A Guy in the Pew

I am the father of a three and a half year old African-American child (who already notices race). I am afraid that words do not even begin to express how important Barak Obama's victory will be to my child. The first President that my son will know will be an African American. That is huge. He will know that he can really aspire to anything.

Some on the left seem so keen on victory in November that they come close (well, ahem, real close) to suggesting that that Sarah Palin should stay home and raise her kids. My decidedly liberal (well, in most ways) wife has a different view. She is an ardent Obama/Biden supporter, but thinks that the candidacy of Sarah Palin has much to celebrate. Here are her thoughts as expressed in an email blast that she sent to her friends around the country: I think we should be grateful to Sarah Palin. Really. These are things I think changed when Sarah Palin became the darling of the Republican Right: 1. It's OK for a woman to be politically ambitious. Before this, women were condemned by the Right for such ambition. Sarah Palin is the poster child for political ambition, and the Right just eats it up. 2. It's OK for a woman to be tough. Before this, a tough woman was perceived as not feminine enough -- not enough of a woman. Sarah Palin has shown that a woman can be tough an...

If you are are tempted to make political use of the pregnancy of Sarah Palin's daughter's pregnancy, please heed these words. First, from Hilzoy : It's easy, in the midst of a political campaign, to forget that the people involved are, after all, people. Some of them -- Sarah Palin, for instance -- place themselves under a media spotlight of their own free will. Others -- her daughter, for instance -- wind up there through no fault of their own. Imagine yourself in her position: there you are, seventeen years old, pregnant, unmarried. Maybe you understand what happened and why; and maybe your parents and friends do as well. But zillions of bloggers and reporters and pundits are about to make the most personal details of your life into a political issue, and they don't understand it at all. And yet, despite that, they are about to use you and your unborn child to score points on one another, without any regard whatsoever for you and your actual situation. I want no part ...

I previously posted about research that purported to show that childless couples are happier than couples with children. In that post, I concluded that "Parenting is hard stuff. It can be very unpleasant at times. It can be boring at times. But, parenting (and loving) a child does give life meaning--and yes, deep happiness as well." Rod Dreher makes a similar point in a post that is worth reading: By the time I got married, I was really sick of being single, and I didn't regret one bit giving up the autonomy of bachelorhood. Impending fatherhood, though, made me nervous. My sister, who married and started her family long before I did, told me not long before our first child was born, "You and Julie are going to lose a lot. You won't be able to go do all the things you like to do now. You're either not going to have the time, or the money, or the energy. That part of your life is over now, and there's no sugarcoating it. But what you don't know is th...

I am the father of a very active and stubborn three year old boy. I am usually exhausted at the end of the day. He makes me smile, but also drives me up the wall sometimes. In other words, I am the typical father of a typical three year old boy. I was therefore fascinated to read recent research that childless couples are actually "happier" than couples with children: The cliché refers to newborn children as "bundles of joy," but recent research indicates that bundles of anxiety, or even bundles of depression, might be more accurate. Sociologists are discovering that children may not make parents happier and that childless adults, contrary to popular stereotypes, may often be more contented than people with kids. Parents "definitely experienced more depression," says Robin Simon, a sociologist at Florida State University who has studied data on parenting. I think this misses the point and was pleased to see this response to this research by Jonah Lehrer, a...

Well this is a provocative way to restart my blog after a break for work obligations and a long weekend vacation! Ben Myers of the Faith and Theology Blog has a very thoughtful post that argues that the Church should get out of the marriage business, and return our concept of marriage back to its true sacremental roots. I have my doubts, but the post is well worth a read. You really need to read the whole post, but here are some highlights: The investment of marriage with a pseudo-religious quality has long diminished the witness of the church: the state authorises a legal union, and then calls upon the church to bless this union with a thin veneer of religiosity. Here, as elsewhere, the church proves itself to be the state’s faithful servant: yes, we will validate state authority with a harmless blessing; yes, we are only too pleased to sanctify the wedding ceremony, and to clothe the social functions of romantic love and family life with a saintly aura. Notice that the church is n...

This short video, taken during the Bishops' visit to our parish on Trinity Cathedral, does a good job showing what worship is like at Trinity Cathedral. Sadly, there are no shots of my family that I noticed.

I was rather taken with this post on father's day by atheist P.Z. Myers: Think back through your past: most but not all will remember their fathers well. Many will have known their grandfathers, but only in their aging years. Some will have met their great-grandfathers, but remember only an old, old man. Beyond that, you might have a few stories, a sepia-colored photo, an entry in a genealogy record, and the otherwise relatively recent will be nothing but a name and a few dates, while go back a few centuries and not even that will be there anymore. Each of those men were for a time among the most important people in their children's lives, and now, nothing but dust. Do you think you will be any different? But wait. I am not some glum nihilist who counsels everyone on the futility of their existence. There is more to this story than generations of wasted effort — to think that misses the whole point. Look at the biology. Parenthood has a personal cost — we know this objectively....

I am the father of a three year old African-American child (who is beginning to notice race). I am afraid that words do not even begin to express how important Barak Obama's nomination will be to my child. If he is elected, the first President that my son will know will be an African American. That is huge. I was therefore very moved by Ezra Klein's observations about the meaning of Obama's nomination: Towards the end of the 1967 movie "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," Dr. John Wane Prentice, played by Sydney Poitier, sits down with his fiance's white father, played by Spencer Tracy. "Have you given any thought to the problems your children will have?" Tracy asks. "Yes, and they'll have some...[But] Joey feels that all of our children will be President of the United States," replies Poitier. "How do you feel about that?" asks Tracy, looking skeptically at the black man in front of him. "I'd settle for Secretary o...

As a father of a very curious and active three year old who loves animals, I thought this was very good advice from E.O. Wilson: The worst thing you can do to a child, in my opinion, is take them on a hike through a botanical garden where there are the names of the trees on the side. Rachel Carson once said, so true, take the child to the seashore, turn her loose with a pail, and tell her to go explore the tidepools. Don't tell her the names of any of these things. Let her find them, let her touch them, let her bring them to you, talk about them, and then you give her the name. These squeezed-in lives of children who are taken occasionally to a park like that or a zoo to see the labels is all part of what I like to call -- I hope I'm not offending anyone -- the "soccer mom syndrome." I believe that soccer moms are the greatest enemy in modern life of natural history and proper biological education. Read the report here . In defense of soccer moms, I must add that my s...

Rod Dreher is a social conservative. I am assuredly not. Still. I always find him worth reading, and this post was no exception: You know, I agree with Huckabee and others that if the legal and cultural definition of marriage is taken to be fluid and entirely subjective, that there's no limit on how far we can take it. But let's get real here: gays and their pro-same-sex-marriage allies are only lagging indicators of a vast cultural shift that, yes, heterosexuals forced. In the 1960s and since, marriage as an institution was revolutionized. No longer did people think of it as having an essential sacred meaning. Rather, people came to think of it as a contractual agreement between willing parties. Once that happens, the game is over. I'm not saying that people think of marriage solely in contractual terms. But divorce law and practice today does reflect that fundamental redefinition of marriage. It seems to me that cultural conservatives concerned (rightly) with the loss o...

One of this blogs readers is John D'Anna of the Arizona Republic , who has a very moving and truthful story of a mother's loss in yesterday's paper. It is well worth a read, but here are some highlights: Her name is Monica and Isaiah was her baby boy. She named him for the prophet who foretold the gift of the Savior's birth. . . . When he was 9, Monica began to notice that he would sometimes zone out. She'd ask what was wrong and he'd say, "Mom, I've got a bad taste in my mouth." She didn't think much of it. About two weeks later, Isaiah was riding in the back seat of the car with his older brother, Gino. Monica heard him gasping and thrashing, the nylon of his winter coat swishing against the seat and car door. She couldn't see him in the mirror so she asked Gino what was going on. He nonchalantly replied that Isaiah did that all the time in his sleep. Monica pulled over, and her training as a nurse told her Isaiah was having a seizure....

In the past week, I have blogged about faith and money , and I have blogged about the inane obsession by some on the so-called "War on Christmas". Well, today I read an article that puts the two together. It seems that a group of clergy have formed a so-called Advent Conspiracy that aims to wage it own Christian war on Christmas--not the religious holiday of Christmas, but the secular comemrcialization of Christmas: Americans will spend about $475 billion this year on gifts, decorations and parties that many won't even remember next year. They will run themselves ragged--shopping, wrapping and celebrating. And some won't pay off their Christmas debt until March, if they're lucky. "We celebrate Jesus' birthday by giving ourselves presents," McKinley says. "We don't give him anything." McKinley is pastor of the Imago Dei Community, a Christian church of about 1,500 members that meets in a high school auditorium here. It dawned on McKinley...

Allison and I enjoyed a wonderful concert of the Phoenix Symphony on Saturday. One of the pieces was by Leonard Bernstein, and the program notes noted that Bernstein was gleeful about being "over extended on all fronts"--he was a full time conductor of a major symphony while composing both popular and "serious" music. It struck me that this aptly describes my life right now--I am gleefully over extended on all fronts, and my bog posting has suffered as a result. My law practice is quite busy, I have undertaken significant new administrative responsibilities at my law firm, I am teaching at the ASU Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, and continue to serve on many non-profit boards. To top it off, we are in the middle of a kitchen remodel at home, and I am the father of a quite active Toddler. Please bear with me--I'll do my best to post something every day, but that may not always be possible.

We just returned from a wonderful blogless (indeed internet free) week in San Diego. I'll post cute pictures of my son at Legoland, Sea World, the San Diego Zoo and the beach later, but for now let me just say the following: For the past week, I did not read a paper, do a blog post, and laregly did not even read the blogs of others. Instead, I spent a gret deal of time with my family, read several books, and relaxed. I highly recommend it.

My family (including me!) is off on vacation next week. While I blogged during an earlier vacation, my wife has made a convincing case that I need a break from my blogging as well as from work. I agree. It is time to take a break. I should be back live on Sunday, September 9. In the meantime, be sure to check out The Lead for your Anglican news. Oh--and by the way, out house will be occupied while we are gone.

Actually, my family got back from vacation three weeks ago, but work commitments have kept me from downloading our photographs until today. We spent a week in Oregon (mostly at the Oregon Coast). I had a 30 year (ugh!) high school reunion in Salem, Oregon (where I grew up), and used the opportunity to get out of the summer heat. My son loved the beach, and the animals at both the Oregon Zoo and the Newport Aquarium.

The May issue of First things is now available online for free, and it includes a very provocative essay by W. Bradford Wilcox, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia and a fellow at the Institute for the Studies of Religion at Baylor University. He notes that marriage and childbearing are a large driving force for church attendance--particularly by men--and that changing patterns of marriage and childbearing are one reason for the decline of mainstream Protestant church attendance. Here are some highlights: The growing secularization of American life—marked by drops in religious attendance, affiliation, and authority in the nation at large over the past forty years—is certainly due, in part, to changes in the larger culture. It owes something, as well, to the theological and moral lassitude of many churches in the face of those changes. But a large portion derives from the declining strength and integrity of the family. The recent history of American religio...

The Pew Research Center issued a survey last week that showed that children are becoming a less important part of our marriages--and our adult lives. The Christian Science Monitor has a very interest article that explores the political implications of a less child-focused America--on issues like education and accommodations for working mothers and fathers: Americans' child-free years are expanding as empty-nest seniors live longer and more young adults delay – or skip – childbearing. In 1960, nearly half of all households had children under 18. By 2000, the portion had fallen to less than a third, and in a few short years it's projected to drop to a quarter, according to a report from the National Marriage Project. Children are also taking a back seat in perceptions of marriage's purpose. Since 1990, the percentage of people who said children were very important to a successful marriage tumbled from 65 percent to 41 percent. The findings were released in a Pew Research rep...

Our son, Teddy, is adopted, and I can still remember the first day I held him in our arms when he was only three days old. What was truly remarkable was that I felt like a father to this tiny child the moment that I held him in my arms. We were lucky that Teddy was (and still is) a healthy thriving child. Life, however, has few certainties, and the health of a child (whether adopted or not) is not one of those guarantees. I thought about the nature of our love for our children this afternoon after I read a remarkable essay by Elizabeth Fitzsimmons in The New York Times . Fitzsimmons describes flying to China to adopt a baby girl, and to receive horrifying news about the child they are to adopt: A CT scan confirmed that there had been a tumor that someone, somewhere, had removed. It had been a sloppy job; nerves were damaged, and as Natalie grew her condition would worsen, eventually leaving her paralyzed from the waist down. Control over her bladder and bowels would go, too; this had a...