Integrity And Intensity

“Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but he who makes his ways crooked will be found out.” – Proverbs 10:9

“Intensive parenting was first described in the 1990s and 2000s by social scientists including Sharon Hays and Annette Lareau. It grew from a major shift in how people saw children. They began to be considered vulnerable and moldable — shaped by their early childhood experiences — an idea bolstered by advances in child development research. The result was a parenting style that was ‘child-centered, expert-guided, emotionally absorbing, labor intensive and financially expensive,’ Ms. Hays wrote.” – “The Relentlessness of Modern Parenting,” Claire Cain Miller, New York Times

I think I understand now why people in Palo Alto can’t have four children, why our family is such an outlier in that way: it’s simply not possible to intensively parent four children born within the span of six years. Not without a lot more money, and possibly several nannies. We’ve chosen to engage in our local culture in many ways, but we also hew to our own values, and this leads to a constant feeling of tension. Esme is in a highly-vaunted, feeder preschool, where children of the uber-wealthy free-play under highly monitored conditions using teaching methods from the latest research. We love the environment and her teachers, but are leery of the notion that attending a particular preschool determines anything about her success in life. I do quite a bit of hands-on driving and being present for events, but I’m also aware of being more comfortable than most with leaving my kids unsupervised. We like the positive team spirit and quality of Ellie and Eric’s local swim club, but I also have to tell Ellie it’s okay if she doesn’t make the Junior Olympics after only two months of swimming experience. Most of her teammates did. In some ways, parenting here feels like intentionally choosing relative mediocrity. I don’t want to have quit my ambition-fueled Harvard life just to become an ambition-fueled parent bent on getting my children into Harvard. And anyway, I have too many children to be able to afford sending them to the private-elementary-school equivalent of Emmy’s preschool, to watch them at all times, or to groom them each into Olympic athletes. 

The word “integrity” here is Hebrew tom, meaning “wholeness.” It means that your outsides match your insides; your actions match your beliefs. We do act: we walk. We don’t stop-and-go, freeze, tip-toe, or run away in fear or anxiety. Neither do we bluster ahead, run, or jump in oblivious carelessness or pride. Walking happens step-by-step, in rhythm, and the key to doing it securely, Solomon says, is placing each step with integrity. Asking yourself, does this rhythm of life reflect what I believe? Does how I parent fit in with everything else I believe about our mission and vision in Palo Alto? About the purpose of life and how success is defined? 

These are not easy questions, particularly on a granular level. How do I steward my children’s giftings without overemphasizing achievement? How do I encourage discipline without losing free time for creativity and play? How do I engage in missional community while resisting subconscious cultural cues that may conflict with my held beliefs? How do I incorporate the strengths of the latest research on growth mindset, grit, anxiety, constructivist learning, et cetera, while filtering it all through the lens of the gospel? How do I engage with the culture in which I live while maintaining important spiritual practices?

Ultimately, security is actually what we want. We want to have assurance, peace, in the workings out of our lives and our children’s lives. If our living lists too far from what we believe, we will be found out, one way or another. But whoever walks in integrity, walks securely. And so, these questions are good. The tension, the confrontation and calibration, is important, because it tests our integrity. It makes us ask, do we really believe what we believe?