Fuckin’-A, thank you! I bragged a little back in 2013 when he danced at Carnegie Hall. He was just starting out back then.
Now there’s one proud mama!
He’s nine now. Proud isn’t quite the right word, although I am that, too.
When he was a baby, I was most proud of him. To be so helpless, and yet of such good faith, so trusting, so happy, so willing to accept everything that happened to him, which, from his point of view, was about 99 % wildly bewildering stuff, and often scary too.
So willing an capable to learn about ten new things a day. Babies are super heroes and I resprected the hell out of my son then.
Now that he is nine, he’s smart, but most of all, he loves people and is eager to interact with them, and they with him. It amazes me how we will be out and about and other kids I don’t know will greet him by name. Like being out with a local nine year old celebrity.
And yes, he never puts away his stuff and has lousy table manners. He is is a picky eater, a picky everything, really. He knows what he likes and what he doesn’t like. Lots of things he doesn’t like, and if those happen to be things I do like, well, I can eat that tofu burger myself, then.
And he is exhausting, always butting in with nerdy boring stories he wants to share. About Minecraft, about Nerf guns. About factoids he learnt on Youtube. He wants to tell jokes all the time, and let me tell you, he has yet a lot to learn about telling jokes. He loves to sing, and he’s very bad at singing, but he doesn’t care.
And so I find myself deeply surprised that, besides the love and exhausting duty I feel because he’s my son, I actually like him. A lot. He’s a cool kid.
I would suggest that they adjust their definition of “proud” to be more compatible with their child’s personality and capabilities.
My bad, but as the PROUD father of five kids, who admittedly have their flaws, I just don’t get the OP.
Congrats! My newest daughter was born a month ago yesterday.
Whew!! When I first read your comment, I was clueless----Does he have a terminal illness? Car wreck?------
congrats! ----so much better than where I was going----and so obvious
Should the parents of John Wayne Gacy (serial killler) have been proud too?
Since you randomly contributed 50% of your DNA to your kids, their predispositions are largely out of your control. When children deviate substantially from your acceptable values, you may have done everything right.
In a stream-of-consciousness sort of way, I was wondering whether evolution rewarded parents with an “I’m awesome. Look what I did” even when things go bad.
I could not be more proud of my daughters. My older daughter is my rock. She has always been responsible and studious, passionate and compassionate. She has never once given me concern in 27 years.
My 12 year old is the same way. She has had to overcome a lot and she’s done it wonderfully. Every day is a struggle for her and every day she wakes up eager to endure and learn and grow.
People tend to biased towards anything they create. So why would parents be different?
Have you never produced something that involved a lot of hard work, stress, and personal inconvenience, and you ended up being really proud of that something? Maybe you painted your home, started a vegetable garden, or published a piece of writing. Were you not proud of what you created?
Raising kids is difficult, especially if you’re trying your best to do it right. When that hard work pays off in the form of a well-adjusted person who contributes to society, then it is quite reasonable to take pride in that.
Do you disagree with this?
Fair enough, and I may have incorrectly interpreted the OP’s use of “child/children” as specifically referring to kids that I am still raising. Of course, when they are out on their own they will still be MY children but they will also have the freedom to live their lives in a way that doesn’t make me proud. I apologize if my earlier posts were insensitive to any parents who are coping with that type of situation.
That makes sense. I’m sorry I misunderstood you earlier.
Maybe it’s all semantics. To me, parents should be proud of their parenting and your third paragraph implies the same thing.
If I create a work of art, I’ve had control over the process. So, that pride in the creation itself makes sense.
You don’t choose your child’s genes (yet). So how that child turns out is largely out of your control.
But on a visceral level, as a childless uncle of lots of nieces/nephews, most parents ARE proud of the product. Which, let’s face it, is in most cases an average human.
Are we just using different words for the same thing? That is, what you feel is pride in your parenting and relief that your child is normal?
Also, is this a largely Western culture thing? Since we have Social Security in the US, we don’t have to have children to support us in old age.
No worries, it was probably my fault for reading the OP too narrowly. I have a newborn daughter so my proud father instinct is currently in hyperdrive, although that’s also why I’m awake at 3:00 AM right now.
My son is 18. Graduated high school with decent grades. He’s attending community college full time and work 25 hrs/week as a dishwasher at restaurant. Lives at home to save money. Helps out around the house. The kid is determined to make it through college without accruing debt. He has a strong work ethic.
Damn straight I’m proud of him.
Why do you believe this? Whether a child even survives its first years of life is entirely in a parents control unless you think things like food, shelter, comfort, and protection are non-essential to developing a healthy human. So it’s amusing to read this assertion. If I withheld affection and praise from my baby this point forward, you don’t really believe she’d be unharmed from this, right?
Most new music is average too. Oddly, this doesn’t keep artists from being proud of their work. The answer to this mystery is that what seems average to you doesn’t seem average to the creator. I’m sure you’ve taken pride in something that in all honesty is pretty mediocre in the grand scheme too. I mean, we all have. Parents don’t have the monopoly on this.
Sure. But I also don’t think there’s anything wrong or unusual about simply taking pride in what your genetics created. Plenty of people are proud of being smart even though they likely inherited it from their parents. Having direct control over a certain property is not a prerequisite for pride.
When it comes to children, most of us choose who we mate with–and by extension, the genes we give our offspring. I took that selection process very seriously, spending most of my adult life single until I found my husband. So why shouldn’t I feel pride to see that choice pay off with a healthy, happy baby? Just because the same result could’ve happened with someone else, doesn’t lessen the signficance that it happened with the guy I married.
I dont understand where you are going with this. Pride in one’s kids has nothing to with elderly care.
I’m basically here, too.
I find these threads difficult to post to. I don’t seek to humblebrag, and don’t see easy ways to avoid that while feeling good about what’s important to me with regards to my kids.
I will say this: part of becoming a grown-up, to me, is to live for something outside yourself. It does NOT have to be a child - it can be a cause, your art, your partner, many things - but having a child certainly sets up the possibility for this to happen, right?
Realizing so much of my self-value was tied up in being a decent dad was deeply terrifying. I can barely exhibit control of my internal system, let alone think I can affect another being.
So the fact that my kids seem okay, understand what it means to be self-aware and to own their own approach to life (even if they are stumbling through this now as beginners as grown-ups) - yes, I feel good about this.
I think you must have a young child. I was thinking more of grown children. My wording was poorly chosen. Of course, it takes effort to keep young children alive and I concede that parents should feel pride in both the effort and the child.
Although you chose your mate, independent assortment determined your child’s genes. Your child could’ve ended up with the worse that you and your partner had to offer genewise.
It seems to me that an artist/musician has more control over their creation; Hence I understand pride in the product. I agree that smart people are generally proud of their intelligence, and I agree that it was largely out of their control.
The Western culture thing I was positing is that because of social safety nets people in the west can afford pride in their child’s existence. If you are in a culture where you are raising your child to take care of you in old age, you may not feel pride unless the child actually fulfills this task. I don’t know. I was merely pondering.
Every grown children was once a baby, and parenting extends well into adulthood for many people. Pride would not suddenly stop at some arbitrary point. Human emotion doesnt work that way.
You’re right; I have an infant daughter. Right now she has exceeded all expectations I had for her. Not because she’s so marvelous but because my expectations weren’t particularly high for a baby to begin with (which actually made me more anxious during months leading up to her birth). Does this mean eventually, as my expectation level increases, will I stop being so proud of her? I have no idea, but I suspect like most parents I’ve encountered, I will retain a baseline of pride for her unique and positive qualities…qualities that would not be present in the world had I elected to not reproduce. Even the most “average” people add value in this very simple way.
For all I know, my daughter did receive the worse from both of us. We still are happy with our child, though. So what should be made of that?
An artist may have more control over their creation, but it takes far more time, work, and resources to raise a child into adulthood. The stakes are also higher when it comes to life versus art. One act of negligence when I’m driving the car, and my daughter could be killed or permanently disabled. No canvas have I ever painted involved such consequentiality.
So it is rather perplexing that you can understand an artist being proud over a thing that might’ve taken them days to create, but not a parent being proud of a person they birthed, nurtured, and supported over the course of 20 some-odd years or more. It would actually be bizarre for someone to invest that much of themselves in another person and walk away not being proud at least to some degree. It’s just human psychology.
You are overthinking this.
without reading what everyone else said, that poll is way to simplistic.
I’ve got two boys, fully grown and out of the house, I’ve got the fosterling who just turned 11 and the guestling who just turned 8 this Easter.
The older boys, I’m sorta proud, they survived, made it to independence without going to jail (it was a close thing though, the little hooligans!) but they are just starting their lives and families, time will tell.
The younger two, well, they’re still clay being molded in a lot of ways. They still have a lot of work to be done, and some firing in the kiln of adolescence before I will fully know the shape or success of them.
I chose “Proud- it’s all good.”
My kids are far from perfect, as are their parents, but it’s all good. They are intersting people who are growing into responsible adults. Who could ask for more?
I agree with you mostly. I think the confusion comes from the differing definitions of “proud”. As you said, “. . .Even the most ‘average’ people add value. . .”
But most parents would never express pride in a random individual accomplishing basic tasks. “Yay! You crossed the street!” ----“Yay! you paid for your fast food!”
The pride parents express would be akin to me being proud of Earth. Yeah, maybe that’s it for me. “Yay! Earth!”
I hope that is only slightly facetious. That is, my pride in Earth is due to my small input and it’s amazing accomplishments—though our Earth is a bit testy.
I don’t have anything else to add to the thread, but I have enjoyed your responses, you with the face.
Hell yes I’m proud. My son and daughter have flaws just like everyone else on the planet. But they are smart, compassionate and open minded individuals I am proud to call my own.