Homemade Humanities

Our first "family portrait" -
taken after the guardianship was finalized

About seven months ago my six year-old niece and fifteen year-old nephew moved from Colorado to live with my husband and me. On their mother's death we became guardians-in-training.

I think it's in fashion to call it "family blending" but it's really Culture Shock. We've gone from steaks with imported beer to beanie-weenie with root beer; from National Public Radio to bands with names like Hoobastank and Modest Mouse - with bass beats so severe that the dogs get restless; from the History Channel to the Disney Channel.

These changes in our lives have led me to think about how the concepts of "parenting" and "humanities" interweave - and how we understand and enrich these ideas every day.

My favorite definition of humanities is, "branches of knowledge that are concerned with human thought and culture." I understood that when I came to work for the Council three years ago - but as a parent, I understand it.

Parents are humanities educators - I can see it every day in my own family. The physical upkeep of our children is only slightly more complicated than that of our dogs - we just have to keep straight who gets Tylenol and who gets heartworm pills. But having the responsibility to teach your child about "human thought and culture" is a daily, and often daunting, labor of love. We impart that knowledge when we're answering the 750 "Why?" questions we hear each day; when we take the time to not only read the book, but to consider the reasons the story is the way it is - and how it could be different; when we have in-depth discussions on how a certain song lyric can be interpreted in different ways. And if we are perceptive, we can learn as much as we teach our children.

I've been told that raising children is easier if you start from scratch and go with babies, but I think having older children is a gift. They have given me the opportunity to see a whole range of human thought and culture that I might never have experienced otherwise. I might prefer to watch a biography of Meriwether Lewis, but I have to admit that Spongebob Squarepants is pretty funny sometimes. I hadn't had a root beer float in years - but now I indulge frequently (yes, I slurp up the foam at the bottom); and while I might prefer folk music, I can appreciate the philosophy in a Modest Mouse song, "Don't worry - even if things end up a bit too heavy, we'll all float on all right."

Dawn Schwab

St. Louis, MO

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Published monthly by the Missouri Humanities Council, a tax-exempt, non-profit organization affiliated with the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Federal agency.
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