Category: Parenting

Stoicism and Virtue in Family Culture: A Conversation

2/5/2018

Common Sense Ethics is now on Youtube! Most parents struggle to get their parenting ideals to match their every day family life. In response to my post from December, Brittany Polat of apparentstoic.com interviews me about how to create an ideal family culture based on Stoic and other philosophical virtues. We discuss:

How to make your ideal family culture part of your daily routine without making yourself crazy.
What techniques have worked for our families.
The importance of norms and family culture versus parenting style.
Books for children and the importance of reading to them.
Family activities and traditions based on Stoic philosophy.

Please subscribe to the channel - we will be discussing many exciting topics going forward!

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Creating Your Ideal Family Culture

12/19/2017

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With the holidays coming up, many of us are focused on family. My recent post Why You Should Create Your Own Culture to Be Happier prompted a discussion on the Stoic Parents Facebook group about how to create a family culture. Family culture, (defined as the way that a group of people think, feel, act and achieve common goals) is tremendously influential. Creating an ideal culture for your family is something that must be done intentionally. Otherwise you will probably operate in default mode just trying to get things done each day since life with kids tends to be busy:

"Parents must decide what quality of family life they will have and then use the necessary discipline to accomplish this. Otherwise life will push the family in diverse directions...Those parents who have carefully examined their values and their view of life are going to be those whose influence on their children is most consistent. Why? Because what they believe is important to them...Our priorities are determined by our values." - Gladys Hunt, Honey for a Child's Heart.

You don't get a second chance at raising your children. Brainstorm what you ideally want for your family life, write it down, and then be disciplined enough to implement it. Build the various aspects of your ideal family culture into your routine and they will come naturally. It may help to think about your ideal family culture in terms of these four broad categories:

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4 Ways to Teach Kids Moderation in a Materialistic Society

8/11/2017

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How much is too much? One of my new favorite bloggers, Brittany Polat, deals with this question in a guest post originally published at Apparent Stoic:

I’ve never really thought of myself as a materialistic person. I’ve always worn inexpensive clothes, lived in modest dwellings, and tried to judge my companions by the quality of their character rather than the expensiveness of their possessions.

But when I had kids, my relationship with material goods suddenly changed. My husband and I found ourselves spending a lot of money on nursery furniture, baby gear, and diapers. Then we traded the old, small car for a new, reliable family car. We moved out of our small condo to a bigger house with a bigger yard near better schools. Without really stopping to think about it, we’ve always assumed we have to give our kids as much as we can afford, whether that means high-quality child care or dance lessons or memorable family vacations.

But one thing I’ve learned from Stoicism is that you should never blindly do things without stopping to think about them; you shouldn’t do something just because it seems right, or just because that’s what everyone else is doing.

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Musonius Rufus' Nurturing Stoic Family or Plato's Guardian Automatons?

5/16/2017

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Last month I had a post about philosophy and parenthood published at Modern Stoicism (formerly Stoicism Today). The post, linked here, is about how Plato's approach to parenting as described in the Republic is pretty much guaranteed to screw kids up.

On the other hand, the Stoic Musonius Rufus, writing somewhat later in antiquity, proposed a nurturing approach to family and raising children that happens to be very consistent with modern research on ideal infant attachment and child development. Here is an excerpt from the post (you can read the entire post at Modern Stoicism):

"Plato errs in viewing the care of young children as an unimportant activity which hinders or detracts from philosophy and the good of the state, rather than one which is good and philosophical in and of itself. Raising virtuous and empathetic children is a most important matter, maybe even the most important philosophical matter, because it is the cornerstone on which a good society is built to begin with."

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Growing Up Stoic: Philosophical Education for Character, Persistence, and Grit

10/24/2016

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Just in case you missed it, my post about Stoic education for children ran on Stoicism Today a few weeks back.

I'll be publishing a new Common Sense Ethics post soon!

Image: Credit Stoicism Today

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Stoic Parenting: Fertile Ground for Eudaimonia

4/19/2016

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I recently had a guest post published on the blog Stoicism Today. The piece is about using Stoic philosophy to become a better parent.

Here is the link:

Stoic Parenthood: Fertile Ground for Eudaimonia

Enjoy!

Image: Credit Stoicism Today

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5 Things That You "Owe" Your Child

3/12/2016

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As a writer, I read a great deal, both online and between the covers of books. Sometimes I encounter a blog post or story that inspires me, or that I feel the need to respond to. One such piece is Mom on the Move 35's post "10 Things You Don't 'Owe' Your Child."

The point of the article is that children aren't entitled to many of things that society typically considers to be good, including lots of material possessions, winning, gourmet food, and popularity. It's not that I disagree with the author, per se. It's that I want to add an addendum in the affirmative. If there are many things that you don't owe your child, then what do you owe them exactly?

Mom on the Move concludes that "Children are entitled to parents who will teach them the difference between the things in life they have to work for and the things in life that are given freely."

Since she doesn't expand on the topic, let's examine it further here. What does the classical philosophical tradition have to say about the things that parents should freely give to their children? Modern psychology? How about common sense?

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6 Reasons Why It Is Wrong to Spank Kids - Number 4 May Shock You

10/20/2015

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I was spanked as a child, but my husband and I don't plan on spanking our son. We have determined that spanking is not ethical or ok for our child and family. Children are people with rights of their own, and they should be treated with respect.

Spanking, or corporal punishment, is the intentional use of physical pain to control a child's behavior. Spanking carries more of a social stigma today than it once did. Corporal punishment is banned in public schools in 31 states. As of 2015, corporal punishment is actually illegal in 30 countries. However in recent polls of American parents, up to 70 percent spanked their children.

Corporal punishment is an important moral issue, because it is widespread among Americans and in the developing world. But why are many parents willing to sanction behaviors towards children that they would never sanction towards adults? Why is there a double standard at play when it comes to hitting kids, who are the smallest and most dependent of people?

Many parents who were spanked as children believe that it is fine to spank kids because they themselves turned out ok. However this is a poor argument and a logical fallacy (appeal to tradition or common practice). Thanks to various academic studies, much more is known today about about the psychological and behavioral consequences of spanking than was known in the past, and none of it is good. Parents should carefully consider the case against spanking before deciding whether or not to spank their children as a form of discipline:

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