What Parenting and the Environment Movement Have in Common
Holistic thinking extends throughout different facets of life
A Need for Deep Long-Term Understanding
Much of the sustainability movement is focused on individual behaviours, like showering for a shorter time or using less single-use plastics. So much of parenting methods and advice, too, are designed around shaping or suppressing children’s behaviour. What’s needed in both cases is a deep understanding of the long-term goal. In parenting, Dr Gabor Maté, a Canadian-Hungarian physician with a extensive experience in childhood development and lifelong effects of trauma, tells us,
‘What we want out of childrearing is, at the end of it, there should be an autonomous human being respectful of themselves and of others, who can be authentic and connected at the same time. A lot of parenting and educational practices focus not on the long-term goal in development but on fixing the kids’ behaviours in the short term, so we talk about kids are acting out.’
What acting out is is essentially portraying that which we don’t have words for. When children don’t yet have the language to explain how they’re feeling, they literally have to act out their emotional needs.
The long-term goal Dr Maté refers to takes a natural developmental process that requires the right conditions. Just as an acorn cannot grow into a mighty oak tree without soil, water, and sunlight, children won’t magically become autonomous, respectful, and authentic without parents who understand their developmental needs. The same goes for environmentalism. Temperature rises, flooding, and other climate change impacts are side effects of a planet in disequilibrium. While adaptation strategies are important, mitigation should look at root causes instead of only focusing on behaviour.
Challenging the Capitalist Narrative
Embracing different typologies of parenting other than the heterosexual pair in a nuclear familial setting is political and important to recognise. Equally, climate action is deeply political and challenges capitalist norms. Composting, gardening, refusing to consume incessantly, and demanding corporate responsibility are all personal acts that hold political significance.
Laura Kessler, Professor of Law who focuses on family, reproductive rights, and gender, wrote about how different forms of parenting are a political statement that threatens norms set by the mainstream patriarchal and capitalist society,
‘…to the extent that othermothering is defined by women-centered, fluid, family-like networks that have different purposes, othermothering undermines the patriarchal family, the male-breadwinner ideal, and the notion of biological motherhood. Perhaps less obviously, it also threatens capitalist norms, for it moves away from the concept of children as the private property of individual parents.’
Othermothering refers to the act of women, including mothers, caring for children who are not biologically their own. It is very commonly practiced but rarely recognised, found in diverse cultures all around the world. Community parenting can be seen as a radical challenge to patriarchal and heterosexual norms that prevail in a capitalist society, and has also been found to be highly beneficial to children’s social development. For example, an article by Nicole Marie Muir and Yvonne Bohr found that many Indigenous communities in Canada emphasises on integrating extended family in familial structures. Similarly, climate action is best done in community. Not only does it foster a shared sense of belonging and responsibility, it helps to know that you’re not the only one fighting for a better future.
Thinking in Wholes
Just as it is important to think about the environmental movement as a whole living, natural, socioeconomic, environmental, political, cultural system, we need to think about children’s growth and development as a whole system. Many people are familiar with the work of Dr Maria Montessori, an Italian physician that was ahead of her time in understanding how children — and humans, really — learn. The Montessori website says this of Dr Montessori’s methods,
‘…fosters rigorous, self-motivated growth for children and adolescents in all areas of their development — cognitive, emotional, social, and physical. Montessori educators view children as naturally eager and capable of initiating and pursuing learning, guided by their own interests.’
This echoes with the teachings of Dr Temple Grandin, Professor of Animal Science who has also been a vocal proponent of neurodiversity, being autistic herself. She advocates for valuing all kinds of thinkers and laments that the US education system disproportionately favours math or verbal thinkers over visual thinkers, who benefit from hands-on and experiential learning.
Reaching the Highest Potential
Business-as-usual’s one singular goal is maximising profit. In doing so, nature, living systems, human beings included, become commodities and opportunities for extraction. Understanding how natural and living systems thrives at full potential is what we should aim towards in our journey to regenerating our planet home.
Keeping in mind what the goal is for childrearing, as Dr Maté reminds us, guides our daily actions and interactions with our children. In the same vein, Carol Sanford shares,
‘Childrearing lays the ground for all other social processes. Parents help children grow their capacity to join with others in order to pursue common purposes. They do this by assisting them to learn, understand, and value the social agreements that allow cooperation among people with widely diverging interests and goals… It is also about helping children tap into and express in the fullest possible way their own potential.’
I reside in a country where Medium’s partner program does not reach, so I cannot receive any financial credit for my work published on Medium. I spend many hours researching, writing, thinking, editing. If you enjoy my work, please consider supporting me by ‘buying me a coffee’ here.
