Motherhood Handbook, Chapter 14: Mommy, It's Not Fair!

Children are taught the expression "it's not fair" in the womb, shortly after they're told how to suck their thumbs and how to walk into the rearview mirror of every car in the parking lot. While they don't have speech until their second or third year, that crying you hear? They're saying, "Mommy, IT'S NOT FAIR!"

My five-year-old is very interested in justice. She doesn't even have brothers or sisters to get pissed about, so she eyes MY closet, MY jewelry box and MY dinner plate. Inevitably, she decides the world is out to get her, my rather pampered only child.

The fact is that I, too, once thought life wasn't fair in that I was getting the short end of the stick, even as I said all the things we parents are supposed to say, summed up nicely here by the father-of-five author of Clark Kent's Lunchbox:

At 37, I've long since figured out how unfair life is. And of course, it's never an excuse, just something you live with - an obstacle that makes you stronger. Kids, however, are still in that learning process. With mine, anytime I say that we can't go to the park because of the rain, or they can't have a toy from the store, it usually illicit the predictable response, "That's not fair!" Then I go into the big parental spiel on how because our choices or even by no fault of our own, life might not always go the way we want it to and nothing we can do will change it. Sometimes I say this with great paternal stoicism, while at others I find my own advice hard to swallow like choking on a fat, dry pill without the aid of water.  

It's no wonder we as parents get SO SICK AND TIRED of the expression "it's not fair!" Because we're secretly thinking the same thing. Even preachers like Katina from Cleverly Disguised as a Responsible Adult:

I guess I assume that my kids will someday outgrow this idea that things have to be fair. I hope that one day they will wake up and decide that it’s okay that one brother got offered a killer job in a big city and will be moving there soon with his beautiful young wife while the other is still working at a fast food restaurant waiting for good things to happen. I hope for this, but I know it isn’t likely. I know this because, even as an adult, I myself expect things to be fair. I hate it that my friend can eat everything on her plate and never gain an ounce. It kills me that the grass in my neighbor’s yard is thick and lush while mine is patchy and yellow. I can’t stand it when I do all the work and someone else gets the credit. It’s not fair.

Certainly now, after the past two years of recession and foreclosures and lost jobs and scary new diseases we want to rail, "It's not fair!" And so do our kids. Sometimes, they have more of a right to say it, writes Brandy at Connor Lint:

"It's not fair Mommy, It's not fair!!!"  Those were Connor's words tonight as we gave him his first dose of chemotherapy.
James and I both replied, "No honey, it's not fair.  It's not fair at all."

Yes, I used to think I was really getting screwed. My mom had cancer when I was a kid, I had an eating disorder, my grandparents all died by the time I hit 24. Then at some point, someone wise if direct pointed out to me that it's not fair I have a house when entire countries of people live in shacks. It's not fair that I have a family when orphaned children abound. It's not fair I have a job when thousands are unemployed. It's not fair I got a beautiful daughter when women struggle this moment with infertility. And so this is what I tell my girl when she grouses over a few jellybeans: Life is not fair, indeed.

And I am humbled by it.