October 2007 Archives

Being a male stay at home parent is an interesting experience. In many ways I think it's easier on Dads than Moms, especially in my liberal Takoma Park town. The standards for men are way lower than for women; if I show up with the kid basically dressed and some sort of food to eat, people think I'm really cool for being with the kids; an identical performance by a woman is utterly unnoticed. And as a person that's always thought society needed a bit of changing, I get a small jolt of happiness that "I am changing society" every time I walk down the street with my kids. And yet there's enough stay at home dads around here that the moms are not stand-offish to me; even at yoga toddler classes, I'm not usually the only adult male.

But it's dangerous ground to walk on. It's already been several years since I've noticed that in a mixed gender party, I often end up talking to women about parenting/householdy things rather than yakking about the football scores or job travails with the men. And recently something happened that in retrospect chilled me.

Last week, having been afflicted with this recurrent thought all summer, I finally tried letting it transform into action. The thought was to thank people that are car-pooling, walking, biking, or busing on the busy street near our neighborhood school. My kids and I made signs, bought candy, and thanked people for 45 minutes last Thursday.

The motivation behind this quasi-protest is global warming, which is really becoming a subject that we as a group need to pay attention to. The interesting thing about global warming is that while there is stuff the government can (and should) do, there is a huge difference that individuals can make by merely altering our behaviors. We can wait for Congress to ask the car companies to increase the mileages that new cars get, and that'll be useful, but it'll take years. Or we can all start carpooling, and double the mileage we get starting right now.

Now, it so happens that encouraging good behavior is daily work for parents. I started to think how differently things work with kids when I can reward positive things rather than punish when things have gone awry, and wondered why we can't apply that to this urgent need for change.

The trickiest thing was finding a time when enough people were actually carpooling so that we could actually thank anyone, but there's a late afternoon, post-school, pre-rush hour time when the percentage of car-poolers was high enough (from 4:15 to 5 pm was our initial experiment). My daughter was deployed as a spotter, with her brother as an assistant and a bus-spotter, and a candy-hander; I held the signs up, made eye contact, yelled "Thanks for ride-sharing" and often bowed.

It was really fun, we had signs to let the un-thanked masses know where they can find passengers to share their cars with. I don't know if we will inspire anyone to carpool, but the action passed the first test by being pleasant to partake in, so we'll be back this Thursday.

One of the most useful things my dad taught me was that emotions are not in the moral realm, they are in the same realm as color sensations or feelings of hot or cold: data about the world. My emotions are data about me, and the emotions of others are data about them, but they aren't "good" or "bad." This is such a useful perspective, because, frankly, with small kids you need all the information you can get.

There's not really a funny anecdote to illustrate this point, so I'll point to a blog entry that inspired me to write this entry.

I am notorious for getting very infrequent haircuts. I worked for many years as a computer programmer, an occupation I loved as much for its valuing of eccentric behavior as for the immensely fun creativity of programming. So to any computer programmer, I'd just say, "I get it cut very short and then let it grow out long, so I spend as few hours as possible getting hair cuts." Programmers would be impressed at that sort of efficiency, and efficient is one of the best things a programmer can be. I'd periodically have trouble when my politician wife would need me to be at a big event where scruffy wasn't one of the best things you should be. In the past, if I screwed up the scheduling, I'd just have to show up scruffy (perhaps thinking, " [expletive] anyone that doesn't like this, I'm a hot shot computer programmer.") Tonight, I had again screwed up the schedule and had very scruffy hair and about 30 minutes before I had to go to an awards banquet, at which not only my beloved life partner but her parents (who don't really like long hair, something to do with the sixties I think). Fortunately, I've got years of parenting experience.

It's been a long while. I could explain how we had too much fun this summer and then have been slammed by the beginning of the school year, or I could explain how the person that got me this gig quit and so no one is hassling me when there's been no new content and how I'm a person that responds well to hassling, but I'll just plunge ahead.

Amongst the many fine developments of this fall (my daughter is enjoying school not just the people and teacher but the writing, reading, and math work as well; my son is enjoying his very short but fun experiences as one of the biggest kids in the twos class at a coop nursery school), is my son's love of puzzles.