Against broken homes and the creative class

[sabotabby]

I'm very much on the go today (and all weekend, argh) so here are two rantlets with accompanying links that have little in common beyond being about phrases I hate.

Broken homes

In the midst of an otherwise quite good "don't pick on teachers" editorial, Peter Mansbridge says:

We send teachers children from broken homes, from abusive homes, from negligent homes. We send teachers children from homes where both parents work, or where the only parent works, or where no parent works.

Which reminds me that I don't think I've ever ranted about how much I hate the term "broken home."

I was one of those pitiable children who came from a broken home—and, as a bonus, a home in which the only parent worked. (A trifecta, even; I have some memories of coming home from school when said parent worked late, making me—at least according to the media, a "latchkey kid, raised by the television." Woe is me!) In fairness, up until I was a certain age, one could conceivably call my home "broken." I'd argue that my parents' separation and later divorce fixed that rather handily, however; my home was certainly a better place to be with a single parent than it was with a traditional nuclear family.

The divorce rate in Canada is approximately 41%, and presumably many of them have children. For the sake of argument, let's say four in ten students I teach come from families where the parents are divorced. I'd bet you anything that those four aren't the ones causing trouble. As much wailing and moaning as there is about absent fathers and such*, of the children I've taught who experience some form of abuse that I know about (i.e., Children's Aid was involved in some way), all but two experienced that abuse at the hands of a father or step-father. So—whose homes are "broken" again?

Can we have a moratorium on "broken home" and "single-parent family" being shorthand for "troubled kid"? It's sexist and heterocentric (after all, it assumes the supremacy of the nuclear family) and obscures the very real problems of high unemployment, poverty, ableism, and marginalization that are typically behind the failure of kids to thrive in school.

Creative class

Looks like this one's been dealt the death blow by the man who coined it in the first place, Richard Florida. The article has its problems (the author is way too gleeful, for one thing, though that's not surprising given what a douchenozzle Florida is), and stops well short of proposing workable solutions. But it's nice to finally see an admission of the failure of what's basically polite class warfare.

So beyond the obvious—an influx of artsy young professionals with no kids does not a thriving urban centre make—let's examine the assumptions inherent in the term itself. Are working class people not creative? Are there significant numbers of people who can earn a living through "creativity" without either being supported by their upper class parents or working as a barista at Starbucks? Is the separation of this group of people into a single city or neighbourhood a desirable outcome?

It's dumb enough that Florida said it in the first place, and even dumber that it's spawned a culture of TED Talks and institutional conferences that take the existence of something called a "creative class" as a given. I should hope that this foolishness will stop now that he's admitted it's bunk.

* This usually comes with a big helping of coded racism as well: If black fathers would only stick around, black boys wouldn't join gangs or something.

Comments

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

In addition to all of what you've said: Oh, no, not homes where both parents work! How horrid! I must confess that I have not done my manly duty and allowed [spouse] to neglect her housewifely duties, in pursuit of filthy librarian lucre. That in spite of that, [daughter] has grown into the sort of child that teachers love to have in their classes, must be testament to her innate strength of character, for clearly she is bestowed with inadequate parental tutelage. (Was that Victorian enough?)

[sabotabby]

That was an excellent imitation of pearl-clutching! Kudos to you, good sir.

(I haven't ever met [daughter] of course, but I bet she is pure joy to teach from what you've said about her.)

[franklanguage.livejournal.com]

Actually, I didn't come from a "broken" home, but neither was it "fixed." My father was an abusive alcoholic, and my parents fought every night, in the TV room—which happened to be the room directly under my bedroom. No wonder I had insomnia.

He also made my mother quit her job when she had me, so that the kids would "have a mother at home when they came home from school every day." So? They fought incessantly about how they couldn't afford anything—the unspoken was that he wouldn't let her work. And they stayed married for 29 years, until my dad's sudden death. In spite of that, my brother became a junkie and lived at home until he was 35.

People should really be clear about where "nature" ends and "nurture" begins.

[sabotabby]

Yeah. Nuclear families are no guarantee of a stable upbringing. /understatement.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

much in agreement re "broken homes" - here they are called single-parent families.

I have not looked up research but bet most of the "troubled" nature of such homes comes from their having less income and more stigma to deal with, there being less extended family support generally for everyone and not enough affordable childcare about anywhere.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

Broken Home that relies on welfare to be stable - it was a strange feeling knowing that most people in the media thought that I was broken by virtue of my upbringing.

[sabotabby]

Yep. And presumably Part of the Problem.

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

I live with two "latchkey" kids from a "broken home" and they are best in class, sleepwalking easily like. Their parents are neither rich nor at home all the time. (They weren´t even married.) They´re openminded, bright kids with multiple talents too so maybe if they work hard they can join that new cool creative class, later.

[sabotabby]

Funny that the bizarrely specific Western nuclear family ideal isn't the only sort of family that works.

[misslynx.livejournal.com]

I actually have somewhat mixed feelings about the whole "broken home" thing. Certainly, the media, right-wing politicians, et al, make a lot of overblown assumptions about intact nuclear families always being better than divorced ones, which considering how awful many nuclear families are, is ridiculous. But at the same time, I don't think it's realistic to claim that parents breaking up doesn't have any kind of negative impact on children.

I used to think it didn't. I remember telling a lot of people that my parents splitting up had been no big deal and that my sister and I had been fine with it. But then one day I said something to that effect in front of my mom, and she looked at me in shock and said "Don't you remember? You were having nightmares and constant meltdowns and even seeing things at one point, and we were so freaked out we took you to see a child psychologist." And then it was my turn to be shocked, because I didn't remember that at all -- and when I tried to think back to the year they'd separated, I realized I remembered almost nothing of that entire year. The few things I could bring to mind were totally trivial and had nothing to do with the separation. I couldn't remember my dad moving out. I couldn't remember ever hearing them fight, even though I know they fought constantly in the months leading up to the breakup. I couldn't remember a single damn thing about the entire process, except for my dad coming to see me and my sister at our grandparents' place where we were visiting, and waking us up in the middle of the night to give us each a stuffed animal and tell us that he and our mom were getting a divorce. And the thing I remember most clearly about that is that the stuffed animals were ugly as sin. It seems I somehow blocked an entire year out of my memory because I couldn't deal with it, and didn't even realize for decades afterwards that I'd done it.

And now, years after that, with my own marriage having broken up nearly five years ago, I can't count the number of times my son has broken down sobbing when one of our visits ended, or asked me (over and over) why his other mom and I can't still live together. He was young enough when she decided to end it that I doubt he can even remember us being together, but he still knows we were, and wishes we still could be, and that he wasn't always having to say goodbye to one or the other of us. So I know the way things are hurts him. And it's been hellishly difficult to try to explain to him how it was that Mama and I could have loved each other at one point, but then stopped loving each other and not been able to live together any more, without seeing the fear in his eyes that maybe that means one day we'll stop loving him.

And yet, in both cases, there really wasn't much of an alternative. If I'd stayed with my now ex-wife, our son would probably have spent the last five years listening to us fight constantly, and that would have just hurt him in a different way. Just like if my parents had stayed together. Sometimes there isn't any option that isn't going to hurt everyone involved, and it's just a case of trying to decide which is going to hurt less. And then sometimes wondering for years afterwards if it was the wrong choice.

Anyway... This all ended up being longer (and more personal) than I originally intended. But the bottom line is, looking at my own childhood and my son's, I have to say that yes, our homes did break. And it did damage us emotionally. Maybe it would have been worse if they hadn't, but it would still feel dishonest to me to try and pretend that the way things did go didn't hurt.

[sabotabby]

I had a lot of meltdowns and such when my parents were divorcing too. But I think that would have happened anyway, or worse, if they'd stayed together.

And long-term, while I think I'm scarred from my father's abuse, I don't really think I'm scarred by the divorce. There were a tough few years, and to make it worse, I was being bullied at school. And I hit puberty early. It's hard to know what left permanent scars and what didn't.