Emerging Women

By Deb Falank

I just came across an article promoting the legal institution of marriage. The excerpt below is from the section titled “Evidence From the Social and Biological Sciences”.

Fathers excel when it comes to providing discipline, ensuring safety, and challenging their children to embrace life’s opportunities and confront life’s difficulties. The greater physical size and strength of most fathers, along with the pitch and inflection of their voice and the directive character of their speaking, give them an advantage when it comes to discipline, an advantage that is particularly evident with boys, who are more likely to comply with their fathers’ than their mothers’ discipline. Likewise, fathers are more likely than mothers to encourage their children to tackle difficult tasks, endure hardship without yielding, and seek out novel experiences. These paternal strengths also have deep biological underpinnings: Fathers typically have higher levels of testosterone—a hormone associated with dominance and assertiveness—than do mothers. Although the link between nature, nurture, and sex-specific parenting talents is undoubtedly complex, one cannot ignore the overwhelming evidence of sex differences in parenting—differences that marriage builds on to the advantage of children.

I’m all about marriage and stable families and agree with much of the broader outlines of the article. However, I find the particular stance in this paragraph to be a little disconcerting on two points, the idea that effective discipline requires particular physical characteristics, and that men are more likely than women to instill perseverance and inquisitiveness. What do you think of these premises? Is effective parenting really defined by gender in this specific way?

Deb Falank writes about women, animality, violence and Christianity at the soulful eye.

Over at one of the NPR blogs today, Linda Holmes had a great post titled “Dear Pixar, From all the girls with Band-aids on their knees.” In it she comments that although she loves their movies and the messages they portray, she would like it if for once a major cartoon was made about girls who weren’t princesses. She writes -

Well, the whole big world has a lot of little girls in it, too. And not all of them are princesses — and the ones who are princesses have plenty of movies to watch.

And even many of them who do aspire to be princesses are mixing their princess tendencies with all manner of other delicious things. Their tiaras fall off when they skin their knees running at top speed; they get fingerpaint on their pink dresses; they chip their front teeth chasing each other in plastic high-heeled shoes.

There’s nothing wrong with the movies you’re making; I’m sure your princess movie will be my favorite one ever. I’m just saying, keep them in mind, those girls in Band-Aids, because they want to see themselves on screen doing death-defying stunts, too. You’re making some of my favorite movies in the whole world right now.

Please, please make one about a girl who isn’t a princess.

This question of role models for young girls is huge. One might say that little girls simply like princesses and faeries so there is no need to market anything else to them. But do they like those things because that is what they have been told to like by the marketing people? I know making movies is generally about making money, but if there are messages to be told it wouldn’t be so hard to tell the story of a normal girl doing extraordinary things. That’s what most movies are like, except they are about boys. Why do the producers feel like movies about girls don’t need to be made?

It reminds me on an interview I read with J.K. Rowling years ago. She said her name on the Harry Potter books was chosen to be J.K. Rowling by the publisher because they thought that boys wouldn’t read a book written by a girl. So her name was changed from Joanne to J.K. to not “scare away” potential male readers. But honestly, would the most popular children’s series ever have failed if early readers were too sexist to pick up the books? Sometimes what the marketing people think our kids want versus what they really like doesn’t quite match up.

My daughter loves princesses and TinkerBelle, but she also likes bugs and getting dirty. The other day she told me all about an exciting game of Star Wars My Little Pony she played on the playground (yes, I’m still confused – what, do they have rainbow lightsabers?). I want her to see girls in the movies she sees doing all sorts of interesting things – not just looking pretty as princesses. Boys shouldn’t be the only ones who get to dream of doing great things. So I appreciated this open letter for raising the question – and wonder when we will actually see movies just about girls being girls.

Hi all, I’m back from the Emergent Gathering in New Mexico. It was a refreshing gathering of friends and the conversations I had were amazing. We had a good Emerging Women lunch, which I will blog about in a day or two, but first I want to spread the word about a new venture that came out of this Gathering.

One of the sessions I attended was a discussion on holistic emerging parenting. The men and women who attended were all seeking to connect with other parents on this emerging journey on how to integrate our “new” expressions of faith in with how we raise our children. Most of us have felt unable to connect with the typical Christian parenting group, and were longing to find others of like mind to engage with. Our conversation there was lively – covering topics as diverse as discipline, salvation, and how to handle Christmas and Birthdays. We all wished at the end that we could continue those conversations, and so we decided to create a blog to be a spot to do so.

Hence the creation of the Emerging Parents blog. It is, like this blog, an open membership blog. Since we have had so many good conversations on parenting issues here I wanted to share this new resource with you all. Not that parenting topics can’t continue here, but just that this is a more focused area for those. It is of course brand new without much content yet, but hopefully we can all develop that together. So check it out, jump in one the conversations, join if you want, and let’s explore emerging parenting together.

UPDATE: This recall has been expanded to include millions of Mattel/Fisher-Price toys. Please check their site.

There is a rather long list of Fisher-Price’s Sesame Street, Dora, and Diego toys being recalled. You can find it at http://www.mattel.com/. Apparently, some genius with their company decided it would be a good idea to save a few bucks by having their toys manufactured in China where the standards of production are low enough that they managed to use lead paints on their toys. This could be very dangerous, so please check the list and pass this info along to anyone you know who has young children.

In the discussion on Children’s Books, Amy wrote -

Julie, you mentioned staying away from the reward/punishment style of raising children. What do you use instead and do you have a particular way you church applies this to its children’s programs? I’ve noticed recently that our kids ministry uses a lot of candy/sweet rewards, especially to offerings. It’s a competition of boys vs. girls. Not that a little candy is horrible thing, but I wonder if there’s a more effective way of teaching our children to give just because it’s the right thing to do, or out of true compassion for missions, etc.

For those of you who have never heard of the debate about rewards and punishments let me give a bit of a background. This is a discussion that is popular in alternative parenting circles, some education circles, and is making its presence known in Children’s Ministry settings. While there are many people writing about the subject, the most well known author is Alfie Kohn. His book Punished by Rewards is the most prominent treatment of the subject (and the source of much emotional debate). Here’s the brief summary of the book to help give a framework for this question -

Our basic strategy for raising children, teaching students, and managing workers can be summarized in six words: Do this and you’ll get that. We dangle goodies (from candy bars to sales commissions) in front of people in much the same way that we train the family pet.

In this groundbreaking book, Alfie Kohn shows that while manipulating people with incentives seems to work in the short run, it is a strategy that ultimately fails and even does lasting harm. Our workplaces and classrooms will continue to decline, he argues, until we begin to question our reliance on a theory of motivation derived from laboratory animals.

Drawing from hundreds of studies, Kohn demonstrates that people actually do inferior work when they are enticed with money, grades, or other incentives. Programs that use rewards to change people’s behavior are similarly ineffective over the long run. Promising goodies to children for good behavior can never produce anything more than temporary obedience. In fact, the more we use artificial inducements to motivate people, the more they lose interest in what we’re bribing them to do. Rewards turn play into work, and work into drudgery.

Step by step, Kohn marshals research and logic to prove that pay-for-performance plans cannot work; the more an organization relies on incentives, the worse things get. Parents and teachers who care about helping students to learn, meanwhile, should be doing everything possible to help them forget that grades exist. Even praise can become a verbal bribe that gets kids hooked on our approval.

Rewards and punishments are just two sides of the same coin — and the coin doesn’t buy very much. What is needed, Kohn explains, is an alternative to both ways of controlling people.

This approach forces us to rethink discipline, competition, and parenting strategies. I first encountered these ideas when I was studying methods of Children’s Ministry. The discussion there revolved around two main issues. One was the tendency to use rewards/bribes to get kids to do things in church (memorize verses being the most prevalent). We saw the impact that such systems had on actually reducing love and respect for the Bible and its utter long term ineffectiveness in retention of those verses (much less basic understanding thereof to begin with). We also explored how the language of behaviorism has infiltrated of presentation of the Gospel (mostly in evangelical settings). Often people are asked to follow Jesus in order to receive the reward of heaven or avoid the punishment of hell. Long term studies that track and compare how people are called to faith (behaviorism influenced decisions or gradual inclusion into the family) have shown that the psychological issues and faith struggles are much greater in those who were given a reward/punishment option. (not that heaven and hell are not real, but that they should not be what manipulates us into choosing to follow God).

Most people don’t like to discuss this issue because it forces them to consider different parenting/ministry styles than what they grew up with. The logic is that, it worked for me/I’m okay why waste energy trying to change things. But studies have shown that such a system of behaviorism does more harm than good. I like the idea of rethinking our strategy for motivating people, but I fully admit that I am still trying to discover practical strategies for implementation. I have started to evaluate what the ultimate goal of all of my interactions with my child is. Am I encouraging her to be the kind of person I want her to be (good, kind, loving), or am I using my power over her by giving or witholding my love in the form of rewards and punishments in order to get her behavior to be the way I find most comfortable?

Before I mention a few suggestions Kohn gives as alternatives, I would like to here from you all. What is your reaction to the rewards/punishment issue? What do you see as good alternatives?

I recently got an email from an EW reader who wrote -

I am a graduate student in English and the wife of a campus minister … We have a baby boy who is 5 months old. We’ve been thinking about how to teach him about Jesus (of course) and I’ve been looking for children’s books. I am having a difficult time finding good books for children, and I’m wondering if you might have any recommendations. Perhaps this could be a good post on the blog. Many of the books I find portray Jesus as a white man or assign stereotypical roles to women and men. I would also love to teach him to pray for children in poverty, and I can’t seem to find any books on this!

So I contributed my $.02 -

I’m with you on the children’s books thing. So many that I find (or have been given to me) are just awful. I’ve yet to find any good Jesus books for kids, but there are a number of decent spirituality books out there. Some of my favorites include -

The Lord’s Prayer and The Twenty-third Psalm – by Tim Ladwig (uses the familiar words with fantastic artwork that portrays inner-city life)

and books from the Early Childhood Spirituality series like – Where is God?, What is God’s Name?, and How Does God Make Things Happen? (most by Laurence Kushner or Sandy Eisenburg Sasso). These books are very multicultural and focus on love and grace. They have full picture books and board book varieties (a necessity with my toddler).

and (although they are not “Christian” – by label, not intent) I like the values taught in the Todd Parr line of books like The Peace Book and The Feelings Book. (Emma especially like the idea of peace being enough pizza in the world for everyone, she’s two)

and I think they are out of print, but the allegorical stories in The Tales of the Kingdom series by David and Karen Mains have been a favorite of mine since I was a kid.

But I would love to find “bible” stories that aren’t warped in some way. That don’t change the story drastically to be suitable for kids, that don’t reduce scripture to a plithy fable, or that don’t teach individualistic “me” centered theology.

So I present the question here to the diverse community that meanders to this blog. What do you recommend?

In Free of Charge, Mioslav Volf argues that we cannot be the initial givers to God who then expect reciprocity, because all things came from God as gifts to us in the first place, even our lives. This makes me think of how my a child can reason, “It’s my room! I can do what I want,” while I parent thinks, “Yeah, but who pays the mortgage?” Or a child says, “I’ll give you my red car if you’ll buy me a new fire engine.” And mom or dads thinks, “Wait, I gave you that red car for Christmas.” On the otherhand, if a child gives a parent a picture made with all her love and creativity, simply because, then I don’t know any parent who dismisses the value of the gift on account of the fact that Daddy bought the crayons and Mommy supplied the paper.

In what spirit to do we offer our gifts to God? How can we be the child we’d love to parent? What thoughts come to mind when you put yourself in God’s shoes (or at least try ?