bearing blog

bear – ing n 1 the manner in which one comports oneself; 2 the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~]; 4 pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation; 5 the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].

Freedom.

My children eat more healthfully than I did as a child. I’m sure that their education is at least as good as mine was at that age, and they get all the benefits of learning within the family that I didn’t. Mark and I are still married, of course, living together and loving each other in the same household; another thing I can give them that I didn’t have.

Maybe it’s not a good idea to compare their childhood to mine, or any generation to another? The temptation has proved too much for plenty. Witness the meme of “giving one’s children a better life.” Mark doesn’t indulge in that kind of thing much. I stand in awe sometimes of what it might be like to look back on childhood with the kind of satisfaction and fulfillment that he does.

One thing about my children’s lifestyle that bothers me, because it seems far inferior to what I had or especially to what Mark had: They just don’t have the freedom to roam about our neighborhood the way we did when we were their age.

I didn’t have a large area to roam, myself; up till I was ten or eleven, I had the equivalent of one or two city blocks. But I could step out the front door and be gone till dark if I wanted to, without having to say exactly where I was going or what I’d be doing. Another girl my age lived catercorner from us, and we spent a lot of time at each other’s houses, mostly at her house, playing with dolls or board games or video games, or down back of her house where there was an awesome rope swing at the edge of the woods. Some years there were more kids around, and there always were more boys than girls, so my younger brother had plenty of playmates. We played Frisbee in the street in front of our house. I had a bike I was allowed to ride around the block, and there was an alley with lots of hiding places among the mulberry bushes. I wasn’t supposed to go into the strip of woods that adjoined our block, none of us were, but the little creek that ran through it was irresistible and we did play there in the summer, pretty frequently, slipping in and out from the back yard by the rope swing. Of course, I walked by myself to and from the bus stop every school day, and in summer might come home for lunch and then head right out again. When it started getting dark my mom would step out on the back porch and yell for us, and if we didn’t come home a few minutes after she called, then we were in trouble.

That was the suburbs of Dayton, Ohio, in 1984 or so. Fast forward twenty-five years and hop to inner-city Minneapolis. We live many blocks away from wooded greenery, and the closest city parks involve walking several blocks and crossing more than one very busy street. All the neighborhood children are kept very close in, it seems. You just don’t see them much, except when the ice cream truck comes, or when school starts and they wait for the buses. And my children are among the children you don’t see much. Not even when the buses come, in our case. They play in our postage-stamp back yard, and we drive to our friends’ houses in the suburbs and they play there with our friends’ children who are also our friends. The alley is not a place I want the kids to play. The street makes me nervous; it’s not supposed to be an artery, but we’re a block away from a pair of one-way arteries, and all day cars speed up our street, trying to save going a couple of blocks out of the way.

It’s not a blighted neighborhood, though it has its share of foreclosed houses and graffiti. The prostitution and the drug deals are supposedly a problem here, according to the precinct cops, but I never notice any activity in the day time.

One of our summer projects: We’re trying to teach Oscar, almost nine, to make his way around the neighborhood now. It seems funny to have to teach this. When I was a child I learned to get around as my play area widened over the years, first my back yard, then the path between my house and my playmate’s house, then the walk to the bus stop, and so on. With Oscar it’s more like, he had to stay in the back yard ALL THE TIME until I abruptly decided he ought to be roaming around more. I could just shove him out the door and say “Be back by dinner” but his personality and mine being what they are, it’s working out instead to send him on missions, each one gradually increasing his territory.

We started by getting a third cell phone, which I send with him. I am pretty sure moms yelling for kids from their back porches has gone the way of the dodo by now.

There are two handy destinations in our near neighborhood. One is a little convenience store around the corner and across a very busy street (with a light and a crosswalk). The other is a neighborhood branch of the public library, a bit farther away and across a medium-busy street, again with a light and a crosswalk. We started out by taking some walks to the convenience store, and by sending Oscar in to buy things. And by letting him walk around the block, and later ride a bicycle on the sidewalk around the block. Gradually we have worked up to sending him to the store alone, on foot, to buy small grocery items (a half-gallon of milk, a can of tomatoes). He is now allowed to ride his bicycle around the four nearest city blocks (and is still required to dismount and walk his bike when he crosses any street; I have seen cars blow through those stop signs more times than I care to count, and I want to force the habit of complete stop at the intersection). Yesterday I sent him ahead to walk to the library while I got the other children ready to go, so he got a good twenty-minute head start on us, long enough to walk alone and yet short enough for me to check that he got there promptly; he performed admirably, and so in a few days I may send him on an errand to return some books and come right back. After that will be an errand to go look for books to check out for himself, and to be back by a certain time. And we’ll keep expanding the walking and bicycling privileges. I would like for Oscar to be able to ride his bicycle to the YMCA, a mile away and on the other side of the highway. But that’s not going to happen this summer. I’d like for him to take the city bus to more interesting places. I’m not sure when that can happen, probably not for a couple of years.

It’s been a relief to get moving on this. I think his younger brother will be able to accompany him on some of these jaunts by next summer. There are a few things we won’t be doing — I’ll keep them in our yard during the obvious school hours (between about 9 and 2:30) for no other reason than to keep people from calling the authorities on us.

I have no illusion that the age of my childhood was an innocent time when children were safer. When I was seven and walking home from the bus stop, two men in a car drove up and asked me to get in (I ran home). The other girl my age, whose house I spent so much time at? Her mom’s longtime live-in boyfriend liked to walk around the house in just a towel (I didn’t tell my mom that, because I was afraid she wouldn’t let me play over there if I did); I learned much later that he had abused my friend for years. Once when I was swinging alone on the rope swing I lost my balance and nearly bashed my brains out; once, balancing on a retaining wall over a sewer grate inlet, I nearly fell in the rushing, high waters of the creek in spring flood. And I didn’t go outside all that much. I was the kind of kid who always had her nose in a book.

And yet I think I was healthier for the freedom to roam a little, than if I’d been made to stay in the house and yard all the time. I’m trying to figure out how to make that happen for my kids.

UPDATE: Commenter Jamie points out:

It’s been almost a year since a woman
in our neighborhood reported us to the police and then to CPS because she didn’t think our son should be walking home alone, and I still think about it all the time. It’s not just a question of what my kids are capable of; it’s also a question of what other people think my kids are capable of.

Yes, this is a big part of my caution too, and the reason I don’t allow any of the children outside the back yard — even on our own front porch — during school hours. (Readers who don’t know Jamie’s CPS story, her posts on this (with excellent comment threads) are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Yes, I think it’s that good of a series).

And Jamie also links to this article from the UK, with a map that shows how the roaming area of children in one family shrank over four generations.

Here’s what my roaming area looked like when I was Oscar’s age:

(View a shaded area that shows my 1984 roaming area in a larger map)

Oscar actually has a wider area, but he’s restricted to the sidewalks and street crossings. It feels less free to me.

Jul 29, 2009

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5 comments on Freedom.
Three weeks.

August 17 is D-day around here.

Or maybe that should be H-day. Or S-day. Or… I don't know, suggest something.

August 17 we will go Back To School.

Home school, that is, not "away school" as my kids have taken to calling that mysterious yellow-bus destination. (The boys got a chance to ride a yellow bus to YMCA camp this summer. It dispelled some of their longings, I think.)

I would rather start after Labor Day, but with a baby expected in the winter, plus the usual weeks off for Thanksgiving and Christmas and Holy Week, and a couple of vacations and trips to Grandma's, and the Extra Sanity Week I always give myself in late March, it's start early and end late in 2009-2010.

I am almost ready. I have to be ready, actually, by next Thursday (more on that later).

I have a weekly basic plan worked out, printed, and in my master school binder. One page shows it organized by student, one page shows it by day, and one page shows it by subject. (You wouldn't believe how many precious seconds of "ummmmmm….." this saves me, having it all printed out three ways. It's the difference between "What do I have to do today?," "What does Oscar have to do today?" and "When was I going to set up the art project?")

I have a one-page basic to-do list, for each day of the week. Not a schedule, exactly, although there are a few time points on the pages: "leave for music class at 9 AM," that sort of thing. Crucially, these are not printed out and placed in page protectors. They are handwritten. They will be scribbled on, annotated with this-goes-here-instead-of-there arrows, rewritten many times.

For Oscar, I have a 36-week schedule planned out for catechism study. Another one for Early Modern World History. Another one for science. Another one for independent reading.

Theoretically, I should have another one for 19th-Century American History by now. I'm about half done. I have a feeling we'll have to wing it, a little bit, on that one.

For the whole family, I have a 36-week schedule of read-alouds.

I don't have a schedule for math, spelling, English grammar, composition, Latin, Milo's nature study, music, art, or learning-to-read-and-write. I don't really need one for those. You just keep going, one page or chapter or lesson at a time.

I have been to Kinko's to spiral-bind the assignment/record books. They look lovely and crisp, all new and blank.

I think I have all the supplies I need to get started, except for a few grocery-store items. For instance, I need two gallon-size glass jars for science. I'm thinking: pickles. Oh, and we also need to finish drinking the case of Crispin's Hard Cider we bought so I could have two dozen identically-sized clear glass bottles. A toast… to science!

No, I'm not in bad shape at all. What a relief. Because a couple of months ago, when I was napping for two hours every afternoon, I didn't think we would ever be ready.

Jul 27, 2009

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2 comments on Three weeks.
The past and future of celiac disease.

An interesting article at Scientific American. War-related food shortages can save lives, it turns out.

CD [celiac disease] acquired a name in the first century A.D., when Aretaeus of Cappadocia, a Greek physician, reported the first scientific description, calling it koiliakos, after the Greek word for “abdomen,” koelia. British physician Samuel Gee is credited as the modern father of CD. In a 1887 lecture he described it as “a kind of chronic indigestion which is met with in persons of all ages, yet is especially apt to affect children between one and five years old.” He even correctly surmised that “errors in diet may perhaps be a cause.” As clever as Gee obviously was, the true nature of the disease escaped even him, as was clear from his dietary prescription: he suggested feeding these children thinly sliced bread, toasted on both sides.

Identification of gluten as the trigger occurred after World War II, when Dutch pediatrician Willem-Karel Dicke noticed that a war-related shortage of bread in the Netherlands led to a significant drop in the death rate among children affected by CD—from greater than 35 percent to essentially zero. He also reported that once wheat was again available after the conflict, the mortality rate soared to previous levels. Following up on Dicke’s observation, other scientists looked at the different components of wheat, discovering that the major protein in that grain, gluten, was the culprit.

Celiac disease is of special interest among autoimmune disorders because

it is the only example where the addition or removal of a simple environmental component, gluten, can turn the disease process on and off. (Although environmental factors are suspected of playing a role in other autoimmune diseases, none has been positively identified.)

Many more interesting details in the article, including recent research on the mechanism of the autoimmune reaction and prospects for non-dietary treatments of the disease. Finally, something to think about if you've got celiac in the family and are still having babies: The author and colleges have

…begun a long-term clinical study to test whether having infants at high risk eat nothing containing gluten until after their first year can delay the onset of CD or, better yet, prevent it entirely. “High risk,” in this case, means infants possess susceptibility genes and their immediate family has a history of the disorder.

We suspect the approach could work because the immune system matures dramatically in the first 12 months of life and because research on susceptible infants has implied that avoiding gluten during the first year of life might essentially train that developing immune system to tolerate gluten thereafter, as healthy people do, rather than being overstimulated by it. So far we have enrolled more than 700 potentially genetically susceptible infants in this study, and preliminary findings suggest that delaying gluten exposure reduces by fourfold the likelihood that CD will develop. It will be decades, however, until we know for certain whether this strategy can stop the disease from ever occurring.

Interesting.

Jul 25, 2009

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2 comments on The past and future of celiac disease.
How we did.

Stuff on my list: $32.53

Fruit for the week (a nice variety, about 23 pounds of it): $25.71

Stuff Mark decided to add (treats for the kids, chocolate, fresh mint, green beans, red chard, honey roasted cashews, pine nuts, ice cream): $19.60

Tax: $0.41

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Total: $77.84.

Jul 25, 2009

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1 comment on How we did.
About that $80 grocery list.

One thing Mark and I have never seen eye to eye on is the family budget.

It's not that we have different priorities, or that one of us wants to spend more and the other wants us to save more, or that we have different assessments of our savings needs. I think we're pretty well aligned on basic budgetary values. It's just that we have never really agreed on how to keep track of everything.

Every time we talked about it we wound up arguing about what goes in which category, what kind of a spreadsheet to set up, how to track how much each person is spending, whether to track spending with the credit card data or whether to use cash for some categories, whether we should be allowed to borrow from one category to make up for an excess in another, whether to set priorities and buy things immediately or whether to defer buying things, whether just one of us should be in charge of the budget or whether to divide categories between ourselves… and we always ended extremely frustrated with each other because we seemed, um, unable to explain ourselves to each other. At least, it was pretty obvious that my ideas didn't make any sense to him, and his didn't make any sense to me.

In other words, we have always had different ideas about how to engineer the budget apparatus.

(Look, couples are supposed to fight about money, right? OK, well, this is how we do it.)

So we have avoided problems by not budgeting at all. Believe it or not, this has mostly worked okay so far, but as our family grows it gets harder to meet yearly savings goals by the "save what's left at the end of the year" method.

So. Budgeting.

Somehow, I can only assume because Mark decided to be nice and do it close to my way, we have finally come up with a method that may work. I say "may" because we haven't actually saved any money with it yet. But it (a) makes sense to me and (b) is not odious to Mark, which is better than most of the plans either of us ever came up with before.

Here is what we are doing (I think).

First, we agree to pay for absolutely everything we can with credit cards. (We pay them off in full each month.) That makes data that's easy to download, as do personal checks, the next choice. Cash is a last resort, and we will each try to limit our cash withdrawals to $50/month.

Mark keeps the "official" record of the budget, including dividing things up into categories. But we decided to design the categories for easy categorization of expenditures based on the information in the credit card statement. So we have a "clothing" category and a "groceries" category. But we also have a "Target" category and a "Walgreens or Walmart" category. Why? Because I buy household goods AND groceries AND clothes AND other stuff at places like Target, and if I do this all in one trip it shows up on the credit card statement as "Target." Why should Mark worry about dividing up a single trip to Target into all the categories? Let's just set a spending limit at Target and be done with it. We can move money from one category to another if we happen to have the information, but we also can just leave it at that and not worry about it. The point is to try to cap our overall spending, the categories are only guidelines.

I am in charge of deciding how to spend some of the categories, and Mark is in charge of deciding how to spend others. I am in charge of clothes, but Mark is in charge of "outdoor gear" (skis, winter coats). I am in charge of household goods, but Mark is in charge of hardware. And I am in charge of the grocery budget, because I make the lists, even though Mark does the shopping.

So anyway, I hadn't been tracking grocery expenditures this month, and just today I sat down and looked at the credit card statements and realized that if we are really going to stay within the month's budget, we only have $80 to spend for groceries this week, which is about half what we usually spend and two-thirds what we figure we ought to spend. Okay then!

Fortunately, the freezer and pantry are really well stocked right now, so I decided to plan only four dinners and one lunch. We'll have leftovers or make do with what we've got (e.g., scrambled eggs and toast) the rest of the time. I also deferred non-essential restocking until the following week — even though we ate the last of the wild rice this week, we don't need to buy more just yet.

Meal 1: chicken lasagna (I already have everything except ricotta cheese, and I could use cottage cheese if I had to), green salad, stir-fried vegetables.

Meal 2: taco soup (I only have to buy one can of beans, one can of hominy, one can of Ro-Tel tomatoes, and the seasoning packets), fried tortilla strips, green salad again.

Meal 3: black beans and rice with cooked greens (I only have to buy parsley and rice).

Meal 4: salmon patties, tri-color succotash (I only have to buy lima beans) and okra.

One lunch: a big batch of tabouli (OK, I have to buy lemons, tomatoes, parsley, and cucumbers, but hey, I have some mint left over from this past week…)

So my list looks like this:

1 green pepper

1 cucumber

2 parsley bunches

1 head lettuce

2 tomatoes

2 lemons

1 bag frozen lima beans

1 envelope ranch dressing mix

1 envelope taco seasoning mix

1 can hominy

1 can pinto beans

1 bag brown rice

5 lbs whole wheat flour

1 canister iodized salt

Enough fruit for a week (Mark's choice — he can decide when he sees the produce section)

and, if there's still room left in the budget,

15 oz ricotta cheese

1 bottle red wine vinegar

1 can Ro-Tel diced tomatoes with chilies

I showed the list to Mark and he thought about it and added to the bottom of the list "Chocolate if in budget."

"OK, but you're not allowed to buy chocolate and not buy my ricotta cheese."

"D'oh!"

I will let you know tomorrow whether we managed to bring it in under $80. (We go through a LOT of fruit.)

Jul 24, 2009

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10 comments on About that $80 grocery list.
Thought while trying to construct an $80 grocery list for this week.

The more real food and less processed food you eat, the less point there is in trying to clip coupons.

Jul 24, 2009

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4 comments on Thought while trying to construct an $80 grocery list for this week.
Dialogue.

Tito Edwards at The American Catholic has a post on ecumenism that is followed by an interesting combox discussion.

Writing about institutional-level dialogue and ecumenism, Tito states:

Ecumenism, whatever that means anymore, is a dead cat. It’s going nowhere because it has no idea what it is. Hence the forty years of fruitless labor has produced nothing to celebrate.

The only real progress I foresee is with the Orthodox. Only they understand us and we they. We have much in common and are capable as divinely inspired institutions to be of one. Not our Protestant brothers who continue to devolve to the point of being unrecognizable among the worldly.

He also quotes Piuses (Pii?) XI and XII to the effect that the point of interreligious dialogue is to promote the “return” of non-Catholics to the Catholic Church. And concludes that ecumenical efforts have produced nothing over the last forty years.

I see his point. Too many people (pro-dialogue and anti-dialogue) confuse “ecumenical dialogue” with “ideological compromise.” Compromise on essential truths is simply not permitted, and not possible if the Church is to remain the Church.

The two things that can be done are to pare away inessentials and to accurately understand each other’s reasoning.

To pare away inessentials is not, of course, to remove elements of worship, belief, and practice that are helpful and fruitful for many, but to identify those features of faith that, being a help to some and a hindrance to others, may be chosen or rejected freely and so do not represent obstacles to union.

To accurately understand each other’s reasoning is not, of course, to adopt the reasoning of the other body, but to understand the exact definition of terminology, to know the rational basis upon which their reasoning rests, to understand the responses to common objections — in short, to comprehend the others’ beliefs on their own terms, with respect for their intellectual freedom. It does not mean accepting faulty reasoning as faulty; it does mean scrupulously understanding each step in the chain of reasoning.

The problems Tito has outlined with ecumenism are largely restricted to institutional ecumenism: committees of leaders of the Church, theologians and prelates and such, getting together with leaders from other traditions and hashing out documents and things like that.

“Dialogue” — otherwise known as “conversation” — between two individuals is another situation entirely. And there are other possibilities besides “I’m trying to convert him” and “I’ll compromise so we can come closer to agreeing.” In the conversation between two people, members of different faiths, who are both loyal to their own faith, fruitful dialogue is possible even if neither party changes their beliefs one whit.

Fruitful dialogue is when the two parties carefully explain themselves to each other, defining terms, clarifying distinctions, and so on, so that they can each come to an accurate understanding of what the other believes and the rational basis upon which those beliefs rest.

Fruitful dialogue pares away areas where misunderstanding of terms, superficial differences in behavior or in practice, etc. makes the two believe they have differences where they really are not.

Fruitful dialogue identifies real differences. It pinpoints the areas where the two really do have to say, “Ah, I see. That’s something you assert which I deny.” Or: “Hey, my belief on that issue, though I phrase it in different words, is not really so very different from yours.”

Because to clearly identify the exact points of difference is to understand how far apart you are. And when two bodies have clearly delineated the exact points of difference — which they do through fruitful dialogue — it is a help to individuals who may be wondering if they belong not there, but here. It is a challenge to individuals within those two bodies to decide which of the two is more true.

That is why dialogue can be fruitful, even if it does not seek to “convert,” but only to teach and to learn. To teach the truth as we know it, to learn exactly where the other does not align with that truth.

One of the greatest mistakes anyone can make in a disagreement — religious, political, or otherwise — is to assume you know why the other thinks and acts as they do, and to dismiss their own explanations of themselves. It’s plainly unkind. It’s remarkably self-centered (“I am the only person in the world whose beliefs are based on rational thought.”) Finally, it’s stupid, shooting yourself in the foot like that, because an accurate and unprejudiced understanding of the other is crucial to crafting arguments that may convince them. And it’s disappointingly common.

Jul 24, 2009

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“And they only get more tenacious as their chicks get older and they have more time to go after postmen.”

Today's puzzling out-of-context quote.

(Context here.)

Jul 23, 2009

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I’ll just file this one away for later.

Plus you get to drink wine. I think that's what that is in the glasses, anyway.

..

You're welcome.

Of course, you *could* try picking up the baby, but then you might have to put down your drink.

Jul 23, 2009

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1 comment on I’ll just file this one away for later.
Why Mark Bittman is my cookbook guru.

Lists.

Jul 22, 2009

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1 comment on Why Mark Bittman is my cookbook guru.
Vague habits are hard to keep.

At nearly 13 weeks pregnant, I have gained 7 1/2 pounds. That's an okay rate — I am supposed to gain between 25 and 30 lbs in a whole pregnancy, so I guess I'm on track for that — but I still feel panicky every time I see a new number on the scale. I just cannot stop myself from expecting to be back at BMI = 31 six months after having this baby.

Deep breathing, don't worry about the scale, concentrate on habits. Like measuring all my food.

A friend said to me the other day as we cooked together in her kitchen that she was working on one good habit at a time, and that right now the habit was "portion control." That's a good habit for anyone to develop, especially someone nursing a brand new baby as she is — it's a fundamental habit for healthy eating, but in and of itself it's not "dieting" and so working on it isn't likely to deprive her of the nutrients she needs to keep up her strength in such a taxing time of life.

I mused about it though — a little bit out loud there in the kitchen as I juiced lemons and minced cilantro, and later over the next couple of days. I was thinking about it just now as I used a 2/3 cup measure to scoop out my yogurt for my midmorning snack.

"Portion control" isn't really a single habit. It could mean a lot of different habits, or some combination of them all. Think about it: You might mean that you never take seconds, i.e., you control the number of portions. Or you might mean that you know exactly how much you eat of everything (whether you stick to a plan or not). Or you might mean that you plan to eat a certain amount of everything and you actually "control" yourself so that you actually do eat that much. Or you might mean that you plan to eat a certain number of helpings of things. Lots of different ideas.

It strikes me that if you're going to work on a habit, you'd do well to abandon a vaguely worded term like "portion control." Better to sit down and write out the details of the new way you'd like to do things. A standard operating procedure, so to speak.

I will always plate my food using measuring cups and measuring spoons so that I know I have served myself an appropriate size serving for each kind of food. I will carry a set of measuring spoons and cups with me for use at restaurants.

Something like that.

There are obviously other features of "portion control" that you could include. For instance, you could decide what is the appropriate size serving of each kind of food (one easy way is to use whatever serving size is listed on the label; another is to use a published system like the one in this book). You could incorporate an actual "diet" plan by allowing yourself a certain number of these servings per day or per week, or by holding yourself to another rule like "no seconds." You could increase your awareness by keeping a food diary.

Or you could just work on the micro-habit of always transferring food from package, to measuring device, to plate, to mouth. The food has to contact the measuring device and the plate on the way to your gullet. A simple rule. You could call it the "three-transfers" rule.

Original packaging —-> Measuring device —-> Plate or bowl —-> Gullet

Notice that all by itself, this rule does away with eating chips out of the bag and licking raw cookie dough off the spoon….

I have slacked off on a lot of my habits since beginning this pregnancy. I am trying hard not to "diet," and to eat when I think I need to eat (careful! I am good at convincing myself I "need to eat" when I don't), but there are a number of habits that are harmless for pregnancy and not really linked to "dieting." This is one. I don't have to limit how much yogurt I eat, but I might as well be aware that I've had about two-thirds of a cup, you know?

Jul 22, 2009

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No comments on Vague habits are hard to keep.
“Old age or a pool of blood,” we will sometimes say to one another.

Good post at DarwinCatholic about the problem of trying for "equality" in a marriage.

I'm not an absolutist about "traditional roles", although MrsDarwin and I have always felt strongly about maintaining a single income family with a full time parent at home, but the one thing I think is probably almost never healthy is a strong emphasis on doing everything equally in a marriage rather than having some sort of roles. If you both work full time careers, and both strive to do equal amounts of housework, parenting, cooking, etc., it seems to me that comparisons will almost invariably spring up.

"I do the dishes every night, but she hasn't swept the floor in three days."
"I end up having to help the kids out with homework while she just takes them out to fun activities which cost lots of money."
"I make more money, but he's always going out to lunch as if money were no object."

And on, and on. Perhaps I'm an unusually unpleasant person, but in a work environment I can't help constantly measuring myself against the other people who are "doing the same thing I'm doing". This can be pretty harmless at work so long as one keeps a lid on it. After all, it's just work, and we get to walk away at the end of the day. But when you bring this same tendency towards competition into a marriage, I can see nothing but trouble coming of it. There it seems to me that it's very important to have complementary but different roles — not do everything together as "co-parents". This doesn't have to be some kind of radical partitioning. But if one of your major goals is, "We'll make equal money, do equal work, and have equal fun," I think conflict will almost invariably result. Marriage is meant to be based on complementarity, not measured equality.

This is all very well said. I think where many folks go wrong is in the mis-application of the truth that men and women have equal dignity, worth, and importance. It is good to say, and to believe, that "men and women should be equal," and it's also correct to say "Husband and wife are equal partners in a marriage," all as ways of communicating the truth of equal dignity, worth, and importance. Equality of persons.

The error is in understanding that to mean "Husband and wife must expend equal effort and/or receive equal benefit." That's the fallacy of interpreting equality to mean sameness or consistency. It's an easy one to make because in many non-marital contexts, ensuring "sameness" and consistency is a handy way, or even the only practical way to ensure equality — children sharing a cake "equally" should get pieces about the "same" size, judges should try to apply laws in a consistent way to all the people before them, etc.

But equality of persons is not dependent on equal effort expended and equal benefit received. It has more to do with equally valuing the different efforts of both: the classic example is to value the work that helps the family without bringing in money equally with work that helps the family primarily by bringing in money, but there are many other examples. It has more to do with trying to equally meet the needs of everyone in the family — which almost surely means that some members receive "more" of something or other, because of needs specific to that person. Trying to treat all your children equally is impossible. Trying to meet all your children's real needs is worthy.

Really, the essence of the "equality = sameness" error? It ultimately assumes that someone who doesn't produce the same as another isn't worth the same as another. It ultimately measures people against a standard of sameness. A (the?) fundamental truth about persons is that persons are unique. Which means unique needs, unique abilities, unique desires.

(I always find that a good mental test for any sort of philosophy of marriage and family is this: "Would this idea hold up if one of us became permanently and severely disabled?" Hard cases may make bad law, but hard cases also make obvious hash of bad principles.)

Finally, I'm reminded of something one of my Indian co-workers said when someone asked her how it was that she'd remained happily married for 20+ years to a man she only met ten minutes before her wedding. "You just tell yourself you don't have any other options," she said. "If you really believe that, it helps you avoid starting problems that will make you want out." At this point in modern America's divorce culture, it's very hard to tell yourself that there are not other options, but I think that rebuilding that mentality — not just as in "I'd better put up with this, because there's no way out" but rather "I had better make sure that I'm easy to live with, because if I cause problems there is no way out of them" — is probably the only real path back towards marital stability and sanity in the wider culture.

I find that the "choice to have no choice" is an extremely powerful one, the purest act of free will, the best way to do what you really know is right or even just to achieve an optional, but dearly desired, goal. That's true whether applied in matters that are small (I want to resist eating them, so I choose to consider these potato chips completely off limits), medium (I want a natural birth, so I choose to think of the epidural as Not An Option), or vastly, eternally important (this marriage isn't over until one of us is dead).

The more firmly you believe in the Not-An-Option option, the easier it is to figure out what your useful options are.

Jul 18, 2009

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