I was an anthropology major so I am convinced by "most people in most societies throughout most of human history" arguments. For example, when I was skeptical of marriage I read Stephanie Coontz' "Marriage: A History." While she wasn't specifically pro marriage she argued that marriage shows up in almost every culture ever studied, and that, for me, was convincing that there's something to it. Perhaps being normative needs to one piece of a triangle, similar to a triangle I learned when vetting theology: culture, tradition, experience. I'm working on a piece right now about shared housing arrangements and also am inclined to say that single family dwellings don't meet the "normative through most cultures through most of human history" test (but welcome any insight on this). Is widow burning normative across cultures and eras? What about sexual abuse of children? When I use a normative framework, I'm looking for more of a larger sample and the existence of a way of being that can't possibly just be because we always have, or because the neighbors do it. The strongest example of this convincing framework , for me, is on the question of the existence of God.
It's interesting that you point out the existence of God as something that falls into this normative framework. I don't disagree about presence of the supernatural being normative, but it also seems clear that belief in a *good* God does not rise to the level of normative (basically only the Judeo-Christian religions?).
I don't think single family dwellings even meet the majority of needs today! I live in a 4 bedroom house with 4 other adults and we appropriate the domicile to make it work for our community's needs like many adults and intergenerational families in the neighborhood, but we are in some ways working against the grain, and it is just not highly feasible for many people (who aren't part of a nuclear family unit) to be able to make it work.
A friend who is farther along on the parenting journey than me says that with her teens/tweens she has opted out of "Because I said so" for "Because I love you." There are so many times in parenting when cold hard logic does not hold up - look at all the other kids who get to do/have/buy/attend that desired thing that they want SO BADLY! But when the discussion has been had and the final ruling has to be made, she feels that framing these limits as an outgrowth of parental love (and not merely authority) needs to be heard, even if in the moment it is misunderstood or even outright rejected.
Mentally bookmarking this! I expect to use "b/c I said so" plenty of times, but if I can replace it with "b/c I love you" even just some of the time, that puts such a different light on it. "Framing limits as an outgrowth of parental love" is a great way to put it.
For me it feels like parenting has been a process of sorting the wheat from the weeds. There are things I learned from my parents that I want to cling to, especially my Catholic faith. But even there, I have learned a lot about teaching the faith to children that my parents didn't have to give me and that I learned on my own as an adult. They did the best they could, but they were both the children of converts and to some degree that sense of the domestic church wasn't something they even had to pass on. For example, when I was growing up there wasn't really a family prayer time, other than grace at meals. So family prayer was something my husband and I had to learn slowly over time through trial and error. And we couldn't just imitate what we saw other people doing either because it turns out family rosary with everyone kneeling didn't work well with our kids' neurodivergence or our physical limitations. Both of us find kneeling physically challenging, so we've opted to pray while sitting instead of while kneeling.
And yeah there are many things our parents did that we don't want to pass on. I have learned a lot of parenting techniques and scripts from social media and online forums and therapeutic sources. Because I was raised in a home that had a lot of maladaptive adaptations for neurodivergence, by parents whose mental health challenges weren't diagnosed when I was a kid. I had to unlearn a lot of disciplinary techniques that were harmful and replace them with other ways of relating to my children. Sadly, I spent many years with undiagnosed anxiety parenting children whose autism and adhd and learning disorders were undiagnosed. I made a lot of mistakes. I needed to learn how to parent without yelling and without hitting. I needed to learn that anger was a symptom of anxiety. I didn't have scripts to follow from my parents. I had to seek elsewhere. So I'm less skeptical in general of therapeutic tools and scripts. And yet I have been very conscious in making sure the tools and scripts I adopt are in alignment with a very considered faith tradition and anthropology. I'm grasping at new tools not in a vacuum that lacks a positive vision but BECAUSE I have a positive vision, but was deficient in the tools I needed to realize that vision. When I was a young mother I despaired when I read about St Gianna Molla's vow to raise her children without physical discipline because I had no idea what that even looked like. I needed to find the tools to realize the new vision I was discovering.
I know my parents would have adopted those tools if they could have. They were doing the best they knew how and they did impart much that I want to carry away. The same father who struggled with anger management and who didn't know how to say he was sorry and for whose (probable) autism and selective mutism he didn't even have a name much less coping skills was also the father who told me when I was four that Jesus was my friend who was always with me and who I could talk to when I was lonely. He was the secular Carmelite who modeled intense daily private prayer and who went to daily mass and who later taught me how to pray the Liturgy of the Hours when I was an adult, but who didn't know how to give us the experience of family prayer when we were children.
I guess my rule of thumb for testing what was handed down from my family is precisely the Christian anthropology I learned from my wide reading when I was in college, from the saints and doctors of the Church and Church Fathers and from Christian poets and novelists and artists. Does this action align with what I know about God and human nature from the Catechism and the tradition of the Church? Those are the traditions I trust in faith and love. Does it bring me peace? Does it bring me/us closer to God? These are my guiding questions as I sift through materials about parenting autistic kids or oppositional defiant kids. And much of the time, probably more often than not, I find the scripts and tactics and gentle parenting approaches align quite well with what I believe about the child as a person created in the image and likeness of God with free will and a human nature that is bent and twisted by the Fall but also redeemed in grace.
My boys are currently six and three, and thus far, they seem to be pure-grade consequentialists. So, it has become a refrain in my house that, when they break one of mom and dad’s rules, one or both of two consequences is likely to occur: 1) someone gets hurt, or 2) something gets broken.
When one of those consequences takes place, I try to calmly point out that someone did indeed get hurt, or something did indeed get broken. Over time, I think I’m seeing my boys become more receptive to hearing “no” as they get better at anticipating negative consequences.
I also try to avoid hypocrisy, i.e. my wife and I try to follow every rule that we ask the boys to follow. Furthermore, if they catch us breaking a house rule, we try to apologize and course correct humbly and quickly.
This is another reason why it was such a gift to me that my parents had a baby when I was 18 years old--I have pretty clear memories of what it was like to care for him, at what ages different things happen, and the landscape of choices that they had to make and how they chose. With any future children I will definitely be content with mostly defaulting to what I observed them doing. I do think that their child-rearing style was a result of a lot of thought and effort; they had some pretty visible departures from their parents' choices. I feel grateful that they did the work sorting through the enormous transformation of pregnancy and early childhood that happened during their parents' and grandparents' lifetimes, so that I have to do comparatively much less of it.
This kind of thing certainly makes me think about what a different experience my first child vs my last child will have of family life. My husband is a wonderful father, and it certainly helps that his baby sister was adopted when he was 12. When we married, he'd changed a lot more diapers than I had.
Being the first child, you get somewhat less of your parents' wisdom practiced *on you*, but you get to absorb much more of it with more mature eyes as you see it practiced on your siblings!
I'm currently trying to teach my 11mo the word 'no.' Several times I've gotten comments along the lines of "pretty soon you'll wish he hadn't learned that!" These people seem to forget how important it is for ME to be able to tell HIM no! I'm not only comfortable with 'no' but I actually need him to understand it because I want to keep him and others safe. He doesn't yet know enough about the world to know when he has crawled somewhere dangerous or grabbed at my face in a painful way. He needs me to teach him these things.
Rather than actually saying 'no,' what I struggle more with is having to change my *tone* to go along with 'no'. I don't want to stop using a gentle, encouraging tone, but I quickly realized he can *only* understand tone right now, not meaning. So I've made my tone more stern/firm and it's almost physically painful to talk to him that way! And of course now he's started imitating my headshake, grinning... and then doing the same thing again. Sigh. He'll learn eventually... I hope!
There's a very moving part of Raising a Rare Girl by Heather Kirn Lanier (https://amzn.to/3WRRgOY) where she talks about how much she needs her disabled daughter to find her "no" which will allow her to communicate preferences to caregivers. It made me very grateful for my kids finding their own nos much more naturally.
Oh I remember that stage with my oldest (she's now 18, sitting beside me surfing the internet on her cell phone). What I remember being hard, but necessary, to learn was that along with a stern tone I needed to use actions to set those boundaries: picking up a child who is reaching for a power cord while I say no. Or gently removing the hurting hand and then setting the pinching child down on the floor while saying no, that hurts me. I had one child who was incredibly sensitive to too stern a tone and who would get very upset. It is hard to find that balance and to figure out how best to teach those lessons. And of course every child is different, so I felt that even though I'd been there before, I still had to learn it all over again five times to figure out how best to communicate with THIS particular
This is very helpful, thank you! We've definitely had a few moments of crying, and not clear whether in response to the physical restraint or the harsh tone. I've been trying to follow up with a cuddle and calm explanation (even though I know he can't understand yet) of how much we love him and how we want to train him in the way he should go. It makes ME feel better, at least!
When my kids were young I called it "off-my-butt parenting." Small children, I agree, need physical (gentle) actions to accompany our requests. It helps them learn the lesson, engaging more parts of their brains and taking your word seriously, knowing it will be enforced.
I try to make sure my parenting “Nos” have a clear “…because…” Even if it’s just “No, because I don’t have the capacity for messy painting this afternoon.” Or “No, because I’m not ready to teach you how to cut up vegetables safely.” Arbitrary Nos are a recipe for butting heads in our household.
Appeals to teleology are attractive to me on some level, but I struggle when I start to think too hard about it. We as humans are too good at telling ourselves stories and creating narratives about things to get it right all the time. I have come out of a theological tradition that used ostensibly teleological reasoning to justify a lot of gender-based nonsense (“But your lesser intellect as a woman is rooted in Creation!!!” type of thing.) So I have a certain amount of skepticism for claims of “design” or “teleology”—but this tends to leave me a little rootless at times, as you and Mrs. Psmith pointed out. Ask me again in five or ten years and maybe I’ll have a better answer.
There's a parallel "Yes, if" I was told to use with directors (and other similar figures). When you can't say "No" directly, you can explain what the Yes requires.
"Yes, we can have a live horse on stage, Darren, *if* all the actors are naked because we would no longer have a budget for costumes."
I like that framing. I used, "Find a way to say yes" as much as I could. Similar idea. Yes, you can paint this Saturday when Daddy is home to help. Yes, you can cut up vegetables when you are ready to learn how to do so safely. I will acknowledge that it can at times come across as disingenuous, so it has to be used somewhat selectively, and you have to be willing to stick with then "when" because your child is certainly not going to forget you said it!
Loved this line: "But the distrust goes further: the parents don’t trust themselves or their own parents." It seems somewhat unique right now that parents are trying to figure out how to parent while having basically no parenting role models in their lives.
You know… I know a young woman having a baby at my church. She is in her 30s. She is the only person in her family, husband’s family, or entire peer group including friends to be having a baby. I actually gave her some ad hoc baby lessons with my own 5month old - how to hold, change diaper, etc. She confidently rejected my offer of organizing a meal train when baby arrives, she has not hired a doula, and she is delivering at a teaching hospital…. in NJ. (if you know the maternal health landscape in NJ, you will understand why I am concerned for her). Obviously I’ll cook for her anyway - but not a single person in her life who is close to her seems to have sat her down and given her any kind of meaningful advice.
We have another couple in our friend group where the husband recently APOLOGIZED for his wife’s post partum moodswings to my husband (who was dropping off bread and soup I made and obviously did not care whether or not his wife was “in a mood”).
This is a very dangerous situation for mothers and babies, quite frankly. The isolation of those who DO want children is very real. And boomer grandmothers are the least well-equipped, least interested grandmothers possible (I speak in generalities, based on personal experience of many, many peers). I have a Gen X mom - I lucked out majorly in the “grandma lotto!”
"How do you make a “no” a welcome guardrail? How do you teach children to distinguish it from an unfair limitation?"
Make the 'no' reasonable and consistent with prior nos (& yess). I don't think 'fair' is the point - authority sometimes seems unfair because it is misunderstood. Don't worry about 'fair' if you're being reasonable and consistent!
Yep; as a parent, you have so much to GIVE them. You know so much more about the world. If they are responsive to you and obedient... you have more freedom and flexibility to carve out a trajectory where the whole family gets to do more awesome things.
I would describe my own life experience thus: to rebel against rebellion is to become traditional.
My father rebelled against his devoutly Catholic parents and taught me that we shouldn’t blindly follow what our parents believe. I, of course, directed that skeptical eye toward his own moral framework which I found lacking, which lead me into the arms of the Church.
The challenge, of course, is that my husband and I don’t have a great model of what Christian parenthood looks like. We can’t look to our parents, and we can’t look to our grandparents (since their parenting produced our parents). We turn to books at times, and social media other times, but ultimately that’s challenging as well - we cannot see the fruit of the approach these people are proposing. So we sometimes have to look at the fruit in our own lives. And we have reached out to mentor families, who have older children who remained faithful, to try and learn from them.
"But the distrust goes further: the parents don’t trust themselves or their own parents. They don’t believe they have something solid to pass on, nor that they can reliably discern what new thing is good for them or their children."
Really stuck on this quote. I see evidence all around me of this exact problem, even though I don't think I face it myself. It inspired to me ask my wife: "Do you have a 'gut' when it comes to parenting?" and she responded with a strong "no". Her sad elaboration: "My parents told me my point of view was wrong so often growing up that I learned not to listen to myself."
Meanwhile, I feel like I've got a really good "gut sense" of parenting situations, and when I drill down to "where did I come up with that?" it's usually "Oh yeah, my Mom/Dad did that and she/he is great, so it must be right."
When I zoom out, I see both of our stories as part of a larger question about "what is even the goal of parenting?" Young millennials like myself seem to be hearing that it's definitely not the way your parents made you feel bad all the time. Rather, it's some combination of catering to children's needs and desires, addressing kids' mental health issues, and providing them with endless achivement opportunities. In that world, "no" is hard to justify, except in extreme cases of safety. Meanwhile, my goal is to protect my little sinners from their own sinful natures while pointing them to Christ's love. This requires tons of "no"s, knowing that kids are like sheep, gentle and usually harmless in their intentions but in desperate need of shepherding to stay on the path.
For my own part, I think my gut is about a couple considerations:
-is this sustainable? (very Kantian concern) If I can't keep something up forever, I don't want to set an impossible pattern the first time it comes up, even if I could do it *once* (e.g. infinite books at bedtime).
-is this an important no? I usually don't use a firm no on something I prefer they not do, but am unwilling to set consequences for.
-are we steering toward a desired behavior? I always want to reward incremental progress, even if it's short of what I actually hope for/need
When my eldest was like two-and-a-half, I turned things around: I made a firm distinction between an ORDER and a REQUEST: He must obey an order, but if I was making a "request," he would be allowed to choose either "yes" OR "no" with no negative consequences (or disappointed noises!!) from me.
This was exciting, because after repeatedly picking "no" (and seeing it really worked: that his "no" could "stand"), he started to pick "yes" some of the time, and I got the great joy of having him help me "from the heart," not just because he was required to!
He was able to GIVE me something which wouldn't be possible in a "do what you're ordered to"-only regime!
I got the idea when reading the book "Boundaries"*. As I wrote a friend a bit ago, "I received the ideas in it like a secret map of living sanely in the relational world that I'd (mostly) not been given (before)." When he was 1-2, I was just first learning the THEORY behind of the things he was now encountering in practice. I love to take a new framework or paradigm I learn of, and reason out how it relates to different things I already know, and "Boundaries" was GREAT grist for that mill--so I remember having so much PLEASURE in my new discoveries, and in building strength.
When it's time to leave for home and your child cries: Soooo.. one time we were at one of those summer events with bounce houses and stuff... and we'd just gotten into the car, and the kiddo of mine who got upset / was crying because we had to leave was old enough to reason with... and the thought struck me: "If he does this as a regular pattern, I will just go to less fun things like this. I won't want look forward to it, and that is demotivating enough that I will definitely do it less. I know this is what happens--wait, this is information my kid wants."
So I gently told him these things: It wasn't a threat; it was just... something that he and I both knew to be true. (and, like, I guess it helped that I wasn't anxiously desiring to take my kids to lots of entertainment-focused events. and, like, I didn't have "fun" kids' events that I was REQUIRED to go to... due to being like a coordinator or something. other parents would have these variables line up differently.)
And he almost immediately got control of himself. (This is one of many situations where you get the payoff to being scrupulously honest with your kids.)
He really got the hang of "the system," with sometimes amusing results: Once when he was 4, a friend offered to let him visit her homeschool preschool for a day. The kids were making paper-bag puppets that were supposed to be cows. When she instructed them to put spots on their cows, and my son immediately asked her, "Is that a request or an order?" My friend looked a bit surprised, but she was canny... she'd been a Kindergarten teacher* before, iirc. Her reply: "Consider it.. a strong suggestion." He thought about it for a moment, and then, satisifed, put spots on his cow.
* Also that day, he asked her, "What do you think of Spiderman?" She responded, "Ehh, I can take him or leave him!" lol! (These are responses that DELIGHTED me by breaking out of the really dull overly-simplistic patterns of interacting with children that I'd seen so much.)
Also, I realize that what many parents find to be the real sticking point is ...getting them to do the things you order them to do. The way I "branched off" and offered a second mode (requests where he had a choice) assumed I could already get him to carry out the orders I gave him--with a very very high reliability.
(With one of our two boys, my husband strongly urged me to give out LESS orders--so as to ONLY give orders that I could ensure I'd follow up on... because I had gotten kinda blind about.. the fact we had a pattern of me letting some of my orders be ignored or defied by that kiddo!)
EDIT: I went "wait, do I know that's true?" So I majorly edited a part that started 'The thing where you "branch off" and offer a second mode (requests where he has a choice) assumes...'
Right there with you, and with others here affirming the good power of "no." When the relationship among parents and kids is built with lots of love and plenty of trust, including the parental trust in kids taking risks as they get older, the "no" is more earned. I find, with teenagers, that the no's we say can naturally be accompanied by reasons that are better understood. But there are still plenty of no's that our teens would rather be yeses! We don't belabor it with excessive reasons, which cross into lecturing so easily. In the formation of virtue, I'm a big believer in firmly holding some lines for behavior calmly, minimally, without the message that kids should somehow already "authentically" know to behave in some desired way. They will learn some things by doing/not doing, and they'll perceive the abstract reasoning later.
Chesterton's fence is worth quoting in full to see how those respondents misuse it:
> In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.
Yes, agree; those people who talk about Chesterton's fence in a way that suggests that it always means living by tradition apparently aren't actually reading Chesterton. He plainly meant you don't cut old fences down hastily, without knowing what they're for. But once you do know what they're for, sometimes you find out they have bad reasons: they protect the unjust power or wealth of a certain group, or something like that. And then you do cut down the fences. Same Chesterton who talked about fences said that it's in distinguishing between custom and creed that one arrives at the ability to break the conventions, but keep the commandments.
Which points to the answer to any investigation about the custom about burning widows alive. *If* it were true that this had a uniquely good and noble effect, then *of course it would be the right thing to do.* But because it is a rite involved with what amounts to demon worship, it can be safely discarded. You aren't getting rid of false religion without true religion as the antidote.
I read an essay once by Elizabeth Anscombe where (at least in my memory, can't find it now) she makes the case that authority over another person--including parental authority--can only ever be based in some need for authority that arises out of a true description of the flourishing of the people over whom authority will be held. Civil authority is justified in this way because the good of a community requires that somebody have care for the common good; likewise, parental authority is required because children, before a fuller attainment of reason and knowledge, require help in the attainment of their good, which is to be capable of flourishing lives, characterized by the capacity for friendship, further intellectual growth, and the use of their human powers. These things do not come to children automatically; they require a teacher, who will have to sometimes use authority to keep the child safe or to require children to learn habits of behavior they may not immediately understand as being necessary to their ability to attain human goods such as friendship.
This necessity of parental authority to always be aimed at the child's good is what I try to make sure is the basis of every time I say 'no.' As far as possible, I try to make sure my children understand the reasons for the no, but I'm not sure it is always possible to have a child experience a no as a "welcome guardrail," at least not in the moment, or at certain stages of development. But my hope is, that if I'm steadily forming the powers of reason in my children, and I'm always using authority for their good (rather than, say, to preserve my bourgeois level of comfort even against their healthy development, or to make sure I look good in public), that they'll be able to understand that better as they get older. Sometimes the line is hard to find; where, for instance, does the protection of my legitimate needs feed into their good, and where do I possibly need to alter my expectations in order to not set my good against theirs?
In some cases, this has meant going against, not tradition exactly, but the example of the few previous generations of parenting, which I think have left us examples of typical rules for children which actually aren't in children's best interests, but are more about the disordered desires of the parent. Think about houses full of unnecessary breakables that are so normal for our parents and grandparents; you have to parent children in a certain way in order to make children who will preserve these fragile surroundings whole, and I question whether you can really foster a curious, active childhood in these surroundings. Sometimes it seems like the goal of parenting is to make children who are able to take their place in the world they live in; sometimes it seems like you have to say it is the child's world that needs to change.
It is hard; constantly I wish I had a model to follow, but when I compare what I think I have reason to believe human persons are for (communion with God and virtuous self-direction through will and reason towards that highest goal, and towards the lower ends that flow from it), I just can't think that many of my most immediate models were parenting in a way that was well suited to raising children who would achieve those goals. Charlotte Mason has been helpful, I think. I find in her, advice for guiding children that fits rather well with what I think is a true sense of human nature. Her influence in certain communities, especially Christian homeschool communities is all to the good; it seems to create a lot of parents in my circles who are open to parenting in a gentler way than they, perhaps, were parented, and a lot of opportunities for hearing from other parents about what is working well in their families. Like most people of my generation, I get a lot of practical advice from the internet, and child psychologists/therapists on social media. Some of it, I'm a bit selective about because some of the advice seems to come out of a view of the human person that I'm worried gives too high a place to emotional expression, but some of this type of advice I still find to be helpful. Sometimes I like to imagine what some saint might have said about a particular scenario; would St. Francis have given a c*** about a child standing on his head on the couch?! Probably would have approved, actually. I think this helps me keep my parenting in close contact with the stories of lives I think are actually worth imitating; it's so easy to bracket the saints away, when really, the goal is for their models to actively transform what you care about and what you teach your children to care about.
I really value this conversation and your observations here. All of it seem part and parcel of the trend toward secularization too; so many young parents today have completely detached from the ways of their parents (or even relationship with their parents at all), tradition and, most importantly, religion. And historically, those have been pretty foundational spaces from which to learn values, norms, approaches. So the new generation turns to hawkers on instagram for advice, instead of leaning on a religious community. Obviously religious communities have passed on their share of negative examples, values and practices, too. But overall, I just see this conversation about parents feeling lost and turning to social media to guide their parenting as one more result of the decline of religion in the lives of so many in the West today, to their detriment.
Frankly, for many of us having children today, that decline happened prior to our generation. How do you refind your way when your parents, and sometimes their parents, disconnected themselves from tradition?
I’ll give an example- I learned 90% of what I know about breastfeeding from reading. My two grandmothers (“the silent generation”) both only breastfed for 4-6months. My mother imitated their example. For most of human history, breastfeeding 2+ years has been the norm. How do you learn something transmitted through a thousand generations of woman orally and experientially when culture/circumstances/family choices have destroyed that chain in the span of 1-2 generations?
You can rinse and repeat this on my mother’s side for religion.
Same with birth. Given the 633% increase in cesareans between 1965 and the present, my poor daughter is a 2nd generation cesarean baby; I wised up and had a VBAC, but in a hospital; if I ever have another child, I’m about ready to cross state lines from NJ to PA because I can have abortion on demand and without apology in this state with effectively no limitations, but cannot legally pay a medical professional to attend an out of hospital birth given my uterine scar.
Same with religion - as you said. I’m an Episcopalian, and we know what Spong (prototype of boomer “progressive religion”) did to TEC in NJ - my diocese. Absolute decimation. Something like an 80% drop in attendance.
Same with cooking - my grandmother was of the generation taught to cook with prepackaged meals and boxed mixes. She was Puerto Rican, so there was a lot of Goya in the mix. Of course the standard American diet absolutely destroyed her health, and she died young of diabetes after dialysis for several years. But she built a multi-generational extended family - and even that I fear is disappearing; I’m the only one of 13 cousins and maybe 30+ second-cousins with children yet. I’m 33.
It’s not just culture, circumstances, or family choices IMO; it’s economic enclosure; it’s the privatization of public good. I think that’s the best description of it. A woman in 1774 at the helm of her household was engaged in a completely different economic project than a Betty Draper in 1955 day-drinking, or a trad mom in 2024 posing on Instagram with her babies’ faces exposed.
I was an anthropology major so I am convinced by "most people in most societies throughout most of human history" arguments. For example, when I was skeptical of marriage I read Stephanie Coontz' "Marriage: A History." While she wasn't specifically pro marriage she argued that marriage shows up in almost every culture ever studied, and that, for me, was convincing that there's something to it. Perhaps being normative needs to one piece of a triangle, similar to a triangle I learned when vetting theology: culture, tradition, experience. I'm working on a piece right now about shared housing arrangements and also am inclined to say that single family dwellings don't meet the "normative through most cultures through most of human history" test (but welcome any insight on this). Is widow burning normative across cultures and eras? What about sexual abuse of children? When I use a normative framework, I'm looking for more of a larger sample and the existence of a way of being that can't possibly just be because we always have, or because the neighbors do it. The strongest example of this convincing framework , for me, is on the question of the existence of God.
It's interesting that you point out the existence of God as something that falls into this normative framework. I don't disagree about presence of the supernatural being normative, but it also seems clear that belief in a *good* God does not rise to the level of normative (basically only the Judeo-Christian religions?).
I don't think single family dwellings even meet the majority of needs today! I live in a 4 bedroom house with 4 other adults and we appropriate the domicile to make it work for our community's needs like many adults and intergenerational families in the neighborhood, but we are in some ways working against the grain, and it is just not highly feasible for many people (who aren't part of a nuclear family unit) to be able to make it work.
A friend who is farther along on the parenting journey than me says that with her teens/tweens she has opted out of "Because I said so" for "Because I love you." There are so many times in parenting when cold hard logic does not hold up - look at all the other kids who get to do/have/buy/attend that desired thing that they want SO BADLY! But when the discussion has been had and the final ruling has to be made, she feels that framing these limits as an outgrowth of parental love (and not merely authority) needs to be heard, even if in the moment it is misunderstood or even outright rejected.
Mentally bookmarking this! I expect to use "b/c I said so" plenty of times, but if I can replace it with "b/c I love you" even just some of the time, that puts such a different light on it. "Framing limits as an outgrowth of parental love" is a great way to put it.
You helped me understand what she was saying, thanks!
For me it feels like parenting has been a process of sorting the wheat from the weeds. There are things I learned from my parents that I want to cling to, especially my Catholic faith. But even there, I have learned a lot about teaching the faith to children that my parents didn't have to give me and that I learned on my own as an adult. They did the best they could, but they were both the children of converts and to some degree that sense of the domestic church wasn't something they even had to pass on. For example, when I was growing up there wasn't really a family prayer time, other than grace at meals. So family prayer was something my husband and I had to learn slowly over time through trial and error. And we couldn't just imitate what we saw other people doing either because it turns out family rosary with everyone kneeling didn't work well with our kids' neurodivergence or our physical limitations. Both of us find kneeling physically challenging, so we've opted to pray while sitting instead of while kneeling.
And yeah there are many things our parents did that we don't want to pass on. I have learned a lot of parenting techniques and scripts from social media and online forums and therapeutic sources. Because I was raised in a home that had a lot of maladaptive adaptations for neurodivergence, by parents whose mental health challenges weren't diagnosed when I was a kid. I had to unlearn a lot of disciplinary techniques that were harmful and replace them with other ways of relating to my children. Sadly, I spent many years with undiagnosed anxiety parenting children whose autism and adhd and learning disorders were undiagnosed. I made a lot of mistakes. I needed to learn how to parent without yelling and without hitting. I needed to learn that anger was a symptom of anxiety. I didn't have scripts to follow from my parents. I had to seek elsewhere. So I'm less skeptical in general of therapeutic tools and scripts. And yet I have been very conscious in making sure the tools and scripts I adopt are in alignment with a very considered faith tradition and anthropology. I'm grasping at new tools not in a vacuum that lacks a positive vision but BECAUSE I have a positive vision, but was deficient in the tools I needed to realize that vision. When I was a young mother I despaired when I read about St Gianna Molla's vow to raise her children without physical discipline because I had no idea what that even looked like. I needed to find the tools to realize the new vision I was discovering.
I know my parents would have adopted those tools if they could have. They were doing the best they knew how and they did impart much that I want to carry away. The same father who struggled with anger management and who didn't know how to say he was sorry and for whose (probable) autism and selective mutism he didn't even have a name much less coping skills was also the father who told me when I was four that Jesus was my friend who was always with me and who I could talk to when I was lonely. He was the secular Carmelite who modeled intense daily private prayer and who went to daily mass and who later taught me how to pray the Liturgy of the Hours when I was an adult, but who didn't know how to give us the experience of family prayer when we were children.
I guess my rule of thumb for testing what was handed down from my family is precisely the Christian anthropology I learned from my wide reading when I was in college, from the saints and doctors of the Church and Church Fathers and from Christian poets and novelists and artists. Does this action align with what I know about God and human nature from the Catechism and the tradition of the Church? Those are the traditions I trust in faith and love. Does it bring me peace? Does it bring me/us closer to God? These are my guiding questions as I sift through materials about parenting autistic kids or oppositional defiant kids. And much of the time, probably more often than not, I find the scripts and tactics and gentle parenting approaches align quite well with what I believe about the child as a person created in the image and likeness of God with free will and a human nature that is bent and twisted by the Fall but also redeemed in grace.
Re: making “no “ a welcome guardrail –
My boys are currently six and three, and thus far, they seem to be pure-grade consequentialists. So, it has become a refrain in my house that, when they break one of mom and dad’s rules, one or both of two consequences is likely to occur: 1) someone gets hurt, or 2) something gets broken.
When one of those consequences takes place, I try to calmly point out that someone did indeed get hurt, or something did indeed get broken. Over time, I think I’m seeing my boys become more receptive to hearing “no” as they get better at anticipating negative consequences.
I also try to avoid hypocrisy, i.e. my wife and I try to follow every rule that we ask the boys to follow. Furthermore, if they catch us breaking a house rule, we try to apologize and course correct humbly and quickly.
This is another reason why it was such a gift to me that my parents had a baby when I was 18 years old--I have pretty clear memories of what it was like to care for him, at what ages different things happen, and the landscape of choices that they had to make and how they chose. With any future children I will definitely be content with mostly defaulting to what I observed them doing. I do think that their child-rearing style was a result of a lot of thought and effort; they had some pretty visible departures from their parents' choices. I feel grateful that they did the work sorting through the enormous transformation of pregnancy and early childhood that happened during their parents' and grandparents' lifetimes, so that I have to do comparatively much less of it.
This kind of thing certainly makes me think about what a different experience my first child vs my last child will have of family life. My husband is a wonderful father, and it certainly helps that his baby sister was adopted when he was 12. When we married, he'd changed a lot more diapers than I had.
Being the first child, you get somewhat less of your parents' wisdom practiced *on you*, but you get to absorb much more of it with more mature eyes as you see it practiced on your siblings!
I'm currently trying to teach my 11mo the word 'no.' Several times I've gotten comments along the lines of "pretty soon you'll wish he hadn't learned that!" These people seem to forget how important it is for ME to be able to tell HIM no! I'm not only comfortable with 'no' but I actually need him to understand it because I want to keep him and others safe. He doesn't yet know enough about the world to know when he has crawled somewhere dangerous or grabbed at my face in a painful way. He needs me to teach him these things.
Rather than actually saying 'no,' what I struggle more with is having to change my *tone* to go along with 'no'. I don't want to stop using a gentle, encouraging tone, but I quickly realized he can *only* understand tone right now, not meaning. So I've made my tone more stern/firm and it's almost physically painful to talk to him that way! And of course now he's started imitating my headshake, grinning... and then doing the same thing again. Sigh. He'll learn eventually... I hope!
There's a very moving part of Raising a Rare Girl by Heather Kirn Lanier (https://amzn.to/3WRRgOY) where she talks about how much she needs her disabled daughter to find her "no" which will allow her to communicate preferences to caregivers. It made me very grateful for my kids finding their own nos much more naturally.
Oh I remember that stage with my oldest (she's now 18, sitting beside me surfing the internet on her cell phone). What I remember being hard, but necessary, to learn was that along with a stern tone I needed to use actions to set those boundaries: picking up a child who is reaching for a power cord while I say no. Or gently removing the hurting hand and then setting the pinching child down on the floor while saying no, that hurts me. I had one child who was incredibly sensitive to too stern a tone and who would get very upset. It is hard to find that balance and to figure out how best to teach those lessons. And of course every child is different, so I felt that even though I'd been there before, I still had to learn it all over again five times to figure out how best to communicate with THIS particular
child.
This is very helpful, thank you! We've definitely had a few moments of crying, and not clear whether in response to the physical restraint or the harsh tone. I've been trying to follow up with a cuddle and calm explanation (even though I know he can't understand yet) of how much we love him and how we want to train him in the way he should go. It makes ME feel better, at least!
When my kids were young I called it "off-my-butt parenting." Small children, I agree, need physical (gentle) actions to accompany our requests. It helps them learn the lesson, engaging more parts of their brains and taking your word seriously, knowing it will be enforced.
I try to make sure my parenting “Nos” have a clear “…because…” Even if it’s just “No, because I don’t have the capacity for messy painting this afternoon.” Or “No, because I’m not ready to teach you how to cut up vegetables safely.” Arbitrary Nos are a recipe for butting heads in our household.
Appeals to teleology are attractive to me on some level, but I struggle when I start to think too hard about it. We as humans are too good at telling ourselves stories and creating narratives about things to get it right all the time. I have come out of a theological tradition that used ostensibly teleological reasoning to justify a lot of gender-based nonsense (“But your lesser intellect as a woman is rooted in Creation!!!” type of thing.) So I have a certain amount of skepticism for claims of “design” or “teleology”—but this tends to leave me a little rootless at times, as you and Mrs. Psmith pointed out. Ask me again in five or ten years and maybe I’ll have a better answer.
There's a parallel "Yes, if" I was told to use with directors (and other similar figures). When you can't say "No" directly, you can explain what the Yes requires.
"Yes, we can have a live horse on stage, Darren, *if* all the actors are naked because we would no longer have a budget for costumes."
I was told to use similar phrasing for customers, haha. Also not to say a definitive No unless you’re the person who can also ultimately say Yes.
I like that framing. I used, "Find a way to say yes" as much as I could. Similar idea. Yes, you can paint this Saturday when Daddy is home to help. Yes, you can cut up vegetables when you are ready to learn how to do so safely. I will acknowledge that it can at times come across as disingenuous, so it has to be used somewhat selectively, and you have to be willing to stick with then "when" because your child is certainly not going to forget you said it!
Loved this line: "But the distrust goes further: the parents don’t trust themselves or their own parents." It seems somewhat unique right now that parents are trying to figure out how to parent while having basically no parenting role models in their lives.
You know… I know a young woman having a baby at my church. She is in her 30s. She is the only person in her family, husband’s family, or entire peer group including friends to be having a baby. I actually gave her some ad hoc baby lessons with my own 5month old - how to hold, change diaper, etc. She confidently rejected my offer of organizing a meal train when baby arrives, she has not hired a doula, and she is delivering at a teaching hospital…. in NJ. (if you know the maternal health landscape in NJ, you will understand why I am concerned for her). Obviously I’ll cook for her anyway - but not a single person in her life who is close to her seems to have sat her down and given her any kind of meaningful advice.
We have another couple in our friend group where the husband recently APOLOGIZED for his wife’s post partum moodswings to my husband (who was dropping off bread and soup I made and obviously did not care whether or not his wife was “in a mood”).
This is a very dangerous situation for mothers and babies, quite frankly. The isolation of those who DO want children is very real. And boomer grandmothers are the least well-equipped, least interested grandmothers possible (I speak in generalities, based on personal experience of many, many peers). I have a Gen X mom - I lucked out majorly in the “grandma lotto!”
"How do you make a “no” a welcome guardrail? How do you teach children to distinguish it from an unfair limitation?"
Make the 'no' reasonable and consistent with prior nos (& yess). I don't think 'fair' is the point - authority sometimes seems unfair because it is misunderstood. Don't worry about 'fair' if you're being reasonable and consistent!
Yep; as a parent, you have so much to GIVE them. You know so much more about the world. If they are responsive to you and obedient... you have more freedom and flexibility to carve out a trajectory where the whole family gets to do more awesome things.
I would describe my own life experience thus: to rebel against rebellion is to become traditional.
My father rebelled against his devoutly Catholic parents and taught me that we shouldn’t blindly follow what our parents believe. I, of course, directed that skeptical eye toward his own moral framework which I found lacking, which lead me into the arms of the Church.
The challenge, of course, is that my husband and I don’t have a great model of what Christian parenthood looks like. We can’t look to our parents, and we can’t look to our grandparents (since their parenting produced our parents). We turn to books at times, and social media other times, but ultimately that’s challenging as well - we cannot see the fruit of the approach these people are proposing. So we sometimes have to look at the fruit in our own lives. And we have reached out to mentor families, who have older children who remained faithful, to try and learn from them.
"But the distrust goes further: the parents don’t trust themselves or their own parents. They don’t believe they have something solid to pass on, nor that they can reliably discern what new thing is good for them or their children."
Really stuck on this quote. I see evidence all around me of this exact problem, even though I don't think I face it myself. It inspired to me ask my wife: "Do you have a 'gut' when it comes to parenting?" and she responded with a strong "no". Her sad elaboration: "My parents told me my point of view was wrong so often growing up that I learned not to listen to myself."
Meanwhile, I feel like I've got a really good "gut sense" of parenting situations, and when I drill down to "where did I come up with that?" it's usually "Oh yeah, my Mom/Dad did that and she/he is great, so it must be right."
When I zoom out, I see both of our stories as part of a larger question about "what is even the goal of parenting?" Young millennials like myself seem to be hearing that it's definitely not the way your parents made you feel bad all the time. Rather, it's some combination of catering to children's needs and desires, addressing kids' mental health issues, and providing them with endless achivement opportunities. In that world, "no" is hard to justify, except in extreme cases of safety. Meanwhile, my goal is to protect my little sinners from their own sinful natures while pointing them to Christ's love. This requires tons of "no"s, knowing that kids are like sheep, gentle and usually harmless in their intentions but in desperate need of shepherding to stay on the path.
For my own part, I think my gut is about a couple considerations:
-is this sustainable? (very Kantian concern) If I can't keep something up forever, I don't want to set an impossible pattern the first time it comes up, even if I could do it *once* (e.g. infinite books at bedtime).
-is this an important no? I usually don't use a firm no on something I prefer they not do, but am unwilling to set consequences for.
-are we steering toward a desired behavior? I always want to reward incremental progress, even if it's short of what I actually hope for/need
When my eldest was like two-and-a-half, I turned things around: I made a firm distinction between an ORDER and a REQUEST: He must obey an order, but if I was making a "request," he would be allowed to choose either "yes" OR "no" with no negative consequences (or disappointed noises!!) from me.
This was exciting, because after repeatedly picking "no" (and seeing it really worked: that his "no" could "stand"), he started to pick "yes" some of the time, and I got the great joy of having him help me "from the heart," not just because he was required to!
He was able to GIVE me something which wouldn't be possible in a "do what you're ordered to"-only regime!
I got the idea when reading the book "Boundaries"*. As I wrote a friend a bit ago, "I received the ideas in it like a secret map of living sanely in the relational world that I'd (mostly) not been given (before)." When he was 1-2, I was just first learning the THEORY behind of the things he was now encountering in practice. I love to take a new framework or paradigm I learn of, and reason out how it relates to different things I already know, and "Boundaries" was GREAT grist for that mill--so I remember having so much PLEASURE in my new discoveries, and in building strength.
When it's time to leave for home and your child cries: Soooo.. one time we were at one of those summer events with bounce houses and stuff... and we'd just gotten into the car, and the kiddo of mine who got upset / was crying because we had to leave was old enough to reason with... and the thought struck me: "If he does this as a regular pattern, I will just go to less fun things like this. I won't want look forward to it, and that is demotivating enough that I will definitely do it less. I know this is what happens--wait, this is information my kid wants."
So I gently told him these things: It wasn't a threat; it was just... something that he and I both knew to be true. (and, like, I guess it helped that I wasn't anxiously desiring to take my kids to lots of entertainment-focused events. and, like, I didn't have "fun" kids' events that I was REQUIRED to go to... due to being like a coordinator or something. other parents would have these variables line up differently.)
And he almost immediately got control of himself. (This is one of many situations where you get the payoff to being scrupulously honest with your kids.)
Going to post a couple more related anecdotes.
He really got the hang of "the system," with sometimes amusing results: Once when he was 4, a friend offered to let him visit her homeschool preschool for a day. The kids were making paper-bag puppets that were supposed to be cows. When she instructed them to put spots on their cows, and my son immediately asked her, "Is that a request or an order?" My friend looked a bit surprised, but she was canny... she'd been a Kindergarten teacher* before, iirc. Her reply: "Consider it.. a strong suggestion." He thought about it for a moment, and then, satisifed, put spots on his cow.
* Also that day, he asked her, "What do you think of Spiderman?" She responded, "Ehh, I can take him or leave him!" lol! (These are responses that DELIGHTED me by breaking out of the really dull overly-simplistic patterns of interacting with children that I'd seen so much.)
Also, I realize that what many parents find to be the real sticking point is ...getting them to do the things you order them to do. The way I "branched off" and offered a second mode (requests where he had a choice) assumed I could already get him to carry out the orders I gave him--with a very very high reliability.
(With one of our two boys, my husband strongly urged me to give out LESS orders--so as to ONLY give orders that I could ensure I'd follow up on... because I had gotten kinda blind about.. the fact we had a pattern of me letting some of my orders be ignored or defied by that kiddo!)
EDIT: I went "wait, do I know that's true?" So I majorly edited a part that started 'The thing where you "branch off" and offer a second mode (requests where he has a choice) assumes...'
Right there with you, and with others here affirming the good power of "no." When the relationship among parents and kids is built with lots of love and plenty of trust, including the parental trust in kids taking risks as they get older, the "no" is more earned. I find, with teenagers, that the no's we say can naturally be accompanied by reasons that are better understood. But there are still plenty of no's that our teens would rather be yeses! We don't belabor it with excessive reasons, which cross into lecturing so easily. In the formation of virtue, I'm a big believer in firmly holding some lines for behavior calmly, minimally, without the message that kids should somehow already "authentically" know to behave in some desired way. They will learn some things by doing/not doing, and they'll perceive the abstract reasoning later.
Chesterton's fence is worth quoting in full to see how those respondents misuse it:
> In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.
Yes, agree; those people who talk about Chesterton's fence in a way that suggests that it always means living by tradition apparently aren't actually reading Chesterton. He plainly meant you don't cut old fences down hastily, without knowing what they're for. But once you do know what they're for, sometimes you find out they have bad reasons: they protect the unjust power or wealth of a certain group, or something like that. And then you do cut down the fences. Same Chesterton who talked about fences said that it's in distinguishing between custom and creed that one arrives at the ability to break the conventions, but keep the commandments.
Which points to the answer to any investigation about the custom about burning widows alive. *If* it were true that this had a uniquely good and noble effect, then *of course it would be the right thing to do.* But because it is a rite involved with what amounts to demon worship, it can be safely discarded. You aren't getting rid of false religion without true religion as the antidote.
I read an essay once by Elizabeth Anscombe where (at least in my memory, can't find it now) she makes the case that authority over another person--including parental authority--can only ever be based in some need for authority that arises out of a true description of the flourishing of the people over whom authority will be held. Civil authority is justified in this way because the good of a community requires that somebody have care for the common good; likewise, parental authority is required because children, before a fuller attainment of reason and knowledge, require help in the attainment of their good, which is to be capable of flourishing lives, characterized by the capacity for friendship, further intellectual growth, and the use of their human powers. These things do not come to children automatically; they require a teacher, who will have to sometimes use authority to keep the child safe or to require children to learn habits of behavior they may not immediately understand as being necessary to their ability to attain human goods such as friendship.
This necessity of parental authority to always be aimed at the child's good is what I try to make sure is the basis of every time I say 'no.' As far as possible, I try to make sure my children understand the reasons for the no, but I'm not sure it is always possible to have a child experience a no as a "welcome guardrail," at least not in the moment, or at certain stages of development. But my hope is, that if I'm steadily forming the powers of reason in my children, and I'm always using authority for their good (rather than, say, to preserve my bourgeois level of comfort even against their healthy development, or to make sure I look good in public), that they'll be able to understand that better as they get older. Sometimes the line is hard to find; where, for instance, does the protection of my legitimate needs feed into their good, and where do I possibly need to alter my expectations in order to not set my good against theirs?
In some cases, this has meant going against, not tradition exactly, but the example of the few previous generations of parenting, which I think have left us examples of typical rules for children which actually aren't in children's best interests, but are more about the disordered desires of the parent. Think about houses full of unnecessary breakables that are so normal for our parents and grandparents; you have to parent children in a certain way in order to make children who will preserve these fragile surroundings whole, and I question whether you can really foster a curious, active childhood in these surroundings. Sometimes it seems like the goal of parenting is to make children who are able to take their place in the world they live in; sometimes it seems like you have to say it is the child's world that needs to change.
It is hard; constantly I wish I had a model to follow, but when I compare what I think I have reason to believe human persons are for (communion with God and virtuous self-direction through will and reason towards that highest goal, and towards the lower ends that flow from it), I just can't think that many of my most immediate models were parenting in a way that was well suited to raising children who would achieve those goals. Charlotte Mason has been helpful, I think. I find in her, advice for guiding children that fits rather well with what I think is a true sense of human nature. Her influence in certain communities, especially Christian homeschool communities is all to the good; it seems to create a lot of parents in my circles who are open to parenting in a gentler way than they, perhaps, were parented, and a lot of opportunities for hearing from other parents about what is working well in their families. Like most people of my generation, I get a lot of practical advice from the internet, and child psychologists/therapists on social media. Some of it, I'm a bit selective about because some of the advice seems to come out of a view of the human person that I'm worried gives too high a place to emotional expression, but some of this type of advice I still find to be helpful. Sometimes I like to imagine what some saint might have said about a particular scenario; would St. Francis have given a c*** about a child standing on his head on the couch?! Probably would have approved, actually. I think this helps me keep my parenting in close contact with the stories of lives I think are actually worth imitating; it's so easy to bracket the saints away, when really, the goal is for their models to actively transform what you care about and what you teach your children to care about.
I really value this conversation and your observations here. All of it seem part and parcel of the trend toward secularization too; so many young parents today have completely detached from the ways of their parents (or even relationship with their parents at all), tradition and, most importantly, religion. And historically, those have been pretty foundational spaces from which to learn values, norms, approaches. So the new generation turns to hawkers on instagram for advice, instead of leaning on a religious community. Obviously religious communities have passed on their share of negative examples, values and practices, too. But overall, I just see this conversation about parents feeling lost and turning to social media to guide their parenting as one more result of the decline of religion in the lives of so many in the West today, to their detriment.
Frankly, for many of us having children today, that decline happened prior to our generation. How do you refind your way when your parents, and sometimes their parents, disconnected themselves from tradition?
I’ll give an example- I learned 90% of what I know about breastfeeding from reading. My two grandmothers (“the silent generation”) both only breastfed for 4-6months. My mother imitated their example. For most of human history, breastfeeding 2+ years has been the norm. How do you learn something transmitted through a thousand generations of woman orally and experientially when culture/circumstances/family choices have destroyed that chain in the span of 1-2 generations?
You can rinse and repeat this on my mother’s side for religion.
Same with birth. Given the 633% increase in cesareans between 1965 and the present, my poor daughter is a 2nd generation cesarean baby; I wised up and had a VBAC, but in a hospital; if I ever have another child, I’m about ready to cross state lines from NJ to PA because I can have abortion on demand and without apology in this state with effectively no limitations, but cannot legally pay a medical professional to attend an out of hospital birth given my uterine scar.
Same with religion - as you said. I’m an Episcopalian, and we know what Spong (prototype of boomer “progressive religion”) did to TEC in NJ - my diocese. Absolute decimation. Something like an 80% drop in attendance.
Same with cooking - my grandmother was of the generation taught to cook with prepackaged meals and boxed mixes. She was Puerto Rican, so there was a lot of Goya in the mix. Of course the standard American diet absolutely destroyed her health, and she died young of diabetes after dialysis for several years. But she built a multi-generational extended family - and even that I fear is disappearing; I’m the only one of 13 cousins and maybe 30+ second-cousins with children yet. I’m 33.
It’s not just culture, circumstances, or family choices IMO; it’s economic enclosure; it’s the privatization of public good. I think that’s the best description of it. A woman in 1774 at the helm of her household was engaged in a completely different economic project than a Betty Draper in 1955 day-drinking, or a trad mom in 2024 posing on Instagram with her babies’ faces exposed.
co-sign