{"id":22719,"date":"2014-07-26T00:30:14","date_gmt":"2014-07-26T04:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?p=22719"},"modified":"2014-07-26T00:30:14","modified_gmt":"2014-07-26T04:30:14","slug":"different-choices-not-a-betrayal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2014\/07\/different-choices-not-a-betrayal.html","title":{"rendered":"Different Choices—Not a Betrayal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"woman<\/a>It happened again today. Someone from back home asked me if Sally and Bobby were going to be followed by eleven more siblings. There\u2019s an expectation some\u00a0have people\u2014even among church people not in conservative homeschooling circles\u2014that I will follow among my parents\u2019 footsteps and have a dozen or so children. They assume it\u2019s what I want, even though I never told them I wanted that and I\u2019ve been grown up and away from home for close to ten years now. And when I say it\u2019s not, they are surprised.<\/p>\n

Is it normal for people to assume that children will replicate their parents\u2019 life choices? Why can\u2019t we see children as individuals who grow up to make their own choices, some of which may be very different from those of their parents? When people raise children, they are not raising clones. They\u2019re raising little people, individual little people with their own interests and desires\u2014and their own choices.<\/p>\n

I suppose it can happen in secular circles too. People assume that the son of a high school football star will\u00a0play high school football himself, or that a child will attend the same college as their parent, in a family tradition of sorts. Many people assumed my husband Sean would make the same occupational choice as his father, so much so that he often felt the need to justify his choice not to follow that same career path.<\/p>\n

And sometimes, when children don\u2019t make the same choices as their parents, their parents view that as a sort of betrayal. I think that\u2019s incredibly unfortunate.<\/p>\n

\"make-a-wish\"<\/a>Next month, Sally will begin attending kindergarten. We\u2019re sending her to the local public school. The day is fast approaching when I will put my sweet baby on a school bus and watch as it\u00a0pulls away. I never had that day myself, because I was homeschooled. But that\u2019s not the hard part. The hard part is that my mother interprets my decision to send Sally to public school rather than homeschooling her as a betrayal<\/em>. She sees it as an indictment of her own decision, which it is not. I\u2019m not her, and she\u2019s not me. We\u2019re two different people making with two different decisions. That should be fine, but to my mother it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t sign up for this. I never asked for my choices to be judged against those of my parents\u2014or for my choices to be seen as an indictment of my parents\u2019 choices. I feel like I was thrust into this position with no say in the matter.<\/p>\n

If I cap my family at\u00a0two children, that is\u00a0seen as a judgement on my parents\u2019 choices\u2014clearly the big family thing didn\u2019t work out, or Libby wouldn\u2019t have chosen to have such a small family. If I send my children to public school, that is\u00a0seen as a judgement on my parents\u2019 choices\u2014clearly Libby doesn\u2019t think homeschooling worked for her, or she wouldn\u2019t put her children in public school.<\/p>\n

Why can\u2019t my decisions just be my own, an attempt to find what works best for the family I have formed? Why do my decisions have to be seen as a referendum of sorts on my parents\u2019 decisions? Don\u2019t people understand that I and my parents are different people making our decisions in different contexts? What is right for one person may not be right for another person. Two people can make different choices without either of them being wrong<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I feel like I\u2019m backed into a corner. Whether I like it or not, my decisions will be viewed by others as a judgement on my parents\u2019 choices. I don\u2019t want that. I didn\u2019t ask for that. If I could get my mother to understand one thing, it would be that my decisions are not a judgement on her decisions. I wish\u2014how I wish\u2014that she could accept my different choices without feeling judged by them. I wish she could see that this is not a betrayal. Maybe that\u2019s not possible, I don\u2019t know. But I wish it was.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is it normal for people to assume that children will replicate their parents’ life choices? Why can’t we see children as individuals who grow up to make their own choices, some of which may be very different from those of their parents? When people raise children, they are not raising clones. They’re raising little people, individual little people with their own interests and desires. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family"],"yoast_head":"\nDifferent Choices---Not a Betrayal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Is it normal for people to assume that children will replicate their parents' life choices? 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