What If My Parents Were Right?

My goal as a new parent was to be everything my mother wasn't.

I wanted to be selfless, attentive and available to my son, always there when he needed me. But now I wonder: What if I was wrong?

In my childhood memories, my parents are in the background. They were supporting players in the drama of my life, and I was a supporting player in theirs. At the time, I wondered where they were when I needed them front and center. These days I'm beginning to see their roles as good casting.

My mother went back to school when I was young. She was often at classes in the evenings, out with friends or traveling. My father worked six days a week. He usually left the house around 6:30 a.m., before I woke up, and arrived home around 6:30 p.m.

When I was older and he was remarried, dinner was our family time. We spent 20 or 30 minutes eating and talking about our days. The rest of the evenings were our own.

On my father's one day off, we would read the Sunday papers, sometimes go for a drive or to a movie. During football season we'd go to a Chicago Bears game. Off-season, we'd often go to the theater.

Mostly, we did the things he loved and I learned to love them, too. His interests -- in news, music and sports -- became my interests. His values became my values. His favorite spots became the landmarks of my youth.

But we led our own lives.

Perhaps good parents are in the background by design and bad parents are there by default. Because while you can't give a child too much love, you can give too much attention.

Or maybe that's what I tell myself to ease the guilt.

Guilt is anger's twin. As angry as I used to be about what I thought was my parents' selfishness, that's how guilty I now feel about my own.

Like them, I am a working parent. I leave the house around 8:10 a.m., the same time my husband takes our son to school. I get home around 7:30 p.m., when we have dinner and discuss our days.

After dinner, we relax -- usually on our own. My son will watch TV or play video games while I catch up on e-mail, blogging or reading. My husband joins one of us or putters around the kitchen or yard.

Weekends are our time together. We go to the movies, the theater and shopping. We read, play basketball and do puzzles together.

And spend time by ourselves.

When my son was a baby, he needed a parent with him at all times. He needed to be changed and fed and entertained. But he's 9 years old now. He needs to live in a house where kids wake up alone, sometimes dry their own tears and keep going. He needs to accept that sometimes life is hard and unsatisfying and even -- imagine! -- boring.

He needs to learn what he's made of, outside the constant shelter of our arms.

Freud said that as part of their growth, children develop a superego -- an internal parent that helps them moderate their behavior.

How can my son learn to parent himself if I'm always around to do it for him?

Different children have different needs. Some may need more than others. And their needs change as their ages do. But eventually, they all need to do the hard work of growing up.

I faulted my parents for leaving me to raise myself. But in the end, that's what we all must do.

Most of us continue that work while raising children of our own.

For example, a full-time mother sought advice because her 5-year-old daughter said she was boring. Here's how Dr. Gail Saltz responded: "If you are overdosing on motherhood, there are ways to fit those important things into your life and let less important ones go. This is what your children should be learning."

What Saltz doesn't say is that maybe the child is overdosing on mothering.

No one would prescribe underdosing. But the proper prescription seems to me like the one that gives the child the mothering she needs and the mother the identities she wants.

It sometimes means parenting ourselves a little more and our children a little less, just as I faulted my parents for doing.

My father used to say, "The older you get, the smarter your parents seem."

He's right.

Julie Moos is a fortysomething who lives with her husband and son. Her column appears every other Thursday. To read more of her thoughts, visit MomInTheMirror.com.