Might as well face it, you're addicted to love.

The oxytocin rush we get from being with our children is almost unparalleled – in moments when our kids are being adorable, anyway.  When they kiss us unexpectedly at the end of a long, hard day as Shankar Vedantam recently wrote about for Slate, or when they tell you it’s okay that you don’t have a boyfriend because you can hug them all you want, as my daughter did this morning.  Right after she pooped her pants for the millionth time this year.

But that’s the thing: our kids do drive us crazy, and “parenting is a grind,” as Vedantam writes.  So why do we do it?  Because we’re addicted. Quite literally, he argues, in the same way that someone might be addicted to crack.  Vedantam says:

Most parents are stressed out much more than they are happy.  But when parents think about parenting, they don’t remember the background stress.  They remember the cuddle and the kiss.  Parenting is a series of intensely high highs, followed by long periods of frustration and stress….  We have a name for people who pursue rare moments of bliss at the expense of their wallets and their social and professional relationships: addicts.

He goes on to say, “Children regularly give parents the kind of highs that only narcotics can rival.  The unpredictability of those moments of bliss is an important factor in their addictiveness.”  I’m sure that’s true in terms of the ways our brains process our children’s sudden outbursts of love – and of bad behavior as well.  It’s easier for me to deal with the fact that my daughter really only has one or two “problem” areas based on the fact that I’m much more cognizant of her amazing and endearing qualities.  Yes, it has been very trying to deal with potty problems as the mother of a 5-year-old who should “know better,” but on the other hand, it’s thrilling to be the mother of a 5-year-old whose ability to read, write and spell surpasses that of many kids her age.  My daughter’s personality makes her somewhat prone to the dramatic, but that’s also the same part of her that overwhelms me with her natural ability to dance in a really expressive and mature way.  And yes, she jolts me all the time by saying the most perfectly sweet thing just when I need to hear it, but there are also predictable parts of our love for one another that I wouldn’t trade for the world.

Every night my daughter wants to read two books and sing two songs.  Every night my daughter says, “Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite.  If they do, bite ‘em back, slap ‘em and tell ‘em to go back to sleep,” something my Dad used to say.  Every morning, my daughter crawls into bed with me.  Every evening, we eat dinner together.  The predictability and sense of routine having a child has brought me is such a blessing, especially given that so much of what I do is unpredictable.  I write about new stuff every day, I play to new audiences all the time.  I don’t show up to the same office for the same hours every day; I get on-camera work here and there and travel a bit.  The shock to my system has not been the unpredictability of my daughter’s love, but how very consistent her love for me is.  It’s unconditional and totally addictive.  I hope I never recover.

Photo: kretyen via Flickr

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