The Ideal Miss Trent

A frequent charge leveled against romance novels is that they make you discontent with the husband you’ve got by setting up a paragon of a hero.

This may well be true, but I think I’m just as likely (or more so) to fall in love with the heroines.

Take Miss Trent from Georgette Heyer’s The Nonesuch:

“She was always very simply attired; but she wore the inexpensive muslins and cambrics which she fashioned for herself with an air of elegance; and never had he seen her, even on the hottest day, presenting anything but a cool and uncrumpled appearance.”

She was a self-sufficient woman, becoming first a schoolteacher and then a private governess-companion rather than live beholden to her brother. She was, of course, accomplished in the female arts that make one suited for such a post – but above that, she had that certain something that made her universally respected.

The daughter of the house worshipped her as a heroine, yes – but she also won over the low-born mother who had been determined to keep the governess in her place:

“She had been too much delighted to regain possession of her niece to raise any objection to the proviso that Miss Trent must accompany Tiffany; but she had deeply resented it, and had privately resolved to make it plain to Miss Trent that however many Generals might be members of her family any attempt on her part to come the lady of Quality over them at Staples would be severely snubbed. But as Miss Trent, far from doing any such thing, treated her with a civil deference not usually accorded to her by her children Mrs. Underhill’s repressive haughtiness was abandoned within a week; and it was not long before she was telling her acquaintance that they wouldn’t believe what a comfort to her was the despised governess.”

What’s more, Miss Trent was so above-reproach that she even won the respect of the self-absorbed heiress under her care:

“Tiffany took an instant fancy to the new teacher, who was only eight years older than herself, and in whose clear gray eyes she was swift to detect a twinkle. It did not take her long to discover that however straitened her circumstances might be Ancilla came of a good family, and had been used to move in unquestionably genteel circles. She recognized, and was a little awed by, a certain elegance which owed nothing to Ancilla’s simple dresses; and bit by bit she began to lend an ear to such scraps of worldly advice as Ancilla let fall at seasonable moments.”

Miss Trent is just the sort of person I could wish to be: always elegant, always genteel, universally liked, and capable of saying and doing just the right things at the right times.

But, alas, I am myself. And while I can work to stay cool and uncrumpled even on the hottest days, can work towards being genteel without being haughty, can seek to live in such a way as to be above reproach – I am still myself. I sweat and stress, I can be common, I fail.

The important part is not that I be the ideal Miss Trent (which I am not), but that God be seen as Perfect (which He is.)


Cooking through Farmer Boy

When I first became obsessed with Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House” books, Farmer Boy and The Long Winter were tied for first place in my affections.

The Long Winter appealed to my love for stories telling of survival in the midst of adversity. Farmer Boy appealed to my love for food.

Whose mouth does not water as they read the description of those stacked pancakes, piled high with butter and maple sugar? Who does not long to be beside Almanzo, silently eating the sizzling ham, the stewed pumpkin, the mashed potatoes and gravy? And the pie, oh that pie!

I dreamed of the pies, of the ice cream, of the pound cake and taffy. I delighted in the descriptions of the familiar and wished to try the unfamiliar – Rye’n’Injun bread, apples’n’onions, wintergreen berries. Oh, how I wanted to try those.

Knowing that Farmer Boy was the next book in my re-reading of the series for Barbara’s Laura Ingalls Wilder Reading Challenge, I determined to cook up some of those toothsome meals.

Now, neither Daniel nor I are 19th century farmers and our calorie needs are significantly less than those of the Wilder family. Furthermore, Laura’s descriptions of the meals are often regarded to be hyperbolic, reflecting more food than even a well-off family like the Wilders would have at a typical meal. So I didn’t at all feel bad about paring the meals down to a more manageable size for our purposes.

We had fried ham, stewed squash (in lieu of stewed pumpkin), and mashed parsnips for our first meals – and then I read through chapter 2 again and discovered that it was mashed turnips they had rather than parsnips. Oh well, the parsnips were good – and I was reminded how much I like them.

We made twisted doughnuts (using the recipe in The Little House Cookbook) with lots of powdered sugar on top – and I decided that I liked the twisted technique even if it didn’t flip itself like Mother Wilder’s did. I think I’d like to try the technique again, only with a yeast dough (I prefer raised doughnuts in general.)

With our friend Ruth, we made stacked pancakes (with maple syrup instead of maple sugar), sausage patties in gravy, and apple turnovers.

I used the leftover pastry from the apple turnovers to make a pumpkin-pecan pie, which we ate with more ham and fried potatoes and apples’n’onions. I decided that apples’n’onions are amazing and I should cook them all the time (except that my husband only moderately likes them, so I should just cook them occasionally.)

I made baked beans using Mother Wilder’s technique – take boiled beans (I used Great Northern Beans), add salt pork (I used fatty bits left on the bone I’d boiled the beans with) and onions and green peppers, pour scrolls of molasses over top and bake at a low temperature for a long time. Daniel’s not usually a big fan of baked beans, but he actually liked these fairly well, especially after adding a bit of garlic powder and cayenne pepper. I’ll be using this as a jumping-off point to try to come up with a recipe he’ll really like for everyday use. With the baked beans, I served rye’n’injun bread (made using the recipe in The Little House Cookbook). I really enjoyed the flavor of rye and cornmeal together, but the bread ended up dry and dense (probably because of long cooking time at low temperature and not quite enough steam in my oven.) The next time I make cornbread, I’m going to try using my regular recipe but substituting rye flour for the wheat flour to make a modern-day Rye’n’Injun bread.

Finally, after the month was over, I got around to making roast beef and mashed potatoes with pan gravy, boiled turnips, and boiled carrots. I know I’ve had turnips before, but I was pleasantly surprised at the horseradishy flavor they have, and resolved to find more to do with turnips.

All in all, I ended up making some of the more mundane recipes from the book, holding off on all the pies and cakes and ice cream and taffy. And I discovered just how delicious meat and potatoes can be (and how many vegetables I forget exist.) Mother Wilder didn’t have fresh greens all through the winter, didn’t even have canned green beans or fruits. She had apples, onions, potatoes, turnips, carrots, and squash – but she used them again and again throughout the winter to provide her family with surprisingly fruit and vegetable heavy meals. I’m encouraged that I can do the same, using these root vegetables to round out my usual go-to frozen vegetables or fresh salads.

In addition to cooking from Farmer Boy, I did actually read it – and made some comments on the chapter on Springtime.


Head over to the wrap-up post for Barbara’s challenge to see what others have been reading, and what they’ve said about it.


Where is the Heart of Darkness?

Is it deep in Africa, along the nineteenth century Congo River?

Is it in the bronze people who drum and dance among those shores?

Perhaps it is in the uncivilized world in general – in Britain before the Romans conquered it.

Or maybe it is confined to Mr. Kurtz, that overpowering voice whose dark heart accomplished terrors along the aforementioned Congo.

Joseph Conrad suggests all of the above in his influential story The Heart of Darkness.

Marlowe, our narrator, introduces the idea that darkness might be a place when he opens his story by reflecting on the Thames:

“And this also,” said Marlowe, “has been one of the dark places of the earth.”

Again and again, Marlowe describes the encroaching forests along the bank of the Congo as an impenetrable darkness.

This, then, is darkness – unexplored, uncivilized places. These dark places infect the souls of the men within, turning them savage as the bronze men and their Mr. Kurtz.

It’s an appealing thought, that darkness is external.

Darkness is a place, free of civilization. Spend too much time isolated from civilization and you too will become dark.

But Marlowe’s story belies this interpretation, suggests a whole nother one.

Darkness is inside Mr. Kurtz. It is his passions that are the heart of darkness – the Congo only served to release his evil passions from the society that constrained them.

“They only showed that Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts, that there was something wanting in him – some small matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under his magnificent eloquence. Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I can’t say. I think the knowledge came to him at last – only at the very last. But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude – and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core.”

I like this interpretation, like to recoil in horror at the blackness of Kurtz’s soul, at the hollow core which enabled him to perform such evil as he did. I like to think him some kind of psychopath, with unusual lusts and lack of restraint.

But the thought niggles at my mind, burrows deep and will not be satisfied. For is not the heart of darkness in me?

I do not make those around me worship me, do not go to any length to obtain treasure, do not openly obsess over my reputation and fame. But that is only because I do not have Mr. Kurtz’s eloquence, his ability to convince anyone to my greatness. That is only because I am not unrestrained by society and culture as Mr. Kurtz was. My heart is just as lustful, just as hollow, just as absolutely dark.

This is what I must conclude from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness:

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”
~Jeremiah 17:9 (ESV)

and

“Cursed is the man who trusts in man
and makes flesh his strength,
whose heart turns away from the Lord.”
~Jeremiah 17:5 (ESV)


Dreaming of Springtime

I’ve always considered February one of my least favorite months. The days are still short, the winter has dragged on long, and generally February’s a pretty dingy month – if there’s snow on the ground (in Lincoln or in Wichita), it’s covered with a layer of grimy salt and road waste.

So as I’ve been reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Farmer Boy, I’ve been reveling in Wilder’s description of springtime from chapter 11.

“Bess and Beauty stepped out willingly, not too fast, yet fast enough to harrow well. They liked to work in the springtime, after the long winter of standing in their stalls.”

That’s EXACTLY how I feel when springtime rolls around and I can get out into my garden. I have a hard time remembering to care for my garden regularly in the summer, and hate to tear it all up in the fall – but after a winter of indoor work, I’m more than ready to get out and plant.

“There was no time to lose, no time to waste in rest or play. The life of the earth comes up with a rush in the springtime. All the wild seeds of weed and thistle, the sprouts of vine and bush and tree are trying to take the fields. Farmers must fight them with harrow and plow and hoe; they must plant the good seeds quickly.

Almanzo was a little soldier in this great battle.”

I love the metaphor here, love how true these paragraphs are, love how they remind me of the parable of the sower sowing good seed.

This year, though, this passage reminds me of springtime of our lives and the great trust that parents are given of sowing seed and cultivating little hearts. It’s easy to be complacent, to assume that children will learn what we want them to learn, that they’ll establish good habits, that there’ll be plenty of time to teach them tomorrow. But the best time to plant a seed and kill a weed is springtime. And the best time to communicate the gospel and establish good habits is early in life.

Which is why I am resolving to be a little soldier in this great battle – and to establish my own habits now, while Tirzah Mae is tiny. Now is the perfect time to get into the habit of speaking the gospel to my daughter, the perfect time to steep us both in Scripture songs, the perfect time to live a visibly Christian life around my home.

Because the life of the earth comes up with a rush in the springtime. And I want the life that grows in my daughter to be a good planting.

“Almanzo asked [Alice] if she didn’t want to be a boy. She said yes, she did. Then she said no, she didn’t.

‘Boys aren’t pretty like girls, and they can’t wear ribbons.’

‘I don’t care how pretty I be,’ Almanzo said. ‘And I wouldn’t wear ribbons anyhow.’

‘Well, I like to make butter and I like to patch quilts. And cook, and sew, and spin. Boys can’t do that. But even if I be a girl, I can drop potatoes and sow carrots and drive horses as well as you can.'”

Okay, this one isn’t exactly about springtime – but it’s in the chapter about springtime. I agree with Alice – I’m awfully glad to be a girl!

I’m reading Farmer Boy as part of Barbara’s Laura Ingalls Wilder Reading Challenge.


Everybody do the doula with me…

When I learned at age fourteen that homebirths were officially illegal in Nebraska (or, at least, that it was illegal for midwives to attend homebirths), I struck midwife from my list of potential careers. I started almost immediately to look for alternatives and was delighted at seventeen to learn of this thing called a doula – a woman who helps women during labor. I looked up all the requirements for being certified with DONA (the doulas of North America) and contemplated becoming a doula many a time.

But when I got pregnant, hiring a doula was the last thing on my mind – it didn’t even cross my mind.

When our midwife and her student midwife mentioned the value of doula care at our meet and greet, I blew it off and wouldn’t have thought about it again except that my husband asked me later if we shouldn’t include doula fees in our pregnancy budget.

I don’t think I need one of those, I told him. Diedre and Cynthia will be there and you’ll be there.

But Diedre sounded like she really encourages women to have doulas, he replied. I promised him I’d think about it. I checked The Doula Advantage by Rachel Gurevich out of the library to help me think through doula care.

What I read did little to convince me. It seemed to me like the biggest advantage of doula care is having someone in between you and the medical staff, someone who can help you ask questions and make informed decisions, someone who is going to know your hopes for the birth and help you have the birth experience you want. That’s all great and I think it’s probably vital if you’re giving birth in a hospital (where protocols are king and the chances that your caregivers know your wishes are slim) – but I’m going to be giving birth at home, with a midwife I’ve been visiting with for my entire pregnancy. I don’t need someone else there.

Then, I started reading birth stories and my sensitive first-trimester belly churned. It wasn’t the birth stories themselves that made me sick to my stomach – few can match my excitement over dilation and amniotic fluid and crowning and women who press through back labor. I love me some birth stories – and have since I discovered my parents’ copy of Special Delivery (a 1970s homebirth manual complete with the birth story and photos of the author’s daughter Mariposa) some fifteen (or more) years ago. No, what was making me sick to my stomach was all the people in these stories. There were doctors and nurses and husbands and doulas and best friends and children, oh my! All I could think was “make all these people leave!”

Diedre asked me at our meet and greet if I’d consider an unassisted homebirth – and I told her no without reservation. (EDIT: On rereading, I realize this requires clarification. My midwife was NOT suggesting that I have an unassisted homebirth; instead, she was trying to clarify what I meant when I spoke of my philosophy that childbirth is a natural process and that intervention is usually unnecessary.) I want to have someone present at my delivery who has experience with birthing women and who can share the wisdom of birthing with me. I want someone there who knows what constitutes an emergency and what to do in an emergency. I want a midwife there.

But that’s not to say that I really even want the midwife intruding much. Really, I just want to give birth on my own terms. I want as much privacy as possible to labor my way – and to cling to my husband as we labor our way. I don’t want an audience. (I may not be the most private person, but I am a very independent one – and having a whole lot of people around during delivery is not my idea of fun.)

Having read The Doula Advantage, I was pretty sure I don’t want a doula. That said, I promised Daniel that I’d discuss it in greater depth with Diedre and Cynthia.

I did and was greatly relieved when Diedre informed me that, while a doula is generally beneficial for most women, I should go with my gut here. (She did, of course, clarify that she and Cynthia may NOT be able to provide doula-like coaching care for the entirety of my delivery – because they need to focus on providing midwife care. And that’s just fine with me!)

Did you have a doula when you delivered? Did you prefer to labor in private or did you want lots of people around? Wanna share your birth story? I’d love to hear it (and I promise I’m getting that gag reflex under control.)


Book Notes: Paranoid Parenting (Part 5)

I’m mostly writing notes to evaluate Furedi’s arguments and add my own thoughts. If you’re interested, you can check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4. This will be the last of these posts since I’ve finally taken the book back to the library.

Chapter 5: Parenting Turned into an Ordeal
Furedi says: More and more parents are complaining that they have insufficient time to parent – despite the fact that today’s parents spend more time with (and actively involved with) their children than any other parents in the previous century spent with theirs. Society has taken off the rose-colored glasses that suggest that parenting is a walk in the park, but they’ve replaced them with “parenting as an ordeal” lenses.

I say: Yep. The expectation of parental involvement has grown and grown – such that parents feel an undeniable pressure for quality *and* quantity time with their children. For the record, my parents spent a lot of time with us kids growing up – but only a small segment of that time was parent-directed. Mom and Dad actually had conversations with one another while we were all sitting in the living room in the evening. Mom read books to herself while we kids played on the floor. She hoed the garden while we kids played in the backyard. She didn’t feel compelled to create sensory bins and learning activities and structured play times (not that those things are bad in and of themselves, but they aren’t a litmus test for good parenting.)

Chapter 6: Why Parents Confuse their Problems with Those of their Children
Furedi argues that now, more than ever, children are a part of their parents’ identity – and parenting advice is more focused than ever on changing adult behavior. Furedi believes the “competitive parenting” is an outgrowth of this confusion of parental identity with childrens’ identities. The most interesting suggestion Furedi makes in this chapter (from my point of view) is that, as adult relationships are increasingly fragile and temporary (due to increased impermanent cohabitation, high divorce rate, etc.), adults are more frequently turning to their children as the most permanent relationship in their lives. Thus, the relative perceived returns of investing in their children versus in a spouse or romantic partner have increased. Parents are now, more than ever, investing in an emotional relationship with their children out of a presumption that this is the one relationship that they can count on for the rest of their lives.

It’s a fascinating hypothesis, although difficult to prove or disprove empirically. Nevertheless, I wonder if some parents’ difficulty in letting their adult children “leave” to cleave to another is in part due to this co-mingling of a parent’s and a child’s identity.

I believe strongly in the permanence of marriage. Daniel and I will be married until one or the other of us dies. He is the one with whom my identity has been mingled (…and the two shall become one…) I will fight to keep my marriage as the central human relationship of my life.

But I still wonder how easily I might fall into the trap that my children’s behavior represents my success or failure at parenting. I have plenty of strong ideas about how things should or shouldn’t be done. I spend my days teaching parents how to alter their own behavior so that their kids won’t be fat (or will be less picky or will gain weight or…) So what happens if I end up with a fat, picky, or underweight child? Will I consider my identity so wrapped up in my child’s that this will devastate me? I don’t know. Or what if I have a child who doesn’t like to read? I don’t know.

I pray God would give me grace to parent well, not in order to bolster my own self-image, but as a faithful steward of the children God gives me.


A Different Sort of Journey

As I read The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, I am struck with how different (for the earthlings) this trip to Narnia is than the others.

In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the Pevensies travel to Narnia by their accident but by Aslan’s grand design to fulfill the long ago prophecy of sons of Adam and sons of Eve sitting on the thrones in Cair Paravel.

In Prince Caspian, the Pevensies travel to Narnia when called by Susan’s horn to set the rightful heir to Narnia’s throne on his place.

In The Silver Chair, Eustace and Jill travel to Narnia to find and free a captured heir.

In The Last Battle, Eustace and Jill travel to Narnia to help the final king of Narnia fight his last great battle.

In each of those four titles, the earthly children travel to Narnia for a specific purpose that changes the course of Narnian history. In The Magician’s Nephew, one could argue that Digory and Polly do not travel to Narnia for the purpose of depositing evil there – but that is what they do nonetheless, forever altering the Narnian landscape (Of course, a sovereigntist such as myself might argue that this is indeed the purpose for which Digory and Polly made their way into Narnia – but I think it would be dishonest to presume that C.S. Lewis, a less eager sovereigntist, would feel the same way.)

So, in each of the other Narnian chronicles, earthly children find themselves taken to a new world, to Narnia, in order to change Narnian history. But not in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. (I am aware that the Narnia fan will accuse me of skipping The Horse and His Boy – and they would be right. I have skipped that book because it does not anywhere within it include an earthly child being transported to Narnia – and it is that scenario that I am looking at in this post.)

In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, one can indeed argue that Caspian’s great sea voyage would have turned out very differently if Edmund, Lucy, and Eustace had not been dumped into the sea beside his ship. One might even say that Caspian may well have died on his voyage were the Pevensies and Eustace not there. That certainly could have changed the course of Narnian history. But one could just as easily say that Caspian would have had an eventful but ultimately successful voyage whether or not Edmund, Lucy, and Eustace were there.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is not about the transformation of Narnia.

Instead, it explores a more subtle transformation – the transformation of people – especially of Eustace Clarence Scrubb.


Chronicles of Narnia Reading ChallengeI am in Narnia again this month, reading along in conjunction with Carrie’s Chronicles of Narnia Reading Challenge. Don’t forget to drop over by Reading to Know to see what kind of goodies Carrie has there for Narnia lovers!


Book Notes: Paranoid Parenting (Part 4)

I’m mostly writing notes to evaluate Furedi’s arguments and add my own thoughts. If you’re interested, you can check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Chapter 4: Parenting on Demand

Chapter 4 starts with a complaint about some of the hallmarks of attachment parenting (feeding on demand, cosleeping, baby wearing, and avoiding “crying it out”) – but quickly morphs into something else entirely. The bulk of the chapter deals with what Furedi perceives as new roles of parents: parents as “full-time lovers” of their children, parents as therapists and healers, and parents as teachers. In each of these roles, Furedi explains how the definition of parenting has changed in recent years. Yes, parents have always been expected to love their children, but love has been redefined into emotional attentiveness, seen especially in play and separate from caring for a child’s physical needs. Furedi speaks of the role of parents in developing a child’s “emotional intelligence” and disparages the modern trend for constant attentiveness to a child’s emotional state, which he sees as complicating a child’s feelings. He also talks about a new role of parents in “supporting a child’s learning”, looking at how much time the average parent spends helping their children with homework (which Furedi purports is more time than the official guidelines suggest children should be spending on homework.)

This chapter was difficult for me to read and analyze. Furedi’s initial complaints about attachment parenting and his later complaints about new roles of parents seem disconnected – the only similarity between attachment parenting and the other complaints is the idea that a parent should be constantly attentive to a child’s needs. At the same time, I see a distinct difference between feeding “on demand” (a philosophy that I very much espouse-although I tend to call it “per infant hunger/fullness cues”) and spending large amounts of energy trying to decode your preschooler’s emotions. Telling parents to feed their infants when they are hungry is different than telling parents that they must always be on alert lest they emotionally damage their child.

Another difficulty for me was Furedi’s discussion of parents as teachers. I was homeschooled. My parents were my teachers. I intend to homeschool my own children. I feel strongly that parents ARE teachers, regardless of whether they take on that mantle or not. That said, I have my doubts about the homework little ones are sent home with – and about how much time parents are spending doing it. What on earth are kids doing in school all day that they need to be doing 5-10 hours of homework at home on top of it? I think I spent ten hours a week doing school, period. By the time I was in third grade, I needed only minimal direction from my mom. She certainly wasn’t spending 10 hours a week helping me with schoolwork (and remember, she was my only teacher.) I think parents should be teachers, are teachers. But I wonder if maybe parents and school systems are getting a little too caught up on “schoolwork” and “learning activities” (possibly at the expense of actual learning – and to the stress of parents everywhere.)


Book Notes: Paranoid Parenting (Part 3)

I’m mostly writing notes to evaluate Furedi’s arguments and add my own thoughts. If you’re interested, you can check out Part 1 and Part 2.

Chapter 3: Parents as Gods
In chapter 3, Furedi goes deeper into a concept he introduced in the previous chapter – infant determinism (also referred to by Furedi as “parental determinism”.) This idea purports that parents are uniquely responsible for all sorts of childhood and adult behavior – and that therefore parents should take a strong role in actively shaping their children’s lives (because if they don’t do it intentionally, they will be sure to mess up their children!)

“Today, parenting has been transformed into an all-purpose independent variable that seems to explain everything about an infant’s development.”

The author goes through a huge list of things that modern science blames on parenting – the terrible twos, school failure, depression, eating disorders, and more. Here’s where he starts talking a bit on my area of expertise: nutrition.

“Nutritionists claim that many parents are mistaken in the belief that a healthy diet for an adult is a healthy diet for children. It is claimed that babies and toddlers who receive normal adult fare are deprived of energy-dense food and therefore lack the right calorie intake….Parents not only have to constantly monitor the food they give to their toddlers, they also have to set the right example during meals.”

Here’s where I wonder if these are the messages parents are really receiving – because they’re certainly not the messages I’m sharing. The truth is that many people are mistaken in their beliefs about what constitutes a healthy diet, period. While extreme low-fat diets were popular, there were indeed parents who mistakenly thought that their infants and toddlers should go low-fat too – and those infants ended up with essential fatty acid deficiencies. But extremely low-fat diets actually aren’t healthy for anyone (and hopefully, no dietitians are spouting that in 2014!) – and children are actually uniquely vulnerable to nutritional deficiencies (as opposed to adults) because they’re still building their bodies (as opposed to maintaining them as adults are.) And setting a good example? Is he really complaining about that advice? It seems like common sense that if you expect your kid to eat vegetables, it helps if they see you eating vegetables too.

The disconnect between what I share as nutritional parenting advice (and really, my job is to give parenting advice) and what Furedi perceives as current nutritional parenting advice makes me wonder where else the messages researchers and educators give are transformed into paranoia.

And then I look at Furedi’s sources: Mother & Baby magazine, Prima Baby magazine, Baby magazine, Parents magazine. These magazines were purportedly quoting experts or giving advice based on research – but I’m not at all confident that journalists have the skills required to give advice based on scientific research. I see it all the time with nutrition. A new study comes out suggesting that high intake of cinnamon increases insulin sensitivity. This is interesting, but hardly something to start giving nutritional advice based upon. Yet Fitness magazine has a big feature full of cinnamon-rich recipes announcing that this is a scientific way to prevent diabetes. The advice, of course, pays no attention to the minimum dose required for response, the magnitude of the response, or the quality of the study. I suspect that much of the “scientific” parenting advice one reads in parenting magazines is similar.

But don’t blame it on the experts, this time. If you want someone to tar and feather, tar and feather the journalists who prey on parent’s fears and inappropriately translate research into guidelines.

That said, Furedi does have a good point to make: children tend to be remarkably resilient. The magnitude of these parenting effects is nowhere near as large as the popular media would have you think. My parents didn’t follow all the nutritional advice I give my clients (and I actually give them good advice :-P) – and I’m not a fatso with an eating disorder. It’s okay to relax – you don’t have to follow every new fad the parenting magazines tout in order to not mess up your child.


Book Notes: Paranoid Parenting by Frank Furedi (Part 2)

I’m mostly writing notes to evaluate Furedi’s arguments and add my own thoughts. If you’re interested, you can check out my introductory comments here.

Chapter 2:The Myth of the Vulnerable Child
Furedi argues that today’s children are regarded as uniquely vulnerable to outside forces (almost all of which are considered risks) and NOT resilient to manage such outside forces. As a result, parents seek to minimize all risks, not considering any potential benefits of risk. Furedi points to the modern playground as an example of the outerworking of this fear of exposing children to risk.

“It is easy to overlook the fact that the concept of children at risk is a relatively recent invention. As I argue elswewhere, this way of imagining childhood involves a redefinition both of risk and of childhood. Until recently, risks were not interpreted by definition as bad things. We used to talk about good, worthwhile risks as well as bad, foolish ones. Risks were seen as a challenging aspect of children’s lives. Today, we are so afraid of risk that we have invented the concept of children at risk. A child that is at risk requires constant vigilance and adult supervision.”

But the myth of childhood vulnerability is not limited to physical vulnerability to danger. Today’s parenting culture considers children to be emotionally and developmentally at risk, subject to what one psychologist calls “infant determinism”. Without just the right childhood circumstances, a child could be scarred for life – destined to be a psychopath or mentally ill. Yet this concept, while popular, is largely ungrounded in empirical evidence. Yes, infants in third world orphanages who are never touched or held are more likely to experience psychological difficulties – but these extreme examples do not prove that children in general are at risk of developmental and psychological issues if they are not held or watched every moment. Children are much more resilient, both physically and psychologically, than current parenting culture wants to admit.

Furedi’s playground argument hits home with me. The modern playground is so far removed from the playground of my childhood that I reflected to my husband (and to Facebook) that the modern playground seems designed to eliminate all risks, including the risk of gross motor development.

While we were dating, Daniel and I took my niece to one of the old playgrounds in my parent’s neighborhood. She was maybe 18 months and I stood a step behind her, terrified, as I let her climb the slide’s steps all by herself. I was fully aware of the risks, of the rails that were simply something for her to grab to help her climb, not something that would keep her from falling 10 or more feet to the ground if she slipped. I was aware that, if the weather were warmer, the metal of the slide could get hot and burn her. My heart was in my chest. But I value learning and independence. I think that’s important. I took the precaution of being a step behind her so she was within hands reach if she faltered. But I let her climb by herself.

Last year, a whole group of our family went to another of my parents’ old playgrounds (they have three old playgrounds within walking distance!) My sister Anna got on the merry-go-round (yes, it actually has one of those) with the Little Miss (who was now two and half) and Daniel pushed them. He went faster and faster and faster while I bit my fingernails watching them turn. I felt sure that Anna was about to throw up and feared that the Little Miss would emerge from the experience terrified of her uncle Daniel. Anna cried uncle and Daniel stopped them. They stepped off the merry-go-round and the Little Miss slowly reoriented to the world. When she found her bearings, she turned towards Daniel and demanded “Again.”

Children are resilient. Yes, risks exist – but so do opportunities that can’t be obtained without risk.

A child broke her arm after falling out of a tree. Her father contemplated banning tree-climbing. I broke my collar bone at age 2 falling out of bed. Perhaps we should also ban bed-sleeping. I say it ironically, but take a look at parenting literature and you’ll read of the advantages of toddler beds set close to the floor, maybe even with a soft mat alongside to break a child’s fall. You can add a mesh rail to your child’s bed to prevent falling entirely, but you must be careful lest your child get stuck between the bed and the rail – another risk.

All of us have stories of risks we took as children. We have stories of risky behavior that didn’t result in damage and risky behavior that did actually hurt us. Most of not only survived but thrived despite (or even because of) these experiences.

But it doesn’t stop with physical risks. We have emotionally “traumatic” experiences in our memories too. I slept in my closet on a pile of dirty clothes for weeks at a time because I got tired of having my sister tickle me in the bed we shared. One of my siblings grabbed a knife from the kitchen and threatened me with it. A drunk man got too close for comfort when I was waiting for my mom after ballet class when I was nine or ten. I experienced fear and anger as a child – but I also experienced love and safety and comradery. Today, I laugh at those “traumatic” stories and have great relationships with my siblings.

Ironically, the “traumatic” experience from my childhood that still has the power to excite me to anger is of an overprotective cop who got angry with my mother for leaving six of her children (with their eleven year old sister- me) in their wrecked van by the side of the highway while she called for help from the car of a Good Samaritan who stopped a hundred feet or less ahead of us. I still become angry when I think of someone daring to disapprove of my mom’s sensible action in the face of our accident.

So there you have it. Kids are resilient – physically and emotionally. Risks exists, but are not always bad. Parents need not be paralyzed with fear of risk – instead, they should consider which risks are truly problematic and how to wisely manage risk while maximizing childhood.