The Silence of the Lambs

How do we help young women find their voice? Last week I gave a lecture on Greek Mythology to my daughter's fifth grade class. I started off by asking them what they knew about the topic as this subject isn't included within the curriculum of the Israeli school system, including far too many Gods and Goddesses for our one almighty troupe. In any case, hands went up all over the room. That is, male hands.

Despite the fact that half of the class is girls, this group remained almost entirely silent. While the boys were jumping out of their chairs, eager to offer their comments, the reaction amongst the girls was something I can only describe as a stupor. When an occasional one did actually work up the nerve to raise her hand, her comment was either monosyllabic, virtually swallowed or offered up almost as an apology. In most cases I had to ask the girls to repeat their remarks as I couldn't quite catch their whispered answers and in more than one instance this resulted in a nervous, "Never mind." The brave girl who stood up and invoked the name of that most important Goddess of Wisdom, Athena, quickly plopped back down on her chair and squeezed her lips shut.

By contrast, I was assaulted by an avalanche of comments by the boys—some quite detailed and precise. This population felt comfortable contributing whatever information they had, whether right or wrong.  There wasn't a bit of hesitation amongst them, in fact I had quite a bit of trouble directing my attention back to the girls. For the record, I wasn't looking for anything too complicated. But even my question regarding the name of the Goddess of Love (understandably evoking a primarily female response) was answered in a hushed voice. I'm not sure Aphrodite, decisively responsible for so many major wars, fights to the death and competitions in Ancient times, would have been happy with being described in such a demure fashion.

Just as interesting was the fact that while the boys encouraged one another, constantly interrupting to add to, agree with or dissent from, their friends' comments, the girls showed no such solidarity. Where was the support rampant in Facebook? Distinct from the punctuated command words and other "unprintables" I find on my sons' Walls, my daughter's is full of "You look great," "You're so pretty," "Congratulations"  and that formidable LIKE. There was nary a sign of this within that heated boys' locker room atmosphere. These girls 

were left out on a limb; each of them isolated, both from the boys and one another.

What happened to that outpouring of confidence I saw at our local community center every afternoon? The girls hang out there after dance class for hours and there's no dearth of chatting, bossing and quite frankly, a lot of flirting. Whereas in the informal, and nonjudgmental, atmosphere of the local park their behavior with the boys borders on brash and downright bold, they assume a cloak of invisibility (such as that useful one sported by Harry Potter) in the classroom. Within those four walls these same girls didn't have enough confidence to contribute to the extremely informal discussion led by the mother of a fellow student who most of them knew well. They were completely unwilling to put themselves out, afraid of being devoured by their fellow classmates. Even my own daughter's feeble attempts to be part of the action were whispered to me in English. She was obviously checking to see if she'd gotten the right answer before officially putting in her two cents.

In Sex and the City 2 (2010), the flamboyantly dressed, self-assured character of Carrie Bradshaw receives an official shushing. A New Yorker review of her new book on marriage harshly criticizes her for pontificating on a subject she obviously knows very little about. They suggest that she'd be better off keeping her mouth shut and accentuate the point with a caricature in which Carrie's mouth has been taped shut by a large masking tape "X". All of her bluster disappears and this model of self-confidence makes a major retreat. The message is clear: This commanding woman has obviously ventured too far, inappropriately imposing her opinions on the public, and must withdraw in silence.

I don’t remember ever feeling inferior to my male classmates or considering how I might appear to them-- in elementary school. These were feelings I didn't develop until my early teens. How is it possible that, at a time when women increasingly hold top positions in the professional world, this is the case for my daughter's generation?  Looking around for answers I found a 1992 study, prepared for the American Association of University Women (AAUW) by Susan Bailey, which suggests that teachers actually "socialize girls towards a feminine ideal." Bailey writes that "Girls are praised for being neat, quiet, and calm, whereas boys are encouraged to think independently, be active and speak up. Girls are socialized in schools to recognize popularity as being important, and learn that educational performance and ability are not as important. Girls in grades six and seven rate being popular and well-liked as more important than being perceived as competent or independent. Boys, on the other hand, are more likely to rank independence and competence as more important."

This information goes far in explaining the steep decline in confidence amongst adolescent girls and directly inspired Peggy Orenstein's 1994 bestseller, Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self Esteem and the Confidence Gap. Here she explored the obstacles girls face (in school, in the home and in our culture) as well as the causes of their self-censorship and self-doubt. Prominent within her discoveries was the oversensitivity of our daughters to how they appear before their male peers. Orenstein's recent publication, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, which has received almost as much attention as that by the Tiger Mother, pinpoints the particular effect of marketing on the already fragile self-image of young girls. She posits that, overwhelmed with the "Princess" model, adolescent girls are virtually incapable of looking beyond their own physical appearance to find self-worth.

Describing the experience of her own daughter, Orenstein writes: "What was the first thing that culture told her about being a girl? Not that she was competent, strong, creative, or smart but that every little girl wants — or should want — to be the Fairest of Them All." The ramifications of this message are clear:: "Even as new educational and professional opportunities unfurl before my daughter and her peers, so does the path that encourages them to equate identity with image, self-expression with appearance" and "femininity with performance." 

  

The message of this second bestseller has provoked horrified reactions amongst female critics; mostly for the reality she presents—always the hardest bullet to bite. Kate Tuttle's review for the Boston Globe, for example, warned that "princess culture nudges girls toward a dangerously limited set of aspirations and a self-image built on beauty and pleasantness, not strength, intelligence, or competence." Jessica Bennett, reviewing for Newsweek, agrees that "young girls today face more pressure than ever to be “perfect” (like a princess?)--not only to get straight A’s and excel academically, but to be beautiful, fashionable, and kind." She confers with Orenstein's assessment that the more mainstream media girls consume, the more they worry about being pretty and sexy, and specifically cites the University of Minnesota study that found that even a limited exposure to advertisements can negatively affect girls’ self-esteem.

 Major decisions within government bodies also play a role in depressing our daughters' voices. Just last week the House of Representatives declared that it was cutting off public financing to Parent Parenthood. This one safe-ground for so many women of all ages, recently accused of promoting prostitution and sexual abuse, was no longer deemed worthy of the government's official support. This ludicrous situation was pinpointed by Gail Collins in her comment that by attacking an organization that provides millions of women with essential services, including family planning and basic health care, the government was basically suggesting, "Let them use leaches." What's next? How many more ways can we convince our daughters that they have fewer rights than their male counterparts and accordingly, are better off staying quiet?

The choices of female role models are becoming narrower every day. Stuck between Hannah Montana and Selena Gomez our daughters are left to design the image they present to the world within the safe, seemingly protected, world of social networks like Facebook. There pictures can be altered to suit their needs; sometimes dolled up with colorful stickers, sometimes made jazzier with negative contrast. As they're in control, they cannot be challenged. The image they project is entirely of their design. How can we expect these girls to affect any stance in the classroom, LIVE—on stage, which might detract from the deliberate one they control within that hermetically-sealed virtual world?

Luckily the silent persona assumed by many of this generation's girls reflects very little of their academic achievement. In fact most statistics suggest that they outperform their male counterparts within the school arena. Yet this success is executed like a stealth mission—quietly, and with intense subtlety, so that none of the boys will notice their achievement. Myla Goldberg summarized the situation in her review of Orenstein's book for Slate, writing that "a 21^st-century girl is supposed to be a high-stakes combo of high-achieving and pretty that's arguably more unrealistic than anything foisted on her predecessors". I'm back to my original question: How can we help young women find their voice?

The Expense of Brevity

Somewhere along the way, the seemingly irreplaceable act of writing has become virtually extinct. Picking up a pen to jot something down happens less and less, replaced by groping around for the cell phone to record something one's desperate not to forget or composing on the computer. One of the last remaining vestiges of my former romance with pen and paper is the weekly grocery list I prepare for my husband—and its execution is seriously hindered by the fact that it takes ages to rummage up something that actually writes! It's not as if I don’t have these valuable staples in the house, but their infrequent usage leaves them inaccessible exactly when I need them.   

More worrisome than the disappearance of the writing instruments which have been such a significant part of our lives since the cavemen scrawled away on their walls with sharp stones, is the vanishing skill of writing well. Our ability to express ourselves on the printed page is fading away. Struggling against its most serious contender, the short-cut style of writing developed for text messaging and chatting online, the art of good writing has been swallowed up whole. Where are those commas, periods and capitals? Since when has it been acceptable to consistently drop vowels? At what point did that saucy verb replace the formerly omnipotent subject? Facebook chatter, obviously executed while seated in a chair, is ironically one hundred percent action! Politesse, adjectives acceptable to prime time, and grammatical precision, have gone the way of the wind.

How paradoxical that literary theorist Stanley Fish has just published a book titled How to Write a Sentence (Harper Collins) critiquing the brevity in writing encouraged by Strunk and White's famous Elements of Style (1918). Fish's premise is that there is actually plenty of room for prose that runs on and on, sentences that meander before coming to completion and descriptions that seemingly veer off course before sliding their way back on to the tracks. But this alternative to that noted in the Elements of Style isn't even an issue for today's youth. Alternatively, the "bullet" style of writing most utilized by anyone under eighteen, and definitely encouraged by Facebook status updates and cell phone texting, makes even Strunk and White's recommendations seem long-winded.

How much of our control of the English language has fallen by the wayside merely by introducing a keyboard with a memory? I am certain that a serious study would reveal a clear connection between the move to composing only on the keyboard and the disintegration of writing skills. That being said, I personally don't want to lambast the word processor because it effectively saved my life. Being one of only two students in the sixth grade whose cursive writing was considered "seriously below par", I benefited most when we were introduced to typewriting the following year. Seated at my own little desk with its own little typewriter, fingers gently placed on the keys with the “g” and “h” left open to stare up at me, thumbs draped along the space bar, I felt as empowered as a concert pianist. Conquering first letters, words, sentences and eventually full texts--the world was our printed oyster.  Nostalgia for the exciting, trigger-like recoil of these early, clickety keys will forever make me a fan of the QWERTY keyboards found on Blackberry-style phones.

The development of the personal computer in the late 1970s made it that much easier to compose and edit lengthy texts. Being a draft writer I had spent much of high school and college retyping entire assignments--over and over. Although I was fortunate enough to work on a particularly fancy Brother typewriter that stamped a letter in white ink right on top of the black one I'd typed by mistake, this new invention changed my life. Its wondrous ability to process words and retain them, essentially cutting my work process in half, was revealed to me at the Brown University Computer center while writing my senior thesis. After conquering that cumbersome roll of perforated paper that sometimes stretched blocks long, I never looked back.

Living in a house with too many computers to count, my children are amazed at the fact that I made it through college without a personal computer. How could I have grown up without this example of modern ingenuity at my beck and command? I counter their incredulity with my own at the way that, albeit making our lives “oh so much easier” in so many ways, the computer has destroyed our ability to write. That might sound like a major generalization, but it's meant to. Computer word processing and personal electronic managers have seriously altered our ability to execute even the simplest task, i.e. compose a sentence.

As an art history professor here in Israel I was stunned to find research papers composed primarily of texts patched together from outside sources. My students had used that handy "cut and paste" technique that some say counts as writing. As in most cases they hadn't bothered to match the grammar of the source text to their own, this was easily detected. This experience in higher academia served me in good stead when I discovered that my own children were doing the very same thing. To add insult to injury, it was obvious that they weren’t even reading the texts they were pasting! When I verbalized my concern I was summarily informed that this is exactly what they had been instructed to do, that they weren’t actually supposed to learn about the given subject. Reading up on, say, the bombing of Hiroshima, was secondary to knowing how to find the information and re-present it within their own Word document; additional sentences were superfluous. The "cut and paste" technique, by curtailing the writing process, was actually curbing the absorption of material! Whereas that first computerized encyclopedia, Encarta, had offered baby boomers a wealth of material with which to enrich their own ideas, this generation simply took Wikipedia's authority for granted; add water and presto: assignment completed.  

  

As a third generation academic trying to raise the fourth, the encouragement of short-cuts within the education system, spurred on by new technology which allows them to take someone else's sentences and claim them as their own, is frustrating. Where has the artistry in writing gone? Where is the search for that perfect word? I still remember my excitement at receiving a copy of Roget's Thesaurus for my 18^th birthday. With all those words at my command I could conquer any task. I still struggle over the selection of each and every word, sifting through a wealth of language so that each choice reflects exactly what I want to say. The Synonym option in Word has made this search that much simpler and I could not live without it. It beautifully helps me to compensate for the weakened state of my present vocabulary, the victim of speaking two languages daily. Yet I’m fairly certain that this exquisite tool designed to enrich our writing, something wonderful within modern technology, has never been used by any of my children. They haven't had enough reasons to take advantage of its ability to help them express themselves more clearly.

The ease with which our fingers tap away, causing an outpouring of words without limits, may have something to do with the petrifaction of language expressed by our youth. There is no question that language usage has been altered by the advent of chats and texting, in fact there was a flood of interest in the topic within the press a few years back. The results were clear: text messaging "stunts writing skills," "aims at getting as much said with as few words as possible," "is not suitable in formal or classroom writing." Students make "countless syntax, subject-verb agreement and spelling mistakes in writing assignments" and "don't want to be bothered with the writing process-drafting, revising and editing." As an occasional editor I’ve plowed through my portion of poorly written papers. While enjoying the challenge almost as much as I did the weekly Times crossword puzzle way back when, I'm horrified by students' overall weak command of language. The extremely limited range of their expression, probably an indication of equally inadequate oral communication skills, may be one of the biggest educational failures of this generation.  

The introduction of computers into the classroom, despite the litany of serious issues raised over the past few years, has effectively driven a nail in the coffin for the maintenance of any real “style” to writing. With it the well-publicized concern over the effect of all of this technology on writing skills has relatively disappeared. Ironically, considering my own concerns, my eldest child is petitioning for permission to use a laptop full-time in the classroom. His reasoning, supported by an official psycho-didactic evaluation, is that his cramped hand keeps him from recording the material presented in an efficient manner. Alternatively, his lightening fast typing skills--developed just how?-- will enable him to better record the important information relayed by his teachers. Despite the reality that in a few short years he'll be like every college student, opening their laptops and typing away as the lecturer speaks, my gut instinct is to delay this transfer of means.

There is something intrinsically important in holding the pencil, in making the effort to scribble something legible, whether meaningful or not, in a notebook. I worry that without this step the focus on the subject at hand, as well as its retention and digestion, might get lost. In addition, how can one dismiss the significance of that age-old experience of scribbling a brilliant idea in the margin of a notebook, perhaps accompanied by a tiny little light bulb! As one brilliant Columbia University graduate recently blogged, "I usually just keep some paper next to me in case I have to think, because I doodle when I think."  

When it comes to writing, there are absolutely no short-cuts. Although I could somehow live without that adrenaline-stimulating annual trip to the stationery store in preparation for the school year, a personal journey I've traveled from Chestnut Hill to Or Akiva, I maintain that this transfer of means, from the pencil to the keyboard, will do nothing to encourage my children's writing skills. Strunk and White's dicta that "vigorous writing is concise" and that "when a sentence is made stronger, it usually becomes shorter," were not meant to encourage the exclusion of punctuation and vowels or the ignorance of basic grammatical structure! The gift of using words to express exactly what one wishes to say is buried somewhere behind that screen. This next generation will have to make a gargantuan effort to find the good amongst the multiple evils released, somewhat like Pandora.

De-clawing the Tiger Mother (or A Fitting End to the Chinese Year of the Tiger)

I considered leaving Professor Amy Chua alone. After all, her recently published bestseller, Battle Hymn to a Tiger Mother, has provoked an endless number of responses in the form of articles, blogs, reviews and round table discussions and it's just quite possible we've read enough. But the temptation to respond to her particularly scorching style of mothering is too great to pass up. After all, I too am a mother, a writer, a professional and a highly educated woman with great aspirations for my children. Therefore the question is: Where do I stand on the issue of tiger mothering?

First of all, I'm a bit bothered by the "tiger" label. Chua's style of mothering seems far more "dragon-like". Her tirades, noted graphically in her book, currently #5 on the New York Times bestseller list, evoke images of the fire-breathing Hungarian Horntail dragon taken on by Harry Potter in his quest to win the Triwizard Match. Not that there's anything wrong with being a dragon mommy every now and then--especially those mornings when the clock is tick-tick-ticking and absolutely no one is moving an inch. Typical scenarios include my ten year old daughter, standing in front of the mirror, brushing her hair for such a long time that there is no hope she'll move on to her teeth and my fourteen year old son still in bed, 10 minutes before the bus pickup time, suggesting that his older brother (always dressed, ready and looking innocent) super glued him there. Although fairly random, all of the aforementioned examples end with the entrance of Dragon Mommy. Just ask those in the know.  

Professor Chua, however, takes the cake in this department. Her punishing brand of mothering goes beyond all limits, not because of its severity (no sleepovers, no computer, no television, no play dates, public shaming, insults…just to name a few regulations on her docket) but because it is based on the belief that, in her words, "academic achievement reflects successful parenting." Her book clarifies that when children do not excel there is "a problem" and parents are "not doing their job." Having been raised within a Quaker school system where competition, albeit existent, was seriously downplayed, the thought of punishing or even scolding my children for not getting a high enough grade on a test, or not performing to perfection, is unthinkable. That doesn't mean that I don't let them know when I'm disappointed, but this reaction would come from my perception that they didn't try hard enough, never from an expectation that they should have gotten a better grade.  

  

There's no question that sometimes I feel I've swung way too far over and become a Cub Mother--gently nudging my children in the right direction, hoping that they'll find their way to achievement by both caring about their work and trying to do the best they can. Although this makes me sound somewhat irresolute, I stand behind the conviction that success (academic, personal or athletic) is something that no outside source (parent, teacher, or school) can determine for them. Insisting children do well seems to me a form of intimidation that I have always hoped to keep out of parenting.  After all, who determined that they must do well? And if they don't do well on an eighth grade science test, for example, does that mean that there's no hope for future success? Does achieving "all A's" in school assure later happiness and career fulfillment? We all know personal examples that disprove these assumptions.

I actually like the Cub mother concept--it seems gentle but firm. It also suits me a bit more than the Mouse Mama designation that my friend Sarah (also responding to the hoo-hah over Chua's book) assigned to herself this week--aspiring mostly to be the "good-enough-parent-most-of–the time" variety. Knowing this particular mother I can state that this description definitely sells her short and I invite her to join me in the cub mothering category. But Professor Chua would scoff at both of our labels and just throw us in the bin with those, so-called, Disney moms. Her description of Western mothers as soft, overly-accepting, too interested in feelings and basically wishy-washy, is simply insulting. At least in my case, there are absolutely no little animated bluebirds fluttering around my head and no nauseating little tunes accompanying me on my merry way as I negotiate three children, a husband and a dog through a typical day. I am not overly sweet, nor so focused on my children's happiness that I quietly accept their average achievement. I am not a pushover and I make a lot of decisions in the house that my children resent. I am not trying to win a popularity contest--just ask my son Daniel who is currently being weaned from his computer! I'm sure that he could come up with a few choice expletives to describe his mommy this week if given the opportunity. That being said, I much prefer the situation where my children actually "like" me and think I'm on their side, to that where I assume the role of the mean ruler cracking the whip.

Unlike the Tiger Mom, who has mainly professed interest in results, in what happens at the end, I am interested in the process of getting to those results. Standing over my kids with a sledgehammer (and considering what I've read about Professor Chua this isn't entirely beyond the realm of imagination) just doesn't seem right (not to mention legal). Her style of mothering, so publicly aired, has brought back a lot of memories for those of us who well remember Mommie Dearest. The terror Joan Crawford waged on her daughter, exposed in Christina's written memoir (also a bestseller) and eventually a juicy film, is not something easily forgotten—especially as I still use wire hangers!  So, without beating a dead horse, although there was apparently a real chance of Chua doing the same to her dog when it didn't perform up to expectations, I will stand by my choice not to punish for coming up short; not to berate for failing to be the top of the class; for eventually letting it go when one of my kid's performance is just…."mediocre". At the end of the road I want them to learn to find their own way to success and the consequent satisfaction that comes with that.

Authoress and mother of four Ayelet Waldman addressed exactly this missing aspect of Chua's methods in an article in the Wall Street Journal titled, "In Defense of the Guilty, Ambivalent, Preoccupied Western Mom." Writing in great admiration of her daughter's battle with dyslexia, Waldman marveled how "She climbed the mountain alone, motivated not by fear or shame of dishonoring her parents but by her passionate desire to read. She did it herself, without us, and it is no exaggeration to say that we were and remain stunned with pride." The fact that the impetus for her daughter's effort, travails and eventual accomplishment came from within herself, cannot be overstated. I am currently experiencing something similar as my elder son, a greatly gifted child who wallowed for years within the Israeli school system as a "B" student, has begun to realize, capitalize on, and fulfill his own potential—not only achieving excellence but, more significantly, truly understanding his abilities. Goals, desires and interests cannot be foisted upon us by someone else. Within this premise, the process of growing into one's own skin, nudged along in the right direction here and there by, shall I suggest, a cub mother, is just as important as the prizes one gains along the way. How can we expect our children to fulfill their own potential if they're busy satisfying ours?

David Brooks takes on another lacuna within Chua's mothering head-on in a New York Times Op-Ed provocatively titled "Amy Chua is a Wimp." Smashing to pieces her focus on academic achievement at the expense of all social activity, he berates her for protecting her children from these equally intellectually demanding activities and for misunderstanding what's cognitively difficult and what isn't. "Practicing a piece of music for four hours requires focused attention," he writes, "but it is nowhere near as cognitively demanding as a sleepover with 14-year-old girls. Managing status rivalries, negotiating group dynamics, understanding social norms, navigating the distinction between self and group — these and other social tests impose cognitive demands that blow away any intense tutoring session or a class at Yale."

In a previous piece I took a crack at Chua's ban on all forms of outside entertainment, distractions from the march to success that would not be tolerated. But even then I admitted to some measure of envy—not so much for the accomplishments of her children as for her belief in her methodology. Chua's book exudes self-confidence. She knows what she's doing. Her choice to be known as a Tiger Mother is meant to reflect all the power, strength and force associated with this animal in Chinese culture. I, on the other hand, inch my way forward day after day; hesitating, lunging, stepping back, and then diving into the frigid water in a kind of drunk, parenting dance. What I wouldn't give to just plow forward, head held high, eyes on the prize, confident that every move was the right one! Unfortunately part of parenting is not having all of the answers. In fact, it's mostly about learning as you go along, exploring the possibilities along with your children, and receiving enormous satisfaction when you hit the bull's-eye. And what exactly is the definition of "bull's-eye"? Well, this wishy-washy Western mother wouldn't dare to try to define that for any other.

Rules of Engagement

A friend of mine recently posted a photograph of her 15 year old son sitting at the table reading the newspaper. In the caption she expressed pride at seeing her son as an "engaged citizen". As my own 15 year old had recently requested a subscription to the paper in order to read it on the school bus (we've gone green and stopped buying the "paper" version), I silently affirmed my own efforts at raising my child's awareness of the world around him. Engaged, interested, aware and informed, maybe there was a chance he would actually do his part where he felt it might count.  In response to my friend's photograph I commented that this generation was now taking the reins. Wasn't this about all we could hope for? 

With so much senseless violence and tragedy in the world it has always seemed questionable to give children access to the news.  How many times have I asked my husband to turn down the volume on the evening bulletin (to which he is professionally addicted) or actually thrown myself in front of the screen when a particularly disturbing item is broadcast? But despite my efforts, the world has a way of working itself in and asserting itself. It will be heard and seen and known.  

I stopped shielding my children from frightening pictures somewhere around the time they passed into their teens. The reality is that the world is very frightening; that things happen; that it isn't all one big fairy tale. In fact, any effort I have made to protect them has been continually thwarted by local tragedies including several fatal accidents and bouts of illness, resulting in the passing of several mothers, fathers, a loving coach and even a classmate. Despite the picture perfect reality of the "bubble" community in which we live, with not one traffic light and no poverty, my children know that "stuff happens" and have had to deal with situations of great sadness--all at a very young age. 

Recently we hosted a 7 year old cousin. This little boy was thrilled when offered the chance to watch his 14 year old cousin (my son) play a computer game. His mother looked at me with concern as he ran towards Daniel's bedroom and I, jokingly, guaranteed her there would be no blood; well, virtually no blood or rather, only virtual blood. This prompted a discussion about whether parents needed, or even should, shield their children from the ugly and violent aspects of life. While the bar for a 7 year old is not the same as a 14 year old, I professed the view that it was not healthy to pretend that the world was entirely rosy. Furthermore, teaching children the difference between the worlds they could manipulate and control within the screen, and the one they had absolutely no control of outside of the screen, was equally valuable. Finally, I admitted that although I had unwittingly bought my elder son a totally inappropriate computer game many years ago (namely: Grand Theft Auto), I'd since seen no specific signs of latent violence or vulgarity.

There is no question that the wealth of information available to this generation through access to the media can be daunting. But isn't our job as parents to educate our children to make the right decisions regarding what they do look at and what they don't? I don't believe that children seek imagery which they find too difficult to handle. Many years ago a child at school passed a pornographic website to my fourth grade son. When I discovered what had happened and asked him to tell me about it, he professed that after one cursory glance he had closed the "window". He had found it frightening and didn't want to see more. And one year ago, while watching a PG movie with a light kissing scene, my daughter tightly squeezed her fists over her eyes and turned completely around on the couch. She wasn't ready.

An open discussion in the New York Times this week focused on the extremely controversial parenting methods of Yale Law Professor Anne Chua. As noted in the Wall Street Journal excerpt of her new book, Chua ascribes to a draconic method of totalitarian parenting which she attributes to, and defends by, her Chinese background. Without going into the many concerns I have with her mothering techniques, some of which I find appalling and some of which I envy, I take major issue with the manner in which she purposefully denies her daughters access to the world.  This is expressed in her no media policy (absolutely no television or internet) and by forbidding them to attend sleepovers (because we all know what goes on there!)  Contributing to the discussion in the Times, novelist Karen Karbo commented that the prohibition of all access to media noted in Chua's methods "presumes that we can prevent our kids from hurt, harm and disappointment. It's a fantasy of control and protection in times that seem out of control and scary."

Since we can't entirely protect our children from the evils of life, perhaps it's our duty to expose them to them in a calculated way, including being there to discuss their reactions. I still remember sitting with my six year old son watching the twin towers fall again and again and again. This was history. This was shocking. This was as almost as evil as it gets. But he was going to hear about it anyway, and everywhere. I felt comfortable being the one to try to explain the unexplainable and more importantly, convey both my opinion of hate and my methods of coping.

While to be honest we know nothing regarding whether or not Professor Chua censors her children's exposure to world events, her methods definitely indicate that she finds them a distraction. And yes, what happens around us can upset or thrill us enough to pull us off our game--but that is very much what life is about. Maybe in an ideal world we could shut out much of the bad, but I think it's preferable to learn how to handle it. Violent and troublesome imagery has, for centuries, reigned supreme within officially sponsored works of art. Bloody wars have been documented in the name of memorializing the men lost while glorifying kingdoms; the vicious acts of the Greek gods have been depicted in the name of enlightening us to the potential for evil provoked by petty jealousy that lurks within all creatures, great and small; and imagery of natural disasters, wherein innocents have lost their lives, including devastating floods from biblical times, has been considered educational, exemplifying man's helplessness in the face of nature.

The tragic death of nine year old Christina Taylor Green in Tucson last week made it crushingly clear that evil will have its day. Here was a young person who wanted to be part of the world around her; to engage. This effort ended in the loss of life; and in this case the loss of a child who had been born on the day of one of the greatest evils of our generation: 09/11/2001. Yet our sadness at her passing will forever be accompanied by our communal pride in her desire to be a part of the greater world. If we don't allow our children the chance to step out of their boxes, to look around at what's happening to other people in other places, what chance do they have to actually appreciate what they have? Engagement is simply part of what living is all about.

A few days ago my younger son, the one who had potentially "corrupted" our 7 year old cousin by exposing him to his very own "World of Warcraft" (so terrifyingly named), mentioned pictures of flooding and destruction he'd seen in the newspaper his brother had handed over to him on the bus. This prompted a discussion about global warming and the dangers of something as seemingly simple, and much prayed for here in Israel, as a heavy rain. Together we sat before the computer screen and looked at both photographs and video footage documenting what happened in Australia just a day earlier. Maybe spoon-feeding our children bits and pieces of what goes on outside our sunny paradises, helping them to take a good healthy peek at the media, is the best way to keep this next generation in the loop--but not overwhelmed. In a world where the evil witch sometimes manages to wreck havoc upon our fairy tale lives there is much sense in the Boy Scout motto: Be Prepared.   

The Window of the Soul

There is only one proven way to stop time, and it's not through Botox injections, plastic surgery or an intense exercise regime. The only means to really stop time—albeit for only a second—is to take a photograph.  This week tragedy struck in our community. A young man my son Noah's age passed away quite suddenly from complications of flu. Those who had seen him only a few days earlier in school and those who hadn't seen him for a long time began a desperate search to find him in old photographs. All sought documentation of how he looked last week and how he had looked as a child growing up; any documentation that he had been here… because now he was gone.

I also searched for images of this lost child within the massive photo bank I have amassed over the years. I've always been an historian, always had a fascination for looking back and seeing what was, but my own search led me to think about the importance of photography for this generation and its consequent obsession with it.  I remember learning how to wind the film into the spool of my first little Brownie camera, working in a darkroom, hanging negatives up on a line and waiting for the image to appear within a shallow pail of solution. There it was, the person or the object I had photographed, captured right there on the two –dimensional paper. No one could take it from me. The subject I had photographed was now mine.

Our desire to actually possess the objects we choose to capture within the lens, immediately, has encouraged the seemingly- lightning development of the industry. First there were Polaroid cameras; what fun it was to watch these instant records appear before our eyes seconds after clicking a button. I still laugh every time I think of Rose Teplitsky, an older woman from Miami who was part of the group my family travelled to Russia with in 1974. She would snap her Polaroid camera and out would pop the photograph, into the frozen air, hesitating one moment before flipping over and fluttering into a bank of snow. Wet and frosty, there was still a viable record of that one moment. 

Digital photography has one-upped Polaroids by providing us with virtually instant, but now high-quality, documentation. Answering our mania for immediacy we can now take a picture, download it and print it up within approximately two minutes. With virtually no need to go to the local photo shop most of those businesses have closed up. In fact, last week, on the final day of 2010, Kodachrome officially developed the very last roll of its once revolutionary color reversal film. Try to remember the last time you bought a roll of film.

Although the patience to wait for our photographs to be developed is gone, the need to record every breathing moment has been accelerated. Part of this is a direct response to our ability, not only to capture, but also to recover these records so easily. Social networks and the internet have done much to enable our search deep into our past, as well as that of others. I don't believe I'm the only one to have searched for an image of a former classmate or boyfriend.  But this interest is not a product of our generation.  In fact, for centuries kings and queens have had their portraits painted specifically to leave behind a record for posterity; to remind us that they were here. Those left to us, which fill museums around the world, attest to the endless desire both to document and to be documented.

How interesting that as the development of modern photography in the early 19^th century began to offer a way to capture appearances with actual verisimilitude, artists began to create more expressive, painted versions.  My present research into the life of a Jewish School of Paris artist has led me to a body of exemplary expressive portraiture.  J.D. Kirszenbaum's (1900-1954) oeuvre is filled with nostalgic imagery of figures he knew in the shtetl who were no longer with him.  His subjects are distinguished by their eyes: exaggerated in size, delineated by endless circling lines and blacker than black. The artist's articulation of these traditional windows of the soul captures a sense of both tragedy and loss. In the end it is the viewer's gaze into the eyes of these individuals that completes the artist's mission.

There is a magnetic attraction to the imagery of those who have left us--attesting to the indelible mark they have left behind. Does anyone tire of looking at photographs of Marilyn Monroe or Princess Diana? Simple snapshots can offer us a way to visually affirm that someone was here--that they are remembered--and that they will be missed; each image offering a bit of solace, along with a great deal of sadness. What don't we read into those eyes? Since there is no way to turn back the clock, and every click of the camera means that one more second has passed, we have no choice but to make every moment a Kodak moment.

Daddy dearest

I was mortally offended, just last month, when my elder son stated that he wanted his father to accompany him to the next parents' day. This request was especially exasperating as it came immediately after I'd endured yet one more of those exhausting afternoons at the high school, trudging back and forth from one teacher to another, each child averaging eight. Was the reward I had received for suffering that biannual event to be requested to step aside next time around? Now, for the record, I have dutifully attended parent-teacher meetings on my own, for as long as I can remember. Not once, during this time, has my husband come to talk to any of the kids' teachers. I'm not looking for a prize but I do want it duly noted that I'm the one doing all of the work. In my husband's defense I must admit that I've never asked him to come—just one example of how I've occupied so much of the space which counts as "parenting" in our house that very little is left for the taking. The assumption of virtually every possible task and role is an indication of either my need to control, my eternal effort to be Super Mom or maybe just a vestige of how I was raised.

I distinctly remember spending a lot of time with my mother growing up. In fact, I really don't remember spending very much time without her. Besides a lot of mundane memories of everyday life within our house I have especially warm ones of those moments which I now recognize, having become a mother myself, exhibited her devotion. They include cozying up in bed together at night to read one classic or another—the last I remember was Irving Stone's The Agony and the Ecstasy so I must have been in my early teens—as well as her attendance at all of my sporting events (to this day for the record!) and every school concert. If I was on stage my mother was there to see it!

My father came home fairly late in the evening so his role in parenting me was far more limited. Nevertheless, when I needed to get somewhere, whether to school (every morning) or to just about any place over the weekend, my dad stepped in. As a bonus, this trusty chauffeur usually joined us for dinner. A by-product of the limited time available to us was the creation of special father-daughter time. This hour or two a week was so sacred we even had a special name for it (not to be revealed here!). Amongst my favorite memories are those Saturday afternoons at Madray's Delicatessen in Lafayette Hill where I ordered a grilled cheese and black and white milkshake (chocolate and vanilla mixed for those not in the "know") and we hung out in our booth.

Within this equation time with dad was almost consistently "special" and time with mom….well….it just "was". I figure this is the same in many households. Somewhere along the way moms have been counted out of sharing the designation of "special". Their relationship with their children is just assumed: a fact of life not demanding any definition, let alone celebration. As the mother of three negotiating my place within the parenting parabola, I constantly check out that of my husband. My conclusion is that, by perpetuating the imbalance I knew growing up, I've basically paved the way for his elite status!

 

Although I know it's not the case for everyone, due to the flexibility of my own work and the lesser flexibility of my husband's, I'm the one left to handle most of the mundane, everyday activities--towing the children from place to place, making sure they do their homework and basically taking care of their every need. I have no issue with this division of labor in most cases (I already admitted to being a control freak), but it has clearly led to his having a more unique, untainted, and almost gleeful relationship with the kids. And it is this that I find quite irritating. I've recently noticed that my teenage sons will do just about anything to get their father's attention. Night after night they hurl themselves in front of his face, engaging him in inane conversations, while little old me is right here, relatively ignored. "What about old Mother Hubbard?" Even more annoying is the fact that those 10 minutes spent with their father are filled with laughter, giggles and smiles while my 410 minutes consist primarily of grunts, whining, frowns or just plain silence!!!

A particularly inspiring program acknowledging the significance of fathers has inmates, within the New York Correctional Services, recording themselves reading books aloud so that their children at home will be able to benefit from this form of intimate, albeit distant, contact. The New York Times quoted one man's heart-felt message to his child, "When you hear my voice, remember that daddy is there with you." While I have never questioned the significance of the father figure, or to be more politically sensitive, second parent, in any child's life, I have wondered about their role as nurturers. Yet the new alignment of loyalties expressed by all three of my children indicates that despite my efforts to overwhelm them with mothering, their father still plays an enormous role in their lives. (I guess I haven't done a good enough job filling all those tiny cracks!) And despite my grumbling (especially when faced with the various crises that arise when one parent is trying to juggle too many responsibilities alone), my husband dutifully fulfills every task I lay before him, picking up the pieces here and there--those tiny slivers of opportunity I've left available.

Accordingly, instead of returning to the same, pointless, New Year's resolution to stop yelling in 2011 (that one's been around the block WAY too many times), I now resolve to move over and allow my partner to participate in all this parenting fun (hardy ho). I'm very curious to see if this will gain him the status of "empty space" verging on "Mommie Dearest" (for those that remember that scathing depiction of motherhood) it has achieved for me. Beneficent to a degree, I also admit that I cannot wait to see just how he negotiates the nightmare of parents' day he's signed on for this coming Spring!