On the anarchist parenting listserv that I subscribe to, there's been a recent discussion about what kind of kids books are out there that have a radical bent. Some of the titles, I never considered; some I don’t necessarily agree with; some I never even heard of. And so, armed with this info, my kids as well as many of the neighborhood children who are a part of a child-swap (article to come soon), my dog Noodle and myself have spent a few afternoons walking to the south Berkeley library trying to find them.
Along the way one excursion, we all started talking about how books teach. I love hearing what they think they learn from books. My eight year old pipes in that she knows how to swim in freezing water if she ever falls through a frozen lake.
‘Nice,’ I say, ‘and I hope I’m with you when I decide to cross the Alaskan wilderness.’
‘And I learned how to make a fire too,’ she brags.
My ten year old daughter asks why we need to find books that are radical in the first place. ‘Yeah,’ the three others chime in sarcastically in that ten year old way they have ‘like, why does everything need to be radical, Tom?’ They sound so exasperated. But they get it. One of them brings up Girls to the Rescue and how normally it is always the opposite. Boy saves girl, but they laugh and know what is up, but they also know how overwhelming it is to be told they same boy saves girl story over and over. And then my daughter brings up Cars. Here’s the main reason I am so impressed with kids and why I was reminded that having these sometimes tedious, difficult conversations is so important, reminded why being willing to talk about what things could look like if in fact things were different is so effective.
My daughter says, ‘yeah look at how popular Cars are now because of that movie. Maybe they should make a movie called Bikes or Walks.’ They all laugh, but she is so right. What if…
***
I was pleasantly surprised to find many of these books available in the local library. Take a look for yourself and please let me know what others you suggest. I am trying to come up with a radical daddy library for the storyteller in all of us to publish in rad dad #4.
Because sometimes we all need a book to help or guide us. When we are tired, when we’ve worked a long day, when we are at our wits end, sometimes what settles us most effectively is to read a story, to be a part of the listening audience, to be transported with our children to the place of what ifs and once upon a times.
And man, did I find the coolest book ever. I happened upon it at Bound Together Books in San Francisco, but I didn't buy it because it was fifteen bucks but now realize after some used book internet searching that that was a bargain. So for my birthday you all can send it to me because I have never seen a book that narrates such a radically different set of values, one that challenges the notions of capitalism, family structure, success and many other things.
It's called A Little Squatters Handbook and it is the story of five homeless people from all walks of life (there’s even one little Lego man who’s missing his little Lego arm) and how they band together to take over an abandoned building. They all sleep in the same bed (at least initially) sharing dreams and fears, mange to ward off the cops by employing various direct action tactics, and in the end they throw a party inviting all their family and new neighbors to celebrate their new communal living arrangements. Read it -- even just for yourself.
What follows the list of books -- tell me what you think...
Some Radical Parenting Books:
Whatever, Mom: Hip Mama's Guide To Raising A Teenager by Ariel Gore
Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn
Liberated Parent, Liberated Child
Kids Books for various ages:
Si, Se Puede!/Yes, We Can!: Janitor Strike In L.A. by Diana Cohn
Conversations With Durito: Stories Of The Zapatistas And Neoliberalism
by Subcomandante Marcos
Selavi, That is Life: A Haitian Story of Hope by Youme Landowne
Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson
Let's Get A Pup by Bob Graham
The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman
Sally Lockhart Mysteries by Philip Pullman
Carly by Annegert Fuchshuber
Super Cilantro Girl by Juan Felipe Herrera
Tacky the Penguin by Helen Lester
The Araboolies of Liberty Street by Sam Swope
The paper bag princess by Robert N Munsch
The Big Orange Splot by D. Manus Pinkwater
The mysterious adventures of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo
The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo
Rabbit Island by Jorg Steiner
From Egg To Chick by Millicent Selsam
Sitting Ducks by Michael Bedard
Brave Potatoes by Toby Speed & Barry Root
The Pirate Queen by Emily Arnold McCully
Oh Lord, I wish I was a Buzzard by Polly Greenberg & Aliki
The Enormous Carrot by Vladimir Vagin
Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems
Nanabosho: How the Turtle Got its Shell by Joe McLellan
Crocodile Crocodile by Peter Nickl
Kids On Strike photo book by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
The day Joanie Frankenhauser became a boy / Francess Lantz
The secret under my skin / Janet McNaughton
Danny, the champion of the world / Roald Dahl
América is her name / by Luis J. Rodríguez
The samurai's daughter : a Japanese legend / retold by Robert D. San Souci
The pirate meets the queen : an illuminated tale / by Matt Faulkner
Punxsutawney Phyllis / by Susanna Leonard Hill
Oh, and I’ll be biking down the coast of Oregon with my babies’ mama because the kids are at grandma’s (much love to grandma) so I’ll post again and reply to any comments after the fourth of july (and if you haven’t read Fredrick Douglas’ 'why I don’t celebrate the fourth of july’ you should…
Monday, June 26, 2006
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Hirshman's "feminism" as masculinist ideology
Being a feminist dad can be a challenge sometimes.
Let me start by saying I know there are lots of kinds of feminism out there. But feminism is important to me in part because it opens the door for guys to escape the gender straitjacket that we've often been forced into in the past. To do so we have to question and reject the masculinist ideology we've been imbued with. It's hard, but I believe well worth it.
This brings me to writer Linda Hirschman's arguments, aired over the past several months in the American Prospect and the Washington Post (see this post at Half Changed World for details).
Hirshman is angry at well-educated women who become stay at home moms. Here are her main points, in her own words, from a recent WaPost column:
With these arguments, Hirshman is reinforcing what I call masculinist ideology of the worst kind.
First, I think it's obvious to everyone that equality of opportunity for women has been an important goal of the feminist movement from the earliest days. But in my view, that's not enough.
What's necessary is to actually change the values of our society.
Currently those values are masculinist. That is, our society values traditional masculine-defined measures of success -- power, money, competition, control -- while it devalues things that are traditionally associated with the feminine -- caring, nurturing, relationships, nonmaterial values -- which are also all crucial to the process of raising children. The lack of balance between the two makes for an unhealthy society.
Hirshman is reinforcing the skew towards masculinist values in our society, rather than trying to shift those values. Her perspective is that of a person who has all the advantages that make for success in a masculinist world -- with the sole exception of being a female.
Hirshman is arguing that women who are wealthy and educated and class privileged should be doing exactly what men in the same position do: dominate society, and be rewarded for their domination. For her it's the only rational thing to do.
And she's angry that some intelligent, educated people disagree with her masculinist priorities. She's angry that lives don't play out in the black and white way she thinks they should, that, as Miriam Peskowitz points out in her own excellent book, The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars, moms' lives are complex, women go into and out of the workforce, work part time or full time, that they change over time in response to their own priorities and needs.
According to Hirshman's reasoning, I was insane to stay at home full time with my daughter, given my graduate degree from a top university, and my potential earning power. I was crazy to downsize my career ambitions, to forego higher pay and higher status, just so I could spend time with my kids.
Well, I know she doesn't really care what I do, since I'm a guy, but that's what she's saying.
But my wife -- very much a feminist -- who quit a corporate career exactly because it required the performance and internalization of masculinist ideology, because she wanted to have a full life more than she wanted to earn a six figure salary or move up the corporate hierarchy and exercise dominance over underlings, because she wanted to spend time with her kids while they were little, because she re-careered into a traditionally female job (teacher) -- Hirshman I'm sure would condemn her to the deepest pits of "feminist" hell.
Is money important? Is a challenging job important? Yes. But just as important are our kids. Hirshman just doesn't get it.
Hirshman continues:
Think about what she's saying here.
Firstly, spending time raising my children is not a worthy goal.
Secondly, she is dissing those people who actually do those tasks -- and I think she misses the fact that though related, housekeeping and child rearing are two distinct activities that are very different in their importance. She is relegating people, men and women, who don't have the class privilege or personalities or skills to climb to the top of the class ladder, those people who from choice or necessity do those jobs, to the bottom of the heap, dismissing their contributions to society as second-rate at best.
Third, and I think most damningly, she totally negates the value of caring. She dismisses the value of spending time with children as they grow, the wonder of actively participating in their development. And that is tragic.
As a guy I'll say very clearly, I would not trade my time with my kids for the best job with the highest pay in the world. Those hours were more fulfilling and enriching to me than the best novel I've read or the most lucrative account I've ever managed. I feel sorry for Hirshman that she doesn't understand this.
This is all quite ironic given this complaint of Hirshman's:
She is right about this. But by reinforcing masculinist ideology rather than trying to change society and its values, Hirshman reinforces this glass ceiling.
How many guys are going to want to take the time and energy away from being "successful" in Hirshman's terms, when Hirshman herself is devaluing what happens at home? When Hirshman is basically confirming these guys' view that housework and childcare are not worthy pursuits for intelligent, educated humans?
What will change things? The kinds of discussions we are seeing among dads, especially stay at home dads, who have grappled with what Jeremy calls the dialectics of dad-hood. The kinds of shift in values that leads guys to actually want to stay at home with their kids, to downsize career and status expectations in order to have relationships with their children.
In short, the only way forward is to reject Hirshman's masculinist feminism and reorient ourselves to a feminism of humanity, which recognizes the importance of a balance, not just of material achievement but also of nurturing, not just of dominating but also of caring.
Because only by making nurturing and caring into priorities, by privileging them over the pursuit of power, domination and money, will we truly be able to achieve the humanist goals of the feminist movement.
Cross posted at Daddychip2
Let me start by saying I know there are lots of kinds of feminism out there. But feminism is important to me in part because it opens the door for guys to escape the gender straitjacket that we've often been forced into in the past. To do so we have to question and reject the masculinist ideology we've been imbued with. It's hard, but I believe well worth it.
This brings me to writer Linda Hirschman's arguments, aired over the past several months in the American Prospect and the Washington Post (see this post at Half Changed World for details).
Hirshman is angry at well-educated women who become stay at home moms. Here are her main points, in her own words, from a recent WaPost column:
... women who quit their jobs to stay home with their children were making a mistake. ... I said that the tasks of housekeeping and child rearing were not worthy of the full time and talents of intelligent and educated human beings. They do not require a great intellect, they are not honored and they do not involve risks and the rewards that risk brings.
With these arguments, Hirshman is reinforcing what I call masculinist ideology of the worst kind.
First, I think it's obvious to everyone that equality of opportunity for women has been an important goal of the feminist movement from the earliest days. But in my view, that's not enough.
What's necessary is to actually change the values of our society.
Currently those values are masculinist. That is, our society values traditional masculine-defined measures of success -- power, money, competition, control -- while it devalues things that are traditionally associated with the feminine -- caring, nurturing, relationships, nonmaterial values -- which are also all crucial to the process of raising children. The lack of balance between the two makes for an unhealthy society.
Hirshman is reinforcing the skew towards masculinist values in our society, rather than trying to shift those values. Her perspective is that of a person who has all the advantages that make for success in a masculinist world -- with the sole exception of being a female.
Hirshman is arguing that women who are wealthy and educated and class privileged should be doing exactly what men in the same position do: dominate society, and be rewarded for their domination. For her it's the only rational thing to do.
And she's angry that some intelligent, educated people disagree with her masculinist priorities. She's angry that lives don't play out in the black and white way she thinks they should, that, as Miriam Peskowitz points out in her own excellent book, The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars, moms' lives are complex, women go into and out of the workforce, work part time or full time, that they change over time in response to their own priorities and needs.
According to Hirshman's reasoning, I was insane to stay at home full time with my daughter, given my graduate degree from a top university, and my potential earning power. I was crazy to downsize my career ambitions, to forego higher pay and higher status, just so I could spend time with my kids.
Well, I know she doesn't really care what I do, since I'm a guy, but that's what she's saying.
But my wife -- very much a feminist -- who quit a corporate career exactly because it required the performance and internalization of masculinist ideology, because she wanted to have a full life more than she wanted to earn a six figure salary or move up the corporate hierarchy and exercise dominance over underlings, because she wanted to spend time with her kids while they were little, because she re-careered into a traditionally female job (teacher) -- Hirshman I'm sure would condemn her to the deepest pits of "feminist" hell.
Is money important? Is a challenging job important? Yes. But just as important are our kids. Hirshman just doesn't get it.
Hirshman continues:
the tasks of housekeeping and child rearing [are] not worthy of the full time and talents of intelligent and educated human beingsI have to admit that this was one of the most offensive parts of her argument for me.
Think about what she's saying here.
Firstly, spending time raising my children is not a worthy goal.
Secondly, she is dissing those people who actually do those tasks -- and I think she misses the fact that though related, housekeeping and child rearing are two distinct activities that are very different in their importance. She is relegating people, men and women, who don't have the class privilege or personalities or skills to climb to the top of the class ladder, those people who from choice or necessity do those jobs, to the bottom of the heap, dismissing their contributions to society as second-rate at best.
Third, and I think most damningly, she totally negates the value of caring. She dismisses the value of spending time with children as they grow, the wonder of actively participating in their development. And that is tragic.
As a guy I'll say very clearly, I would not trade my time with my kids for the best job with the highest pay in the world. Those hours were more fulfilling and enriching to me than the best novel I've read or the most lucrative account I've ever managed. I feel sorry for Hirshman that she doesn't understand this.
This is all quite ironic given this complaint of Hirshman's:
Oh, and by the way, where were the dads when all this household labor was being distributed? Maybe the thickest glass ceiling, I wrote, is at home.
She is right about this. But by reinforcing masculinist ideology rather than trying to change society and its values, Hirshman reinforces this glass ceiling.
How many guys are going to want to take the time and energy away from being "successful" in Hirshman's terms, when Hirshman herself is devaluing what happens at home? When Hirshman is basically confirming these guys' view that housework and childcare are not worthy pursuits for intelligent, educated humans?
What will change things? The kinds of discussions we are seeing among dads, especially stay at home dads, who have grappled with what Jeremy calls the dialectics of dad-hood. The kinds of shift in values that leads guys to actually want to stay at home with their kids, to downsize career and status expectations in order to have relationships with their children.
In short, the only way forward is to reject Hirshman's masculinist feminism and reorient ourselves to a feminism of humanity, which recognizes the importance of a balance, not just of material achievement but also of nurturing, not just of dominating but also of caring.
Because only by making nurturing and caring into priorities, by privileging them over the pursuit of power, domination and money, will we truly be able to achieve the humanist goals of the feminist movement.
Cross posted at Daddychip2
Sunday, June 18, 2006
Heroes vs. Villains
Scenes from playgroup, Karen's house:
"No!" cried Nico, snatching a fire truck out of Liko's hands. "Nico! Nico!" he said, clutching the truck to his chest.
Nico's dad Stefano took him into a corner and held him close. For the 10th time that afternoon, Stefano patiently explained the concept of sharing to his toddler.
Nico twisted out of his dad’s arms and ran off. Stefano's shoulders slumped. Nico had been a handful; he was often a handful in playgroup, pushing other kids, throwing things, grabbing toys, requiring constant management. Stefano was plainly worn out and perhaps slightly embarrassed.
Among the parents, there was an uncomfortable moment of silence.
Suddenly Karen spoke: "You're doing a great job, Dad."
It struck me as just the right thing to say. "Yeah," I added. "Stefano, you're a really good dad."
Karen and I both meant it.
Stefano just put his head in hands and sighed heavily.
---------------
The next day I was at a restaurant where Liko and I are regulars. Liko made himself at home, trying to get in every corner, touching everything, saying "Hi!" to everybody. It had been like that all day (and the day before, and the day before that...), him going a hundred miles an hour, me trying to keep up.
A professionally dressed middle-aged woman approached me during a respite, when Liko stopped to caress and sniff a row of flowers on the patio.
"I've been watching you two. I just wanted to say that you're doing a really great job."
"Uh, really?" I was taken aback and maybe a little guarded, uncomfortable with the idea that our antics had been so closely regarded.
She noticed my reaction, and tried to explain. "I raised two girls myself, and now they're both in their twenties. I've seen a lot of parents in action, and I wanted to say that you have a really nice touch."
"Really?"
"I can see you know him well and understand him. You have a really good sense of when it's time to let him be and when you have to hold him back."
"Thanks." I tried to make up for reacting like a dolt. "I really appreciate that."
Liko took off into the restaurant and the clanging, steam-filled kitchen. I dashed in and grabbed him; when we returned, the woman was gone.
Afterwards, I thought about her praise and my reaction. I was embarrassed, feeling unworthy, initially thinking, actually, that she was a little strange for watching us, and even patronizing me in going out of her way to deliver the praise.
Then I thought to myself: you are a fuckhead.
She was trying to make me feel good, just as Karen and I had tried to pat Stefano on the back; such acts make a better world. I tried to see myself as the woman might have seen me. I tried on the idea of seeing myself through her eyes, of dropping my guard and just basking in praise from a stranger. Why not?
--------------
It's Father's Day, a day of praise for dads. Well, why not have such a day? Why not reflect the best in a dad back to him, so that he can see himself in some more exalted context than the diaper-changing, food-throwing, toddler-chasing reality in which he lives?
Is it just a greeting-card cliché to say that every dad is a hero? Maybe not. In parenthood, there's an element of evolutionary self-interest: animals that we are, we seek reproductive success. But as anyone who grew up reading comic books knows, heroes become heroes by ultimately transcending self-interest. It is always the villain who acts purely on self-interest, however deranged. The figure we call a hero acts on behalf of something greater than himself: an ideal, a tribe, a family.
Like Rilke's Apollo, the hero asks us to change our lives. The quest to become that hero is what we call commitment. Commitment - political and personal - creates an image that we chase all our lives and never reach, and yet there's something heroic in acts like caring for a child or marching against war, which defy distance and death.
We not just admit that to ourselves? Why not strive to be heroes, instead of the bunch of losers that we might feel ourselves to be? We need ideals. We need praise. "Our strongest weapons are our stories, the stories we tell our children, the ones we whisper to each other in beds of our own making, the myths that fill our imaginations," says Dialectical Daddy Tom in his June 17 post. "It is those weapons we must employ over and over to create the world we want."
--------------
It's Father's Day. Praise to my father!
I won't share with the reader his many fine personal qualities - I don't expect you to care - but I will say that my dad modeled for me the kind of thoughtful heroism that I'm trying (and possibly failing) to describe.
No, he's not perfect. Of course not; I’m not even sure what “perfect” means. But he taught me through his actions how to take care of other people; even now he asks me to change my life. For that I'm grateful.
Saturday, June 17, 2006
call for submissions
Hello
This is tomas from rad dad and I sending out this call for submissions for the next issue of rad dad, a zine which ariel gore called the best of 2005…on board already are an interview with radical father: matt hern, who runs the Purple Thistle Centre, a essay on race, and a piece on
experiences with a colicky baby…
So join us…
I’m looking for pieces that deal with sexism, gender, pop culture, relationships; however, feel free to just send something in.
I’m hoping to get the submissions by the first week of july and it will be available mid july.
Hope everyone’s well…
tomas moniz
http://raddadzine.blogspot.com/
and copies of #3 are still available for $3 for a limited time...
1636 fairview st
berkeley ca
94703
This is tomas from rad dad and I sending out this call for submissions for the next issue of rad dad, a zine which ariel gore called the best of 2005…on board already are an interview with radical father: matt hern, who runs the Purple Thistle Centre, a essay on race, and a piece on
experiences with a colicky baby…
So join us…
I’m looking for pieces that deal with sexism, gender, pop culture, relationships; however, feel free to just send something in.
I’m hoping to get the submissions by the first week of july and it will be available mid july.
Hope everyone’s well…
tomas moniz
http://raddadzine.blogspot.com/
and copies of #3 are still available for $3 for a limited time...
1636 fairview st
berkeley ca
94703
what i do...
is tell stories but I think I’ll take it easy for the next few days and leave you with the intro to my zine, rad dad #3, and a call for submissions to rad dad #4. This project has inspired, frustrated and most of all motivated me. I’ve meet amazing radical parents, who believe parenting is integral to any movement or aspect of social change. For once I’ve been able to feel validated by the many parents who believe as I do that any sustained attempt to create a better world has to be multi-generational -- involving, kids, parents, and elders.
I want to thank Jeremy for making this site possible and begin to drop hints of somehow organizing a radical parents conference in the bay area...
let me know
enjoy
tomas
Storytelling -- intro to rad dad #3
Parenting starts with a story:
My grandma, worried that her 3-year son had not spoken a word yet, had him chase down a grasshopper. Diligently, without complaint, the boy did and returned with a smile. Open she said; confused but with hesitation, he opened wide. Wide. She shoved it in and closed his mouth. Hablas, mijo, hablas. He spit it out crying. Crying and yelling. He has not stopped either since she says and smiles thinking of her now 50 year old son talking his time away in a New Mexican state penitentiary.
This is my father. He smiles when he tells this story now on a snowy day to my children in his trailer on the outskirts of town. He has been out of jail for a year now. My kids look to me for guidance. Do we believe? I can only smile. Teasing, my father says, ‘what mija you don’t believe me? Come here I’ll tell you more.’
I realize this is so central to my parenting. Stories. But I did not know this when I became a father. I didn’t know those afternoons or early mornings when my partner had to leave to culinary school and I had to discover what to do for the next eight hours that I was talking to both my newborn son and myself. I was showing us they way. I was imagining the path home. Telling myself, telling my son that success is possible, that despite my fear, my ignorance, my loneliness this path was traversable. It’s the stories that we tell each other that create connections, that foster empathy, that teach.
But we aren’t the only ones telling tales. I see now how storytelling works in a cultural, social level as well; how myths of capitalism, christianity, patriarchy are told over and over and over until our kids tell them back to each other while at play, to their teachers in their homework, to us if we listen during those tucking ins at bed time or in the quite hours when we wake up together in our bed. This is linguistic terrorism. I have also come to see how it’s our cultural stories that impact our kids more than any one thing can, more than parents, more than teachers.
My daughter combing her hair in the morning, sulks away from the mirror saying her hair is ugly. Who taught her that beauty standard because no amount ‘oh no it doesn’t, honey’ is gone change her view in that moment. My other daughter informing her sister as they play in the car that if she ever lives with a boy then she has to have sex with him. ‘Really, why?’ my partner asks. Because. As if that explains it. We need stories to counter these. We need heroes, legends, rituals that offer other narratives, other examples of how to look, how to live, what should be valued, what holds meaning, what it means to be alive.
Because that shit works; the other day my son, who used to be a vegetarian for the last five years (on his own accord) but now laughs at that Super Size Me film not because of what it’s saying but that it took the guy twenty whole minutes to eat his meal and then he puked. ‘Hella stoopid. I’d eat two in ten minutes,’ my son brags. As if it’s something to be proud of. My son who’s biggest dream right now is to own a scraper to cruise through south Berkeley bumpin base because it looks tight. Yes that’s my son, but so is this. My son taking his 3 year old cousin by the hand for a walk in the back yard and she picks up a worm. He asks her has she ever heard the story about Ella who ate a big ol’ worm when she was a baby thinking it was a cheeto. ‘Ever since then, he says ‘Ella is a little an animal lover. I think it’s the worm inside her.’ They laugh and laugh. I can only smile. I don’t know what it means, what the moral is, but I know my son is gonna make it. In his own way, on his own terms. But he’s gonna survive all the lies that are forced on him and so many others like him. All the bullshit he’s asked to believe or buy into.
What are the stories you need to tell? What do you share with your child, your lovers, your family and friends?
Our strongest weapons are our stories, the stories we tell our children, the ones we whisper to each other in beds of our own making, the myths that fill our imaginations shared among conspirators at bars or over camp fires or sitting in jail cells. It is those weapons we must employ over and over to create the world we want. I have realized that of all the things that give my life meaning it has been the spoken visions of the future or the shared memories of the past that sustain me in the present, that nurture my growth, my will, my determination. In stories, truth doesn’t matter, facts become fictitious, desire and purpose mold the outcome. If I need to hear stories of survival, if I need to find inspiration, if I need to laugh and laugh and laugh, I need only open my mouth, need only to sit with someone close and say ‘tell me a story.’ Here is one of my favorites to tell my kids when they ask why I do what I do. And I swear it is all true.
At 20, a few months before the birth of my son, I hitchhiked from Las Vegas, New Mexico down the highway to the State Penitentiary just outside of Santa Fe to see my father face to face. To try to find some answers, to perhaps find guidance. He tells me he fucked up. He should be out there with me, working with me, living life with me. ‘Because,’ he says, ‘I realized I’m a slave in here. And now I can only fight against other slaves. But if I was out there with you, when I realized I was a slave, I coulda done something, I coulda fought back at least. Somehow. In here, it’s just fucked up. All you can do is write and fight.’
My father explained that in jail, pencils are like daggers, you can write and you can stab. ‘Mira,’ he points to his hand, ‘here are the pencil tips that I cannot get out.’
I want to thank Jeremy for making this site possible and begin to drop hints of somehow organizing a radical parents conference in the bay area...
let me know
enjoy
tomas
Storytelling -- intro to rad dad #3
Parenting starts with a story:
My grandma, worried that her 3-year son had not spoken a word yet, had him chase down a grasshopper. Diligently, without complaint, the boy did and returned with a smile. Open she said; confused but with hesitation, he opened wide. Wide. She shoved it in and closed his mouth. Hablas, mijo, hablas. He spit it out crying. Crying and yelling. He has not stopped either since she says and smiles thinking of her now 50 year old son talking his time away in a New Mexican state penitentiary.
This is my father. He smiles when he tells this story now on a snowy day to my children in his trailer on the outskirts of town. He has been out of jail for a year now. My kids look to me for guidance. Do we believe? I can only smile. Teasing, my father says, ‘what mija you don’t believe me? Come here I’ll tell you more.’
I realize this is so central to my parenting. Stories. But I did not know this when I became a father. I didn’t know those afternoons or early mornings when my partner had to leave to culinary school and I had to discover what to do for the next eight hours that I was talking to both my newborn son and myself. I was showing us they way. I was imagining the path home. Telling myself, telling my son that success is possible, that despite my fear, my ignorance, my loneliness this path was traversable. It’s the stories that we tell each other that create connections, that foster empathy, that teach.
But we aren’t the only ones telling tales. I see now how storytelling works in a cultural, social level as well; how myths of capitalism, christianity, patriarchy are told over and over and over until our kids tell them back to each other while at play, to their teachers in their homework, to us if we listen during those tucking ins at bed time or in the quite hours when we wake up together in our bed. This is linguistic terrorism. I have also come to see how it’s our cultural stories that impact our kids more than any one thing can, more than parents, more than teachers.
My daughter combing her hair in the morning, sulks away from the mirror saying her hair is ugly. Who taught her that beauty standard because no amount ‘oh no it doesn’t, honey’ is gone change her view in that moment. My other daughter informing her sister as they play in the car that if she ever lives with a boy then she has to have sex with him. ‘Really, why?’ my partner asks. Because. As if that explains it. We need stories to counter these. We need heroes, legends, rituals that offer other narratives, other examples of how to look, how to live, what should be valued, what holds meaning, what it means to be alive.
Because that shit works; the other day my son, who used to be a vegetarian for the last five years (on his own accord) but now laughs at that Super Size Me film not because of what it’s saying but that it took the guy twenty whole minutes to eat his meal and then he puked. ‘Hella stoopid. I’d eat two in ten minutes,’ my son brags. As if it’s something to be proud of. My son who’s biggest dream right now is to own a scraper to cruise through south Berkeley bumpin base because it looks tight. Yes that’s my son, but so is this. My son taking his 3 year old cousin by the hand for a walk in the back yard and she picks up a worm. He asks her has she ever heard the story about Ella who ate a big ol’ worm when she was a baby thinking it was a cheeto. ‘Ever since then, he says ‘Ella is a little an animal lover. I think it’s the worm inside her.’ They laugh and laugh. I can only smile. I don’t know what it means, what the moral is, but I know my son is gonna make it. In his own way, on his own terms. But he’s gonna survive all the lies that are forced on him and so many others like him. All the bullshit he’s asked to believe or buy into.
What are the stories you need to tell? What do you share with your child, your lovers, your family and friends?
Our strongest weapons are our stories, the stories we tell our children, the ones we whisper to each other in beds of our own making, the myths that fill our imaginations shared among conspirators at bars or over camp fires or sitting in jail cells. It is those weapons we must employ over and over to create the world we want. I have realized that of all the things that give my life meaning it has been the spoken visions of the future or the shared memories of the past that sustain me in the present, that nurture my growth, my will, my determination. In stories, truth doesn’t matter, facts become fictitious, desire and purpose mold the outcome. If I need to hear stories of survival, if I need to find inspiration, if I need to laugh and laugh and laugh, I need only open my mouth, need only to sit with someone close and say ‘tell me a story.’ Here is one of my favorites to tell my kids when they ask why I do what I do. And I swear it is all true.
At 20, a few months before the birth of my son, I hitchhiked from Las Vegas, New Mexico down the highway to the State Penitentiary just outside of Santa Fe to see my father face to face. To try to find some answers, to perhaps find guidance. He tells me he fucked up. He should be out there with me, working with me, living life with me. ‘Because,’ he says, ‘I realized I’m a slave in here. And now I can only fight against other slaves. But if I was out there with you, when I realized I was a slave, I coulda done something, I coulda fought back at least. Somehow. In here, it’s just fucked up. All you can do is write and fight.’
My father explained that in jail, pencils are like daggers, you can write and you can stab. ‘Mira,’ he points to his hand, ‘here are the pencil tips that I cannot get out.’
Being a dad
Becoming a dad changed my life. Cliché, perhaps, but nevertheless true.
For the first two years of my daughter's life I stayed home and took care of her full time while my wife worked 10 hour days.
Given my wife's salary and career at the time, and my not-so-wonderful job prospects, it seemed like a no-brainer.
Turns out it was the best career move I've ever made. I've never had a job that was so demanding, yet so rewarding. By the time my wife decided she wanted out from her corporate life, I had become not just a different person -- I think that happens to anyone who has kids. I became a different man.
Being a stay at home dad (SAHD) back then (early 1990s) was unusual. When I started I thought nothing of it. But I quickly learned that it was outside the norms.
For the most part people, including friends and family, were very supportive. But I'd get the occasional strange look, the occasional woman who could not believe a guy could actually care for a little baby, the occasional comment about my daughter growing up confused, the occasional cold shoulder from stay-at-home moms at the playground. I have to admit, though, that I often went out of my way to let people know I was a SAHD. I was proud of what I was doing.
And I loved it. Yeah, it could be boring and isolating and sleep-depriving. But after a few months, I couldn't even imagine having to work 40 or more hours a week, having to be away from my little baby for so long. I appreciated the sacrifice my wife was making -- and I still am eternally thankful to her for giving me that time with our daughter.
One of the saddest days of my life came when I had to start working full time. My wife had taken a long-term leave from her job so she could spend a year at home with our daughter -- a year that ended up stretching to ten.
It was a tough change for me. I loved the job, and it was great getting paid to do something I enjoyed doing.
But the sadness in my heart outweighed the joy. And on the first day of full-time work, when I came home at the end of the day, our little daughter, two years old, was mad at me for having been gone the whole day. I nearly cried.
My sadness increased when our son was born three years after his sister. I was able to take a few weeks off from work after his birth, and my job provided me with very flexible work schedule, so I spent as much time with him as I could. And I loved that time. But I knew what I was missing. Being a stay at home dad had changed me forever.
These experiences made me totally reevaluate what was important in life. I'd been conditioned to see making money, achieving status, advancing in a career, "succeeding" in traditional terms, as the most important goal.
But my stint as a SAHD made me realize that all of that was much less important and meaningful than spending time with my kids.
After an internal struggle, I took a deep breath and downsized my career expectations. I put aside the ambitions I'd had, ambitions that would have meant 70-80 hour work weeks, coming home in time to tuck my kids into bed, missing the best years of their childhood.
As a result, while I wasn't able to stay at home full time, I have managed to spend more time with my kids than most dads. I walked them to elementary school every morning and picked them up in the afternoon. I worked several hours a week in their classrooms. Before he started kindergarten I spent at least one weekday morning every week just hanging out with my son. I've made it a point to spend as much time as possible with them.
The past fifteen years have been an adventure. They've also led me to see the world in a different way.
My dadding experiences have shown me the destructiveness of gender expectations and social norms that pigeon-hole moms as "caregivers" and dads as "breadwinners." They've highlighted the dialectics of dad-ness, the fact that for men to be free, we have to fight masculinist gender stereotypes and expectations. We have to be not just fathers, but daddies who strive to make the world a better place for our kids, but also for all kids. And we have to show our kids the way forward.
For the first two years of my daughter's life I stayed home and took care of her full time while my wife worked 10 hour days.
Given my wife's salary and career at the time, and my not-so-wonderful job prospects, it seemed like a no-brainer.
Turns out it was the best career move I've ever made. I've never had a job that was so demanding, yet so rewarding. By the time my wife decided she wanted out from her corporate life, I had become not just a different person -- I think that happens to anyone who has kids. I became a different man.
Being a stay at home dad (SAHD) back then (early 1990s) was unusual. When I started I thought nothing of it. But I quickly learned that it was outside the norms.
For the most part people, including friends and family, were very supportive. But I'd get the occasional strange look, the occasional woman who could not believe a guy could actually care for a little baby, the occasional comment about my daughter growing up confused, the occasional cold shoulder from stay-at-home moms at the playground. I have to admit, though, that I often went out of my way to let people know I was a SAHD. I was proud of what I was doing.
And I loved it. Yeah, it could be boring and isolating and sleep-depriving. But after a few months, I couldn't even imagine having to work 40 or more hours a week, having to be away from my little baby for so long. I appreciated the sacrifice my wife was making -- and I still am eternally thankful to her for giving me that time with our daughter.
One of the saddest days of my life came when I had to start working full time. My wife had taken a long-term leave from her job so she could spend a year at home with our daughter -- a year that ended up stretching to ten.
It was a tough change for me. I loved the job, and it was great getting paid to do something I enjoyed doing.
But the sadness in my heart outweighed the joy. And on the first day of full-time work, when I came home at the end of the day, our little daughter, two years old, was mad at me for having been gone the whole day. I nearly cried.
My sadness increased when our son was born three years after his sister. I was able to take a few weeks off from work after his birth, and my job provided me with very flexible work schedule, so I spent as much time with him as I could. And I loved that time. But I knew what I was missing. Being a stay at home dad had changed me forever.
These experiences made me totally reevaluate what was important in life. I'd been conditioned to see making money, achieving status, advancing in a career, "succeeding" in traditional terms, as the most important goal.
But my stint as a SAHD made me realize that all of that was much less important and meaningful than spending time with my kids.
After an internal struggle, I took a deep breath and downsized my career expectations. I put aside the ambitions I'd had, ambitions that would have meant 70-80 hour work weeks, coming home in time to tuck my kids into bed, missing the best years of their childhood.
As a result, while I wasn't able to stay at home full time, I have managed to spend more time with my kids than most dads. I walked them to elementary school every morning and picked them up in the afternoon. I worked several hours a week in their classrooms. Before he started kindergarten I spent at least one weekday morning every week just hanging out with my son. I've made it a point to spend as much time as possible with them.
The past fifteen years have been an adventure. They've also led me to see the world in a different way.
My dadding experiences have shown me the destructiveness of gender expectations and social norms that pigeon-hole moms as "caregivers" and dads as "breadwinners." They've highlighted the dialectics of dad-ness, the fact that for men to be free, we have to fight masculinist gender stereotypes and expectations. We have to be not just fathers, but daddies who strive to make the world a better place for our kids, but also for all kids. And we have to show our kids the way forward.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Introducing the Dialectical Daddies!
Today we become a group blog, a concept for which the Star Trek word "Borg" might apply.
Let me introduce my fellow Dialectical Daddies:
What is a Dialectical Daddy? It's the social dad, the dad as citizen of the world. It's a dad who loves his kids enough to work for a more just and sustainable society, a place where all children can grow up free, fed, and cared for. A Dialectical Daddy faces contradictions but never stops trying to resolve them. A Dialectical Daddy knows that if women are free, he'll also be free. He never stops trying to live the life he's imagined, consistent with his values and hopes. A Dialectical Daddy tries to be conscious of the impact of his decisions on the world and on the future in which his children will live.
That, anyway, with an awkward degree of grandiose hand-waving, is the ideal Daddy Dialectic tries to promote. Welcome dads!
Let me introduce my fellow Dialectical Daddies:
Gopal is a friend and colleague in the Bay Area media justice movement; we both serve on the Board of Media Alliance. He's also a sharp political observer and a stay-at-home dad in a communal home.
Chris is also a friend in so-called "real life." At one time he was - this is unbelievable to me now - the only dad my age that I knew in San Francisco. Chris is also a teacher, activist, rocker, and baker of cupcakes for his 3-year-old Cole.
Tom is also a teacher and activist who publishes the 'zine Rad Dad, whose perspective I value.
Chip is an experienced blogger and the father of teenagers. Though he's the only daddy I don't personally know, in his blog I found a progressive who fearlessly tracks his experience against his values and politics - a kindred spirit and a true Dialectical Daddy!
What is a Dialectical Daddy? It's the social dad, the dad as citizen of the world. It's a dad who loves his kids enough to work for a more just and sustainable society, a place where all children can grow up free, fed, and cared for. A Dialectical Daddy faces contradictions but never stops trying to resolve them. A Dialectical Daddy knows that if women are free, he'll also be free. He never stops trying to live the life he's imagined, consistent with his values and hopes. A Dialectical Daddy tries to be conscious of the impact of his decisions on the world and on the future in which his children will live.
That, anyway, with an awkward degree of grandiose hand-waving, is the ideal Daddy Dialectic tries to promote. Welcome dads!
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Dads vs. Globalization
My buddy and British spy Susan Godstone sent me "Is being a good dad ruining your career?" from the U.K. Observer, which links falling job security to the rising number of involved fathers and stay-at-home dads:
Actually, the article (by Rafael Behr) goes a way past the merely economic:
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This is probably as good a time as any to announce two things.
First, starting on June 15 Daddy Dialectic will become a group blog - I'll post in a few days to introduce my fellow Dialectical Daddies. Second, not coincidentally, starting on June 15 my wife will be off for the summer - she's a teacher - and I'll be ramping up my consulting and freelancing work for the duration. While it might seem like that'd give me even more time for daddy dialectics, in fact I'll be focusing on other things...things that pay money!
The current generation of 30-something workers may already be at the height of their careers. If we are lucky our earnings will peak in our forties, after which we will be obsolete - replaced by upstart, bargain-bin graduates. At best, we will have to take pay cuts. More likely we will be nudged towards retirement, for which few of us have made adequate provision...
If you care about spending time with your family that is a raw deal: work longer and harder to be a bit poorer at the end of it all. Instead of delaying the gratification of time off, perhaps indefinitely, people in their twenties and thirties should really be taking their leisure and family dividend when they can afford it. We won't get a life in retirement, so we should demand one now.
Actually, the article (by Rafael Behr) goes a way past the merely economic:
The loneliest I have ever been was sitting at the kitchen table at 2 o'clock in the morning while my wife and our newly born daughter were still at the hospital. Adrenalin carried me home. Then I grappled with an absurd dilemma: to tidy the house so that our new life could get off to an orderly start or to sleep. (Anyone who has had a baby knows the easy answer. Sleep.)
After a few minutes ineffectually carrying objects up and down the stairs and depositing them in random places I sat down and poured myself a drink. Then I cried. I like to think I was moved exclusively by relief that everything had passed without medical emergency. But if I'm honest there was also a pang of helplessness, the feeling that at that precise moment there was nothing I could do for my family. It is a terrible thing to fear redundancy at home and at work.
-----------------
This is probably as good a time as any to announce two things.
First, starting on June 15 Daddy Dialectic will become a group blog - I'll post in a few days to introduce my fellow Dialectical Daddies. Second, not coincidentally, starting on June 15 my wife will be off for the summer - she's a teacher - and I'll be ramping up my consulting and freelancing work for the duration. While it might seem like that'd give me even more time for daddy dialectics, in fact I'll be focusing on other things...things that pay money!
Liko's Newest Word
"E-mail."
Also: My previous entry provoked two readers to share examples of conservative family values creepiness. For your further amusement and horror, here's another one: "More and more fathers are becoming aware of their influence and regularly dating their daughters..."
Thanks to peeps at Other magazine for pointing me to this...my esteemed colleague Claire pretty much expresses my thoughts on the issue: "Why does Focus on the Family believe that only fear of sex will activate fathers? Are right wing fathers otherwise completely uninterested in their children?"
Friday, June 09, 2006
The LibDems vs. Homophobic Bullying
The fairly mainstream Liberal Democratic party of the United Kingdom launched an online petition as part of a coordinated campaign to stop homophobic bullying:
I'm posting this as a follow-up to my June 1 post (and the discussion it provoked) on bullying and raising boys.
I confess that as an American, with all my cultural biases, and even with my politics, I find it amusing that a national political party thinks it can legislate against bullying - on the other hand, it's good that they're doing something. No idea about the context or if this petition will have any traction in the U.K., but my God, here in the USA we're debating a fucking amendment to the Constitution that would explicitly forbid people of the same biological sex from getting married.
Our entire country is run by homophobic bullies!
Commenting, Liberal Democrat Shadow Education Secretary, Sarah Teather MP said:
"Our petition is calling for all schools to develop measures to tackle homophobic bullying. Taunts and name calling should be challenged immediately so that it’s clear such behaviour won’t be tolerated.
"Liberal Democrats are concerned about all aspects of bullying but are focusing the spotlight on homophobic abuse because it’s currently harder to monitor and stop..."
Liberal Democrat Higher and Further Education Spokesperson, Stephen Williams MP who organised the Education and Skill Select Committee's first ever session on bullying, added...
"If a pupil is bullied because of race, looks or a disability they are likely to at least have supportive parents. This is often not the case for young gay people and it is difficult for them to know which teacher they can confide in.
"Putting a duty on schools will ensure there is someone for the young person to turn to and will send out a message that homophobic abuse should be treated with the same zero tolerance as racist abuse. Schools should be safe places of learning for all children irrespective of their sexuality."
I'm posting this as a follow-up to my June 1 post (and the discussion it provoked) on bullying and raising boys.
I confess that as an American, with all my cultural biases, and even with my politics, I find it amusing that a national political party thinks it can legislate against bullying - on the other hand, it's good that they're doing something. No idea about the context or if this petition will have any traction in the U.K., but my God, here in the USA we're debating a fucking amendment to the Constitution that would explicitly forbid people of the same biological sex from getting married.
Our entire country is run by homophobic bullies!
Thursday, June 08, 2006
Rich Dad vs. Poor Dad
To my way of thinking, the Washington Post's Leslie Morgan Steiner represents everything that's wrong with the way the mainstream corporate media cover children and parenting: she's shallow, blind to anything that falls outside her cultural and economic comfort zone, and obsessed with counterfeit conflicts like the so-called "mommy wars."
A few days ago, she posted the following to her blog:
A June 1 article in The Washington Post ran under the headline Father Knows Best: Education Linked to Dads' Parenting Skills with the news that dads with higher levels of education are more involved in their children's daily lives. The survey involved about 4,900 men age 15 to 44 nationwide who were interviewed in 2002 and 2003 by the National Center for Health Statistics.
Based on the findings, researchers estimated that about 28 million American men have children under the age of 19. About 75 percent live with their kids. Those with more education tend to interact the most, the survey found. Among dads who had attended college, about 87 percent said they played with their children daily, compared with about 76 percent of those who had a high school diploma or less.
Roughly 65 percent of more educated fathers say they routinely bathe or dress their children, compared with 42 percent of those less educated. About 32 percent of more educated men read to their kids daily, compared with about 20 percent of less educated men...
This information is all interesting. I was glad to read about it. But what struck me as incredulous is that this survey marks the first time our government has questioned men about issues related to family life...No wonder the 2.3 million single fathers and 147,000 stay-at-home dads in this country feel invisible.
I don't feel invisible, exactly, and furthermore, this is not the first study of its type: in 2002 the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services "Fatherhood Initiative" produced a number of studies about male participation in parenting. What struck me about Steiner's entry, the comments that followed, and the original article is how no one saw the survey as still more evidence of the radical inequality that defines family life in this country.
Of course educated white-collar dads are more involved in the lives of their kids: they have more flexibility on the job and more options in life. Some might work more hours than blue-collar counterparts or maybe spend more time at home massaging spreadsheets after the kids go to bed, but many (not all, but many) can blow out in the afternoon to go to the doctor and they can take time off when necessary. Many - including yours truly - have the New Economy option of becoming freelancers or consultants, so that they stay at home more.
And of course our children benefit over the long run in terms of educational achievement, etc. That's how class works in this country. That's one of the ways that a few can prosper while the rest suffer. (BTW, via the blog Working Dad, I found this article about economic class integration at public schools - of course, no one talks about eliminating class altogether. Why, that's just not practical!)
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Of course, all is not rosy for the educated and affluent. Here's an anecdote, which is a warning to us all. A friend of mine teaches in an exclusive, very pricey afterschool program. If the parent isn't there to pick up the student at a certain time, the kid is brought up to the office and the parents are charged for every minute that the kid sits there waiting.
My friend noted that it is always the same kids who are left waiting. And those are always the same kids with emotional and behavioral problems; the two groups are identical.
I found this to be really disturbing.
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Speaking of disturbing, there's an illuminating and complex dialogue going on at the Rebeldad site about the social isolation of stay-at-home dads, in which I'm participating. Check it out.
Daddy Dialectic vs. Blogger
It seems that thanks to a Blogger network problem, Daddy Dialectic readers have only intermittently during the past 24 hours been able to post comments - naturally, this happened in the middle of my first attempt at an open thread ("worst parenting advice," below) and lots of people have told me about it. Thanks, and please try again - you never know when Blogger will get its shit together.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
Share the worst advice you've ever gotten!
I'm working on an article on the stupid advice parents can receive.
Here's my question to you, the reader: What's the worst advice you've gotten as a parent?
Post your comment!
Try to leave an email address so that I can contact you in case I quote your comment in the article.
With vs. Without Baby: The Play
Based on several more or less true stories!
Characters:
Waitron: Jeanne Garofalo
Dad: Tony Roberts (circa 1976)
Mom: Diane Weist (circa 1979)
Act I, Scene 2:
Scene: Local restaurant serving "California cuisine."
(DAD and MOM finish food, pay check. WAITRON stops to talk.)
Waitron: Hey, good to see you guys. Where's the baby?
Dad: At home with granma. We're on a "date" (makes air quotes).
Waitron: You guys look really different without the baby.
Mom: Yeah? How?
Waitron: You look like a hip young couple out on the town.
Dad: What do you mean?
Waitron: You just look different with the baby.
Mom: Not young? Not hip?
Waitron (stuttering): No...not like that..just different.
Dad: Maybe it's the fact that I'm wearing all black?
Waitron: You always wear black.
Dad: It doesn't stain as easily.
Act I, Scene 3:
Scene: Affluent street in West Coast city.
(MOM and DAD leave restaurant, walk down the street.)
Mom: Honey, yesterday somebody said that everytime he sees me, I look more like a mommy.
Dad: You are a mommy.
Mom: He said that sometimes he doesn't recognize me right away, that's how different I look.
Dad: You look the same to me. (Pause) Actually, I think you're sexier.
Mom: Why should we look different to other people?
Dad: We're always walking around with multiple identities, a couple in our head and at least one for every person we meet.
Mom: What if you hate the images people have of you?
Dad: You don't want to look like a mom?
Mom: I still don't feel like one. I keep trying, but I don't feel like a mommy.
Dad: That's OK. It's OK.
(MOM and DAD walk a block in silence)
Dad: Maybe we should try out other restraurants?
Mom: Yeah. Someplace where they don't remember us being a young, hip couple.
--------------
What's the point of this? No idea; it's just a synthesis of conversations I've had recently.
"Is the true self this which stands on the pavement in January, or that which bends over the balcony in June? Am I here, or am I there? Or is the true self neither this nor that, neither here nor there, but something so varied and wandering that it is only when we give the rein to its wishes and let it take its way unimpeded that we are indeed ourselves? Circumstances compel unity; for convenience' sake a man must be whole. The good citizen when he open his door in the evening must be a banker, golfer, husband, father; not a nomad wandering the desert, a mystic staring at the sky, a debauchee in the slums of San Francisco..." - Virginia Woolf, "Street Hauntings"
Characters:
Waitron: Jeanne Garofalo
Dad: Tony Roberts (circa 1976)
Mom: Diane Weist (circa 1979)
Act I, Scene 2:
Scene: Local restaurant serving "California cuisine."
(DAD and MOM finish food, pay check. WAITRON stops to talk.)
Waitron: Hey, good to see you guys. Where's the baby?
Dad: At home with granma. We're on a "date" (makes air quotes).
Waitron: You guys look really different without the baby.
Mom: Yeah? How?
Waitron: You look like a hip young couple out on the town.
Dad: What do you mean?
Waitron: You just look different with the baby.
Mom: Not young? Not hip?
Waitron (stuttering): No...not like that..just different.
Dad: Maybe it's the fact that I'm wearing all black?
Waitron: You always wear black.
Dad: It doesn't stain as easily.
Act I, Scene 3:
Scene: Affluent street in West Coast city.
(MOM and DAD leave restaurant, walk down the street.)
Mom: Honey, yesterday somebody said that everytime he sees me, I look more like a mommy.
Dad: You are a mommy.
Mom: He said that sometimes he doesn't recognize me right away, that's how different I look.
Dad: You look the same to me. (Pause) Actually, I think you're sexier.
Mom: Why should we look different to other people?
Dad: We're always walking around with multiple identities, a couple in our head and at least one for every person we meet.
Mom: What if you hate the images people have of you?
Dad: You don't want to look like a mom?
Mom: I still don't feel like one. I keep trying, but I don't feel like a mommy.
Dad: That's OK. It's OK.
(MOM and DAD walk a block in silence)
Dad: Maybe we should try out other restraurants?
Mom: Yeah. Someplace where they don't remember us being a young, hip couple.
--------------
What's the point of this? No idea; it's just a synthesis of conversations I've had recently.
"Is the true self this which stands on the pavement in January, or that which bends over the balcony in June? Am I here, or am I there? Or is the true self neither this nor that, neither here nor there, but something so varied and wandering that it is only when we give the rein to its wishes and let it take its way unimpeded that we are indeed ourselves? Circumstances compel unity; for convenience' sake a man must be whole. The good citizen when he open his door in the evening must be a banker, golfer, husband, father; not a nomad wandering the desert, a mystic staring at the sky, a debauchee in the slums of San Francisco..." - Virginia Woolf, "Street Hauntings"
Thursday, June 01, 2006
Boys vs. Girls
The following is based on a comment I made at Half Changed World, in response to a question posed by Jennifer of the blog Under the Ponderosas: "What makes you say society is hard on boys who aren't conventionally masculine?" It got me to thinking and remembering, and led me to a thought about raising my son that I don't think I like very much.
When I was a kid in Saginaw, MI, I played the flute in my junior high school band, the only boy to do so. There were twelve chairs, and for the first half of the first year, I was dead last. The drum section - all macho schmucks - teased and bullied me relentlessly.
At some point - driven by an impulse that I did not consciously acknowledge - I started to practice furiously. In a single session, I zoomed past all the girls from last chair to first, and I held that first chair for the rest of my time in band.
At roughly the same time, I challenged one of the drummers to a fight. I lost, of course - of the dozen fights I was in that year, the best I could ever manage was a draw.
But a strange - or maybe just predictable - thing happened: the teasing and bullying gradually evaporated.
With hindsight, I see clearly that the end of the harassment had everything to do with dominating the girls in the flute section. It helped that I was willing to fight with my fists, even if I lost. The important thing is that I fought at all.
I just put Liko down to sleep. While I was watching him sleep, I remembered all this. I asked myself: if he faced the same level of teasing and bullying, would I want him to fight other boys and dominate girls if that meant an end to his persecution?
I'm afraid that for all my dude-feminist posturing, the answer is almost certainly yes.
Times have changed and also, Liko won't grow up in a place like Saginaw. Hopefully, he'll grow up in a more forgiving, egalitarian social atmosphere, where gender is not quite so polarized and people are more secure in difference, than the one I experienced in the Midwest in the mid-Eighties.
But it would obviously be better if my ideals weren't put to any kind of test.
Postscript: I still play the flute, but only for Liko. When I take it out and start putting it together, he scampers off to find his plastic yellow recorder. While I play little baby tunes, he tries to imitate me, his eyes watching my every move.
Saturday, May 27, 2006
Anne Lamott vs. Her Critics
Anne Lamott isn't the kind of writer whom I ordinarily like; I prefer gloomy European eggheads. But during the first few weeks of Liko’s life, Shelly and I took turns reading aloud Lamott's classic memoir Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year, which we found to be hilarious and helpful.
Since then I’ve taken to reading her columns in Salon.com and I’ve really started to like the woman. It’s worth noting that Lamott does seem to be a little bit of a high-maintenance loon, but her writing is so amusingly human and relentlessly honest that I (for one) am willing to take her as she comes.
On May 22 she published a column in Salon detailing an “ugly and insane” confrontation with her now-17-year-old son Sam. Rather than quoting, I’ll let you read it. Sufficed to say that the column is full of anguish and pain at her son’s bad attitude and the turn their relationship has taken in his teenage years, and pivots on a slap Lamott delivers in a moment of weakness. It’s a common story – I was Sam, once upon a time, maybe even a little bit worse – and Lamott tells her side as candidly as she can. She doesn’t make herself look good, either. That’s part of the point.
The column provoked (at this writing) nearly 400 comments from Salon readers, many of them sanctimonious (“it takes a lot of something -- hell knows what -- to slap another person in the face”), laughably misguided (“what would people be saying if he’d been the one who slapped her in the face?”), self-righteous (“you’re a beater”), and sometimes even misogynist (“someone really needs to take this cupcake out behind the shed and slap her around”). Other Salon readers ably rebutted the worst comments, so I won’t add to the chorus.
But here’s what most struck a nerve with me: many commentators also condemned Lamott for writing at all about her son. “Lamott… has made a habit of cannibalizing her son's life for profit,” writes one person. “Violating your son's privacy by sharing this story here is a bigger mistake,” writes another, “and one that I don't think I would have EVER forgiven my parents for had they ever written about my foolish adolescent misdeeds in a public forum read by millions of readers.”
Since starting Daddy Dialectic in March, I’ve received two emails from people who called the blog “exploitative” for writing about my experience taking care of Liko; my critics even seem to be under the impression that I write Daddy Dialectic for some kind of financial gain. To which I reply: Ha! You have no idea what you’re talking about.
And so my first instinct was to side with Lamott; the first draft of this blog entry consisted of a defense of Lamott’s right and even duty to write honestly about her experience as a single mom.
However, in the process I thought a great deal about the limits, real and potential, that I impose on what I share and don’t share in Daddy Dialectic. Liko is still a toddler and so there is nothing I can write here that will reverberate in his social and emotional life; he’s just a little guy with little-guy problems, like learning to sleep through the night. The point of the blog is to document my own responses as a primary caregiver and think politically about my experience, based on the assumption that a dad-at-home is still a relatively new social phenomenon and therefore worth writing about.
However, there is a gigantic no-fly zone in Daddy Dialectic: my wife Shelly, who seldom appears except in passing. The reason is simple: she doesn’t want me writing about her. She and I have never discussed this, but after 14 years together, I instinctively understand that Shelly doesn’t want me talking about her or our relationship in any depth with a bunch of strangers, or even with friends.
And so you’ll never read in Daddy Dialectic about an argument we just had and any of my petty dissatisfactions as a husband. If, God forbid, one of us slapped the other in a moment of rage, you, dear reader, will just never hear about it. And I think that as Liko grows older, you’re probably not going to hear about our most painful growing-up moments. (There are, incidentally, ways to write about parenting in the teenage years that are respectful and appropriately distant. See, for example, the Daddychip blog.)
In the end, I guess I have to agree with some of Lamott’s more thoughtful critics, that in writing about an altercation with her teenage son, she might have showed poor judgment.
But here’s the thing: anything I write about my relationships with my wife and son, or any member of my family, is between me and them. Reading about one isolated incident in the life of a family is not license for the reader to judge an entire person or entire relationship, the way Lamott’s critics have done. Lamott showed courage in writing so frankly about her experience, and that should be honored even as we politely question her judgment.
Writers who share and explore their experiences perform a socially necessary task that our society rewards in various ways, through pay and prestige. It’s hypocritical to read Lamott’s writing and derive meaning from it, and then turn around and criticize her for writing at all. Lamott might (we’re not in a position to know for sure) have damaged her son and her relationship with her son by writing about their life together, but it can be simultaneously true that the column is useful to us as readers. Certainly, as the father of a future teenager, I read it very carefully, as a warning. For that, Lamott has my respect and gratitude.
-------------------------
One last, different note. Like many of you, this morning I read details of the latest massacre in Iraq perpetrated by American troops: “The 24 Iraqi civilians slain on Nov. 19 included children and women who were trying to shield them, witnesses told a Washington Post correspondent in Haditha this week and U.S. investigators said in Washington. The girls killed inside Khafif's house were ages 14, 10, 5, 3 and 1, according to death certificates.”
Imagine, right now, soldiers kicking down your door and murdering your children before your eyes. All of us as American taxpayers helped murder those girls; we paid for the guns. Wherever you are and whatever the circumstances of your life, do what you can to speak out against the war. It has to stop.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Sharing vs. Imperialism
1. From my friend Alex comes this blog post on the relationship between American imperialism and sharing your toys, written by a dad staying with his son in the Philippines:
2. It's behind a firewall (therefore, no link) but in today's Wall Street Journal (page D1), Jeffrey Zaslow follows up on an (in)famous 1986 Newsweek cover story based on a Harvard-Yale study that suggested that a mere 20% of 30-year-year-old white, college-educated single women would EVER find husbands. At age 40, said the study, the probability fell to 2.6%.
OMG! Naturally, the story set off a media frenzy designed to fan panic amongst members of the group in question and get them to the altar. But Zaslow's followup finds the obvious: most of the women studied, who are now in their 50s and 60s, did get married at some point, if that's something they wanted for themselves. Putting aside the question of the desirability of marriage as an end in itself and measure of self-worth, the moral is obvious: don't listen to sociological studies and commercial media that say your choices will lead inevitably to disaster. Just live the life you've imagined, and take it all as it comes.
3. My friend Howie sent me this bit on how "Germany is examining ways to encourage mothers to return to the work force after they have children." See my my March 6 entry for commentary on this issue.
Josh and I went into another room and had a chat. I tried to articulate for him, once again, why he needs to share. We made a new rule – okay, I made the rule. If he can’t share it then he can’t keep it. What he won’t share we will give away, to that child or to someone else. Then I started reflecting on something I have observed about life in America: how riches often make people less inclined to share rather than more so; and how the version of childhood we have invented – more precisely, that the corporate market has invented – might contribute to this.
It is the very rich, those who can most afford to pay their taxes, who belly ache the most about them. (The drive to repeal the estate tax was concocted, it turns out, by the Walton family of Wal-Mart billions, et. al.) It is the very rich who often are the least inclined to give to someone else, relatively speaking....The Philippines are a very poor nation, materially. The U.S. is very rich. So what is the Bush Administration's priority in the Philippines? Enforcement of intellectual property laws, so that poor Filipinos will have to pay more -- often to us -- for cd's, auto parts, and most egregiously, prescription drugs.
2. It's behind a firewall (therefore, no link) but in today's Wall Street Journal (page D1), Jeffrey Zaslow follows up on an (in)famous 1986 Newsweek cover story based on a Harvard-Yale study that suggested that a mere 20% of 30-year-year-old white, college-educated single women would EVER find husbands. At age 40, said the study, the probability fell to 2.6%.
OMG! Naturally, the story set off a media frenzy designed to fan panic amongst members of the group in question and get them to the altar. But Zaslow's followup finds the obvious: most of the women studied, who are now in their 50s and 60s, did get married at some point, if that's something they wanted for themselves. Putting aside the question of the desirability of marriage as an end in itself and measure of self-worth, the moral is obvious: don't listen to sociological studies and commercial media that say your choices will lead inevitably to disaster. Just live the life you've imagined, and take it all as it comes.
3. My friend Howie sent me this bit on how "Germany is examining ways to encourage mothers to return to the work force after they have children." See my my March 6 entry for commentary on this issue.
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Odds vs. Ends, Again
Odds and ends on the Web:
1. ”A different perspective on motherhood,” by Karen Harris: One of my earliest kvetches on “Daddy Dialectic” was that we seldom hear in the mainstream media from moms who work while their men stay home with the kids. Harris’s Mother’s Day op-ed speaks for the go-to-work mom. Nothing groundbreaking or unexpected here; just an honest voice:
My husband has had his fair share of feeling disconnected--the only father at play dates, not included in the preschool-mom chats, asked by the pediatrician for the mother's input when he had all the knowledge of our son's illness.
This hasn't been the easiest of arrangements for me, either. I have the maternal instinct of wanting to be there for my children at all times. I sometimes wonder if I made the right decision. I wonder if I should have been the one there for the first words and the first steps. Instead, they were lovingly re-created for me when I came home from work.
My mother was a stay-at-home mom, as was her mother. They are and were wonderful role models. I have nothing but fond memories of growing up with my mother at home, volunteering at my school, and being part of my every day.
I think about how my sons will remember their father in that way.
2. "The Family as Firing Offense,” by Ruth Marcus: Again, no surprises, but in my opinion you can’t hear enough about how hard it is for blue-collar workers to get the time they need for their kids. Marcus reports on "One Sick Child Away From Being Fired: When Opting Out is Not an Option,” a report authored by Joan C. Williams at the University of California at Hastings:
Williams studied almost 100 union arbitrations that, she writes, "provide a unique window into how work and family responsibilities clash in the lives of bus drivers, telephone workers, construction linemen, nurse's aides, carpenters, welders, janitors and others." Many are mothers, but this is not just a female problem. Divorced fathers, and families that patch together tag-team care, with parents working different shifts, are similarly vulnerable. Indeed, nearly everyone is a potential victim of child-care plans gone awry: Among working-class couples, only 16 percent have families in which one parent is the breadwinner and the other stays home.
The stories Williams relates are foreign to those of us lucky enough to have flexible jobs and understanding bosses -- for whom it's no big deal to step out in the middle of the day to go to the school play. A bus driver is fired when she arrives three minutes late because of her son's asthma attack; a packer loses her job for leaving work because her daughter is in the emergency room with a head injury. A police officer is suspended for failing to report for unscheduled duty; she had arranged baby-sitting for her three children for her regular 4 p.m. shift, but couldn't -- without notice -- find baby-sitting for the noon-to-4 slot she'd been ordered to work.
In my experience, the problem for white-collar workers is that while there is more flexibility, there are fewer boundaries. Yes, you can go out in the middle of the day to deal with a mini-crisis, but you also find yourself obsessing over a spreadsheet at nine in the evening or working through the weekend on a powerpoint.
3. ”Paid-leave proposals gain steam,” in the Christian Science Monitor:
From same-sex marriage to universal healthcare coverage, Massachusetts has rarely shied away from blazing a trail of progressive reform. Now the state is considering another landmark proposal that would give workers here the nation's most generous paid leave policy.
The bill, which would pay workers their full salary (up to $750 a week) for up to 12 weeks to care for newborns or ill family members, comes just weeks after Republican Gov. Mitt Romney signed legislation that extends health insurance to nearly every state resident.
But the proposal is no liberal anomaly: Twenty-six other states considered some form of paid leave in their 2005 legislative sessions. California's 2004 program is currently the nation's most comprehensive.
Experts say the issue is gaining traction because it attempts to ease the difficulty many Americans face trying to balance work and family. A Harvard University report published in 2004 showed that of 168 countries studied, the United States is one of just five that don't offer some form of paid leave to women in connection with childbirth...
"Both liberals and conservatives recognize the reality of the situation," says Gary Chaison, a professor of labor relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. "But they have to make it seem like it is reflecting a new reality, without making it seem like they've become France."
I've lived in Massachusetts. I've traveled in France. There's no chance that anyone is going to mistake Massachusetts for France.
4. ”Being Poor,” by John Scalzi: A bit old now, and much blogged in its day (September 2005!), this is something that I only recently discovered. It’s a catalog of experiences of poverty from a family point of view: powerful stuff. The reader’s comments (350+) are worth a scan.
Monday, May 15, 2006
Followup on "Utopia vs. Families"
I was struck by the urgent and personal nature of the dialogue triggered by my "Utopia vs. Families" post.
While it might appear that "utopia" is a pretty abstract topic for a parenting blog, I'm relieved to discover that I'm not the only one who is struggling to find connections with other parents and family members, and with the future, through the medium of shared ideals. The concept of "utopia" that emerged in dialogue seems to me to be more about finding a better way to live, than it is about the blueprint for a perfect society. For most of us, the extended family my father describes is gone. In the Sixties and Seventies, young people proposed Kibbutz-style communes as an alternative, yet time proved their vision incompatible with contemporary life.
What can replace lost families and lost ideals? It seems to me dishonest for any one of us to claim we have the answer, but we shouldn't stop trying to find one. Antonio Gramsci: "The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born." Gramsci is also the guy who argued for pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the heart.
My friend Karen (mentioned in the first line of "Utopias vs. Families") described in a comment the origins of the "Peace Trek" coloring book, which I think is worth elevating to a post:
I responded that I love the image of Mark sharing with his infant son the utopian vision in "Peace Trek," no matter how flawed I think it is. It gets to the unstated question behind my post: what positive vision of the future can we impart to our own kids, through both words and actions?
Because I think you have to do that, even if we as adults are too corrupted by our experience to believe fully in that vision. It's a balancing act: we work to realize a vision of a good life and good society even as we try to train our kids to always question that vision, to modify and improve upon it as life and history goes on.
Hats off to Mark for providing us all with an example to follow.
While it might appear that "utopia" is a pretty abstract topic for a parenting blog, I'm relieved to discover that I'm not the only one who is struggling to find connections with other parents and family members, and with the future, through the medium of shared ideals. The concept of "utopia" that emerged in dialogue seems to me to be more about finding a better way to live, than it is about the blueprint for a perfect society. For most of us, the extended family my father describes is gone. In the Sixties and Seventies, young people proposed Kibbutz-style communes as an alternative, yet time proved their vision incompatible with contemporary life.
What can replace lost families and lost ideals? It seems to me dishonest for any one of us to claim we have the answer, but we shouldn't stop trying to find one. Antonio Gramsci: "The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born." Gramsci is also the guy who argued for pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the heart.
My friend Karen (mentioned in the first line of "Utopias vs. Families") described in a comment the origins of the "Peace Trek" coloring book, which I think is worth elevating to a post:
Jeremy found the said item hidden behind a big basket of toys, an oversized Richard Scarry book and a picture book of cloud nebulas. It was buried sort of like it was porn. Buried because there are things I find particularly annoying about the Peace Trek coloring book, things which more or less echo Jeremy’s sentiments.
The book was brought into our home by Mark. Mark is Argus’ father and the man that I love. Mark is an engineer/scientist who listens to Deepak Chopra and doesn’t find him kooky. Mark takes things at face value and does not devolve into worst case scenario. Mark thinks not only that the world can be good but that essentially it is good.
When Jeremy looked at the coloring book, I both avowed and disavowed it in the same breadth-saying I was too cynical for that kind of thing, but admitting, no gushing, how cute it was when Mark read it to Argus.
I responded that I love the image of Mark sharing with his infant son the utopian vision in "Peace Trek," no matter how flawed I think it is. It gets to the unstated question behind my post: what positive vision of the future can we impart to our own kids, through both words and actions?
Because I think you have to do that, even if we as adults are too corrupted by our experience to believe fully in that vision. It's a balancing act: we work to realize a vision of a good life and good society even as we try to train our kids to always question that vision, to modify and improve upon it as life and history goes on.
Hats off to Mark for providing us all with an example to follow.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Liko vs. "Some Evil Mothers"
This morning: Liko dancing to the Velvet Underground's Loaded... pictured above... singing "pa pa-pa paaah" to the chorus of "Who Loves the Sun." (Answer: "not everyone!")
I'm so proud.
Happy Mother's Day! To my wife, my mom, and everyone else.
"Some people like to go out dancin'. Now other people they go to work. There's even some evil mothers, they'll tell you life's just made out of dirt. That women, they never really faint, and villains always blink their eyes.That children are the only ones who blush, and life is just to die. That every one who ever had a heart...that wouldn't turn round and break it, anyone that played a part, whooa, and wouldn't turn round and hate it. Sweet Jane, Sweet Jane, Sweet Jane. Sweet Jane!"
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Utopia vs. Families
Last week Liko and I were visiting with our new friends Karen and Argus. Leaning in the playroom corner we found "Peace Trek: Family Coloring Book," published in 1986.
“Why are people in this picture smiling and relaxed?" write the authors. "They are at peace with themselves and with everyone else in the world. That would make anyone a happy person. We must learn to be at peace with ourselves before we can help bring peace to the world.” We see businesses with names like “Soy Foods,” “Planetary Holistic News,” “Holistic Health Clinic,” “Curative Herb Garden,” and “Peace Academy.”
“In a world at peace," they write, "schools will be different from the way they are today. Money no longer needed for national defense and weapons will be used to buy wonderful equipment for schools…In a peaceful world, schools will become lifelong education centers for the whole community. Schools will be places of great excitement and adventure.”
Promises, promises! Can you hear the creepy, passive-aggressive, be-happy-or-else, wheat-germ grooviness behind these lines? I can. I have experience with this sort of thing.
“In a world filled with conflict and fights over money and property, many problems are caused," concludes "Peace Trek." "Many people think that all these problems can only be solved by raising children differently, and with much more love and attention.”
It's pretty to think so, isn't it? This morning I re-read a 1985 essay, "Looking for Mr. Good Dad," by Ellen Willis, one of my favorite cultural critics:
Indeed. The conservative chokehold on family values had only just gotten started in 1985, mid-way through Reagan's regime; it's strange to think that people like Ellen Willis - whose own child was a year old at the time of the essay - or the creators of "Peace Trek" could still call to the page, even in past-tense, elegiac tones, visions of a future so fundamentally different from, and better than, the present.
Now we live in the future - the first decade of the 21st Century - in a world as exploitative, anxious, and wartorn as anything in dystopian science fiction. No one is "smiling and relaxed," unless they're on a psychotherapeutic drug. Few in post 9-11 America talk about utopia, except in the most derisive tones. The "family" - as an idea and as a unit in which most of us live - is a battleground, and yet we all find ourselves in the same trench facing an enemy who looks exactly like we do.
Even conservatives who relentlessly attack the latte-sipping urban liberal are really at war with their own ambition and the circumstances of their lives - the "liberal" is just a symbol and a scapegoat for the economic forces that undermine their yearning for stable home and hearth. In fact, no one of any consequence is ever willing to rhetorically "attack" the family.
Certainly not anyone who calls herself liberal, progressive, or left. Today even progressive visions of the family are fundamentally familial. Most of us in America make our experiments within the ambit of the nuclear family and capitalistic work, even as the nuclear family disintegrates and the demands of work tear children from parents and grandparents - covert, de facto attacks by employers are part of the landscape of our lives. If we really are in a war, it's a shadow war: it's us against someone else's profits. Perhaps because the family really is being undermined on every side, many of us are horrified by the prospect of quitting the safe familial realm and making the family an arena of utopian aspiration and experimentation – it sounds monstrous.
And the results of the radical ideas Willis delineates have been, when implemented in the real world, mixed. Take the Kibbitz movement. Early Jewish settlers in Palestine made children a communal responsibility. Babies slept outside the home, side by side in dormitories. "This experiment failed the test of reality," writes Israeli sleep researcher Avi Sadeh. "In a study that took advantage of the survival of communal sleeping on one kibbutz that still kept this tradition, scientists… compared the sleep of babies and young children in their parents’ homes to that of children who slept in communal children’s houses or in day-care centers. It was found that children who slept in their parents’ houses tended to have longer continuous periods of sleep than those in communal sleeping situations on the kibbutz…Researchers found that the kibbutz children’s sleep improved greatly after moving to family sleeping arrangement.”
Children are born of our bodies; it's not so easy and probably not so desirable to sever family from biology. Score one for familialism!
Maybe utopia and families don't mix. But when you think about it, all ideas of the family are ultimately utopian. No family utopia is at present more perfectionist, totalitarian, and widespread than the White American Christian ideal (which has counterparts in Black, Latino, and various Asian communities that differ in politically interesting ways).
Even non-fanatics hold in our minds an ideal of the perfect family; we all work to realize that ideal in daily life; all of us fail and suffer disappointment in not reaching that ideal. We try to forge a good life for our kids, inside and outside of standard gender roles: dad stays home; mom stays home; mom and dad split it all down the middle of a pie chart they post on the refrigerator; kids have two dads or two moms; we move to be closer to relatives; we tinker with disciplinary regimes, trying to balance our child’s need to develop as a creative person against the need to set limits.
And more explicitly utopian experiments still persist: in a recent New York Magazine article, Annalee Newitz profiles a 100-person commune on Staten Island, which sounds like "Peace Trek" in action. “Our cars are a perfect example of socialism,” says a founder. “Nobody owns them, so we treat them like shit.” If children are defined as a "collective responsibility," will they be treated like cars on a commune? Thanks, but that suburban townhouse is starting to sound pretty good.
And so we, from religious right to secular left, find ourselves trapped between the family life we've imagined and the quotidian, globalized reality of life in "the future." Last night Liz of Badgermama described her efforts, which have been so far frustrated, to launch a co-living community with other families. During the past year, Shelly and I have twice tried to set up more communal living situations with other families - we're not talking radical free-love vegan communes here, but just a mutually supportive, cooperative environment for our kids. Both efforts fell to pieces - or perhaps I should say are on hold for the moment - for many different reasons.
But when I think about it, all the reasons share an underlying unity having to do with the mobility and velocity of our society. Like our toddlers, we can't seem to sit still. There's always something better somewhere else, in a place we never seem to reach.
----------------
"Right now we can't waste time imagining or promoting alternatives to capitalism," a then-unknown Tom Frank once told me. "At this historical moment that's just soft-headed." At the time I disagreed. I was twenty-five years old.
Years later I interviewed the science-fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson. "There's got to be a utopian strand, there's gotta be positive stories," he told me. "You can criticize over and over again, but it also helps to have some vision of what should happen... All ways of trying to imagine some post-capitalist world are useful, even though - or precisely because - they are wish fulfillment and escapist in some senses. It means there are wishes still in existence for a better and more just world, and it means people want to escape, like prisoners, the current reality. All to the good!"
At the time I agreed with Robinson, yet today - in my mid-thirties - I tilt more towards Frank's position. Never has my daily life been brighter; never has my imagination been darker. The contrast is intolerable and I would like nothing more than for inside and outside to find some kind of harmony. Perhaps Frank and Robinson are both right. In such a case, I think Robinson's is the more courageous default position. If only I could find his courage.
“Why are people in this picture smiling and relaxed?" write the authors. "They are at peace with themselves and with everyone else in the world. That would make anyone a happy person. We must learn to be at peace with ourselves before we can help bring peace to the world.” We see businesses with names like “Soy Foods,” “Planetary Holistic News,” “Holistic Health Clinic,” “Curative Herb Garden,” and “Peace Academy.”
“In a world at peace," they write, "schools will be different from the way they are today. Money no longer needed for national defense and weapons will be used to buy wonderful equipment for schools…In a peaceful world, schools will become lifelong education centers for the whole community. Schools will be places of great excitement and adventure.”
Promises, promises! Can you hear the creepy, passive-aggressive, be-happy-or-else, wheat-germ grooviness behind these lines? I can. I have experience with this sort of thing.
“In a world filled with conflict and fights over money and property, many problems are caused," concludes "Peace Trek." "Many people think that all these problems can only be solved by raising children differently, and with much more love and attention.”
It's pretty to think so, isn't it? This morning I re-read a 1985 essay, "Looking for Mr. Good Dad," by Ellen Willis, one of my favorite cultural critics:
Why do men and women have such an unequal relation to parenthood? Is it biology - we bear children, they don't? Actually, this difference becomes inequality only in the context of a specific social system for rearing children - the family, or, to be more precise, familialism (since I'm talking about a system that affects us all, whether we're in actual families or not). A familialist society assigns legal responsibility for children to the biological parents; the society as a whole has only minimal obligations to its children...This system puts women at an inherent disadvantage: Since it's obvious who a child's mother is, her parental responsibility is automatic; the father's is not. And so the burden has always been on women to get men to do right by them.
[Nearly everyone] takes familialism for granted... After all, the family is so ancient, so apparently universal, that it seems as natural and fixed as sexual difference itself. Yet a mere 15 years ago [mid-1960's] it didn't seem that way at all. Feminists and other cultural radicals were pointing out that the family is a social arrangement, invented by human beings, subject to criticism and change. All sorts of radical ideas got a serious hearing: that children should be considered members of the community, rather than wards of their parents; that they are properly a collective responsibility; that every child ought to have a socially guaranteed right to be supported and genuinely cared for. Some of us envisioned a society organized around communal households, in which adults as a matter of course were committed to sharing in child rearing, whether or not they had biological children. With the conservative onslaught, debate on these ideas has been choked off...
Indeed. The conservative chokehold on family values had only just gotten started in 1985, mid-way through Reagan's regime; it's strange to think that people like Ellen Willis - whose own child was a year old at the time of the essay - or the creators of "Peace Trek" could still call to the page, even in past-tense, elegiac tones, visions of a future so fundamentally different from, and better than, the present.
Now we live in the future - the first decade of the 21st Century - in a world as exploitative, anxious, and wartorn as anything in dystopian science fiction. No one is "smiling and relaxed," unless they're on a psychotherapeutic drug. Few in post 9-11 America talk about utopia, except in the most derisive tones. The "family" - as an idea and as a unit in which most of us live - is a battleground, and yet we all find ourselves in the same trench facing an enemy who looks exactly like we do.
Even conservatives who relentlessly attack the latte-sipping urban liberal are really at war with their own ambition and the circumstances of their lives - the "liberal" is just a symbol and a scapegoat for the economic forces that undermine their yearning for stable home and hearth. In fact, no one of any consequence is ever willing to rhetorically "attack" the family.
Certainly not anyone who calls herself liberal, progressive, or left. Today even progressive visions of the family are fundamentally familial. Most of us in America make our experiments within the ambit of the nuclear family and capitalistic work, even as the nuclear family disintegrates and the demands of work tear children from parents and grandparents - covert, de facto attacks by employers are part of the landscape of our lives. If we really are in a war, it's a shadow war: it's us against someone else's profits. Perhaps because the family really is being undermined on every side, many of us are horrified by the prospect of quitting the safe familial realm and making the family an arena of utopian aspiration and experimentation – it sounds monstrous.
And the results of the radical ideas Willis delineates have been, when implemented in the real world, mixed. Take the Kibbitz movement. Early Jewish settlers in Palestine made children a communal responsibility. Babies slept outside the home, side by side in dormitories. "This experiment failed the test of reality," writes Israeli sleep researcher Avi Sadeh. "In a study that took advantage of the survival of communal sleeping on one kibbutz that still kept this tradition, scientists… compared the sleep of babies and young children in their parents’ homes to that of children who slept in communal children’s houses or in day-care centers. It was found that children who slept in their parents’ houses tended to have longer continuous periods of sleep than those in communal sleeping situations on the kibbutz…Researchers found that the kibbutz children’s sleep improved greatly after moving to family sleeping arrangement.”
Children are born of our bodies; it's not so easy and probably not so desirable to sever family from biology. Score one for familialism!
Maybe utopia and families don't mix. But when you think about it, all ideas of the family are ultimately utopian. No family utopia is at present more perfectionist, totalitarian, and widespread than the White American Christian ideal (which has counterparts in Black, Latino, and various Asian communities that differ in politically interesting ways).
Even non-fanatics hold in our minds an ideal of the perfect family; we all work to realize that ideal in daily life; all of us fail and suffer disappointment in not reaching that ideal. We try to forge a good life for our kids, inside and outside of standard gender roles: dad stays home; mom stays home; mom and dad split it all down the middle of a pie chart they post on the refrigerator; kids have two dads or two moms; we move to be closer to relatives; we tinker with disciplinary regimes, trying to balance our child’s need to develop as a creative person against the need to set limits.
And more explicitly utopian experiments still persist: in a recent New York Magazine article, Annalee Newitz profiles a 100-person commune on Staten Island, which sounds like "Peace Trek" in action. “Our cars are a perfect example of socialism,” says a founder. “Nobody owns them, so we treat them like shit.” If children are defined as a "collective responsibility," will they be treated like cars on a commune? Thanks, but that suburban townhouse is starting to sound pretty good.
And so we, from religious right to secular left, find ourselves trapped between the family life we've imagined and the quotidian, globalized reality of life in "the future." Last night Liz of Badgermama described her efforts, which have been so far frustrated, to launch a co-living community with other families. During the past year, Shelly and I have twice tried to set up more communal living situations with other families - we're not talking radical free-love vegan communes here, but just a mutually supportive, cooperative environment for our kids. Both efforts fell to pieces - or perhaps I should say are on hold for the moment - for many different reasons.
But when I think about it, all the reasons share an underlying unity having to do with the mobility and velocity of our society. Like our toddlers, we can't seem to sit still. There's always something better somewhere else, in a place we never seem to reach.
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"Right now we can't waste time imagining or promoting alternatives to capitalism," a then-unknown Tom Frank once told me. "At this historical moment that's just soft-headed." At the time I disagreed. I was twenty-five years old.
Years later I interviewed the science-fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson. "There's got to be a utopian strand, there's gotta be positive stories," he told me. "You can criticize over and over again, but it also helps to have some vision of what should happen... All ways of trying to imagine some post-capitalist world are useful, even though - or precisely because - they are wish fulfillment and escapist in some senses. It means there are wishes still in existence for a better and more just world, and it means people want to escape, like prisoners, the current reality. All to the good!"
At the time I agreed with Robinson, yet today - in my mid-thirties - I tilt more towards Frank's position. Never has my daily life been brighter; never has my imagination been darker. The contrast is intolerable and I would like nothing more than for inside and outside to find some kind of harmony. Perhaps Frank and Robinson are both right. In such a case, I think Robinson's is the more courageous default position. If only I could find his courage.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Moms vs. The Man
Miriam at Playground Revolution has posted a series of blog entries calling moms and dads to political activism. If combining parenthood and politics seems impossible, but you're still looking for a kick in the ass, read Miriam's May 5 entry.
Miriam also points to MomsRising, "a new organization founded by Joan Blades and Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner with the goal of championing core motherhood and family issues in political, social, and economic spheres."
It's a worthy effort, though when I look at the organization's actual program, I have to wonder why those issues - parental leave, flexible work, healthcare for all kids, etc. - are defined as only mom's issues. Why not define them as issues for any parent or caregiver? Though I understand why it makes sense to target strategic constituencies, it still seems a trifle retro given all the changes families are going through.
Eh, what do I know. I'm just a guy with a laptop in one hand and a dirty diaper in the other. As I've said elsewhere, I see myself as a mr. mom. I've signed up for MomsRising, and you should too.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
"Height of the campaign season" vs. "A very active, engaged co-parent"
Scenes of parenthood in San Francsico, from my fine neighborhood newspaper, The Noe Valley Voice:
Having a baby is hardly revolutionary, but District 8 Supervisor Bevan Dufty is destined to put his own unique stamp on it.
A gay man, Dufty announced in April that he is partnering with a lesbian friend, Rebecca Goldfader, to create a family. The couple plan to move under the same roof and raise the child together, while remaining open to other relationships.
The response in Noe Valley? Congratulations!
Actually, I found myself snickering at how the happy couple imagine life with baby:
The coming fall will bring not only the birth of Goldfader and Dufty's daughter, but it's also the height of the campaign season. Dufty plans to "campaign hard" for election to a second four-year term as supervisor, but being a good father is his top priority.
"I intend to be a very active, engaged co-parent," he says....
Dufty envisions creating a unique and diverse home environment... "I hope our home is like a fun salon, mixing food, politics, and good causes," he says. "I think that will be a great environment to raise our daughter."
Ha ha ha! Good luck on all that, Bevan. See? Straight, gay - it doesn't matter. People are all equally delusional.
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Speaking of San Francisco: on Wednesday, May 10, I'll be taking part in a "rapid fire" (three minutes, tops!) reading at Valencia Street Books, along with people like Charlie Anders, Tim Pratt, and Pat Murphy. The event, which starts at 7pm, is a fundraiser for Strange Horizons and the Speculative Literature Foundation, two of my favorite science-fiction related organizations.
Sunday, May 07, 2006
Jeremy vs. Liko
1. My grandmother – Nana, to me – died early Friday morning. That afternoon I took Liko to lunch. I found myself sharing with him my fragmented, half-submerged memories of Nana, though he did not, of course, understand me and spent most of the time throwing food on the floor.
The memories are not the sort of thing I'd write down. Nana didn’t share heartwarming stories by the fire. She didn’t play the piano beautifully or teach me to love Shakespeare. The most famous person she’d ever met was Jack Kerouac’s wife, with whom she’d go grocery shopping. She was a terrible cook. My memories of her do not stand out as instants in time, but rather as a Thanksgiving that did not begin and has never ended, one whose menu consists of dry turkey and cooked-to-death vegetables, with World Federation Wrestling and the Home Shopping Network playing endlessly in the background.
Yet she was humble and decent, the best sort of white, working-class New England Protestant. She had few illusions in life - as far as I know, she did not believe in God - and faced the end of her life with courage. I liked and respected her, and I’m going to miss her.
Liko met her once when he was only four months old. He will never know her or miss her. He will never know very much about her. This seems typical of my atomized family, whose mutually suspicious members are scattered across the continent.
2. All parents secretly long for the day when their children will be able to look past the unreasonable punishments and emotional failures and petty hypocrisies that infest all parent-child relationships, to finally see whom their parents really are and why they did all the things they did. We wait for our children to have children, so that we will be finally understood and forgiven.
But in my experience a parent’s desire for vindication is almost never fulfilled. Relationships with children are never de-complicated in the way a parent hopes, for the simple reason that life doesn’t work that way. Living systems grow more complex, not less; only death simplifies.
Well into maturity, the relationship with our parents keeps convoluting. We may respect our parents more and understand them better when we become parents, yet we still have to deal with their actual personalities.
In fact, seeing our parents more clearly through adult eyes can be much more painful than any disappointment we suffered as children or adolescents. The home a parent creates is all a young child can know; there’s no way for a child to measure her experience against another’s. The trust and thrall is absolute; our family is the one true family.
But children grow. They compare and contrast. They learn – they have to learn - to mistrust. Fissures and shortcomings appear. Families are like any institution, community, nation – some offer more freedom than others. Many of us come into young adulthood striving to be free of our families so that we can live the lives we have imagined.
The parent sees ingratitude, but the child is only protecting herself: I love you – what else can I do? – but you can’t tell me what to do and you can’t hurt me anymore.
3. I’ve found myself thinking recently about what a vast proposition and long journey parenthood is, and how there are so many opportunities for failure along the way. My teenage years were defined – I can admit this now that I am a father, I would have denied it then – by the long, slow disintegration of my immediate family. I don’t write this to embarrass my parents; it’s a common enough occurrence and there’s no shame in it. In fact, today the family divorce, that rite of passage, is worn like a red badge of honor.
Perhaps my parents were happy for all the years that came before, loving and cooperative, even as strains built up, repressed, perhaps, “for the sake of the children.” But today their marriage is defined in my mind by its ending, not its beginning or its middle. My parents have to live with the memories I have, unfair and half-seeing as they are. You can’t simply erase the past – or rather, you can’t erase other people’s memories of the past. You can’t replace their recollections and responses with a set you might find more congenial. You have to find a way to live with other people’s memories. You have to find a way to live with your own.
And so it goes. I can be the perfect father now and for many, many years to come – but what will happen when Liko is twelve? What kind of person will I be and what circumstances will we face? What kind of relationship will I have with my wife? Are there strains building within our little family that we are now repressing, sacrifices of selfhood made for the peace of the moment, that will ultimately undermine our collective happiness and integrity? How can we save ourselves, if indeed we need saving?
Liko will not remember his infancy or toddlerhood, when I changed countless diapers and wiped an infinite amount of snot and casually saved his life twelve times a day. Will I still be there for him when he is thirteen? Will I still take care of him at fourteen? Will he be as alone as I was? The uncertainty is maddening, and I feel an entropy, an accumulation of random errors, at the liminal edge of my experience that resists any conscious design on my part. The end is coming. The end is always coming. It never stops and no amount of love and sacrifice can stop it. We can only start again. Liko will never know his grandparents and he will always live far away from most of his scattered relatives, no matter where he lives.
4. From "How to write a memoir," by William Zinsser in the current issue of American Scholar: "One of the saddest sentences I know is 'I wish I had asked my mother about that.' Or my father. Or my grandmother. Or my grandfather. As every parent knows, our children are not as fascinated by our fascinating lives as we are. Only when they have children of their own - and feel the first twinges of their own advancing age - do they suddenly want to know more about their family heritage and all its accretions of anecdote and lore. 'What exactly were those stories my dad used to tell about coming to America?' 'Where exactly was that farm in the Midwest?'"
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Dads vs. The Delivery Room
Where have I been? Busy, sick, and busy. Still sick. Still busy. But nothing can stop "Daddy Dialectic"!
Here’s some interesting stuff I’ve read:
1) ”Who let the dads in?”, from the Australian newspaper The Age, provides a light-weight but solid overview of the issues involved with men’s presence in delivery rooms.
Throughout the First World, a dad’s presence is now compulsory, due mostly to social pressure – you look like a bad, disengaged dad if you don’t want to be there for any reason.
But "Who let the dads in?” raises some key issues that almost no one talks about here in the States (no one I know, anyway). “Trawling back through history or examining other cultures, there is scant evidence of men having a role at birth. Traditionally, birthing mothers are helped by a group of experienced women.” It’s little wonder that midwives and medical personnel sometimes don’t know what to do with the dad; it shouldn't suprise that a dad might be out of his depth and scared of what he sees and hears. This deserves sympathy and constructive action, not scorn.
“One of the problems is that today's new dads are the first generation expected to be present at birth, and cannot turn to their fathers for advice, says childbirth educator Julie Clarke. ‘There's a real gap in knowledge,’ she says."
Now that so many men over the past 30 years have seen their children born, it might be time to ask hard, frank questions about which men shouldn’t be there, because of temperament or other factors, and how men’s presence should be structured. There clearly needs to be even better preparation. Sure, there are classes you can take and books you can read, and doulas, midwives, and doctors are usually more than willing to talk and answer questions.
But these are often tremendously inhibited conversations, with men reluctant to share what’s really on their minds with experienced women or in front of partners. Men need to share birth stories with each other just as women do, to model how to behave and what to expect. And we should open the door for a range of styles and levels of participation in the birth experience, based on the individual's desires and limitations.
There should probably also be more and better after-the-birth support, or at least a more supportive culture.
Liko had a fast but harrowing birth - precipitous labor, double footling breech – in which he could have died and Shelly could have been injured. I remember cradling Liko in my lap two weeks after he was born. Shelly was sleeping; it was very early in the morning. I thought about the birth for the first time since it had happened, replaying it in my mind, and I just started weeping helplessly, uncontrollably. I was not weeping with joy. (To my surprise, I’m starting to get choked up just writing this down. I don’t often think about Liko’s actual birth.)
In retrospect, I think it's pretty clear that I was having a touch of post-traumatic stress, which is a medicalized way of saying that I held a memory of something that might have been better forgotten. I kept it to myself and the bad feeling went away of its own accord. If someone had asked me how I felt (no one did, that I remember, but those brain cells could be dead), I would have shrugged it off, as would most men, I think. In fact, in public both Shelly and I were pretty cavalier about the whole thing. That’s OK. Our birth was, in the end, happy. It could have gone horribly wrong, but things turned out OK.
But many men have experienced far more difficult births, helplessly watching their wives in pain and their children born in circumstances they see as horrific. Nothing any man experiences can even approach the journey his wife is taking, but his experience shouldn’t be discounted. There’s absolutely no reason for men to be silent, and there may in fact be substantial social and personal benefits from sharing experiences in some kind of structured, honest way.
2) Speaking of which, my very good, old friends Matthew and Karen have started keeping a “He said-she said” pregnancy journal for BabyCenter.com, where Karen works as an editor. Check it out, especially you expectant parents.
3) Lastly, see this interview with sociologist Jody Heymann on “how globalization has radically impacted families around the world”:
Parents' work has shifted markedly around the world—and that goes for every region. Men in particular have been moving away from farmed-based work, and into industrial and post-industrial work—so they've moved away from the home. Women, likewise, have moved into the paid labor force and away from the home…If this had been the only thing that had happened, the world would have seen better opportunities for women, and more opportunities for families to raise their income…
But the globalization of the economy meant that there was increasing pressure for workers to accept lower labor standards. Companies increasingly say, "Unless you accept lower wages, longer hours, fewer benefits, and less paid leave, we'll move our factory to another country." Nations likewise feel pressure from economic globalization not to implement family-friendly policies—such as paid leave for illness or when a child is sick, or paid parental leave. And that leaves working families struggling to balance work and their care-giving duties.
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