Boomerangs, Broodlings and Bigs

What to Expect When You’re Expecting. Every pregnant woman I knew had it. So reassuring, to be so prepared, so confident that becoming a parent was a manageable task. I guess the biological part is for most. As a pediatrician though, I know that even that piece can get very tricky.

We had our babies. Even before the advent of Instagram, our photos filled pages. Wonder and delight were camera ready. Smocking and Peter Pan collars added a sense of timelessness to the frame. Never mind the sleepless nights, the evening colic, and the diapers that had terrified adults holding the baby suspended in mid-air while others ran for back-up support. We knew we had it all then.

The magic years really are. My generation just called them children. Now young parents exclaim about their littles. Charming. Still so malleable in our hands, we presume. Dressed up like mini adults, they don sports uniforms, Easter dresses, first-day-of-school shoes. Social media takes the place of our earlier books as mothers share how tired they are, what recipe is perfect for the picky eater and where they find the best babysitters. Life may be a mess, you might always be late, but you are still living the dream.

What they don’t emphasize in all those parenting books is that from your child’s first roll, they are turning away from what restrains them. Starting to command their own world. Getting ready for independence. We know this is coming, but those cheerfully sage books make it sound as if such pursuits are bookended by the teen years. We brace ourselves for those. We believe we know what to expect.

Fewer snapshots are shared of the teen-aged babies. It’s hard to capture them darting from their room to the car, head down and cap on. Smocking doesn’t scrunch right on black sweats. No worries about red-eyes with our new cameras, but no gadget can take away the fierce glaring. We know nothing, as it turns out. At least that’s what we are told by the same darling we encouraged to speak just a few short years ago.

Still, most of us make it out alive. Our teens transform into young adults. They choose their own pursuits. Their days are mostly borne without our presence. But they still animate our thoughts if not our dinner tables. Did the parking tickets get paid? Are they in credit card debt? Is their boss kind? What do they long for? What animates their minds?

If this were the natural conclusion of a parenting life, we could still write a winsome book about what to expect in the first 21 years. But as a parent of twenty-somethings and a thirty-something, my biggest surprise is how full my mothering plate is during this stage. The wonder years are over but the identity years are in full swing and our roles are as varied as a set of golf clubs. Is this the right time for a long shot? A chip out of a sandtrap? A gentle nudge toward the final flag? I don’t even play golf, and I really need a caddie.

Malcolm Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours to master something as a true pro. Allowing for sleep, and generously multiplying by five for those who might critique that I split my efforts among my children, I calculate 17.12 years of effort should result in near perfection as a parent. That sort of lines up with the idea that we finish raising them at eighteen, right? 

Just not true. Nope. Of course, Gladwell doesn’t allow for constant change in the subject being mastered. Our children vary continuously and unpredictably. Whether there are five, three or one; whether biological or adopted, single-parented or doubled; whether helicoptered or free range; my offspring and those of all I know have more complex and stretching connections with their parents than any of us anticipated. What to Expect when They’re Adulting. That’s the book I really needed.

Blame the pandemic. Or the economy. Or just culture in general. But somehow, things feel entirely different from what I experienced in my twenties as normative. Today, over 50% of people in that age bracket live with their parents (our box is checked). Marriage is delayed to the thirties (second check mark). Gender identities, pronouns and given names are up for grabs (yep, that too). Ironically, while so many live at home, 40% of Americans have experienced estrangement of a family member, with 27% of folks currently estranged (I grieve that check mark). Mental health needs are in a state of crisis (anyone not checking that box)?

There are some silver linings in this new state of parenthood. Living with our adult children, even if because it makes economic sense for them, has given us an entrance into their life that in former times would have been a foreign concept. We share meals, day to day events, stories, games and ideas. There is a new chance to see each other as both independent and dependent—the illusion of full autonomy as a human good is stamped out. There are still times of wonder as we hear how they managed a difficult work situation, resolved a rough relationship or expressed a spiritual insight that we needed to hear.

Navigating house cleaning and privacy are today’s equivalent of figuring out sleep training and sibling rivalry. I’m sure a book chapter could capture what’s necessary. Less clear is how we juggle this period where we are still working yet eyeing retirement, navigating our own transitions in life as age starts to become something that limits rather than frees. “I’m old!,” I sometimes want to shout. I thought I’d have more of my life’s demands figured out by now. I didn’t plan to live this part in full view of the family audience.

And that’s still the easy part. Harder is the push and pull of those not yet able to integrate their identity into a happy member of our loving, if imperfect, family. I didn’t see the grief of this as possible in those early years of doing everything the experts advised. Along with my now struggling friends’ children, our five had lives full of love, education, opportunities, faith and everything else on that hierarchy of needs. Life still got them in its teeth.

Some wrestle with demons we have never met. Others have inherited our bad apple genes along with our prize-winning ones. All have some sort of challenge we can’t fix. And despite well more than 10,000 hours of effort, I still struggle with responding to everyone at every moment with grace and equanimity. Though I thought I had a perfect image of God’s unconditional love for us when I birthed my first child, I think I have a much better idea of it in this stage of my mothering life.

One of our beloveds doesn’t want to be called our child. Nor a daughter. What then? Offspring sounds so distancing. Product of conception is so clinical. They prefer kid, but my own mother’s voice haunts me with the rebuke that a kid is a baby goat. 

So how do we refer to those in this stage of our family life? I’ve been pondering suitable nicknames. Younger parents have their littles, maybe we have our bigs. But that label is so grammatically grating when you have been trained by nuns to diagram sentences. I did birth five, including the one who is now plural. But they aren’t children. Young adult sounds like a section in the library. They’re not a litter. What about a brood? Yes. How about broodling? It seems an apt term for those tempest-tossed in their family relationships. I rather like that one, full of pathos yet hope and connection. 

There is another term that seems just right for many of the adult progeny making their way in and out of our lives. I first imagined it as a retort to those who call out “Hey, Boomer” to my generation. 

“What’s up, Boomerang?” I’d respond with a smile. 

We keep tossing you all out into the world, but you always find your way back. And perhaps that is as it is meant to be. Put that into the second edition of the world’s most incomplete book on parenting. Available everywhere.