Parenting Tips from Mythology

From the 1950’s, when Benjamin Spock’s Baby and Child Care book found its way onto every new parent’s bookshelf, to the 21st century when contemporary shows like Supernanny appeared on our televisions, parents have long been searching for guidance on how to raise their children. 

With the barrage of conflicting articles on social media, parents (and kids!) would be forgiven for being more confused than ever.

Even in the 1930s, advertisers used parents’ insecurity as a marketing tool, as this catalogue advising on the right toys for the right time suggests.

However, rather than poring over articles by pop-psychologists, or the latest book on “helicopter” or “free-range” parenting, modern parents could turn to another resource: the myths of ancient Greece and Rome.

Any parent can relate to the tragic heartbreak of Daedalus as he loses his son during their escape from Crete. 

This 5th century pendant alludes to the myth of Daedalus and Icarus whose only chance of escaping their imprisonment was by air. A skilled inventor, Daedalus created two pairs of wings out of feathers and wax for him and his son. It was a risky move, and Daedalus lectured his son on how to best fly to ensure his safe escape. 

In this painting by Anthony van Dyck, the expressions on the faces of the concerned father and his distracted son could easily be found on the faces of any 21st century father and son arguing over the importance of safe driving! 

This painting by Carlos Saraceni shows his tragic descent. 

Ovid describes how Icarus, ‘delighting in his daring flight, and drawn by desire for the heavens, soared higher. His nearness to the devouring sun softened the fragrant wax that held the wings: and the wax melted: he flailed with bare arms, but losing his oar-like wings, could not ride the air.’ 

Daedalus is not the only mythological parent left bereft by the death of a child. The ancient Greeks and Romans had many different tales about Thetis, the sea-nymph, who desperately tried to protect her half-mortal son, Achilles, from death. 

One of the most famous tales of Thetis, as shown in this 17th century painting, tells of her disguising her beloved son as a girl in the court of Lycomedes to protect him from the dangers of the Trojan War. 

As Statius writes in his unfinished poem, Achilleid, ‘But Thetis, standing by night upon the sea-echoing rocks, this way and that divides her purpose, and ponders in what hiding-place she will set her son, in what country she shall choose to conceal him.’

However, as mythology teaches us, even Thetis, with the magical powers of a sea-nymph, is unable to ensure her son survives the Trojan War, let alone lives a long and happy life.