Particularly in these difficult times, we often use our children
as reasons to avoid getting involved in critical issues. We've
got all we can handle holding on to our jobs and spending a
little time with them. We fear political commitments will make
their lives more insecure. Especially when they're young, it may
be all we can do just to go to work, come home, pay attention to
their needs, and catch a few scarce hours of sleep. Yet when we
do find ways to get engaged, our children can give us powerful
reasons to act.
It's understandable that we'd want to shelter our children. We
want to protect them from the ills of the world. We'd rather
they focus on simple childhood pleasures than the Gulf oil spill
or global climate change. It's awkward to explain war, fear,
greed, and all the shadows that hang over their future. However
we handle the time constraints, raising children can make us
more cautious. They may also lead us to shy away from public
controversies that might risk our jobs, or to move to more
costly neighborhoods with better schools. We want to give them
comfort and security even if this means subordinating other
values.
Yet as Children's Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman
puts it, protecting our own children "does not end in our
kitchen or at our front door or with narrow attention just to
[their] personal needs." Writing to her own sons, she says, "You
must walk the streets with other people's children and attend
schools with other people's children. You breathe polluted air
and eat polluted food like millions of other children and are
threatened by pesticides and chemicals and toxic waste like
everybody's children. Drunken drivers and crack addicts on the
streets are a menace to every American child. So are violent
television shows and movies and incessant advertising and
cultural signals that hawk profligate consumption and excessive
violence and tell you slick is real. It is too easy and
unrealistic to say these forces can be tuned out just by
individual parental vigilance." If we want our children to lead
generous-spirited lives, we need to give them ideals to inspire
them.
COMMON SOLUTIONS
Collaborative approaches can help: When my wife Rebecca was
pregnant with my stepson Will, she approached another pregnant
woman in her apartment building and initiated a baby-sitting
co-op that quickly spread to 20 families. The group soon became
a close-knit extended support system, watching each other's
children daily, holding a weekly play group, volunteering
together at a local community help line, and sharing emotional
support. If we want to attract parents to our political
movements, we'd do well to create similar networks or find other
ways for people to bring their children along.