Commentary

Garfield tips the scales

June 5, 2025   ·   0 Comments

By Anthony Carnovale

As a teacher, I spend a lot of time helping students with questions that they may have about things like Shakespeare, life, and whether or not they think it’s a good idea to ask someone out. My response to any question, is usually, to encourage them to use the tools I’ve shared with them in class to figure out the answer for themselves.

I try to apply the same rules to my own life; but there are times I’ve had to ask friends, family, colleagues; I’ve had to look through books, search things up on Google, ask Siri, and prompt ChatGPT. Sometimes I flip coins, sometimes I’ll leave things to chance, maybe even play a quick game of Rock-Paper-Scissors. If I’m still stuck, there’s a bit of wisdom I always fall back on, something I learned from a very fat cat.

When I was younger and dealing with some regular teeny-bop boy issues, I used to collect Garfield comics. In one issue, Garfield was going on about his weight, and his insecure feelings around it, when he decides that the best way to deal with it is to simply hang out with fatter cats. Genius.

One way I deal with my insecurities and anxieties over being a parent is to follow Garfield’s lead: I hang out with other parents. When I hear how other parents are struggling in their role as parents, I end up leaving the conversation feeling a little better about myself as a parent. It’s not that I think I’m better than them; it’s just nice to know I’m not the only person making a mess of being a parent.

Parenting is a tough gig. Like, I knew it was going to be hard; I just didn’t think it was going to be this hard. I’m thirteen years into being a father, and I still haven’t cracked the parenting code. If my wife and I ever manage to find a sliver of time to, maybe, debrief, maybe even decompress, to talk about what’s working and what’s not working, the conversation usually turns in on itself and gets back to all the things we have to do, forgot to do, would rather not do: ‘What time is the game?’ ‘What time do you have to be there?’ ‘I still have to make lunches.’ ‘I’m going to bed.’

How do you prepare for something as important as being a parent? My high school offers a ‘parenting course’ (A young girl I teach was so traumatized by the experience in the class that she swore to never have a child of her own — I think she’s serious). Can a person be taught to be a parent? What do you do about all the messy feelings that come with temper tantrums, insults, wet toilet seats and empty milk containers?

As much as I love my parents, and as much as they did a good job with raising three children, I think their focus was more on turning me into a good man than it was on raising a good father. Does being a good man translate into being a good father? Now that I am a father, I’m curious about what my parents thought, and what they felt when things got crazy in our home. Did they ever feel inadequate? Anxious? Did they ever feel like giving up? Is this why, when we asked my mother where she was going some nights, she would quip: “I’m going crazy. Want to come?”

I think one of the biggest differences between parenting today, and parenting back in the day is the role that fear plays in the way we parent. If LOVE was the first chapter in my parent’s manual, FEAR was the focus of chapter two. In our home, we grew up fearing the wooden spoon, the silent treatment, the nuns that followed me around, keeping track of how many times I swore.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard someone say, “Kids these days just aren’t afraid anymore.” Fear may have kept me quiet, and made sure I came home on time, but I’m not interested in making my kids afraid of me. There are plenty of other reasons for this generation of kids to be fearful: Climate change; AI and future job prospects; the cost of housing; the rising cost of education; the growing gap between the rich and poor; threats to democracy. When I was a kid, every time I left the house, my parents would tell me to be careful. Today, my kids don’t have to leave the house to be hounded, or stalked, by a stranger. They just have to hop onto a device.

So, no: I don’t want fear to be a major player in my parenting practice. I don’t want to yell; I don’t want to shame; I don’t want to be another thing that my children will grow up fearing. If my children go out into the world fearful and anxious, they’re adding to the fear and anxiety that the world is already drowning in.

To put it simply, it’s just phenomenally hard to be a parent right now. The world today is so much more complex and complicated than the world I grew up in. Or maybe we’re just more aware, and better informed than previous generations were. Maybe there are just too many options, too many places to turn to when we’re looking for answers. Maybe we should spend more time trying to make the world a less fearful place by making our homes a more loving one. Maybe I just have to accept that parenting is messy, sloppy, and beautiful.

I get that Garfield is a cat, and that he has nine lives to work through his crisis. I don’t have nine lives, I have one. And right now, I live that life for my children. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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