Once you’re a grownup and have managed to keep a pot plant alive for a couple of years and everything, your thoughts may be turning towards the ambitious goal of actually raising your own baby bat. On the other hand if you’ve been caught with your pants down and find yourself expecting unexpectedly, it may be something that you haven’t given much thought to, but the parenthood lurgie is going to slap you upside the head in around nine months anyway; feel free to panic.
So, Goth parents. What’s that all about then? Do Goths stop being Goth when they have kids, raise their kids as Goths, or pretty much wing it? Probably the latter, in most cases.
The good news for the Goth parent is that there are buttloads of websites, advice circles and Goth parenting blogs on the web dedicated to raising your spawn if you have an eye for Goth.
On my part, I am pretty sure that I was hatched from an egg, and equally sure that these genes should die out with me. However, being of a certain age, plenty of my pals are currently dealing with their own little puke monsters, and I’ve canvassed their opinions (read: used this blog post as an excuse to get drunk with them) on being a Goth parent, how it all works, and what problems, if any, they have run into along the way.
Is having a rug rat likely to cramp your Goth style?
The general feedback I got to this question is that being a parent obviously requires a reasonable amount of compromise, and that particularly while the baby bat is still at the puking and shitting stage (no one is able to advise me of precisely when this ends) your tiny human takes up most of your attention. If you have a leet crew of babysitting rellies on call, this makes life much easier, but when you do get the odd night off you’re more likely to spend it fast asleep than legging it off to an industrial rave. You’re probably going to find that some of your clothes fall victim to the rug rat too, oh, and there is no good way of getting liquid babyshite out of your best hand wash lace.
However, you’re not going to suddenly turn into a Stepford resident or forget about the things that you love. You’ll still keep your friends, taste in music and other interests, and when your kid is old enough to take out without having to prepare for an hour first, you’ll probably find yourself segueing back into your old routine, albeit a little differently.
Do you get ‘tude from other parents?
Mixed responses to this one; most Goth parents had a tale to tell about The Stepfords, and their disapproving glances or occasional odd questions.
Yes, they are totally judging you.
Only one set of parents that I spoke to had an outright horror story of another Mother not letting their kid play with “the Satanist’s kids” and presumably filling her little angel’s head with all kinds of bigoted crap to stand her in good stead for the rest of her life too.Misadventures of an American Goth deconstructs some of the other strange assumptions people make about Goth parents.
Generally, other parents don’t bat an eyelid at Goth parents, and many have actually shown a great deal of interest in the culture as a result of their respective kids making friends, which can only be a good thing, really.
Are you raising your kid in a “Goth” style?
I got a pretty much resounding “no” to this one, but also the clear message that the parentals in question were not not raising their kids as Goths either. All of the parents I spoke to were very clear on the concept of retaining their own personal expression, while letting their kids discover their own. Yes everyone admitted to buying the odd bat onesie or taking a pic of themselves covered in baby puke and throwing the devil horns, but really what do you expect? We’re only human, after all.
Morbid Outlook has also interviewed a host of Goth parents, and gathered their feedback on Goth parenting issues and how individual Goth parents go about things.
The Goth parents I spoke to were all unanimous in their opinion that they would support their child in however they chose to express themselves as they got older. May we all have had such well-balanced upbringings!
