Le projet parental

Having children who have reached that milestone known in the English-speaking world as the 'teens' gives one plenty of opportunities to recall the personal reasons for having children in the first place.  I say this in jest, of course, but it is remarkable in the big picture that we can actually have personal reasons to parent.  Personal choice is a marker of contemporary parenthood.   Instead of following tradition and socially-prescribed expectations and roles as we have for centuries, we can now make private choices about parenting: whether or not to do it, when, and how.  As sociologist Judith Stacey (2011, Unhitched, NY University Press) so aptly puts it, the paths to parenthood today no longer appear "...natural, obligatory, or uniform as they used to, but have become voluntary [and] plural...."   In this way, parenthood is just one path we might choose to follow in adulthood, or it can even be thought of as a kind of life project that we may choose to undertake, un projet parental (a parental project), as it is referred to in some of the family law and reproductive technology literature in Quebec and France.  Thinking about parenthood as a chosen path or project though does not mean it is the same kind of choice for everyone, or that it is free and easy.  As before, some couples can just decide one night that they will make a baby and biology will cooperate, while for others, the project requires a great deal of personal intent, risk, and effort combined with external assistance.  In particular, for those who are involuntarily childless, such as the infertile, single adults, and homosexual couples, the parental project requires deliberate planning, money, persistence, and even creativity to navigate the biological, financial, legal and other barriers.

The supposedly free choices about parenthood are also constrained by social imperatives.  We may or may not need children for personal fulfillment, but our societies still need children in order to survive, and so societies, that is states, economic systems, and social institutions all still try to control and influence parenthood so that the broader social needs are met.  In this way, the parental project is much more of a joint one, where personal fulfillment is coupled with public needs: for example, we might make parenthood more attractive to some and control access to it for others.  This comes with the whiff of social engineering because entities other than the individuals intimately involved weigh in on who may or may not bear children.  China's one-child state policy is a vivid historical example, and we have plenty of lesser known examples, even in U.S. history.  In France, contemporary parenthood is tied to the need to sustain population growth, (see"Fertility: the crisis hits birth rates," Presseurop, Jan. 13, 2013), with the caveat that French children do have the right to have responsible parents (which is not the same as saying that adults have the right to have children as they choose.  See "Defining Parenthood" by Connie Cho, Yale Journal of Medicine and Law, vol. VII, issue 2, April 7, 2011.).  For most French adults, if they can bear children easily and they are not too young, then that seems to be enough to make them responsible in the state's eyes.  (For young French women the state offers excellent access to birth control and abortion is legal, thus discouraging childbearing until later adulthood.)  In return for their 'responsible parenthood,' French parents get generous social supports from the state, such as virtually universal non-parental childcare for young children (the famous crêches, or daycares), or cash benefits to mothers who stay home.  The former especially makes it possible for couples and particularly mothers, to continue working in the labor market while they bear and rear children.  However, for those who cannot take on le projet parental without some assistance, there is a bit more engineering going on in terms of who is given access and who is not.  The French offer tightly controlled assisted-reproductive technologies at low or no-cost, but only to some adults.  Certain categories of heterosexual couples (the most responsible ones, presumably?) have access to highly controlled procedures and resources, while single adults and homosexual adults are left out.  Some procedures remain illegal for all, like surrogacy.  Adoption too is tricky, particularly for gays and lesbians for whom it is illegal, (although this may or may not change soon, as France paves the way for gay marriage).  In the U.S., in contrast, the social engineering is less explicit (but should be no less controversial) because it is largely directed by the free market; the national government is relatively hands-off about childbearing, leaving matters like contraceptive access and the licensing of reproductive technologies and of adoption agencies to individual states and to private enterprise.  This means that in theory (but not in practice), anyone can choose to parent, so long as they have money to purchase services related to parenting and so long as services, technologies and resources are available in the marketplace. 
  
Clearly, while parenthood is more and more of a private choice, social (and biological) barriers persist.  As a parent of les ados (teenagers), I can see the attractions of trying to stay in control, of regulating the choices facing my kids, of deciding things for them.  They are still too young to evaluate and decide everything for themselves.  Yet, when they reach adulthood, I would hope for them, as I wish for others now, that they will have true opportunities to choose their paths freely and fully, whether these be to parenthood, to satisfying careers, or to simple, meaningful lives.  I'm pretty sure most parents would want the same for their own kids.

The results of my parental project as they grudgingly follow the path on a 'forced march,' or a Sunday family hike

Le bonheur

While I am a somewhat lapsed knitter (but one who now lives a simpler, French life with more time for little pleasures like needlecrafts), I was initially puzzled by the dearth of handicraft shops in Aix.  Within our first month here, a friend introduced me to a lovely but pricey shop called Au bonheur de dames (ladies' true happiness), where I have spent plenty of  Euros on yarn for the same flouncy scarves I've seen on many women here (see me wearing one creation on Le temps, Nov. 30, 2011) and on some beautiful but expensive needlework kits (my photo shows a little needle case that I completed earlier this year).  Yet, when I went looking for more shopping options, I was surprised by how few there were and how limited.

It didn't take long for me to realize why Aix has so few textile crafts shops.  On EACH occasion that I have brought out my knitting or other needlework in public or among French friends, I have been teased for being an old woman knitting on the football or rugby sideline or in the living room armchair.  Le tricot, la broderie, la couture, ils ne sont pas à la mode!  (Knitting, embroidery, sewing, they are not 'in'!)   This is in direct contrast to my experience in the United States where knitting and other crafts continue to be very popular.  Yet, the young sisters of the French soccer players have been absolutely mesmerized by my projects, asking me questions about the embroidery tension rings and needles, admiring the changing colors on the variegated yarn on my fingerless glove project shown here, and checking on my crafting progress throughout the games.  Surely these pleasures are not reserved for just les vieilles dames (the old ladies)?

I've come to think that young girls in this society, and particularly in the south have limited leisure time opportunities, with Barbies, then shopping and cosmetics, and then experimenting with cigarettes among them.  Clearly, textile handcrafts are largely out, yet other options like physical activities continue to be fairly segregated by gender.  Girls swim, do gymnastics or dance, play tennis, or might ride horses if they have the money.  There are a few exceptions, and perhaps my eagle-eyed readers discovered two of them in my last post (the one with the masculine title Allez les gars, Nov. 26, 2012): in the accompanying photo of my son's football team, there are two girls who play soccer alongside the boys.  They have to, if they want to play soccer here.  While France has a national women's team, the infrastructure for a girls' youth league is not as well-developed as it is in the United States where young girls have many opportunities to play, and so they do.  I have yet to see an all-girls soccer team or league here in the football-crazy south, and it's probably right to say that France does not yet have a functioning equivalent of Title IX (the U.S. law that ensures equal funding for women's athletic and other programs in federally supported institutions).  That means that French girls have to be incredibly determined, tough, and focused, if they want to play le foot, just like the two girls at my son's club as well as the courageous girl I saw yesterday, at a match in Marseille.  She waited stoically with her parents for warm-ups to begin, standing just beyond her all-boy team that was horsing around (and excluding her).  I watched her maintain her poker-face and her rigid posture as she stepped onto the field at the start of both halves.  Clearly, le foot means a lot to her, yet she cannot comfortably express the joy and pleasure she has for the game while playing among and against adolescent boys.  (Blog update: I have discovered a New York Times essay about this same topic, Sciolino, Sept. 16, 2002. "Paris Journal; For French Girls, Soccer is a tough goal", suggesting that not much has changed in a decade.)

How do we find notre bonheur (that which makes us happy)?  As I continue to observe the gender inequality around me and look for evolutions towards a literally and figuratively more equalized playing field for French girls, (and wait for knitting to become hip among the younger French, male and female alike), I am hugely disappointed by France's former First Lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy's comments in a recent interview with the Parisian Vogue.  She says that women of her generation ....“don’t need to be a feminist....There were pioneers who opened the breach....I’m not at all an active feminist. On the contrary I’m bourgeois, I love family life, I love doing the same thing every day.” (as transcribed in "Carla supports gay marriage." La Connexion, Nov. 26, 2012) Apparently, this privileged and 'bourgeois' mother (whose voice could make a difference) seems to believe that her young daughter and other French girls will have no problem at all in finding equal and full access to life's pleasures and opportunities.

La sécurité

One of the benefits of living in a city like Aix is that we and our children can move about fairly easily and en sûreté (safely).  Our boys, like many other French middle schoolers, can wander through town and sit at cafés without supervision and walk or bus to their sports' activities independently.  (Have I said earlier already that I absolutely relish our carpool-free life, even as I miss our U.S. carpool buddies!?)  A safe public milieu is a hallmark of many European cities, although all cities, of course, have their dark sides.  What is particularly interesting is how differently societies assess safety and risk, and how some elements are accepted as reasonable risks in one place, but not in another. 

I have been noticing such differences between French and American safety thresholds over the past few weeks.  Just a month ago, we wondered about property security when we saw a beautiful basement rental apartment in the city, with barred windows and a rare garden, encircled by a very high metal fence but an awkward gate.  Sécurité incendie (fire safety) came up in another apartment we viewed; it was a true aerie with tremendous views from the top of the 5-story building, but its winding, narrow stairway meant that both moving our things in and ourselves out, (in case of a fire), would be very, very difficult.  Many residences here in the center would not meet general U.S. fire safety codes.  The freeing of U.S. student Amanda Knox from Italy last week has brought up discussions of la sécurité personnelle (personal safety), especially of young women and foreign students.  (There are 5000 such students in Aix each year, according to the Aix City News, Oct. 12, 2011 edition; I wonder how many know the local emergency telephone numbers, of which there are several.)  The Knox case also stirs up the issue of political security; do you know how to reach your national embassy in case you are arrested!?

Then today, Allen and I saw the most remarkable traffic and public safety exercise.  The local police had cordoned off small sections of Cours Mirabeau (the grand boulevard in Aix) to allow schoolchildren outfitted in fluorescent yellow vests to practice safe bicycle riding around traffic cones.  Our boys' bicycle helmet-focused, primary school P.E. teacher would have fainted; in this publicly-organized and sanctioned event, directed by the police, none of the Aixois children were wearing casques de velo (bicycle helmets)!  In fact, the only people we see regularly wearing helmets are the bicycle cops in Aix, and motorcycle and motor-scooter drivers.  But then again, these drivers dart in and out of traffic in such a way that the helmets may not be enough to protect them.  On the freeways, motorcyclists are allowed to drive in between lanes and cars, at rapid speeds, and I have seen and experienced a number of near-accidents where cars were about to change lanes onto these riders.

In regards to this last motorway practice, my spouse made an important point, how some societies just choose to accept a certain number of traffic fatalities that might result from certain behaviors.  After all, at one time, no one wore bicycle helmets or seat belts in the U.S.  Some of this was due to the lack of rigorous study of the effects of wearing helmets or seat belts, but one can also see this as a matter of different social contexts and social priorities.  Today, in the U.S. we are inching towards making the use of cell phones illegal while driving, yet our legal driving ages are generally lower than in Europe and we accept higher blood alcohol percentages in our drivers.  This is all highly sociological, this notion that there can be significant variation among societies and across time, in terms of what is deemed safe or acceptable risk.  We can also explain the decisions about acceptable risks sociologically.

Some sociologists would explain certain safety risks as essentially functional or even rational for society.  That people get hurt more often, or worse, die, because of certain practices, may be weighed against say, the lower personal cost of owning a motorcycle or scooter vs. a car in Europe, or against the fact that injuries and fatalities do in their morbid way, create jobs and social positions for other people.  In contrast, other sociologists might suggest that the accepted risks favor and hurt different groups of people, perpetuating the inequalities between these groups.  In general, those with scooters may be less economically well-off and thus less powerful, and perhaps more expendable than say wealthier drivers in their relatively safe Mercedes sedans.  If we consider the case of foreigners abroad who are arrested, the 'get out of jail free' passes tend to go to those from wealthy families and countries and with the right skin color and looks.

There are other sociological arguments too, suggesting that in today's highly complex, intertwined, post-modern world, we simply have too many choices in front of us, and none of them are perfect.  What we decide on one issue unavoidably affects our choices and decisions on other ones, and so we make decisions that we think will work the best in our current circumstances, but the calculus we use will likely not be the same as someone else's in another social setting.  In my litany above, I didn't even mention food safety, but that presents an excellent example of such overwhelming choices: what kind of food should we offer and eat, how cooked, how clean, how raw?  The French have chosen to accept the risks of offering steak tartare (raw beef), foie gras (goose liver) and some moldy fromages (cheeses), because they value haute cuisine and the sensory experiences of eating, while in the U.S., we are not willing to take the risk of serving undercooked beef anymore, given the greater concern we may have for the political or economic costs arising from a potential outbreak of food-borne illness.  These decisions affect other French and American choices, about the ways we raise our beef or fowl, the access and costs we create in our healthcare systems, and the messages we give our children about food.

On that note, I shall end by sharing that our family's personal choice in regards to food safety is that we accept the risks associated with French dining, and we do so happily every Friday night after rugby and soccer trainings.  (This week, raw fish, Japanese style, at Seito).  Bon appetit!