Vegetarian Ranchwife

In Arabic folklore, there’s a famous story that goes like this:

Goha and his son were walking to a nearby village with their donkey. Some people passing by commented, “What fools! They walk when they have a perfectly good donkey to ride.”

Goha put his son on the donkey and walked along side. The next people they passed commented, “How cruel! That poor old man has to walk while the son rides the donkey.”

The son got down and Goha rode the donkey. Then the people they passed said, “How cruel! That man rides the donkey while the poor boy walks.”

When both Goha and the boy rode the donkey, people said, “How cruel! They make that poor donkey carry two people.”

Then both Goha and his son got down and Goha carried the donkey on his back, and people commented, “What fools! They carry a donkey that should carry them.”

I thought of this story few weeks ago as I followed an active and passionate discussion on Yacsha Mounk’s substack about differences in parenting styles between Southern Europe and the US.  Is there any other topic that invites the judgement as quickly as someone’s parenting decisions?

Mounk opened the discussion by asking why American parents feel the need to get their children to bed at 8 o’clock at night. He recounted a recent evening in Italy, dining with friends and their eight-year-old daughter who participated in the conversation, entertained herself and fell asleep at the dinner table. When he left the restaurant after midnight, he noticed families walking in the piazza and children still playing in fountains. He contrasted this to the US, where it’s unusual to see children out with their parents after 8 PM.

In the discussion, participants pointed to differences in social structures as possible explanations.  Southern European tradition of siesta pushes their bedtime back quite late. The European plaza offers a safe place for children to play close to where their parents are dining. But people were also quick to jump to general character flaws in American parents. We’re helicopter parents, constantly serving the needs of our children, and stifling their growth in the process. Somehow, at the same time, we’re unwilling to set boundaries.

As one commenter helpfully announced: “American parents are just wrong about this.” Full stop. No need for discussion.

One thread delved into the diet of most American kids which “preclude them from easy integration with an adult meal.” Of course, Americans are feeding their kids wrong, eating only chicken nuggets and mac and cheese. There they go again, those helicopter parents with no boundaries! Naturally, the French have it all figured out. Their nursery schools serve a variety of healthy grown-up foods. 

In American parenting advice, there’s a strange trend that presents another culture as some idealized model as opposed to the bumbling Americans who have it all wrong. Shortly after my first child was born, French parents apparently did everything right. Then, a few years ago, Inuit child-rearing techniques were all the rage because, apparently, they never yell at their kids.

Rather than yelling, “Don’t go near the water!” Inuit parents have calmly told their children stories  about sea monsters so their kids would be too scared to go near the water. That works well for a tight-knit Inuit village, where everyone is in on the ruse, but I can’t see a similar ruse working in a country where people have strong beliefs that we shouldn’t lie to our kids about Santa. 

As I read through the discussion, feeling my mom-hackles rise, I thought about Goha, with his son and his donkey, just trying to get to the next town. Similar stories occur across so many cultures because, apparently, getting judged while going about your business is a near universal experience. We keep telling Goha to just ignore what other people say, as if it’s his problem. Why isn’t the folktale’s moral, Mind your own business and let Goha get on his way?

A recent New York Times article discussed all the ways that parenting has become increasingly exhausting and stressful in America, it noted the ways parents increasingly feel judged. Everyone has an opinion on how we’re doing our job: we should be pushing our kids; we’re over scheduling them; we need to set boundaries; we’re too strict; we need to take an active role in raising our kids; we’re helicoptering them.

None of these judgements take into account the daily reality, which is that all the work of raising a child has increasingly fallen onto the parents. As the New York Times article points out, the US has few family policies and the social networks that used to fill those gaps has eroded. We keep telling parents to raise their kids like the Italians, the French or the Inuit, without taking into account that all of these cases, extended family and villages share the labor of raising kids.

Everyone has an opinion on parenting because it’s an important job. The kids irritating us at the restaurant will eventually grow up to be the doctors and nurses who will care for us as we age. They’ll be fixing our electric lines, growing our food, doing all those necessary jobs in society. Raising kids is a public good, and we not only don’t support the people doing it, we hector and criticize every choice.

The barrage of parenting advice out there just adds to a parent’s to-do list. I broadly agreed with Mounk’s takeaway when he wrapped up the discussion. American parents are kid-centered, leaving them exhausted. European parents can be looser with bedtimes and more fully integrate their children into their social life because the kids are not always the center of attention. But because it doesn’t recognize any of the reasons why these differences have developed, it just came across like another bad choice I’m making as a parent.

It can be helpful to look at other cultures. We get stuck in ruts, just doing the same old things because we can’t imagine a different way. Looking at what the French or the Inuit are doing can get us thinking about other ways to do things. At the very least, we can learn that there are many different ways to raise a human, or, as Goya might say, many different ways to travel with your donkey.