Stay at Home Dad

At breakfast this morning Grandma challenged me to explain to her how I was going to accomplish my goals as usual.  I had told her that in Harrisonburg their were all kinds of linguistically diverse communities that I could engage with to help my daughter grow up speaking many languages--possibly 7 total with the new people I met this weekend raising their children to speak German and Persian in addition to English.

"How are you going to do that while you are in a Ph.D. program?" Grandma challenged.  "You don't have either the time nor the money," she asserted.

As usual, I refused to be pinned down with serial thinking.  "There is so much you can do with symphonic thinking--you don't always need time or money."  "For example," I explained, "what if I started a co-op with 7 like minded families who have children my daughter's age who all bring different linguistic resources to the table?"  "I could take all the children one day a week to play with them and teach them Spanish or English while each of the other parents did the same one of each of the other days of the week."  "So there is at least one example of how I can raise my daughter the successful polyglot I want to raise her as without a lot of time or money!"

I never had that thought before this morning, but I am incredibly pleased with the idea now that Grandma forced me to spit in out to defend the feasibility of my ambitions.  Moreover, to add to the thrill of this idea, I stumbled across a magical coincidence just now reading the news.  In the corner of a completely unrelated CNN article on the new construction milestones at the World Trade Center site, I encountered a link to another article about stay at home dad's in America.  And this is the shocking and immensely pleasing statistic I encountered:

"Among fathers with a wife in the workforce, 32% took care of their kids at least one day a week in 2010." (see http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/30/pf/stay-at-home-dad/index.htm?iid=GM).

Wow! Isn't that great!  I think this idea I've had this morning just might work and happen.  And the 7 languages Mariem will practice on the 7 different days of each week look like they will be: 1-English, 2-German, 3-French, 4-Spanish, 5-Persian, 6-Arabic, and 7-Hebrew.  That's what I see ample community support around me in Harrisonburg for. Here's the full news article about this growing trend with Dads--who I hope to involve equally with mothers in the project of a polyglot co-op with me:

Stay-at-home dads: More men choosing kids over career

By Jessica Dickler @CNNMoney April 30, 2012: 10:58 AM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Before Jessica and Lance Somerfeld had their baby, they decided it would make the most financial sense for one of them to stay home to raise him. Since Lance made a fraction of Jessica's earnings, he was the obvious choice.

With wages at a standstill and child care costs skyrocketing, Somerfeld is just one of a growing number of dads who are staying home with the kids.

Among fathers with a wife in the workforce, 32% took care of their kids at least one day a week in 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, which looked at families with children under 15 years old. That's up from 26% in 2002.

Of those with kids under the age of 5, 20% of dads in 2010 were the primary caretaker.
Not only has it become more necessary for men to pitch in at home, but fathers have also become more available to do so. "It's a combination of mothers going to work and fathers being out of work as a result of the recession," said Lynda Laughlin, a family demographer at the Census Bureau.

Men were particularly hard hit by the steep job losses during that time, losing 4 million jobs since 2007, while women lost just over 2 million during the same time period, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

While men have since gained back a majority of those jobs during the recovery, their unemployment rate -- at 8.3% in March -- is still above the national average of 8.2%.
Many find that having one parent at home does have its advantages, especially as child care costs continue to climb.

Couples do the math and realize that it makes more financial sense for one spouse to stay home with the kids. And while it's often the woman who decides to drop out of the workforce, more men are taking on the responsibility of child care as well.

A lot of that has to do with who makes the most money in the household. Even though the wage gap between the sexes persist, a growing number of women are out-earning their husbands. In 2008, 26% of women living in dual-income households had annual earnings that were at least 10 percentage points higher than their spouse, up from 15% in 1997, according to the Families and Work Institute's latest data.

As a New York City school teacher, Somerfeld said he made a fraction of his wife's salary. "She was probably making 80% of our household income and I was 20%," he said. Her career as a corporate actuary for an insurance company "was on a really good track and it made more sense for me to stay home."

But the decision they made wasn't strictly a financial one. "Too often, we hear that it's the economy that forces dads into these roles and that's certainly a part of it, but I would love to shatter that stereotype," Somerfeld said. "Being my son's primary caregiver is something I have truly cherished and embraced and never looked back."

Three years ago, Somerfeld started the NYC Dads group to connect with other fathers in a similar position. The group now has over 550 members.

"There are a lot of guys out there that had remote relationships with their own fathers and they don't want that with their kids," added Jeremy Adam Smith, a one-time stay-at-home dad and author of The Daddy Shift. "It's not just stay-at-home dads -- fathers in general are participating more in their children's lives."

Regardless of their employment status, nearly half of the men surveyed by Families and Work Institute said they take most or an equal share of child care responsibilities, up from 41% 20 years ago.

Just don't call them "Mr. Moms," said Ellen Galinsky, president and co-founder of the Families and Work Institute. "Like it's a female task, I've never understood that."

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the unemployment rate among men as 8.9%. The seasonably adjusted rate is 8.3%.

First Published: April 30, 2012: 5:18 AM ET

If you want all the pictures and links, the article is at:

http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/30/pf/stay-at-home-dad/index.htm?iid=GM

Metaskepticism

So what is metaskepticism, and what is the use of it?  One comment on another website says this:

     "All I know is that I know nothing. And I'm not even sure about that."

Really? So what's the point of that? How does that help us?  To answer this questions, let's look at the two parts of these words:

Meta is the prefix we use to square the meaning of a word--to times it by itself in effect.  So metalanguage is grammar.  Language about language.  When I say "dog" is a "noun" I'm talking about the word, not the dog.  Likewise, meta-thinking is intellectual introspection, or thinking about thinking.  Normally, one would use the term metacognition though rather than meta-thinking though.  Why make things simple when we can sound more sophisticated, right?  Smile, I'm not saying that sarcastically.  It amuses me, I must say I do like it.  But don't get me started, or I'll state talking about the Latin conquest of England and the two sources of root words like thinking and cognition and why we play with them like we do.  They are such delightful linguistic legos to play with! Ha!

Anyway, now that we've got that down, we turn to this concept of skepticism.  Modernism is a kind of skepticism.  If we can't measure it, define it, package it, and put it in a nice tight intellectual box, it doesn't exist.  The skeptics laugh at the idea of God--God is not measurable; God is not seen, heard, or touched; God defies easy labels.  "From whom shall I tell the people I was sent?"  "What is your name?" Moses asks God.  "Tell them that I AM," was and still is the answer.  Moreover, let's also ask another hard question to box up an nice answer for.  "What is free choice?" 

The reality of free choice, like God, doesn't really exist for the modern skeptic.  We have a nature/nurture debate.  Your intellectually dissectable choices for explaining away behavior in simple cause and effect terms are to say that your choices are driven either by your nature (your genes) which we can count and measure, or by your nurture (your life experience which we can film, photograph, and feed into the file functions for fine formulas).  But what about choice?  What about when Gandalf turns in the cave to face his demon and burns with overwhelming spirit like as he pounds his staff down in the ground at the edge of the bridge and declares, YOU SHALL NOT PASS!  The skeptic is skeptical of the manifestation of true free will, just as the skeptic is skeptical of God.  If it can't be intellectually dominated, it doesn't really exist to the skeptic.  Skepticism is the attitude that if something doesn't submit to us intellectually, it doesn't exist.

That is precisely why Jesus said, unless you become as a little child, you can not enter the kingdom of heaven.  That is also precisely why it becomes harder and harder for some older people to learn new things.  Neural science calls this mental fossilization.  It is the opposite of what is called neural plasticity--flexible, open, impressionable thinking.

This is why it is useful for us adults to turn skepticism onto itself--to be skeptical of skepticism itself.  It releases us back into the world of wonder and awe in all that we experience as BEING part of the world within and around us.  God is part of the world within you and around you.  You know that.  You experience your consciousness of and constant reference to God and that consciousness of and reference to God in others.  Why does it mater that we can't define what that means?  Doubt the definitions, not the experiences, stories, and overwhelming present and prevalent myths of our lives and the lives of others.  Judge things only by the magnitude of their BEING.  If it has presence in your life it IS for you.  Let meaning wrap itself around your soul in wondrous mystery.  There is always more to learn about everything.  Life is too short to get to the end of any story--the point is just to incarnate into and to live into everything as deeply as possible.  Be in it.  Like a child.  Metaskepticism lets you do that.  It let's you dive right in.  It lets you suspend disbelief.  It lets you doubt doubting.  It lets you disbelieve in disbelieving.  And then the adventure really begins and never ends.

Now you found your way back to wonderland with Peter Pan, and yes, you can fly!  And feeling that feeling is much more of a rush and much fuller than the utter emptiness that seems to suck life and energy out into the void of saying "All I know is that I know nothing. And I'm not even sure about that."  Instead of that, I say this in defining the meaning of my metaskepticism:

"My mind and heart and body as I experience these parts of my being soak life up around me like a sponge--I am me and my circumstances that fill me--therefor I will savor life in all it's multiple layers of flavor and scent--and even though I will never be able to define it all in words--I will let life impress me--and I will remember it and continually reflect and recreate what I have been given to experience."

That is what I mean by metaskepticism.  It is the best friend of the true scientist always open to new discovery, while at the same time it is the worst enemy of the mere technicians who mascaraed as scientists, as described by Thomas Kuhn in the Structure of Scientific Revolutions.  Be part of the meta-revolution.  Do just convert to a new idea, convert to a new way of having and holding ideas--a way open to permanent intellectual revolution--it's a change in energy state as profound as moving from solids (fossils) to air (completely pliable and adaptable).  That is another glimmer of deeper meaning behind what Jesus said when he said we must be born again of Spirit.  And those who are born again of Spirit are like the wind.  Where the wind comes from and where it is going know one knows.  It and those who are like the wind are limitless.  They can think outside of the box.

This is going to be my Peter Pan blog.  My wife and a few other friends (most explicitly Lori, but others as well) have asked me to share things that I am reading and the things that I'm thinking about in terms of what I read (all of my myriad associates) so they can get into the envisioning process behind my visions with me.  I invite you to join me in this journal of my thought life here if you are so inclined, with one key caveat.  Like Chris Martenson said at the beginning of his crash course, I say this: "these are my options and thoughts at this point in time, and I reserve the right to change any of my opinions whenever new evidence comes to light."  The things I post here are merely my perspectives at certain moments in time, and I always reserve the right to change my opinions and evolve them constantly as I work to fly higher and higher to include ever larger panorama's within my view.  Being a metaskeptic doesn't mean that you don't have lots of thoughts and opinions--it just means that you remain radically open to evolving your thoughts.  Enjoy the cornucopia of fresh intellectual delights here.  There will be no stale bread.