Parenting as a Radical Experiment in Empathy

This post is by contributing blogger Kelly Coyle DiNorcia, a graduate of our M.Ed. program, and a humane educator specializing in helping parents raise joyful, compassionate children. Find out more about Kelly's work at her website Beautiful Friendships, and her blog for Wellspring Community School.

I just finished watching Sam Richards’ talk from TEDxPSU, titled “A Radical Experiment in Empathy.” It was riveting. You should watch it. Go ahead. I’ll wait. Just promise you’ll come back here when you’re done.

So what did you think?

Watching his talk, I was reminded of a very profound experience I had when my daughter, now nearly six years old, was a newborn. I was reading The New York Times, back in the days when people read newspapers that were made of paper, and there was a photo on the front page, above the fold, of a young Iraqi mother and her day-old baby, lying in a bed in the hospital maternity ward. The caption under the photo read “An Iraqi woman who gave birth recently in Najaf, Iraq, cast her ballot yesterday in the referendum on the constitution. Prisoners also voted early.”

Setting aside the juxtaposition of new mothers and prisoners for the moment, I distinctly remember being overcome with sadness. Not that it took much in those hormonally-challenging post-partum months to bring me to tears, but I felt so ashamed of myself, and so intensely connected to this woman, that it was all but unbearable for me.

You see, I ordinarily would have considered myself a reasonably empathetic individual. I might have even described myself as above average in the compassion department. But right after my daughter was born, I was consumed by depression. My life had changed so much, and I felt like I had sacrificed my interests, my passions, my very identity to this little person who did nothing but scream and nurse and never slept and was never happy, and this was never going to end and I was never going to sleep again and forget about eating a seated meal! I am not particularly prone to self-pity, but this life shift was extraordinarily difficult for me. In those days, weeks, and months, I could not see beyond the walls of, as Richards says, my tiny little world. Mostly, I could barely even leave my bedroom.

Then, this picture snapped me out of it. Isn’t it funny how something so simple can have such a strong influence on us? I remember thinking, “What am I complaining about? This woman is risking her life to vote, and she has a little baby to worry about now. And maybe more kids at home, and a husband, and a family, brothers and sisters maybe, who rely on her. And I’m complaining because I can’t go out to dinner with my husband?”

I do not minimize my own experience of new motherhood, or that of other new mothers who have had similarly painful experiences, because the depression is real and sometimes debilitating. But suddenly I felt the walls of my tiny little world expand across space and time to include women around the globe and through time immemorial. I had always tried to “walk a mile in others’ shoes,” but now it took no effort at all to imagine myself as a mother who is watching her child die of starvation or dehydration because there isn’t clean water or money for food. I could hardly stop picturing myself as a mother who had lost a child in war, or who had lost a husband and was now left to support a family on her own.

As intensely as I love my children, I know these mothers love theirs just as intensely. As much as I would do anything for my children, I know these mothers work hard to provide the best lives they can for their children. This is not to say that only mothers are capable of empathy; just to say that for myself, motherhood has widened and deepened my ability to see the world through the eyes of another. It has also invigorated my commitment to work towards a peaceful, just, and sustainable world for my own children, but also for the children of these other mothers. It has brought a unique perspective and motivation to my work as a humane educator.

That picture still hangs in my office.

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