When it comes to parent-child relations and the “quality versus quantity of time” debate, “quality of time” adherents are often rationalizing skewed priorities.

Parents cannot spend enough time with their children during the first ten years of their lives. 

Parenting is the most selfless act imaginable.  Effective parenting entails putting your child’s needs before your desires on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis year after year.

I’m far from a perfect parent, but I’m proud of my wife’s and my work and the young women our daughters are becoming.  I’ve accomplished a fair share of things, but without a doubt, I’m most proud of who my daughters are becoming.

Why ten years?  That’s fairly arbitrary, but three of four years ago I remember having a conversation on the way to school with A, age 15, that is etched in my mind.  The specific words aren’t as memorable as the vivid feeling the conversation engendered.  It had something to do with friends, choices, the importance of schooling, delayed gratification, and planning ahead.  She cut me off midstream and completed “the talk” in her own words.  It was as if I was seeing the future, hearing what she’s likely to tell my grandchild on the way to school in two or three decades. 

It was an epiphany.  We were done.  Give her a driver (with navigation), a frig filled with food, and she could damn well live on her own. 

Ten years of affection, reading together, attending violin recitals, talking over dinner, commitment.  Ten years of trying to put her needs before my desires.  I enjoyed the process, but at that moment, felt even more moved by the result.

Intellectually, I knew A would forge her own path after high school; I just was caught off guard by how mature she already was.  Part of me was saddened that she would never need me in the same way, but I knew I had to accept it as a natural part of the cycle of life.  I had an intense joy that’s tough to put into words. 

We’re probably a more modern family than we’d like to admit.  We try to be countercultural and resist the urge to over schedule ourselves.  But it’s two steps forward and one back.  There’s an ebb and flow, but too often we get overscheduled, drive too much, and don’t spend enough time together, unplugged, and fully present. 

Maybe the best way to flee the grasp of modernization is to retreat on occasion.  In 2003, thanks to my university, we retreated to Chengdu, China for three months.  I was the site director for our study abroad program at Sichuan University.  We separated ourselves from our friends and regular activities, lived in a small apartment without an internet connection, walked all over together, dealt with homesickness and cultural differences together, played ping-pong and made new friends together, and as a result, deepened our bonds.

If you’re reading this on Monday, February 4^th, we’re probably half way over the Atlantic in transit to Hamar, Norway, 83 kilometers north of Oslo, where, thanks to a Fulbright grant, I’m doing guest teaching at a university. 

Our first shared experience was preparing together.  And we just learned our “semi-detached, tiny, but cozy” guesthouse won’t be ready until February 25th so it’s three nights in a hotel and two and half weeks in an apartment in a museum 30 minutes away.  Most importantly, we’ll bop from place to place together.  It will be the first of hundreds of new experiences that we’ll share together.  Instead of five minutes of conversation after school, or ten during dinner, we’ll once again be living in very close proximity, experiencing interesting and challenging new things together on a daily basis, leaning on each other, and once again, deepening our bonds. 

My hope is we’ll be changed as a result of our Northern retreat, both individually and collectively.  When school and full-time work begins again in September, and we return to our regular routines, I hope there’s a legacy of intimacy that helps us better manage the pace of modern life and relate to one another and others with even more patience, kindness, and love.

An observation, question, and prediction.

The observation. Women with children do a better job than men of reflecting on and talking with one another about the art of parenting. My male friends and I don’t talk about parenting too often, and when we do, the conversations tend to be brief and fairly superficial.

The question. Why is there a gender gap when it comes to reflecting on and exchanging thoughts and ideas on parenting? If women spend more time with their children than men, and also spend more time with one another, I suppose the gap makes sense.

It may not be that simple though because my male friends and I are way more involved in our children’s daily activities than most of our fathers were. Our children also see us help around the house a whole lot more than we saw most of our dads. Sometimes when L complains that I’m not doing my fair share around the house, I remind her how abysmal my dad’s modeling was and how helpful I am by comparison. I admit, pathetic, blaming my dad when he can’t defend himself.

The prediction. Over the next few decades, “the stay-at-home dad” ranks are going to swell. If I were an entrepreneur I would be strategizing on how to capitalize on this impending social transformation. Like you probably, I know a handful of stay-at-home dads, but they’re still a distinct minority. I predict this will change because my female students are running circles around my male ones. My experience jives with what others are documenting in other parts of the country. Not only are there more female college students than male, they also tend to be more purposeful in their studies, they’re studying abroad at greater rates, and they’re enrolling in graduate schools in greater numbers.

In some of my classes, the gap is glaring. I might have 30 students, 17 or 18 female and 12 or 13 male. Typically, six of the top eight students who are most engaged, most hard working, and most successful, are female. Class after class, semester after semester. There are purposeful, hard working, outstanding male students; they’re just outnumbered by their female counterparts. To create better gender balance, some universities are relaxing admission criteria for men.

Apart from the fact that young men spend a lot more time playing video games than young women, I don’t have many sociological insights into the reasons for this gender gap in academic achievement, but I believe it is going to have profound implications for all us, especially my daughters and their girlfriends. Specifically, will my daughters and all of their girlfriends find partners with similar levels of education, ambition, and gumption?

Related to this, I predict more women will graduate college, more women will enroll in graduate programs, and more women will enter the professions, and in the not so distant future, women will out earn men. Given that likelihood, more couples will decide that the lower-earning male should take the lead in child rearing. This has started to happen already, but it will accelerate.

In twenty years, I expect more men to have even more child rearing responsibilities. They’ll probably form playgroups and bump into one another at their children’s schools, and seek out one another for adult conversation. They’ll spend more time together than my male friends and I do. And when they’re sitting at the park pushing their kids on the swings, I won’t be surprised if they begin reflecting on and swapping ideas about the art of parenting.

Sometimes when I’m watching sports on television one of my daughters will plop down beside me and ask, “Who are you rootin’ for?” I tell them the “blue team” and return serve asking, “How bout’ you?” Without fail it’s, “I want the blue team too.”Recently, standing in our kitchen, I asked J, “Who are you voting for?” even though she’s a senate term too young to cast an official ballot. While seeing exactly how much ice cream she could pack into her bowl, she replied, “Barack Obama I think.”

That makes two of us.

Obama’s Iowa victory speech was the most moving and inspiring I’ve heard in a long, long time. Among other parts, I liked his “there are no red states, blue states, only the United States” idealism and his admonition that 9/11 shouldn’t be used to “scare up votes.” Instead he talked about terrorism as one of several important 21st century challenges including global warming, poverty, oil dependence, and nuclear proliferation.

I was less impressed with his simplistic criticism of outsourcing and economic globalization, which I assume was a nod towards Midwest manufacturers. Go ahead and join the drumbeat against outsourcing, but first convince the American consumer to pay quite a bit more for consumer goods. People want Wal-Mart prices and protectionist trade policies, but seem unwilling to connect the dots.

I wondered how can someone be so incredibly comfortable on the national stage when he hasn’t been on it all that long?

I’m admittedly conflicted about J’s voting intentions. On the one hand, I’m glad she didn’t say “I’m really upset that Tom Tancredo withdrew because like him I dream of living in a country surrounded by an insurmountable wall.” But on the other hand, I want her to become a self-confident, creative thinker willing to take positions different than my own. On one level it’s flattering that she wants the blue team and Barack Obama, but I’d rather she become an independent thinker rather than a carbon copy of me.

I want to guide her development while simultaneously remembering she’s an autonomous, unique person whose life will take unknown twists and turns.

It’s an interesting dance, hoping she adopts the values I’m attempting to model while simultaneously encouraging independent thinking.

It may be like promoting democracy in the Middle East and then saying “Oh shit, look who they voted into office.” In cultivating an independent thinker, how much control am I prepared to give up? What if she applies to USC, votes for a Tom Tancredo, and drives a Hummer?

Cultivating independent thinking is messier, takes more time, and is less efficient than more traditional and authoritarian models of parenting. Sometimes the dishwasher needs emptying, the lawn needs mowing, and bills need to be paid. To develop self-confident, independent young adults we have to guard against saying “because I said so” too often. We need to respect their ability to reason.

Also, children need to see the adults in their lives respectfully disagree and constructively resolve conflicts. And as children age, we need to draw them into more and more substantive conversations consisting of topics upon which reasonable people disagree.*

Ideally, teachers will help model these skills and sensibilities and provide our children with opportunities to practice and develop them. Unfortunately though, the educational pendulum has swung so far towards easy to test content (mostly of the math and science variety) that in-depth, critical classroom conversations are far and few between.

How do you test respect for contending viewpoints, tact and diplomacy, an appreciation for ambiguity, active listening skills, and the boldness and creativity of someone’s thinking? It’s tough to assess those skills and sensibilities, but it’s difficult to understate the importance of them in our homes, communities, and world.

* Postscript: I wrote this post a week ago. Last night, L and I attended a great dinner party. Without prompting, one couple explained how they do exactly what I’m proposing here. On the way home, L was deep in thought about their example, and said, “Our dinner conversations are more John Belushi Animal House than anything else.” At which point J and her both blamed me. I admit, there are times at dinner that I don’t act very professorial and my table manners could use some work. At the same time, they say they don’t laugh nearly as much when I’m not there, so there are trade-offs. My point in sharing this to admit to a gap between theory and current practice.