Before marriage equality, chop wood carry water.
After marriage equality, chop wood carry water.
Sunday, July 21, 2013
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Love makes a family
When you are a young adult, the clever and important question to ask is - "If x% of families are dysfunctional, what is the function of the family?" It is a time when you need to define yourself as an adult, as having an identity separate from the expectations and infantilizations of your parents. It is also a time of socializing with peers and learning that their families are as whacky and dysfunctional as your own.
By the time you are a parent, "what is the function of the family?" is an entirely practical and important question, and the answers are obvious, starting with the truth of this truism - "you don't understand your parents until you become a parent."
The function of the family is to raise children to adulthood. To protect and nourish children; to provide a safe environment; to educate and socialize children to function as capable adults. There must be something special at work that makes these commitments and obligations so compelling.
I have to believe there is some inheritance in the human genome that makes the attentiveness and constancy required for raising a child really, really rewarding. Intrinsically satisfying, so that even when you are tired, frustrated, exasperated, this is still what you most want to be doing. So that even when you don't have the energy for childrearing, you somehow have the energy for childrearing.
It feels like love. Love like you have never felt. Love to where you know that you would lay down your life, in a heartbeat, to save the life of your child.
Just the happy daily being-there-ness of loving your child feels intrinsically nourishing. And this is a good thing.
By the time you are a parent, "what is the function of the family?" is an entirely practical and important question, and the answers are obvious, starting with the truth of this truism - "you don't understand your parents until you become a parent."
The function of the family is to raise children to adulthood. To protect and nourish children; to provide a safe environment; to educate and socialize children to function as capable adults. There must be something special at work that makes these commitments and obligations so compelling.
I have to believe there is some inheritance in the human genome that makes the attentiveness and constancy required for raising a child really, really rewarding. Intrinsically satisfying, so that even when you are tired, frustrated, exasperated, this is still what you most want to be doing. So that even when you don't have the energy for childrearing, you somehow have the energy for childrearing.
It feels like love. Love like you have never felt. Love to where you know that you would lay down your life, in a heartbeat, to save the life of your child.
Just the happy daily being-there-ness of loving your child feels intrinsically nourishing. And this is a good thing.
Sunday, May 12, 2013
What is power?
Most people have an intuitive sense of power and powerless. Power is that happy secure feeling of knowing that you are safe, that you have resources to ensure that your needs will be met, and that people will listen when you talk. Sometimes power is simply the self-satisfaction of lording it over someone, even if the stakes are not very high.
Powerlessness is the opposite - vulnerability about your physical and material safety, being unable to influence anybody or anything, and the humiliation of being subject to the will of others.
Michel Foucault defines power as "action upon the actions of others." For many, this definition is way too tame, because it makes no judgment about whether structural inequalities burden people with persistent and insurmountable disadvantages. Andrea Dworkin offers a starker definition - "power is the threat of violence and the sanction to deliver."
* * *
There is much more to say about all of this. But I need to take a long detour through parenting.
One of the first things I realized when Austin was a wee babe is that I do not have to dominate him. I need to elicit his cooperation. Of course, this also means me owning the frustration of my child being truculent and uncooperative and having a mind of his own; and there is me noticing when and whether this elicits anger in me, and why. And there is the fact of his power over me - Austin's claim to my attention and energy for all of his needs, and when and whether this is joyful, frustrating, poignant, empowering, humbling.
What becomes obvious after a while is that both of us exercise power and each of us is subject to the will of the other; and that fundamentally this is a relationship of cooperation rather than domination.
On the other hand, it is also true that as a parent I may deploy power in the sense of domination - as a threat of violence and the sanction to deliver. Parents are afforded a great deal of power and latitude, bounded by the governmental authority of Child Social Services and having the child removed from your home. Even far short of that extreme, I have never seen authoritarianism and violence produce an enduring or nourishing parent-child relationship.
* * *
Back to my central thesis, though - parenting has given me deeper wisdom about theories of power; wisdom about the experience of the exercise of power; wisdom about the meaning and the power of love; wisdom about the relationships and experiences that nourish life. And joy! Lots of it. I think this is the experience of parenting, and that my experience is much like the experiences of others who have chosen this path.
Powerlessness is the opposite - vulnerability about your physical and material safety, being unable to influence anybody or anything, and the humiliation of being subject to the will of others.
Michel Foucault defines power as "action upon the actions of others." For many, this definition is way too tame, because it makes no judgment about whether structural inequalities burden people with persistent and insurmountable disadvantages. Andrea Dworkin offers a starker definition - "power is the threat of violence and the sanction to deliver."
* * *
There is much more to say about all of this. But I need to take a long detour through parenting.
One of the first things I realized when Austin was a wee babe is that I do not have to dominate him. I need to elicit his cooperation. Of course, this also means me owning the frustration of my child being truculent and uncooperative and having a mind of his own; and there is me noticing when and whether this elicits anger in me, and why. And there is the fact of his power over me - Austin's claim to my attention and energy for all of his needs, and when and whether this is joyful, frustrating, poignant, empowering, humbling.
What becomes obvious after a while is that both of us exercise power and each of us is subject to the will of the other; and that fundamentally this is a relationship of cooperation rather than domination.
On the other hand, it is also true that as a parent I may deploy power in the sense of domination - as a threat of violence and the sanction to deliver. Parents are afforded a great deal of power and latitude, bounded by the governmental authority of Child Social Services and having the child removed from your home. Even far short of that extreme, I have never seen authoritarianism and violence produce an enduring or nourishing parent-child relationship.
* * *
Back to my central thesis, though - parenting has given me deeper wisdom about theories of power; wisdom about the experience of the exercise of power; wisdom about the meaning and the power of love; wisdom about the relationships and experiences that nourish life. And joy! Lots of it. I think this is the experience of parenting, and that my experience is much like the experiences of others who have chosen this path.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Being There
Parents are not an oppressed class per se, and not necessarily the go-to thinkers for political liberation movements. When you think "political intelligensia" you do not necessarily think "stay at home mom" or "doting father." On the other hand, there is a political wisdom that comes with parenting. Also a spiritual wisdom that comes with being wholly present in the present moment, as parenting calls us to do.
Many parents and parenting blogs ask the simple questions of - how do I get my child to try new foods? how do I get my baby to sleep at night? how do I make my child listen better?
At a meta-level, all of these are questions about power. Philosopher Michel Foucault defines power as "action upon the action of others." And this is where it gets really interesting.
As a parent, you ask yourself not only "how do I get my child to do x?" but the harder questions as well - What is the just exercise of power? How do I wield authority without crushing developing minds and egos? Or go ahead and crush away, just don't be surprised if you raise a sullen and embittered child. What is the harm of authoritarianism? What is the harm of insubordination?
Notwithstanding that I earned a Ph.D. in political philosophy, in the 13+ years that I have been raising a child I feel like I have become a lot smarter about power and society, not just in the realm of political theory, but emotionally and spiritually as well. I have had to answer the hard questions - why do people believe in God? why do we have to say the Pledge of Allegiance in school every day and not just once?, what is a pedophile?
* * *
As a young adult, before becoming a parent, I was involved in equality movements with clear notions of who are the oppressors and what are the oppressed classes. These movements deploy political theory more or less specific to different types of inequality, and strategically specific to shifting those inequalities of power so that jackbooted thugs will get their foot off your neck. Whether this is class, race or gender inequality, the battle lines are drawn much the same way.
But being a parent changes all that. You are, to your teenager, the jackbooted thug. So, yes, you have considerable power, but unapologetically so. Your child is vulnerable and unformed, and the more power you have to provide and to protect, the better. And this begins to shift the reflexive valence within liberation movements that power = bad. Power is what it is, more or less effectively deployed, and eliciting a whole range of human emotions that go with its exercise.
As a parent you have standing in society in a way that finds favor - in the tax code, for example, with child credits, day care credit, education credits and so forth. But you also have low status, because parenting is seen as a collection of quotidian obligations and chores that hinder your pursuit of public accomplishments which would bring higher social standing - a public life and a successful career. There is perhaps a bit of condescencion towards parents from those who have gained great intellectual and public attainments unfettered by domestic obligations. But there is also a deep satisfaction in the being there wisdom of parenting that allows us to graciously abide this condescencion while cherishing what we love.
Many parents and parenting blogs ask the simple questions of - how do I get my child to try new foods? how do I get my baby to sleep at night? how do I make my child listen better?
At a meta-level, all of these are questions about power. Philosopher Michel Foucault defines power as "action upon the action of others." And this is where it gets really interesting.
As a parent, you ask yourself not only "how do I get my child to do x?" but the harder questions as well - What is the just exercise of power? How do I wield authority without crushing developing minds and egos? Or go ahead and crush away, just don't be surprised if you raise a sullen and embittered child. What is the harm of authoritarianism? What is the harm of insubordination?
Notwithstanding that I earned a Ph.D. in political philosophy, in the 13+ years that I have been raising a child I feel like I have become a lot smarter about power and society, not just in the realm of political theory, but emotionally and spiritually as well. I have had to answer the hard questions - why do people believe in God? why do we have to say the Pledge of Allegiance in school every day and not just once?, what is a pedophile?
* * *
As a young adult, before becoming a parent, I was involved in equality movements with clear notions of who are the oppressors and what are the oppressed classes. These movements deploy political theory more or less specific to different types of inequality, and strategically specific to shifting those inequalities of power so that jackbooted thugs will get their foot off your neck. Whether this is class, race or gender inequality, the battle lines are drawn much the same way.
But being a parent changes all that. You are, to your teenager, the jackbooted thug. So, yes, you have considerable power, but unapologetically so. Your child is vulnerable and unformed, and the more power you have to provide and to protect, the better. And this begins to shift the reflexive valence within liberation movements that power = bad. Power is what it is, more or less effectively deployed, and eliciting a whole range of human emotions that go with its exercise.
As a parent you have standing in society in a way that finds favor - in the tax code, for example, with child credits, day care credit, education credits and so forth. But you also have low status, because parenting is seen as a collection of quotidian obligations and chores that hinder your pursuit of public accomplishments which would bring higher social standing - a public life and a successful career. There is perhaps a bit of condescencion towards parents from those who have gained great intellectual and public attainments unfettered by domestic obligations. But there is also a deep satisfaction in the being there wisdom of parenting that allows us to graciously abide this condescencion while cherishing what we love.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)