onfocus

I've been thinking about parenting lately since I'm on deck, and it's reminding me of college in a way. College is where I made the transition from being a child dependent on my parents to being an adult, and that's the time when I began figuring stuff out for myself. It's also when I was fully immersed in the problems of the adult world via my classes, and thanks to that I read some philosophy (among other things) to help make sense of the world. I didn't always understand what I was reading (I wasn't a philosophy major—just read for fun), but some of those books did give me new ways of looking at things that I've found useful.

So as I'm getting ready for another life-shift, I've been wondering what philosophers have said about parenting. I know there are a lot of books out there about "parenting philosophies" and that's not quite what I'm after. I'm wondering what classic Philosophers have said.

The philosophy I read in college dealt with abstract concepts like whether or not a table exists in reality, or whether the table is simply expressing its tableness through existence or something. I didn't read anything about practical matters like raising children. (Or maybe I wasn't reading the right books.) It's not like I expect to find Baby or Superbaby? by Nietzsche, but thinking back there wasn't much in what I read specifically about family life, which isn't all bad. Ideas about personal responsibility and freedom that are a part of existential writings can apply to every aspect of life. Philosophy is sort of a meta-layer above everything else anyway. I also think philosophy has the problem of being dominated by men who might not be completely tuned into their nurturing side.

I remembered reading some thoughts on marriage by Bertrand Russell and if you read his bio you'll know why he had some ideas rattling around about that. Even though his life isn't the model of family bliss, I've found his logical writing hard to argue with. So I thought I'd see if he'd written anything about parenting. I eventually found his Conquest of Happiness on Google Books and read a bit there before picking up a copy. It's not a philosophy book or a parenting book. It's more of an early self-help book he published in 1930 where he lays out "life lessons" for being happy.

The book is surprisingly modern for being almost 80 years old, and the issues of modern living he addresses have only become more pronounced. Parts of it are dated, and he was obviously writing for a white, Western, upper-class audience. And sometimes I couldn't decide if I was reading grandfatherly advice or cranky old man rants, but either way this book has given me a lot to think about. The book has also generated a lot of conversation around the house, and I thought I'd summarize some of his parenting thoughts.

The most fascinating chapter in the book for me was ironically about Boredom where Russell encourages parents to teach children how to endure boredom. "The pleasures of childhood should in the main be such as the child extracts himself from his environment by means of some effort and inventiveness." He talks about how the ability to concentrate on boring tasks will pay dividends in adult life. And in a poetic passage he mentions that the human body is adapted to the slow rhythm of the Earth, and children especially need contact with this slow ebb and flow. (I was reminded of this just today reading Asha Dornfest's thoughts on planning summer activities and the fear of "wasted time" for kids. It's obviously still something parents are grappling with.)

In a chapter on Family, Russell describes a conflict that arises in all parents, "...between love of parental power and desire for the child's good..." He advises parents should have an almost mystical respect for the child's personality so they don't become possessive or oppressive parents. This can lead to the classic case of Democrats having a Republican child (or vice versa), where hilarity ensues. The idea that, "...the child should as soon as possible learn to be independent in as many ways as possible..." seems difficult to me, and I'm not even a parent yet.

Russell also mentions that our modern knowledge of psychology is both a blessing and a curse. While we have a better understanding of phobias and neuroses that can help children be healthier, Russell feels this knowledge can create timid parents who are afraid of screwing up. His prescription is self-confidence, respect for the child, and self-permission for occasional mistakes. Easy!

The bits on parenting only make up a small portion of the book, and overall reading it was like a smack in the face. But in a good way. I went looking for philosophical parenting advice, and I've found just this small bit. I'm sure there are other parent-philosophers who have a completely opposite take. Anyway, just as I found in college there's only so much you can glean from books before real life takes over and teaches you the hard way.

I've been silent on this blog lately, and it's only been alive thanks to the steady drip of my del.icio.us links that are posted automatically with a Perl script. I was joking around on Twitter the other day that I'm having a blogdentity crisis (ugh, sorry) and it's definitely true.

The last burst of activity here was in February when I did a series of posts about Going Off the Flickr Grid. I haven't done much since then with the project, beyond another implementation of the code (with heavy modifications for group posting and commenting) over at ORblogs: ORblogs Photos. (By the way, ORblogs turned four years old yesterday.) I still have a long to-do list for OTFG, but now that the code is working well enough for me to share photos here, I'm not as motivated to continue developing it.

At the beginning of May I started more sustained work behind the scenes at Metafilter, and that's going well. I don't want to blog about all of the nitty-gritty details of what I'm doing there, so I haven't been posting about that. But in the past month I've been able to help build some new features for the site, and I've learned more about ColdFusion than I ever thought I would. I still have to look up little syntax things, but I noticed the other day that I'm thinking in CF first.

The real reason this site has been so quiet is that sk and I are morphing from normal people to parents. Our due date is in October, and I've been working on Figuring Everything Out before then. I'm not going to turn onfocus into a parenting blog, or even an expecting-parent blog, so I'm afraid the silence will continue for a while. I'm reading/learning about pregnancy and birth with its own vocabulary, culture, and mountain of knowledge to absorb. And looking ahead to post-birth has me re-evaluating myself, the world, and my relationship with everything in it—not the kind of stuff that's easy to convey in the short space of weblog posts.

So even though things are quiet here, this is an exciting time for both me and sk. And I'm sure I'll be able to blend my new parenting role with my old (ugh) blogdentity eventually. It'll just take some time.

I have a smoothie for breakfast every morning. I've been making them for years, and I've had a chance to hone the recipe to perfection over that time. I don't measure anything anymore, I just dump stuff into the blender. But I thought I should share my recipe titled My Smoothie Technique is Unstoppable. Here are the basics with approximate measurements:

• 1 cup frozen strawberries
• 3/4 cup orange juice
• 1 6 oz. vanilla yogurt
• 1 banana

Throw into a blender and blend. Of course the quality of the smoothie is completely dependent on the quality of the ingredients. Here are my choices for ingredients:

Stahlbush Island Farms Frozen Strawberries, a local Corvallis company, great strawberries. They're not certified organic, but they have a lot of text on the package about no pesticide residue. Frozen strawberries are expensive—especially in the winter—but you can't skimp on these if you want your smoothie to be unstoppable. If I'm having a strawberry emergency and I can't get to the Corvallis Co-op, I'll pick up Safeway Organics strawberries. (But I don't feel as good about it.)

Columbia Gorge Orange Juice, from another local company (Hood River, OR). I used Odwalla Orange Juice for several years until I tried this brighter, happier orange juice. Like Odwalla, this isn't cheap OJ. I buy the 1/2 gallon size at the co-op and it's even a bit more expensive than Odwalla. But remember the goal: unstoppable.

Tillamook Vanilla Bean Yogurt from Tillamook, OR. Yogurt is the real x-factor in this smoothie, and I've tried a bunch. This yogurt has sugar and corn syrup, so it's definitely not "pure" in the healthy, unrefined sugar sense. But it does have live cultures, so I get the beneficial bacteria. This isn't a creamy, European style yogurt—it has some heft to it. So if you don't have Tillamook where you are, you might look for a heftier yogurt to bulk things up. This yogurt also makes the smoothie insanely sweet, and I'm all for that.

Finally, organic bananas. I don't sweat the brand too much, I just pick up what I can find.

My blending technique is probably stoppable, but there is a knack to it. I have a Braun blender, I dump in everything in the order I've listed, and I start at 1. Once the strawberries are chopped up I crank up the speed. It's key that you don't stop the blending process until you're at the consistency you want. Stopping and starting will throw smoothie all over the sides of the blender, wasting precious expensive ingredients.

The quantities I've mentioned here fill up one of my glasses perfectly, sometimes with a little extra. But no bit of smoothie is wasted in my house. I stopped drinking all caffeinated beverages last February, and I find if I don't have this sugar jolt every morning I'll be dragging by ten o'clock, barely able to function. I also try to eat a piece of toast with peanut butter with my smoothie—the protein helps slow the absorption of this massive sugar hit into my blood. Anyway, this smoothie gives me pretty sustained energy in the morning.

In the end I get a smoothie that is the sum of its parts, no one ingredient overpowering the others. Probably more than you wanted to know about my breakfast habits, but I take my smoothies very seriously.