Parenting
The Complex and Beautiful
Vocation of Raising Children
Holly Taylor Coolman
Books on parenting abound, with many suggesting that specific strategies will produce desired results. Gifted theologian Holly Taylor Coolman offers something different: a theologically and biblically rich commentary on the theme of raising children.
Drawing on her experience as a mother of five, Coolman explores parenting as a complex and beautiful vocation in which mothers and fathers themselves are made and unmade, offered troubling sorts of gifts, and drawn deeper into connection not only with their children but also with God, others, and themselves.
This book will appeal to Catholic (and mny other Christian) parents, especially adoptive and foster parents, as well as pastors, church leaders, and students. Reflection questions are available, making it especially easy to read this book with a group of parents or with one's own spouse.
What others have to say...
“As a fellow theologian mom, I have long admired Dr. Holly Taylor Coolman. She’s been an example to me both in the work of theology and in the vocation of parenting. So I am thrilled and grateful to be able to endorse her new book. Readers will find in Coolman a wise and gracious guide eager to help other parents with their vital work of ‘apprenticing children to love.’ Church leaders will find numerous insights into how best to support parents and children. There are a lot of books about parenting on the market—and I’ve read most of them. But I think Parenting is uniquely thoughtful, inclusive, and peaceable. It is a resource I recommend to anyone who cares about children, parents, and the vocation of child-rearing in God’s kingdom.”
Emily Hunter McGowin, associate professor of theology, Wheaton College
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“Parenting is both a gift from God and a wilderness. I can’t think of a better guide to receiving well the gift and navigating the wilderness than Holly Taylor Coolman, who writes out of her deep faith, theological understanding, and profound experience. Reading this book was like having a long conversation with a very wise friend about things that matter most. I look forward to recommending this book to parents in my congregation.”
L. Roger Owens, Hugh Thomson Kerr Professor of Pastoral Theology, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
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"As the mother of adopted children herself, Coolman has firsthand experience of the importance of a supportive community for the spiritual, emotional, and physical health of both kids and parents. She mentions early on the African notion of ubuntu, the conviction that “a person is a person through other people,” (p. 18), and proceeds to examine the importance of community when it comes to coping with crises in one’s kids’ lives (Chapter 9), finding ways to keep overworked parents physically and spiritually healthy (Chapter 10), navigating the dynamics of blended families (Chapter 13), or going it alone as a single parent (Chapter 14).
Coolman’s emphasis on the importance of community goes beyond the hackneyed “it takes a village” model. I think the community she has in mind is more along the lines of koinonia (κοινωνία), a deep communion or fellowship in which members are bound together by agapic love...
“Parenting is hard,” Coolman reminds us. But her book goes a long way towards helping prospective and current parents approach it with a mindful focus on its deeper dimensions, and not just on nursery furniture. Good parenting offers “the chance to share with another person what we know of how to live, to cheer their triumphs and salve their sorrows, to give and receive love, to experience together the big and small moments that make up life.”
It is, as she says, “a vocation worth giving ourselves to.” (p. 136) And her book is well worth reading."
From a review on Cassiacum. kerrywalters.substack.com
Excerpt
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"We can think of parent and child as involved in a process of apprenticeship...
Apprenticeship, which still survives in some of the arts and some of the trades, was once a dominant form of education. The basic form is a simple one: An apprentice works alongside a master, watching carefully and slowly moving into greater and greater participation in the work. A masonry apprentice learns bricklaying by watching and then joining in the work of a master bricklayer. In the art studio, an apprentice might be allowed first to clean brushes, then to mix paint, then to begin adding details to paintings. Apprentices to the great artists of the Renaissance did these very things. Leonardo da Vinci, for example, became an apprentice at 14 as part of a chain of apprenticeship that was eventually a chain of masters. He studied under a master named Andrea del Rocco, who himself had studied under Donatello. The apprentice eventually receives payment and produces her own masterpieces. The master, close at hand, oversees this process throughout.
Too often, parenting (and, in a sense, even the term “parenting” itself) slides toward imagining something that parents are doing to their children. Parents can get pulled into something perhaps better described as management of children. We get them ready for the day. We feed them; we bathe them; we pick them up and bandage wounds. And we try to follow all the advice. When they are newborns, we try to put them to sleep on their backs. When they attend school, we try to set up space for them to do their homework. We try to praise them more often than we criticize them. Ultimately, though—and sometimes it seems almost ceaselessly—parents are doing things to and for our children. This model has real weaknesses. It can create anxiety in children. It can erode the relationship between parent and child. And all this management, frankly, is exhausting—both for parents and for children. The model of apprenticeship, on the other hand, offers a number of fruitful emphases for parents.
The model of apprenticeship is more about parents simply being with their children, doing life together. If it becomes a guiding model, then it actually leads to less vigilance and less alarm. It involves less planning and less organizing. It involves more presence, more patience, more playfulness and more calm. The calling of a mother or a father to walk with their children, sharing work, sharing play, sharing themselves, is a richer reality.
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Contents
Introduction
1. New Parents
2. Beyond Birth: Other Ways of Welcoming Children
3. Fostering Community, Within and Around
4. Toddlers: Not That Terrible
5. Mapmaking and Apprenticeship
6. The Growing Years
7. The Art of Discipline
8. The Challenge of New Technology
9. Parenting in Survival Mode
10. Parents—and More Than Parents
11. Busy Days
12. Moving into Adolescence
13. Parents and Marriage
14. Single Parents
15. School and Other Ways of Learning
16. Later Adolescence
17. Parenting Adults
Epilogue
Suggested Reading
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