A Guide to Commercial-Free Holidays

Commercializing childhood is a societal issue -- but even as we work to improve society for families, we know millions of families are assaulted by stepped-up commercialism each holiday season. How can we find meaning amid the clutter of commercial chaos? How do we preserve our values in the midst of the annual advertising assault? How can we reclaim the holidays from corporate marketers?

The nonprofit Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood has put together a guide that helps with these questions. I’m one of the contributors, along with Enola Aird, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Nathan Dungan, Allen Kanner, Tim Kasser, Diane Levin, Karen Lewis, and Susan Linn.

Download the CCFC Guide to Commercial-Free Holidays to find strategies for coping from some of your favorite activists, advocates, and authors. Pass it on, post it, share it with friends and families.

How Can Dads Connect?

I got an email yesterday from the dad of 4 year old and 19 month old daughters who describes his marriage as “wonderful.” He asked: “How can I reach out to connect with my kids more at their age? Most of the info I read seems to be for older girls.”

If you’re a professional working with families, it’s good to remember how many fathers and stepfathers long to be close to their children—even if they don’t always talk about it. We also tend to put a lot of focus on father-child relationships when the child is older, which is why this dad has trouble finding resources for his situation.

Here are the 3 things I suggested that he try:

1) Join up with the free Yahoo group "DadTalk" and ask is question there. DadTalk has been around for 9 years and has a cadre of good dads and stepdads of daughters (with kids of all ages) with good suggestions based on their experience.

2) Get my book The Dads & Daughters Togetherness Guide: 54 Fun Activities to Help Build a Great Relationship. The title is self-explanatory, and the activities are divided by age of the girl. And, by the way, all of the activities in the book can be used by dads with sons, too. As well as by mothers, grandparents, other relatives…and family professionals like counselors, pastors, teachers, health care pros, etc. Just change the pronouns to meet your circumstances! ;-)

3) If you’re giving your daughters as much time and attention as possible, then don’t worry overly about your connection. Time and presence build the connection, IMHO. The time and attention can come while changing diapers, making dinner and other mundane tasks--it doesn’t all have to come in big, "special" activities. I've come to believe that our kids and us really get to know each other in the mundane, ordinary activities of life...as long as we are THERE during those mundane, ordinary activities. So, make sure you're showing up.

I hope these suggestions were helpful to him—and you, too. Share your ideas for how family professionals can promote and encourage dad-child connection in a comment below.

Loving Kids-In-Law Isn’t Automatic

My daughter and her boyfriend got formally engaged last weekend. That’s her ring (and hand!) in the picture. This is a first for me--and her, BTW! ;-)

This is something I’ve been looking forward to for a couple of reasons.

First, and most important, because I love and am impressed with my daughter and future son-in-law. I also love the great partnership the two of them have. It will come to no surprise to learn than my daughter (like her sister) is pretty special and remarkable—and thus deserves a great life partner. (Most dads and stepdads I know feel the same way about their daughters—and a good thing too!) So I’m very happy for the two of them separately and for the pair they are (and will be) together.

My second reason is one of heritage. I was blessed with two grandparents, Frank Barnes and Catherine Hughes, who I always loved greatly. As a child and young man, Bepa and Cacky (as we kids called them) taught me the importance of honesty, compassion, justice, tolerance, forgiveness, and family.

But it wasn’t until my own children were older that I realized another important—and difficult--lesson they taught me.

My mother was their oldest child and the first to marry. For a number of reasons (some quite defensible), they were not thrilled with her choice of husband, my dad. But they found their way to loving him. Even with his imperfections, they saw that Dad was a good man at heart. And, during my lifetime, they embraced him as their own child. They did the same with the other people who married into their family: my Uncle Matt, Aunt Mickey and Aunt Ruth.

As a result, I was very close to my aunts, uncles and many cousins. I loved this extended family with all its chaos and affection and celebrations. But I took that gift for granted—not even recognizing how this family was Cacky and Bepa’s gift to us.

When my daughter and her fiancé got serious with each other, I suddenly realized that a good relationship between me and this good young man was not automatic. I needed to get to know him, include him in my life and take the risk of growing close to him (and growing close to them as a couple). For the first time, I saw that my grandparents’ embrace of their children-in-law was not automatic, either—even though it always looked automatic to me.

No, Cacky and Bepa had to take risks, too. And they took them even when (as with my father) they had more reason to hesitate than I’ll ever have with my future son-in-law.

Now, many years after their death, I began to understand the level of spiritual strength and capacity of love this required. To my eyes and experience, Bepa & Cacky did not discriminate between their biological children and the people their biological children married. They loved them all, period. Same for all their grandchildren.

What a wonderful and powerful example they set for their children and us grandchildren. It’s an example lived out in my generation and our parents’ generation. And it’s the example I try to follow with and for my soon-to-be-son-in-law and my daughters.

Thanks, Cacky & Bepa, for that gift and heritage. Your great-grandchildren don’t know you the way we grandkids knew you—but they do know you nonetheless.

Congratulations to you—and to my daughter and soon son—for nurturing such spiritual strength and capacity of love.

Early Live-Away Dad Contact is Key

The period immediately following separation is crucial for the long-term contact between fathers and their children with whom they no longer live.

A study from Statistics Canada shows that Dads who remained closely involved with their children in the first few months following separation had a much greater chance of remaining so later on.

At the point of separation, almost one-half of children saw their father frequently: 27% saw him at least every week, while 22% saw him every two weeks. Almost one-third saw their father monthly, for holidays only or irregularly. The remainder (19%) had no paternal visits at all, though some had contact by phone or mail.

Two years later, the frequency of paternal visits had changed for about half of the children. The study showed that fathers who visited their children regularly seldom lost contact, and fathers who were "absent" rarely began regular visits afterwards.

Overall, the study suggested that fathers who were involved in their non-resident children's lives after separation did not abandon them, whatever the family commitments they later took on.

Find tips for Live-Away Dads at www.TheDadMan.com.

54

With apologies to Oprah, there are three things I know for sure:

• I am a white man about to turn 54.
• I was born in 1954, the year that the Supreme Court ruled school segregation illegal in Brown v. Board of Education—probably the most important civil rights decision ever.
• Until this year, it never occurred to me that a Black or biracial person would ever be elected President of the United States in my lifetime…or in the lifetime of my twin 28-year-old daughters.

Like the majority of voters, I happen to have cast my ballot for President-elect Obama. But no matter who we voted for, we fathers and daughters are living through a stunningly historical moment in our national history.

During the course of this campaign, my heart warmed to hear how often Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama (and Ms. Palin, Mr. Biden, Ms. Clinton and other candidates) expressed love and concern for their daughters during the campaign. As an advocate for Dads & Daughters (to borrow a phrase), my faith in people’s respect for father-daughter relationships was vindicated.

Last night, I shed tears listening to Sen. McCain’s honest, healing and patriotic speech; listening to the President-Elect’s call for mutual effort and sacrifice…and listening to my own daughters describe their amazement at the election’s outcome.

All I could think to tell them, through a choked voice, was this: “I am so grateful that you lived to see and experience something like this. And that Mom and I lived to see and experience it, too.”

This morning, I can articulate more clearly why I am so grateful. No matter what one’s political persuasion, November 4, 2008 was a thrilling and humbling reminder of the unfolding miracle of the idea of the United States. Despite our troubles and problems (and, too often, our cynicism), we are all stewards of a remarkable, ongoing experiment of a Republic.

And as a member of the fraternity of fathers, I feel this morning like my life is some reflection of that. At (almost) 54, I’m not an old man. But in the course of that relatively short lifetime, the United States has gone from a place where the children of middle-aged fathers (Black and White) were murdered because Blacks wanted to ride a bus, attend a college—or cast a vote. In my lifetime.

And in the lifetime of us fathers and our daughters, the son of Black and White parents became our President-Elect last night. Whatever happens next, please make time today to ponder with your daughter how we all made history this week.

A Father's Father’s Influence

Even before he has a baby, the average father longs to have the foolproof formula for fathering her. That desire is good news! It is nature’s way of telling a dad how important e is to raising his child. The bad news is (you guessed it), there is no sure-fire, one-size-fits-all blueprint for fathering this child, or any other child.

However, Nature provides dads with many of the instincts and tools they’ll need for the job. That eons-long heritage is not the only one at our disposal. As I explain often to fathers, we can also draw on our family heritage—no matter what it looks like:

For some of us, our parents, stepparents, grandparents, and other relatives are a mother lode—no, let’s make that a father lode—of positive parenting. For some of us, our ancestors look like a toxic stew of bad examples that we should seal over with concrete, and never look back. The vast majority of us have both good and bad examples to draw from.

Take time for an honest, detached look at how the adults in your family raised you, your siblings, and your cousins. If, at first glance, all you see is a massive mound of miserable garbage, keep looking. There are probably a few positive things for you to salvage from that pile. As my grandmother used to say, “Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.”

Try this exercise:

• Write down five good things your father, stepfather, or grandfather did that you want to be sure you do for your child.
• Write down five things your father, stepfather, or grandfather did that you want to be sure you avoid doing to your child.
• Reflect on your years as a dad or stepdad and ask yourself if your experience makes you want to alter the lists in any way.
• Save these lists, pull them out again on in a year, and see if that year of fathering makes you want to alter the lists in any way.

Of course, it is often hard to clearly see our relationships with our parents and stepparents, since they are the adults we were closest to growing up. When something is very close to your eyes, it’s hard to see where it fits into a larger picture and context.

If you look back from your adult perspective, for example, you can probably think of some particular parental behavior that felt great to you one day; while the exact same behavior felt terrible another day.

But always remember how influential you are to your children! As former New York Governor Mario C. Cuomo put it: “I talk and talk and talk, and I haven’t taught people in 50 years what my father taught by example in 1 week.”

Adapted from my book The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Being an Expectant Father.