The top of the wrong ladder
Why does my 90 year old granddad pester my brother to get married? "When are you going to meet a nice girl and do your duty to society?" He's got great ideas like, "Let the neighborhood girls bring you baked goods." Asking my brother when he's going to get married is like asking the pope when he'll get into rap. It's not beyond the realm of reason, but boy, wouldn't that make the evening news. Why stake your hope on THAT?
Well I think things used to be a lot more homogeneous, expectations-wise. Theoretically, every white man believed in Jesus, popped out babies, and definitely wasn't a sissy. Now, even non-whites are (theoretically) afforded access to the economy and human decency. Non-whites! My grandfather isn't entirely at ease with this development.
Old homogeneous ideas are, like, there was once a correct way for all parents to raise all children. I'm using correct in the religious sense here. Correct parents had correct kids who turned into correct parents and so on. If anything went weird with a kid, you blamed the parents. I guess Freud kicked off the whole "Parents really really really matter" craze. But honestly I really don't think you can control what your kids turn out like. I question that whole assumption. I look back, and I see all kinds of things I liked in my parents that I emulated, and all kinds of ways I chose to become the precise opposite. It's like all these religions trying to out-breed each other. That just doesn't work. Quiverful kids' blogs are, like, "My parents are INSANE!"
There's also this idea of lateral inhibition, where for whatever reason, siblings tend to differentiate from each other. This makes sense to me because humans are specializers. Some folks are plumbers, some are teachers, and there's room for everybody. The whole reason we're killing it as a species is this whole specialization plus teamwork thing we do. Maybe having kids with diverse personality traits comes in handy.
That certainly seems to be the case with my siblings! My sister seems practically designed to be a parent. She has a superhuman capacity to nurture. She's got patience, wisdom, and endurance. She's great for the long haul stuff. My brother is a wonderful uncle. When he hits town, a crazy party goes down and the kids go wild. But you couldn't live like that all the time. He'll be the first to admit it. He's exhausted when he goes home.
If my brother became a parent, he'd have to turn off that whole crazy party thing, and then where would we be?!
I think my granddad is making the mistake of being too, like, cookie cutter in his thinking. I'm just talking technique at this point. I don't mean to make moral judgments here. He wants a puzzle made out of all the same piece, a castle made out of one type of Lego block. He likes the idea of one man, one woman, one house, one garage, one pot, one chicken, one job for your entire life, one role per gender, two kids, that kind of thing. He thinks that will work well. But I'm quite doubtful at this point. Suburban families aren't exactly the poster cats of happiness. I think this cookie cutter system pigeon holes a lot of people into roles they suck at. It's anti-specialization. Everybody must belong to an atomic unit and every atomic unit must both nurture children and make money, the more the better in both cases.
Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to do something more along the lines of, my mom had four kids. One of them, my sister, herself has four kids because that's exactly what she wants to do. The rest of us aunts and uncles, eternally grateful that we didn't have to raise our own kids, help in our own specialized ways. I don't know, somebody could make money and pay for college. Somebody could take the kids on adventures once a week. I'm sure 3 out of 4 of you can come up with a laundry list of ways you'd love to help just as long as you got to give the kids back most nights. That seems nice to me. Way nicer than this every-man-for-himself, so-called-family-values approach James Dobson made a lot of money writing books about.
I was raised with these atomic family ideals. I can't say what would have happened if we'd thought about it another way, but I don't know. Looking back, it's not the least bit surprising to me that all my siblings live a thousand miles apart. We were taught that everybody has to support their own family, so just like our parents, we put serious priority on self sufficiency, and left to go find it. When my ex wanted a baby I said, "Shucks, how hard can it be? That's a thing we're supposed to do, right? Sure." So it's not surprising that my marriage fell apart and I floundered for years.
This is the advice I want to give the kids in my family. Pay attention to what you actually want. I was taught there was only one correct thing to want, and wouldn't you know it, I fell for that. Be more like your uncle who knew what he wanted and got it.
Well I think things used to be a lot more homogeneous, expectations-wise. Theoretically, every white man believed in Jesus, popped out babies, and definitely wasn't a sissy. Now, even non-whites are (theoretically) afforded access to the economy and human decency. Non-whites! My grandfather isn't entirely at ease with this development.
Old homogeneous ideas are, like, there was once a correct way for all parents to raise all children. I'm using correct in the religious sense here. Correct parents had correct kids who turned into correct parents and so on. If anything went weird with a kid, you blamed the parents. I guess Freud kicked off the whole "Parents really really really matter" craze. But honestly I really don't think you can control what your kids turn out like. I question that whole assumption. I look back, and I see all kinds of things I liked in my parents that I emulated, and all kinds of ways I chose to become the precise opposite. It's like all these religions trying to out-breed each other. That just doesn't work. Quiverful kids' blogs are, like, "My parents are INSANE!"
There's also this idea of lateral inhibition, where for whatever reason, siblings tend to differentiate from each other. This makes sense to me because humans are specializers. Some folks are plumbers, some are teachers, and there's room for everybody. The whole reason we're killing it as a species is this whole specialization plus teamwork thing we do. Maybe having kids with diverse personality traits comes in handy.
That certainly seems to be the case with my siblings! My sister seems practically designed to be a parent. She has a superhuman capacity to nurture. She's got patience, wisdom, and endurance. She's great for the long haul stuff. My brother is a wonderful uncle. When he hits town, a crazy party goes down and the kids go wild. But you couldn't live like that all the time. He'll be the first to admit it. He's exhausted when he goes home.
If my brother became a parent, he'd have to turn off that whole crazy party thing, and then where would we be?!
I think my granddad is making the mistake of being too, like, cookie cutter in his thinking. I'm just talking technique at this point. I don't mean to make moral judgments here. He wants a puzzle made out of all the same piece, a castle made out of one type of Lego block. He likes the idea of one man, one woman, one house, one garage, one pot, one chicken, one job for your entire life, one role per gender, two kids, that kind of thing. He thinks that will work well. But I'm quite doubtful at this point. Suburban families aren't exactly the poster cats of happiness. I think this cookie cutter system pigeon holes a lot of people into roles they suck at. It's anti-specialization. Everybody must belong to an atomic unit and every atomic unit must both nurture children and make money, the more the better in both cases.
Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to do something more along the lines of, my mom had four kids. One of them, my sister, herself has four kids because that's exactly what she wants to do. The rest of us aunts and uncles, eternally grateful that we didn't have to raise our own kids, help in our own specialized ways. I don't know, somebody could make money and pay for college. Somebody could take the kids on adventures once a week. I'm sure 3 out of 4 of you can come up with a laundry list of ways you'd love to help just as long as you got to give the kids back most nights. That seems nice to me. Way nicer than this every-man-for-himself, so-called-family-values approach James Dobson made a lot of money writing books about.
I was raised with these atomic family ideals. I can't say what would have happened if we'd thought about it another way, but I don't know. Looking back, it's not the least bit surprising to me that all my siblings live a thousand miles apart. We were taught that everybody has to support their own family, so just like our parents, we put serious priority on self sufficiency, and left to go find it. When my ex wanted a baby I said, "Shucks, how hard can it be? That's a thing we're supposed to do, right? Sure." So it's not surprising that my marriage fell apart and I floundered for years.
This is the advice I want to give the kids in my family. Pay attention to what you actually want. I was taught there was only one correct thing to want, and wouldn't you know it, I fell for that. Be more like your uncle who knew what he wanted and got it.
"I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it."
ReplyDelete— Harry S Truman