Advice

ADVICE

Wanted: church for ‘real’ parents

Grumpy, moody, monosyllabic teenagers? Perfect, upright parents? It’s time the Church stopped stereotyping and gave people permission to be themselves says ROY McCLOUGHRY

When I was a teenager, many moons ago, Christians didn’t seem to admit that they had problems. It was assumed that if you were a Christian then things had changed in your life so radically that life was a bundle of joy.

I read biographies of the twentieth century saints which seemed to show that this was true. Turn to ‘problems’ in the index and there was nothing. Everything worked out OK in the end. If that was the case, I used to think, I was definitely going to hell, which probably let me off going to church twice on Sunday.

Now we live in a society where confession is the norm. Baring your soul means sharing something negative and we admit that relationships go wrong. Maybe Freud wouldn’t have been so convinced that ‘letting it out’ was better than ‘bottling it up’ if he had had to sit through an episode of Jerry Springer.

One of the most fraught relationships in our society is that between parent and teenager. This is often a traumatic time when teenagers are growing up and parents are spreading out. Each faces their own problems. Both, however, are trying to avoid being stereotyped by our society. Parents in the church have the worst of it. Have I mentioned in this column before my dislike of books about perfect parenting? Forgive me if I have. The phrase I prefer (not my own) is ‘good enough parenting’. I can live with that.

So it comes as no surprise to me to see that a new survey on parent/teenager relationships has focused on moodiness. Parental moodiness. It seems that the slammed doors, the grunted answers and the dark clouds hanging over family members belong to the parents and not to the teenagers. Some 40% of the 16,000 teenagers surveyed said that the worst thing about parents was their moods. Apparently our best attributes are love and humour (closely followed by money). It explains a lot to know that money is meant to be a parental attribute.

Yet over 50% of teenagers think that they get a bad press. This rises to 66% in the north-east of England. One of the most tragic signs that some parents are out of touch is that only 21% of teenagers said that they would talk to their parents about sex, while 37% thought that that their teenagers would talk to them about sex. There didn’t seem to be a category for people like me who would like to talk to their teenagers about sex. I would definitely learn something. Similarly only 8% of teenagers said they could talk to their parents about depression, yet 33% of the parents were concerned about it.

Such surveys show that we have a tendency to stereotype our teenagers. I think we still do it in the Church to some extent. Having learned about our post-modern culture in which all is up in the air and you can believe anything you want, it is a sobering fact that one-third of the teenagers surveyed thought that death was their greatest worry. Perhaps we judge real teenagers by the media images portrayed of who they are meant to be.
Some 20% of them said that having a bad press was the hardest thing about being a teenager today.

We have come a long way in the church over the last 50 years in understanding teenagers. When I meet youth workers or specialists in youth culture, I am usually impressed by the understanding they have. It may be that we who are parents are part of the problem rather than the solution, in which case the Church should turn its attentions to parents.

Parenting is a gift from beginning to end, but it is a strange gift and one which can bring unutterable pain with it. Some Christians have been through hell as parents, yet have never felt that they could say so in church for fear of being seen to be a failure as a Christian parent. Yet we cannot be the church of the people we should be, only the church of the people we are.

We often speak as if our teenagers are responsible for the incoherence of our modern culture, since much of it is aimed at them. But we are the ones who laid its foundations and the ones who are making money out of them. Being a teenager is confusing enough without growing up in a society whose values are constantly changing, and in which there seems to be no fixed reference points.

This should be the point at which Christianity steps in. Surely religious faith is just what is lacking and just what is needed to ‘fill the void’. We have moved some way towards this in that spirituality is now a ‘big thing’ again. But we will never go back to what we had in the Fifties, even if we wanted to (which I don’t). Now any semblance of religious knowledge has leached out of the modern imagination. Grandfather could tell you the story of the Good Samaritan, Father went to Sunday School until, at the earliest opportunity he left, but son or daughter have no religious knowledge, nothing for evangelists to build on. We have to start all over again.

That is why parents are so important. In our fragile, moody way we can offer something which is authentic and speaks of Jesus Christ. Once you have encountered that kind of love you can never deny that it exists, and though you may not respond in your early years, the seeds have been sown …

Roy McCloughry is director of the Kingdom Trust

© Christian Family Network
is run by CPO, supported by
Care for the Family, Marriage Resource, Positive Parenting,
Care, Women Alive, Christian Herald and many others.


		ADVICE Wanted: church for ‘real’ parents Grumpy, moody, monosyllabic teenagers? Perfect, upright parents? It’s time the Church stopped stereotyping and gave people permission to be themselves says ROY McCLOUGHRY When I was a teenager, many moons ago, Christians didn’t seem to admit that they had problems. It was assumed that if you were a Christian then things had changed in your life so radically that life was a bundle of joy. I read biographies of the twentieth century saints which seemed to show that this was true. Turn to ‘problems’ in the index and there was nothing. Everything worked out OK in the end. If that was the case, I used to think, I was definitely going to hell, which probably let me off going to church twice on Sunday. Now we live in a society where confession is the norm. Baring your soul means sharing something negative and we admit that relationships go wrong. Maybe Freud wouldn’t have been so convinced that ‘letting it out’ was better than ‘bottling it up’ if he had had to sit through an episode of Jerry Springer. One of the most fraught relationships in our society is that between parent and teenager. This is often a traumatic time when teenagers are growing up and parents are spreading out. Each faces their own problems. Both, however, are trying to avoid being stereotyped by our society. Parents in the church have the worst of it. Have I mentioned in this column before my dislike of books about perfect parenting? Forgive me if I have. The phrase I prefer (not my own) is ‘good enough parenting’. I can live with that. So it comes as no surprise to me to see that a new survey on parent/teenager relationships has focused on moodiness. Parental moodiness. It seems that the slammed doors, the grunted answers and the dark clouds hanging over family members belong to the parents and not to the teenagers. Some 40% of the 16,000 teenagers surveyed said that the worst thing about parents was their moods. Apparently our best attributes are love and humour (closely followed by money). It explains a lot to know that money is meant to be a parental attribute. Yet over 50% of teenagers think that they get a bad press. This rises to 66% in the north-east of England. One of the most tragic signs that some parents are out of touch is that only 21% of teenagers said that they would talk to their parents about sex, while 37% thought that that their teenagers would talk to them about sex. There didn’t seem to be a category for people like me who would like to talk to their teenagers about sex. I would definitely learn something. Similarly only 8% of teenagers said they could talk to their parents about depression, yet 33% of the parents were concerned about it. Such surveys show that we have a tendency to stereotype our teenagers. I think we still do it in the Church to some extent. Having learned about our post-modern culture in which all is up in the air and you can believe anything you want, it is a sobering fact that one-third of the teenagers surveyed thought that death was their greatest worry. Perhaps we judge real teenagers by the media images portrayed of who they are meant to be. Some 20% of them said that having a bad press was the hardest thing about being a teenager today. We have come a long way in the church over the last 50 years in understanding teenagers. When I meet youth workers or specialists in youth culture, I am usually impressed by the understanding they have. It may be that we who are parents are part of the problem rather than the solution, in which case the Church should turn its attentions to parents. Parenting is a gift from beginning to end, but it is a strange gift and one which can bring unutterable pain with it. Some Christians have been through hell as parents, yet have never felt that they could say so in church for fear of being seen to be a failure as a Christian parent. Yet we cannot be the church of the people we should be, only the church of the people we are. We often speak as if our teenagers are responsible for the incoherence of our modern culture, since much of it is aimed at them. But we are the ones who laid its foundations and the ones who are making money out of them. Being a teenager is confusing enough without growing up in a society whose values are constantly changing, and in which there seems to be no fixed reference points. This should be the point at which Christianity steps in. Surely religious faith is just what is lacking and just what is needed to ‘fill the void’. We have moved some way towards this in that spirituality is now a ‘big thing’ again. But we will never go back to what we had in the Fifties, even if we wanted to (which I don’t). Now any semblance of religious knowledge has leached out of the modern imagination. Grandfather could tell you the story of the Good Samaritan, Father went to Sunday School until, at the earliest opportunity he left, but son or daughter have no religious knowledge, nothing for evangelists to build on. We have to start all over again. That is why parents are so important. In our fragile, moody way we can offer something which is authentic and speaks of Jesus Christ. Once you have encountered that kind of love you can never deny that it exists, and though you may not respond in your early years, the seeds have been sown … Roy McCloughry is director of the Kingdom Trust © Christian Family Network is run by CPO, supported by Care for the Family, Marriage Resource, Positive Parenting, Care, Women Alive, Christian Herald and many others.