Helen Palmer Geisel was attending a dinner party hosted by the Johnstons. As the host hugged her, she turned to him and exclaimed, “You don’t know how I needed that!”.

He had suspected her remark was in relation to the increased workload at Beginner Books, a publishing company that she co-founded with her husband, Ted Geisel. Or perhaps, he wondered, there was a more sinister reason. Perhaps her remark was a cry for help, a sign of her increasing loneliness and unhappiness after an almost 40-year marriage that was bound by obligation, rather than love.

Two days later, the Geisels’ longtime housekeeper stumbled upon Helen’s dead body in the bedroom of their La Jolla residence.

A prescription bottle that originally contained one thousand capsules, was now filled with just seven hundred and six. A letter, directed to her husband, was found near her lifeless body. “I didn’t know whether to kill myself, burn the house down, or just go away and get lost,” it read. The morning after, members of their inner circle gathered around the house to comfort the new widower.

Their neighbor and friend, Audrey Stone Dimond, had placed herself in front of the window at the Geisels’ ocean-front property and affixed her gaze into the blurred horizon—perhaps ridden with guilt that their affair, not yet exposed—had contributed to Helen’s untimely demise. Or perhaps she was anticipating the agony that would accompany the accusations of moral corruption that were sure to follow; despite everything, she still loved the man and wanted to be with him.

In less than a year, Dimond divorced her husband, sent her children away to boarding school, and did indeed fulfill her utmost desire—Ted Geisel and Audrey Dimond were married.

The suicide letter that Helen wrote for Ted had been signed off with their secret code. A make-believe law firm named “Grimalkin, Drouberhannus, Knalbner, and Fepp.” If such a playful and rhythmic bouncing of words sounds familiar, it’s most likely childhood nostalgia resurfacing. Helen was the uncredited and largely unknown writer responsible for nurturing the creation of one of the most influential authors and artists of the 20th century.

To the world, he’s an American icon, but to countless children all over the world, he’s better known simply as “Dr. Seuss.”

A published author herself, she was once widely regarded as his “chief editor, chief critic, business manager and wife.” For interviewers who had an exclusive with Dr. Seuss, their go-to question is why a famous (and married) children’s book author doesn’t have any of his own.

“You have ‘em, I’ll amuse ‘em,” he quipped in interviews with The New Yorker and Los Angeles Times—an understandably evasive answer to a perhaps overly personal question.

But behind closed doors, in particular in a conversation he had with his niece, Margaretha “Peggy” Dahmen Owens, he dropped the decades-long façade and revealed, “It was not that we didn’t want to have children. That wasn’t it.” In The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, the entire book was dedicated to a seven-and-a-half year-old named Chrysanthemum-Pearl.

In an interview with Robert Cahn for The Saturday Evening Post, Ted explained he created an imaginary daughter as a comfort to his wife. This came in particularly handy for after-dinner conversations at their house, when the guests commenced their braggart statements pertaining to their offspring or grandchildren. He would proudly declare that Chrysanthemum-Pearl could “whip up the most delicious oyster stew with chocolate frosting and flaming Roman candles!” and “carry one thousand stitches on one needle while making long red underdrawers for her Uncle Terwilliger!”

For years the name of Chrysanthemum-Pearl had appeared on the Geisel Christmas cards, but then so had Norval, Wally, Wickersham, Thnud and a dozen other fictional infant-like characters. In a conversation between close family members, it was revealed that in the fourth year of their marriage, Helen had been hospitalized in New York due to worsening abdominal pain. The doctors couldn’t diagnose the underlying cause and thus made the swift decision to remove her ovaries, rendering her incapable of ever having her own children; she was thirty-three years old.

Peggy Owen’s son—named Ted after her famous uncle—recently shared his mother’s favorite photograph of Helen with me. Her deep chestnut brown hair is delicately curled in bunches, bordering her warm, softly featured canvas. Her pale blue eyes offer an agreeable gaze, flanked by an authentic, radiant, all-teeth-showing smile—the sweetness intensified by the red hue of her lipstick. To say that Helen was like a mother to Peggy is an understatement.

Peggy’s own biological mother had died when she was only seventeen years old, and the Geisels had welcomed her into their home when she first moved to California. Two years before Helen’s death, Dr. Seuss had dedicated the book, I Had Trouble Getting To Solla Sollew, to her with the inscription, “For Margaretha Dahmen Owens, with love and thanks,” as a token of appreciation for her staying with them while his wife was ill. Helen had struggled for more than a decade with partial paralysis fromGuillain-Barre syndrome, a rare autoimmune disorder where the immune system attacks your healthy cells, which leads to weakness, numbness and tingling.

Two years before Helen’s death, he wrote Peggy, “. . . Yesterday Helen was pretty depressed, but today she’s got her sense of humor back. Besides two baths, she today started Occupational Therapy . . .  starting with lessons on how to dial telephones, unbutton buttons, brush teeth, comb hair, and a first stab at writing.” He solemnly continued,

“Helen sends her love and wants to thank Al for loaning you to us. And so do I. I don’t know how I would have got thru the past two weeks without you. And I can think of no one I have ever met that I would rather have been with during this period. You really took care of everything (including my spirits) . . . and when you left, you left me better organized than I have been since the Spanish American War. Someday I’ll do something for you.”

Before her health had deteriorated, Helen was a talented writer and businesswoman. She graduated from Wellesley College with honors in 1920 and thrived in an environment where the curriculum was focused on languages, literature, and even economics. After graduation, she enrolled in Oxford University, an institution that awarded women degrees for the first time only four years prior to her arrival. Unbeknownst to either of them, Ted Geisel was to also attend Oxford after he graduated from Dartmouth.

In 1925, a young American girl sitting behind a doodling Ted peered over his shoulder and was surprised to see how little he was paying attention to the professor. After being in several lectures with this student, she concluded that he always just seemed to be immersed in his own little world.

A year earlier, she had arrived at Oxford with her widowed mother. Standing at five foot three inches, Helen Marion Palmer, Ted recalls Helen possessing a “certain grace” that was distinctly unique to the other women at Oxford. One day, as she watched Ted illustrate John Milton’s Paradise Lost, she insisted he was on the wrong career path. “What you really want to do is draw”, she said. Her judgment solidified by glancing at another one of his pages, “That’s a very fine flying cow!” University of Cincinnati graduate, Joseph Sagmaster, was also attending Oxford and had introduced the pair having known the both of them personally.

Years later, Ted Geisel would dedicate the book Yertle the Tertle to his friend; legend goes that this honor was perhaps bestowed upon Sagmaster because he introduced Geisel to Helen back at Oxford. Sagmaster himself said this was, “the happiest inspiration that he had ever had.” Their swift romance had all the trappings of Ted’s impulsive nature, with a sharp dash reminiscent of an old Hollywood film. After racing back to Oxford before curfew, Ted proposed to Helen in a roadside ditch after he had taken too wide of a turn on their two-horsepower motorcycle and had accidentally toppled them over.

“So, we became engaged,” Ted said, but for a time it was their secret. Geisel granted his first Saturday Evening Post interview with Robert Cahn, revealing why he became Dr. Seuss, the simple reason he draws the way he does, and the undeniable effect his wife, Helen, has had on his career. Two years ago, a republished article from 1957 had appeared, in which Cahn wrote how the famous author “depends at all times on the level headedness of his wife, Helen” to pull him out of predicaments where his impulse has inevitably led him. Separately, Ted’s sister Marnie had always talked of how Helen had been “a great help to him in his work”.

Around the beginning of 1957, Ted had trouble finishing his Christmas-themed book.

The whimsical tale had featured the “bad old Grinch” who “would try to stop Christmas from coming to Who-Ville.”

In a bid to protest commercialization, the Grinch plotted the sinister mission in destroying any gifts, ornaments, trees and fixings that the Whos had planned for their beloved annual holiday. Then arrived the stumbling block. He wondered how he could wrap it up without injecting a pathetically sentimental ending.

“Helen, Helen, where are you?” shouted Ted from his secluded den into the living room. He planted a sketch and a verse into her lap and continued, “How do you like this?” She shook her head and he was distraught. “This isn’t it. And besides, you’ve got the Papa Who too big. Now he looks like a bug.” Ted rebutted, “Well, they are bugs” to which Helen added, “They are not bugs. Those Whos are just small people.”

Later that fall, How The Grinch Stole Christmas was published.

Seventeen years earlier, he had struggled with another book, Horton Hatches The Egg. At the time, the Geisels were living on Park Avenue in New York City. As Germany began to occupy France, progress on the book was immediately put on hold. Instead, Ted began sketching brutal images of Adolf Hitler, and the benign elephant affectionately named Horton, was momentarily consigned to oblivion. The sudden priority shift didn’t seem to bother Ted, who was quoted as saying, “I didn’t know how to end the book anyway, so I began drawing savage cartoons.” He continued, “I had no great causes or interest in social issues until Hitler.” The conception had originated from an earlier sketch that Geisel had drawn which superimposed an elephant over the branches of a small tree.

He then spent countless days trying to figure out how Horton could have entangled himself in such a way. At that point, Helen swooped in with her creative wit and began brainstorming ways to bring Horton down. In Ted’s words, her pivotal contribution was in the climactic lines that follow the hatching of the egg on which Horton sat on for 51 weeks. Then, suddenly, in an epiphany-like state, Helen and Ted cheered, and cheered and cheered some more.

“My goodness! My gracious!” they shouted. “MY WORD! It’s something brand new! IT’S AN ELEPHANT-BIRD!” Ted claimed his wife is a fiend for a story line and that every idea and every line is worked and reworked until the two of them are happy, coiling into a tight bind their decades-long literary partnership and elevating her contribution as being paramount to everything he’d ever published at that point (14 books in total, including, And To Think I Saw It On Mulberry Street, The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, Thidwick The Big Hearted Moose, If I Ran The Zoo, Horton Hears A Who! and The Cat In The Hat). In 1959, Helen once told interviewer Peter Bunzel that “Ted doesn’t sit down and write for children. He writes to amuse himself. Luckily what amuses him also amuses them.”

Her husband agreed and also remarked at his own disbelief surrounding the conclusion, especially considering the absence of forethought during the writing process. “Ninety percent of failures in children’s books come from writing to preconceptions of what kids like. When I’m writing a book, I do it to please Helen and me. But when it finally comes out, I take one look and think, ‘Oh, my God!’” As with most successful writers, Ted was eventually approached by Hollywood. For first-time screenwriters Helen and Ted Geisel, their synergistic collaboration had materialized into an original screenplay titled Design for Death, which chronicled the events leading to Pearl Harbor. It went on to win the 1947 Academy Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary.

However, despite their well-deserved high-caliber Hollywood accolade that many spend years trying to obtain, they were driven away by “disillusionment with the film industry” and instead proceeded to make The Tower in La Jolla their permanent home.

The Cat In The Hat was published through the company they co-founded with Phyllis Cerf at Beginner Books (an imprint of Random House). Helen had, perhaps in an act of defiant independence, used her maiden name to publish numerous titles under the Beginner Book banner over the years, including A Fish Out Of Water, I Was Kissed By A Seal At the Zoo, Do You Know What I’m Going To Do Next Saturday? and Why I Built The Boogle House.

During her tenure, she had displayed her natural business acumen by heading up as Vice President at Beginner Books until her sudden death in 1967. Harry Crosby is a 96-year-old award-winning author, historian, and La Jolla resident whose parents knew the Geisels. In addition, he had spent some time on the board of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego with Helen. “She was a wonderful woman,” he told me. “I mean, really, she was very intelligent, and she was very generous and polite.”

In the background of the phone call, Harry’s wife can be heard nudging him to add that there has been, “nothing written to show how important she had been in getting her husband into all of those positions and getting his stuff accepted.” He continued, “he became as well-known as he was, certainly in large part, because of her assistance.”

“Dear Ted, What has happened to us? I don’t know. I feel myself in a spiral, going down down down, into a black hole from which there is no escape, no brightness. And loud in my ears from every side I hear, ‘failure, failure, failure…’ I love you so much…I am too old and enmeshed in everything you do and are, that I cannot conceive of life without you . . . My going will leave quite a rumor, but you can say I was overworked and overwrought. Your reputation with your friends and fans will not be harmed . . . Sometimes, think of the fun we had all thru the years . . . “

Her unconditional love and devotion to her husband was palpably apparent in her written suggestion to falsify reasons behind her death. Her concern—even at the edge of suicide—was to protect his wholesome image to friends, family, and most importantly, the millions of readers all over the world who have come to know and love the paradoxically elusive and magnetic Dr. Seuss. Most newspaper clippings from the date of her death chose to omit the details surrounding her suicide—The New York Times, from an article dating October 24, 1967, noted that “she died in her sleep.” It wasn’t until years later that the truth surrounding the circumstances surfaced and family members—including Ted’s former mistress and second wife Audrey Geisel—began to confirm it. Carol Olten, historian at the La Jolla Historic Society remarked to me, “suicide was a taboo subject back then.”

Nowadays, when accomplished authors, fashion designers, artists or other public figures exit the world through an act of suicide, their namesake artifacts inherently carry a heavier weight of fleeting significance, arguably even more so than when they had been alive. The day after Alexander McQueen’s death, retailers reported a 1400% increase in sales. Similarly, sales had increased by 600% the day after Kate Spade’s suicide was announced. In an over-simplified and economic sense, it’s a practical display of supply and demand. Years after Sylvia Plath’s death, scholars are still dedicating themselves to her work in order to dissect and apply speculative theories on the beloved author. In 2013, The Smithsonian reported, “…cultural fascination with her continues to burn brightly despite—or perhaps because of—her premature departure from this world.”

Perhaps the posthumous and rapid consumption of these works represents a greater human condition: that we, despite modern society favoring atomization and individualization, have an embedded desire to commemorate a person or a group of people who symbolizes a positive impact on the wider community, expressed through groundbreaking contributions in the arts, humanities or sciences. Conversely, it can be safely said that most, if not all humans, have an intent to leave a similar mark when our inevitable mortality arrives.

When I asked a long-time La Jolla resident and bookstore owner, Laurence McGilvery, on whether or not he had any memories of Helen Palmer Geisel, he told me over the phone that she had the most “seductive gaze he’d ever encountered.” The comment caught me off guard and I was confused—the description he gave was inconsistent to other accounts I had stumbled upon at that point. I asked him if I could continue this conversation over e-mail considering my Australian accent can be a little incoherent at times. Over e-mail, he quickly corrected himself, “The first Mrs. Geisel! I was remembering the second. It was Audrey who looked up at me on our first and only meeting with the most seductive gaze I ever had encountered.”

He doesn’t recall ever meeting Helen, although her husband, Ted, frequently visited his bookstore. Thirty years after Helen’s death, Audrey Geisel (who has recently passed away) had given University of San Diego, California a multi-million-dollar donation that assisted in the library’s extensive renovations. As a token of their appreciation, the library—easily one of the most recognizable buildings in San Diego thanks in part to its unique Brutalist architectural design—was renamed after her and her second husband, Ted Geisel. With an additional lump sum gift in 2015 came a new café inside the library named, “Audrey’s.”

Five miles south, at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, lies a small library embedded in its white-walled corridors and in plain black text it reads, “Helen Palmer Geisel Library.” Much like her own demeanor, the space is unassuming, subdued and notably humble. A lack of online search results questioned its existence, but the Communications and Marketing Manager at the Museum had affirmed that there was indeed a small library dedicated to her. No other information could be found pertaining to the library’s namesake. Helen’s work and her contributions to the creation of Dr. Seuss couldn’t be efficiently exploited through marketing campaigns after her death.

Not only was Helen’s death swept under the rug, but that feat could have only been made possible if she publicly claimed title to his revolutionary success, which she never did. Years earlier, with a keen observation over a young Ted Geisel, she nurtured and fostered a man with an undeniable talent that was yet unbeknownst to anyone else but her.

When evidence of his potential came to light to the young married couple, she had effectively made her life legacy about choice, sacrifice and unconditional love. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the choice to stand by her husband’s career and fade into the background was not an easy one.

Dr. Seuss Enterprises has been successfully running their multi-million-dollar global portfolio almost 30 years after the beloved author’s death, thanks in part to his second wife, Audrey Geisel, who passed away this year. She was known for her stringent control of licensing partnerships and fierce protection over their intellectual property. Her unrelenting clutch of some of Ted and Helen’s work—coupled with expertly tailored marketing and public relation campaigns—assisted in a generally accepted wholesome and sunny legacy of the famous children’s book author. It’s only in recent years that his sordid minstrel past has unsurfaced and Geisel’s work has come under fire for racist cartoon depictions.

But even with his arguably sordid personal life and problematic societal stances, his legend and life remain largely unsullied and the Dr. Seuss juggernaut rolls along, celebrated year after year, bookshelf by bookshelf. And that’s in no small part to the sacrifices of Helen Palmer Geisel; her contributions have affected the lives of millions of people all over the world, and have sprawled across three generations.

Their niece, Peggy, called her death “her last and greatest gift to him.”

I used to go on long walks when I was pregnant. I’d lace up my snow boots and zip my barely-fitting winter coat over my belly and just walk for hours around the neighborhood. I loved it. I loved how I waddled, my hips expanding to accommodate the baby’s drop. I loved how my stomach strained the zipper, pocket seams bursting, as if even my clothes were excited with anticipation about my daughter’s arrival. I loved how strangers smiled and asked when I was due and told me, “Congratulations!”

I loved being a pregnant person.

It felt easy to be a “good” pregnant person. Yes, the details were hard – a screenshot of safe fish to eat lived on my phone, consulted before every sushi order that always ended in California rolls anyway; I sat on an inflatable birthing ball at work to try to encourage the baby to go into proper head-down position; I didn’t sleep on my back; I learned infant CPR; we squirreled away money for future childcare.

But overall, I was lucky. For me, moving through the world as a pregnant woman was simple. I felt so sure of my choices, so sure I was doing it right. It was the first time in my whole life I felt truly at home with my identity, that I wholly embodied within what was being projected outwardly. It was the first time I felt confident in myself.

Motherhood is not like that. Motherhood has shaken my confidence to the core, chiseled away my decision-making skills, left me puddled and wobbly. Things that had once seemed stupidly obvious stop me in my tracks. I spend a ridiculous amount of time standing in the grocery store, paralyzed at the thought of choosing the wrong baby water. I agonize over what is the proper type of onesie to put her in (Fleece? Cotton? Flannel?). Old episodes of ER play in the background as she cluster feeds and my mind hums with screen time recommendations.

Everything, every choice, every decision, every moment, is heavy with consequence.

My daughter sleeps in her bassinet next to me. I lay in bed, having checked to make sure she’s breathing. Once. Twice. Three times already. I close my eyes, satisfied.

She shifts.

Don’t do it, I reprimand myself in my head. She’s fine. Don’t do it. She just moved a little. Don’t do it. Embarrassingly, she has not one but two life-detecting monitors (a motion sensor pad under her mattress that came with the video monitor, and a Snuza clipped on her diaper that is supposed to beep should she stop breathing.) Don’t do it. Neither is going off. Don’t do it. She’s fine, she’s fine, she’s fine…

I lift my head, scootch to the side of the bed, peer over. I check on her. I watch her diaphragm move up and down. I make sure her nose and mouth are clear of anything that has the minuscule chance of blocking her airway (the sleeve of her onesie positioned in a one in a million chance in the throes of her sleep, the fitted sheet somehow coming up from the secure hugging of the mattress corner and tangled over her face in her tossing…) She is fine. I pull the covers up, I close my eyes, I wait for sleep.

She shifts again.

Motherhood has shaken my confidence to the core, chiseled away my decision-making skills, left me puddled and wobbly.
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I don’t want to be this mother. Double-checking, triple-checking that the car seat is clicked in properly (did I hear two clicks? I don’t know. Do it again). Nerves frayed after a bad night of sleep (why did I rock her to sleep, she will never learn to sleep on her own, I’ve ruined her sleep habits forever and committed my husband and me to a lifetime of interrupted nights, 2 a.m. wake ups). Thoughts from long ago, news stories of dangers lurking in every corner fill my head (infants accidentally left in hot cars, dead after their first day at daycare, stabbed by the nanny…).

I’m sorry, I didn’t get it, I want to say to the mothers of eons past. I used to think, “Why is it so hard? Why are you so worried? If your baby is hungry, she will eat. Tired, she will sleep. What are you fretting, obsessing, agonizing about?” I’m sorry I didn’t understand until now.

The love for my daughter took time to come in. We don’t talk about that much, but maybe we should, the assurance offered to new moms that their breast milk may take time to come alongside a “don’t worry, that love everyone talks about, it will come too.” It snuck up on me, weeks after she arrived, but when it came it was enough to stop the world. I would lay in bed after a middle of the night feeding and listen to her shallow breaths, listen to my husband’s deep slumber beside me, everyone at peace, and I would think if the world had to end, please God let it be now because there would never be anything more perfect than this moment.

I’m sorry, I didn’t understand how your child is everything and nothing all at once. Like Sandra Cisneros describes in her short story Eleven, how when you’re eleven you’re not just eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. My daughter is everything right now in the moment, but she is also nothing but potential, events yet experienced, lessons yet learned, a life yet lived.

It’s here where the anxiety nestles itself, feeds off itself, this crux of past and future.

The heat rattles to life and fills my New York City apartment with an oppressive warmth. Is she too hot in her swaddle? “Cold babies cry, hot babies die.” Pinterest notifications illuminate my phone during nighttime feedings, alerting me to pins I might like: “5 Hidden SIDS Risks” and “Newborn Safety Checklist.” Clickbait promising to make me a better mother lures me in.

“It’s because you click on them,” my husband says as I show him the ad for the weighted sleep sack that promises three more hours of sleep in just three nights, the gripe water that cures colic and stops crying, the teas and bars and cookies that will boost my dwindling supply of milk. “It’s targeting you because it wants you to buy things.”

But it doesn’t feel that way. I don’t feel targeted; I feel like I’m being sent clues to a puzzle. That writhing, wailing newborn you can’t figure out? We know how to fix it–here’s why your baby isn’t sleeping; here’s why your baby isn’t eating; here’s why your baby won’t stop crying, here’s what you’re doing wrong. You’re doing it wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

I feel like a good mom only when I’m not responsible for her. When she is with Grandma or Dad I wash and change her crib sheets. I scrub her clothes free of spit-up stains. I sanitize her bottles and pacifiers. I organize her toys. I buy more formula. I tick off all the things she needs, stay on top of the concrete, hard details of keeping her alive and happy. But she always comes back, and with her the unknowns.

But are they unknowns, or are they just things I haven’t learned? How could I live with myself knowing the information was out there that could’ve saved us both and I was too lazy to click it? That the research existed but I was too tired to read and evaluate it thoroughly? That I was too overwhelmed, it was four in the morning, I’d been up half the night, I knew the recommendations of flat on her back in her own space but I just needed to sleep so I put her in the swing, in the bed, in my arms, as I rocked her, rocked her, rocked her, my eyes snapping open in panic after dozing off, dawn light teasing the corners of the window.

The model of motherhood is there, it’s right there, I shout in my own head. In millions of mothers doing it right, doing it better.

My daughter raised the stakes too high in a game I don’t have the constitution to play. Thoughts of being younger, begging and begging to watch a scary movie and then huddling by a nightlight, every night for weeks, both terrified and ashamed, in equal measure, of the fear I’d brought on myself.

You wanted this, prayed and pleaded and cried each month when one line appeared instead of two.

Now she’s here. You protect her. You keep her safe.

She would never exist again. This soul made of stardust. It would never form again.

It’s maddening, it’s exhausting, it feels viscerally unfair, being forced to exist like this: repeating the same mundane steps of caring for a newborn over and over, the numbing repetitiveness sliced sharp with the knowledge that if you don’t do the steps right, if you let your guard down for a moment, if you lose focus on the task at hand, if you take your eye off the ball…like the bright yellow posters in factories warning workers of the dangers on the assembly line that do nothing to break through the haze of monotony until an accident shocks everyone awake again.

We know how to fix it–here’s why your baby isn’t sleeping; here’s why your baby isn’t eating; here’s why your baby won’t stop crying, here’s what you’re doing wrong.
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My daughter grows. She reaches developmental milestones. At five months she scoots forward on her knees and elbows in a combat crawl and I lay out circus-colored safety mats to cushion the hardwood. At seven months, I turn around to see she’s pulled herself up on the side of her crib — that night we drop her mattress to the lowest setting. Now, at nine months, the mats have been replaced with carpet because she cruises along any furniture she can reach, legs shaking when she lets go to test her limits. She gobbles down the food we put on her highchair tray, bits of cheese and mashed banana and bread balled as small as my fingers can make it.

The old fears lessen their grip around my heart but instead settle like a cold in my bones, and are replaced with new fears that cause the blood to rush in my ears each time she stumbles while she learns to walk or chokes as she learns to eat. I doubt they’ll ever go away completely. This is parenting, I think, your breath always one moment away from being knocked out of you.  

A grape not cut small enough. A dresser not properly secured.

My mind remembers, listening to a news brief when I was so young I was standing on a chair to reach something in the kitchen cabinets. The grandmother had wanted to surprise her infant grandchild with a stuffed bunny for Easter. She put it in the crib next to the girl while she slept. The tape holding the wrapping paper somehow came unstuck, the paper somehow covered her mouth and nose in the night.

Everything would be nothing.

I raise my head, peak over the side of the crib. Check to make sure my daughter is still breathing.

DISCLAIMER: Never share or distribute scenes or movies involving child pornography of any sort. Distributing these scenes to raise awareness can cause further victimization of children and may have legal consequences. Report child pornography to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

My husband accidentally showed me child pornography.

It happened a couple of years ago, when we first started dating. We were in that “getting to know you” stage and would frequently choose our own favorite movies to show the other when we went on dates. My husband decided on Moonrise Kingdom, thinking it would be right up my alley since I love coming-of-age stories. I understand why: Moonrise Kingdom is a poignant, critically acclaimed, visually stunning movie that paints a very realistic portrayal of the complicated emotions children experience when they are in the process of exploring their own growing independence. I was captivated by Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola’s skillful storytelling, until the scene.

The two lead actors, Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward, were both twelve years old at the time of filming. I didn’t know this at the time. All I knew is that there were two children stripping down to their underwear on camera and French kissing each other. The young girl says that the boy “feels hard,” but that she likes it. The boy gropes the girl’s chest and the girl says she thinks they’re going to grow more.

I have post-traumatic stress disorder partly from childhood sexual assault. When I saw that scene for the first time, I felt like someone was sitting inside of my ribcage. I felt like I was suffocating under the weight of what I had just witnessed: two children being exploited in a public and permanent way. I sobbed so hard that we had to stop the movie.

“Anderson would have to get their parents’ permission, first,” my husband said. “He wouldn’t be able to do it without their consent.” My husband has always been incredibly sensitive and supportive toward my PTSD. He checks movies with me before we watch them to make sure they don’t have sexual content or nudity that might trigger a panic attack. When we decided to watch Moonrise Kingdom, he told me that I would have no problems watching it: since the main actors were children, the film contained no sex or nudity. I felt furious at my husband for showing me two children involved in a sexually exploitative scene. But beyond that, I couldn’t understand why he didn’t see anything wrong with it.

When I saw that scene for the first time, I felt like someone was sitting inside of my ribcage.
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Maricsa Evans, a licensed marriage and family therapist, explains that “Introducing children to sexualized behavior at an early age causes a lot of problems later on developmentally, emotionally, and mentally.” According to Evans, the children’s lack of ability to fully understand the situations they are being exposed to can lead to serious developmental problems, such as engaging in reckless sexual behaviors from a young age. “If they feel traumatized or violated from experiences like this, it can lead to dangerous behaviors such as drug addiction or emotional distress where they need to have mental health services,” Evans said. Later on, if the children become uncomfortable or feel that they were unable to truly consent, it can cause them to have a troubled or negative relationship with their own sexuality or even lead to disorders such as PTSD.

Considering that children are not able to consent to these scenes, their parents shouldn’t have the right to consent on their behalf. “It’s exploitation of your children,” Evans said. “That in itself is child pornography.”

Federal child pornography laws, as specified in 18 U.S.C. § 2258 (b), apply to “any parent, legal guardian, or person having custody or control of a minor who knowingly permits such minor to engage in, or to assist any other person to engage in, sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing any visual depiction of such conduct or for the purpose of transmitting a live visual depiction of such conduct.” Child pornography is defined as any visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct involving children under the age of eighteen. According to federal law, the scene in Moonrise Kingdom falls squarely under child pornography. Why, then, were no lawsuits filed over this movie?

Nobody Told Me My Son’s Camp Counselor Was Accused Of A Sex Offense
theestablishment.co

When it comes to pornography, many people still subscribe to Justice Potter Stewart’s statement, “I know it when I see it.” In the case of Moonrise Kingdom, people fail to question whether the film constitutes as child pornography simply because it seems so “artistic.” Anderson relies on his signature storybook cinematography to entice viewers to feel detached from reality. Due to the soft fairytale aesthetics in Moonrise Kingdom, people are reminded that it is just a movie—thus, “art” and not pornography. Furthermore, people rarely question the scene because the children are engaging in exploratory behavior. “There is a normal developmental curiosity with children when it comes to sex,” Evans said. However, this behavior is never something an adult should facilitate—especially not for a film.

People are now opening up the discussion of films that include child pornography after Netflix began streaming Diego Kaplan’s 2017 film Desire. Viewers were outraged by the opening scene of Desire, which features two girls under the age of ten playing with pillows while watching a cowboy movie. One of the girls, mimicking the cowboy riding on a horse, begins to masturbate on the pillow. She eventually reaches orgasm. After Netflix’s choice to stream the film sparked such controversy, Kaplan released a statement defending the scene:

The girls never understood what they were doing, they were just copying what they were seeing on the screen. No adult interacted with the girls, other than the child acting coach. Everything was done under the careful surveillance of the girls’ mothers.

This defense misses the point entirely. If the children are too young to understand what they are doing, they are too young to consent to these behaviors. “Children involved in these situations might start questioning themselves: ‘What does that mean? What does that mean about me?’” Evans said. “A lot of doubt and questioning about themselves is going to happen, which is why certain things shouldn’t be introduced to kids too early in their life. It can impact their ability to trust their parents later on if they feel like their parents made the wrong calls protecting them, they’ll have a hard time trusting anyone.” This situation can be damaging to the young actress if she grows up and feels violated by what she was asked to do for the film.

In the case of Moonrise Kingdom, people fail to question whether the film constitutes as child pornography simply because it seems so artistic.
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These consequences become even more disturbing when I considered what Anderson was actually trying to accomplish with the kissing scene in Moonrise Kingdom. Gilman stated that in the month before filming began, Wes Anderson wanted him and Hayward to exchange letters in the style of the “Dear Sam”/”Dear Suzy” letters. He also said that they did not rehearse the kissing scene beforehand. The scene was both of the actors’ first kiss and, as Gilman explained, “Wes wanted it to be authentic.” Hayward further noted, “Wes wanted it to be these two kids’ first kiss. So that’s how we did that.” Gilman also noted that, for the sake of their privacy, they were given a closed set for filming.

Closed sets are used for actors who are filming scenes that involve nudity or sexual activity that they might want a greater deal of privacy for. A child actor should not need a closed set because a child actor should never be put in the same position adult actors are in when they require closed sets.

It is clear from the beginning that Anderson wanted to foster a certain kind of relationship between the two children. Gilman stated that he e-mailed Hayward at first, but then Anderson decided that the actual act of writing letters was important to help the actors get in character. Anderson did not want the children to act out a scene of two characters’ first kisses: he wanted to create and capture a real sexual experience between these two children. And regardless of whether parents or filmmakers intended on pressuring these children, the pressure of this being a job can make it even more difficult for the children to feel comfortable about the decisions their parents made for them.

How, then, can filmmakers responsibly tell coming-of-age stories? The rules are pretty simple. “Filmmakers have a moral and ethical responsibility to protect children from scenes involving touching, nakedness, and implications of sexuality,” Evans said. “I feel they have a higher call to prevent this type of thing from happening. Children should never be in real sexual situations for these movies.” Parents have an even greater responsibility to protect their children by not consenting on behalf of them for scenes that can be developmentally damaging.

“Parents should not let anything slightly related to a sexual encounter guide them to do anything but protect their children and others that are out there,” Evans said. “If no one else, your own children.”

Even In Art, ‘Free Speech’ Can’t Override Consent
theestablishment.co

However, there are ways of telling stories about childhood sexuality without harming children. Gregg Araki’s film Mysterious Skin tells the coming-of-age story of two boys, one of whom is molested as a child and becomes a sex worker as he grows up. It’s a graphic, NC-17 rated film that has no issues depicting adult sexuality—but the filmmakers were careful to protect children when shooting scenes that had to imply child sexual abuse. In one scene, it is implied that an adult man is about to engage in sexual acts with a young boy. In order to accomplish this, the scene relies on close-ups of the actors faces that imply physical contact that is never actually depicted. This technique approximates intimacy between the actors without involving any actual interactions between them. By approaching the scene this way, the filmmakers ensured that they would not have to compromise their artistic expression when treating the scene—and the young actor—with the sensitivity they deserve.

Recent movies Love, Simon and Edge of Seventeen also create beautiful coming-of-age stories without featuring scenes of sexuality. The use of clever dialogue and imagery capture the relatable conflicts growing up. Teens in these movies experience the excitement and awkwardness of growing up, and struggle with trying to embrace an adult world they aren’t quite ready for while learning how to assert their independence and autonomy. Much of the beauty in these movies lies in the dialogue, which expresses the teens unique experiences with love, fear, and confusion in ways that are raw and nuanced.  

Dialogue, imagery, and point-of-view narration are just three tools that filmmakers can use to create poignant and realistic coming-of-age stories. Children should never have to be in legitimate sexual situations on camera. “It’s child pornography,” Evans stated. “No one should be able to consent to children doing sexual acts on camera.”

The Est. collected open letters on Sessions, familial separation and the current administration’s response to asylum seekers and immigrants — good grief our collective heart! — to publish on a dedicated landing page as a kind of evolving pastiche of opinions and concerns, anger and empathy. Resistance is vital.

Dear Mothers,

Not mine.

My mother was allowed in the country without questions — an infant in her arms. My mother was given a green card and told to go forth and prosper in the American Dream. She knew only elementary English.

My mother got a job quickly. She stayed with the same company for decades and rose through the ranks. Bootstraps. My mother had a salary; not extravagant, but enough to take care of me.

My mother became a citizen 17 years after she stepped onto American soil — never once afraid of deportation in the interim. My mother was naturalized and no one was excited but us. A quiet assumption: She was American. Like them.

A “good” immigrant with auburn hair and seafoam eyes. A model immigrant for posters hanging in U.S. Customs and Border Protection offices.

My mother is white.

I am brown.

Dear Anyone Who Is Listening
theestablishment.co

Brown like the mothers who are seized at U.S. borders. Mothers who cannot move so freely through the world for fear of having their children ripped from their arms as they await trial for crimes they did not commit. Brown like the mothers seeking asylum. Mothers who want the same safety for their children my mother provided me. The same chance afforded to my mother as she arrived in a new country. I am brown like the mothers in holding cells, wondering if their children will survive in internment camps.

My mother’s whiteness afforded me the safety to grow up in her arms, not a cage. My mother’s whiteness afforded me protection from a system that criminalizes mothers who look like me. I am often plagued by the idea that if I were my mother, trying to do what is best for my child, my story would not be so kind.

So, Dear Mothers:

You deserve safety.
You deserve respect.
You deserve humanity.

You deserve to live a life like my immigrant mother.

Mothers, I love you.

If you regularly spend time with kids and adolescents in the upper and middle grades, there’s a good chance you’ve recently heard them use this phrase: “That’s so racist!”

As a parent, I’ve overheard kids using the phrase at my child’s school and during her extracurricular activities. The claim takes a variety of forms, including, but not limited to: intentional misuse as a joke (Child A: “Go stand by the white door.” Child B: “That’s so racist!”); intentional misuse as a joke that reinforces a negative connotation of the word “black” (Child A: “Let’s not play on the blacktop.” Child B: “That’s so racist!”); and accidental misuse that shows misunderstanding of the concept of racism (Teacher: “What do you notice about the kids in this photo?” Student A: “They are all white.” Student B: “That’s so racist!”).

I reached out to several other parent allies who I thought might share my concern, and over half of them had either directly heard children using the retort, or had learned about it from their child.

Whether uttered by adults or children, misusing the word “racist” reduces its legitimacy and dehumanizes the people who suffer from its real effects. No matter how subconscious or innocent, it is a strategy which re-appropriates the word according to the terms of the racial group that has been uncomfortably confronted about its role in systems of oppression.

Misusing the word ‘racist’ reduces its legitimacy and dehumanizes the people who suffer from its real effects.
Click To Tweet

Although we may be tempted to shrug these words off as immaturity and nonsense, they reveal real attitudes about racism to which kids are being exposed at home and in popular culture. Our current political climate has emboldened skeptics of systemic racism to openly dismiss it with claims such as #AllLivesMatter and #NotAllWhitePeople. Joining this chorus of doubters, adults who have never experienced real racism may sarcastically label a comment or behavior as “racist” to mock what they perceive as oversensitivity from people of color (POC). Current events highlighting our political and racial divides, such as those involving Colin Kaepernick or Jemele Hill, offer ample opportunities for white adults to consciously or unconsciously share these attitudes with their children. Putting air quotes around the term, rolling eyes, or using a sarcastic tone are behaviors that send a strong message to kids about how they can talk about racism.

Even if you don’t personally engage in these behaviors, kids are picking it up from discussions between other adults in real life or via mass media — and this shouldn’t go unchecked. By any measure, an adult who is reluctant to clearly and effectively correct such careless and damaging behavior by children is complicit in perpetuating a host of dangerous ideas.

Taking A Colorblind Approach Only Normalizes Whiteness

Adults’ failure to correct misuse of the word “racist” teaches children that talking about race, particularly about whiteness, is wrong.

The last example shared above is the only one where the child is actually responding to a real race label being used by her classmate. Student B’s accusation implies that simply talking about or noticing race is a racist act. This colorblind approach to race is not only unrealistic, but ineffective in combating racism, as explained in volumes of contemporary social science research and summarized in the article “7 Reasons Why ‘Colorblindness’ Contributes to Racism Instead of Solves It.” Noticing race is natural, and it’s not the problem. The problem is our conscious and unconscious biases about various races, which show up in the way we use, or do not use, race labels. When children flinch at the term “white,” and call it racist, it shows their buy-in to the normalization of whiteness as a default identity that needn’t be labeled. Talking openly about whiteness creates discomfort for white children unaccustomed to their race being named, disrupting the assumption that white is synonymous with normal. The article “Why Talk About Whiteness?”presents a succinct explanation for why refusing to use white as a race label disempowers us from fighting racism altogether.

Joking About Racism Is A Micro-Aggression

Tolerating kids’ use of the word “racist” as a joke is also disempowering and damaging to the wellbeing of children who identify as people of color.

Children of color are already at risk for loneliness and isolation in situations where they are a racial minority, as explained in the brilliant piece “27 Things You Had To Deal With As The Only Black Kid In Your Class.” Because POC are often accused of misinterpreting situations where race-based micro-aggressions have occurred (such as a white person’s surprise about their academic ability or how articulate they are), they grow up learning to just tolerate these offensive behaviors. Children may not have the ability to explain why joking about racism feels like a microaggression, or they may just choose not to call it out because it reflects behavior to which they have become accustomed. Often, the negative consequences of calling out their peers would override any real benefits, so they remain silent. Children of color may even be the ones jokingly misusing the term “racist” as a method for inclusion, since adapting to systems of oppression can often feel less taxing than fighting them.

We Need To Talk About Racism In Education
theestablishment.co

The Effects Are Cumulative

Allowing children to casually and frequently misuse the word “racist” diminishes the focus and concentration of children of color, resulting in an unfair educational playing field.

Researchers have been able to identify and measure the cumulative effects of micro-aggressions, especially how they affect task performance and therefore the achievements of their targets. Countless studies show that exposing humans to negative stereotypes about their group before asking them to complete a task results in measurable declines in performance. These findings are widely cited when explaining differential math and science outcomes for girls versus boys. Similarly, when a child of color who experiences real racism is constantly forced to dedicate emotional and cognitive energy to processing comments from white peers about racism, it reduces the energy they can expend on the task at hand. Reacting to these daily triggers and seemingly small behaviors adds up over time to disproportionately impact children of color in academic settings.

Many readers will balk at what appears to be over-sensitivity about this issue, and some will retort that policing the word “racist” is just another catalyst for a generation of snowflakes. If this describes your reaction, my guess is that you are white or white passing. It’s worth asking yourself if your racial privilege includes the luxury of thinking this just doesn’t matter.

Adults in the racial majority might be uncomfortable with this call to action because they never agreed to be complicit in systemic racism and they don’t fully understand their role in dismantling it. Here are some ideas to start with:

1. Commit to calling out race-based micro-aggressions, such as misuse of the term “racist,” as a crucial part of your role as a parent or teacher shaping the minds of the next generation.
2. Educate yourself. If you’re uncomfortable and inexperienced in this territory, kids can tell. Start by reading the short article ”How to Talk to your Kids about Race: A Guide for Parents” or taking a webinar such as“Let’s Talk! Discussing Race, Racism and Other Difficult Topics With Students.”
3. Be prepared. Memorize a phrase you can use so you don’t have to come up with one on the fly, such as “Hey (child’s name), when I hear the way you use the word ‘racist’ it makes me worried that you may not understand what it means. Can we talk more about it?” Use your script as an entry point for a brief age-appropriate discussion about how racism is dependent upon power, and why it’s not okay to joke about it. To help develop your own understanding, grab a copy of the book Is Everyone Really Equal?
4. Get decision-makers on board. Do some research and then contact your principal about in-depth training for teachers at your school from organizations such as Crossroads and Teaching Tolerance. Seek funding from the district or other sources and commit to playing an active role in making it happen.
5. Develop empathy. If you are a member of the racial majority, read up on the lived experience of those who find themselves in the position of being a racial minority in the classroom. The book Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In the Cafeteria? is a great place to start.
6. Share this information. If you are a white parent trying to figure out your place in racial justice, consider joining Showing Up for Racial Justice Families to learn more about how you can spread information effectively within your own racial peer group.

Given our sordid past when it comes to showing up for people of color, folks with racial privilege must embrace our collective responsibility and get on board with working to eliminate oppressive language of any kind, including misuse of the word “racist” on school grounds and at home. Ignoring or excusing children’s casual, inaccurate, and excessive use of the term demonstrates lack of bravery and accountability, making us the exact kind of bystanders that anti-bullying curriculum warns against. Disrupting this behavior is part of our job as the role models and mentors of young people, especially for those of us with racial privilege and power. Now let’s get to work.

Kids’ Misuse Of The Term ‘Racist’ Is Dangerous —So Let’s Disrupt It

An adult who is reluctant to clearly and effectively correct such careless and damaging behavior by children is complicit.

flickr/Texas.713

I f you regularly spend time with kids and adolescents in the upper and middle grades, there’s a good chance you’ve recently heard them use this phrase: “That’s so racist!”

As a parent, I’ve overheard kids using the phrase at my child’s school and during her extracurricular activities. The claim takes a variety of forms, including, but not limited to: intentional misuse as a joke (Child A: “Go stand by the white door.” Child B: “That’s so racist!”); intentional misuse as a joke that reinforces a negative connotation of the word “black” (Child A: “Let’s not play on the blacktop.” Child B: “That’s so racist!”); and accidental misuse that shows misunderstanding of the concept of racism (Teacher: “What do you notice about the kids in this photo?” Student A: “They are all white.” Student B: “That’s so racist!”).

I reached out to several other parent allies who I thought might share my concern, and over half of them had either directly heard children using the retort, or had learned about it from their child.

Whether uttered by adults or children, misusing the word “racist” reduces its legitimacy and dehumanizes the people who suffer from its real effects. No matter how subconscious or innocent, it is a strategy which re-appropriates the word according to the terms of the racial group that has been uncomfortably confronted about its role in systems of oppression.

Misusing the word ‘racist’ reduces its legitimacy and dehumanizes the people who suffer from its real effects.

Although we may be tempted to shrug these words off as immaturity and nonsense, they reveal real attitudes about racism to which kids are being exposed at home and in popular culture. Our current political climate has emboldened skeptics of systemic racism to openly dismiss it with claims such as #AllLivesMatter and #NotAllWhitePeople. Joining this chorus of doubters, adults who have never experienced real racism may sarcastically label a comment or behavior as “racist” to mock what they perceive as oversensitivity from people of color (POC). Current events highlighting our political and racial divides, such as those involving Colin Kaepernick or Jemele Hill, offer ample opportunities for white adults to consciously or unconsciously share these attitudes with their children. Putting air quotes around the term, rolling eyes, or using a sarcastic tone are behaviors that send a strong message to kids about how they can talk about racism.

Even if you don’t personally engage in these behaviors, kids are picking it up from discussions between other adults in real life or via mass media — and this shouldn’t go unchecked. By any measure, an adult who is reluctant to clearly and effectively correct such careless and damaging behavior by children is complicit in perpetuating a host of dangerous ideas.

Taking A Colorblind Approach Only Normalizes Whiteness

Adults’ failure to correct misuse of the word “racist” teaches children that talking about race, particularly about whiteness, is wrong.

The last example shared above is the only one where the child is actually responding to a real race label being used by her classmate. Student B’s accusation implies that simply talking about or noticing race is a racist act. This colorblind approach to race is not only unrealistic, but ineffective in combating racism, as explained in volumes of contemporary social science research and summarized in the article “7 Reasons Why ‘Colorblindness’ Contributes to Racism Instead of Solves It.” Noticing race is natural, and it’s not the problem. The problem is our conscious and unconscious biases about various races, which show up in the way we use, or do not use, race labels. When children flinch at the term “white,” and call it racist, it shows their buy-in to the normalization of whiteness as a default identity that needn’t be labeled. Talking openly about whiteness creates discomfort for white children unaccustomed to their race being named, disrupting the assumption that white is synonymous with normal. The article “Why Talk About Whiteness?” presents a succinct explanation for why refusing to use white as a race label disempowers us from fighting racism altogether.

Joking About Racism Is A Micro-Aggression

Tolerating kids’ use of the word “racist” as a joke is also disempowering and damaging to the wellbeing of children who identify as people of color.

Children of color are already at risk for loneliness and isolation in situations where they are a racial minority, as explained in the brilliant piece “27 Things You Had To Deal With As The Only Black Kid In Your Class.” Because POC are often accused of misinterpreting situations where race-based micro-aggressions have occurred (such as a white person’s surprise about their academic ability or how articulate they are), they grow up learning to just tolerate these offensive behaviors. Children may not have the ability to explain why joking about racism feels like a microaggression, or they may just choose not to call it out because it reflects behavior to which they have become accustomed. Often, the negative consequences of calling out their peers would override any real benefits, so they remain silent. Children of color may even be the ones jokingly misusing the term “racist” as a method for inclusion, since adapting to systems of oppression can often feel less taxing than fighting them.

We Need To Talk About Racism In Education

The Effects Are Cumulative

Allowing children to casually and frequently misuse the word “racist” diminishes the focus and concentration of children of color, resulting in an unfair educational playing field.

Researchers have been able to identify and measure the cumulative effects of micro-aggressions, especially how they affect task performance and therefore the achievements of their targets. Countless studies show that exposing humans to negative stereotypes about their group before asking them to complete a task results in measurable declines in performance. These findings are widely cited when explaining differential math and science outcomes for girls versus boys. Similarly, when a child of color who experiences real racism is constantly forced to dedicate emotional and cognitive energy to processing comments from white peers about racism, it reduces the energy they can expend on the task at hand. Reacting to these daily triggers and seemingly small behaviors adds up over time to disproportionately impact children of color in academic settings.

Many readers will balk at what appears to be over-sensitivity about this issue, and some will retort that policing the word “racist” is just another catalyst for a generation of snowflakes. If this describes your reaction, my guess is that you are white or white passing. It’s worth asking yourself if your racial privilege includes the luxury of thinking this just doesn’t matter.

Adults in the racial majority might be uncomfortable with this call to action because they never agreed to be complicit in systemic racism and they don’t fully understand their role in dismantling it. Here are some ideas to start with:

1. Commit to calling out race-based micro-aggressions, such as misuse of the term “racist,” as a crucial part of your role as a parent or teacher shaping the minds of the next generation.
2. Educate yourself. If you’re uncomfortable and inexperienced in this territory, kids can tell. Start by reading the short article ”How to Talk to your Kids about Race: A Guide for Parents” or taking a webinar such as “Let’s Talk! Discussing Race, Racism and Other Difficult Topics With Students.”
3. Be prepared. Memorize a phrase you can use so you don’t have to come up with one on the fly, such as “Hey (child’s name), when I hear the way you use the word ‘racist’ it makes me worried that you may not understand what it means. Can we talk more about it?” Use your script as an entry point for a brief age-appropriate discussion about how racism is dependent upon power, and why it’s not okay to joke about it. To help develop your own understanding, grab a copy of the book Is Everyone Really Equal?
4. Get decision-makers on board. Do some research and then contact your principal about in-depth training for teachers at your school from organizations such as Crossroads and Teaching Tolerance. Seek funding from the district or other sources and commit to playing an active role in making it happen.
5. Develop empathy. If you are a member of the racial majority, read up on the lived experience of those who find themselves in the position of being a racial minority in the classroom. The book Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In the Cafeteria? is a great place to start.
6. Share this information. If you are a white parent trying to figure out your place in racial justice, consider joining Showing Up for Racial Justice Families to learn more about how you can spread information effectively within your own racial peer group.

Given our sordid past when it comes to showing up for people of color, folks with racial privilege must embrace our collective responsibility and get on board with working to eliminate oppressive language of any kind, including misuse of the word “racist” on school grounds and at home. Ignoring or excusing children’s casual, inaccurate, and excessive use of the term demonstrates lack of bravery and accountability, making us the exact kind of bystanders that anti-bullying curriculum warns against. Disrupting this behavior is part of our job as the role models and mentors of young people, especially for those of us with racial privilege and power. Now let’s get to work.

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]]> https://theestablishment.co/bad-advice-on-wedding-gifts-and-other-peoples-children-2efdc4f9593e/ Wed, 29 Nov 2017 00:21:30 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=2871 Read more]]>

Dear E. Jean: A few weeks after our wedding, I learned that friend A and friend B got together after they met at our reception (one of them mentioned it to me). They had a great time together and are planning to hang out again, and I’m incredibly jealous!

Aren’t I supposed to be invited, too? What’s the etiquette here? Isn’t there an unspoken rule about how to conduct oneself in these situations? Isn’t one supposed to go through the mutual friend, and not behind her back? I know it’s normal for adults to meet new friends through their social networks, but I want to tell them I feel disrespected. Is it my insecurities?

— From “FEELING ISOLATED,” via “Ask E. Jean” in Elle, 22 November 2017:

Welcome to our latest Bad Advice column! Stay tuned every Tuesday for more terrible guidance based on actual letters.

flickr / M Pincus

Dear Feeling Isolated,

What’s insecure about mandating that your friends arrange their social calendars according to the degrees of friendship from which they link themselves to you so as not to errantly enjoy themselves in your absence? Why, nothing at all, that’s what! The mutual affinity that these two share is plainly an attack on you personally and is expressly intended to come at your expense.

These friends of yours are not simply entitled to enjoy themselves when you’re not around as if any old, grown-ass person has a right to make friends with any other old, grown-ass person who returns their interest. People just aren’t capable of, like, knowing a bunch of different other people and being able to use their judgment about who they want to hang out with and when. What would that world be like? Folks just genuinely enjoying each other’s company and encouraging the people they love to find comfort and joy wherever they can, even if it means growing and expanding friend groups to include ever more people who love and appreciate each other on their own terms? Unthinkable.

It’s perfectly normal to demand your fair share of the finite amount of love available in this life lest someone you treasure experience even a fleeting moment of their own independently won joy, thereby chipping away at your personal ration of cheer. Every mutual smile and giggle that these two share outside of your presence depletes your own store of happiness.

This is a fact they well know, which is why they’re going to such extreme lengths — directly contacting each other without obtaining your permission first! The sheer gall! — to share each other’s company. A truly respectful adult would be sure to refrain from entering into the unchaperoned presence of another adult until they had been assured that all of their shared acquaintances had been consulted to their respective satisfactions.

Remind these friends that you are the social glue that binds them and gives their acquaintance worth, and request that they cease and desist all attempts at getting to know each other without you. If necessary, demand to be Skyped into any meet-ups you can’t attend in person, and you will soon find that that you will no longer feel isolated.

I recently spoke on the phone with an old friend from college. During the call she mentioned that her son is taking a drug for A.D.H.D. and that it really helps him focus. I know there is controversy surrounding this class of drugs, but I didn’t feel comfortable bringing that up. I assume she has looked into the pros and cons, and I know her mother is a psychiatrist. But should I mention my concerns nevertheless? Or should my concerns about seeming a busybody outweigh concerns about her son’s future health?

— From “NAME WITHHELD” via “The Ethicist,” New York Times, 20 November 2017

Dear Name Withheld,

The fact that you are literally aware that some controversy exists over a pharmaceutical should in no way stop you from giving your friend unsolicited advice about her child’s medical condition and any related treatment. Your Google probably works totally differently — and far more deeply — than this lady’s Google, and it’s important that you share everything you found in Reader’s Digest with her, lest she continue to rely on her own capability as a parent and the expertise of her son’s own doctor, who knows the specifics of her son’s case in the decisions she makes with her family about her child’s treatment.

Without your essential recollections of that thing you heard those people talking about on “The Chew” last week while you were getting your toes done, your friend may continue to believe that she herself, in conjunction with the degreed medical providers she has retained for the purpose, is in the best position to decide the course of her child’s care.

Support Diverse Journalism — Become A Member Of The Establishment

Dear Miss Manners: My wife and I got married about two months ago. We just finished going through all our cards and gifts, discovering in the process that there are still quite a few people who have not given gifts.

I have heard people convey that the proper window for giving wedding presents is from six weeks to one year after the wedding. What is the actual correct time frame to expect gifts, and after that time has passed, how do we go about inquiring with these people about the (lack of a) gift?

I do not want to be rude by making our guests think we are waiting for a gift (though we are), but actually our main concern is that perhaps the gift or card got lost at the venue or in the mail, in which case we and our guests both lose.

I’d like to simply send out a text message to each with something to the effect of, “Hey, please don’t feel ANY pressure to give a gift at all, but we went through our presents and did not find one from you, so we just wanted to make sure it didn’t get lost or misplaced.’’

However, I am afraid this will be interpreted as a thinly veiled (and rude) attempt to “remind’’ the guest that they have not yet given a gift.
—“Miss Manners” via Washington Post, 24 November 2017

Gentle Reader,

Only the most self-absorbed guest would interpret a mass, form text message sent to dozens of people concerning the whereabouts of absent gifts as a reminder about an absent gift, instead of what it obviously is, which is a deeply concerned and personal entreaty inquiring as to the dear guest’s good health as it relates to their capacity to materially reward you for publicly pledging to stay in a relationship with another human being for the rest of your life.

To take the time to type thirty-eight entire words, let alone and press send, shows just how deeply invested you are in these relationships, to the extent that you care passionately not just for the people, but for the things they really ought to have bought for you by now. We can only hope that your wedding guests see things as you do, and respond accordingly.

Looking For A Comments Section? We Don’t Have One.

]]> https://theestablishment.co/children-in-poverty-have-been-adulting-since-birth-8d51d030d45d-2/ Tue, 08 Aug 2017 22:16:37 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=3812 Read more]]> The way we talk about ‘adulting’ is classist.

I am 7, and I’m aware that my existence is a financial burden on my mother. She would never say it, of course, but I recognize the lines that spread across her forehead when I need to buy gifts for parties, when I need money for school bake sales, when I need food for lunches.

As I grow up, I see the bigger picture: Having children isn’t only expensive when it comes to the cash you hand them. I can sense my mother’s breath quickening when she swipes her card to buy my school uniform. I watch her try to figure out how to cover our medical expenses. When my teachers hand out letters about school fees, mine invariably has the word “OVERDUE” stamped on the front.

In many ways, I had a good childhood. Our income bracket and lack of assets meant that we were considered a low-income household, but we were never homeless. My family is a group of genuinely wonderful people, and I felt safe and supported in my own home. And of course, I benefited greatly from white privilege, which means a lot in post-Apartheid South Africa.

Poor People Deserve To Taste Something Other Than Shame

But we didn’t have class privilege, and our financial situation was always dire. I cried myself to sleep on many occasions because of our financial burdens; I had nightmares about bills covering every floor in our house. I was stressed about our financial situation, and even more stressed because I had no way to make it better.

I had nightmares about bills covering every floor in our house.
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I’ve been thinking about my childhood a lot recently, especially since the concept of “adulting” is so prevalent on social media nowadays. According to Merriam-Webster (because yes, the word is that widespread):

“to adult is to behave like an adult, to do the things that adults regularly have to do. This includes things like having a job and living independently, sure, but also such mundanities as taking clothes to the dry cleaners (and remembering to pick them up), making and keeping dental appointments, getting your car registered, doing yardwork.”

The word permeates our everyday conversations, and the concept is often touched on in popular memes. “My favorite childhood memory is not paying bills,” states an often-shared meme. #AdultingInFiveWords, a hashtag that trended a while ago, was often used to point out the financial responsibilities of adulting. For many people, adulting is associated with stressful financial burdens because their childhood, by contrast, didn’t involve shouldering those burdens.

For me — and for many people who grew up in working-class and poor environments — the opposite is true. My worst childhood memory is not paying bills. Because I couldn’t work, I felt that I was unable to contribute to the family that worked so hard to raise and protect me.

For many of my peers, financial strain is a part of adulting. For those of us who weren’t as privileged, it’s been a fact of life since birth.

In Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood, anthropologists Allison James and Alan Prout wrote, “the immaturity of children is biological fact, but the ways in which this immaturity is understood and made meaningful is a fact of culture.” Anthropologists before and after them have argued that childhood is socially constructed and influenced largely by culture.

For many of my peers, financial strain is a part of adulting. For those of us who weren’t as privileged, it’s been a fact of life since birth.
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There is no universal experience of childhood. And yet, many international groups — such as UNICEF and the World Health Organization — have attempted to treat childhood as a universal experience. Because those groups were — and arguably still are — very Westernized, a lot of their policies erase the experiences of children in non-Western, marginalized situations. As scholar Sharon Stephens argued in her intro to Children and the Politics of Culture, “affluent groups in Western society confronted a chasm between their idealized concepts of childhood and the realities of many children’s lives, both in the Third World and in the heart of First World urban centers.”

Stephens and many other anthropologists point out that policies like the UN’s Declaration on the Rights of the Child are problematic, because they fail to take into account that we all experience childhood differently. For example, the Declaration implies that the biological parents of children are usually the best caregivers, and that biological relationships between children and parents are more natural and important than other familial relationships. This is a heteronormative assumption that sidelines queer people, multi-generational households, and non-traditional families.

The ideas we have about what children should and shouldn’t do are often based on the childhood experiences of the most privileged people in our society. Children should be protected. Children should be sheltered. Children shouldn’t have to work. As well-intended as these notions are, these expectations don’t match up to the realities of poor and otherwise marginalized children.

These laws and policies prevent children from working because, supposedly, we want to protect them from exploitation. But who protects children from poverty? Poor children find themselves at a painful crossroads, simultaneously experiencing the difficulties of poverty, and unable to do anything about it. It’s an immeasurably taxing situation to be in, and one that can’t be easily fixed.

Who protects children from poverty?
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Adults are privileged over children. We have more political, financial, and social power than our child counterparts. Of course, when we become adults, we’re expected to have certain responsibilities — responsibilities that can be burdensome, especially for poor and disabled people. These responsibilities are often what we discuss when we speak about “adulting.”

Many of our discussions around adulting center on dealing with bureaucracy, dealing with the medical-industrial complex, navigating governmental structures, taking care of ourselves, sorting out our finances, and doing domestic work. A lot of these activities aren’t easy for everyone. We know that banks, medical institutions, colleges, and government departments are seldom friendly and accessible spaces for trans, queer, disabled, poor, and otherwise marginalized people.

Sometimes, our discussions around adulting involve addressing that inaccessibility. In that sense, these conversations can be insightful. Our anxiety and frustration at broken and unfair systems must be discussed. But we also have to remember that adults aren’t the only people hurt by these systems.

I Grew Up Too Poor To Smile

If a system is hard for an adult to navigate, imagine how difficult it would be for a lone child to navigate, especially if they didn’t have any adults supporting them. This isn’t only limited to poor children, but children facing emotional trauma too. I often complain about adulting when I have to make an appointment to see a doctor, but truthfully, I first took myself to a clinic when I was 12. I had just been sexually assaulted and I found out I was pregnant. I was afraid to tell anyone, so there I was, “adulting” alone. My situation was horrific, but far from unique. We often don’t want to admit that children are put in these positions because it’s painful to imagine — but we need to acknowledge that this is a reality, or we erase marginalized children altogether.

In some ways, these discussions remind us that adulthood and childhood are social constructs. There is no magic age where you stop feeling anxious whenever you make a doctor’s appointment, and there’s no expiration date on impostor syndrome. Many of us feel like confused children in adult bodies with adult responsibilities, and this is because we don’t automatically stop feeling like children as soon as we’re legally considered adults.

If a system is hard for an adult to navigate, imagine how difficult it would be for a lone child to navigate, especially if they didn’t have any adults supporting them.
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But on the other hand, our discussions about adulting shouldn’t presume that we’ve all had the same experience of childhood: one where we seldom deal with bureaucracy, where we weren’t faced with the financial burden of bills, where we’re protected.

Becoming an adult has brought me a great deal of joy and frustration. I find myself having to grow up, work, make major life decisions, take on responsibilities. But when I look at the struggles I face, I realize many aren’t exclusive to adults. When I complain about adulting, I’m not wishing for my childhood, but for one that was sheltered, stable, and peaceful.

In sharing our frustrations with the world, we should remember that many of our younger counterparts are facing the same challenges with less privilege. Adulting is difficult, but for the marginalized, childing is, too.

In many Indian homes, the intensely personal decision to have a child is not limited to the space between spouses, and certainly not to women alone. I often joke that discussing procreation and being inquisitive about people’s desire to further their progeny is a national pastime.

I’ve had distant relatives — people I don’t know well — feel no hesitation in checking up on my plans to start a family. But there’s more to it than relatives making polite conversation at family gatherings. Friends report being grilled about their reproductive choices at staff meetings, conference calls, job interviews, and even on first dates. There’s just no winning, even with a baby in tow — one-time mothers are often chided about not having a second child, while ones with daughters are pressured into having another in the hope that it will be a boy.

And yet, despite these forces, I was initially ambivalent about the prospect of motherhood. Culturally, it’s deeply ingrained as a crucial milestone of adulthood, so I believed that sooner or later I would “lean in” and accept it. But over time, this ambivalence turned to clarity that motherhood was not for me. For one, I never felt the pangs of maternal instincts that so many women speak of. Thankfully, the myth that all women want children has been busted. Also, I couldn’t think of a single aspect of my life that I wanted to off-load (even temporarily) to make room for a child. But most of all, I intuitively knew that motherhood just didn’t call out to me.

As an Indian woman, my decision to not have children meant facing a barrage of intrusive questions, fielding off unsolicited advice, and steeling myself from unwanted “treatments” and “fixes” — all offered to correct this “obvious flaw.” There is a common notion that motherhood “completes” a woman in a way nothing else can, and I felt lonely in my choice.

I was 31 when I stumbled upon Megan Daum’s anthology Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision NOT to Have Kids — a book of essays by a range of writers, men, and women of varied sexual orientation describing their decision to not have children. In this anthology, I found comfort, peace, and a sort of camaraderie that made me feel less isolated about eschewing motherhood.

At the same time, I found company in a tribe of Indian women who echoed my sentiment. They listened, without belittling or rushing to offer a solution to alter my thinking. Having faced their share of meddling questions and conjecture about their reproductive choices, I knew they’d appreciate the essays in Daum’s book as much as I did.

I set out to talk candidly with four friends about the book . . . and to gain insight into their own decisions to challenge motherhood — a concept inextricably linked with my culture’s ideal of the perfect woman.

“I don’t hate children. The children of family and friends are much loved and pampered by me,” my friend Chandni starts off. “Just because I don’t want my own, do not assume that I won’t be interested in activities involving children.”

Contrary to the most common assumption about choosing to not have children, I — like Chandni — do not hate children. Nor do I hate people who choose to have them. An inability to acknowledge the possibility that some of us are simply not excited by a life caring for little ones dismisses our agency to find purpose in places and activities outside of motherhood.

Roshni is 40 years old and an accomplished author. She tells me that motherhood didn’t particularly ever appeal to her. She finds the lives of those with kids stressful, burdened, and not enviable. But social conditioning runs deep, and she bore some guilt when having to acknowledge a future without motherhood.

On finding solace within Daum’s book, she says: “The book provided some useful reference points to help me begin letting go without feeling unnecessary guilt or attachment to ideas I had been holding on to as a consequence of social conditioning.”

We both agreed that Pam Houston exemplified this concept of self-determination in her essay, “The Trouble With Having It All,” in which she writes:

In this and other ways, the book does a fantastic job of plainly presenting the spectrum of reasons to choose a life without children. My friend Shilpa says it took her upwards of 30 years to really grow into herself as a person and become comfortable with her own body and in her own skin. As such, the idea of stepping into motherhood and inevitably unsettling that newfound comfort never appealed to her. Her favorite essay, “Mommy Fearest” by Anna Holmes, states:

“These days, as I enter my forties, I find that I am only now beginning to feel comfortable in my own skin, to find the wherewithal to respect my own needs as much as the others’, to know what my emotional and physical limits are, and to confidently, yet kindly, tell others no. Despite (or because of) my single status right now, becoming a mother would feel like a devolution as much as an evolution.”

The book also doesn’t shy away from acknowledging that even the most self-assured women amongst us cannot sidestep the painful possibility of waking up to realize that, perhaps, we made the wrong choice. But as Jeanne Safer eloquently put it in one of the most relatable pieces for me, “Beyond Beyond Motherhood”:

“There is no life without regrets. Every important choice has its benefits and its deficits, whether or not people admit it or even recognize the fact: no mother has the radical, lifelong freedom that is essential for my happiness. I will never know the intimacy with, or have the impact on, a child that a mother has. Losses, including the loss of future possibilities, are inevitable in life; nobody has it all.”

I sometimes wonder if being selfish about what I want out of and for my life is really such a bad thing — especially when I consider the crucial fact that in most Indian families, childcare is shouldered almost entirely by women. Even the most hands-on father will never experience pregnancy, childbirth, recovery, or breastfeeding, leaving women to be primary caregivers.

In “Maternal Instincts,” Laura Kipnis debunks the idea that society favors parents. She posits:

“Until there’s a better social deal for women — not just fathers doing more child care but vastly more social resources directed at the situation, including teams of well-paid professionals on standby (not low-wage-earning women with their own children at home) — birthrates will certainly continue to plummet.”

My friend Nisha lives in Chicago; her immediate family lives across the world. The distance from this support system means she has to carefully consider everything that she will need to give up in order to transition to parenthood. “If it was easier to visualize a life with children, I bet more women would choose it. But without help from family or financial resources to hire people to take care of cleaning, babysitting, shopping . . . it’s definitely not an easy choice.”

Fortunately, increased dialogue around this means we’re also opening ourselves up to the idea that it’s okay to make this choice. Those who have chosen to not have children are finding common ground in circles of likeminded folks, often joining Facebook groups to share essays, books, and resources. In this way, we are engaging with others who, like us, acknowledge that parenthood and living a wholesome, meaningful life are not mutually exclusive.

I’m a willing and happy auntie not just through blood ties but through bonds of friendship of my choosing, and I have, at various points, contributed to and been a part of some milestones in parenthood along with my closest friends. Like Daum said in an interview:

“These essays have so many people talking about the ways that they do have relationships with kids, nieces or nephews or kids that they mentor. You’ve heard the cliché ‘it takes a village.’ There are so many ways of being a responsible villager.”

Accepting what is right for you, even if it means embracing an unpopular choice, requires conviction and courage in a society that has no trouble exerting its opinion on you at every turn. It means going against the grain and shunning motherhood even if it’s perceived as a weakness or selfishness.

I would love more well-meaning aunties to read Daum’s introduction: “It’s about time we stop mistaking self-knowledge for self-absorption.”

My partner and I both grew up with music. We both heard our daddies sing from birth, and sang with our families before we could read. When we think about having a child, we often wonder what their voice will sound like. We wonder if they’ll hear jazz and beg to play the piano before their feet can reach the pedals, like I did, or sing at Carnegie Hall like their father. We hope that they will be happy, honest, and kind; that they will find and express their joy proudly; that they will be ready when they meet those who might wish to silence them.

My friends who are parents often tell me there is no way of knowing what parenthood is like until you experience it. My partner and I are in our thirties, and we are deciding whether to bring another human into our family. We both love other people’s children. We both feel we could offer a child a loving home. If we do have a child, we will do our best to help them understand the importance of respecting and truly hearing others.

What I struggle with most is not what I don’t know, but what I do. My child, if I have one, will be Black in the United States. As a white person with a Black partner, I already know what it is to fear my husband will meet a police officer who finds him “threatening.” But I do not know, and can never know, what it is like to be Black. I worry I will not be able to teach my child all they need to know in a nation and a society in which I have privileges they will never have. And it terrifies both me and my partner to know that any child we have is sure to face racism in this country.

I’m not alone. Writer Shannon Barber says, “Racism is a large part of why I’ve decided not to have children in the U.S.” When I ask if she would be more likely to consider parenthood living in another country, Shannon answers, “There aren’t enough places where me or my Black children would be safe.”

Writer and activist Feminista Jones also talked with me about whether racism factored into her decision to have a child. “For the longest [time], I didn’t want children,” she says. “There were a lot of family issues, but I was concerned about bringing another Black child into this world. With everything that our people experience, I wondered if it would be fair to sentence another human being to the inevitable.” Jones does have a son now; he has just started fifth grade.

I was concerned about bringing another Black child into this world.
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My partner and I know that any child of ours would face an education system that unfairly punishes and suspends students who look like them. They would live in a city in which only about six in 10 students graduate from high school — and this number is even lower for Black students. In the United States, Black children are three times more likely to be the victims of robbery and five times more likely to be victims of homicide than white children. Black adults are twice as likely as white peers to experience unemployment.

Our child would have advantages and opportunities many children do not — they would have a parent who taught art, one who makes puzzles, two parents with advanced degrees who were once educators. They would grow up in a house full of books, with (hopefully) three loving and supportive grandparents in their lives. But my partner and I must also face the fact that our future child could also be murdered by those tasked to protect and serve them. Who will protect our child from the “protectors”? Can we truly cope with a lifetime of fear, wondering if our child would become one of far too many whose lives are lost at the hands of police?

Feminista Jones feels prepared to discuss racism with her son. “It was the current movement against police brutality that prompted me to begin the age-appropriate discussions,” she tells me. “When Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy who looked remarkably like my own son, was killed, I became fearful for my child’s life. It was imperative that I begin to discuss racism with him. My son is quite intelligent and rather intuitive, but also curious. He asks important questions and I do my best to answer them. I think he has a basic but solid understanding of how racism affects Black people, but the focus has been on uplifting our people and teaching him the importance of living himself and respecting Black people.”

Writer Rhea St. Julien, a white parent of a 6-year-old Black daughter, tells me, “We started early, talking about race…When our daughter was two, and was learning parts of the body and differences between people, we pointed out our varying skin tones and hair textures, and gave her language for how to describe those things respectfully and truthfully.”

‘When Tamir Rice was killed, I became fearful for my child’s life.’
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Rhea says she never once considered not having a child because of anti-Black racism they would face. “I knew I’d have to equip my child with special resilience skills, but I felt strongly that this was something my husband and I could do, with our strong support system of family and friends,” she says. Rhea and her family began the Stay Woke Parents Collective in her city to create opportunities for kids to participate in actions to fight racism and promote Black lives, from sign-making and story time to marches and rallies.

To know your child will face racism and the threat of state violence is one more injustice on top of so many others that Black parents and parents of Black children must combat. People should be free to make parenting decisions — including the choice of whether or not to have children — and dream of their families’ futures without this kind of fear.

If my partner and I do decide to have a child, we will do our best to prepare, filling up on cautious hope and endeavoring to listen and learn. We will work our hardest to give our child more than we had. We will challenge systems and individuals and language that oppresses others. We will be open about and true to who we are and what we support, and make our voices heard.

To our future, maybe child: I will teach you to play the piano. Your father can teach you to play the guitar. Our friends and family will sing with you, show you how to lift a tuba, and proudly watch if you ever want to take over a stage. We will help you find chances that many may not want you to have, and we will struggle to be honest about the world we live in — a world that will sometimes devastate us with the way it treats you. Know that we will fight for you and do our best to protect you. As your parents, that is what we must do.