While digging through the pile of papers in my seven-year-old’s backpack, I came across a copy of a page from the district reading curriculum that includes the weekly spelling words and a couple of ‘Guiding Questions’ for parents to talk to their kids about at home during the week. To be brutally honest, I often put these directly into the recycle bin — we’ve got curiosity and interesting conversations to spare at our house — but my interest was piqued by this one because the Guiding Questions were:
“How are families alike?” and “How are families different?”
So, as we set the dinner table with our usual assortment of mismatched plates and plastic cups the kids had caught at Mardi Gras parades in Louisiana, I asked whether they had been talking about families at school. Stuart said yes. He said they had talked mostly about how many siblings people had. The teacher called out numbers, beginning with one, and asked the kids to raise their hands when she called out the number of siblings they had. He felt bad for one friend who is an only child. Indignant, he exclaimed: “But Mom! She shoulda said zero! She shoulda said: ‘Who has zero siblings?'” Stuart reported that they also talked about how some families have only a mom, some families have step-parents and half-siblings and some have a grandparent living with them.
Being something of a pot-stirrer, I said: “That’s great. Did you talk about how some families have two moms or some maybe have two dads?” He paused for a moment and then said: “Umm, no, we didn’t exactly talk about that…”
I started in on an impromptu soapbox speech about how the teacher should’ve expanded her definition of what qualifies as a “family,” but was interrupted by this little gem, spoken with an upturned eyebrow and a Cheshire Cat grin:
“We also didn’t talk about how some families have one dad and seven wives.”
Oh boy, did everyone laugh at that. My girls suggested that you could have a different mom in charge for each day of the week. I said I would want to be the Thursday mom because I like Thursdays this semester.
After everyone settled down and all our food was ‘prepared’ -a frozen entree here, a bowl of cereal there (no second shift for me, thank you very much)-Stuart declared: “Mom, I just think there’s all different kinds of families and they’re all good.”
That’s my boy. He gets it.
P.S. He’s 7.
Funny, the first time I really had to think about what a family was had to do with zoning laws …
Before then, line families (a kind of polyandry where the family is an association with property and inheritance rights so that the assets always remain within a core kinship group), alternating patterns (where old women marry young men and old men marry young women, who inherit their stuff and then marry young so that the older spouse always has assets and social standing, the younger spouse is always inheriting position and possessions to be set up to raise the children) and others had just seemed like one more kind of family.
My dad was in the air force, his father in the diplomatic corp, his father with the rail road, so nuclear families living around had not happened since before my great grandfather was one of three Fred LeRoy Marshes in Anaheim (three guys with the same name in a town of about five thousand .. they played poker for the name, one guy got to be Fred, great grand-father became LeRoy and the last guy found a new name).
But it is a good question.
I love Stuart! Now there’s a kid with a sense of humor …..
One of these days, I’m going to have to meet Stuart. Seriously, what a funny kid.
Stuart stories are my favorite! Such a funny, smart and wise kid.
Your dinners sound like ours. We run that kitchen like part diner, part self-service pantry. I wonder if that’s how it is for all dual-income families. I have never understood how families can manage a big family meal every night of the week – if they even do. It’s been a long time since I’ve encountered that kind of setup.
I agree that Stuart is wise. That kid needs his own show.
Heather, you should get one of those little hand-held camcorders and let us sit in on one of your dinnertable discussions sometime. It was great to read about one here: it sounds like yours is the kind of family that would help a child feel secure and generous about what other families can be.
Awesome, Heather. I love this story. What a smart little man. So perceptive. There are sorts of families out there. Maybe the teacher didn’t want to get into any hot water with some parents by talking about families with two moms/dads. Certainly some parents would complain if it were discussed in school, or maybe they were hoping that part of the conversation would happen at home (hence the take home flyer?).
@Hawkgrrrl, we try to sit at the table and eat together. That’s the bar. WHAT we eat is not the main goal. Oddly, despite having done this for YEARS, I still find myself harping at the kids to sit down (sometimes Stuart gets up to do a cartwheel or two in between bites) and stop interrupting each other, etc. Sometimes they’re like conversational gladiators–clamoring to take each other down and get the last word in. Or sometimes they’re so excited to go on about their day, we have to take turns. Okay: you get to tell us two things and then it’s someone else’s turn. But OFTEN, we have some really great conversations.
@Dayna, oh, I’m SURE the teacher did not want to create controversy. And I get that need to stay on the safe side. But really, that desire to stay safe is part of the problem–especially in terms of creating environments inside AND outside schools wherein families with same-sex parents can be accepted and considered one of many types of families. We can pretty confidently assume that someone in that class, over his/her lifetime, will either be gay/lesbian or will have a relative who is . . . and what will they do? How will handle that?
Well, I probably would have been on a soap box, too–but I have to feel sorry for teachers these days. It’s a thin tightrope they walk. Can you imagine the trouble Ms. Stuart’s Teacher would have been in with the conservative families, had she expanded this conversation to include the more non-traditional configurations of families? As a public school teacher, you just can’t win.
So, thank goodness there are families like yours, who bring up the things they’ve learned in school, and hash them out at home. Rock on, Heather, and Stuart.
@BiV, I’m totally with you on feeling for the teachers. I hope I didn’t sound like I was blaming her. Of course in a small town in Texas, this teacher would really have been sticking her neck out on the line. (And this is a school where Stuart was taught to say a special prayer every day before going to the cafeteria for lunch, so umm, yeah, not real “progressive.”) Having said that, I LOVE the school, I love so many of the teachers, I am so grateful every day that when I drop them off, I know they will be safe and cared for. So I was not condemning the teacher. I was doing what the district curriculum mandated, right? Discussing the “guiding questions” at the dinner table.
I’m actually GLAD when crazy things get said at school and at church and in my own classes because it provides great conversation starters.
England is considered to be pretty secular and liberal as a nation, but I remember all the way coming through state schools, we would always say ‘grace’ before starting our lunch.
I seriously doubt that there’s many state schools still do that today – but there you go – a lot has changed in the last 20 years.
Gah! I nearly lost it, Andy. Luckily, Brent is more cool-headed, so he dealt with it for me. The teacher ended up telling the students that they weren’t going to say the prayer anymore.
I really think that gay couples should be given a mention at school, nothing needs to be said about any way of living being right/wrong or better/worse, just that these types of families exist, but then there is probably so many variations, you can’t mention them all. I’m interested to find out how schools teach this kind of stuff as my little girls start school. Cara, my eldest, has just started pre-school at a Catholic school here in England. Should be interesting.
@Hedge–I agree . . . but like I said, I don’t fault the teacher for fearing for her job. I fault the society/culture at large that makes losing her job over something like that a real fear. What more perfect time/place/lesson to just mention that as one of the ways in which families are different? Nothing about whether they’re right or wrong–just that they exist, as you mention. The teacher didn’t pass moral judgment on any of the other possibilities – single parent, divorced, etc. And like I always tell my students (college kids): having a “nuclear” family CLEARLY doesn’t guarantee happiness or good parenting or happy children, right?
In my experience, the schools don’t teach this at all. But I have lived in Louisiana and Texas–both conservative southern states–so I wouldn’t expect otherwise. Still, I’m trying to get my kids to realize that these kinds of families exist and that they are real and that they can be good (or bad!)–just like any other kind of family. Stuart asked a while back what “gay” meant. I told him. He paused for a minute and said: “Mom, I think that’s kinda weird” (and he can’t say his r’s, so you have to imagine him saying “weird” more like “weiwd”). And I said: “I know it’s not what you’re used to, but that’s okay . . .” and then we talked about it from there.
I really adore this post, Heather. I could totally imagine the scene as it played out and connected with your family life and what you’ve nurtured there as well. Thank you.
P.S. I have vivid memories of eating that very Swanson TV dinner.
What a lovely scenario, Heather, which I appreciated sharing in. I miss those family dinners with young (or teenage) children. They were the second-best times for real communication (best was when I had one child in the car, driving them someplace). Now we rely on grandchildren to see young minds unfolding and taking in (and giving back) unexpected insights. I love it when their parents occasionally post these gems on Facebook status.
:) Matt, I remember eating that same Swanson dinner.
I’m one of those only children that the teacher left out. I’m happy that Stuart stuck up for me.
Having met Stuart, I can totally visualize…..
Stuart is a gem. He has an uncanny sense of self. He exudes self-confidence, but is not full of himself. He is just content to be himself–just as he is–and he seems equally content to let other people be themselves.
I feel like my challenge with him is to not ruin that.
Here in Massachusetts, the 2 mommies/2 daddies thing is part of the curriculum. My youngest daughter (1st grade) brought home a library book in which a prince needed to get married, and after looking far and wide for a princess decided that he was going to marry another prince, and so they became king and king and lived happily ever after. She’s quite a pot-stirrer. The teacher had read it in class, and she realized that it was the sort of thing that might get a reaction out of Mom and Dad. The funny thing was that all 3 of her older sisters knew the story, and they never mentioned it because they thought that we’d disapprove. This is something that they must have picked up from church.
Plus, kids tend to innately assume that different means bad, which is something that always surprises me. It sounds good to say, “kid’s aren’t born hating” but that turns out to be nonsense. From the second they begin to evaluate their surroundings they’re categorizing the world into groups based on similarity or difference with themselves. One study showed that kids begin to notice racial differences sometime between their 3rd and 6th months (“The Other-Race Effect Develops During Infancy: Evidence of Perceptual Narrowing.” David Kelly, Paul Quinn, Alan Slater, Kang Le, Liezhong Ge, and Olivier Pascalis, Psychological Science, v18, no12, 2007). Not talking to a kid about differences leaves them to make conclusions based on their imagination, which invariably leads to inaccurate conclusions.
I’d make it a point to talk to my girls about issues relating to differences when they are preschool age. I’ll ask them questions like, “If someone is black, do you think that they are nicer than other people, less nice than other people, or just as nice as anyone.” They’ll answer, “less nice,” which always astonishes me, but this is the typical response. It forms the starting point for a dialogue about why people are different in some respects and what it means, and this dialogue is one that we revisit again and again.
DKL, clarify one thing for me, if you don’t mind: your older girls had heard the story, but didn’t mention it because they thought you would disapprove of the story’s approval of a same-gender marriage? You said “She’s quite a pot-stirrer,” but did your youngest daughter do something at school to stir the pot?
Also, I’ve read some of the studies on racial differences . . . I won’t argue that babies/young children don’t notice difference, but my experience has shown me that kids do learn a lot of that. Or maybe they notice the differences when they’re very young, but don’t make moral judgments about them? Or maybe their attitudes towards the differences they see get worse as they age? I’m not sure.
My oldest daughters attended a public school in Louisiana in which they were the minority by far. In my daughter’s kindergarten class, there were maybe 3 white kids, 1 African American-Cuban girl, and 20 African-American kids. We wondered whether she would notice how different her school looked from our neighborhood, her pre-school (a Methodist Mothers’ Day Out program), and our church. She didn’t say anything. We kept waiting for some sign. Finally after a couple weeks, she casually: “It’s kinda funny that all the kids at my school have brown skin.” And that was that. Nothing more about it.
NOW (at almost 14), she would definitely notice it and probably make a lot more attributions about being in that situation.
So it does seem like she’s learned it, no?
Not arguing with you–just talking.
I don’t know what the scientific literature has to say about it, but I do think the degree to which the differences are apparent shapes assumptions about whether those differences are good, bad, or irrelevant. Our youngest two girls went to church, preschool, and then the first couple years of grade school in the inner city where they were often in the minority. The assumptions they made in their own minds about what it meant to have a different skin color were very different from our two boys, who went through these same experiences in a lily white suburb. We’ve had to be more proactive about discussing this sort of thing with the boys than we ever had to with our girls.
Heather, by pot-stirrer, I mean she loves to say things that get reactions out of people (I wonder where she gets that from…). She didn’t do anything at school. The school that my daughters attend is a little over 40% black.
I now it’s difficult to imagine that kids are born haters.
Bergitte Vittrup Simpsom’s did her doctoral dissertation on the topic (Exploring the Influences of Educational Television and Parent-Chiled Discussions on Improving Children’s Racial Attitudes, University of Texas at Austin, 2007). She started out asking children a series of questions about race (“How many white people are nice?” and “How many black people are nice?” — similar to the ones that I’ve asked my daughters; the material in her dissertation is what prompted me to start having these conversations with my kids.) What she found was that ignoring race as a topic and saying general things like “Everybody’s equal” or “God made all of us” had no impact on kid’s racial attitudes. Also ineffectual were educational videos that showed blacks and whites interacting, but that did not address racial differences head on. What she found worked were specific discussions that acknowledged race and were aimed directly at dispelling incorrect assumptions about it.
In other words, trying to raise kids so that they’re colorblind is not an effective way of eliminating racism. Some parents worry that even saying positive things about someone’s race or ethnicity (“Isn’t it great we have a black president?”) will teach a kid to use race as a construct through which to view society. The truth is that kids already have this construct. And it makes perfect sense: racism isn’t invented by adults; like illiteracy, it is a condition that we must educate our children away from.
A 2007 study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family (“Child, Parent, Situational Correlates of Familial Ethnic/Race Socialization,” by Tony Brown, Emily Tanner-Smith, Chase Lesane-Brown, and Micahel Ezell, v69, no1) found that 45% of families seldom discuss race issues with their children.
Of course, she found that most kids start out with some pretty racist attitudes, because kids respond to people who are different from them even in very small ways by thinking that different is not as good. Rebecca Bigler took 3 preschool classrooms and divided them in half, giveing one have blue t-shirts and the other half red t-shirts. The kids played nicely together, and the t-shirts had no overt impact on how the kids behaved toward each other. But when asked questions about the characteristics of kids with the different color t-shirts, the kids regularly had believed good things about kids with their own color t-shirt and bad things about kids with the other color t-shirt. (Rebecca Bigler “The Use of Multicultural Curricula and Materials to Counter Racism in Children,” Journal of Social Issues, v55, no4, 1999). Bigler argues that children look for friends first among those who most closely resemble them (Rebecca Bigler, Lynn Liben and (“A Developmental Intergroup Theory of Social Stereotypes and Prejudice” in Advances in Child Development and Behavior, vol34, 2006).
I used to be uncomfortable with the fact that my daughters’ elementary school always had all these lessons about race and racial attitudes, because I used to think that it would teach them to look at the world as though it were divided into races. After looking at the scientific literature on the topic, it’s pretty obvious to me that my daughters’ school had the right idea, and that I need to realize that kids see these distinctions whether we discuss them or not, and that I need to be more active about extinguishing prejudice in my children.
This is great stuff, DKL. I also cringe when people (whether friends or my students, who are pre-service teachers) say things like “We’re all equal” or “I’m colorblind.” Whah?? No way. I don’t let them get away with that.
This summer in one of my classes, we took a look at an updated version of the doll study wherein students were shown pictures of cartoon characters with varying colors of skin and asked questions like: Point to the pretty girl, Point to the mean girl, Point to the smart girl. The results were stunning. Almost ALL the kids–regardless of their race–associated all the good adjectives with the lighter skinned girls and all the bad ones (mean, lying) with the darker skinned girls. CNN did one of their reports on it. I’m not as good as you, so I’m not providing citations here, but maybe later tonight. ;)
I agree that talking about these issues frequently and in a natural, organic sort of way is the best way to go. Pretending like these issues aren’t real won’t get us anywhere.
Hey, I like the idea of a self-service pantry. . . Heather, nice job on the post.