Embracing the Gray

          If you’ve been on Facebook lately, you’re probably fed up with all of the people trying to use the site as a platform for whatever political, social, or other message they want to promote. If it isn’t sweeping conclusory statements about a particular political candidate, it’s an assumption about another person based on one occurrence (i.e. “this random mom in the news is a bad parent”), or stereotyping an entire group amidst a discussion of equality (i.e. “all cops are good” or “all cops are racist”).

          While I miss the cute baby pictures, crazy cat videos, and recipes as much as the next gal, what really bothers me about these posts are the way they portray complex issues as black and white. Few things in life are straightforward. Almost nothing is cut and dry. Let’s take the parenthood issue, for starters. I like to think of myself as an advocate for children’s rights, but as a mom, I don’t particularly appreciate the double standard for moms vs dads nor do I enjoy seeing society hanging a mom out to dry for one moment of less-than stellar parenting.

          I’ll give you an example from my personal experience. I generally consider myself to be a good parent. I will never claim to be perfect and I’m sure you could all suggest areas of improvement for me, but for the most part, I think I’m doing just fine. Had a news crew been following me around yesterday, however, I think CPS might come and take my children from me. It started with a busy morning—I was tired from a baby who sucks at sleeping and I was rushing to get four kids and myself fed, dressed, and out the door for camp drop off. Somewhere in this chaos, the baby speed crawled (seriously—she’s wicked fast!) to the table where one of my lazy kiddos had left out a spoonful of peanut butter and she began to wolf that peanut butter. Not a big deal unless you consider that the pediatrician advised us not to let her have peanut products due to a family history of nut allergies and that peanut butter in particular tends to be a choking hazard. Flash forward to afternoon, when I’m rushing to meet a work deadline and make lemon bars for a dinner party. For a brief moment, Jeremy and I lost track of the baby, each assuming the other was watching her. Of course we found her in the bathroom, standing at the open toilet, EATING USED TOILET PAPER OUT OF THE TOILET. Yes, you read that correctly. Still thinking I’m an okay parent? After that incident, I scrubbed the baby’s hands, lectured the kids about flushing and putting the lid down, rinsed the baby’s mouth, and dry heaved for a good ten minutes. By this point I was fully flustered, so as I packed the diaper bag and got the wine, beer, and desserts ready to take to the neighbors, I quickly agreed to let my big kids walk on over ahead of us since we were just going across the street. Jeremy picked up the baby, and we locked up the house. After sitting everything down at the neighbors’ and taking off our shoes, someone asked if we’re missing a child. Jeremy and I looked at each other and realized yes, indeed we had left our three year old at home. Alone. Granted we were only across the street and it was only for a few minutes (translation- please don’t call CPS!) and she hadn’t even noticed our departure as she happily rearranged furniture in the Barbie dream house while singing “Let it Go,” but still…

Frankly had any of these incidents been splashed in the newspaper, I would’ve been crucified by society and labeled as the latest Bad Mom. You wouldn’t see in the short, biased articles that I work extra hours to afford fun classes for my kids, how I rub their backs at 4am when I’ve already been up twice, the way I happily steam broccoli every night since it’s the only vegetable they all eat, or any of the other many many things that make me feel good about my parenting overall. Why? Because the media’s job is to make it look simple, straightforward, and black and white.

Anyway, the point of this post is not to let you all know I’m secretly only moments away from accidentally maiming or losing one of my children at any point of time. My point is that things aren’t always what they seem. People are complex, issues are complex. Few social, political, or economic issues have a clear cut right or wrong stance because so many elements come into play on any given problem.

So instead of launching into principled tirades about X being awful or Y being the only solution, can we instead just embrace the gray area and focus on meaningful discussions about the problems we all seem to agree exist? I’m trying to teach my kids to question the world around them but when every form of media encourages us to take a firm stance and defend our position no matter how extreme it may be, I’m fighting an uphill battle. I don’t want kids who accept conclusory statements at face value, and whether you realize it or not, you probably don’t either. What we need is for the next generation to break away from what they think they should believe and focus on what is actually there, ideally while working towards a real solution, which, let’s face it, isn’t going to be black or white.