Homeward Bound

Happy New Year!

A busy run up to Christmas means I have a backlog of books I've been meaning to write about, and with my new year enthusiasm, I've promised myself I'll get on with it before I forget all about them...

First up for 2014 is Homeward Bound: Why Women are Embracing the New Domesticity by Emily Matchar.  It's an interesting book that is really an examination of the rise in popularity of "domesticity" (in the broadest sense of the word) in American culture. What the book does well is to bring together lots of mini trends into one large narrative, which is the rise of "do-it-yourself" in all aspects of life.  It was so current in its observations I was basically ticking things off the list that I / my friends do...

Food - growing your own veggies, rearing backyard chickens, cooking food from scratch, scrutiny over what you're feeding your kids.  We used to grow herbs in the car park of our old apartment block and some former neighbours came over the other day with a jar of pickled chillies that were grown in that same car park!  Now that we've moved to a house with a backyard we have got a little veggie patch (tomatoes, watermelon, green beans) and a lot more herbs and it's all pretty lovely really.  

Crafting and creativity - yep, everyone's at this now. I have an amazing friend who self published a cook book in her spare time (while working full time as a hair stylist).  I went through a brief phase of knitting toys for my friends' newborn babies, and got some lovely handmade things as gifts when we had our two kids.  Whenever we were given anything handmade for our babies, these were the things I cherished the most and find very hard to part with. Other friends have upholstered armchairs, reconditioned dining tables, set up photography businesses, made short movies and given art they've done themselves as presents. My husband's writing music.  Everyone's getting creative.

Parenting - yikes, this one's a can of worms. Matchar thinks attachment parenting fits into this DIY trend.  This is the intensive, extended breastfeeding, co sleeping, ultra responsive (to minimise crying) style of parenting that's very popular now with certain types.  Matchar thinks this also extends to the rising trends for unschooling and homeschooling we're now seeing.  Attachment parenting is not compatible with working in an office where you can't take the baby with you - so Matchar explores the implications for the women who devote themselves completely to parenting.

Work - lots of people are stepping out of (or have been pushed, due to the recession) the traditional, corporate workforce to concentrate on these things. There is a really good section  about Lisa Belkin's famous article "The Opt-Out Revolution" and the author airs her concerns about the dangers of women's short term outlook when dropping out of paid work.  She also makes the case that most of the people selling stuff on Etsy only earn pocket money and that being self sufficient foodwise (backyard chickens, preserving fruits, growing veggies) is time consuming and tiring. So she argues it's a nice idea to think you'll earn a living from selling handmade cushions on Etsy and produce all your own food but unlikely in reality - and if you do, it'll be hard and probably not that fun.

The author points out that these DIY trends have been driven in part by a growing lack of faith in collective solutions (because of food scandals, worries about public hospitals and schools), but in this quest for self sufficiency and all things "natural" the author argues that we risk developing a culture of hyper individualism where the focus is on ourselves, our immediate families and our own children.  Matchar worries that this means there are fewer people who are engaging in finding communal solutions to communal problems - for example, if you don't think your local school is any good, you can either pull out your child to home school or unschool them, or you could take action to change that school so the other kids in your community benefit as well as your own child.  Matchar thinks the growing trend for the former is concerning for society as a whole.
 
This book also made me see the link between all the TV shows either I or my husband have been watching lately...Moonshiners, Mountain Men, Wheeler Dealers (about fixing up cars to sell on), Kevin McCloud's Man Made Home, Kirstie's Homemade Home, River Cottage...they're all about making, growing or fixing things. That's just what we're all into at the moment isn't it?

By the end of the book I'd lost my romantic notions of the warm, fuzzy loveliness of the new domesticity (the food and creativity bits anyway, the attachment parenting thing's not my style) as Homeward Bound is pretty upfront about the risks and the downsides of this movement.  My enthusiasm came back, however, when I read the next book, Plenitude: the New Economics of True Wealth by Juliet Schor, which I was alerted to in Homeward Bound. Stay tuned.

Hacking your Education

I've had my nose stuck in Hacking your Education by Dale J Stephens since I wrote my last post.  It's aimed at young people contemplating university, and I've already been, so I've been reading out of curiosity rather than to learn tips to apply to my life. Was it still a worthwhile read? Yes...

In a nutshell, the book is pretty much a "how to" guide for any young person who wants to map out their own path outside the traditional (and expensive) university route and get a great job or start their own business at the end of it. It's full of case studies of friends and acquaintances who, for whatever reason, didn't attend university at all or dropped out and made successes of themselves through grit, determination, good luck and a fair amount of blagging and hustling.

Stephens thinks there are 3 main reasons why we go to university: the social experience, to get a job, and to learn for learning's sake.  He argues we can get these things in the real world, without having to pay out for university and have more fun in the process.

So far, so good. But how? Stephens has tonnes of suggestions.  Figure out what you're really interested in.  Commit to learning outside the classroom. Make a to-learn list, find someone or a group of people to keep you accountable, and put yourself out there (he suggests setting up a personal website that becomes your online portfolio of experiences).  Learn in groups with other like minded people. Figure out your talents and how you learn best. Find mentors and teachers. Network, have lots of coffees. Use technology, become a writer or a programmer! Gate crash conferences and university lectures! Take advantage of free educational resources. Have your 2 minute pitch ready! Start up a company. Travel the world! Don't pursue traditional jobs through traditional routes (never send in your CV!). Get a job through your network. They'll call you! (Well, sort of - that happened to some of the people in the case studies). Phew. As he says at the start, this is not a book about dropping out and taking the easy option.

In the book he also talks about Peter Thiel, the tech entrepreneur and co-founder of PayPal, who set up the Thiel Fellowship in 2010 to give grants to people under 20 to spur them to quit college and pursue their own ventures (Stephens is part of this programme). This quote from Thiel made me think back to my post on expectations:

"The problem that exists with schooling is that it ends up convincing most people that they're mediocre, and then the talented people get regrouped and are forced to compete with each other, and then most of them get convinced they're mediocre as well, and you sort of cycle and repeat, until people's dreams and aspirations are badly beaten out of them over time." 

What did I learn from all of this? Well, I had no idea that universities like MIT in the US had made their course materials available for free online (yes, really! See here). Not only that, you can listen to university lectures on iTunes U, including from Harvard, which I think is pretty amazing.  I'm tempted to take a few modules...  Also the case studies in Hacking your Education are full of examples of young people basically designing their own jobs, just as Roman Krznaric suggests in How to Find Fulfilling Work.  It's reinforcing the message to put aside other people's expectations and do your own thing.

On reflection, it made me realise that there are loads of examples of people who have "hacked their education".  Dynamo the magician (who I wrote about here) could quite easily have been a case study in this book. Someone else I'm a fan of, the writer Caitlin Moran, could have been too - she educated herself in her local library and subsequently blagged her way to becoming a writer. Also, these twin sisters taught themselves to embroider by watching youtube videos and are now sought after artists.  I find these stories so inspiring. You can learn anything you want! It's all out there waiting for you.

On expectations

I've been thinking about expectations after the Huffington Post article I wrote about last week. (The equation it talks about, that Happiness = Reality - Expectations, was written in the context of Gen Y's hopes about work).  I have also been re-reading Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton. One of the first chapters - on the causes of status anxiety - is on expectations.  In this chapter he explains that our assessment of our own status is relative to the people we are comparing ourselves to (and measuring ourselves against).  This is what he says:

"Our judgement of what constitutes an appropriate limit on anything - for example, on wealth or esteem - is never arrived at independently; instead, we make such determinations by comparing our condition with that of a reference group, a set of people who we believe resemble us."

This idea of a reference group came up in the same Gen Y article, and in another article I read on the UK Telegraph website last week, ("There's much more to life than being top of the class"). It was about some research released by the London School of Economics that argued it's not always better to send your child to a "good" school instead of an average one.  In "good" schools, where children achieve better results, it's harder for average children to keep up, which negatively impacts their performance and their self confidence.  I think this is just saying - think about where your child ranks and tamper with the reference group so that you can get your child as near to the top (or furthest from the bottom) of that group as possible - which will make them feel good about themselves. It's such a narrow view of education and achievement though isn't it?      

While we're on the topic of school and expectations, I found this video on youtube called "10 Expectations".  It turns the whole thing about expectations at school on its head...instead of focusing on expectations about student achievement (measured solely by exam results) it talks about expectations that students have about school.  At its core, it breaks down the division between school and work/life, and asks how school can enrich the student, support the development of their interests and make them relevant to the real world.  It reminded me of the comments Thoreau made about learning in Walden Pond.  How likely is it that these 10 expectations will be realised? Or are they just hopes and wishes? They sound like what I would choose for my kids' education, in an ideal world.

On freedom and "having it all"

In his book, How to Find Fulfilling Work, Roman Krznaric talks about the importance of freedom.  In the short section in the book on "freedom" he addresses, among other things, the idea of "having it all."

He quotes Shirley Conran, the British author and journalist, who wrote the 1975 book, Superwoman, in which she famously said "life's too short to stuff a mushroom".  She was lamenting the implicit message our culture is peddling that women who aren't able to shine in both their job and as mothers (while doing something esoteric on the side like learn Japanese) are somehow inadequate.

Krznaric brings a male perspective to the issue and reframes it as being relevant to both parents.  He thinks "can women have it all?" is the wrong question to be asking (I agree), and argues that the question should instead be:

"How can parents support each other so they can both have some of it all?"

I was at a drinks function after work one night last week and met two other women who were both qualified lawyers, one was looking after her children full time and one was working part time after returning from maternity leave.  This topic came up in conversation and I mentioned the "you can have it all, just not all at once" idea and they both said "that's what Quentin Bryce said".

Quentin Bryce is Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia, and a pretty remarkable, inspiring woman. She said this in an interview in 2008 (you can see it here). My favourite quote is this, and I think it's relevant to men and women:

"For a very long time now I've been saying to young women, you can have it all, but not all at the same time. How important it is to take very good care of yourself, of your mental and physical and spiritual wellbeing, it's hard to do. It's easier to be a workaholic than to have a truly balanced life. It's very tough for a lot of women teetering on that tight rope of balance and balancing too many responsibilities."

How true.  It's so easy to let work take over sometimes, and so much harder to stop it.

The beauty of Food DIY

I wasn't expecting to be moved by a book about food.  I bought Food DIY by Tim Hayward for my husband as he's the main cook in our family, and dreams about living in the countryside one day doing lots of River Cottage-y type things like making his own charcuterie.  

Food DIY's sub-title is: "How to make your own everything: sausages to smoked salmon, sourdough to sloe gin, bacon to buns".

I was looking through it at the weekend and found myself reading passages aloud to my husband (I guess trying to convince him that he really should pay attention to this book I had just bought for him).  In the introduction:

"...there's something empowering about grasping back food production from industry and middlemen and a dignity in providing for your family..."

"...in a strange, geeky way, some of these skills are a pleasure in themselves and worth trying if only once."

I also loved what Hayward said about Food DIY and Kids (he has a 10 year old daughter who gets involved in his cooking):

"DIY cooking with kids isn't just about recipes, it's about spending time together, about science, history, culture, art, physical competence with tools and heat, about learning to enjoy sensory pleasures, taking responsibility for how we treat our bodies and those of other living things, all the stuff we learned from our parents and from experience and want to pass on."

Although I have never before been tempted to build my own smoke house or make my own cheese, looking at these activities through Hayward's poetic and enthusiastic lens means that now I can't wait for us all to get stuck in.