Tag Archives: family

They’re really free agents: parenting lessons and organizational practice

Posted on June 21, 2011 by | 2 Comments

Who wouldn't want a superhero on their team? And why would I fight my kid on wearing his Batman costume to run errands?

One of my favorite blogs to read, partially for the insightful content and partially because I’m convinced that she’s a terrific person (even though we’ve never “met”), Community Organizer 2.0, had a post awhile back that dealt with the idea of free agents, a topic expanded on in The Networked Nonprofit, and one that I’ve done some thinking about here before.

And it occurred to me at the time that my most successful parenting days come when I apply the principles of free agency to my kids, and that those lessons can help me not only succeed as a parent but also apply to my organizing and organizational development work. And, then it took me a couple of months to actually sit down and write that out. And, apparently, I’m incapable of doing so today in short sentences!

The concept of free agents is basically this: if nonprofit organizations and “official” entities try to control too tightly their messages and those who would be ambassadors for their causes, they’ll miss out on a whole lot of passionate activity that could be contributed by those who don’t see themselves as traditionally connected to a nonprofit base (as a staff member or volunteer), but who will “latch on” to your issue and, potentially, bring the new attention and energy that every campaign desperately needs.

There are some really smart people spending a lot of time thinking about organizations as fortresses and how to break down the barriers that discourage free agents, and about how to change organizational culture so that the idea of loosely affiiliating in this way isn’t so strange and scary. It’s tremendously exciting, in part because of the incredible advocacy potential of free agents (who often specifically want to tell people about a given cause and rally others to its defense, which is what advocacy efforts crave), and also because I believe that making organizations more responsive and responsible to free agents will make them places where clients can tap into leadership opportunities and where transparency will, to a large extent, reign.

Very important stuff.

And, of course, because I’ve got young children to raise, I tend to think of everything in terms of what it means for me as a mom, in addition to someone who tries to think about and work with social problems and the nonprofit organizations charged with addressing them. Which brings me (eventually!) to this post.

Because my kids are free agents, with me, not of me, and the more I remember that, the better things work around here. What this means for me as a parent, and what I think it can mean for us as practitioners?

  • We have to be okay with the fact that free agents don’t do things the way we would do them. If we want that, we need to just do them ourselves. But, so much of the time, we’re too busy, or we’ve recognized that there is something valuable to be gained by giving others the chance to do for themselves, but then we want quality control veto, or something, over the final product. That’s crazy-making, whether it’s how my kids spread peanut butter on their own sandwiches, or how someone crafts a Facebook appeal for your next advocacy meeting. They’re free, remember, to come at this their own way.
  • Similarly, we need a clear sense of where we’re headed, so that we don’t have to stress if we’re not following the same path to get there. My favorite all-time human behavior concept of equifinality applies here: there are many routes to Point B. Too often, though, we’re not entirely clear what our goal is, so then the process becomes our fixation (we all have to do it this way), not even because we want the control, but because we’re just not sure what to tell people about where we’re headed. When my kids know that we’re leaving in 10 minutes, and what they have to do to get ready, then it no longer matters if shoes or coats go on first. And if we define advocacy success so that we know it when we see it, then we’ll all be at the finish line together.
  • Ownership matters, a lot. Sometimes, we’re fine delegating control of the process to our free agents, but we want the credit (or at least the branding) for the successes. What motivates my kids, especially the oldest, is knowing that something was his call, and that the success (or failure) will be his to own, too. Too few organizations have any kind of structure to applaud the contributions of their free agents, because they’re not even consciously tracking them, and because they don’t fit into one of the categories that they currently laud. If we want free agents in our orbit, we can’t try to co-opt them.
  • It’s not just “zen”; you really get more. If this whole free agent thing was just the right thing to do, because it’s consistent with our principles of inclusivity and empowerment and maximum participation, it would still make sense, especially for nonprofit organizations seeking renewal and transformation. Absolutely. Just like, if it was just about me being a less hypocritical parent and raising my kids in the way that I believe in organizing, it would be right for us. But the truth? My kids are more creative and cooperative and enthusiastic when I treat them as my co-travelers on a life journey, rather than as extensions of myself or as my minions. And your free agents will, as case examples are demonstrating all over the world, use their talents and tools for extraordinary ends, too, when your organization stops trying to orchestrate those ends.

    I’m interested in hearing from both parents, about this whole free agent “thing” applied to kids, as well as from nonprofit folks who are finding ways to tap into and build up the free agents who circulate around their causes: is this parallel something my intense-summer-course-addled brain just came up with, or does it reflect what you see in the free agent realm?

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    Yes, everywhere: “real-life” applications for community organizing skills

    Posted on June 20, 2011 by | Leave a comment

    What does Vacation Church School have to do with community organizing, you ask?

    Um, in my world, a lot.

    Over and over again, I find that I apply my community organizing experience to all kinds of situations, and that that perspective shapes how I approach so much of my life, from how I parent to my engagement with nonprofit boards, to my neighboring to my volunteer service. In some respects, that can be problematic: I’m sure that some of my friends wish that I’d stop including “have you talked with your senator about immigration reform?” at the end of an email to them, and my husband has wondered aloud why we still send Christmas cards to several current and former elected officials as well as a scattering of immigrant advocates around the state.

    But, for the most part, I find that almost all of life’s challenges are more successfully conquered through community organizing tactics, and I’m continually struck by how amazed people are at what one can accomplish by leveraging the tremendous power of organized people.

  • I ask people to do things that fit their passions and skills, instead of putting out a “I’m sure everyone is too busy for this, but could someone please?” plea. It makes it much easier to recruit volunteers for Vacation Church School, yes, and it also gets parents to testify at a PTA legislative forum and neighbors to take on planning a block party, too. People want to be valued, and that’s not just true for major campaigns for social justice.
  • I make relationships part of my to-do list. People are more likely to say yes, not just if the ask fits with their lives, but if the asker is someone they trust and care about. That’s why I make it a point to send notes, or make calls, fairly regularly to a wide spectrum of people–those with whom I serve on Boards, other advocates, even some of my kids’ friends’ parents. Some would say that relationships are cheapened, somehow, if there’s the potential for an ask to enter the equation at some point. I counter that organizers legitimately care about people as people, absolutely, but also see relationships as our single greatest asset. And assets deserve continual investment.
  • I’m short on protocol but don’t skimp on process. I have very, very little patience for formality; committee rules and complicated chains of command tend to discourage new participation and stifle real accomplishment. But I absolutely believe in giving people an opportunity to voice their experiences, on the PTA and at the conclusion of last week’s Vacation Church School and after my son’s class end-of-year celebration.
  • I believe in multiple entry points; I want to give everyone a way to say “yes”. So, okay, maybe this sometimes looks like persistence bordering on stalking, but, when someone says no to my first ask, I follow it up with another. A good friend of mine, Jake Lowen, who is also an awesome organizer, talks about jumping ahead to a huge ask and then dialing it back to something that seems, in comparison, modest, and I guess that’s what I do. I found a role for everyone in Vacation Church School, including the folks who initially told me no. Because I want people in the door.

    So none of this work is going to change the world, right? I mean, I hope that building a better community for my kids and for others’ kids plays some small role in making a better society, but it’s not like I’m organizing a revolution. But what approaching all of life like an organizer means for me (in addition to the fact that I couldn’t turn it off if I tried) is a chance to keep my skills sharp. I also truly believe that it exposes more people to the real possibilities within themselves, when they join with others. And, that, of course, is precisely where revolutions come from.

    I want to hear from you about how organizing spills into your “regular” life, and about how applying organizing skills in other contexts has made a difference for your work. And what are you facing that could benefit from some organizing energy?

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    Wherever they are, that’s where I am, too

    Posted on May 5, 2011 by | Leave a comment

    Sunday is Mothers’ Day.

    I think about motherhood all the time, honestly, so, for me, a set-aside day to think even more about being a mom isn’t too big of a deal.

    And I’m not exactly the breakfast-in-bed type.

    This year, instead, as I approach Mothers’ Day, I’m reflecting on the kind of mother I am, and the kind of mother I want to be.

    And I’m remembering my favorite passage from one of the most marvelous books I’ve ever read, The Children, the story of the youth in the civil rights movement.

    There’s no way to do justice to the passage without quoting it, and, so, to briefly introduce it (and acknowledge that it’s actually about a father and his son, but it still speaks to me as a mother), it tells the story of a parent whose son was arrested for participating in a sit-in. The father lived in a rural community and, as an African American, was vulnerable to reprisals from the white power structure for his son’s audacious behavior while away at school. When the father first found out that his son was participating in the sit-in movement, he visited him in jail and told him to worry about himself, not about the family back home, giving his implicit approval for behavior that must have been quite frightening to contemplate.

    This scene is what reverberates in my mind:

    “Everyone in Whiteville, it seemed, knew what Curtis had done; the story was big news there. A few days after Curtis’s arrest, Buck (the father) was walking down a street in Whiteville when a white man he knew yelled over at him. “How’s that jailbird son of yours doing?” “He’s doing just fine,” Buck had answered. “Where is he?” the man said, mocking him. “Is he still in the Nashville jail?”

    “Wherever he is, I am too,” Buck Murphy had answered, and when Curtis heard that story a few days later, he knew that whatever else happened during the sit-ins, he might never again feel so close to his father.”

    I know that my children will take on battles that I cannot join, and that I may not even understand.

    I know that their journeys will take them away from me, and that I cannot hope to follow.

    I know that they will have their own struggles, and that they may, in fact, sometimes struggle against me.

    And I know, above all else, that “wherever they are, I am too.”

    Happy Mothers’ Day, to the three wonderful kids who let me be a mom.

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    You’re most welcome: political opinions as “gifts” to share

    Posted on April 7, 2011 by | 7 Comments

    In this last post during this week of reflections about social media, I’m reflecting on a passage from The Facebook Effect where one of the founders shares his belief that Facebook creates a space for generosity by reducing the costs associated with sharing of oneself.

    And that got me thinking about the ways in which I use social media, and about social work boundaries, and about transcending taboos about disclosing one’s beliefs.

    And, if I can pull all of that together into anything coherent, I guess it’s this:

    I share my beliefs about justice, and politics, and the world, not as much in an attempt to bring anyone ‘around’ to my way of thinking, but to be an integrated, whole person, and to rather transparently share that self with others.

    I don’t think that I do my students, or my friends, or even my family members, any favors if I hide my beliefs, or tried, in pursuit of politeness, to present a bland caricature of who I really am. Nor, of course, would a single-minded pursuit of my own vision of righteous truth likely bring me closer to a generous sense of community.

    But somewhere in between, in the realm of sharing how who I am (wife, mother, neighbor, friend, teacher) shapes what I believe (that we must welcome the stranger, that all children deserve a chance at their dreams, that health care is a right, that poverty is a global shame), I hope that I help others clarify their own beliefs, challenge their previously-held truths, and articulate a vision of “the good society.”

    I did that before Facebook, obviously. Politics have never been off the table in my family, even though there’s considerable difference of opinion, and my friends have always known what I think.

    But I will grant that social media have changed the nature of the conversation a bit, increased the number of occasions when there’s a chance for real dialogue, helped me to discover that some of my friends and even family share views of mine that I hadn’t known, and given me a chance to remind those with opposing views that there is a bond of love and respect between us nonetheless.

    I’m still working on how to challenge statements without attacking that messenger, especially on issues (racial justice, equal rights for gays and lesbians) where I see things very clearly in “right” and “wrong”. I value the practice I get on Facebook, and the chance to weave humor and life and motherhood, in particular, into my activism as well.

    I see it as a gift, too, when my students and others are willing to share their own beliefs with me, as a sort of extension of trust and demonstration that they’re engaged enough to invest a bit of themselves.

    Have social media changed how you share your political perspectives with those in your social networks? If so, how? What’s your response to policy and political debates on Facebook and other social media? How do you live generously, as an advocate of social justice, in this connected age?

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    Teacher, mother, wife, activist…neighbor

    Posted on March 29, 2011 by | 3 Comments

    Aerial photo of our neighborhood, including the nearby public park

    Before I had kids, I didn’t do much neighboring. My husband knew the neighbors far better than I did, especially because I was seldom home from work before about 10PM. Even when I wasn’t at work, and even when I was outside working in the garden, I saw home as a refuge, a place to think through the strategies that might convince the Speaker of the House to bring a bill up for a vote I knew we could win, not a place to connect with others in a meaningful way.

    But that changed when I began to see my neighborhood as the proximate environment in which my kids will grow. It’s where they will learn what it means to be a citizen, and what obligations to others mean for our own lives. It’s where they build relationships with adults beyond our family and their teachers. It’s where they mediate conflicts, and watch us do the same.

    It’s home, but home as the center of shared lives, not home as an enclave against the outside.

    And, so, today, my role as “neighbor” is fairly prominent in my life.

    In the summer, I cut flowers from the garden for Sam to deliver to our closest neighbors. At Christmas, we sing carols with a few families around us (luckily, they’re more musically-talented than our clan!). The kids and I spend much more time in the front yard than in the back, mainly oriented around the large front porch that we added to the house last year. All year long, Sam shuttles back and forth with the kids two houses down, who spend at least an afternoon a week at our house. When their mom had another baby last summer, we brought her food for a week, and her husband and mine go out on a regular basis. The teenagers across the street not only babysit my kids, but also just play with them, and we go to their sporting events and consult on their homework. We have the phone number of our elderly neighbors’ daughter, who lives in California, on our refrigerator, and ours is the second emergency number on theirs. The young single mom across the street brings her son over for more exposure to other kids, and the divorced man next door lets my twins hang out on his front porch, which they, for some reason, prefer. When my husband comes home from work, after a rundown of the kids’ day, he usually asks, “what’s going on in the neighborhood?”

    And I know.

    But, still, despite the breadth and increasing depth of these relationships, and despite my background in community organizing and what I’ve witnessed as the power of “place-based” organizing for change, I’ve never thought much about my neighborhood, this community, as a force for social justice.

    In part, that’s a reflection of the relative affluence in which we live; there are few glaring injustices that must be righted here.

    But that doesn’t mean that we can’t use these relationships to leave a mark on policies, in our community and beyond it.

    We could speak out, as taxpayers and public school patrons, about the kind of state school finance formula that would serve not just our kids but all kids. We could work on issues of after-school time, a challenge for several families in our neighborhood, and one that they mostly struggle with alone. We could share the story of our walkable neighborhood as testimony to the need for public transportation and investments in infrastructure that would address the spatial isolation of other communities.

    And, in so doing, we could make being neighborly more about making a difference.

    One of the tools I’m exploring to help with this is a neighborhood-based social networking application, called Neighbors Forums. There aren’t any active forums in my area to date, but there are examples of those at work in other parts of the country, models that communities can follow, and tools to integrate neighborhood forums into the social networks people already use to connect. They emphasize in-person recruiting, relying on the electronic component as a complement, not a replacement, to the “old-fashioned” door-to-door organizing that still characterizes the most successful community efforts.

    And that makes sense for me, and for this place.

    While I’ve broached the subjects of values, and politics, and “issues” with my neighbors, enough to know what their concerns are and what moves them, I haven’t yet begun to really organize. I think that I’m headed there, as I move towards integrating the various aspects of my life into some sort of cohesive whole. I’m not sure if I’ll look to something like the Neighborhood Forums, or recruit my neighbors to join some larger venue, or both.

    As I work through some of these questions, alongside these former strangers who I now can’t imagine my life without, I’d love to hear from others who are organizing where they live. What has it meant for you as strivers for social justice, and as neighbors? How have these efforts shaped your personal and professional lives? And what lessons learned would you pass along?

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    Going Public, and Being a “whole” mom

    Posted on March 24, 2011 by | 1 Comment

    The reasons I go, and the reasons I come back

    Recently, I left a protest rally a little bit early, handing my sign to my new friend next to me, and saying goodbye to compatriots along the line. I gave a quick Spanish radio interview on my way to the parking lot, but cut it short, because I really had to leave.

    I had promised my older son that, after a day of work and an evening of activism, I’d be home in time to read his Boxcar Children bedtime stories.

    And I made it, just in time.

    I’d never claim to be an expert on this whole “balance” thing. In fact, I tend to swing from one extreme to another.

    When my oldest son was first born, I was still deeply immersed in the immigrant rights struggle, and I worked through my entire maternity leave and then spent much of the next months of his life in D.C. It wasn’t the kind of mother I wanted to be, so I quit.

    And then, I retreated, into our private lives and my private concerns. And I felt better about how I was parenting, for a while, but, really, that wasn’t the kind of mother I wanted to be, either–so focused on my child and his needs that I gave him, and others, the message that he was my only concern.

    And, so, I’m trying.

    In the process, I’m learning a lot about how maintaining an ethic of responsibility to the common good makes me a better mom, and how my perspective as a mother makes me a better activist, too.

    I know now that I can’t possibly protect my kids from the outside world, and that trying to do so brings only alienation and anxiety. I see this in other parents who spend so much energy looking for the best schools (or preschools, or enrichment programs), in the hopes that this will be the difference for their kids. I talk with moms at the park who don’t know that we just had an election, but express so much fear about what their kids’ lives will look like as they grow. As stated eloquently in The Soul of a Citizen, the dream of a private sanctuary is an illusion, and I don’t pretend to search for one anymore.

    So becoming a “public” mom makes me a less nervous one. Soul of a Citizen describes this phenomenon as, “if we focus solely on our own experiences, we will hear nothing but the echoes of our obsessions” (p. 148).

    And I also think it makes my kids (okay, at least Sam) respect me more. My children, after all, deserve a complete person as a mom, which makes me think about the meaning of the word integrity, as having to do with the wholeness and interconnectedness of the world, and how essential it is to being human. That’s a lot of what compels me to action, really, this recognition that caring about social justice is just a core part of what and who I am. Soul of a Citizen says this, “It is the determination to protect our sense of who we are that leads us to risk criticism, alienation, and serious loss” (p. 23).

    And, certainly, trying to be this kind of mom does carry risk (sometimes Sam is inconsolably upset when I leave, or I feel guilty when I’m on the phone or checking email instead of snuggled up reading on the couch) and it does involve loss (I wish my kids always ate home-cooked, organic foods instead of the chocolate pudding I let the babysitter give them!).

    But it’s who I am, and, more importantly, it’s who I hope fervently my children will become, too.

    And, so, maintaining ties to a community of activists, and commitments to causes that matter for our world, is also about giving my kids a place to go with their own worries–so that injustice doesn’t become something that we ignore, and so that my silence doesn’t send a message of complacency or acceptance, which would be confusing at best, and demoralizing at worst, to children who I hope will grow up outraged at what they see around them.

    There are certainly many days when I fail, when I’m half an activist and half a mom, and feel like a failure at everything.

    But, the morning after we finished the mystery of what happened to the stolen jewels in New York, when I showed Sam the pictures of the protest and explained what it was about, wasn’t one of them.

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    Starting where people are: When Life Interrupts Activism

    Posted on March 1, 2011 by | 2 Comments

    Before I became a mom, virtually nothing came in the way of my work. For years, I rarely noticed when the clock changed to 5PM. If I was in the office, instead of in someone’s home recruiting new leaders or in a gymnasium somewhere facilitating a public meeting, or in a hotel in Washington, DC, I’d eventually notice, around 7PM or so, that it had gotten quiet, and take off my shoes and run the high-volume copies of flyers that I didn’t want to annoy my coworkers with during the day. I’d come home when I was too exhausted to think anymore, around 11PM, give my husband a big hug (and, yes, eat the dinner he’d made me), go to bed, and get up to do it again the next day.

    But this post isn’t about how unhealthy that may have been, or what it says about organizational capacity, but, instead, about what we can’t see, or even feel, when we’re approaching our work like that.

    Because, the truth is, I often forgot the social work maxim to “begin where the client is.”

    I was a lot more focused on getting them where I needed them to be: conscious of the need for collective action, committed to our strategy for social change, at the congressional forum with the 30 people they promised to turn out…

    I don’t apologize for holding fast to the belief that EVERYONE can raise his or her own voice against the injustices encroaching on their lives.

    I believed that then, and I saw tremendous leadership from single moms with 4 kids, people with first-grade educations, and men working 3 jobs and teaching catechism classes on the side.

    And I believe it now.

    But I must have some regrets about how unsympathetic I was, at times, to the realities of people’s lives, because I highlighted almost every paragraph in an essay by Joshua Levy in Rebooting America. He writes about trying to teach politically-conscious blogging in an English-as-a-Second-Language class, and of being frustrated and a bit perplexed when his students’ main priority was figuring out whether the technology he was teaching them could make it cheaper to stay in touch with their families around the world.

    Day after day, he would talk enthusiastically about civic engagement and about English as a tool for empowerment, and he’d hear in return anxieties about family members, economic concerns, and the pressures of life for low-income immigrants rather alone in a huge, foreign city.

    Most sobering, for him and for me, in retrospect, is that, eventually, maybe when they sensed that he wasn’t really listening, or maybe when they felt bad for being such an obvious disappointment to this fired-up volunteer teacher, they quit talking. And, so, they went through the motions of what he wanted them to do, in an empty way that meant little to him and even less to them.

    He describes it as reality getting in the way of the “web-induced political consciousness I was trying so hard to impress upon my students”, and he concludes his essay with his own reflection that the power of digital technology to reinvigorate democracy will be incomplete and unfulfilled, to him, until his students can participate in a meaningful way. Filling in what he doesn’t say, from my own experience, this means not just creating mechanisms that facilitate participation in user-friendly ways for people with unpredictable lives, but also the creation of a social environment that lifts some of those same pressures, so that so many people aren’t having to swim so fast upstream.

    And, so, for this I do apologize: I not only failed to start where my clients were, but I sometimes didn’t even remember to really find out.

    It’s an apology to all of the mothers who couldn’t come because their children needed to be home in bed, to all of the people who really couldn’t get off work, to all of the teenagers who needed to study, and all of the fathers who were just too tired, to everyone without transportation, to those who were too sick or anxious or frightened…to everyone who is a human being just as worthy of dignity and respect as anyone else, even if they really didn’t care about our campaign nearly as much as I thought they should…

    I get it.

    For the individual, life can get in the way of movements for social change. That’s why they’re movements, and that’s why it takes the many.

    But there will be a place for you when you’re ready.

    Because it won’t be a real revolution until you have a chance to be in it.

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    Viva la Commons?

    Posted on February 22, 2011 by | 3 Comments

    One day last fall, I overheard my four-year-old lecturing another child on the idea of the public commons.

    Kind of.

    This other little boy tried to grab a truck away from Sam in the sandbox in our neighborhood park. “Mine!” he said.

    Sam looked a little baffled, glanced briefly at me, and replied, “It’s not yours. And it’s not mine. It’s just…everyone’s.” (The trucks are mostly left there by families that use the park, although a few are purchased by the city for park use.)

    Exactly.

    I think that the little boy started crying, because he just wanted the truck, but maybe I’ll imagine a different ending to the story today, one that involves communal understandings of property, and shared stewardship, and exaltation of the “we” above the “I”.

    One of the sites I’ve been spending some time on lately is On the Commons, described as “a citizens’ network that highlights the importance of the commons in our lives, and promotes innovative commons-based solutions to create a brighter future.”

    What’s not to like?

    There’s a lot of environmentally-related content, as you might imagine: our communal resources such as water, alternative energies, and green space. But there’s also material related to using wealth in ways that promote the common good, (three cheers for responsible tax policies!), discussions about the Internet as a public good rather than a corporate tool, and the forum organizing project, dedicated to talking together about our common spaces, physical and not, and how to not just preserve but enrich and enlarge them.

    I think about the public commons a lot more since I had kids, and not just because we spend a lot of time in that sandbox.

    It’s because our common resources, and, more importantly, the mentality to value and share them, are a big part of what we leave to our children, and far more secure than private inheritances we might hope to leave.

    And I’m not sure what kind of public commons we’ll have left by the time they’re engaged in debates over how to protect them, or whether the concept will even have real meaning by then. Even today, there are parents who seem confused, on their first visit to the park, that someone has left toys there for the community to use. And others who avoid the public park altogether, because they don’t like the unpredictability that comes with sharing an unmediated public space.

    But I believe very strongly in things public: public schools and public places and public utilities.

    I believe in them not just for what they provide, but for how they change how we think, about who belongs within the “we”, and where the limits of our personal ownership are drawn.

    And I want my kids to have those experiences, including the inevitable tussles when private desires clash with public good. I want them to be people comfortable with commons living, people who prefer public spaces.

    And, so, I’ll be On the Commons quite a bit, alongside my fellow citizens, around the world, who believe in public, too.

    Join us.

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    Posted in My New Favorite Thing

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    Solving my babysitting problems while promoting intergenerational policy convergence

    Posted on February 3, 2011 by | 2 Comments

    March 16, 2010 Rally for Public Schools, Topeka, KS--my parents, kids, and I are standing just out of view to your left

    I won’t try to pretend that my main motivation for having my kids’ grandparents babysit them so much is to spur increased commitment on the part of each (kids and grandparents) to the kinds of intergenerationally equitable policy solutions that are so often elusive, or at least presented as such, particularly in the areas of entitlement reform, taxation, and budget cuts.

    But I really think it’s a side benefit.

    Okay, so my kids are too young to voice their support for productive aging strategies, universal design, and a robust income support policy for older adults. The younger two are still working on talking, and the older one is currently obsessed with Captain Underpants, so we’ll give them a little time.

    But my parents get it, I think more than many retired people, and they pay more attention, which is perhaps just as important. And, granted, some of that could be because they’re my parents, and they’re wonderful, and they have to listen to me going on and on about this and that policy debate all the time.

    But I think there’s good evidence, anecdotally at least, that their frequent, sustained, and meaningful contact with my kids changes their perspective on policies that affect children and young adults, in ways that have potentially powerful implications for building public support for the kind of policy infrastructure that all generations need and deserve.

  • When they pick my son up at preschool, they see what well-paid early childhood educators working in a clean and spacious environment can do with little kids, and they recognize the importance of every child having access to such a resource.
  • When they take my sick daughter to the doctor, they are reminded of the importance of each child having a medical ‘home’ and the insurance coverage to pay for it.
  • When they see the twins’ faces light up at the public park, they think about the erosion of quality public spaces and the need to preserve areas where children can play safely.
  • When they hear my older son’s friend talk about how he was supposed to go to all-day kindergarten but can’t because his parents can’t afford it, they realize that many programs within our “public” schools aren’t free, and that young families face real challenges in providing for their children’s educations.
  • When they hear my voice on the phone, trying to sound calm as I tell them that the other babysitter cancelled and I’m supposed to give a speech in an hour, but it will take me 40 minutes to get there, they remember (as they grab their keys) that childcare arrangements are precarious for so many families, and that parents can’t work unless someone is providing good, quality, affordable care for their children.

    I would never discount the very real struggles of grandparents raising grandchildren–I, too, am reminded of the importance of supports for older adults when I see my parents’ relief when I pull up to take over the childcare once again–nor do I naively assume that seeing need in the eyes of one’s own grandchildren automatically translates into commitment to meet the needs of children everywhere.

    But I see how my Dad learns so much about our community, and the realities of young families, while he’s watching the kids play at the sandbox and talking to (as he calls them) “the other moms”. I see how my Mom reads the whole newsletter that my son brings home from school, and often asks me questions about it. I see how their lives become integrated with those of other generations as they learn to inhabit the same spaces, and share the same resources, and I think…maybe I’m onto something after all.

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    Giving every kid Sam’s chance at success

    Posted on January 31, 2011 by | Leave a comment

    photo credit, Flickr Creative Commons

    Seeing my kids learn and grow and change (too quickly, sometimes!) every day, makes me think a lot about kids, and what their lives are likely to be like, and what it takes to give them a really good chance.

    My oldest son is exceptional. I know that. He’s not only extremely bright (there’s no way that I could parent him without Wikipedia, because I have to look things up multiple times each day to answer his questions), but he’s also very insightful. I hope every day that I will be able to help him find the best ways to use his talents, that I am up to the task of parenting him.

    And, so, as I watch him take on the challenges of his world, I have a new measuring stick of sorts–a new criterion by which I evaluate how well we’re doing by our children:

    Does every child have Sam’s chance?

    Obviously, every child is born with varying levels of innate ability. But, as Malcolm Gladwell dissects in Outliers, the experiences of everyone from political leaders to professional hockey players to child geniuses to Asian math students to rock stars to billionaire software engineers show that no one really succeeds on the basis of his/her inborn talents alone, that all of us are highly dependent on the context in which we thrive (or not) to determine the course of our lives.

    Which is wonderful news, really.

    It means that we have, within our control as a collective, the power to shape much of the trajectory of our children’s futures. It means that determining who will succeed and who will not doesn’t mean getting better at measuring IQ at earlier ages, or looking at the success of one’s parents.

    It means putting all of the elements in place to support each child, so that we take much of the ‘luck’ out of the equation.

    Today, when I look at Sam’s peers, I’m worried. Rather than trying to level out the disparities, the environments in which kids grow up today magnify them dramatically. I talk with him, and learn with him, and I get angry that he starts off so much farther down the road than so many.

    It doesn’t have to be this way.

    I know I’m not the only parent who thinks like this. I’d never claim to be Marian Wright Edelman, but I do apparently think like her, as she writes to her sons about her, “sometimes difficult, even frantic, efforts to balance my responsibilities to you, my own children, and to other people’s children with whom you must share schools and streets, the nation and world. Paradoxically, the more I worried about and wanted for you, the more I worried about the children of parents who have so much less.”

    We know what helps kids succeed: good schools, with qualified teachers and quality materials and ample hours dedicated to study; safe communities, with recreational opportunities and hazard-free housing; a healthy foundation of nutrition and access to care; strong relationships with supportive adults.

    Giving kids a fair start, then, like so many other social policy challenges today, isn’t so much a technical problem as it is a political one. The problem, of course, is that we’ve failed to commit ourselves to investing in these elements in the life of every child.

    And maybe a big part of the “why” is that we fail to understand how much of a difference it could make. Maybe, as Gladwell asserts, it’s our personalization of success–our belief that it’s about you or I when it’s really all about we–that leads us to miss out on so many opportunities to make successes of so many. And, of course, we’re the losers then.

    When only those kids who are naturally amazing enough or baldly lucky or unjustly privileged enough to push through all of the obstacles that could derail their success manage to make it, we lose the potential of all of those who could have, would have, if only we would have understood that it’s up to us to make sure that they did.

    I love part of the introduction to Outliers:
    “We all know that successful people come from hardy seeds. But do we know enough about the sunlight that warmed them, the soil in which they put down the roots, and the rabbits and lumberjacks they were lucky enough to avoid? This is not a book about tall trees. It’s a book about forests” (p. 20).

    Here’s to planting better forests.

    I want Sam, and every four-year-old with whom he will share a world, to grow up in the shade.

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