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The restorative calm of pets

Gaston guides us to soothing places to chill and relax.

Lack of rough and tumble play hinders the normal give-and-take experience necessary for social mastery and has been linked to poor control of violent impulses later in life. Dr. Stuart Brown studied the play histories of young murderers in Texas and found an absence of rough and tumble play in their childhoods.

Rough And Tumble Play

#play #rough play #socialisation #violence

The entitlement of 4yo boys in boardshorts

On Friday, I watched Shimmy in a swimming lesson – with female teacher and 3 girls – taking more than his share of time, space & attention. I though it presented quite the feminist conundrum. How to temper that entitlement without undermining his sense of worth?

At a rough guess, I supposed: carefully and patiently.

There’s no doubt it's the teacher's responsibility to strive for some kind of equity in the class, but in general the responsibility is ours. I reckon the tendency of men to take (and be given) more than their share in mixed company will only be overcome by boys and men being aware that it happens, it's not their fault and it's not cool.

I actually took an opportunity to mention to teacher that Shimmy seemed over-attended, and she said she thought he was being neglected—which is telling.

I'm not saying it's beyond dispute that Shimmy's exhibiting typical gender traits, but it is worth considering since the behaviour observed matches observed gender differences in Australia.

I’m going to assume that the insidious little things that get in our heads and perpetuate an undesirable hierarchy of gender differences are getting in his head too.

If I'm wrong, raising a son could get a good deal simpler.

If I'm right, perhaps we'll get to make a few timely interventions along the way and get a better man and a better world out of it.

—adapted from a Facebook exchange.

#feminism #men and feminism #fatherhood #boyhood #swimming #entitlement #ibot

redlightpolitics

The other day, during the episode*, I stated that I was “a feminist cultural critic” and that, in turn, got me thinking into something that I believe is important, for me, to expand a bit further. I see feminism as a toolkit, the lens through which I look at the world and its politics....

Search engines are a wonderful tool for the curious. You find anything that you're interested in—anything that you're excited by. But there's no guarantee that what you're interested in is going to expand over time. There's no guarantee that it's going to pull you away from local concerns. We are all hard-wired to pay attention to the people who are most like us. It's a sociological tendency called 'homophily'. It's one of the strongest and best documented social forces. We have a very strong tendency to pay the attention to the people who are already close to us.

Ethan Zuckerman in 'Why Global Stories Matter' from On The Media podcast, 23 August 2013.

#Ethan Zuckerman #On the Media #sociology #interest #bubble #filter bubble

Our findings suggest that at-home fathers have formed, as part of their cultural capital repertoire, a collective and reflexive understanding of the ideological incongruities between their emergent social identity, prevailing gender norms, and their primary socialization in gender-based social practices, ideals, expectations, and status hierarchies linked to the breadwinner model of masculinity. Their capitalizing consumption practices are fundamentally intertwined with the ideological goal of attaining greater cultural legitimacy for their unconventional performances of fatherhood and masculinity.

Gokcen Coskuner-Balli and Craig J. Thompson. “The Status Costs of Subordinate Cultural Capital: At-Home Fathers’ Collective Pursuit of Cultural Legitimacy Through Capitalizing Consumption Practices.” Journal of Consumer Research: June 2013.

#SAHD #Bourdieu #masculinity #fatherhood #gender #ideology

Hide and seek in the library

I'm getting really frustrated by the female characters missing from the books Shimmy chooses at library. It's that ratio Clementine Ford spoke about.

"When society internalises the message that there is something so incomplete and foreign about the female gender that it only deserves to contribute to 20-30% of public life … then you create a society in which women are taught to shrink in upon themselves rather than expand." from Misogyny, Power and the Media

Shimmy's not choosing stories about males, but he's being shown stories are about males. It's infuriating and absurd.

I'm sure I've mostly learnt to accept the 20-30% female representation but:

I'm pretty sure the picture book ratio fails even that (explains my noticing)

there's no good reason to indoctrinate my son in the same way.

I've mentioned before that I consider policing Shimmy's media diet loses on cost/benefit, so I want the work done for me. Show me how to drive structural reform. No really, I'm ready to do something.

The libraries, publishers and authors need to get with the program so a four-year-old randomly pulling books off the shelf has a 50/50 chance of finding female characters to love or despise or meh or whatever.

Some of Shimmy's favourite people are female. Stop telling him he's got it wrong.

#clementine ford #picture books #feminism #men and feminism #female characters #representation #Shimmy

An individual really has to sign up for trying to live the considered life, very much a response to the great Socratic demand to be reflective about life. I like to remember what the Greek writer Plutarch said in an essay about the dinner of the seven wise men - it's always men in ancient times - where he talks about two sages going to a dinner party. One says to the other, we know what the duty of the host is, provide the food and wine, but what is the duty of a guest? The other says - to be a good conversationalist. This means he should be informed, thoughtful and he organises his thinking, so he can have a point of view, explain and defend it - and that he's a very good listener. He can hear what the other person is saying, which is quite an art. To be informed and attentive requires us to educate ourselves. This doesn't only mean book education but to remember that wisdom is free and belongs to everyone. We can use wisdom in the conversation of mankind because we are really guests at the dinner party of life. We should be people who are such good conversationalists and listeners.

British academic, A C Grayling on being a guest at the dinner party of life.

#AC Grayling #reason #informed #thoughful #dinner party of life #Plutarch #considered life #conversation #humanism #listening

In the absence of a careful empirical study, however, it's probably a good idea to listen to people when they explain what makes them feel uncomfortable and unwelcome, rather than trying to argue that they don't actually feel that way, or that they're wrong to feel that way.

Janet D. Stemwedel on blogospheric science, naming, shaming, victim-blaming.

#blogging #offensive #harrassment #@docfreeride #victim-blaming #discourse

Some of the things we do now with our devices are things that, only a few years ago we would have found odd or disturbing. But they've quickly come to seem familiar. People text or do email during corporate board meetings. They text and shop and go on Facebook during classes, during presentations—actually during all meetings. People talk to me about the important new skill of making eye contact while you're texting. People explain to me that it's hard but that it can be done. Parents text and do email at breakfast and at dinner while their children complain about not having their parents' full attention, but then these same children deny each other their full attention. And we even text at funerals. I studied this. We remove ourselves from our grief or from our reverie, and we go into our phones. Why does this matter? It matters to me because I think we're setting ourselves up for trouble. Trouble, certainly, in how we relate to each other, but also trouble in how we relate to ourselves/in our capacity for self-reflection. We're getting used to a new way of being alone together. People want to be with each other, but also elsewhere/connected to all the different places they want to be. People want to customise their lives. They want to go in and out of all the places they are, because the thing that matters most to them is control over where they put their attention. So, you want to go to that board meeting, but you only want to pay attention to the bits that interest you. And some people think that's a good thing. But you can end up hiding from each other, even as we're all constantly connected to each other.

Being a professional thinker, Sherry Turkle effectively describes people "going in and out of all the places they are" via mobile devices. These are some of the thoughts I was chasing in This is Shimmy’s dad. Transcribed from Do we need humans? Turkle's full TED talk was called Connected, but alone? dc

#TED #NPR #TED Radio Hour #Sherry Turkle #Alone Together #cyberspace #attention #control #distraction

The natural consequence of demonstrating the scanner to a 3yo.

#Shimmy #art #email #online playdates

"From the pantry" apple & blueberry pie.

Substituted gluten free pastry, pears & nectarines for apples & lime for lemon. Too much sugar. A present for Mummy after a long, long weekend away.

When we drove back from the hospital with the babies, I drove and my wife sat near the baby. So socialization starts, you know, at the hospital or when you leave the hospital and the baby is a few days old. And it’s almost impossible to disentangle this from actual behavior.

Uri Gneezy, behavioral economist at the Rady School of Management at U.C. San Diego — on Freakonomics.