I'm having fun blasting holes in the head of a certain MarkM over at Booker Rising as he and my afrocentric nemesis Ngosama jump up and down calling me a Neanderthal. The subject matter is schooling and parenting, something I blog about en passant. I haven't thought of a good way to pontificate about it quite yet, other than ordinary dad-pride. However I do think I've learned some fairly important lessons and I have been asked to do a bit more commentary. So I'll try to work in a new category and a style of writing about it from the perspective of the kind of guy I am.
As regular readers of Cobb know, I am rather protective of my family, and while I refer to them directly, I use pseudonyms. So one of the things I'll be dealing with in creating new guidelines for writing about this subject.
But for now, I'll deal with some basics that I feel fairly comfortable with.
Daddy's House Is Full of Love
All of my kids know this. If I say 'Daddy's House' as the call, the response is immediate and unanimous. In one respect, part of my job is to let my kids see me with my guard down. At some point in their lives, they will understand and come to respect the things I have accomplished, but I make sure that everyday they know that I'm a nice guy with a goofy sense of humor who belches out loud and sometimes walks around with no shirt on in the house. What "I'm really like" is a combination of things for my kids and I am always very conscious about what parts of my personality I am sharing with them. For the most part it is intimate. They are to see me relaxed and comfortable, unflappable and able to handle whatever with ease and confidence.
Strategies & Tactics
My kids understand very much that their mother is going to make about 80% of the decisions that affect the everyday, and Daddy is all happy and nice and saying yes or 'Go ask your mother.' But they also know very much that when it comes to the big things, Daddy is the man. That would include the time when baby girl ran into a pole and chipped her front teeth and everybody everywhere freaked out. Daddy was the one who was calm and set the situation right. Daddy is the one who decides about the cars we own. Mom decides if your face is clean enough to sit down at the table. These are negotiated and natural roles, but over time we have found balance.
My philosophy behind this is as old as history, and it's actually feudal. So my critics were halfway right when they suggested my ideas were not [post]-modern. I decided long before I got married and had children that I would give my wife all the money to run the house, and all the authority about the everyday business of the house. I did not want my judgment to be colored by expense. I set the strategy, she has the last word on tactics. I handle the long range goals, she runs the operations.
Running the operations of the house is a fulltime job, especially if you think of the house and the family as your life. I work to feed my family, that is to say I advance my career primarily for the benefit of my house, not for myself. Everything we do is constrained by supply but every reason I work is driven by demand. If my son develops a talent in playing the trumpet, it is my duty to provide one, given that the strategy is to develop artistic sensibilities in him. But I'll talk about the strategies of child rearing in more detail later. Mom shops online for the horns and buys the one she feels fits into the budget.
Mom knows the neighbors. Mom directs the chores. Mom runs the house, period. Dad bankrolls the operation.
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