Vol. 40 - Whose Cause is it Anyway?

On turning our kids into billboards

Yesterday I walked into our dining room and saw a small pink shirt laid out on our table.

On it, in blocky black letters, it read, “Access & Care & Justice & Misoprostol & Mifepristone.”

If you don’t know, as I didn’t, misprostol and mifepristone are drugs employed in abortions. (And if you didn’t know, Emily and I are as pro-choice as you can get.)

Given the size of the shirt, it only took an instant for me to surmise that Emily had bought the shirt for our baby girl, to, at some point, dress her as a walking statement, advocating for what we believe is a woman’s inalienable right to make decisions about her own body.

The shirt gave me pause, as those kinds of shirts often do, especially when they skew political. When we as parents turn our children into billboards for their parents’ causes, even when we dress our kids in tiny AC/DC or KISS t-shirts (both of which I have been guilty of) or dress them in the colors of the teams we, not they, are diehard fans of (which I again have been guilty of), we’re projecting our own opinions and passions onto them. We are, in a way, exploiting their inability to yet have opinions on things political or artistic or cultural in nature.

But I guess that’s parenting, no? Downloading all of our bullshit onto them until their brains are developed enough to distill it all into their own bullshit?

And yes, I realize the hypocrisy of this criticism coming from a man who has written a lot about his children in a public scope wholly without their consent.

Still, something about seeing a little girl dressed as Ruth Bader Ginsburg for Halloween makes me cringe a bit.

(Of course, seeing a grown-ass woman dressed as RBG for Halloween makes me cringe, too. But then again, I’m one of those people who thinks we have a habit of lionizing our elected officials far too much. Yes, dear reader, even RBG.)

But back to the shirt.

I asked Emily about it, expressing my concerns and how I don’t think we should be projecting our causes onto our children, turning them into walking advertisements for what we think is right and wrong before they’ve had the opportunity to form their own world views and opinions.

“But we’ve dressed them in Black Lives Matter and Pride shirts,” she said.

She was right.

“And how is this any different?” she said, before pointing out the fact that choice, much like Black Lives Mattering and LBGT rights, is not an issue of political or cultural opinion. Rather, it’s a human rights issue.

She was right.

This wasn’t the first time Emily and I have discussed fundamental truths of both of our belief systems and how we have to do our jobs to ensure that those things are part of the fabric of our children’s lives. And it won’t be the last. Like most things, the points in the conversation between Emily and I existed on a spectrum; I’d rather not have my daughter unknowingly campaign for our next President. But I’m happy to begin plant the seeds now of what a more just and equitable world can look like.

There’s little doubt we’ll continue to project our opinions and tastes onto them as they grow. They’ll be forced to listen to dad’s music and his rants about the New York Giants. They’ll probably run more than a couple of 5ks with their mom. They’ll most likely grow into progressive adults if for no other reason than the household they’re being raised in. Some of it will be with intent on our part. Some of it with be through a childhood’s worth of exposure. Osmosis or something like it. And of course, there are lines to be wary of within that spectrum. Where they sit for Emily, I’m not sure. For me, that line tends to be political.

But there are some things that we’ll have to be unwavering in our indoctrination: that Black Lives Matter, that people can love whoever the hell they want, and that a woman’s body is her own fucking business.