The Persistence of Core Memories
I was recently feeling incompetent, so I reserved every book in the library with the word “parenting” in the title and ended up reading “Parenting: Getting It Right” by megachurch pastor Andy Stanley and his wife Sandra. (I know.)
The Stanleys urge parents to approach childrearing with the specter of adult child estrangement looming in their minds. The goal for parenting ought to be, in their words, “kids who enjoy being with [their parents and siblings] even when they no longer have to be.” They recommend prioritizing family time, avoiding yelling and harsh words, and allowing children to make their own mistakes in adolescence, among other strategies.1
According to the Stanleys, just as a farmer prepares for harvest, parents nurture these relationships and wait for their children to mature so they can reap their reward of fruitful adult friendship:
You sow, water, fertilize, protect and then wait. And wait. And wait. We remind parents all the time not to grade their parenting until the crop is in. Good news! The crop isn’t in at thirteen. Or even eighteen. It comes in around twenty-five. Even perfect parents are no match of a lack of frontal lobe development.
None of the advice the Stanleys give is bad, per se, but I don’t think it’s particularly helpful to aim your parenting in this direction. There are so many reasons why a parent might not have a close relationship with their adult child despite being an overall “good” parent. Likewise, there are plenty of adults who have close relationships with parents who were otherwise complete disasters.
I really hope that when my children are adults, we’ll have great relationships and that none of my parenting choices will have harmed them. And yet, the reality of parenting is that it’s a long separation from the moment they leave the womb, and the scary part is that you’ll have little control over what your children remember of their childhood.
A couple years ago on TikTok and Instagram, there was the “core memory” trend in which parents would share videos of their children doing special things (i.e. seeing the ocean for the first time, visiting Disneyland, etc.) with the caption “core memory unlocked,” as if we get to choose which memories will be formative for our children.
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Doing special things for your kids is, of course, really nice. But they get to be the main characters of their childhoods. They get to choose which memories are formative for them. And, for better or for worse, their “core memories” probably won’t be the moments Mom orchestrated, but the little everyday things you might not even notice. The way it feels to hide beneath the lilac bush in full bloom. The dollhouse in her preschool classroom. The terrible sandwich some friend’s dad made on a playdate.
In her poem “To You,” Maxine Scates writes:
…I do believe memory is a dwelling as singular as any place we’ve ever lived though in L.A. the tract where I grew up is a long-term parking lot for LAX and the hill where my grandparents’ house stood among the oil wells is a city park—which is all to say that some of the places you live now may be erased or resurrected like that park, planted as it is with native plants, because of course, it’s still your choice, the way it was ours who failed at doing so much of what we said we’d do, failing you as history has failed all of us.
What my children remember of their childhoods is ultimately up to them. I hope they remember the really good, sweet things, and that their childhoods are like a beautiful park filled with native plants that grow wild.
In my very first days of motherhood, I couldn’t stop singing “Do You Realize?” by the Flaming Lips because my daughter really did have the most beautiful face, and it felt so good to sing those words to her over and over again. I’ll always remember waiting with her in the car as her dad ran in to Target to buy formula—doctor’s orders since she had lost too much weight on my breastmilk alone, the first of many ways my actual parenting would deviate from my intentions. I stroked her little face and sang “Do you realize you have the most beautiful face? Do you realize we’re floating in space?” over and over again until she quieted down. At some point over the next few months, I abandoned that lullaby, but it was the theme of my early motherhood.
Today, “Do You Realize?” came on shuffle as we drove to Target to buy sandals and granola bars. “Mom, I really like this song,” she said. I smiled and said, “Me too.”
It is striking how much evangelical parenting wisdom has deviated from the authoritarian methods that were so popular in the 70s, 80s and 90s (for background on this, I recommend Fundie Friday’s exploration into the parenting manual To Train Up a Child.) It is astonishing to see that some version of gentle parenting has permeated even this corner of the culture where compliance to one’s parents is not merely desired but ordained by God.