Jennifer Traig - Act Natural: A Cultural History of Misadventures in Parenting

T hough we think of having children as the most natural thing in the world, actually becoming a parent has taught me that theres nothing natural about it, and to pretend otherwise leads only to trouble. A short time ago I followed my natural impulse to nap on the rug while my young son followed his to deface, in hot pink marker, the floor, the wall, the velvet couch, a lamp, an electrical socket, and a coffee-table book lengthily inscribed by a former first lady. Had we been at home, this would have been irritating, but we were staying at someone elses house, so it was mortifying.

Sam was being Sam, I explained helplessly when my husband came to survey the wreckage. Its just his nature.

Did you fall asleep?

Thats my nature.

This mess is on you two, Rob answered, shaking his head. Lets not drag nature into it.

And while I thought it might be nice if Rob had fought his nature to be right about this particular matter, we both knew he was. From the cocktail of chemicals that brought our two children into the world to the countless perverse decisions weve made every day since, the only role nature has played is scapegoat.

But thats never how it feels. In the moment, everything we do seems like the logical, instinctual, natural response. Sam cries, and we pick him up. His older sister, Rachel, asks us to intervene in their fight, and we do. At the store, one or the other will lick a package of something he or she desperately wants, and after making sure no ones looking, we will place it back on the shelf. Normal, logical, appropriate. It doesnt even feel like a decision, just the only thing a sane person would do. Act natural.

But really, of course, thats all it isan act, a performance of a script that was written a long time ago. And when recently I started to examine the hundreds of parental actions I take every day, I realized that I have no idea why I do any of them, or whether I should or shouldnt. I just go along with the received wisdom, without asking where I received it from, or whether its even wise. Dr. Spocks famous line You know more than you think you do had it almost rightas a parent I know what to do most of the time, but I dont think about why I do it, or if its such a good idea after all.

As is true in many houses with small children, questions are asked all the time in ours, but these are seldom about big-picture matters. Why is there yogurt on the TV? Why are my car keys in the trash? Wheres the front doorknob? Who let a squirrel in the house?

Much of what we do, in fact, other parents would never consider. The things we take for granted as normal and natural strike parents in other parts of the world as absurd and dangerous, as wrong as letting your toddler play with a machete, which, by the way, some Congolese parents do. And as horrified as we are by their methods, they are by ours. Playing with knives is one thing, but putting your child to sleep alone? Thats child abuse.

Which is where this book comes from, a curiosity about what parents actually did throughout history, what they do now in other parts of the world, and why, here and now, we do what we do.

Here and now, most of us rely on rules and a general idea of what constitutes good parenting as defined by developed-world, middle-class Westerners. This is the parenting tradition Ive inherited, and thus the one I focus on, though its by no means the only or the best. It is certainly worth interrogating, which is in part what this book is trying to do.

Because the tradition does and should raise a lot of questions. Why do we teach our children what sounds animals make before we teach them the sounds people do? Why do we encourage them to crawl, when it doesnt help them learn to walk? Why do we read them stories about homicidal stepparents? Why do we sing them soothing songs about fatal accidents and incurable diseases? Why do we beg them to eat? Why do we give them time-outs, and why do we think this changes anything? Why do they know the toy keys are not the real keys, and why do they think the real keys are better? Why do we let other people take care of them? Why do we take care of them ourselves? Was it always this hard, and is it this hard everywhere else?

The short answer to that last question is: probably. Even the Buddha named his son Burden, and by the way, he left the family a week after the birth. You can hardly expect the less enlightened of us to do any better. Biology certainly doesnt. As sociobiologist Robert Trivers argued in a landmark paper, the ideal pairing, from an evolutionary perspective, is children who ask for too much coupled with parents who wont meet all their demands. This way, both parent and child survive. Their selfish/withholding genes pass on, and the hard work continues.

It islets be clearvery, very hard. Freud called child-rearing one of the three impossible professions (the other two: governing nations and psychoanalysis). To do even a half-assed job is a Sisyphean task. Children get away with things no adult would. They defecate in the living room; they assault us with impunity. In a single week one summer, I was smacked, punched, scratched, and bitten; my ears were boxed, my hair was pulled, and my glasses were thrown across a parking lot. I was slapped across the face with a foot.

With children, the most basic human activities are fraught. A couple of years ago my husband and son stumbled out of a restaurant bathroom, both looking traumatized. Did he pee his pants? I asked. He peed his daddy, Rob answered. He peed all over me. He peed on his own face.

Its all so hard, but what choice do we have? The modern practice known as natural parenting appealed until I realized it does not in fact mean do nothing, and requires as many if not more interventions than unnatural parenting does. No parent really wants nature alone to take its course, though parents have often turned to nature when faced with a crisis of confidence. This is a little like asking the house cat for contractor recommendations, and is generally just as helpful. When nature alone has served as parent, as in the case of the feral children who occasionally turn up in history, things havent turned out so well, unless you were hoping for a chronically masturbating child with no language skills or table manners.

Since Im hoping for a bit more, the past few years have been a lot of work. Much of what children subject us tosleep deprivation, extreme noise, stress positions, physical abuse, use of bodily fluids as weaponsfits the technical definition of torture. Most of our parenting actions are taken simply because theyve broken us down. We are too tired to question the custom, too weary to fight, too worn out to spend the next two hoursokay, fourplaying Mozart musical chairs and not watching eight consecutive episodes of Caillou. Why is my forehead bruised? Whats this on the carpet? Who wants to watch episodes nine and ten?

It is so difficult that despite Triverss argument I cant help but think it used to be easier, or the species simply wouldnt have continued. Oh, sure, caveman parents had to fight off mastodons and appease the bear god, but they didnt have to worry about competitive preschools. Medieval parents never had to fish a smoking banana out of a heating grate, never had to pull over when their toddler figured out how to open the door of a moving car. They never had, as I did the other day, to scrub grease stains off the upholstered dining room chairs after my son decided to spray them all with PAM. They did not bother with time-outs, they did not agonize over self-esteem, and if only because they didnt have indoor plumbing, they didnt have children who routinely confused the toilet with the bathtub, climbing feetfirst into the former and relieving themselves in the latter. Why are your socks wet? Why are you making that face? Why is the bathwater opaque?