Yet another parenting article popped up in my Facebook feed this week. Not a How-To parenting article, which is annoying enough, but a You’re-Doing-Everything-Wrong parenting article. Generation X’s Parenting Problem, published in 2015 but making the rounds again now, is a diatribe about how today’s parents are doing everything wrong. Life was so great when we were kids. Parents today are stressed-out maniacs who need to relax. We turned out fine. Kids these days have it too easy. If only parents today followed their parents’ and grandparents’ choices, everything would be great. The problem is, we don’t live in our parents’ or grandparents’ world. Just like the insipid and ubiquitous memes about how "My childhood was awesome: I was beaten with a belt and I learned respect", these … [Read more...]
Surviving the Holidays, Anthropologist Style
As the holidays inch closer, and you’re beginning to dread joining the bag of mixed nuts you call your family, consider approaching them with anthropologists’ eyes this year. Participant-observation is the primary way cultural anthropologists come to understand people who live very different lives from their own, but we use it also to understand people who are *ahem* uncomfortably close to us, too. Rather than hitting the eggnog too hard and arguing with Aunt Fifi about her political views, pretend you’re writing a book on people you don’t know anything about and respectfully ask auntie about her politics. Sit at the kids’ table and check out how different the conversations (and the table customs) are from the grown ups’ table. Notice with new ears how, despite the fact that your black … [Read more...]
