Tag Archives: Parenting

The Son Who May — or May Not — Be Mine

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My Good Men Project column runs one day early this week, and it’s turned out to be a controversial one: I May Have a Son, But I’ll Never Know for Sure. It’s a true story I tell, one I’ve not written about before. I had wanted to write a piece on the Casey Anthony trial, focusing on the anonymity of the father of little Caylee, but I thought better of stoking that fire.

Excerpt:

In a medium-sized city in the Midwest, there’s a boy who will turn 13 next month. He lives with his parents, who were wed three months before he was born. He is tall, with dirty blonde hair and blue eyes. His name is Alastair*, and he may –- or may not -– be my son…

Fourteen autumns ago, I was casually dating a woman I’ll call Jill*. We had unprotected intercourse a handful of times in late October and early November. And just before Thanksgiving, Jill discovered she was pregnant.

She didn’t tell me until after New Year’s Day. While Jill and I had been in a “friends with benefits” arrangement, she’d also been growing more serious about another man, Ted.* She’d first slept with him for the first time two nights before she had last slept with me. It was that week that Jill got pregnant, and as she would later tell me, there was no way to know for sure which one of us was the father.

But there was no question which one of us was a better bet as a romantic partner. Jill had broken things off with me as soon as she and Ted had decided on an exclusive relationship (just before she found out she was pregnant.) Ted was several years older than I was, professionally and emotionally stable, and clearly falling in love with Jill. I was drinking, partying, with some time to go before I’d hit my rock bottom. Jill wanted to be a mom. Ted wanted to be a dad. I wasn’t sure what I wanted. In her mind, these facts settled it: the baby was Ted’s. Or it needed to be Ted’s…

At the Good Men Project and at Jezebel, where the piece was reposted this afternoon my choices — and the choices of a woman I slept with many years ago — are under intense debate. (The only thing I’m regretting at the moment is the pompous phrase “fourteen autumns ago”.) Not surprisingly, the GMP and Jezebel commenting communities don’t always agree.

Read the whole thing here or here.

Fashion isn’t frivolous: the importance of engaging our girls about everything

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My Thursday column is up at Healthy is the New Skinny this morning. Let’s Talk to Girls about Beauty, Too was written as a response to this generally excellent Lisa Bloom essay at the Huffington Post. An excerpt from my piece today:

…we also need to remember that fashion isn’t the enemy. Cruel and narrow standards and impossible ideals are. Ignoring subjects like clothes and hair does nothing to equip our daughters and little sisters (and, let’s face it, ourselves) to deal with the pressure to look good. All it does is leave many girls feeling shallow for still caring about beauty.

It’s not evidence of superficiality to take an interest in clothes or shoes or make-up. Girls can care about fashion while also caring about books, about sports, about nature, about making a difference in the world. We need to get past the myth that an interest in beauty makes you vain and frivolous. Girls need to be reassured that it’s okay to care about clothes and hair, but they also need reminders that they are valued for so much more than their looks. Let’s lose the false choice that says we either validate little girls for their brains or for their beauty. We need to be fearless about praising both.

This is personal to me. I’m not just a college professor and a writer. I’m also a father to a little girl. A day doesn’t go by that I don’t tell her how beautiful she is. But I also praise her for the other things she does, and as she grows more vocal, I engage her in conversation in a host of other topics. I read to my daughter every night – and I help her pick out her outfit for the following day. My little girl loves clothes as well as books. And I want to encourage her in both passions.

Read the whole thing.

Letting kids play on the gender spectrum: a partial defense of “Egalia”

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Several people sent me the link to this story that ran on Yahoo this weekend: No ‘him’ or ‘her’; preschool fights gender bias.

At the “Egalia” preschool, staff avoid using words like “him” or “her” and address the 33 kids as “friends” rather than girls and boys.

From the color and placement of toys to the choice of books, every detail has been carefully planned to make sure the children don’t fall into gender stereotypes.
“Society expects girls to be girlie, nice and pretty and boys to be manly, rough and outgoing,” says Jenny Johnsson, a 31-year-old teacher. “Egalia gives them a fantastic opportunity to be whoever they want to be.”

It’s a rather innocuous project, but judging from the hand-wringing comments below the piece, it’s an initiative that’s misunderstood. The school doesn’t, for example, deny biological difference (the children play with anatomically correct dolls.) The school doesn’t force little boys to play with dolls while insisting that girls take up sports. Rather, as Johnsson says, the whole idea is to give kids the “fantastic opportunity to be whoever they want to be.”

Having a daughter in preschool has reinforced something I already knew: gender happens on a spectrum. Some girls are “girlier” than others. Our Heloise wants to play with dolls more than soccer balls; her friend Ruthie prefers rough-housing. Some of the boys prefer playing house with Heloise; some of the boys prefer to tumble about with Ruthie. At this stage in their little lives, Ruthie and Heloise (like their preschool classmates) find themselves at different points on the spectrum of stereotypical gender behavior.

Gender essentialists insist that there are certain immutable truths: boys are violent, girls are nurturing. Anyone who spends time with little children will notice that at best, that’s only partly true. As a group, the boys do seem rougher and the girls gentler — but invariably, on close examination, a healthy minority of the boys are more tender than an equally noticeable minority of the girls. It’s not a binary, it’s a spectrum — and on that continuum between ultra-masculine and ultra-feminine, little kids are scattered at virtually every point. Furthermore, Tuesday’s rough-houser can be Wednesday’s little nurturer.

Biology isn’t destiny, but it isn’t irrelevant either. Rather, it’s one factor among many that goes into making children who they are. The Egalia pre-school seems committed to allowing children to find themselves without being forced too soon into rigid gender roles. That’s healthy and good. Continue reading →

Hug Your Daughters

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The Good Men Project is offering a series of pieces focusing on Dads this week, leading up to Father’s Day on Sunday. My column this week has a simple message to my fellow papas: Hug Your Daughters. (And your sons.) Excerpt:

One widely-believed myth about father-daughter affection is that if a dad stops hugging his daughter, he’ll drive her to seek affection from other males. I’ve heard of pastors who urge fathers to embrace their girls as a “prophylaxis against promiscuity,” and even some therapists take it for granted that there’s a demonstrable connection between paternal touch and a daughter’s sexual decision-making. But as Kerry Cohen points out in Dirty Little Secrets, her forthcoming study of teen girls and promiscuity, no study has ever shown a link. (The actual research on adolescent sexuality shows that parents have much less influence on decision-making than we like to imagine.)

The reason we should hug our daughters has nothing to do with preserving their virginity. It has to do with reminding them that no matter how overwhelming the changes of adolescence may seem, a father’s love is a constant in the midst of what seems like daily upheaval. Just as importantly, it’s an affirmation that their bodies aren’t as big a problem as our daughters fear that they are. As boys (and, sadly, older men) begin to leer and other girls begin to judge, girls desperately need reassurance that their bodies are not dangerous distractions. A dad who doesn’t freak out that his daughter has boobs can provide that reassurance as few others can.

Read the whole thing.

“I need your help, papa”: a reprint with an update on feminist fathering of a toddler girl

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From October 2010. Update at the end.

I linked last week to this post from a year ago: Princesses, princes, daughters and dads: a reprint against emotional incest. I stand by my thoughts in that piece still today. But reposting it reminded me that I haven’t written recently about Heloise (or HCRS, as we affectionately abbreviate her).

Our daughter is 21 months old. As of her last doctor’s visit, she’s in the 90th percentile for height and the 20th percentile for weight. She’s doing great on a vegan diet. So far, Heloise is not particularly interested in sports (balls and the like), but is very interested in clothing, and likes to go through her drawers and inspect what she has to wear. Heloise has got a rapidly expanding vocabulary and a great memory for people. She’s clearly social, perhaps even outright extroverted. Like her father, she likes to move quickly from one activity to the next, and is particularly interested in going to see friends and family. Our basic conversations often revolve around when we’re going to see Ruthie (her best friend) or “abuela” again. Walking down the street, she waves at strangers, saying “Hi” in an enthusiastic voice. When strangers don’t respond, Heloise looks confused and crestfallen — and it’s all her father can do not to walk up to those who have failed to notice my daughter’s greeting and tell them “Damn you, pay attention! My daughter said ‘hello!’”

And I notice the compliments she gets. Parents are hopelessly biased, of course. But it is rare that she is out in public without being told by strangers and acquaintances and relatives alike how beautiful she is. Some of that focus on her looks is perhaps due to her very special cuteness; some of it is the way in which we are socialized to praise girls for their prettiness. As a feminist and a father, as well as a professor and a youth leader who has spent much of my adult life working with teens around body image issues, I am acutely aware of how compliments at an early age shape young women’s identity. I am equally aware that as parents, my wife and I cannot entirely insulate our daughter against the most pernicious aspects of beauty culture. But we do what we can.

One thing we do is praise Heloise for things besides her beauty. When she remembers the names of the characters in her “Dora the Explorer” books; when she helps pick up her toys; when she successfully gets herself up and down the slide on her playset unassisted, we respond with wild enthusiasm. I know better than to never praise her looks: when everyone else is telling you something your Dad never mentions, that can make matters much worse (as anyone who works with teens knows.) But Heloise hears far more often how much she is loved, and how much her achievements delight her parents. There will come a time when she will learn that she can’t expect applause for performing routine tasks, but that time is not yet. At this age, I don’t think it’s possible to spoil a child with too much validation.

I also know that having loving and affirming parents isn’t always a prophylaxis against poor self-image. Mothers and fathers play a part, but so too do peers and the culture at large — with each passing year, indeed, our parental influence will diminish slightly as the other two influences grow. There is only so much that can be done to forestall that more or less inevitable process.

Whenever I change my daughter’s diaper, or take off her clothes, or give her a bath, I ask permission. I’ve done that since she was a newborn. “Heloise,” I’ll say softly, “papa’s gonna change your diaper. Is that okay?” Until recently, I got no reply. About six weeks ago, she finally started weighing in, usually with a “yes”. When she says no, I briefly — and I do mean briefly — discuss it with her. “But honey, you’re wet and you need your diaper changed.” That seems to do the trick. (It may not always, and I’m prepared for that.) Continue reading →

“What’s SlutWalk?” A note on rallying right next to a sandbox

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I will eventually stop writing about SlutWalk, but not just yet.

Not long before I got up to speak at SlutWalk on Saturday, Melissa Maynarich, a reporter from L.A.’s CBS affiliate, walked up to me. I was standing with the other organizers behind the stage. Melissa and I had chatted earlier, but this time she didn’t have a microphone in her hand or her camera operator trailing behind. She asked for a quick word, then pointed over my shoulder to the space just beyond the lawn where the throng of SlutWalkers was assembled. “Did you think about the fact that this is going on right next to a play area?”

I was surprised no one had asked that earlier.

When we first were given the West Hollywood Park location, I’d seen that a large sandpit with slides and swings was immediately adjacent to our assembly area. When I was meeting with city officials on Thursday, I’d briefly brought it up, and was told it would be “no problem.” As one remarked, “parents in West Hollywood are not going to have a problem with SlutWalk.” (The city has a very progressive reputation and is the heart of the Southern California LGBT community.)

While we were setting up, kids and their parents played in the sandbox. As our speakers began to speak, and as the space began to be jammed with people, small children swang and slid and dug under their parents’ watchful eyes. As our speakers told painful personal stories of rape and slut-shaming, and as at least a few scantily-clad speakers took the stage, the kids kept playing. I kept glancing over at the little ones, many of whom were my daughter’s age. And even before the reporter asked me, I’d been watching the eyes of the parents, locking friendly gazes with a few of them.

(Heloise and her mother weren’t at SlutWalk. As someone who for better or worse was so publicly identified with this, I didn’t want to make my daughter the focal point of attention. I’m reluctant, personally, to politicize very young children. It’s one thing for me to say “I’m here as a father”, it’s another thing to display my daughter as evidence. When she’s old enough to understand the work I do, and if she chooses, she’ll be welcome to come and participate. Other parents do feel differently, and I respect their decisions regarding their little ones.)

I told Melissa that I thought most of the very little ones were completely oblivious to the rally taking place just feet from their play area. Others, I suggested, might ask their moms or dads about what was going on. And speaking as a father and a long-time youth leader, I said there were many developmentally appropriate things one could say to a child who asked “What’s slutwalk?”

With small kids, the easiest thing to tell them is that SlutWalk is a group of people getting together to remind everyone that no matter what you wear, you deserve to be safe. I’d say, off the top of my head, something like:

“No one ever gets to touch you if you don’t want them to. Some people think that if a girl or a woman wears certain clothes, she deserves to be hurt. The grown-ups at this rally don’t believe that. That’s why you see so many people who look like they aren’t wearing very much. It’s kind of unusual, isn’t it? It’s okay to look and it’s even okay to laugh! It’s just not okay to think that any of these men and women deserve to be hurt because of what they’re wearing.”

Melissa cocked her head, looked up at me, smiled her best on-camera journalist smile, and thanked me. Her eyes seemed to suggest that many parents might not share my views or my desire for such a discussion.

More to come.

Daughters Make Their Daddies More Liberal

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This post is two years old, but if anything, I’ve grown more resolute in my liberal politics as a result of being a father to my darling, independent, assertive toddler Heloise.

There’s been a lot of research done over the years on the impact that becoming a parent has on one’s political preference. The common wisdom has generally been that becoming a parent, particularly to a daughter or daughters, would push that parent rightward in his or her politics. Indeed, back in my own youth, I heard some variation on this line from several sources: “What’s the definition of a conservative? A former liberal with a teenage daughter.” It “sounded” right, and not being a parent (but being quite left-wing), I was prepared, however reluctantly, to believe it might be so.

My student Hilary sends me a link, however, to this post at the wonderful FiveThirtyEight: Having Daughters Rather than Sons Makes You More Liberal. 538 provides a link to a PDF file of a forthcoming paper which summarizes a number of recent studies, all of which indicate that the presence of daughters in father’s lives (more so than in mother’s) tends to move men leftwards. This trend is true in both the UK and the USA (the two nations studied), and true both for ordinary voters as well as for politicians. For example, the study cites the work of economist Ebonya Washington:

By collecting data on the voting records of US congressmen, Washington… provides persuasive evidence that congressmen with female children tend to vote liberally on reproductive rights issues such as teen access to contraceptives. (She also) argues for a wider result, namely, that the congressmen vote more liberally on a range of issues such as working families flexibility and tax-free education. Her data — compiled partly but not wholly from voting record scores compiled by the three interest groups of the National Organization of Women, the American Association of University Women, and the National Right to Life Coalition — cover a cross-section of 828 members of four congresses of the US House of Representatives for the years 1997 to 2004. As her
final sentence puts it:

“Not only should we consider the influence that parents have on
children’s behavior, but we should acknowledge that influence may flow from child to parent.

Read the whole study, the comments at 538, and check out the fun graphs and charts. A statistician’s delight!

I argued in March that “strong public institutions which offer alternatives to traditional family structures and allow for maximum personal autonomy and responsible self-expression are a key way to promote a feminist vision on a macro-economic level.” That was and is my view, but it’s interesting to see that having daughters seems to lead other men (politicians and ordinary voters alike) towards that same position. It’s not the case that those who have girls are automatically more liberal; it’s difficult to argue that on most issues, Dick Cheney was somehow made more progressive by having two daughters and no sons! One shudders to think how much more extreme he might have been had he had “Larry” and “Mark” instead of Liz and Mary. (It’s worth noting that his nuanced and moderate position on gay marriage, rare for a right-wing Republican, was certainly influenced by having a lesbian daughter.) Continue reading →

Blood, gratitude, and “you are my sunshine”: my day with my daughter

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I’ve been sick much of this week, and needed to cancel both yesterday’s and today’s classes due to flu. I’ve also been editing the final galleys of Beauty, Disrupted, working on promotion for SlutWalk LA, and a host of other things.

I was still in bed this morning, fighting the chills, when I heard my daughter scream. Eira is out of town on business, and as I was sick, my mother-in-law (who lives with us) was getting Heloise ready for school. Part of her morning routine includes getting a little dab of perfume on each cheek, a ritual her Colombian abuela never misses. Somehow, however, the bottle of perfume had cracked — and my mother-in-law accidentally lacerated Heloise’s cheek and jaw. The howls of anguish were immediate, the blood was profuse, and in the space of about forty seconds, I was healed of the last vestiges of the flu.

The bleeding stopped quickly, but taking no chances, my mother-in-law and I bundled Heloise into the car and raced off to our pediatrician. Dr. Gordon is in Santa Monica, and it was rush hour, so the trip took nearly 45 minutes. When we got there, my girl shrank in my arms (she is no fan of doctor’s visits, even with the gentlest MD in town). I had hoped that Jay would look at her, give her a bandaid and a pat and send us home. But his jovial face took on a flash of concern when he saw the cuts. “It’s not serious”, he said, “but it may need stitches. And because it’s on the face, I’m sending you to a plastic surgeon.” Continue reading →

Love, like water, should flow downhill

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Yesterday’s post about Guess How Much I Love You prompted a phone call to my mother. After all, I had just written that if I were forced to choose between saving her or my daughter from a burning building, I wouldn’t choose the woman who gave birth to me. I brought it up with mama, and she had the expected reaction: “Of course. Love flows downhill.” (Meaning that we love those whom we raise more than we love those who brought us into the world.) Or rather, and here’s where it gets tricky, we should love our children more than we love our parents.

In the human past where children died so frequently that the average parent buried at least two or three of their kids, the kind of love we feel for Heloise would be, perhaps, unthinkable. (This is one of the classic debates in medieval and early modern history, and it tends to get folks riled up: did our ancestors love their children as we love ours, given the high infant mortality? Did they steel themselves against heartbreak by “holding something back”? Scholars of family and childhood can’t agree.) In a world without pensions of one sort or another, the need of the parent for the child increases exponentially.

In my family, the great horror of the aging is becoming a “burden to the children.” It’s an idea loaded with both class privilege and assumptions about what a family ought to be. Comfortable retirement communities with various stages of care or a team of home nurses are out of financial reach for many. And of course, many families believe that changing grandma’s diapers, while perhaps burdensome, is part of the natural reciprocity of life. “As she once did for you, you now do for her” and so forth. That’s not our familial ideal; the thought of someday needing Heloise to care for me fills me with horror. When it comes my time, and if my mortal coil shuffles off slowly and painfully, I’d infinitely rather the care I receive be given by kind strangers than by my own flesh and blood. I’d want Heloise to visit my bedside, but I’d want to shield her to the last from the decay of my body.

Her vulnerability was my responsibility; mine will not be hers. That’s loaded with class privilege, sure, but also with what I know is a very particular (and relatively new) view of what family is. I would lay down my life for my daughter, but would be horrified if she felt compelled to do the same.

Water, love, and duty should all flow downhill. That may not be a universal sentiment, but it is as deep a truth as I know.

You should adore your kids more than they adore you: in defense of “Guess How Much I Love You?”

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When Heloise was born, we bought (or were given) all the classic children’s books. We have Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny; Each Peach Pear Plum and Ferdinand. We read what we were read; I can’t wait to recite Charlotte’s Web to my daughter in the next few years, as I loved it so. (My brother and I grew up listening to the LP’s of E.B. White reading his famous book aloud.)

I’ve learned that children’s books can divide parents; everyone has one they love or loathe. But I was surprised to read this commentary at Daddy Dialectic about one of my daughter’s favorites (and one I also treasure), Sam McBratney’s Guess How Much I Love You. Jeff writes:

In it, two rabbits – an adult and a child – engage in a game of one-upmanship in their quest to say how much they love each other. The game begins with the little rabbit telling the big rabbit “Guess how much I love you.” The little rabbit then stretches his arms out wide and says “This much.” The big rabbit smiles, and, doing the same thing with his arms, says “Well I love you this much.” They then proceed in back and forth fashion through raised arms, extended legs, jumps, etc. until the little rabbit begins to fall asleep. At this point, the little rabbit presents his final claim: “I love you all the way up to the moon.” The big rabbit ultimately concludes the book by replying: “I love you all the way up to the moon – and back.”

According to the publisher this book has sold over 15 million copies and is published in 37 languages. The children’s book review publication Booklist gave it a starred review and said about the book, “There’s not a wrong note in this tender tale.”

Am I the only one who thinks the adult rabbit… is a bit of an asshole? Aren’t the adult rabbit’s constant moves to up the ante on the little rabbit evidence of an ego that’s out of whack? Even when channeled through professions of love, this kind of behavior doesn’t feel particularly tender to me. In fact, it seems to me that the adult rabbit’s answer to the question of how much love it has for the little rabbit should be, “Not enough to restrain myself from besting your every move.”

Gosh, that’s not how I read it at all. And since I’ve never written about children’s books before, I’m happy that my defense of McBratney’s charming tale will be my first. Continue reading →