Even for those of us who found math in school to be cruel and unusual punishment, and despite how little we employ trigonometry or calculus in our adulting years, it remains an underappreciated fact that the logic of math dominates our lives. I don't mean that we still utilize some modicum of math at the grocery store or in the workplace. No, I'm suggesting that the calculating logic of math is more like the unseen air we breathe, so unavoidable that everything from our romantic relationships to our families, or from our expectations to our wildest dreams, are permeated by its presence.

Perhaps nowhere is this more prevalent and problematic than in our parenting.

But first, for shits and giggles, look at how math still haunts you and I. Try to think of an area of life where the logic of math isn't at play. For shits, they say that a healthy gut should be giving you three BM's a day. For giggles, the experts inform us there is a latent equation linking laughter to positive mental health. Or take your marriage.  Studies show that the determining factor in whether wives or husbands feel satisfied with the sex, romance, and passion in their marriage is, by 70%, the quality of the couple’s friendship. There is always math in the background, functioning as a silent guide, directing us towards what actions to take to better our chances at reaching the outcomes we desire. Pick anything...sorry this isn’t actually interactive. I’ll try to pick random things for you. Take judicial system reform for an example.  The evidence says (note the subtle anthropomorphism we engage in all the time) that dollars spent on education and reform are more effective at reducing recidivism and lowering taxpayer costs than housing people in prisons. And of course there are endless mathematical omens around our diet. Bad inputs, high fructose corn syrup and saturated fats, equate to diabetes and heart disease. Math is always by our side, ready to give us answers and ready to be used by others to give us the answers they want us to have. Think of the algorithms that shape your viewing habits. Or here is one that should really make us hate ourselves: politicians that spend more on negative ad campaigns tend to get more votes.

There are literally countless examples that ride the wave of the logic of math. It is so hardwired into us that even when the statistics we are given are outright fraudulent or woefully under-researched most of us have been habitualized to listen to the evidence and logic of numbers that we fail to question the conclusion. And strangely this is the case even though Millennials and Gen Z have suspicion baked into their cultural ideology.  No one can shake this proclivity to have faith in the logic of math.

And why should they? Imagine going through life without being able to weigh the evidence, without being able to have your observations and those of others mean a darn thing? We need to be making mental and emotional calculations all the time.

Math is here to stay. Math is built into the universe.

Decision making is already stress inducing, but decision making without math would be a nightmare. It would be like Russian roulette, yet another analogy that relies on math to help the decision maker. Math does give life a measure of structure, structure we all desperately crave.

The problem is not math itself or even following the logic of math in our day to day decisions. The problem is when we reduce the universe and by extension all of our day to day affairs to math and math alone.

To repeat my thesis: nowhere is this more problematic than in our parenting.


We read the literature on parenting or we don't read the literature on parenting- on one level it doesn't even matter- because even if you don't read parenting books, you still come at parenting assuming algebra is the answer. Those who read more parenting books just end up trying more algebraic equations.

In algebra you are solving for a variable:
x +  8 = 14
You know the answer but you need to discover the right number to get you there.
Or in the scenario when you don't know the answer, you still have enough information to determine an answer:
4x + 12 = y
Here the answer will change, but it is still determined by the given variables that you can manipulate.

In my own household and from years of conversations with countless other friends I am all too familiar with algebraic parenting. If Chris subtracts gluten, if Susan receives more verbal affirmation, if Eric takes some Ritalin, if Levi gets to move around outside, then ______  (solution).
We are like mathematicians forever playing with the variables to get the desired results.

Why do we do this? Because we love our children! And this is so commendable! And yet there are at least 2 dangerous pitfalls in algebraic parenting. First, a great number of us parents don't engage in enough deep personal reflection. Quality personal reflection is a sorely underdeveloped skill. As parents we ought to be asking ourselves-is what we are hoping for our child really in their best interest or is assuaging some perceived desire of my own?
Now I'm not saying that the child knows themselves better than the parent knows them. Nor am I suggesting that a young child will know what is best for them more than a parent would. Hell no. You are right to cut them off from their fourth helping of candy. You probably should cut them off after two (anything less than that may backfire down the road). And you should be telling them why you are cutting them off.  Children are developing, not developed. Yet you, as an adult, are also developing and not developed. However, it is fair to say that in most cases you are further along that path, and that is the reason throughout  history and across cultures elders have been tasked with providing guidance for their youth.
But it is important to pause at this point (and at every point in your parenting tenure) to always be questioning yourself as the parent, “why do I want this for my child, why is this outcome, this behavior, this habit, this fill-in-the-blank, so important to me? Why is it important for my child? Am I being obsessive about this? Does this have more to do with my own neurosis than what is good for my child? Am I okay with assisting my child in becoming differentiated from me because they truly are a separate human being with their own unique tastes and interests?”

We all engage in algebraic parenting because we should. We would be fools not to. Children need guidance. Good parents are thoughtful parents, intentionally weighing the best evidence available with the peculiarities of their particular child in mind and forging a brave way forward in the best interest for the child's well-being (and the well-being of the community as a whole- let's move beyond western individualism…another article for another time).

But what I want to share is a big caveat. In my observations often times some of the most intentional parents can be the most anxious parents.  I speak from experience.

I don't believe it takes a rocket scientist to understand why.
The most intentional of parents are taking the algebraic logic of parenting and not just running with it, but sprinting with it like they and the lives of their children depend on it. If only my child can conquer this ADHD, or learn to share with siblings, or shed this abnormality, then all will be right with the world, or at least we could enjoy 10 minutes of peace before we head out the door. Obviously we rarely say these thoughts aloud, and intellectually we know better, but our hearts are so wrapped up with these budding human beings that it feels like the weight of the world depends on them growing up right. And them growing up right seems to depend on us. That is why we are anxious. Simple.

Now I'm not going to argue that some of that anxiety is not warranted. As I've already said, a lot of good parenting is following this logic of math. Good inputs + child = healthier child. But while this is true, it is not the whole story. Life is not that simple. So what follows is the second pitfall of algebraic parenting.

Do you know what a paradox is?
Without looking below, without asking Google or Siri, try to define it in your head right now.

Paradox has become the single most important word in my lexicon as I try to navigate life. My favorite way of describing paradox is: a paradox is a higher form of logic that accepts that two contradictory things can both be true.

In our current conversation, the paradox is this: parenting is a matter of math, that is to say, the variables you introduce into your child's life will shape the outcome. A child growing up in a nurturing home will more likely experience secure attachment while a child who lacks a consistent and loving caregiver is more likely to be anxiously attached or avoidant or whatever other terms Bowlby used. Attachment theory is not fiction. But this is half the picture. We need to add another dimension to get at reality. The other dimension is this:  AT THE SAME TIME it is also true that: parenting is a mystery, where the love you give is not a guarantee that your child will reciprocate in like fashion, or internalize it, or whatever else we might hope happens. As powerful and true as it is to argue that humans are the manifestation of their genetics in conversation with their environment or upbringing, it is also true that humans are mysteries comprised of complexities, desires, and a will for which no calculation can account.
1 + 1 does equal two and 1 + 1 does not equal two.
Paradoxes mess with our head. We are constantly prone to focus on one side of the paradox or the other. We hate the extreme cognitive dissonance they elicit. But maybe that is the space we need to inhabit to parent best.

It is common in philosophy to distinguish between problems and mysteries. Problems can be solved. Mysteries cannot. Problems lend themselves to observation, analysis, and solutions. Mysteries can be observed and analyzed as well, but will always outpace or transcend our comprehension. Mysteries humble. They make us aware of our limitations. In the face of mystery we gain a perspective of ourselves that is incomplete. The thing we come to know is that we know so little.

There are children who are raised in abusive homes who become beacons of compassion, and children raised in tender and nurturing homes who become insufferable assholes. This doesn't discredit the logic of math. It simply demonstrates that there is more than the logic of math at play. The world that we inhabit and that inhabits us will confound our reductionistic attempts at taming it.

Our confidence doesn't have to be completely eliminated, but faced with mystery it is tempered and tamed. Reduced and put in proper perspective. And I believe it is here, when we realize that our "control" over the variables in life and parenting, while precious and important, are nonetheless not the entire picture, that we can shed so much of our anxiety. We can love, love with all intentionality and fully, but be free from obsessive worry. Free to let go even as we are pursuing our children with love.

I'm speaking of a love without any becauses, a love without cause. Let your love be creative, not contingent. Don't find what is worthy in your child and love that. Just love them for no reason. Let your love be reckless and illogical, pure and unmotivated. We all need to be loved without condition. To whatever measure you can provide that for your child, do it. And then know even as you come up short there is a Love greater, more mysterious, more perfect, that can bind all that is broken and bring the healing we all need. We parents are in just as much need of this healing as our children.

There is also this mystery: love can take opposite stances on the same issue. Your child fails to put in the effort to get a B or above in Chemistry. You agreed ahead of time that a B or above was a sign of prioritizing school work over watching random YouTube videos. It was agreed that the consequence was the removal of the child’s computer and screen time for two weeks so he could refocus. However, in the moment, out of mercy and compassion, you hug your child and say, “you know what, I’m not going enforce this contract. That doesn’t mean that I don’t want you continue in this lack of prioritization, but I want you to feel my love.” You may do this because you know your child is already beat down by some negative comment they received from a peer and you recognize your child is fragile just like you are. Certainly this could be an act of love. Conversely, out of love you want your child to learn and grow in wisdom because you know in the long run this will serve them well in life. You want your child to develop good habits. You want your child to become resilient, so you do the difficult thing and follow through on the contract despite your child’s protests. Is this not also an act of love? Which act of love do you choose as a parent?

I have no idea! My fear and what I tend to see in many parents is that they naturally lean towards one of these options more than the other as their modus operandi. I’m no exception. And of course you can guess the problems associated with each. You become an enabler of a passive and lazy human being or you nurture an insufferable success driven stressed human.  And if you are an erudite parent, capable of reading your child’s propensities, you are all the more likely to adopt a stance to push or challenge your child’s tendencies and the result is an ever tension-filled home.

Maybe the solution to this mystery is a measure of math. Maybe good parenting is attempting to take the child’s personality into consideration, but at the end of the day making sure some percentage of time you are enforcing healthy habits, boundaries, and structure, and some percentage of time you are modeling grace and acknowledging our shared human fragility. There are no perfect parents, good enough would be wonderful.

So parenting is both math and mystery. Can you hold these polarities in tension?

On my best days I have a meager awareness that this is the case. Every day I should remember the tattoo on my wife's arm. She has a large arrow extending from her elbow and pointing upwards towards her shoulder and inside the arrow are three birds. Each bird representing one of our children. And underneath the arrow is this text "How much more" taken from Matthew 6 where Jesus says that if his heavenly Father watches over the sparrows of the field how much more will he watch over his children? It is an ink reminder for my wife and I that while we love our children with all our hearts, we fail them daily and undoubtably are sowing lasting pain in their precious lives, a horrible thought. But we can rest assured that they are in better hands than ours. Faith in this mystery carries us as it carries them.



Jeff Roessing
March 17, 2024