In order to live our lives without taking on an almost unbearable burden of guilt and responsibility, we draw a series of lines beyond which we refuse to trace the web of harm we’re potentially inflicting on others. When we hit our wives, we feel responsible for that. When we smoke addictively, and in so doing provide a model that our children end up emulating, we feel some responsibility for that. When we have a beer during a picnic in the park, and we look like we’re really really enjoying that cold frosty beverage, and that image of us enjoying the brewski imprints itself on the mind of our friend’s ten-year-old son and he goes on to become an alcoholic, we don’t hold ourselves responsible for that.
The problem of figuring out where to draw these somewhat arbitrary lines in the realm of masculinity is, in a sense, one of the primary missions of this blog. The rules for how to be a man are in a state of flux, and flux breeds confusion, and confusion breeds resentment, as well as opportunity, which is why the world needs Jamie and me and all the other thinkers and artists who are willing to discover or create some harmonies out of the confusion. Because without us, it’s left to the godawful reactionaries, and to their wonderfully-intentioned but rhetorically outgunned counterparts on the left, to define the new man. Consider, for example this set of "core values" that Christopher Pepper, one of the writers of the Daddy Dialectic blog, aspires to pass on to his son Cole.
Core values I’d like to communicate to Cole
———————————————–He should learn that he is loved unconditionally, always, and doesn’t need to do anything or behave any certain way to earn that love.
He should learn that food is something that should be enjoyed and appreciated, and he should always be provided with a variety of healthy, nutritious things to eat.
He should learn how to build a rich, diverse social community, and be encouraged to find common threads of connection with other people.
He should learn that our bodies are our own, and that no one should be hugged, kissed or touched without their permission.
He should learn that his ideas are important and that we will listen to his thoughts. When problems come up, he should be encouraged to help develop solutions as much as possible.
He should learn that animals should be treated with respect and care, and that they shouldn’t be hurt or killed unnecessarily.
He should learn that playing, fun and laughter are important.
He should learn that when he says he’s going to be somewhere or do something, he should actually follow through.
He should be encouraged to use his imagination, and value creativity over passive entertainment.
He should learn that it is important to find fun and enjoyable physical activities, and he should be encouraged to do some physical activity or exercise every day.
He should learn that violence, yelling, put-downs and threats are not effective tools for solving interpersonal conflicts.
He should be encouraged to do as much as he can to help other people.
Great, right? Then why did I get so annoyed as I worked my way through that list? Some of it is certainly envy. I don’t think I’m as good a person as Christopher Pepper seems to be, and parts of me wish I was (were?) that good. I’m more selfish, more protective of my entitlement to things in the world that can’t be justifed or even excused in the context of such beautiful values, than he is.
Some of it, however, comes from a real philosophical difference in how Christopher and I think (or at least write) about the task of being a father and about the challenge of living in the world responsibly. When I think about what I want to teach my daughter (who’s due in three weeks, by the way — holy shit!), it’s not that I don’t think about a lot of the things mentioned above, it’s that I imagine them in the background, occasionally needing to be articulated but much more often just needing to be modeled, and also needing to be balanced with a flexible, complicated, irresolvable sense of the imperfection of the world and of human nature.
I think about taking my daughter to the movies. And not just the G-rated movies, or the thoughtful ones, but, as she gets older, the PG and PG-13 and R rated movies too, and the trashy, exploitative movies. We’ll read fantasy books, and while sometimes we’ll talk about the ideological substructure of the books, sometimes we’ll just read and enjoy them. We’ll talk about people, and we’ll vent about them, and although I’ll protect her from a lot of the darker things that go in inside my mind and the minds of the people in her world, I won’t protect her from all of it. I won’t even protect her from herself all the time.
When I envision the household that arises from Christopher’s list of values, I see a place where everybody’s worried all the time about being misogynistic, racist, classist, illiberal, immoral–where everybody’s worried about being bad, and where his son grows up convinced that all these feelings he has that don’t conform to his parents’ ideals make him a bad person. The voice of Christopher’s blog is humane enough that I don’t, in fact, imagine that he and his wife have created such a puritanical household, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it tends that way.
In a post from last year, "Boys, toys, and militarism," Pepper’s co-blogger Chip writes about wrestling with his son’s attraction to militaristic toys and games. It’s a thoughtful post, but I keyed in on this passage:
Our kids have to know that war is not a game, and that violence should only be used as a very last resort. They have to know that our society tries to create the false impression that war is exciting and fun and bloodless. They have to know that our leaders try to deceive us into believing that we are always justified to use bombs and guns.
Jamie made fun of me the last time I picked a fight with a male feminist, and here I am doing it again, but c’mon — "the false impression that war is exciting and fun and bloodless"? War is anything but bloodless, and the mass culture industry is pretty shameless in implying that it is, but unless pretty much every single serious account of war that I’ve ever read is wrong, then war is also, for many of the people fighting it, exciting and fun. There’s the thrill, and the camaraderie, and the ecstasy of unleashing violence without the fear of being judged for doing it. War is hell, but it can also be a kick.
The task of the Twenty-First-Century Dad (which is the title of the book that another Daddy Dialectic blogger just signed a deal to write) isn’t just to teach his kids that war is ugly. It’s also to teach his kids that the instinct to compete, and to conquer, and to do violence to those who seem threatening, is part of what it means to be human, and that there’s probably no way, at least without the benefit of some serious psychopharmacology or yet-to-be devised genetic engineering, that they’re going to be without such instincts.
CORRECTION: I made some changes to this post after realizing that I’d gotten the Daddy Dialectic authors mixed up. The names are now correct. -Dan
