I've been a mother for six years, nine months and 15 days, and I still haven't figured out how much I want my son to know about the lives of grownups and, more specifically, the life of this particular grownup, his mom. I know I don't want him keeping any secrets from me, and I'm pretty sure he acts accordingly. If a kid is mean to him at school, he tells me. If his dad slips him an extra two (or 10) Jujubes, he dutifully lets me know.

I think it's good for him to tell me everything. He's a kid. He can't hold the world in his head, can't make sense of it all. He needs to unburden, to run things by me for interpretation and response. But what do I owe him in return? My honesty, my full-on adult self? Does he really need to see me both happy and occasionally bereft, today even-keeled and tomorrow overwhelmed? Or am I all secrets and lies for his protection? I never heard my parents fight, and then one day they woke up and told me they were getting a divorce. Thirty years later, I'm still in shock, mostly because I didn't see it coming.

While I languish in the dilemma, my husband does not. If I move to close the bedroom door when the decibel of our conversation rises and I know my son is playing happily in the next room, my husband asks me to leave it open. It's important, he says, that our son know who we are—that we fight and make up, have good days and truly awful ones, too.

His argument is compelling: Parenting is not pretending. Parenting is providing a living example of successful being in the world—what perspective to have on the disruptive kid in class, how to handle the intrusive stranger in the supermarket, how to define a friend. Even if our six-year-old doesn't understand what we're talking about now, growing up with this level of transparency will serve him later. We're instilling the compass, because if we don't show, live and convey what we believe, who will? CNN, Facebook, a different teacher every year?

It's not easy. I want to keep it all quiet—every angry outburst, scary event and moment of grief. I want him to believe the world is a wonderful, egalitarian place where people don't hurt one another and everything turns out right in the end. But that's not fair. I owe my son more than that. I owe him the messy truth so he will be prepared for life on the horizon. And he can't hear it if I keep shutting the door.

Rebecca Walker is the author of Baby Love and One Big Happy Family.

Click here for another piece on the power of silence.

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