What is "Unconventional" Parenting?

This week, we looked at two different pieces that both had one thing in common. That thing would be the fact that the authors had unconventional parenting. But what exactly counts as unconventional parenting?

Strictly speaking, parents really only get prior experience with the idea of parenting as a child. And their parents have the same issue, and so on so forth. So strictly speaking, I guess it can be claimed that no parent truly understands parenting. And parenting is almost certainly impacted by culture as well. For example, when we were discussing all of the different relationships we had with our parents, I found that my Asian parents acted more like other Asian parents than they acted like parents with other racial backgrounds. As for why, I suspect that culturally, parents have always raised their children how they have seen others do so, and so cultures that have never "met" until recently have never been aware of the shortcomings and advantages of all other cultures.

But it parents are so inexperienced, then I guess it can also be claimed that no one truly has parents who do their parenting duties in a "conventional" way, because no one has the experience to define any one style as "conventional." So I guess ultimately in the two pieces, unconventional as the parents were they really weren't any more unconventional than any one else.

And yes, I am just waiting for someone to respond "The Glass Castle."

The Frugal Repast

The Frugal Repast by Pablo Picasso

A man and a woman at a table
The man is blind, the woman is not.
Who has it worse?
The man cannot see anything, cannot tell if there is food he simply doesn't know about.
He's wondering if there's something he's missing, if this is simply cruel and unusual punishment,
He's wondering if he will make it and oh dear lord is that all?
He sees the pervading darkness and lack of light and hope,
with the perspective of one who cannot see at all.
And he smells the air in an attempt to find more food,
but catches only the aroma of dust and ash.
And is the ash from the air, or his body, which is breaking down?
Or is it literally his body, which he swears is made of ash
made of the same charcoal-carbon as the fire
the fire of pain, which pierces his body and pounds on his stomach
and can he please have some more food?
And he clutches the girl, his one guide,
the one he hopes is not leading him astray.
And meanwhile she considers how easy it could be to just leave him,
to push him to the ground and run away,
oblivious to the whimpering of a man whose inevitable death has just sped up.
While she gets all of the food,
and starves to death slower because of it.
and yet as much as she wants to, she cannot leave him.
It's as if Time is frozen,
or rather Time will not let them escape,
as their world crumbles and decays.
Like them.

Cultural Chameleons

Since Amy Tan's "Fish Cheeks" was probably the essay I most connected with this week, I guess I'll write about that.

So what I found most interesting about her piece (and in retrospect this is probably true about me as well) is that she varies her behavior depending on her environment. She has no qualms about her relatives having Chinese habits when they are all she is around. After all, she reveals at the end of her piece that her mother had cooked all of her favorite foods for Christmas, so she clearly has enjoyed them at one time or another (most likely with the company of her relatives).

However, when she is in the company of the priest's family, she wants an American nose, a family with American manners, etc. She wants to be American when in the company of Americans.

So the obvious question (for me) is fairly straightforward. Simply put, which culture does Amy belong to? Her default appears to be Chinese, but most of the time, she's also in the company of her Chinese friends, so that may not be true. Alternatively, she could be American by default, but I'm not sure. She could also be a mix of the two (which would mean she blends in to either culture she wants to at any given moment), which would explain her mixed habits and wants, as well as the confusion she feels when presented with both options. What do you think? I'm actually pretty interested in getting more input here.

On an entirely unrelated note, when I was opening my riverside to get to our active reading assignment, I happened to open it to "Behind the Formaldehyde Curtain" on page 305, and I decided to read it because why not. That had the unintentional side effect of making me question the point of everything that was happening in "Grade A." Whoops.

We meet again, stereotypes

It's pretty clear that one of the central ideas of Nancy Mairs's piece "Disability," is that people with disabilities are human, physical abnormalities or not. But in suggesting that disabled people are just like able bodied people, is she suggesting that able bodied people are like how they thought of disabled people?

At one point in her essay, Mairs talks about labeling able bodied people as TAPs, or Temporarily Abled Persons. Obviously, this is an interesting label towards able bodied people, which seems to say, "You are only temporarily abled. Disability is the norm. One day you shall join us." Obviously, that's rather exaggerated. If it were true, then disability would be the norm and Mairs wouldn't even be writing this paper on behalf of a minority. But that's not the point.

The point is, in the process of classifying all able bodied people under the same label, Mairs seems to be dehumanizing the very people she claims to be the equal to. "We," the able bodied, are all just TAPs. We are just a group of mindless Great American Consumers. We are, to you (the disabled), what you are to us, albeit with a few more abilities. So what's this point you're making about us (the able bodied) dehumanizing you (the disabled)?

Come to think of it, this speaks to a larger truth. It's so easy to claim that you and everyone like you is a victim in some way, shape, or form. It's much harder to tell that you are victimizing others. I suppose it's human nature (way to make an argument against labeling everyone the same thing, Nick).

So yes, in my opinion, her argument falls short in some ways. But it was still a nice, thought provoking essay overall and it's nice to see a fresh perspective. Hopefully we get more of these in the coming semester.