Rory Fitzgerald
According to my six-year-old boy, I am “like a rainbow”. His teacher brought me into his classroom the other day to see his little essay, proudly hung on the wall, where he was asked to use similes to describe a friend. I was touched that he chose me as that friend, and I was even more moved to be described as “magic, funee (sic), kind, helpful and hugilee (sic). My dad is always so kind. He is just like a rainbow.” On the top of the page, there was a picture of Seán and I holding hands and smiling.
I doubt such sentiments will be repeated in 10 years’ time, when he is aged 16, so we parents must enjoy being heroes to our children while it lasts.
I, too, remember my parents as seeming like wondrous beings when I was a child, all-powerful and omniscient. I remember feeling an inexpressible love and admiration for them – as indeed I do now, but back then they seemed more like demigods than ordinary human beings.
As small children awaken into the world, they are utterly dependent on these benevolent giants, their parents, as their protectors. Children rely on their parents not only as their providers of food, clothes and shelter but – crucially – as their principle givers of love, respect and emotional security.
Most of us only dimly recall the early years of our childhoods. Yet the child is the father of the man, or woman. These years form the template for who we will become and how we will perceive the world around us. Our relationships with our children even influence how they will vote in later life.
Research suggests that four-year-olds whose parents have a more authoritarian parenting style are more likely to vote for conservative politicians as adults, for example.
When children become adults, the state is their ultimate protector in terms of health care, defence, protection from crime and the provision of services. The state in many respects fills the role once occupied by our parents in our formative years, so it’s not surprising that how we think about government is influenced by our experience of being parented. As the Irish general election approaches we should perhaps ask ourselves: “Is this candidate like a rainbow?”
In the ultimate pantheon of heroes or saints, I doubt Irish politicians will feature strongly. Heroes and role models are in short supply in our cynical age. Those people who inspire me most are the quiet, unassuming people – often women, often elderly – who in no expectation of glory, recognition or reward do many humble tasks with love, to comfort and help others in their families and communities. These type of people, and parents, support society and therefore the state in myriad important ways, without reward.
Change
Harried, sleep-deprived parents can even assume a slightly undignified sort of heroism as they change the thousandth nappy, make another round of school lunches and forgo money and career opportunities to put their children’s needs ahead of their own and raise a happy new generation. The state gives little support to parents, but the work they do ensures the very survival of the state.
Without a numerous and well-reared future generation of decent, law abiding, tax-paying citizens, the state will not function effectively, as many European countries with historically low birth rates are now discovering.
Therefore, when our children are reared, and our main task as parents is done – like Charlie Haughey, and with the same sincerity, and the same unshakeable confidence that we also worked selflessly for others -we too can quote Shakespeare’s Othello, as he did, “I have done the state some service and they know’t.”