What is the Real Difference Between Being a Parent and Parenting?

Parent. Parenting. One is often confused with the other, any person that either has given birth to a child, helped to create a child, or is raising a child is a parent. Not all of these people are actively parenting. Does that mean that everyone who has ever had a child that they have given up or had taken from this is necessarily a bad parent or a horrible person? Not on any level. However, it does mean that while they may be a parent to a child, that they are not necessarily parenting that child. There is a huge in the meaning of the word parent depending on if it used as a verb or a noun. Very few words in our language have the ability to incite as many emotions as any conversation that stems around someone being a good parent or a bad parent, when actually a lot of times the conversation is not about being a parent at all but rather it is about whether or not that person is actually parenting.

For instance, if a young man and woman find out they are going to have a child together when they are still in high school. They could decide to give the child up for adoption because they feel like that is the only way that the child will have access to all of the things that it needs while it is growing up. They may feel that being so young they will be unable to parent the child the way that they should, yet they are both now technically parents. Quite possibly they have made the best decision, for the child that they parented. However, from that day on they are not parenting that child. That child will grow up with an additional set of parents, the ones who are doing the actual parenting. Honestly, both the boy and the girl could grow to adulthood, have wonderful families and more children and do wonderful at both being a parent and at parenting the children that come later in their lives. But, while they can always claim that as parents they did the best thing they could have for the first child they had, they honestly have no claim to parenting that child in any form. Whoever, raises that child can never take credit for great hair or any genetic traits, but they can honestly step forward and say they enjoyed their time parenting a wonderful child.

Often times today, children are raised in split homes, with their parents living apart, perhaps remarrying and building another family. This can all be confusing for the children, and sometimes even the parents, especially if one parent retains full custody, the other getting visitation every other weekend. The parent with weekend visitation may feel that they no longer are a parent to their child. However, if they are contributing in every way that they can, they are there financially, they are there when they can be for visitation or to spend time talking or interacting with their child, then yes they are still a parent and still parenting to the full extent that they can. If on the other hand, they don't contribute financially, they are not there for visitation, and then while they will always remain that child's parent, no they are not parenting that child.

Honestly, to become a parent can be a purely physical act from beginning to end, or it can be entirely built upon an emotional attachment. However, parenting is where the work comes in, that is the verb for day-to-day taking care of a child. That is the word for those sleepless nights with a crying baby, or hours spent driving looking for a teenager that is late coming home. There can be love in either of these words, but there are always heartstrings attached to parenting.