Dad Reckoning

Shouldn’t Children Be the Center of Our Concerns?

The way we center our lives now is different from what it was when I was growing up in Oklahoma.

I like The Big Bang Theory. In particular, I like Sheldon’s mom. Whatever the other faults of the show, it got East Texas right. I know this because East Texas is just a warmer and more humid version of eastern Oklahoma.

On Young Sheldon, which is a spin-off of the series, the characters have to deal with one of my dad’s favorite parenting issues: Sheldon’s elder brother got a young woman pregnant. The series spent several episodes exploring the familial and social ramifications of this. It was true to the culture. By culture I mean the standard ways that have been developed to deal with the issues of living.

In his “Tiffany Aching” series, Terry Pratchett describes how the country folk in England (well, Discworld, but really England) handled such things. A young man and woman would get together at a fair. A few months later a bump would appear on the young woman’s abdomen. The girl’s mother would talk to the girl’s dad. The girl’s dad would talk to the boy’s dad over a pint at the pub, and it would all just be worked out.

This is similar to the way Dad taught.

Dad was a simple man and he gave simple advice. If you get a girl pregnant, you are going to marry her. He did recognize that complications could arise, such as, maybe the two people involved didn’t like each other. His response was thought out ahead of time: if you don’t think that you can live with the girl, then maybe you shouldn’t be having sex with her. He also said it was a lot more fun to get along with your spouse than to fight all the time. He was of the school of thought that individuals had some responsibility for their actions.

Paramount Needs

As I look back on it, I see that his philosophy—this cultural way of doing things—was based on the idea that once that little human being comes into existence, its needs are paramount.

This was a lecture I heard from Dad more than once. I think he had it playing on a loop somewhere in his head. It came out whenever we were working in the garden or hunting or fishing or painting the house. “When you get married, your loafing days are over. Don’t spend time out with your buddies. You need to be home with your family. You need to concentrate on putting beans on the table and raising your kids.”

He wasn’t speaking out of abstract concerns, either. He had plenty of empirical data. He could name numerous young men who had faced just this challenge. They’d made the trip to city hall or the preacher or whatever. They’d been given a clothes basket full of household items and taken to the trailer they would share with their new bride.

While this is often referred to as a “Shotgun Wedding,” no shotguns were involved because they didn’t have to be. The young people in question had been raised in this same tradition. I could name quite a few grown people with children and grandchildren who are in existence today because of this. It ain’t always pretty, but it’s life.

It is a cultural practice that is centered on the child. The idea is that a child needs the support of its whole family: mother, father, and grandparents. It works better if the parents are living together and happy about it. That means marriage, de facto if not de jure.

There is a line from Gordon Lightfoot’s song, “The House You Live In”: “Stay calm in the face   / of all common disgraces.”

I think that “disgrace” is a strong word to use there, but from the moment I heard this, to me it has meant reacting in a calm, measured way to something that is, as my dad would always say, “just human nature.”

Times have changed since my dad was bringing up his sons. Human nature has not. We are creating new problems and new solutions. Maybe, just maybe, one principle we can stick with is making our children the center of our concerns.

—This article originally appeared in The Pittsburg Morning Sun. Used with permission.