A few days ago I came across a School of Life twitter message. It said the following: “Whether or not to have Children: “No honest experience of parenting is complete without an intermittent but very strong impression that in some ways children are both the meaning of one’s life and the cause of the ruin of one’s life.” At the time I ‘liked it’, as one does these days, and then I posted it on Facebook and added a few comments of my own. Then, once again, as one does in the ephemeral world of social media, I forgot about it. But it does not want to be forgotten. And I find myself remembering it and trying to think about it, and what it really means to me.

First, parenting is a marvellous achievement, and a challenging skill that is acquired in the most haphazard and ill-defined of ways. (Not becoming a parent – obviously that is a clearly defined way, occasionally haphazard – but the acquisition of parenting skill!) No thoughts about parenting have any value without considering the pain of those who cannot, for myriad reasons, parent. I have no idea of how great that pain is, and few people blessed with children, like me, can know. What I do know is that the pain men and women who want to have children of their own, and cannot, is rarely expressed. It is often too difficult, and even for close friends, it becomes one of the ‘unsaid’ parts of the friendship.

My lucky experience could not be more different. Three healthy young adults and both genders represented. Truly blessed. When my first was born, I felt an extraordinary contentment. I witnessed the birth. I often read about fathers claiming it is the best moment of their lives. I watched my wife handle the pains and discomforts of birth, and I cannot say that seeing somebody one loves, coping with pain, is anything I can equate with ‘best moments’. That said, it was wonderful, as the magic of nature presented us with something that inspired such aching protectiveness and love. I was so convinced that my baby was special, but very fragile. When we drove her home I winced as the car went over speed bumps in Islington, and contended with my wife’s laughter and near-scorn, as I drove home from Great Portland Street at a steady 20-30mph, so that mother and baby were comfortable, and I did not ‘damage’ them.

The emotional pull was something I was not ready for. I could not imagine loving any other being the way I felt my love for this inarticulate bundle. Once the initial weeks, months and years were experienced, I began to fear that I could not love a second as much as the first, and I worried about how a second child would be treated. Of course, one loves them all equally, but differently. Is that a shared opinion? I feel it. Those early days were amazing. First feeds and changes at home without nursing support. Two young adults looking at one another and sweetly admitting that we really didn’t know how to do the best for the baby. Hungry? Overfed? Wind? Tired? And so it goes on, as new parents go through the agonies of not knowing what particular loving comforts are required at any one time, and not knowing how to interpret the new arrival’s communications.

And then, they start to grow up. Time for a sibling, perhaps more than one. Which leads to a whole new set of parenting challenges and skills development. Teaching principles of fairness. Discussing sharing. Dealing with tantrums about seating arrangements, especially if it includes front and back seat of a car. What are appropriate sanctions for poor behaviours? When is it right to exclude one child and include another? Does an eldest child have any more ‘rights’ inside a family than younger siblings? And all of these decisions are thrust upon a parent and usually dealt with instinctively rather than with due care and consideration. Because parenting is about reacting to events. Children are relentlessly surprising, so planning and preparing are largely irrelevant.

Parenting is not all about passing on lessons though. Most of it is the sheer lung-filling joy of being around someone with whom one has a special connection. That connection drives huge emotional responses in a parent and in my opinion hugely enriches us. My late father-in-law, who was a very quiet, considerate gentleman and gentle man, only once put me under any sort of pressure once I had won his daughter’s hand. He said he hoped we planned to have children, and then added that he did not think a man was complete without having become a father. This was not to disparage men who were not fathers, but to let me know of the extraordinary power of parenting emotions.

My parenting experience has allowed me to feel joy, of an otherwise unrivalled intensity. When your child has been unwell, but is recovering and suddenly sits up in bed, throws out its arms for an embrace and says “I love you daddy”, there can be few more joyous moments in a lifetime. That same, almost light-headed feeling that comes over you when holding up your baby after he or she has been bathed, cleaned and wrapped in a soft all-in-one babygrow, and a gurgling giggle sound emerges, and you reel at the brightness of your child’s eyes, whilst wondering how long it will take them to sleep. Or that extraordinary feeling when a small hand holds out a piece of paper with a painting “that I did for you at school today” that shows a picture of a home and a mummy and a daddy.

It helped me to feel pride. Sometimes pride is an unattractive feeling, but the pride that comes from seeing a little one master a trot on his/her pony, or singing on the school stage, or demonstrating that a rung on the ‘growing up ladder’ has been passed because it is now “joined-up writing”. And it keeps on giving. Nothing I have ever achieved has given me the pride that the things that my children did well, made me feel. And I feel it now, even if the achievements are now progress in a career, or success in university, and no longer those charming school age moments. And that is one of the great things that parenting allows one to learn profoundly; which is selfless behaviour is immeasurably more satisfying than selfishness.

There is another side to the coin too. Those feelings of being ‘let down’, or disappointed in a child. These are really difficult. How does one register disappointment, perhaps a little shame, but have the respect of a child and maintain their love. I thought about this because infant observation is part of the Psychotherapy training I plan to do, and it made me think about how I would have felt, being observed parenting a very young infant. Because it feels like there are no rules and so how can one be seen to ‘do it well’? And what advice I would give to new parents? And if I am blessed with grandchildren, and I am closer to my sixtieth birthday than to my fiftieth, what would I be able to do well and how different will I be to the man I was as a father rather than a grandfather?

This weekend I saw the film ‘Vice’. Dick Cheney was always a bit of a shadowy figure, so I expected not to know about some of his political dealings, especially if they were at all shady, but I thought that his profile would mean I would know a bit about the man. It had passed me by that he had a lesbian daughter, whilst watching and applauding his political colleagues’ speeches lambasting same sex relationships. I was not aware of how his eldest daughter’s political career had come at the expense of her relationship with her sister. I wonder what the ‘right’ parenting is for that. I did like the film’s portrayal, which may well be true, that he put her personal life ahead of his political one at a critical moment. Parents often say they would “do anything” for their child, and it is true that parenting can drive one to extraordinary lengths; way beyond one’s expectations.

With so many households needing dual incomes, the benefits of a child being raised largely by a birth parent are being eroded for many. I was lucky that my three had their mother at home until they went away to school in their teens. It was what we had planned for them, but I realise how that has become much less common. As I delve deeper into Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, I realise the importance of parenting done well. I probably had little appreciation for just how critical the earliest weeks and months are, but I think it will help me if grandparenting comes my way. I was not particularly good at ‘play’ when mine were very young, and I regret that I wanted them to grow up quickly so that we could talk about lots of things, and share some of my interests. One of my daughters liked ‘riding’ imaginary ponies and jumping hurdles in the garden like she was in a showjumping ring. One day, I thought she should have outgrown it and let her know that it was a bit embarrassing behaviour in my view, given her then age. Yet, I see a video has gone viral, and there are now competitions held in Scandinavia for young women (there may have been men, but I did not see any), who do this as a new sport and also do ‘dressage’ events. But I had little understanding then of how important ‘play’ is of a developing mind. Now, I ‘get it’.

I want to return to ‘The School of Life’ comments from the opening paragraph. “…the cause of the ruin of one’s life”. If one has ruined a life, it is almost certainly self-inflicted. I cannot imagine many cases of one’s own child being a cause to ruin a life. How? Perhaps if the child was a violent criminal? A mixture of parental shame and guilt? But I cannot think of anything else that a child might do that would have ruined my life. Sometimes one feels that one’s life is not one’s own, when parenting. But that is quite different, and certainly not a form of ruination. So I ‘liked’ the comment for social media purposes because I like ‘The School of Life’ and the glibness of the comment made me smile. But, actually, on consideration, I did not really like it at all – parenting is so much more fulfilling than this allows, and I am delighted that I have been lucky enough to feel ‘complete’ as my father-in-law would have had it. My children have given my life all its meaning, and I know most parents feel exactly that.