Trusting
Ourselves and Our Children Is Not Regressive – April 1, 2005
Life learning families make choices that differ in some ways from
current societal norms, and therefore sometimes struggle with the
tensions and seeming contradictions inherent in those choices. Giving
our children the honor of learning without schooling is bound to bump up
against many other issues, from how a family makes its living to how the
chores get done.
I have been exploring some of those issues – both in
my own life and in a broader context – as a result of the reader
feedback I’ve been receiving to a recent Life Learning magazine
column (see my March 21, 2005 blog entry – “Learning Neatness”).
As part of that exploration, I am reading a book entitled The Paradox
of Natural Mothering (2002,
Temple University Press). Academic Chris Bobel has massaged her
dissertation into a book that portrays a group of mothers engaged in
homeschooling, natural health care, voluntary simplicity and various
attachment parenting practices. The paradox in the title arises from
what Bobel sees as a conflict between a lifestyle that is both
progressive and regressive (i.e. anti-feminist). While the women she
interviewed feel they are making choices in their lives, Bobel
denigrates these as non-choices that are biologically determined because
they are emotionally-based rather than intellectually thought-out.
(Presumably, if they’d thought about their choices, they’d have
behaved like more conventional mothers!) What these mothers are, in
fact, doing is trusting their emotions, their intuition, their bodies
and their children.
Perhaps our societal agendas have swung us so far away
from the inherent “knowing” that characterizes primitive societies
that so-called “natural parenting” seems to contradict the
principles of equality for women. My own life – and I would say those
of the women Bobel has portrayed – is an ongoing pursuit of the
balance between trust and intellect. Trust, after all, is one of the
cornerstones of non-coercive parenting and life learning. Taking
ownership of our own education and allowing our children to own theirs
requires trust in what we call “human nature”. In the case of our
children, that means trusting that they will behave sociably and want to
learn things, including both academic knowledge and social skills...with
our help and example, of course.
Posted: 2005/04/01
12:10 PM
