TRANSCRIPT
I have often thought about how I would behave as a parent if I had children. I never have had children, but I’ve spent a lot of time around children, worked with a lot of children in a lot of different contexts, certainly lived with a lot of families who had children, have a lot of friends who have kids, and I was a child. It really has not been an easy conversation I’ve had with my head, so I’d like to just explore some of my thought process and also share in a way why I’m kind of glad I didn’t have children, because I never did come up with good solid answers for how I would have done it—answers that satisfied me.
So in my process of thinking about this, one of the main things I’ve thought about is schooling. When my children or my child grew up to school age, would I send them to school? One thing I thought is I would not want to send any child of mine to a school of the variety that I went to. Certainly, when I was a kid in public school, it was like the teachers were not particularly inspired or motivated. Very few of them were remotely intellectual; they weren’t particularly curious. They seemed much more concerned with discipline than education. They seemed much more concerned with getting children—getting me and other kids—to memorize certain specific parts of the curriculum than they did with creativity. Even the art teachers, it was like there was a right way to do art and a wrong way to do art.
The music teachers that I had—I mean, I studied music from, well, I played the French horn from fourth grade up to the end of high school—and it’s like none of my music teachers were inspired. It’s like actually I liked to compose music; none of them were even interested in that. They just wanted me to play the lesson that I was taught. I had to get my parents to sign that I was practicing for, what was it, 30 minutes a day in fourth grade? And then by, you know, by fifth grade it was 35 minutes a day. They had this whole concept of the right way to teach music, and I hated it. I used to practice sometimes for three or four hours a day when I felt like it, and I loved it, and I was inspired. I didn’t want to play bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bump like they taught me. It’s like I had a different way of doing it. So obviously, I would not want my child to be in that situation.
But then private school, it’s like, were private schools any better? Sometimes I think they were even more rigid. From all that I’ve heard from people who went to private schools, more rigid, more strict, more dominating. Or send my kid off to boarding school where teachers have total control over his or her life, where the child doesn’t even live with me. It’s like, well, why have a kid at all if I’m just going to send him or her away to be gotten rid of like an object? So I definitely wouldn’t want to do that.
Yet I remember when I was like 14, 15, and I hated school. I wasn’t popular, and nobody liked me. The girls didn’t like me, and the boys were mean, and I was being bullied, and the teachers were bullies. I even considered going away to boarding school just to escape from this environment. So it’s like, would I want to put my child in this position? So those are things that I’ve really thought about a lot.
And yet then there’s the other thing. Okay, so I wouldn’t send my kid to school, maybe, but then I know so many kids whose parents homeschooled them, and then it was like sometimes that seemed okay, and sometimes the kids seemed odd. Sometimes the kids seemed to learn little or nothing; sometimes the parents weren’t very good educators at all. And then I think, how would I have felt spending all my time around my mother and father? It was like at a certain point I didn’t want to learn anything from them. They were so, you know, awful.
And then there’s the other thing that if I didn’t put my kid in school, well, what if I’m not part of a community where there are other kids who are out of school? I’ve seen this. I’ve seen this with people who homeschool or do non-schooling or unschooling of their children, and sometimes the kids are just very socially isolated, very lonely. Even they don’t have other kids to play with, and that’s one of the things that I liked best about school. Ironically, I happened to have been a very good student because I was clever, and I learned so much on the outside that I could figure out how to beat the system of school in order to survive and get ahead. But my favorite classes in school were gym class and lunchtime, where I could just be with kids and play and not be into the watchful eye of teachers.
I loved athletics. It was like I wasn’t even the best athlete by any means at all, but it was like at least it was a time where I could be free. That was what was interesting. I’ve known parents who said, “I’m not putting my child in this public school system; it’s horrible,” and their child agrees with it for a couple of years, and then at a certain point says, “Wait a second, I see all these other kids going to school,” and even though they hate academics, perhaps they like going to school because it’s a social environment. So where would I raise my child in a social environment? I guess I would desperately try to find other families who had children where they were raising their children with a similar philosophy. But sometimes that works, and sometimes that really doesn’t.
And also, well, what if I do find these other hypothetical families, and you know, we have some similar ideas on some things, but on other things not at all? Or if my kids don’t get along with their kids? Because I’ve seen this too. This is the main thing: I would want to set up my child to be in a social environment where they could have fun, where they could learn, where they could play, where they could be free. Also, where they could be—this is perhaps most important because it was most important to me—in nature. And it was arbitrarily random that I grew up in an environment with a lot of nature, with access to nature.
Because I was born in New York City, I lived here until I was, what, two and a half years old. My family moved upstate because my dad went to law school, and the plan was after law school upstate, when we lived on the edge of the countryside, we were going to come back to New York and rebuild our life in New York. The irony is my dad was too scared to come back. He was afraid he was too old to make it in New York and that New York was too expensive. This is back in literally the 1970s, 1977, when he finished law school. He was too afraid. My dad had a lot of insecurities; he was afraid he couldn’t make it in this vast city.
But for me, it was like the most amazing good fortune to be raised on the edge of nature, to not be a city kid. I would never ever want to raise my kid in a big city. Aside from the fact that there’s no nature, there’s so much less freedom for a child. I would want my child to grow up in an environment where they have the ability to be free and independent. And that’s another thing that scared me. I thought many times, like, I know what I had starting at four or five years old when I was allowed to be away from my parents and go—certainly by five years old and by six, I was like five, six years old. I had a bicycle; I was out in the neighborhood. I was out in the woods; I was swimming in ponds by myself, going up to my knees and up to my thighs in mud and like wild animals and BB guns and fighting with kids and bows and arrows and wild kind of stuff.
I feel like this set the stage for an independent life that I have now. It set the stage for so many…
Of the things that I value most about my life and my freedom, this ability to not be afraid to be out by myself in the world, to meet people, to interact with people, sometimes who are dangerous or scary, or when I was a kid, a lot older than me, people who were very different from me. I had to learn how to adapt. Also, how to learn to adapt to be in environments, phys, physio, physical environments that were dangerous—climbing and swimming and places that if kids made mistakes, they could get really hurt. I saw kids get really hurt playing with guns. Also, there were guns from when I was a very young kid—BB guns and later rifles, shotguns. I was around all of that stuff, had guns of my own, learned a lot from this. I learned a lot about how to be safe and smart and how to climb trees and waterfalls and cliffs and, you know, drive cars and ride bicycles and go over ramps and do all sorts of stuff that was very dangerous. Well, the thing that it brings up for me is, would I want my child to go through this? I really think, if my parents really knew what I’d been doing when I was a kid, especially out in nature, and if they really had cared about me, they failed in both areas. Because most of them had no clue what was going on because I didn’t tell them. I didn’t want them to know because I didn’t know what they might do if they found out. And second, I really don’t think they cared that much anyway. They were just sort of glad I was gone and doing my own thing. I’d come back with blood on me—well, not infrequently. I’d always come back muddy and wet, like always. I was always like, I would leave clean, come back muddy and dirty. I kind of boys will be boys, and I think that was an attitude from more of a bygone era. But I admit I remember thinking about it when I was like 20, when I first started thinking about the possibility that I could become a father. It’s like, I’d be scared for my child, and I’d be afraid that I would react in the wrong direction and become overprotective. I really thought that because I also saw how well, how nasty and cruel and violent some children were when I was a kid—older children. I got bullied, I got beaten up. I saw kids have horrible things done to them. I saw adults who were crazy and dangerous and violent. And it’s like, I would want to protect my kid from that environment. And it’s like, I thank God that I wasn’t protected in that way because, look, I survived. I made it out, and I learned how to survive. But I saw so many kids who never got the chance to do that. And I’m like, would I be one of those parents who would overprotect my child, which would crush their spirit? And yet the goal being to help them physically survive to adulthood, but also to not let them psychologically grow. This is something I’ve never been able to answer for myself.
Screen Time and Technology
And then there’s the whole thing about screen time—television, video games, the computer. Well, I first saw a computer when I was in fifth grade, and I saw really early—that was like, what, 1981? I believe we got those old Apple II computers. And then my family bought a computer to get ahead. And it was like, I played on the computer. I remember I’d play on it for like an hour sometimes in the afternoon, and my dad would rage at me. “All you do is play that damn computer! Get outside! Get outside and play with the other kids!” In part, he was right. Ironically, one hour was a lot of screen time back then. Get out! Really, he wanted me out of the house. He wanted to have his privacy. I think he wanted to smoke his pot and be away from kids. But in a way, it’s like I’m glad that I had limited screen time. I’m glad I had some screen time. I really feel like having had some time on the computer, more than most kids back when I was a kid, really prepared me to have a life that could plug in, and I could learn how to make a living and function on the computer. But I see kids nowadays. I hear some of my friends say their kids are on the screen for 12 hours a day, 14 hours a day, all the time. They don’t want to go outside a lot of the time. Their eyes are like glued to the screen. And it’s like, I don’t even remember when I was a kid playing some of the early computer games we had. It was like I’d be a little weird after I’d be on the computer for an hour, or if I’d managed to get an hour and a half, I’d get a little strange. My thoughts would be strange. I’d get a sort of a tunnel vision. What if I’d been on the computer for 10 times that much a day? It’s like some of these kids nowadays—it’s like that’s their life. Some of them, they have all their friendships through the computer. I know some kids in the world, they have all their friendships through the computer in a language that’s not even their own native language. The advantage being they learn other languages. The disadvantage being they don’t interact in any sort of regular way. I’ve also seen some children along the way—less now in my travels, but especially in my travels. I’m talking now when I started hitchhiking almost 30 years ago. I stayed with some families, spent some time with families where their kids had no screen time. They had no televisions back then. There were no computers. They were playing with other kids, with their families. They were playing their instruments, they were playing board games, they were out in nature exploring, playing with their animals all the time, 100% of the time. And what I saw—and this really struck me back then, which really made me think if I had children, what would I do? Those kids were happier. They were more curious. They were more alive. They were more intelligent. They were more interactive. They were, in a way, they were more innocent, but in a good way. Innocent meaning they were open. They weren’t jaded. I see these kids that are on the computer all the time. I’ve seen this for a long time. The kids become jaded. I wouldn’t want my kid to become jaded. A kid who is jaded, they kind of lose the best part of being a kid. But then I hear stories of people who are trying to raise their kids nowadays that way, and then the kids have friends, and their friends have screen time. And the kids become addicted to going over to the friends’ houses because they become junkies for this stuff that’s been prepared for them on the screen. And they get hooked into that, and they like to be over there more than they like to be at their own homes. And it’s like the kids become like little screen junkies, and it’s like all the parents’ best wishes don’t mean anything anymore. And I wouldn’t want that. So it’s like, well, is there any community in the world where the children have this? I’ve also seen children that are raised without screen time, but the parents have their phones, and the kids are like literally—they don’t like their parents, they like their parents’ phones. And they’re always begging to be on their parents’ phones. So I think I would have to practice what I preached. If I had a kid and I didn’t want them to be on the screen, I wouldn’t want to be on the screen either. And yet that’s not possible pretty much in this modern world. I mean, how much of my world is on the screen nowadays? It’s like, what kind of hypocrite would I be as a parent? And that’s another thing—I wouldn’t want to be a hypocrite as a parent. And yet, in a way, I wouldn’t know how not to be a hypocrite as a parent. And it’s so confusing. And I think this is what I’ll close with: If I were a parent, I would want to be a parent for a child in a world where I really felt hope for the world. And I really often don’t feel that I have hope. I have hope.
For individuals, especially individual adults, to be able to grow. But children also to grow. But really, I’m thinking of myself and some other adults that I see in the world who have the ability, the motivation to grow, to study their childhood, to study what went wrong, to study their traumas, the history of the violations that they experienced. To grow, to heal, to grieve, to reconnect with their lost sides. That gives me hope. That gives me hope in my life. That gives me hope for watching some other people. That gives me hope that someday this will happen on a much more mass scale.
But for the planet, for nature, for humanity as it is writ large, the modern human technological species, I don’t have hope in this. I see ugly coming. A lot, lot, lot more sadness, sorrow, destruction, future cataclysm, ugly things coming. And I don’t know how would I, how would I justify it to a child if they said, “Why did you bring me into this world? Why did you bring me into this very, very screwed up world?” And I couldn’t lie. And I never could give a good answer to that.
And I, for decades now, I’ve known this destruction is coming. I mean, I studied biology more than 30 years ago. I saw this coming. I knew this was happening. My professors talked about it. And yet all my fellow biology students, oh, they looked at this sort of an academic subject when they heard these statistics about the ugly things that were coming and were going on even then.
I think for me, having been raised in nature, I knew what it really meant when I heard this data, the scientific data connected with my own experience of nature. I knew the ugly was happening. I knew it was real. And it made it very hard for me to justify bringing more humans into this world, at least now. Maybe someday. But these are all the debates that have gone on in my mind.
I think the main thing is, if I had children, I would want to be much more confident that I was even more healed of a person than I am now. And that’s probably the most important thing. I would want to give them an example of a very healed, mature, emotionally connected parent. That’s the most important thing because that’s what I believe every child deserves: a parent like that, two parents like that, a community like that.