Children confront us with our paradoxes and dishonesty, and we are exposed. You need to find an answer for every why — Why do we do this? Why don’t we do that? — and often there isn’t a good one. So you say, simply, because. Or you tell a story that you know isn’t true. And whether or not your face reddens, you blush. The shame of parenthood — which is a good shame — is that we want our children to be more whole than we are, to have satisfactory answers. My children not only inspired me to reconsider what kind of eating animal I would be, but also shamed me into reconsideration.
And then, one day, they will choose for themselves. I don’t know what my reaction will be if they decide to eat meat. (I don’t know what my reaction will be if they decide to renounce their Judaism, root for the Red Sox or register Republican.) I’m not as worried about what they will choose as much as my ability to make them conscious of the choices before them. I won’t measure my success as a parent by whether my children share my values, but by whether they act according to their own.
Suggested Discussion Questions:
1. What does Jonathan Safran Foer express about the nature of education and parenting?
2. What is the nature of tradition in this text? How much are Foer's decisions informed by his predecessors and to what degree does he hope that his children's decisions will be informed by his own choices?
3. How do we teach our values? How do we instill the ability to create one's own value system in our children?
Time Period: Contemporary (The Yom Kippur War until the present-day)