This thread is actually unrelated to the recent IMHO thread about the playground and calling the police. But rather, it seems that there are often one of two different things that happen to people when they become parents:
They become more protective, sometimes to the point of profiling, whereby they will increasingly profile people as potential threats to their children, often on the basis of race and/or gender. Sometimes the profiling is of a furtive/sheepish nature - *“I hate to seem racist, but I care too deeply about my children’s safety to **not **be concerned when that black man approached” *etc.
Parenting makes them less prone to profiling or more accepting of people, because the parenting process makes them empathetic or understanding of others.
FWIW, I am not a parent. Just want to ask about the experience of those who are parents.
When my husband and I decided to adopt from foster care, we had to decide whether we, a white couple from all-white families living in a 99% white neighborhood, would be an appropriate family for a black child/children. We both did a lot of reading and self examination to expose and root out whatever prejudices we have. While we ended up with a white child, all of that has still been very valuable. She comes from a small town with more overt racism and now goes to an almost all black elementary school. If we hadn’t prepared for a black child, I think we would have just taught her basic colorblindness.
For us, parenting means doing our best to make sure that what we are teaching our daughter is right and trying to be better ourselves.
I don’t think parenting has anything to do with it. Some people are more prone to let there prejudices show than others. I think that’s true across parents and non-parents alike.
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Well sort of, but it cuts across racial lines and is very complicated.
Before I begin - the saying goes “you dont sacrifice your children on the altar of your values”.
Now my story: As a single male I could live almost anywhere and I used to live in a crappy area of town with no decent public parks and the public schools were dumps. But then I could because all I needed was an apartment. I actually liked the old “urban vibe” of downtown. I had homeless people practically on my doorstep.
When I got married and had kids all that changed. We then moved to the suburbs which yes were mostly white. Now we have clean, safe parks and neighborhoods and the schools are great. I never see any homeless and I can walk around my neighborhood without worries or being asked for handouts.
Thing is its not just white people though. I have black neighbors who have done just the same and moved out here. One black friend said they were torn on this but knew they had to put their kids in the best schools. However they do try and connect with the urban areas by going to events and attending a black inner city church.
Its an interesting thing I sometimes discuss with white liberals who are all about diversity and ending racism and all but they themselves live in white neighborhoods and send their kids to all white schools. Some feel bad about it and I remind of them of the saying I mentioned above"you dont sacrifice your children on the altar of your values".
Ok, now there are SOME white people who are so dedicated to their values of inclusion and diversity that they deliberately live in majority black neighborhoods and send their kids to nearly all black schools.
So do parents become racist - well… its complicated.
My parents compromised. They wanted us to grow up around in a working class, predominately black neighborhood so that we’d be grounded and not bougie. But they shipped us to schools on the other side of town so that we could get a good “middle class white folk” education.
Now that my dad has had some time to reflect, I think he regrets having us grow up in a “bad” neighborhood. But none of us kids share that regret because we had good times there–and even though there were bad times, we wouldn’t trade them for suburban blues.
Not a parent, but it depends on the parent and even on the child. My sister in law’s father didn’t learn much from his children, as he wasn’t interested; neither did my mother, as again she wasn’t interested. My father and SiL’s mother did, and she did learn more from their grandchildren (which he never had the chance to meet): there were things she learned from The Nephews faster than SiL or Bro did. The first two were the kind of person who expects the world to bend to their expectations and who tend to paint everything in black and white (and I don’t mean grey); the second have always been more flexible. The first stayed in their black and white, prejudice-based world and just added more prejudices as time went on; the second gained even more flexibility.
I don’t see any change in my attitudes since becoming a parent.
As for my son… he has friends of every race, creed, color, family type, sexual orientation, lifestyle, you name it. If nothing else, parenthood has exposed me to many kinds of people I probably would t have associated with before.
As my daughter was growing up, I was hyper-aware of the attitudes I was exposed to as a child (my grandfather could have been a role model for Archie Bunker) and I didn’t want her to know about prejudices until she was older and could maybe understand why some people were like that. So I was concerned when she came home one day and announced she didn’t like one of the black boys in her class.
Deep breath, then ask “Why not?”
Answer: “Because he’s a kissy boy!”
She went on to explain that he liked to chase the girls around the playground and kiss them. So good for her on 2 counts - she wasn’t judging him by his skin color, but by his actions, and she wasn’t going to put up with sexual harassment (no, I don’t think the kid was a sexual predator. I think he was a goofy little kid who thought it was funny to tease the girls by trying to kiss them.)
And for the record, she was in high school with that same boy - he managed to get past his “kissy boy” phase.
The only thing that makes people less bigoted is to actually encounter the people they are bigoted against in real life, interact with them in a constructive and meaningful way, and develop an empathetic understanding of both others and themselves through careful introspection and self-reflection.
Shitting out children has nothing to do with any of that.
So I think we can all agree on is that parenting changes things. You want to protect your kids from dangers. And yes, that means not wanting your kids to be exposed to certain people and situations.
Yes and no- being a Dad DID make me more apprehensive about all kinds of things. It doesn’t help that my son is a daredevil by nature, who has always climbed the highest trees and done the craziest bike and scooter stunts!
I have spent the last 13 years terrified that my son is going to find some novel way to break his neck! (And he HAS broken a few bones, and gotten his share of bruises and scrapes!)
But I haven’t become afraid of people, black, white or otherwise. My son is super friendly, and I haven’t tried to make him afraid of every stranger he meets.
As I said earlier, my son has friends of every race, creed and color. There’s no chance he’ll grow up thinking, “All blacks are stupid, all Mexicans are lazy, all Muslims are homicidal maniacs, whatever.” All the kids he associates with are sane, intelligent, middle class, college-bound kids like himself. Ergo, he now assumes, “Regardless of ethnicity, most people are just like me.”
Will he still feel the same way when he enters the larger world? Hard to say. He’s never met any ghetto blacks, any Mexican gang bangers, any Islamic fanatics. He now believes everyone in the world can hold hands and sing “Kumbaya.” And that’s WONDERFUL. It just may not be permanent.
It has no effect. If you’re bigoted when you become a parent, you’ll be bigoted afterwards (not that you can’t change, but parenting is unlikely to cause the change). The reverse is also true.
Less bigoted. I’m too busy telling my kids to stop doing stupid shit to notice other people. I no longer have the openness of schedule to judge passersby. No time to mentally compile the List of Things I Don’t Like About You, Random Person when I’m in the middle of explaining that books are not for eating.
If you have several kids (we have eight) it is definitely less bigoted because you realize just how different people are, even when they come from the same gene pool and are brought up essentially the same. Imagine when they are far more different genetically (even if it is just superficial) and their upbringing is drastically different. Actually, many children creates a ton of tolerance, in my experience.
Why does it sound like you’re trying to create a narrative to fits most people? I think that most people follow the stereotypes they grew up with, or at the best, try and correct things that went wrong with their own childhood.
If you grew up privileged and had an insular childhood, then you are more likely to do that with your own kids. Considering that most people in America, didn’t grow up this way, I don’t think that most people parent in the way you are describing.
