TLP 330: Parenting Trends 2020, Part 2

I speak with confidence and authority about parenting because I'm not talking about what I do perfectly. I don't parent perfectly. I'm talking about what God can do perfectly in all of us.

Introduction to Parenting Predictions for 2020

Welcome to Truth. Love. Parent. Where we use God's Word to become intentional, premeditated parents. Here's your host, AM Brewster.

Welcome back to our Parenting Predictions for 2020. If I'm being honest, they're really not pretty, but it makes sense because we are sinful people who love darkness rather than light. We're more comfortable when we live an unexamined life.

Our goal today, therefore, is to shed the light of God's Word into the shadowed corners of our world's parenting philosophies. If you didn't catch our last episode, I would encourage you to do so. And if you'd like to learn more about TLP, what we do, how we do it, why we do it, I invite you to check out TruthLoveParent .com.

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I hope you'll learn more about us, pray about it, and genuinely consider what part you may play in this ministry. Two more of the free resources we offer are episode notes and transcripts available for nearly every episode.

I hope you'll avail yourself of those notes as needed. Okay, let's talk about the final two parenting predictions for 2020. Last time we read an article from Global News posted on New Market Today. In the article, the author cites two individuals, Tanya Hales and Samantha Kemp Jackson, in their attempt to frame their view of parenting 2020.

And what are their four pillars for the new year? Well, without wasting any time on frilly fashion trends or whether or not you should buy a weighted blanket for your baby, the article focuses on one, a growing desire for parenting community, and two, what they call the end of gender-focused parenting.

And then the two points we're going to discuss today. And like most worldly philosophies, there is truth to be gleaned and error to be rejected. Parenting community is an absolutely valuable thing if it revolves around the expectation God has for our parenting and our community.

It's vitally important if it includes brothers and sisters in Christ attempting to bear one another's burdens. On the opposite side, it becomes destructive if we simply promote unbiblical philosophy or encourage sinful practices in the name of tolerance.

And when it comes to gender in parenting, it's easy to see how the media's views on gender directly contradict scripture. For Christians, this push toward genderless parenting should actually encourage us to better understand what God says about sex and gender and then make sure it's discussed appropriately in our homes.

To avoid the discussion would only succeed in relegating vital truth to the sidelines in honor of socially constructed self-worship. May we never communicate to our children by commission or omission that the Bible should take a back seat to contemporary thought.

When you do that, you lie to them about the scriptures, but then you also set them up to have to learn the information from someone who doesn't believe the Bible. Therefore, we must keep this same Christ-centered, Bible-grounded approach as we discuss the final two points.

Family Activism and the Christian Response to Political Protest

The third prediction made for 2020 parenting is this, family activism. The author writes, Kemp Jackson thinks 2020 could see more families on the front lines of political protests. The tumultuous and contentious nature of recent political trends has led to a polarization of values, ideals, and social mores, she said.

This confluence of emotions has put parents in a precarious position in recent times, forcing them to take a stand regarding their beliefs and their values for the sake of their children. Most recently, 17-year-old activist Greta Thunberg called for global action on the climate crisis, driving teens and young people to hit the streets in the millions.

Thunberg has galvanized youth, in turn making their parents more accountable and active, said Kemp Jackson. Look for more examples of youth-led protests in other sectors that are supported by parents.".

This is clearly a politically charged point that reflects well our social climate. In one way, I do agree with it. In another, I think it's damaging. This idea of family activism can sound a lot like parents teaching their children the scriptures and then working with them to spread the good news of the gospel.

I can see families serving in soup kitchens, volunteering in vacation bible schools, offering love and support outside of abortion clinics, and hosting their unbelieving neighbors. This would be a fantastic way to teach your family to take a stand regarding your beliefs and values.

However, the dangerous side comes with a double front. On one side, you have a phenomenon that has occurred all too frequently throughout history. That is, mentally indoctrinated children who do not truly believe what their parents believe being required to promote the concepts they themselves do not fully accept.

Even if your foundation is bible, asking an unbeliever who happens to be familiar with how to lead someone down the Roman's road to share the gospel with others is just a terrible idea. Here, they are trying to persuade someone of what they don't actually believe themselves.

Now, in a best-case scenario, both unbelievers in that context could come to know the Lord, and perhaps God has been gracious enough to allow that to happen over the course of history. I have to believe he probably has.

But in a worst-case scenario, which is extremely more common, the unsaved quote-unquote evangelist continues to believe they're born again because of their obvious good fruit, and the person to whom they're giving the gospel is repelled by its superficiality and hypocrisy.

The other obvious problem with family activism comes when the family is promoting the wrong things. This obviously goes without saying. So, what do we do with this information? Your family needs to be activated about all the right things, starting first and foremost with our great God.

Standing together as a family that lovingly proclaims the truth in this dark world is extremely important and, may I add, absolutely vital if you and your family members call yourselves children of God.

In Matthew 5, 14 through 16, Jesus proclaims, you are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.

Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. Did you catch that last line? Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who's in heaven.

That kind of activism is amazing. In addition to that, you and your kids can also advocate for other things about which you're passionate. Just make sure your kids are really on board before you conscript them to persuade others.

And of course, make sure you keep the main thing the main thing. It would be depressingly awful if we became more passionate about our cause than we were our creator and inadvertently taught our kids to worship the creation over the creator.

Now, I originally planned to cover these four points in just one episode, but when I finished my notes for points one through three and imagined the many, many things to be said about this fourth point, I realized that splitting the episode would be necessary.

Mental Health Transparency, Postpartum Depression, and Biblical Discernment

The fourth and final point made in the article is this, mental health transparency. Now, for some of you, that sounds like a super important and exciting thing. Others may cringe. Once again, I want to portray a biblically-centered approach to this topic.

However, I understand that I cannot do full diligence to the topic during the last half of one episode. It's been my intention, though, to discuss this topic in far more detail for quite some time now.

I even put a toe in the water in episode 296, Parenting Angry Children, How to Help Angry Kids with Disabilities. I hope you listen to that episode as it introduces many important elements that can fill out our understanding of this topic.

But since I don't want to rehash that fundamental information here, I'm going to instead step through the article and comment as we go. Hopefully, if nothing else, this will prompt valuable questions in our minds and drive us to find the answers in scripture.

The article reads, For years, parents, especially mothers, were expected to be all things to everybody, says Hales. She hopes 2020 will bring an end to that myth. We're starting to see the breakdown of this taboo of super moms, she said.

We can talk about the hard parts of parenting. You love your children, but you might not like them in that particular moment. It's important that parents are able to be honest about how difficult it can be to raise children, said Hales.

Putting up this facade that you're perfect parents and you always love your children is going away. People are starting to do away with that false narrative about motherhood, unquote. Now, really quickly, just as a side note that kind of just came to me as I was reading that, this whole idea of being honest about not liking your kids or not loving them in the moment, there is a value to that.

And we'll talk about the value in a second. But at the same time, if we're not careful, I see this escalating to a point where it becomes like the socially accepted thing to do for moms and dads to just tear their kids apart online because, you know, well, we're just being authentic and genuine.

And again, I'll talk more about that in a moment, but it just it kind of scares me that we're putting down this facade of being a perfect parent is allowing me now to just talk about the fact that I hate my kids.

I don't like them right now. I don't love my kids right now. I don't know. However, I do wholeheartedly agree with a lot of these sentiments. You know, prideful, arrogant, selfish human hearts desperately want for everyone else to see only their best side.

Admitting to the faults and brokenness and sin is counterintuitive for most people. James 5, in fact, admonishes us to, quote, therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be spiritually healed, unquote.

Pretending to be a super anything is immature at best. You're like a little kid running around with a cape and a mask. Now, no one at Truth Love Parent wants anyone to think we're perfect parents. We can only speak with authority when our counsel is grounded in God's Word because you don't even have to have kids to quote God when he says, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

I speak with confidence and authority about parenting because I'm not talking about what I do perfectly. I'm talking about what God does perfectly in us. These episodes are just as much for me and my family as they are for yours.

So, I do agree with Ms. Hales. We can talk about the hard parts of parenting. And that harkens back to our discussion last time about parenting community. But there is still a caution to be made. There is a dangerous pendulum swing where people are taking too much joy in their brokenness without the desire to be healed.

James invites us to share our spiritual brokenness for the purpose of beseeching God that we may grow in our spiritual maturity. In the same way arrogance and pride may tempt us to act as if we have it all together, the same arrogance and pride can tempt us to always be talking about our own woke suffering, authenticity, brokenness, genuineness, and transparency, which are generally code words for just glorying in our pain.

Paul modeled the right approach when in 2 Corinthians 12 9 -10 he said, And he has said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. Mostly gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.

Therefore I am well contented with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong. Paul welcomed distress into his life only when it was prompted by the Lord's work and it would result in his Savior being magnified.

It wasn't about him wearing a badge of dishonor or talking about his sin so people understood he was authentic. It wasn't about the pain that came into his life as a result of his own sin. Paul took pride in the fact that Christ was glorified when he was beaten for Christ, not when he was beaten for just being a jerk.

God was his motivation, his strength, and his goal. So the article starts this point pretty well, but then the quote-unquote parenting experts apply this concept more specifically. Quote, Hales hopes parents with postpartum depression will also become more able to openly discuss how difficult the illness can be.

There's not only one way to suffer from postpartum depression. Your entire personality, both physically and emotionally, has shifted and you have come to terms with that, she said. How society views you, how your job views you, how you view yourself, how your spouse views you, it all changes.

I would really like to see the conversation shift around how we talk about postpartum depression. First and foremost, Hales wants to expand the definition of postpartum depression beyond just the immediate weeks and months after childbirth.

I think that it's something that can arise later when you're still trying to figure out your identity as a parent and child, she said. I went to a maternal conference and they said you're always postpartum after you've given birth.

By opening up that definition to include all parents, Hales hopes that conversation about mental health can reach new heights and new parents can continue to find the support they need, unquote. So, once again, we have a smattering of good and bad.

If nothing else, I hope I'm at least modeling how to approach information when you encounter it online or in a book or magazine or newspaper, even when it's presented by people calling themselves experts.

I hope this is how you respond to everything I say. In 1 John 4 .1, we are told, Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

Opinion must kneel before God's throne in order for it to be accepted by God's people. So, let's pick this part a little bit. Miss Hales said that she hopes that parents with postpartum depression will start sharing their struggles.

That's a great idea. However, there is poor communication and misinformation in her statements. On one side, she assumes an accepted definition of postpartum depression. I know from my counseling experience that no two women would describe their postpartum feelings the same way.

Second, she refers to postpartum depression as an illness, and that's not technically true. From a strictly biological standpoint, any number of physical illnesses could produce symptoms that can be described as depression.

However, depression is not an illness. A concert pianist can feel depressed because she gets into an automobile accident that crushes her hands. The illness was the breaking and swelling and potential infection of the hands.

The depression was the response to the illness. On the other hand, it's exceedingly common these days to refer to, quote, mental illness. For hundreds of years, the accepted definition of illness went something like this.

A condition in which the body is harmed because an organ or part is unable to work as it usually does. A disease or sickness. Modern definitions have made an interesting addition. They say it's a condition in which the body or mind is harmed because an organ or part is unable to work as it usually does.

But we must understand that even scientifically speaking, the mind is not the brain. The mind is a conceptual entity that refers to how we think and believe. Of course, the world doesn't accept the biblical description of humanity.

If they did, it would make everything much easier. The Bible makes it clear that we have a physical component and a spiritual component. The spirit cannot be measured or observed by any scientific methods.

Therefore, the world patently rejects the spirit and assumes we are solely biological beings. This is why books published for postgraduate study admit they really don't understand how the brain works and that they're postulating, at best, about this thing called the mind.

They're desperately trying to force supernatural concepts into sadly limited constructs because they reject what God has to say about the spirit. And yet, despite all of that, most of the world has simply accepted that quote-unquote illness, a word that refers to the breakdown of physical tissues, can apply to this thing called the mind, which is not physical.

It's not biological. Now, a brain can be sick or distressed or hurt, but the mind cannot. Again, talking like that betrays a futile attempt to understand a spiritual reality within a solely biological framework.

Lastly, using the term illness also communicates that we are not responsible for it. However, when you remove culpability, you remove two other things, hope and the need for change. If my feelings of anxiety or depression are like hepatitis or mono, then I'm left thinking I'm incurable.

There's no hope. Also, if there's simply an illness for which I'm not responsible, then I'm a victim with no impetus to change my life. I can't help it. Consider what they're saying about pedophilia. For years, it was considered a sin.

Then, it was deemed a mental illness. Now, it's being called an acceptable reality. Why? Because that's the natural step. Once you say that a person, their mind is sick, it's ill, they're not responsible.

And of course, like homosexuality, which too was once considered a mental illness, it is now accepted. Now, the example I'm going to give you is just one limited example. But if what I'm explaining can occur even one out of a hundred times, then we can't dismiss it entirely from our thinking.

It's a plausible example. If my feelings of depression have arisen because I don't like that my parents are telling me I can't have a girlfriend, and my school counselor tells me that I have a mental illness and sends me to a medical professional who prescribes medication that actually causes more stresses to which I continue to respond in the wrong way, then I am in a destructive spiral with no hope for real joy.

Now, what would have been the fix? Well, at the very beginning, if I just simply submitted to God's word and my parents' authority and taken joy knowing that God is using my parents to help me grow in my maturity and conformity to Christ, I wouldn't have felt depressed in the first place.

Again, not everyone has feelings of depression because they choose to sin, but it's excessively common. Yet, even if my feelings of depression are arising from a legitimate biological source, my response to them is still going to be regulated by God's expectations for my life.

Now, I know I'm going a little long today, but I want to share an extremely important resource with you, okay? Emphasis on extremely. I admit it could be easy to dismiss what I'm saying because I'm, quote unquote, not a medical professional, or I'm not woke, or I'm just one of those people, or whatever trite excuses one can make.

So, please listen to the episode I've linked in the description. The podcast is called Truth in Love, and it's offered by the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors. On this episode, the host talks with two medical professionals who happen to be Christians who share some extremely vital information concerning prescription medication doled out for cases of mental illness, like what we're talking about today.

The research is fascinating, and the convenient sidelining of the scientific research is actually a little scary. I'll give you a little sneak peek here. The medical institutions, they do their research, and when they find that their drugs don't do what they wanted it to do, they just simply don't really publish that information.

The episode is called Understanding Psychotropic Medication Biblically, and don't let psychotropic freak you out. That's just basically any drug given to somebody for the, in order to affect the, quote unquote, mind.

And it features Dr. Dan Gannon and his wife. Please, really, seriously, take the 23 minutes to listen. Put it on double time and take half that time, okay? It's so important. It's vital for people like us who are being told one thing by mainstream psychology and get something very different from the scriptures.

We need to understand the biblical truth, and I'm seeing far too many parents being sucked in by the world's philosophies of how we, quote unquote, cure the mind. If 2020 is truly going to usher in growing mental health transparency in our parenting, then we need to make sure we're being honest with the subject matter.

I want there to be growing mental health transparency. I want people to understand what the mind is. I want them to understand how they can have a spiritually healthy mind. I want there to be transparency on the subject.

I want us to be able to talk about it. So, no, depression is not by any means an illness. However, it is a physical and sometimes spiritual response to stimuli. That stimuli may be biological. It may be spiritual.

It may be external. It may be internal, but it's still just a response. It's not really an illness. There is hope for this. There is a cure. Even if the physical abnormality persists and there's no cure for that, there's still hope for abundant life in Christ and overcoming the depression.

Now, as I bring everything to a close today, I find it interesting that Ms. Hale's focus in her discussion on postpartum depression looks mostly on how we view ourselves and how others view us. She's not really talking about any physiological issues.

She speaks of us having to come to terms with physicality and feelings changing. She discusses how society, our jobs, and our spouses view us. She mentions that it can arise from trying to just figure out our identity.

There really is no illness to speak of. She's describing the struggles of a person who's experienced a significant life change trying to grapple with it all. Her body changes. Her relationships change.

Her sleep changes. Her responsibilities change. Her identity changes. These are all legitimately big ideas. These are things that moms are grappling with that they need to be stepped through. They need to be mentored and discipled.

They need to be helped. We need to come along with them. I'm going to read to you something recently that my cousin posted on Facebook. It was so fantastic, and it deals with this issue that these stay-at-home parents are doing a really huge job experiencing a lot of stressors and pressures, and nobody's there with them.

Nobody's there doing it with them. They don't have co-workers. They can't stand around the proverbial water cooler and be encouraged. They don't get accolades, and there really is no parking spot for the employee of the month.

So yeah, there are big things going on. And yes, if you have no solid philosophical mooring, no spiritual grounding, you're going to feel completely upended. You're going to experience pressure and stress that you won't know what to do with.

But God's Word has the answer. We can be open and honest about mental and spiritual health. It starts with the knowledge and understanding and belief of God's revealed Word. From there, we can talk about the possible physical illnesses or presenting problems.

But without the scripture, every man's way is going to seem right in his own eyes. If you would be interested in seeking biblical help for your struggles in your home, please don't hesitate to contact counselor at truthloveparent .com.

And remember, if we want our children to grow up into Christ, we must parent in truth and love. To that end, join us next time as we ask, Why Does My Family Argue?

Truth. Love. Parents is part of the Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you become an intentional premeditated parent. Join us next time as we search God's Word for the truth your family needs today.