#10 Course Wrap-Up: You are Loved

Posted by: paigemariegesicki on: May 11, 2011

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For an American Studies class entitled Capitol Crimes, which discusses “America’s love affair with money”, we were assigned to read the novel The Privileges by Jonathan Dee. Definitely a worthwhile read, I would recommend this book to pick up light reading that is relevant to contemporary society. It is not a far fetched to see some of our own experiences as privileged as students at Notre Dame. In fact, the line where it says that “We were adults acting like children acting like adults” could be the motto for me and many of my peers. At the ages 18-23, we are adults. We act like children when we go out to drink the night before an exam, wearing costumes at bars and singing with out friends. We are children acting like adults, because the next day we will show up to the career center with a electrolyte packed gatorade in hand along with our resume. We are not willing to give up our status as upwardly mobile, money making students looking to be successful, yet we are also unwilling to forgo childish antics. So how does this culture of ours relate to motherhood and parenthood? In class, it is a unanimous decision that none of us would want to have a child right now. Most of the mother’s in our novels were not singled out for being particularly young mothers, so I assumed that they were all of an appropriate age to have a child for their time. This idea of the appropriate age is in flux, and on the rise. Career oriented students at Notre Dame do not think of children as an option now, and some of us not ever.

So, the consensus in class is that a child for us as adult/adolescents, children/women and men is definitely a no-go. But what if we did have a child now? What if one of our children was some sort of creature like in The Fifth Child? or a hermaphrodite like Wayne in Annabel? What if we married someone who pressured us to have an abortion and make us live with the guilt like in Hannah’s Diary or we felt so detached that we fled our family to The South? These are fictional novels and depict trying circumstances, yet they encourage us to realize the uncertainty in having a child. This uncertainty is daunting, and a main reason why it seems healthier to have  a child when you are mentally, physically and financially prepared. Yet most of these novels end with some hopeful note about parenthood. The relationships heal somehow, against all odds, the mother finds a way to get through each day with whatever it is that she is confronting. The circumstances might not be optimal, but the course shows realistic ways of survival when parents are challenged by a surprise, an inevitable challenge when having children. To return to Dee’s novel, The Privileges, he describes his version of the ability for parents to adapt to whatever challenge their child presents them with. And his solution is simply love, something that has been echoed throughout our novels. Dee’s character disciplines his adult/adolescent daughter after she gets in a car accident while on drugs. Perhaps more lenient than others parents would be, Dee writes: “‘You are loved,” Adam said. ‘Okay? And if you know you’re loved that you might make a mistake once in a while but you are never in the wrong. I know this isn’t a great time for you, but I have total faith that things will get better, because that’s what things do. They get better.” (Dee, 240) With this in mind, we can re-evaluate the mothers in our novels with a better and more optimistic understanding of what it means to love your child.