A Soft Place To Land
I was driving to Denny’s with my five year old in the backseat. We were on the way to meet her dad for dinner and it was unprecedented. We had divorced when she was two weeks old and avoided each other since. She was going to start school and we wanted her to feel like she had BOTH parents when it started.
“I don’t like the idea,” says a little voice in the backseat. I look in my rearview mirror to see her looking out the window, her face wet with tears. I ask why and she shrugs her shoulders.
“Would you like a minute to put your thoughts and feelings into words?” I ask. She nods yes. I turn up the radio so she does not feel pressured with the silence.
“Mom,” she says quietly, “do other kids cry when they parents are going to see each other?”
This was the memory that popped into mind when I read Theory as Liberatory Practice by Bell Hooks. Particularly when she said “When I was a child, I certainly did not describe the processes of thought and critique I engaged in as ‘theorizing’.” In that moment my daughter was trying to find words for her feelings, her confusion, but also, she was trying to gage how normal her response was. She was looking to me to have the answer.
Often times when asked I describe parenting as trying to navigate another person on territory you’ve just begun to chart. Yet there I was, gripping the steering wheel in my hands, trying to find the words to help my child. She was about to be thrown into a world of single parents, working parents and parents who were still together.
I wonder if Bell Hooks would have answered it like I did. Better yet, I wonder if she as a child would have felt at home if her parents had responded to her questioning similarly.
“Some might, some might not. But you are and that’s ok. Sometimes we know why we’re crying, sometimes we don’t and that’s ok too.”
Bell Hooks says that she came to theory to make sense of what was going on within and around her because she was hurting. Children enter this world constantly questioning. Before they are conditioned to conform to social norms. Before they understand the defiance perceived by their questions. Before the desire to be normal has created inhibitions. I feel that it is my job as a parent to foster this rather than stifle it.
This is where theory as practice comes into play. It is a constant battle within myself to rid myself of sexist ideals, as well as patriarchal and western thought that I have internalized and see now, after many years, as normal. I must dismantle these thoughts so that I am able to teach my children to spot them and question them.
The battle does not stop there though, for we do not live in a bubble. I have to actively engage with people who try to teach my children otherwise. To defend them when adults around them are trying to convince them that children are not entitled to autonomy and should blindly follow all adults because of “respect” and “authority.” I try to do so in the presence of my children so they know I will defend them and their rights. How would Bell Hooks felt if she had such an advocate? If her mother, rather than theory, had been her soft place to land?
Please do not misunderstand me. I am not tying to rally the troops so that we may raise the next generation of anarchists. I am saying that if maybe Bell Hooks had parents who could engage her, gave her a platform to express things other than joy, happiness, and positivity and then gave her the tools to unpack her feelings then maybe she would have come to theory for other reasons.
