This week I heard an interesting interview on the HBR Idea Podcast with Stephanie Coontz. She just finished a study and published a book called “A strange stirring: The feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960’s.
She talked about the cultural shift that started as women started entering the workforce in the 60’s. A working woman had more independence and thus the divorce rates increased in the 60’s and 70’s. However as societies (mostly western) accepted equal rights, the divorce rates have gone down in families with working mothers. Where in the 60’s a working mother brought instability into the household, today a working mother brings stability to the house.
Further on in the discussion she explained how the dichotomy has changed. The woman is in a more powerful roll now. It is acceptable for a woman to aspire to things that were once seen as a male only activities where men are suspect if they do anything feminine. Therefore now the double edged sword for men. They feel and want take an active role in their family however, society still hasn’t accepted this. The workplace is still designed that there will be one breadwinner and the other cares for the children. Some men reported they were going to a doctor appointment instead of saying it was their turn to pick up their child. A man is seen as questionable if he wants to teach young kids. The mother is always addressed at schools or doctors. Men clearly have a back seat in regards to family marketing.
As I am telling my wife about this she says, “yeah, a funny thing happened the other day.” They were reading Stella’s latest favorite book “Llama Llama Misses Mama”. In the middle she stopped and asked “where is the daddy?”
My heart glistened when Maja told me that. I do all I can to be as involved as possible. I work a lot but I do my best to give undivided attention when home and we share all tasks equally.
At the end of the interview Mrs. Coontz was asked what the future holds in the next 20 years. Her answer, it depends on how we carry on and embrace the evolving role changes.
Stella’s comment made me proud.
I am making an impression!
I am proud to be an active father (and don’t hide it)
I am proud that the fathers in our circle of friends are just as active.
I am proud to see the fathers picking up their kids at our pre-school.
I am proud that there are many more out there that ARE taking an active role in parenting. And with the internet we can be found.
There are some great men making such a difference in children’s lives.
Sweet juniper with his ever Mcguiver creations.
Teacher Tom running a cooperative kindergarten.
Outnumbered and his hilarious adventures.
And many more…
Germany is trying to recruit more men to be pre-school teachers.
A lot of the younger fathers at my work are much more involved which makes for good watercooler talk.
We still have a long way to go.
But we’re on the right path and I am glad I am on it.
In our household everyone helps out. What a wonderful way to explore and learn and in this case, get soaked.
In an appendum to my last post regarding language development. I forgot to mention a most wonderful moment that actually triggered the post in the first place.
It has happened a couple of times and this is how I know it’s in her little noggin. I was talking with Stella one day while we were at sport. Her friend was standing next to her and she asked what I had said. Without batting an eyelash, Stella repeated exactly what I had said to her but in German. And as if bored, took off running across the room.
We’ve hit two major miles stones in our household over the holidays. The first is that Emmett is now fully walking. Albeit sometimes like a college student after a kegger but he’s walking. The transformation was amazing. Each day he would take more steps. One week if he fell over he would continue crawling. The next, when he fell over he would stand back up before taking off again.
Musical chairs. I’m not sure what the trigger was but Stella now only sits on the toilet. Emmett has replaced her on the potty. Evolution at its most visible!
I think I’ve mentioned this before or at least told a fun story or two in the past. The language development has fascinated me. Not only because the kids are constantly absorbing information like a sponge but also because we are doing two languages at the same time.
I read that after the age of six, our minds start closing language doors. By then the mind is set onto which language it is learning and focuses on that. Before that everything is just sounds that the brain filters a meaning for and can associate many different meanings too.
It is not only easier to learn a second language in the years 1-6 but also props these doors open for further ease of cognitive development/language learning in the future.
I have been fascinated over the past 3.5 years how Stella has developed. Obviously German is her first language but it has only been a rare occasion where she hasn’t understood me. And that is usually when I have been pushing the complexity limit, seeing how far I can push the limits of understanding.
She has constantly amazed me though on her level of understanding, comprehending statements I didn’t expect her to.
And as any child does as they learn a language they mix things up every once and a while. I wanted to share two of our favorite circumstances. One a simple word mix up but the other a testament of understanding and comprehension between two languages.
1. Egg dirt – Stella saw a present wrapped in the form of a triangle. She said,”Wow, sieht aus wie Ei dreck, uh?” what she meant to say was „Dreieck“ a triangle. Loosely translated she said instead egg dirt. It doesn’t seem so funny now that I explain it but it was at that moment.
2. Her new favorite book is “The little engine that could” (thanks Malek family). The last page of the book has a picture of the scene, the broken down engine, the mean engines going to the round house and the Little Blue Engine coming into the picture. When we reach this page I would ask which train is which. The first couple of times she pointed to the Freight train and said this is the “angst” train. I didn’t catch it at first but after questioning her a couple times she said, “yeah daddy, the afraid train”. I guess I was speaking so fast that she understood “a freight” as “afraid” understood it in German “Angst” and was still able to clarify to me what she meant. Wow!
Stella comprehends practically all English that is thrown at her. She has favorite words that she will mix in to a German sentence. She also can say small English sentences when prodded. I think soon she will be able to switch between the two without a problem.
AND now we get to get Emmett in on the fun.
Over the past few years you might say I may have lost my spirit of Christmas.
The over commercialization and materialization of such a spiritual occasion became really over bearing for me.
We have been in transition; from couple to family, from one continent to another, from house to house to house.
The season would hit me and I wasn’t ready. My feeling of Christmas fading as I moved further away from childhood and what those traditions meant to me.
Yes, I’m mixing the childhood and young adult Christmas together but they blend and those are my memories.
It just isn’t the same anymore.
It is not supposed to be. We are ever evolving creatures. My role has changed. I want to create an atmosphere that my kids will look back on with fondness. For the last three years though it wasn’t happening. But that is changing. At 3.5, Stella is much more aware of her surroundings and retaining a lot more information than she did in the past.
Stella is learning about Christmas in preschool and comes back with lots of stories. She knows about the trip to Bethlehem. Btw; did you know that Jesus has a sister? Stella informed us of this as she was playing with Oma’s nativity set and lining up all the appropriate characters.
In Germany, Nicolas comes and puts something in your shoes on the 6th of December. She was so excited. She properly polished her boots and set them by the door. And with wild excitement she ran down to look the next morning marveling at the little packages in everyone’s shoes.
Now she asks when Santa is coming.
It’s been a rough couple of weeks for the Tygielski family.
A presumed stomach bug turned into an inflamed appendix that had to be removed. While in the hospital both kids came down with severe colds and had to stay home from day care. They in turn gave my wife a double whammy cold.
We were miserable.
The parents had no energy, patience or tolerance.
The kids were ornery, whiney and impatient.
Not a good combination.
To put it lightly…this nuclear family hit real low point.
The parents were on edge. Their actions weren’t nearly the storybook childrearing plans we had dreamed of. The children reacted in kind putting us in this downward spiral where I can see why many have asked…”Can we send them back?”
Perspective – We realized this was a lose/lose situation. We weren’t setting the example we wanted for our children. Our approach obviously wasn’t working. We talked through it. We needed to change our perspective and approach.
The next day things went smoother. Was this because of our Attitude to the situation, our conviction to set a better example? Was it because we were feeling better and had more patience? Was it because the kids were feeling better?
It was probably a combination of all of the above. The emotion, testing the limits, setting discipline etc ist still a roller coaster but the culmination of our efforts hit a high today where mini dragon girl transformed into our little princes for a whole day.
No incidents, no tantrums, no time outs.
Instead, sharing, caring and helpfulness.
A moment when we are proud to say we are her parents.
We’ll keep working and doing our best and hope that we can minimize how often mini dragon girl and whiney siren show up.
Now that I am on the mend, I hope to feed some new stories and pictures into the blog over the next few weeks.
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