the Family approved book list.

Luckily, that’s not the case! They make that clear on Neufeld’s website. I love the firm boldness they state it with (bolded part mine):

We understand that the information about the role of family as well as parents in particular can be used by certain advocacy groups to forward their own agendas. We are concerned, however, that getting involved in such agendas would distract from our mission if not sully the science upon which we are based.

We particularly distance ourselves from any religious cults or political activist groups who put their own rights and interests ahead of those of others who are different than themselves. We specifically take care to avoid any association with white supremacy movements, libertarian movements who put their rights before that of the community, and religious right movements who champion corporal punishment for children and the imposition of their own values on those who do not have the same beliefs. We do receive a large number of requests for interviews and do make every effort to avoid being used or exploited by such advocacy groups.

[Fist pump!!]

But let’s say you didn’t know any of that.

If you, like me, grew up in an authoritarian evangelical household, you might balk at the notion of holding on to your kids and being more important to them than their peers. In my kind of evangelicalism, kids were seen more as property or beings to be shaped, molded, and controlled in the parents’ image than as people in their own right. For me, being “held on to” initially brings to mind a controlling squeeze. A refusal on my caregivers’ part to acknowledge that other viewpoints besides theirs might be valid. And it makes me want to fight my way out, elbows flying, gasping for air until I reach the surface.

“Parents being more important than peers” probably sounds benign unless you were raised in high-control religion. Coming from that environment, it’s natural that some yellow flags get raised. We think about what happened to us: limiting outside information, limiting exposure to “secular” environments, creating firm us/them boundaries between the righteous believers (assumed to be the family) and everyone else. Growing up, my peers were assumed to be bad influences, especially since many of them were not Christians. So of course my evangelical caregivers wanted to be more important to me than my peers.

But just because I might have a startle reaction to the title doesn’t mean there’s not merit to it. Just because high-control religion twisted and manipulated an idea for its own power doesn’t mean the entire original idea is bad.

The writers of the book make an argument that we have a peer-centric culture for raising children today. Many of us are not in close contact with extended family, where children have regular, close contact with grandparents and other adults who love them. We often have busy, hectic lives, and prioritizing a close emotional relationship with a child can take a back burner to all the activities and programming and work and to-do lists that must get done. Then what is lost by this peer-centric culture is the transmission of mature values and the security that comes in knowing you are held and loved by a village of adults who care for you.

In order to matter to our children (and this could be your own, or others’!), you have to build a real relationship with them. This is not a top-down, authoritarian relationship. That’s not the kind of relationship that makes your adult kids want to come home to you.

Sometimes I reflect on what it would have been like to have that kind of relationship with my evangelical caregivers. Can one be a sincerely all-in conservative evangelical AND have a relationship with children based on mutual respect and unconditional love? I think it must be possible even if in my experience, I didn’t get that. And I can’t go back and alter my past, but I am hopeful that I can develop the kind of relationship with my own children that will have them wanting to be friends with me for the all of their adult lives.

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I’m only a very small partway through the book, but I hope to share more insights as I continue to learn. Meanwhile, I wonder what the antidote to the diagnosed problem of peer-centric culture is. What might it look like in the 2020s to buck hustle culture, online culture, pressure to achieve and perform? What does it look like to be confident in our beliefs that we as adults — particularly adults that have probably done a lot of inner work to try and be the best version of us we can, at the moment — have something really important to provide to the next generation?

Thank you for being here! I’d love to hear your thoughts about what it means to have a caregiver / child relationship that orients children toward the adult but without in a coercive, controlling way. This conversation isn’t just for parents, either — we’ve all been children of someone! Meet you in the comment section!