Abate persuaded me that Raising Your Kids Right is an important book, and for the most part I really enjoyed and learned from Abate’s methodology. This book is a fun read. Knowing nothing about it, I wasn’t sure what Abate’s politics would be, and it’s to her credit that I didn’t figure it out until halfway into the introduction.

That said, I question moments in the book when Abate seems to choose black-and-white characterizations of issues instead of engaging with their nuances in depth—which is exactly her critique of The Book of Virtues and The Truax. I loved her description, for example, of The Book of Virtues as offering “concrete and unquestioned moral certainties, which were arguably never really certain in the past and are surely no longer steadfast amid the complications, complexities, and upheavals of the postmodern world” and her use of Nussbaum’s quote that the book “‘prefers an easy unity of feeling to the hard puzzles of moral reflection’” (42). This is deft phrasing, and pages 35-45 are full of especially juicy nuggets like these. So I was a little disappointed when she occasionally dips into similar modes of thinking with different ideologies; sometimes it feels like she’s just fighting partisan conservative politics with partisan liberal politics. While conversations like that are necessary, I’d like to think there’s a better way (at least from the liberal point of view, since we have truth on our side, just kidding/not kidding/just kidding).

What do we want to teach our children and what don’t we want to teach them? That seems like a fair place to start, right? We want to teach children to stick up for themselves and each other, but not to be bullies; to have high self-esteem, but not be egomaniacs; to be kind, but not be pushovers; to be independent thinkers, but only if they express those independent thoughts in approved ways (e.g., show independence by running for office, not by doing drugs); to be adventurous, but not reckless (Be bold! Try new things! But don’t drink the fabric softener or stick a fork in the electrical outlet); to be creative and artistically free, but not flaky or exploitative or parasitic; to be responsible and take care of business, but not deadened corporate drones with crushed souls. We want children to listen to parents and teachers, and frankly, more or less do what they say (don’t play with doody; don’t bully the shy kid; do your homework), but we also want them to question authority and embrace their own agencies. We want them to be obedient in all the right ways for their own safety and positive development, but we don’t want them to feel helpless or insignificant, and we never want to think of ourselves as teaching them blind obedience.

These are all extremely fine lines, and I think it’s easy to criticize any piece of children’s literature for not getting the balance quite right—especially when children’s lit is also vulnerable to the valid critique of being excessively didactic. Abate calls for children’s lit to incorporate more subtlety, but at what point do extensive pains to tune a book’s message to a precise political key render it even more overtly didactic? We talked a bit about libraries and curation in class last week, and I wonder if the best solution is simply a multiplicity of texts. That’s easier said than done, of course. While I don’t intend to universalize my experience, I grew up in a house with a lot of books, including crusty old traditionalist tomes from the 50s that belonged to my mom and aunts when they were kids (hoarding isn’t all bad). As a kid, I found some of those books exotic and quaint and others stupid and lame, but I didn’t swallow any of their messages whole, and I could sniff them out as dated propaganda. Of course, no one insisted I read them and I was fortunate to have a lot of alternatives. In reading Abate’s discussion of “The Ant and the Grasshopper,” I thought of Leo Leoni’s Frederick, a direct counterpoint to “The Ant and the Grasshopper.” Frederick the mouse appears to do nothing while the rest of the mice labor all summer, and then in deep winter when the mice are cold and their food stores are empty, Frederick brings them warmth and comfort with the poetry he brooded over all summer, and he saves the day. Would I have understood or appreciated Frederick if I never knew the story of “The Ant and the Grasshopper?” That’s hard to say, but I know I read Frederick thousands of times, and “The Ant and the Grasshopper” only once or twice. If kids can identify and avoid preachy messages in literature, maybe we don’t have to be too scared they’re being brainwashed in any direction.

With respect to the issue of safety, I question Abate’s characterization of Tootle the Train (1945) and Scuffy the Tugboat (1946) as conservative because they teach the respective lessons of staying on the rails and staying in the bathtub. Are these lessons motivated by politics or the desire to teach the child not to wander off in a crowd, stick her fingers in a light socket, or get into a stranger’s vehicle? As is the case with adults, some children are naturally cautious, but others are not, and parents of an incautious child might want to gently discourage her from exploring that abandoned mine shaft, and maybe to plant seeds of caution hoping that, 15 years later, she’ll make really sure that MDMA pill isn’t rat poison before she swallows it. Now, if Tootle and Scuffy were the only pieces of literature parents offered their children on how to balance boldness with caution, it would be problematic indeed. But consider how even The Polar Express suggests that kids should step beyond their “comfort zones,” take risks, and seize opportunity and adventure in defiance of parental authority. Think about the encouragement of bold adventure in many other pieces of children’s literature (including Harry Potter; recall the article we discussed in class last week about safety hazards at Hogwarts). I’ll plant my flag here and say that Tootle and Scuffy are reasonably gentle counterpoints to grand adventure stories for reminding young children that sometimes caution is a good idea—not to make them neurotic or to cultivate blind obedience, but to survive. Sure, explore the world fearlessly like Dora the Explorer, but…maybe don’t explore climbing that rusty old electrical tower, or explore grand adventures like these.

Abate acknowledges this problem at the end of the chapter on The Book of Virtues; quoting Jean Porter, she recognizes that “One person’s courage is another person’s rashness, and one person’s prudence is another person’s small-minded caution” (51). But Abate puts this statement at the end of the chapter and smooshes it between a reiteration of Bennett’s hypocrisy and a discussion of status politics, both of which make it feel like an afterthought. How would her argument change if she put this issue in the foreground?

It is also worth noting that current parenting practices’ (probably necessary) use of constant surveillance wasn’t the norm in the 1940s. Perhaps there’s less need for Tootle or Scuffy these days because kids don’t have as many opportunities for adventure and don’t make as many risk-benefit choices as kids in the 1940s who played in the street and the woods without adult supervision. But this also raises the question: should we really code safety-motivated messages to stay on the rails as politically conservative? Doesn’t that somehow imply that politically liberal parents are negligent about children’s safety? Is it more liberal or conservative to teach a child to be cautious in an adult world and then give him or her more freedom, versus teaching children to be adventurous but never giving them any opportunity? Trying to code these things politically makes my head spin, and I wonder what purpose such coding really serves.

Shifting gears to The Truax, I would have preferred that Abate discredit The Truax’s environmental claims with sources other than environmental groups. While I think the Wilderness Society is a great organization and I trust them, conservatives would argue that it’s no more neutral than is the National Oak Flooring Manufacturers Association is. How can we make these arguments without appearing to fight partisan politics with partisan politics? I also would have preferred a lot more detail about why The Truax’s claims are wrong, but I also recognize Abate doesn’t set out to convince us that logging is bad (that would require a much longer book). Even so, the fact that she just tosses off a few quotes as evidence of The Truax’s deception tells me that she intends to preach exclusively to the choir. On one level, that makes practical sense, on another, I’m a little uncomfortable being told to reject propaganda because its information is “not reliable” on the basis of rather superficial evidence, particularly since the crux of The Truax’s argument is that environmentalists are ill-informed and brainwashed by propaganda. Clearly, both sides of the logging debate feel the other side is plainly misinformed. But it seems to me that The Truax sends a useful message about how to advocate for the environment without projecting Guardbark’s presumption, impatience, and disinterest in evidence, and that a fairly superficial treatment of the evidence makes it so easy for conservatives to say, “See, you’re just like Guardbark.” I don’t want to make it easy for them to say that; my affinity for the cause motivates my critique. So the question becomes, am I asking too much of Abate, or might there be a better way?