In my experience (I am the lone father of an eight-year-old boy

The words of Martin Jacques burn with the fire of lived sorrow and endurance: “In my experience (I am the lone father of an eight-year-old boy who lost his mother when he was one year old), parenting is the most difficult of all jobs: forget your chief executives, editors, prime ministers and the like – parenting is far more challenging.” This is not the casual reflection of an observer, but the testimony of a man who has walked through grief and shouldered the burden of love alone. His words remind us that among all the titles and crowns the world bestows, none is as demanding, as relentless, or as holy as the title of parent.

The ancients would have nodded in solemn agreement. They knew that kings might rule kingdoms, generals command armies, and ministers shape laws—but none of these responsibilities compare to guiding a fragile soul from helpless infancy into the fullness of life. The chief executive may resign, the prime minister may be replaced, but the parent cannot lay down their duty. Their task is constant, woven into dawn and dusk, into the quiet hours when no one else sees. Jacques, as a lone father, speaks to the heart of this truth: that the weight of such work is not measured in wealth or status, but in sleepless nights, in silent fears, and in the unending demands of a love that cannot quit.

Consider the story of Marcus Fabius, a Roman senator who, when widowed, raised his children without the aid of servants, determined to shape their character by his own hand. Though he held high office, he declared that no civic duty outweighed the duty of parenting. He taught his children discipline at home before speaking in the Senate, and when asked how he bore such a load, he replied, “The state will endure without me, but my children cannot.” Here we see that even in the halls of power, the ancients knew what Jacques declares: that the greatest office is not public, but private, the throne not gilded, but set at the hearth.

Jacques’s testimony is made even more poignant by the shadow of loss. To raise a child alone, without the presence of a mother’s hand, is to fight not only the battles of daily care but also the silent war against grief. The child grows, unaware of what has been lost, but the parent remembers, and bears both roles in one. To endure this trial requires a courage that few offices of state could summon. What prime minister could endure the long years of quiet sacrifice? What general could march so steadily through days filled not with glory, but with the endless, ordinary labors of love?

The heart of his words reminds us that parenting is not a task of efficiency, but of the spirit. The corporate world measures success in profits, the political world in victories, but the parent measures success in a child’s smile, in their resilience, in their eventual ability to walk into the world whole and strong. This labor brings no worldly crown, yet it is crowned with eternity, for in shaping a child, the parent shapes the future.

The lesson, then, is this: let none undervalue the work of parents. If you are one, remember that your toil, unseen though it may be, is greater than the work of rulers. Do not measure yourself against the honors of society, for you are laboring in a realm where the stakes are higher than wealth or power: you are shaping a soul. And if you are not a parent, give reverence to those who are, for they are warriors of a different kind, heroes of an invisible battlefield.

Practically, this means lifting up the work of parenting with dignity. Share the burdens where you can—between partners, within communities, among friends—for no parent should walk alone. For those raising children by themselves, like Jacques, society must offer not pity but respect, and wherever possible, support. And for every parent, remember that love, though wearying, is itself the greatest resource: a wellspring that, though it demands everything, also renews itself in the smile of the child it sustains.

Thus, Jacques’s words echo like a solemn hymn across the ages: parenting is not simply a job—it is the hardest, holiest work entrusted to humankind. And those who bear it faithfully, whether in joy or in sorrow, stand taller than kings, greater than rulers, because they shape not empires of stone, but empires of the heart, written in the lives of their children.