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Complaining
So the move is still pending, though it is scheduled for later this week. Here's hoping. And if you have any other ideas for non-incense based home charms, I'm open to suggestions. One can't be too careful.
Anyway, while I'm waiting for this big thing to happen, I happened upon this sort of sentimental set of articles on Slate about "idle parenting." They are extracted from a book by Tom Hodgkinson and the general attitude seems to be that parents should spend more time doing not much of anything with their children, rather than engage in highly structured, strategically crafted behavior.
The opening piece is about how people want children, have them, then complain endlessly about them and fail to appreciate and play with them. Well, maybe this is so, but I don't really know why this guy would write something that misses such a fundamental point about his subjects. It isn't that people have children and then start to complain. People complain. People complain endlessly. Some people complain competitively (which is territory into which I don't tend to venture) and get great pleasure about one upping each other, misery for misery. This tends to be a family thing, I think.
My own family has a few tendencies, less competitive and more standard. My mother, for instance, has a peculiar kind of nostalgia that I fear I have inherited a little bit where she always feels beloved things have been altered. She is often right, of course and I think I've written about "They Changed It and Now It's Not Good" syndrome here before. (This syndrome applies broadly: to the subway system, the formula for Doritos, any "improvements" in products, new menus in restaurants. She doesn't mind progress, but does tend to lament change.
But I'm drifting. I suspect a lot of people would read The Idle Parent, whose subtitle is: "We had children and then we complained" and say that people shouldn't be having children in the first place. This is one of those obnoxious attitudes that inevitably ends up with people ending up in: "You're a Nazi/No YOU'RE the Nazi" arguments. People do complain about their children, but they complain by nature. It isn't as if they wouldn't be complaining about something if they didn't have children and it isn't even as if the lament is reflecting fundamental unhappiness. I have been seriously under the gun lately and rising very early to work, which is hard but it is the only system that guarantees any kind of progress. This is fair enough, I think, but the other morning, Felix woke up and began a pre-dawn howl after I had only been at it for about 20 minutes. I complained about that. I don't actually think there's much wrong with being frustrated about this sort of thing. The article seems to suggest that to even feel torn in this way is unhealthy.
The second piece in the series talks about how one should spend a lot of time with your children in unstructured activities, NOT going to amusement parks and museums. Surely there is some sort of middle ground one can reach for that doesn't involve constant frantic activity and the sort of shut-in life that Hodgkinson writes fondly of when he says: "At home, you are free. You can create your own fun, at no cost whatsoever. We often now stay at home all day on Saturday and all day on Sunday." My home not being some sort of small Utopia, I would be sorely tempted to jump out the window.
Of course I get the idea of not entering a schedule frenzy, but there's something of the self-righteous in here that makes me want to do something wild and rebellious, like go to a zoo for the better part of a day. Anyway, this theory of living is not for me and I'm as lazy as the next person.
posted by Elise at 4:12 AM
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Laura K. Curtis said...
Years and years ago, my then-roommate and I tried to give up complaining for Lent. I think we lasted three days. It's impossible not to complain about anything, not even the inability to complain!
4/22/2009 10:55 AM
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Laura K. Curtis said...