During my fairly extensive dissertation piloting there were several themes in the adoptive parent interviews that seemed related to a kind of morality or ethics of parenting. I was not able to get enough of a handle on this emerging theme to write about it in my proposal, but maybe it will become clearer when I begin the main data gathering phase of the study. In the meantime, I'll brainstorm about it a little here. Even if it does not come to anything, research-wise, maybe it will be an interesting thing to write (and hopefully, read) about.
From Genes to Choice
An example of the "ethical parenting" theme I am talking about in these interviews is some parents' discussions of, say, their need for genetic information about their children's birth families. Hinted at in these discussions is a sense of obligation or responsibility. It seemed to me that some parents were expressing the sense that they were failing in their duties as a parent if they could not secure this information for their children--for health purposes, but also for less accute reasons like satisfying children's curiousity.
This is something that interests me immensely--acts of parenting as moral duty. I am in the very early (VERY VERY early) phases of developing a rough framework for these simmering ideas, some I tried out last November when I guest lectured for a couple weeks in FSoS 8007: Ethical Issues & Moral Dilemmas in Family Life. (Resource list here. Thanks again, Dr. K.R.!) I guess my starting point is a question, inspired both by my personal experience and my research journeys:
In an era of the "Celebration of Choice" in family relationships in the US and other industrialized corners of the world, what obligatory roles do parents define for themselves? What obligatory roles are defined for parents by others?
Included in this "Celebration of Choice"...
...A situation in modern times in "Western" lands where folks are free to marry people who have not been picked out for them by their family members--in fact, even free to marry folks who The Law used to bar them from marrying (e.g., marriage between different races). And this union can occur just about whenever folks want during their lifecycle. And folks can de-unionize (e.g., divorce), and re-unionize--as many times as they can find willing partners. And actually, folks are free to not marry at all.
...A situation where "families by choice" (to paraphrase Kath Weston's wonderful title)--families formed by emotional bonds and autonomous decision-making in a stigma-reduced cultural environment as opposed to by legal marriage and genetic ties--are discussed by many researchers as being legitimate alternatives to families constructed by requirements of tradition and the State.
But even as I welcome this widening of the universe of what gets defined as "Family," I do not think that "non-choice" issues have left the household. I am not convinced that greater family choice has meant freedom from either the perception of major moral duties for one's own parenting or the perception of others for parents' moral duties.
And I am fascinated by this juxtaposition of choice and moral duty.
"Buggaboo parents, unite!"
This back-burner research interest was brought to the forefront of my mind the other day when I read this Salon.com article, "Ringing Up Baby." The whole article is worth a read, but these two paragraphs are enough to illustrate the point I am brainstorming about in this post:
While wealthy parents like these are forced to forgo necessities like peekie toe crab appetizers, the kids upscale product industry has been raking in an estimated $45 billion annually. Why the boom? As more U.S. moms wait until their relatively affluent 30s to give birth and race to give their offspring every possible competitive advantage, 30,000-square-foot "baby superstores" (such as the delicately named Buy Buy Baby), Euro-tot boutiques, and "educational" software companies are proliferating to suck up that affluence as efficiently as the $200 Whisper Wear Hands-Free Double Breast Pump extracts milk.
Yet signs of a growing baby-luxury backlash are appearing. A New York Times piece about $900 sidewalk-hogging Bugaboo strollers here. Exasperated posts on mothering blogs there. Pointedly irreverent books, such as "The Three-Martini Playdate: A Practical Guide to Happy Parenting," are openly mocking moms and dads who over-coddle. When Jeff Howe and Alysia Abbott, an expectant Brooklyn couple, were searching for baby names last summer, Howe dismissed several of Abbott's suggestions -- Spencer, Sebastian, the admittedly indefensible Willem -- with a weary: "Too Bugaboo." Which is to say, "too ubiquitously yuppie." One senses they're not alone.
I am a parent myself. I did not spend this kind of money on my twin daughters when they were babes. I recognize that my reaction to these paragraphs is supposed to be to gasp, accidentally spit out my coffee, and loudly exclaim "What--a $900 stroller?!! What is wrong with these parents??!!" (See the comments to the article. Some letter writers exclaimed almost exactly that.)
But hey, aren't we in the Land of Choice? Haven't these parents--after exercising their right to choose when to parent--earned the right to choose how much money to spend on their babies? If you say anything other than Yes-period, then I will say you are delivering judgement on these parents--casting them as moral agents and found them wanting.
And the parents in the article apparently making name choices based on the $900-stroller parent set? They may be casting themselves as moral agents who will be judged by the name they choose for their baby. So...I said "choose," but actually their choices are constrained--They cannot like the way Willem sounds and "choose" that because it may place them in this morally suspect category of parents.
And of course this category of parents--or at least the cultural phenomenon it embodies--has a label:
"This is a phenomenon called displacement consumption," says James Twitchell, Ph.D., author of "Lead Us Into Temptation: The Triumph of American Materialism." "It always comes out of anxiety and what's more anxiety-provoking than, My god, I have a baby?" He points out that consumerist parents too conflicted to conspicuously indulge themselves (selfish!) sidestep guilt by buying their newborn a status stroller (doting!). "You're spending on your baby, though," says Twitchell, "so the assumption is: No one's going to criticize me."
Another driving force behind such extravagance, Twitchell argues, is the universal need for community. "Americans used to be defined by how we went to church, or by our schools. But now it's really about consumption communities. The question becomes: 'Can you assemble, by buying things, a coherent presentation of the self as part of a community?'"
I am not saying I am in favor of babies tooling around town in vehicles that cost more than my first (and second) car. For example I have written here on this blog about my frustrations with the birthday party one-upsparentship. I have also written more formally with Bill Doherty about a related issue: his nail-on-the-head named "overscheduled children, underconnected families" phenomenon observed through his community and clinical work. (See here for more info.)
The issue for me is not whether I am "for" or "against" such parenting practices. The issues for me are
(1) that I see a reluctance (on the part of researchers, practicioners, everyday folks) to recognize that judgements are made about and by parents--even in this age of free choice, and
(2) because of this lack of acknowledgement, we are unable to critically examine the very real moral and ethical dimensions of parenting.
I think that in an environment of increased family choices, there may actually be greater moral and ethical demands on parents and parenting (externally, from others, and/or internally, from parents themselves) than in less choice-filled times. Yet I rarely see this frame applied to research on parents and parenting.
Maybe at some point I could develop a research agenda to tease out my questions, hunches, and confusions about this...
That's "Ms. Yvette" to you
Maybe the following will be my first research project in this scholarly program.
For backstory, let me first tell you about my late paternal grandfather, TJ Perry. His name was "TJ"--not "T, which stands for... and J, which stands for..." Just T and J. Roughly, the family tale about this name goes:
When granddaddy appeared at the schoolhouse door for his first day of elementary school the White teacher asked him, "And what is your name?" Granddaddy replied, "TJ." After some back and forth about what the "initials" stood for, the teacher looked closely at him and said, "You can't just have letters for a name. I am going to give you the name of one of our great founding fathers: Thomas Jefferson. You are "Thomas Jefferson Perry."
No one I ever knew--family, friends, church congregants...no one--ever called my grandfather "Thomas Jefferson." At his funeral, he was listed as "T.J. Perry." For me, his claiming "T.J." even in an environment in which a White adult could willy-nilly name him whatever she wanted (and so deliciously ironically for that particular White father) was an act of autonomy and agency...a moral act. (See Patricia J. WIlliams' strikingly similar discussion of her grandfather, I.D., in Open House.)
Now, fast forward to the 21st century. TJ's grand-daughter (Me) arrives at her daughters' child care center to pick them up. One of their little friends, who has gotten to know me over the weeks, is excited to greet me at the playground gate. She says, "Hi, Yvette!"
Hundreds of images from hundreds of years flash before my eyes--my grandfather being renamed by his teacher, little White children in the Jim Crow South calling grown Black folks by their first names, enslaved Africans being given pet-like names by masters. But all that was actually before my eyes was a little girl with two long blond pony tails telling me "Hi." I say to her, "_______, will you please call me Miss Yvette?" She agrees merrily and runs off to tell my kids that I have arrived. Forever afterwards she calls me "Mizeevette" even as she continues to call other parents "Bill" and "Mary" and "Susan" and such.
But I always had this lingering bad feeling about the administrators of the child care center for their policy of everybody calling everybody by their first names. And I probably, to some small extent, passed a judgement on those parents who allowed their children to go along with this program--whose children, in fact, were on a first-name basis with the adults in their lives outside of the center.
At one point while my daughters were enrolled at the center, it came to pass that instead of being the only African Americans, there were two other little Black girls in the same class. During one pick-up time when all three of us African American Moms were talking, one of their daughters called me "Yvette." I corrected her, a little wary at doing so in front of her mother. But to my great relief, both women were enthusiastic about my stance. One said "Oh, thank goodness! We have been so uncomfortable with this first name thing." The other said, "It has been so hard for _______ to go from church, where everybody is "Mr" or "Miss," to here where kids call adults by their first names."
I was aware that I at that moment passed a (favorable) moral judgement on these two women.
So...what was going on here? I have talked to several parents about this informally. One White woman from the South told me she would never think to allow her children to call adults by their first names. Did she think it was "wrong" for parents to do the first name thing? No, she told me, she thought it was more of a regional thing. Another parent thought that it was maybe a generational thing, or maybe how parents themselves were raised. (I myself was a flower child of the 70s who called all my parents' friends by their first names...) Most Black parents I have the conversation with see the Ms/Mr requirement clearly as a matter of respect for adults, especially in a context of racial and cultural sensitivity. In contrast several White parents I have spoken with saw the first name allowance as showing respect for children.
Is this related at all to my interest in moral/ethical dimensions of parenting? Is either naming address stance "morally wrong"? "Morally right"? How do African American (or Southern White...) parents perceive they may be judged if they take one stance or the other? Do White parents have some sort of moral obligation to have their children use titles with adults to do their part to combat White privilege?
Might the first name thing be more than "respect for kids" or more than a generaltional/racial/regional thing? Maybe, a la Dr. Twitchell, something like "displacement salutation," whereby parents are expressing their anxiety over the increased demands and responsibilities of their parent role by creating the illusion that adults and kids are social equals?
In the Absence of Science, Lay Expertise Saves the Day
Well, like I said, this is all just brainstorming at this point. I will have a lot of conceptual and other work to do if I ever do take steps to turn these thoughts into researchable plans. I do not have much worry that too many other researchers will scoop me on this idea. Like I said, I think we have some ambivalence towards broaching topics like these--maybe they're seen as too politically controversial in these particular political times.
But, though family science research may be lacking in this area, real parents seem to be tackling such things head on. Two sites that I have recently added to my blogroll, Families.com and Parent Hacks, are very exciting in their potential for revealing the ways that real parents think about and discuss practical parenting and the "rights" and "wrongs"--the moral dimensions--of parenting.
I haven't seen yet if either site has tackled this whole kids-calling-grown-folk-by-their-first-names phenomenon. Maybe I'll start my own discussion on one of these forums about it...
Posted by perry032 at February 3, 2006 12:45 PM | TrackBackI think these concerns are about morality, practicality, and protecting the status quo. Take the name example. Our norms dictate that children should respect their parents, but under the postmodern conditions of today many parents feeling respect for authority is less important than something like good grades or impressing your friends (especially the upper middle class and upper class parent here in NY). The definition of respect is changing; however, those of us like you and I feel threaten by this change. In some ways we can make an appeal to morality and in other ways we making an appeal to practicality, and sometimes it is both.
As someone who teaches some of these children who "have gotten everything" (Many of their parents proudly say this.). I worry about them. They are adults in my college classes and they still can't take care of their own basic needs, so their parents didn't raise them practically, but the tone I used to speak about this clearly indicates that I have a kind of moral outrage when I talk about these issues. I guess I feel that parents are hurting thier kids and that is unethical.
Just a few thoughts......I think any discussion of these issues should include class analysis and some cross cultural analysis as well.
Posted by: Rachel S at February 3, 2006 06:33 PMI love the idea of children calling adults by their proper names. I'm old fashioned and financed my dissertation with lot-o-child care work. (Yes, NYC pays handsomely.) My brother's significant other calls my father "Mr. Gary." At first I thought this odd, but she explained that this is common in the South. I rather like it now and I think it's less confusion than Aunt. Most of my friends' children call me Aunt, and one friend was kind enough to ask me, what would you like my children to call you? Brava Ms. Yvette!
Posted by: Toni at February 9, 2006 11:40 PM