I read research studies as a hobby. This has been true for many years. I read studies about a wide variety of topics. I have read just about everything written on the topic of incest that was available as of the time I last sat down with databases to search (I haven’t gone looking for research studies on incest in the past four years so I’m probably out of date now). I read about PTSD, parenting, child development, race, vaccines, breastfeeding, other more general mental illness issues, among many random one-off topics that aren’t normally part of my obsessive researching.

I confess that I do not bother to keep a running bibliography of all the studies I have ever read. I do not read these things so I can impress anyone else. I feel incredibly frustrated that so many people believe that if I am going to write about what I know then I must footnote everything.

Guess what? That’s an incredibly idiotic thing to demand of people who are not writing for an academic journal. Have you noticed how I have shunned academia? Yeah, fuck you too if you think I must cite everything I know or it is invalid.

 

I read studies that agree with my points of view and studies that argue with me. I can almost always sit down and present bullet point lists of the pro and con arguments if I’m asked to do so. No, I can’t fucking remember the name of the schmuck who did the study. That’s not how my brain works.

What is more important? That I be able to cite a small list of studies so I can win internet arguments or that I read absolutely everything I can and come to my own conclusions?

Have you ever read meta-research? The vast majority of studies that exist are unsound, inaccurate, biased, or otherwise not all that appropriate for basing your life around. Most studies are done on populations and every single thing that is true for a population can be disproved on an individual level. Which means to my jaundiced way of thinking that they aren’t all that valid.

Kind of like looking at you BMI as an indicator of health. Like Brad Pitt being deemed “unhealthy” if his BMI is too high. Err, his BMI is high because he has muscles and if we’re dinging people for that our “health standards” are kind of broken.

Just about all of science works that way when you go read study after study after study after study.

So no, I’m not going to spend the rest of my life carefully footnoting everything I write. Give me a break. I’ll do it for books. I’ll do it if I ever decide I want to participate in academia. Otherwise: bite me.

Saying that someone must cite everything or it isn’t valid is kind of like saying, “People who have only read one or two studies and they have memorized them are way more important to listen to than someone who has so much information in their brain that they are now uncertain what started from where.” Well, uhm… ok. Have fun with that.

I don’t mostly write because I am trying to convince people of anything. Have you noticed how I’ve never gone out and tried to write in a general forum addressing lots of people? I write to clear my head and figure out what I think. If that’s useful to other people, great. If it isn’t–don’t fucking tell me that I have to cite studies in order to prove what I think. Just ignore me and move on with your life.

That said, man do I wish I got to be the boss of other people. I really do.

I read about parenting because I have spent my whole life knowing that what I saw of “parenting” was bad and I need to understand what “good” parenting means.

Mostly what I find is that gender essentialism is a problem for everyone. When you look at research, depending on who does the research, you either find that it doesn’t matter what gender the parents are (kids from queer parents do great thankyouverymuch) to finding out that “men have a unique role”.

Men are supposed to teach kids how to rough house. Learning to rough house is how you learn more about your body’s physical boundaries and the boundaries of people around you. When a child is very young they climb all over you and you ignore a baby. They can’t help hurting you. As they get heavier, parents have to teach them how to be non-hurtful.

Kids are not born knowing that if they shove their knee into your belly it hurts. They just don’t know. They have to be told hundreds or thousands of times.

If I cared more about research I would be tapping my foot and looking at Noah with impatience.

Instead I look at the combination of things I learn and think “Hey–I think these people “proved” that fathers must teach these things because that is what they wanted to prove. That doesn’t mean it is TRUE.”

So I rough house with the kids I know. I rough house with my kids and I go to the park and wrestle with the home schoolers. I get the impression I am more rough with the kids than their fathers’ are in general. We live in Silicon Valley. Our fathers are mostly computer geeks. They aren’t rough and tumble brogrammers either. I am blissfully surrounded by men who are not so physical.

So I am instead. I brought the power tools into my relationship. If there is something to be fixed in my house we don’t wait for “father to come home” I fucking do it.

I do, however, think that parents play very different roles for children. I don’t think that is any more gendered than it has to be.

I believe that parents have responsibilities to their children because the parent of a given child has a unique ability to help that specific child.

Your kid is a mixture of you and another person. That means your kid is going to have some personality and/or physical traits like you. What have you learned about the world in your tenure pre-children? What did you learn about how to manage your personality in the world?

Your kid isn’t going to be exactly like you. What you teach them about your experience is about guidance, not requirements. You should not expect them to handle everything exactly how you would because they are also like their other parents. Presumably you mated with someone who had at least some traits that are different from yours, right?

Parents need to teach their kids what to expect from the world. If you are an asshole to your kids then you teach them the world is like that. They will never unlearn that point of view.

Daughters and sons who have fathers who think they are unimportant go on to find more people to treat them like they don’t matter. People want the world to make sense. Even if that means they pick dysfunctional relationship after dysfunctional relationship.

It matters how you treat your children. And some of how parents treat their kids is about gender and it is about privilege.

No one should scream at their kids. Not mothers and not fathers. That’s pretty well shown to be true. Screaming elevates cortisol and adrenaline and the more time you spend with those chemicals racing through a developing brain the worse time that kid will have becoming a calm, functional adult.

Fathers are often, but not always, bigger and stronger than their wives. Whenever you are standing next to someone who is much smaller than you then it is important that you consciously not be scary.

It isn’t fair that a large man is more inherently scary to a child than a woman but it is mostly true. Women have to work much harder to be scary compared to men. Men are often terrifying if they don’t consciously work to not be.

If you go look at history that made more sense. Men have often been more brutal than women. I’m not saying women aren’t brutal–far from it. I’m aware of how scary and nasty women can be let me tell you.

In any given family a mother might be more scary than a father but in general children spend more time with their mothers and they are more acclimated to the mother so she is more familiar and “normalized” than the father.

If a father stays home and the mother works then this seems to reverse. It’s not actually about gender. It’s about familiarity and acclimation. We have just had a long period of

 

And I’m going to stop there because I have two forking kids asleep on me. fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. I’m feeling oppressed and bitter lately. My attitude fucking sucks.

Ok if I’m going to have children fucking climbing on me from 4 fucking 30 in the fucking morning I’m going to need pot today. fuckfuckfuckity.