Asymmetrical Information

Can't claim credit for this post - it's my co-blogger Harry Brighouse (we get mixed up all the time).

You should be less self-effacing -- the pressure on middle class parents to 'improve' their kids is huge, and its so easy to get caught up in it. Staying home with kids can be fun -- if it isn't you shouldn't be doing it. What's the point of living in the wealthiest society in history if it doesn't allow us to sit back and hang out, frivolously, with our children (or other people we might like)? (yes, I get mixed up with Henry all the time, much to my benefit).

Oh dear. Well, I never claimed to be literate. I'll fix.

We just had a kid with colic.

Boy, am I glad I'm the person who gets to go to work in the relationship.

No, Jane, you are 100% correct. Anytime you hear a person complain about the amount of work they do in the house, tell them to shut up, get a job and hire a nanny. Raising kids isn't nearly as difficult as people claim. I have four, yes, they take up time, they are sometimes good and sometimes bad and very expensive, but your advice is perfect. Put the kids in front of the TV and have a drink.

[I had a conversation recently with a guy who wanted his wife to work so he could stay home with the kids and write. What did he think the kids were going to be doing while he wrote? I asked. Blank stare. Women, whether or not they have children, already know that the answer is "crawl all over you and ask you to get them a cookie/drink/toy".]

Yeah, I guess you're right. A man would have utterly no clue about how kids behave. Especially a father. I bet the buffoon thinks he can just shove the snowsuit-donned kiddies into the backyard while he attends his writer's club meetings! Doesn't he know that he will be spending all of his time "interacting" with his children? :-)

You're contradicting yourself here, Megan.

And if you think there's a ton of social pressure on stay-at-home mothers to avoid laying by the pool and playing tennis...ask yourself what society's reaction would be to a stay-at-home FATHER who laid by the pool and played tennis all day.

I'm curious, how did the Mrs. respond to Mr. Blankstare's proposition? Did she accept? If not, why not? Isn't it interesting that the unstated premise of this little story is that the mother has the choice of working in or out of the home, but it is highly inadvisable to allow the father to stay at home?

Perhaps when some men (half-) kiddingly offer to stay home while the wife wins the bread, they aren't doing so to point out a difference in the degree-of-difficulty of their traditional roles (the fathers I know are fully aware of the challenges of running a house full of kids)...but rather to socratically expose the difference in the ability to choose in the first place.

Goodness! I didn't mean to impugn fathers! Men without children (like the fellow I was talking to) just have a lot less clue about what's actually involved in homemaking than women without children -- and I know I know less about what's actually involved in parenting than men or women with children.

I think men should have the option to stay home, and I know a couple who are doing so. I certainly recognize that they have unique difficulties, and wouldn't take anything away from them, nor was I trying to argue that men are lesser parents. I'm just pointing out that most single men, and a few married ones, don't have a good grip on what's involved. Most women do, because it's a choice we have to think about.

Sadly it's one of those dialectical things. Social restriction of the choice to stay home is limiting in some ways, but frees you to work outside the home without guilt. Women have the opposite problem. Absent the revolution, both are fraught.

But hey . . . before you chime in, why not put the kids in front of the television, pour yourself a drink, and relax for a minute?

Wouldn't whichever mother is reading that line have done much the same thing in order to have the minute to read this blog?

Interesting post. It caused me to think about the changing standards for childcare. What was once common parenting practice years ago might now put you in jail. For example, my mother used to LEAVE US IN THE CAR while she went into a store! (She'd leave a window down so we could enjoy the breeze (if there was one), but my brother would invariably roll it back up.) If a parent were to leave young kids in a car today, CPS would likely take the kids away.

I think the largest change is in the attitude about what is proper interaction with children. We were required to sit still and be quiet while mom chatted with her friends. (You can learn a lot that way.) While she read us stories and the like, most of her time was spent working in and around the house, and we worked along side of her. We didn't work all day, but if we wanted to be with her we had to work. Otherwise, we had to entertain ourselves. She taught us a lot, but for the most part she taught be working beside us or allowing us to observe her example. Today, it seems the focus of most parents is to find activities to keep the kids busy. They go from school to soccer to dance to hockey. Growing up, life itself was our activity. We interacted with our mother as she lived it.

Poor Irish families in New York, where both parents had to work, used to put the kids in "daycare" by locking them, alone, in the apartment all day. And I myself was allowed to roam rather freely without a seatbelt. ;-)

I think that part of the problem (which isn't covered in your post specifically) is that people don't feel comfortable sending their kids outside to play alone anymore. I used to go to my Grandparents house in suburband New Jersey and walk over to play with the neighbor kid by myslef when I was five. We'd ride our bikes in the street or, conversely, we'd play in the street with all the other kids in the neighborhood. Parents don't do that anymore. Before my Grandparents died and we sold their house a few years back we almost never saw a gang of children playing in the neighborhood by themselves anymore.

You and I also had the security of growing up in a building where there was lots of common, public space to play in, where we didn't need parental supervision and it wasn't expected that we'd get it. It was very easy for our parents to shove us out the door to play somewhere else. There were lots of somewhere elses to play. Once we were ten we could walk ourselves to the playground four blocks away. It didn't require a parent.

By the way, I completely agree with you on the whole. Mothers shouldn't focus solely on their children. It makes the children spoiled and unpleasent people and the parents unhappy and uninteresting. The best parents, in my opinion (and the ones with the best kids), are the ones who still allow their children self discovery and self-exploration. These are the same parents who have conversations with their kids because they haven't been hovering over them all day and so they need to have actual discussions with their kids to find out what the kid has been up to.

But, what the heck do I know, I don't have any kids yet either.

As someone trying to work at home today, in between kids' temper tantrums, snack requests, and general demands for help or attention...I'll elaborate on the response after the kids go to bed and we clean up after them...which should be at 1:00 AM on Sunday night or so...

My sister is doing her best to do Everything Right with her 7 month old. While baby was rocking in her swing, she told me about all the things that she won't do with baby that used to be common practice. I pointed out that in ten years, they'll probably find that putting a baby in a swing will keep their inner ears from properly developing a sense of balance.

"What did he think the kids were going to be doing while he wrote?"

Gosh, it's not possible to stay home with kids and write? Someone better tell Lileks.

1) Why is it childless men should know less about parenting than childless women? What you ARE doesn't necessarily dictate what you KNOW. I'd expect knowledge of parenting would be a function of what you grew up around- oldest of many would know far more than youngest, and so on.

2) Of course raising kids well is a difficult job. But just like any other job, some people are going to be better at it than others. Sometimes people keep their lives complicated so they don't have to think of things to do with their freetime. Who's to say dad won't have time to write?

"Most men..."
"Most women..."

Aaarggghhh!! Such generalizations!!

And I love how you say that even for a single, childless woman such as yourself who may not fully appreciate what's involved, well, at least you recognize and admit your inexperience. But a single, childless male? They're apparently so clueless that they don't even KNOW they're clueless!!!

A little anecdote...my wife and I have a lovely son, who was quite happy and was an easy baby to care for. When he was four, we discovered that the wifey had twins girls in the oven. Wow!! I must have had a look of complete shock on my face when we learned this, because my wife correctly read my expression and said "Oh, c'mon, don't look so worried!! We've handled one baby with no problem, so how hard can it be to handle one plus an extra?" Seven years later, I can tell you that my wife will now readily admit to me and anyone else that will listen that SHE was the one who was clueless.

(I know I'm overstating your postion here, Megan. Just having a little fun.)

If you read Lileks more closely, you'll find that he drops Gnat off at Nana's and goes into the office rather frequently.

Jane,
You are absolutely correct. I have two kids, ages 7 and almost 5, and am just starting to see the pressure put upon the moms in my son's elementary school. It's one of the more well-off districts in town, so a lot of the moms are stay-at-homes, and they all are at the school just about every day. My mother was a room mother, but she wasn't there Every Single Day, and I think that's why I didn't grow up believing that the world revolved around me.
The person who commented about being uncomfortable with sending kids out to play alone was correct, though, as well. I don't feel like my kids will ever have the freedom I did, and finding the balance between that freedom and being a smothering mom is difficult.

There are things I can do with kids around, like manual labor (try explaining the functions of various parts and tools spread out on a table to a 4 year old; it's kind of fun) and things I can't, like write, or talk to clients on the phone (the cry for attention in the background is not conducive to reaching a key agreement). Anyways, I wonder how Abe Lincoln ever developed the intellect and insight into the human condition needed for the Gettysburg Address and 2nd Inaugural. No pre-school! No play-dates! Both parents engaged in toil from dawn to dusk! Nearly everybody born in the 19th century and prior must have been an ill-adjusted, anti-social, moron!

Interesting remarks about kids not playing outside anymore.

A sensible contrarian viewpoint can be found in the book Worried All The Time: Overparenting in an Age of Anxiety and How To Stop It, by David Anderegg. In modern parenting, he says:

"We can see faint, or not so faint, markings of old waves of national anxiety. In most of these cases, the wave of anxiety has come and gone...but the echoes of the wave linger for decades in the area where we are most vulnerable to primitive and irrational thinking: our children."

He gives the rundown: crappy research, hysterical overreaction, political haymaking... all of our favorite stuff!

By the way, I completely agree with you on the whole. Mothers shouldn't focus solely on their children. It makes the children spoiled and unpleasent people and the parents unhappy and uninteresting. The best parents, in my opinion (and the ones with the best kids), are the ones who still allow their children self discovery and self-exploration. These are the same parents who have conversations with their kids because they haven't been hovering over them all day and so they need to have actual discussions with their kids to find out what the kid has been up to.

But, what the heck do I know, I don't have any kids yet either.

Works for me, that's roughly how I was raised. My own mother permanently gave up her admin assistant job (back then, it was known by the term "secretary") to raise myself and two subsequent siblings full-time. Mom spent a good deal of time directly interacting, but she didn't hover; we had pretty clear boundaries, and knew we had to ask permission before doing certain things, but aside from that had a lot of freedom to interact with neighborhood kids and ride bikes and such. There was, however, a very nice sense of security in knowing that someone was in the house or working elsewhere in the yard should Things Unfortunate and Wrong occur.

Oh, and do yourself and your future children a favor -- shoot the TV. My parents never had one by choice so my growing years were largely absent of the influence save for occasional encounters at school and friends' houses (radio, newspapers, and magazines were available if one required media entertainment), and retrospectively I consider myself very lucky for it -- even though I presently enjoy a DVD or TV show once and a while.

Hear, hear, anony-mouse! Blow up the TV. I never had one either growing up, though my brothers and I did get the occasional show at the neighbors, and for Really Important Stuff (e.g. the Huskies playing in the Rose Bowl) we'd get to accompany my dad to a family friend to take in the festivities.

We've basically done the same favor for our kids, and while it's not a magic bullet it's a help. Now, if you're the stereotypical male and care two cents about what's happening in pro sports or (curiouser yet) actually want to watch some of the events, well, I don't know how to reconcile that.

Overparenting occurs for many of the same reasons people used to think a centrally planned economy would succeed. (Fortunately, it usually does not fail as spectacularly, since children are resilient little things.)

I can still here my mother's voice, God rest her soul, "Get outside, you are not spending all day in this house!!". I was champion of falling off my bike, but, Mom would patch me up and "out you go". Mom taught me that bumps and bruises happen, just get back in (or out) there. Moms today look like hunted animals.

Folks, it isn't women who need help and understanding. It's men. If you haven't noticed, men now earn about 40% of college degrees.

50 years of giving women quota priority is really taking its toll on men. 50 years of demonizing men (particularly white hetero men) is having a devastating effect on men. Read the current web debate about the fake hate crimes at Claremont college for illustration.

Women, if you are concerned about being able to find a man who is a good mate, and who has a positive attitude about the future, it is time to quit the brooding over women. It is long past time to talk about how to make more men productive and happy members of society. Men listened to women and responded when women demanded change. Ladies... it's time for you to return the favor. Warren Farrell, who is the leading writer of the men's movement said, correctly, that men helped to liberate women, but they forgot to liberate themselves.

That will involve thinking about how to make school and the workplace more attractive to men.

Really, the constant focus on the needs of women is beginning to smack of piggery. Women don't have too little. They have too much.

Get in the present. Think about how to help and encourage men. This is what needs to be done now.

This gross distortion of the whole parenting process has just about convinced me I don't want to have kids. I'm just about on the fence - personally I'd like to have my own, but I wouldn't want to be a child today and the world doesn't need more people.

I often feel like having children will make things worse for everyone. The only way out off this endless downward spiral of social values and general sensibility is to refuse to participate. That's a depressing and demoralizing thought.

When I was a child, like most of my generation, and apparently all previous generations, I was free to be a kid, have fun, and explore the world. As far as I can tell, you have to go very far away from civilization for kids to have that opportunity today. I really don't want to have children who are just going to be little prisoners of a politically correct world. I'm especially terrified of what the world is going to look like when the little socialist model citizens grow up.

CW, contemplating children doesn't have to be scary. Just plan on raising your children to be contributing members of society, so they'll be a net good to the world.

Stephen, give it a rest. You're preaching to the choir. Nobody who comments here is prejudiced against men, for crying out loud. What exactly do you want me to do? Affirm a belief in "equal rights for men"? Done. Proclaim that affirmative action for women is morally bankrupt? I hereby so proclaim. Establish victims' rights programs for poor downtrodden men? I seem to recall your castigating women for claiming victim status, so I assume you don't think men should claim to be victims either. What exactly are you looking for?

My point is not that kids can't be raised to be productive members of society - it's that the future world looks so crappy that I'm not sure I want to inflict it upon them.

Gotcha. It is an interesting question. Under what circumstances is it unethical to bring a child into the world? What if you knew for a fact that your child would, say, experience a lifetime of abuse and die early of a painful disease? You would probably choose not to conceive. At what point does life in general get so bad non-existence is superior to existence?

I guess there are two ways of looking at it. The rational, secular point of view would posit that if your future son decided non-existence was better than existence, he could always kill himself, and at least that way you'd have left the choice up to him, thus increasing the amount of free will and independent action in the universe. Seems to me the more independent action there is in the universe, the better off humanity will be, from a kind of free-markets perspective, if that makes any sense.

The religious point of view, depending on your religion, is also likely to support the idea that existence is superior to non-existence. My brand of Christianity sees life on earth as a temporary state in which we get to use our free will without too much interference from God, which lets us learn and grow more than we otherwise could (on the same principle as making your kids leave home eventually, I guess). Life is seen as a positive thing in that context, no matter how bad it is. YMMV depending on your religion, but except for followers of Jim Jones, most religious folks embrace existence. (And the rest of them tend to remove themselves from the gene pool.)

On a more practical note, I'd say cheer up--the world isn't really that bad. It's not like the state is snatching kids at birth and raising them in institutions. The home children grow up in still determines to a large degree what kind of a life they'll have, which means you can do a lot to make their life a happy one.

CW: Just think how it looked for prospective parents in 1936, or 1969, or 1981. It's not as bad as it looks.

I'm a father of three who has worked *extremely* hard to afford to be a single-income family, and where I can see points re: overmothering I think in part the issue has to be a backlash against single-parent families, two-earner families with a TV for a sitter, and other dollar-related pursuits of comfort and status in favor of family. With a 40% divorce rate among my parents' generation, I'm surprised no one else has mentioned it... I only have one childhood friend whos parents stayed married. There must be a significant portion of the 20something parents who are trying to give their kids what they didn't get, i.e. interested parents/available parents. Can you fault them for often swinging the other way?

I also want to mention that my wife has received quite a lot of negative attitude from other women regarding her decision to stay at home and raise our kids. Some people think a decision not to work is the same as a: intentionally making mothers who choose to work feel guilty, and b: betraying the sisterhood somehow.

And contentious as it might be, IMHO if you make your kids come home to an empty house because you like the extra guest room, swimming pool, and two-car garage... you should feel guilty.

Finally, to Harry: Staying home with your kids is often *not* fun. It's a tough job, especially when they're young. Again IMHO, if your personal gratification is the deciding factor in whether or not you stay home with your kids it's time to take a serious look at your priorities.

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