Tough Mothers: Raising Children and the Development of Grit

As we have previously mused, there seems to be a necessary element of physical discomfort to develop grit. Our bodies are always with us, and they tend to desire the comfort of food and sleep in a regular and predictable sequence. Having grit requires subjugating the body to a higher vision and pursuing said vision tirelessly, if often with tiredness.

There is a tendency in an aging and increasingly childless society to value personal, physical comfort more highly. Athleisure and Crocs reign. Crocs are molded plastic slip-on shoes with nothing visually appealing to recommend them. Athleisure consists of loose-fitting, soft-fabric workout clothes meant for people who rarely work out. Prizing comfort above all else can have its place in our lives, but there was a time when that place was not out in public.

Beyond our garb, there is in our current age the fixation on streaming entertainment into our eyeballs and dining on food prepared and delivered by someone else creeping into our daily life as a society. The point is, as much as our bodies crave comfort and abhor challenge, we live in a soft age that caters to those inclinations. As with so many areas of health and human flourishing, though it seems the cards are stacked against us, all is not lost.

There are still paths to encourage grit. Joining the military for one. Getting into a CrossFit gym for another. For a simple and cost-effective means there is camping without excessive gear. There is also, surprisingly, becoming a mother. For many mothers, physical discomfort presents itself from the embryo’s earliest days. Pregnancy is a rollercoaster of physical sensations, many of them uncomfortable.

Giving birth, with its own physical challenges, is not crossing the finish line but instead the starting line for a life of small sacrifices. Young children present daily challenges to get up when our bodies prefer to lounge, to clean messes and to fix broken people and objects, and to read and sing one more time when we’d really rather not.

Since someone will likely object that fathers also have the opportunity to develop grit, we’ll throw them a bone: yes, fathers, too, have the opportunity to develop grit. However, there is a unique series of challenges for the mother. These are worth mentioning particularly because they are so little understood that many women think something has gone terribly wrong when they encounter the physical and emotional discomforts of life bearing and caring for children. However, it is, so to speak, a feature not a bug.

While there is clear contrast between military combat and motherhood, there is an underlying thread of sacrifice and challenge that lend themselves to grit. We must not forget the other essential element of grit: vision. It’s not as though people go camping for the purpose of sleeping poorly and feeling cold and damp first thing in the morning. People go camping for the thrill of sleeping out-of-doors and banishing cellular technology for the refreshing experience of lingering around a campfire.

Likewise, with having children. People do not generally seek out the experience of physical and emotional dysregulation induced by hormonal fluctuation, lack of sleep, added expenses, and radical uncertainty for its own sake. The perennial teaching of many traditions is that children are, fundamentally, a blessing. Having children in order to accept and nurture a gift that we do not fully understand is the vision. There are countless tender moments, meaningful conversations, and beautiful revelations that confirm children are a blessing. We have to develop the requisite grit to manage the unpleasant parts in a way that gives us the freedom to enjoy what is enjoyable.

Once you have surpassed the socially acceptable number of children for a given group—and for some groups that occurs with your first child—you will likely get commentary. One of the recurring themes is stunned disbelief. Why, when given the option to do otherwise, people wonder, would you subject yourself to such indignities?

Lacking grit, suffering is meaningless. With grit—the ability to withstand discomfort and the ability to persevere in service of a vision—suffering can be a source of meaning and, even, almost incomprehensibly, joy. Not that suffering itself is a cheerful business but that the goods we seek cannot be obtained without the suffering. You can learn not only to enjoy the end goal but come to enjoy the journey, too.