Parental Ethics and Privacy
One of the areas I work in as an academic is children’s rights. It’s no
surprise that the topic interests me. That’s in large part due to the choices I
face on a daily basis as a parent of three children. One of the joys of being a philosopher is being able to change areas as one’s life interests change. In my work on feminism and death I note that it’s similarly no surprise that some of the bets known feminist philosophers, the same women who once wrote about the ethics of marriage and the just distribution of household work and childcare have now turned their attention to aging and death. Baby boomer 2nd wave feminists have aged and so have their interests. Given that I’d
like to write more personally about some of the areas I do research in
and also extend some of my personal interests into my academic work,
writing more personally about parenting seems a natural thing to do. But when I
set out to do that I get stumped. It’s not that I don’t have a lot to
say. The problem is saying it while respecting my children’s rights to
not have their lives shared with others without their consent and
involvement.
At 8, 10 and 14 my children have the rights to privacy that prevent me from using them as philosohical or conversational fodder. Here’s one example that will help make this clear. I have lots of feminist friends who as parents have gender typical children. They exclaim that their boys emerged from the womb loving trucks, mud, and guns, that their girls dress in pink, play princess and collect dolls. They act surprised that their feminism seems to have had no impact on their children’s gender orientations. Not me. Not my children. I’m the feminist parent with gender atypical children. To call them budding gender outlaws would be an exaggeration but only one conforms to anything like a gender stereotype. I have one son for whom I’m in fact an inadequate feminine role model. He wishes I had fluffier, fancier, sparklier, shinier clothes! In the morning he hauls out towering spiky heels for me and tries to put glittery make up on my cheeks. The first time he saw drag queens in a pride parade, he looked on in awe and said, "Why don’t you dress like that mom?" Long ago he learned that dressing for school was a matter of compromise-safety and fitting in versus personal expression. We have had one appointment with a not unsympathetic teacher who said she’d protect him from bullying because she understood that his problem was "just like any other disability." Grrr. These days he has better teachers, more confidence and more support. I find myself torn between two thoughts. One: I’m glad he’s our child. Two: It’s no surprise that he’s our child. The first thought regards his gender orientation as luck, as if he fell from the sky, born that way, as the old argument for toleration goes. The second thought gives us some causal role in who he is and how he expresses himself. Probably the truth is somewhere in between.
But enough of that. I began this entry to explain why you don’t hear much of my children’s lives on my blog. I then proceeded to break all my rules to make the point. If there were a way to talk about parenting without talking about them, I would. It’s not that I don’t think a lot about parenting and that my children don’t play an enormous role in my life. I do and they do. But I can’t talk about that without failing to respect their privacy. When they are old enough to tell their own stories or to comment and protest, maybe. But for now I’ll return to talking about my life and ideas, leaving them slightly off stage.
