Ask Team Ambiguity: Is Christianity Really Pushing Young People Away?

I have this recurring dream. In it, I am in a cozy cafe. I am wearing a shirt that says "Spiritual Atheist." Over in the corner are some smart looking people. They are wearing shirts that say "Humanist" and they look at me with raised eyebrows. Why the choice of verbage, they are wondering. To my left is a woman in flowing skirts. Her shirt is emblazoned "Pagan." Her companion's shirt says simply, "Witch." My closest friends–the ones at my table–are a motley crew. Their shirts say "Catholic," "Christian," "Mormon," "Jew," "Agnostic." Many of them, in a cozy cluster, are labeled as "Unitarian Universalist." Here and there I see "Buddhist." There are more labels here than it is worth devoting key strokes to describe. Everyone has a t-shirt and we are all just drinking coffee–except the Mormons–and talking about our children, our gardens and the weather. Everyone is polite and congenial. Everyone is labeled, and no one says a thing about the labels. We just drink coffee and chat.

This cafe is my life. I love it here. I love the people, but I am driven by the kind of existential angst that would demand that I stand up and start asking questions about Jesus. Everyone else just wants espresso and polite ignorance. I want to have an interfaith group therapy session. I sit on my hands and sip my latte.

I found this article in the Huffington Post Religion section, written by Rui Dai, a student at Duke University. I don't know if it is a good Team Ambiguity article, but I do think it is a good starting place for conversation. I like several things about the article. I like that Dai acknowledges that Christianity can and will survive its evolution toward scientific understanding which it has done time and time again. I like that she questions the existence of an organized anti-religious agenda. I have always felt that if there were such a thing, someone would probably have told me by now, given my associations. I am reminded of Jerry Falwell's denunciation–in the wake of the 9-11 attacks–of pagans, who, among other groups, he blamed for making America vulnerable to attack.

"We aren't even organized enough to get thirteen women together for a circle.," my pagan friend informed me afterward.

Dai's article is smart, articulate and challenging. It even, I suppose, takes my side, if we are taking sides. I am, after all, a Unitarian Universalist atheist liberal. The best articles make me think and this one did. I have some questions to ask about it, some places I want to go. Let's examine the body.

The Left Leg: Is the Christian faith really  any less tolerant than it ever has been? This is an argument not with anything Dai has said specifically, but with where I think some may go with her assertion. People are given to negative superlatives. Every election cycle is the dirtiest we've seen. Racial politics get worse and worse. Sexism doesn't get better, it only hides. Really? As recently as the 18th Century, the church was burning witches at the stake. Go back further and people were stoning adulteress women. How recently were cautions against the miscegenation as serious in tone as the ones against gay marriage now? The continued existence of intolerance doesn't make it as bad as it ever was. In fact, the fact that young people are turned off by the bigotry of certain religious groups that grab the mic is an indication that tolerance is increasing. Our younger generation doesn't want to hear that message anymore. I find that hopeful.

The Right Leg: There is intolerance and there is intolerance. I am going to say the thing that makes me so weird and unpopular with everyone. Secular assholes are just as much assholes as religious assholes. Intolerance doesn't require a religious stamp to be intolerance. Yes, some of the most institutionalized intolerance that currently exists is religious in nature, but you can be a racist, sexist, closed-minded, violent wrong-doer without coming in the door holding a cross or a Koran. (Hitler and Stalin always leap immediately to mind.) In terms of people you may meet in the cafe, the secular jerkwads are the ones who won't listen to anything you have to say, who malign everything done by any person of faith no matter the context and who hope that someday everyone will evolve to be more like them. So, in order to avoid the whole mess Dai describes, you can't become an anti-religionist. You need to just quietly and politely not attend church and avoid religious conversations. By all means, don't go the way of Christopher Hitchens, may he rest in peace.

The Left Arm: Is leaving the answer? I beg your indulgence because I am playing devil's advocate here. I am not a Christian, and I am not currently attending any church whose stated beliefs make me uncomfortable. I cannot say that leaving a church or faith isn't exactly the right thing to do for many people. It likely is in more cases than not. I just want to ask this question: How much change can take place from within a faith as opposed to from without? This is how my husband and I have chosen to approach our own faith. To do this requires that you love your faith and have an investment in it. It also requires that you have a sense of ownership of its beliefs so that when people argue with you, be they other lay people or clergy, you have a sense not of righteousness but of authority. Our own conviction is that our faith needs to be more active and relevant, less provincial, cozy and sure of itself. We often express disagreement in church, but we do it with love. I wonder what might be possible if more young people leaving Christian faiths would stay and bring their commitment to bear on them. I do not claim to know, only wonder.

The Right Arm: The young don't need church as much as espresso and Prozac. When I was in my twenties, I didn't go to church either. Why bother? I participated in various spiritual groups, but my life was more focused on my own exploration of the outer world and my own ideas about it. I tended to push up against any organizational doctrines as a means of testing my wings. We started going back to a UU church, in which Mike and I were both raised, when we had our third child and the older children were...older, old enough to need what I might call moral instruction. They needed community. We needed community. In our thirties, we suddenly liked dressing up and showing up on Sundays to bring our kids to Sunday school and sit in the sermon. I wonder if the seeming mass exodus of twenty-somethings is as significant as Dai thinks it is. I'd be curious to see the statistics on those kids when they're in their thirties.

The Body: Religion almost never seems religious to me. I think we cloak a lot of things in the guise of religion that are nothing more than the nature of being human. Bigotry may have a religious justification, but it doesn't require one and it will persist with or without that rationale. That is why I always argue that fighting over the semantics of fear and hatred is a waste of time and energy. The answer, we always find is love. I don't mean that in a "stick a sign up at a protest" sort of a way. I mean it in an actual, scientifically verifiable kind of a way. We got to know people of other races and care about them, which made the worst forms of bigotry start to disappear from the mainstream. The Cosby Show or Will and Grace gave us fictional African-Americans and fictional gay people that we could get to know. Gay friends, relatives and co-workers refusing to hide and be ashamed have woken us up to the smell of our own hatred, like a cupped hand close to our mouths. Our society is not done with this process, but it is happening.

Freeing ourselves from religion won't save us from being human and subject to other humans. It is part of our nature to form groups. It is also part of that nature to act without thinking, to choose sides, to attack that which seems "other," and to give attention to just the person that is doing the loudest, stupidest-sounding yelling. If we don't line up and form groups around religious lines, we can still do it around politics, child raising, and soft drink preference. And we will.

Everyone's gonna do what they're gonna do. I don't honestly expect that my three sons will attend church while in their twenties. I don't know that I'm invested that they do at all. Here's what I'm invested in: Come into the cafe. Sit down with me and let's talk about what we believe. I'm not out to convert you, and I hope you're not out to convert me. If it ends up getting heated, we can always get another latte and change the subject. I don't want to spend my life at one table with a bunch of people wearing the same t-shirt I'm wearing and I don't want to leave the cafe. So, come on in and pull up a chair.

Now tell me what you think. This is where it gets interesting. Here are the rules for all Team Ambiguity discussions:

1. Please do not rely solely on the pacifying statement that people just disagree. This is true but obvious. What is interesting is: why? And do these people feel listened to? I don't necessarily mean us; I mean whatever parties are at issue in our discussion.


2. You have to be respectful of one another and of the opinions or thoughts being discussed, even if you think they are are turkey twaddle. Team Ambiguity is characterized by its ability to step back and consider that we may be wrong. That means the turkey twaddle may be right. 


3. Please don't hide because you think everyone else is smarter or more articulate than you, or because no one has said yet what you were going to say and you are waiting for them to, so you can say "Yeah, what SHE said!". You are the smartest damn person on the whole blog. We want your comment because yours is the essential comment.


4. Please realize it's not a fight. Discourse is illuminating. It is what makes people smarter. If we are all following Rule #2, there isn't any fighting. We are just responding with our honest experiences and thoughts and stories. One person adds celery, another adds carrot and soon we have a rich soup of differing flavors.

Bring on the ambiguity!

Ask Team Ambiguity: Do Good Things Make Us Bad People?

Photo Credit: Morgue File by Mantasmagorical

For this week's Team Ambiguity post, I'm going to look at what I think is one of the most interesting things I have encountered in the last several weeks: the idea that mere exposure, under controlled circumstances, to images of organic foods, can make people behave more judgmentally and less compassionately immediately afterward. This article by Diane Mapes in Health on Today  discusses a study conducted by the Psych Department of Loyola under the leadership of assistant professor Kendall Eskine. For the study, 60 undergrads were divided into three groups, one of which was exposed to clearly marked images of organic food, one images of unhealthy comfort food and the last (the control group) images of food that were neither particularly unhealthy nor organic. The groups were then asked to make moral judgments on depictions of various moral breaches, which they rated from one to seven. After that, they were asked to volunteer for a bogus study, delineating the amount of time they would be available. The results were that people who had been looking at the organic apples and spinach were more likely to condemn and less willing to help. The nicest people? Brownie viewers. The results, apparently, are due to a phenomenon called "moral licensing."

I will admit that I can't help but view this result with a certain amount of snickering satisfaction. Having lived for years in a place where people acted with regard to iced cookies like they were Fred Phelps at Richard Simmons' funeral, I enjoy a certain amount of Schadenfreude when the moral perfection of Whole Foods shoppers comes into question. I say this, though, as a woman who both purchases a weekly farm box from a local organic farm and is growing her own organic produce. It has often been my observation that the privileged position of being able to buy one's own health food at a store can sometimes produce snobbery and total lack of sympathy for those whose disposable income and priorities do not find them spending $8 a pound for grass-fed beef. But the fact that just looking at pictures of organic food would produce a similar result? That's kind of astounding.

The framework for a Team Ambiguity post is that we (Team Ambiguity) take a deeper look, past shallow assumptions, easy answers and side-taking. In each discourse we consider, there is a body in the living room and all the conversation is about the weather or the wine. Our job is to examine the body, identify it and try to say why it is there. I will throw some ideas out, but the rest is up to you. The magic happens in comments, so you're going to want to make sure and hit "Subscribe by email." Here is my take so far:

The Left Leg: This isn't about organic food. Let's just start from that point, so the conversation can get really interesting right away. Kenneth Eskine, interestingly, already knows this. Organic food is something that we associate with a kind of correctness that we either accede to or rebel against. For some of us, perhaps, pesticides and factory farms are wonderful advances of human technology, but, mostly, we see them as necessary or unnecessary evils. We give in, we stand up or we compromise. Perhaps, we don't care. But the association remains. So what was this Loyola team really testing? Perhaps, in organic food, they found a perfect symbol to access the real question of moral licensing itself. Do our associations with what we think is right automatically predispose us to act like asses? Would we get the same result with exposure of the right demographics to pictures of babies worn in slings or nursing, people praying or meditating, people doing yoga, or eight ounces of fresh water?

The Right Leg: There's right and then there's right. I keep coming back to the thought that there is a profound difference between buying a bundle of organic spinach at Whole Foods and growing your own spinach and an even greater difference between those and teaching people in a desert wasteland to grow their own spinach using permaculture. I can't make out how and if any of this factors into flashcards of organic food and moral ratings, but, when I reflect on the most obnoxious organic foodies I know, what stands out for me is that they are consumers, never farmers. And I'd say this holds true across the line. The religious folk who stand around throwing words of stone are never the same ones in the ghettos not just saving souls but lives. We can't afford judgement when we are placed in the fray. If we have energy to condemn, it is symptom of inaction and apathy, not moral elevation.

The Left Arm: Are we what we see? If we are immediately and objectively influenced by the vision of an apple with an organic sticker, if this sight makes us subtly and temporarily a different human being, what does that say about the rest of our media selections? I find I cannot regularly read anybody without having them show up in my writing. Does Gregory House in some way inform who I am as a human being? And does this mean I have to stop watching True Blood?

The Right Arm: Is sin the best avenue for virtue? The fact that the comfort food viewers were the least judgmental and most helpful has gone largely unremarked in the articles I have read on this subject. But what does that mean? In the presence of those items which we enjoy but which make us feel less than something less than righteous, it seems we become the kindest. Would Christmas be half as much fun if we served beet salads and sprouted quinoa? Apparently not. And doesn't this hold true in life in general? Humility is often the catalyst for giving. Exhibit A: Alcoholics Anonymous. Only a sinner can give of themselves in this particular way and only if they never forget what an utter and complete waste of space they once were. The never-forgetting is essential to the impetus to be there for the next sufferer who drags themselves pitifully in the door.  To forget is to become indifferent. It's the wrongness, not the rightness that breeds love.

The Body: Be very, very wary of your moral associations. How then do we proceed? Whether we are reacting to the inherent virtue of organics or merely the inherent virtue of apples, we need to stop and check ourselves. There is nothing wrong with organic food. In fact, in terms of certain kinds of organic food–locally grown, personally grown, using bio-intensive methods–I would argue that this is the direction we should be looking as a species if we want to preserve our planet and feed the hungry. But what do we think it means about us? Exercise is also good, but it isn't charity. It doesn't buy us any freedom from moral obligation. Mediation and mindfulness practices are ultimately selfish if we aren't using them to make the world a better place.

I think we associate the consumption or personal practice of notions we have labeled as "good" with doing good. You can't purchase morality at the store. At best, you can excuse yourself at times from participation in the worst of a destructive system. You can support a farmer, a businessman. This does not make you a good person. It makes you the owner of a bar of chocolate labeled "fair trade." The work of being a good person is done with others, in the practice of compassion and the gifts of our time and talent to the people and causes that we love. It demands presence, not to oneself, but to others. And you can do it with an apple as well as with a brownie. As long as you remember that the apple is not some sort of moral coupon that buys you out of loving others.

Now I want to know: What do you think? Faith in Ambiguity is open to all view points, especially dissenting ones and those that think they don't matter. The rules of discourse dictate respect at all times. Chime in and share widely.


More Information:
Reason.com by Baylen Linekin: Do Organic Consumers Shop Exclusively at the Jerk Store?

Martin Cizmar at Chubster: An Idiot Walks into a Farmer's Market

Do Good Deeds Make Bad People? by Clot, Grolleau, Ibanez

Images are used according to allowable terms by Morguefile.

Ask Team Ambiguity: Do Women Really Want to Suffer in Relationships?

Photo Credit: Morgue File by Dave Hamilton

I really like Gina Barreca. Or at least, I really liked listening to her at the Erma Bombeck Writer's Workshop last month. She was the last keynote speaker that I heard, and, among that aggregation of very funny people, she stood out as the funniest of all.

"No man has ever done what women do about this, because we try to fit ourselves into sizes."

"No man has ever said I'm going to be a 42 short by the holidays."

"Men think they're a little fat if they can't fit into a foreign car."

Her talk–and what made it so funny–centered on the disservice women do themselves through our rampant anxiety, the niggling desire to "fit ourselves" into clothes, expectations and circumstances. Men were just the foils within this theater of female psychodrama. The Not-Women. At a glance, Gina Barreca's feminism seemed to be about what women do to themselves and to each other, more than what men and society does to women. Which I kind of liked. And I will tell you: Gina is one smart lady.

And yet there was something I kind of laughed over–or only let out the embarrassed laugh that makes you look out the corner of your eye to see if anyone is looking offended, to check if you should be offended, the uncommitted laugh.

"We're the smart ones."

Resounding applause followed in a room filled, by an enormous ratio, with women. Women are smarter. Women have a more sophisticated sense of humor. Hmmmm...it's funny, and it smells like a kind of truth (or it wouldn't be so damn funny), but, in one fell swoop, it herds all females–lesbian, straight, married, single, young, old, smart and dumb and all men–into opposite corners of the room and calls it truth. Perhaps, that is the essence of humor. It lives in generality. But Gina Barreca is not just a humorist but a thinker. Here is a link to one of her latest pieces Why Do Women Fall For Cruel Men? which appeared in Psychology Today May 7th.

What Barreca is pointing at is that strong women, in her estimation, tend to view strong men as ones that can best them. This besting then plays out as men treating women with a certain callous disregard, a certain cruelty. Or causing a certain emotional grief. She discusses the case of a woman, having waited to find the right man–a man strong enough–who then loses herself entirely in that man. She tells stories of women for whom male anger, when directed against them, shows love. Stories of smart women seeking stupid men. Other women, while perhaps not seeking an actually painful relationship, Barreca says, will look for a man too good for them, a man who will ignore them. Women, as she portrays them, are bound and determined to suffer at the hands of men, but somehow on their own terms.

I find myself amply motivated to argue with all of these statements. In fact, I chose this piece as a link because I thought its broad generalizations worthy of a second, more ambiguous look. But, I cannot, as I re-read this article, completely discount what Barreca has said here. At least not in front of anyone who has known me long enough to be familiar with my entire relationship history, which has included, over and over, men less intelligent than myself with whom I quickly grew bored or smoldering, passionate but physically abusive men or yet more men entirely indifferent to my interest in them. And don't we all know these women? The ones about whom we wonder aloud,

"Why the Hell did she choose him?"

If this phenomenon is specific to the psyche of women, I am not entirely sure it is limited to straight women. It seems to me I have known many lesbians to have made ill-fated choices among their partners as well. But is this argument true at all? Let's examine the body.

The Left Leg: Which woman do you mean, exactly? Is this true of all–or even most–women? Barreca's article rang–in some ways–true for me, but I developed my male-female relationship strategies very young and while navigating issues of depression and addiction. To say that I was looking for someone to "fix me" would be an understatement. So, I have to ask you ladies and the men who know them–those of you who grew up straight rather than bendy, if this stuff is true for you?

The Right Leg: When prevented from committing suicide, Juliet grows up. If women are geared this way, as suggested by Margaret Drabble, due to the portrayal of romance as tragic, don't most of us get the picture later? (If so, I guess this would be an argument for dating quite a bit before committing to marriage.) Someday, don't we finally realize that we want a best pal, a life mate, a trusted friend and then get over the need for grand gestures of male strength? I cannot imagine myself, at thirty-six, having the slightest damn interest in any man's ability to overpower me in any way. Although I will admit that I often said, when younger, that I found it attractive if a man could beat me in an argument, I now find it infinitely more attractive if he does laundry and will watch Grey's Anatomy with me.

The Left Arm: Is every guy you know Eminem? What does this say about men? If women are hot and bothered for all these brooding assholes of men, it would seem there would have to be quite a lot of them to go around. Unless, of course, we all dated the same jackass senior year and he's still making the rounds. But are you married to this guy? Or did you leave him a long time ago and settle down with someone who gently strokes your hand but wears sandals with socks? Or are these men really at fault? Are they made awful by our own weird fixation? That is a chilling thought. Perhaps after you left them for being so wretched, they settled down with someone who treated them like just another human being, and they still treat her like a queen?

The Right Arm: Let's play master and servant. If a lot of us will sheepishly admit to a certain understanding of Barreca's case here, just as many of us seemed to relate to it when Tangled Lou bared the soul of narcissistic love–the kind where you settle, fall in love with the notion that your partner may change, and let that poor soul adore you while you treat him like a dog that has yet to be trained. The love that seems to be compassion but is really falling in love with one's own reflection. I have done this kind of thing as well. So maybe it is just hard to get this right. We are shooting for men who slavishly worship us and for whom we do not return the affection, or we are shooting for men who seem disinterested or uncommitted or unkind. How many shots before we nail it? One high, one low, one waaay on the outside there, then, hopefully BULLSEYE!

The Rest of the Body: It All Comes Down to Power. At the risk of sounding like I am chatting with you from a communist coffee shop in Berkeley while I water hemp with a tincture of my own menstrual blood: my analysis is that patriarchy comes down to systems of power that are wielded (unconsciously and automatically) in subtle ways that keep women from accessing that power to control their own lives. If we are raised all of our lives to believe that certain kinds of power are the province of men, it makes sense that we try to get it from them. So, if men are the avenue to feeling loved or feeling worthy–or men are the avenue to showing us our own strength–then, perhaps, the most daring among us may seek the fiercest dragon to slay and therein prove our own worth. Our lives are shaped by myths and fairy tales told over and over, unconsciously, thoughtlessly, and innocently. The man wins by being brave, smart and strong. The woman wins by being loved. The allegory is stamped on souls.

And, instead of making us better wives, mothers and lovers, I think it makes us angry. Angry with some sort of Meta-Male force that demands our multi-tasking, lactating, libidinous perfection so that we can claim a wholeness that we can never have otherwise. The individual men that fall into our lives, I think, are still just foils–actors in the fairy tales they never liked as well as we did. They mostly just want their coffee brought and to be told they are wonderful. The rest is woven around them like invisible skeins of implication, winding all of us up like cocoons.

But what do you think? Our lives are varied, full of mirrors and polarities. I only know the path my romantic, heterosexual life has taken me. What about you? Are you buying that we have a collective penchant for male punishment? Or something akin but, perhaps more subtle? Or do you think the whole argument is gobbledygook? And it really wouldn't hurt men to comment. They have a unique perspective on this, which I would be fascinated to hear, since they know women, and perhaps have been in romantic relationships with them a time or two.

Remember to follow the rules.

Ask Team Ambiguity: Are Women Enslaved by Modern Motherhood?

Mikalh, moments after his birth, already getting ready to marginalize me.

I was looking for fodder for Team Ambiguity. What would be worth bringing to color, that is currently black and white? What do we have a lot to say about–with our different opinions and different experiences–more to say than the "experts," than the "thinkers?" There I was, thumbing through pages on the internet. Two clicks and there it was. An interview with Elizabeth Badinter, the author of "The Conflict : How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women."  Badinter is described in the article as "[arguing] that motherhood–or, at least, certain approaches to motherhood–come at a huge, and unacceptable, cost [to women]." Badinter is especially concerned with the promotion of exclusive breastfeeding, mothers staying home with kids and what is termed "intensive" parenting.

This article, by Lisa Belkin, in the Huffington Post, is the kind of thing that frustrates me. No disrespect to the journalist. It's the topic that makes me batty. I could give you lots of really well-reasoned, intellectual arguments why, but the experience I have is this: When I was a little girl, other little girls were mean to me. This is part of the known topography of elementary school. Little girls can be wickedly mean, and, especially to strange girls who speak like the characters from Victorian children's novels. In high school, girls–now larger, with glossy hair and breasts, continued to be mean. It was girls who assassinated my character, girls who knew where to plunge a dagger of words, so it would send you in a lifeless heap to the ground, reeling from shock and heartbreak.  Girls made the rules and then shut you out. Most of these girls grew into women who are not mean anymore, because they are no longer so afraid. But the sensation seems oddly familiar.

Forgive me for saying so, but the self-styled feminists who write these books about what women should not do–what is wrong with women–seem very much like grown-up mean girls to me. I reject a claim to feminism on behalf of any woman whose argument is about devaluing what is held dear by women, insulting the choices they make, and suggesting that they, instead, behave more like men. And just like in school, my reaction is one, first of hurt, and then of anger.

Acid, burning, biting anger because they assume so much that would make me small, and then, they claim that I have made myself small. If what they are saying is pro-women, why does it leave the perspective of most women out? I think a truly feminist message empowers women, not insults them.

When I posted yesterday, I asked, "What's the body in this living room?" I want to know what you think, even if–especially if–you and I disagree. (Please make me smarter!) Here is what I see from my end:

The Left Leg: Financial independence does not equal fulfillment.
Badinter is very concerned with the preservation of the status and financial independence of women. How, though, are we going to assign status? I have lots of thoughts on this, but I am going to quote Tangled Lou, who said it much better than I could:

"The notion that a woman's (or anyone's for that matter) worth is determined solely by her earning power is ridiculous. It is the mess that our country is currently in with the whole 99% vs. 1%. We have collectively focused on financial gain with no thought of consequence for the last several decades and now it's all falling apart. A large part of the reason it's falling apart, I believe, is because very little attention has been paid to the finer aspects of being human: critical thought, creativity, personal sacrifice, meaningful relationships, etc. If we are valuing people not by what they contribute to society, but by what they are able to consume, we will only consume each other and ourselves. At its heart, the focus on financial viability is ultimately a focus on consumption, which will always be dissatisfying and incomplete. So, the argument that women are giving up 'status' to raise families is fallacious in that it is argued from a faulty notion of 'status.'

The Right Leg: Classism. 
Motherhood, it is being argued, is at odds with a fulfilling career. Set aside any argument, from our other leg, about what constitutes a fulfilling career. I am assuming that Badinter is not talking about a job at Starbucks or a meat packing plant or a widget factory. She is talking to educated women, women with the luxury of a "fulfilling career." That is not, as it happens, most women, or even, necessarily, every women with a degree, the job market being what it is. Our choices are not "Follow a ribbon of stars to the top of the sky." vs. "Change diapers and watch Days of Our Lives." Both of those options are ridiculously oversimplified. Given the actual menu of choices, women do what makes sense to them. And they do it, thanks to the feminists of yore, generally, with some sense of choice.

The Left Arm: Valid and best are not the same. 
I'm going to go out on a limb here. I know that it is best to exercise 30-45 minutes at least four days a week. I know that it is best not to bite my cuticles. I know that it is best to drink eight glasses of water or more a day. And I still don't do those things. My choice–or knee-jerk reaction–with regard to any of these is valid. I compromise because no one is going to be perfect, because doing what is best is not always best for me, if it will drive me crazy.

For those same kinds of reasons, lots of moms don't breastfeed or stop sooner than is recommended. (I am not talking about moms who adopt or who have a physical issue preventing them from nursing.) It is no good doing the perfect thing if you are going to go nuts doing it. But that doesn't mean that bottle feeding is as healthy as breastfeeding. I know this is going to drive a lot of people crazy because we think we have to do the perfect thing for our kids, but we don't. And none of us does, to be perfectly honest. So, some of us breastfeed and some of us don't. Some breastfeed for two years, four years. Some manage it for two weeks. From a medical perspective, longer is probably better, at least up to a point. From a medical perspective, I should drink at least sixteen ounces less of coffee every day. I don't need to pretend, though, that, actually, drinking too much coffee is better or equally healthy.

The Right Arm: Fear of experts. 
My children see, collectively, a psychiatrist, two counselors, a speech-language pathologist, a special ed. teacher, an occupational therapist and two physical therapists. If I could not use these people, I would find it very hard to do the right thing as a mother, on my own. So I think Badinter's advice regarding experts is bad advice, even though she had parenting book experts in mind, I presume. But I think she is pointing at something very true. We are way too worried about experts. Because we act like we aren't competent, intelligent people.

If you are a seasoned professional in your field–or even, let's say, a bright and promising novice–your attitude about new information regarding that field is not going to be one of, "Shut the blinds! Batten down the door! Don't let any light in here!" That is the strategy of someone who is afraid. You–the professional–you're going to be interested in this information, but then you are going to filter it through what you know and have experienced, what you value and what your intuition is telling you, before you decide a thing. Right? Experts are consultants. If you need some input, use them. But you are the one who makes the choice.

The Rest of the Body: Stories, not advice. 
The discussion in comments, when I looked, was not much better than the article itself. They ran the gamut from bland defenses of the joys of traditional motherhood to the oft-repeated statement "To each her own.," along with the occasional odd interjection of a man telling women to get off the pity pot. It all made me tired and sad.

I had three children by natural childbirth and breastfed them each two years. Then I stayed home with them while they were little. So, that's my deal. What I find sad is that when, for some reason, this comes up in conversation with a mom who's mothering journey took a different turn, there is almost always tension. But that same tension is not there if I say I didn't finish college and they did. It's not there if I say I have pets and they don't. Why should this be any different?

How often is any woman actually asking you for your advice on whether or not she should get an epidural, breastfeed exclusively or co-sleep with her child? How often is she asking if she should stay home with them? Not a lot. Women don't often come to us with requests for advice. They come with stories. If you want people to nurse, or to forgo vaccines, or to carry their infants around in slings, work with women who are pregnant, not women who have already made these choices. Once the choices are made, the woman who is talking is just telling her story. It's a memoir of her time with her babies, or the time she bore her babies. You don't have to agree or disagree.

All you have to do is listen.

But, forget all this. What do you think? If you and I stand on opposite ends of the world, in our impressions of this article, I still want to be your friend. What is missing in this conversation? Please, don't forget to follow the rules. I can't wait to hear what you all have to say.

You are...Team Ambiguity!

Back when I attended twelve step meetings, the wisdom that was imparted to me, among other things, was this:

"K.I.S.S., or keep it simple, stupid."

This was very good advice for a teenager who had only recently completely burned her thyroid out with an eating disorder. My biggest superpower at that time was that I could turn absolutely anything into a complete disaster using only my brain and my mouth. Later, though, I had to reject it. Somehow I have managed to remain clean and sober anyway, for over nineteen years, and have never relapsed into bulimia or committed homicide. My motto now is something more like:

"Keep the complexity and you won't be stupid."

In keeping with the spirit of that adage, I am going to invite you to do something interesting and, at the same time, I am going to give you a stupid name. This is how superheroes are created. (Later, I will send you all capes and tights.) You are now Team Ambiguity.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to examine a conversation, think about what both sides are saying and then figure out why this conversation is going nowhere. There is a dead body in the living room and both parties are using its bloody head to rest their drinks on. The argument is about whether the wine the debaters are drinking is really white or red. Your task is to point to the body and, if possible, tell us why it is there.

Please don't worry. This is not another occasion to have one of those awful discussions that take place in the comments of controversial blog posts or major media articles. I am proposing a world where all of those commenters thought before speaking, spoke respectfully and allowed themselves to be changed by what others shared, because everyone, whether agreeing or not, had shared from their hearts. I want this world, and so I think that we have to practice it some place. Here are the rules:

1. Please do not rely solely on the pacifying statement that people just disagree. This is true but obvious. What is interesting is: why? And do these people feel listened to? I don't necessarily mean us; I mean whatever parties are at issue in our discussion.


2. You have to be respectful of one another and of the opinions or thoughts being discussed, even if you think they are are turkey twaddle. Team Ambiguity is characterized by its ability to step back and consider that we may be wrong. That means the turkey twaddle may be right. 


3. Please don't hide because you think everyone else is smarter or more articulate than you, or because no one has said yet what you were going to say and you are waiting for them to, so you can say "Yeah, what SHE said!". You are the smartest damn person on the whole blog. We want your comment because yours is the essential comment.


4. Please realize it's not a fight. Discourse is illuminating. It is what makes people smarter. If we are all following Rule#2, there isn't any fighting. We are just responding with our honest experiences and thoughts and stories. One person adds celery, another adds carrot and soon we have a rich soup of differing flavors.

Tomorrow, I am going to write a few brief thoughts on this article on the nature of modern motherhood and ask you to add any of yours. You don't need to be a mother to participate because there are larger questions at play: women's and men's respective roles in society, whether or not you identify with feminist theory (yikes!), children and what role we each think they should have in our lives, judgement (when do we have the right to judge another person's actions–don't answer so quick!), and how we should discuss our differences of opinion.

I recommend you read a page of the comments as well as the main article to get a sense of the conversation. Then, tomorrow, get ready to tell me:

"What's the body in this living room?"