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D R A M A++Q U E E N Did a gorilla ever spit on your videocam? Send your worst outing tales to
dramaqueen - - - - - - - - - - T A B L E++T A L K Just throw pink stuff at it! Discuss children's ailments and the prevalent use of antibiotics in the Mothers area of Table Talk - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y Global baby warming Mulan through the looking glass Boho/professional goddess seeks modern man Your show of shows Drama Queen winners BROWSE THE SALLIE TISDALE ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - - Mamafesto
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THE DEMISE OF DISCIPLINE: SECOND OF THREE PARTS | PAGE 1, 2
After the wedding, we went with several local women to see a sewing collective. It was late afternoon, and in the cramped room, where old sewing machines were lined up in tight rows from one wall to the next, a dozen women worked. They are learning modern sewing techniques so they can make clothes for export without having to work in the exploitative, foreign-owned factories. Most of them work all day in town, in menial jobs, or manage their households. Several times a week, they come afterward to the sewing collective and work for a few more hours together. A half-dozen children were there too, and another four boys outside, kicking a soccer ball. I assumed the children were working beside their mothers and asked if they also had an opportunity to go to school. More than a third of the Mayan children of Guatemala do not have the chance to go to school. But these women were a little shocked by my question. Of course the children went to school; school was over for the day. "They are just keeping us company," one woman said. There, in that small choice, is a world of difference. Many Americans don't plan on their children keeping them company or keeping their children company in turn. In fact, they plan from before conception on having their children reared by someone else, turning them over to "professionals" while they work. It's easy to say that it takes a village to raise a child, but we don't have villages -- we have corporate day-care centers instead. We have "educational" television and parenting-skills classes. We also have child psychologists, bestselling books of daily affirmations, a cornucopia of anti-depressants and mandatory sentencing for juvenile criminals. It isn't enough to pour love into children. We must also pour in time. As far as children are concerned, the two cannot be separated. There is, of course, another small difference, and that is between those who must work and those who choose to work -- and of the latter, the work they choose. Many parents must work in our topsy-turvy economy and have no option but day-care centers and latchkeys. But lots of parents don't have to have two incomes; they want two incomes, or both parents want simply to do the work they do for their own fulfillment. I've been both kinds of parent. I am certainly not bragging; I don't pretend to be someone who reared her own children in all the "right" ways. I was sometimes a good parent and sometimes not so good. I learned by doing. One of the strangest aspects of our culture is how little we see of the ordinary life of other people. We don't see anyone but our own parents rearing children day by day, morning and night. This inability to simply see each others' lives is part of our cultural wound, part of our painful prosperity. Family life, like so much else in this supposedly open society, takes place behind closed doors. We like enormous houses with huge yards, and in those houses we each want our own private rooms. When we visit each other, we stay in the "common" spaces. Even inside the family, we keep doors closed. Our children don't sleep with us, often don't eat with us; we don't allow them into our work rooms or take them to the office; they're locked out of our very private inner lives. We love our privacy almost as much as our loneliness. We rear our children -- whether consciously or not, often simply by exposure -- to value that privacy, that space around the self that is both physical and psychical, that dedication to meeting the needs of the self. We rear them to value their own desires in life more, even, than keeping each other company on the way.
Discuss Sallie Tisdale's series on discipline and her past columns in the Mothers area of Table Talk.
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