Will's Thoughtstream

I've heard Cats in the Cradle by Harry Chapin a couple of times over the last year, and as a parent, it makes a big impact on me. The song is described well in the entry on Wikipedia:

The song is told in first person, and relates the story of a father who is too busy to spend time with his son. Though the son repeatedly asks him to join in childhood activities, the father always responds with little more than vague promises of future quality time. Meanwhile, the son grows up loving and admiring his father but decides to be 'like him' in that he will get on with his own life. This is seen in the third verse where the father asks the son to sit for a while but the son asks for the car keys instead. The son is now starting to become like his father in the sense that he won't have much time to spend with his father. This final realization dawns on the father in the final verse.

Years pass and the lonely, aging father finally desires to spend time with his child. Hoping to make up for lost time, he reaches out to him. The son however has grown up and begun his own life; he warmly responds that he is now too busy with his own work and family to spend time with (or even talk to) his father. Like his father once had, the son promises that someday in the future they will spend time together. The last verses end with the lines "I'd love to dad if I could find the time/You see my new job's a hassle and the kids have the flu/But it's sure nice talking to you, dad ... And as I hung up the phone, it occurred to me/He'd grown up just like me/My boy was just like me ...". This indicates that, as the father sadly realizes, the son has taken after the father in that he has become too occupied with his own family to spend time with his father, who now has the time for him.

Here is an excerpt from the full lyrics:

My son turned ten just the other day.
He said, "Thanks for the ball, dad, come on let's play.
Can you teach me to throw?" I said, "Not today,
I got a lot to do." He said, "That's ok."
And he walked away, but his smile never dimmed,
Said, "I'm gonna be like him, yeah.
You know I'm gonna be like him."

The song is really composed of two parts: first the dad is never there for the son, and then the roles reverse and the son isn't there for the dad. What I have realized recently is that while we might hope to model a close connection with our children to avoid the tragedy of the song, it is really beyond our control what happens when our children become adults. It's not that we need to make time for our children so that our children will later make time for us, but rather that we need to make time for our children because only when our children are young is it within our control to make that time. We need to seize the opportunity today, because we have no idea what tomorrow might bring.

This is difficult for many parents, myself included. Not only do we juggle the required events of day to day life, but as adults, we still have hopes and aspirations for our lives that might include creative expression, career goals, financial goals, and gosh...even recreation.

I don't really have any answers. This is a balance I am trying to understand myself. But the older my children get, the more I feel drawn to spend more time with them.

(Simple living is one approach that is often recommended. Simple living is an approach to life in which individuals choose to minimize the "more is better" pursuit of wealth and consumption, with the goal (among others) of gaining more quality time with friends and family. This is a good avenue for exploration.)