So what are 10 things the selfish father specifically can do to conserve water?  Mind you, as I mentioned above, the selfish father loves to waste water on himself and making his house and yard look nice. So how can the selfish father and the rest of us modify our behaviors to join the rest of the forward thinking world in conserving water?

To conserve water, the selfish father can

Pee in the woods.

Kids love stopping at gas stations because it means another needless soda or tube of sweet tarts. It’s up to the selfish father not to give in to things that could potentially silence his kids for a few minutes and forego the gas station. When you’re taking a long trip, pull over and go in the woods.  Each time you pee in the woods it saves a gallon of water, just make sure you keep hand sanitizer on board.

Get the proper water heater.

It’s the selfish father’s goal to “find the best deal” on things like water heaters, and then the family ends up waiting 5 minutes for water to get hot. The truth is most of us wait for hot water from showers in the morning.  While this doesn’t account for much water loss on a per person basis, looking at the big picture, waiting for the shower to get hot is the cause of thousands of gallons of perfectly good water going unused down the drain.  If you’re building a new home, do a little research on water heaters.  There are many different kinds—tank, tankless, heat pump, and solar—see what folks are saying about all of these: which get hot the quickest, which use the least amount of energy?  Also, if you already have, or feel like you would like to install a storage tank water heater because of the low initial cost, ask a plumber about installing a return loop, or a recirculating pump system. Both of these methods ensure almost instantaneous hot water.

Streamline his shower procedure.

The selfish father loves his alone time and the shower is a perfect place to get it. However, time spent daydreaming and singing is time ill spent when the water is running.  A shower shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.  Shaving, teeth brushing, and face washing shouldn’t be done while the shower is running. I know it’s easier, but it’s wasteful.  Looking at it this way, a shower should go like this: After using a small amount of water to lather up the loofah/washcloth beforehand, step into the shower, lather up your hair, wash quickly but precisely and get out.

Plant/lay zoysia grass.

Americans love their lawns, and statistics that I just made up show that many believe that greener grass adds to their property value. The selfish father loves his lawn, and is inclined to care for it as if it were the family dog.  This means installing a complicated sprinkler system, and purchasing expensive squares (or seeds, but they require more effort and time, which the selfish father usually doesn’t want to provide) of the greenest grass imaginable—strains like Kentucky bluegrass and perennial ryegrass—which require much more water than the average American rainfall to remain lush.  So, as a way to make-up for the world’s shortcomings, sprinklers constantly drizzle water on lawns, sidewalks, passing cars with their windows down, etc.  Some water saving lists recommend “resetting sprinklers” to avoid wasting water on the sides of houses and sidewalks, but that’s still using water that doesn’t need to be used.  A drought resistant strain of grass like zoysia requires much less water than standard grass, and will be fine with the average amount (and even less) of American rainfall—no sprinklers at all.

Not play golf.

The selfish father loves competition, because, if he wins, people will admire him above everyone else.  This is why he loves to play golf.  Golf also allows him, first, to get away from his family for many hours. Second, it allows him to drink constantly.  Third, it doesn’t require a whole lot of physical effort since most of the time recreational golfers are driving around in golf carts with a beverage between their legs.  However, though this behavior certainly needs work, simply playing golf supports the drastic effect golf courses have on the environment.  There are too many negative effects to name here, but let’s just say that a golf course is the diabetes of the landscape. Golf should be avoided because showing support for this pastime encourages constant use of irrigation for entertainment.  It also requires constant chemicals to kill weeds, which, in turn, run off to the lower ground doing who knows what to the world.  Yeah, do something else with your Saturday.

Clean, not spray, the side of the house.

Just like his lawn, the selfish father likes a well-maintained house exterior.  There’s nothing wrong with a nice looking house at all, and efforts should always be made to manicure the lawn and keep everything clean.  People appreciate cleanliness and a clean house exterior and yard contribute to the overall positivity of a neighborhood.  However, since water is so inexpensive people tend to use an abundance of the stuff to drench their houses and decks as they clean them. Many people own or rent pressure washers to get their houses clean, but there are other ways to do this that take a bit more time, sure, but use far less water and no harsh chemicals. For starters, who cares if the water you clean your house with is fresh, perfectly potable water?  Nobody. So using the water from a large rain barrel to do your exterior cleaning is a great idea.  Simply fill a bucket with rainwater and get to scrubbing.  You’ll need soap, so try different combinations of things like borax, baking soda, and vinegar to find the best stuff to get that house clean.  Also, you may need something for mildew as well. You don’t need water for this either, simply spray on full strength lemon juice or vinegar and scrub with a sponge.

Drink less.

It’s no surprise that Americans drink about 22% of their calories.  I can guess, pretty accurately too, that most of this 22% is superfluous calorie intake occurring not to reach the 2000 calorie average our bodies require, but simply because drinks taste good and we don’t want to drink plain old boring water.  The selfish father doesn’t drink much water, because if something tastes good he feels he should have it, is almost entitled to it. This 22% comes from sodas, fruit drinks, beer, and wine, which are all major contributors to how overweight Americans are.  By eliminating some of these superfluous drinks, think of the water just a single family can save.  Before buying drinks with excess calories, simply ask yourself, “Do I need this?”  I’ve talked about this before and it’s the most effective thing for me to control my calorie intake.  Another way to avoid getting drinks from vending machines and such is to always carry a water bottle.  This makes you feel stupid to get an additional drink when you already have water.  All of this, of course, saves plastic as well.

Use ice packs.

The selfish father makes coolers to carry all of his drinks around, and usually fills them with ice from a big bag he buys at the gas station and has to bust up on the ground before pouring it all over his awaiting beverages. This is a useless practice, and can be substituted by keeping previously frozen icepacks in the freezer at all times.  It could also be an opportunity not to run the icemaker in the freezer continuously, saving even more water.

Harvest rainwater.

Rain barrels are very cheap and are designed to catch rain from house runoff.  While there are more complicated units that sit on top of the houses, pump water to underground storage tanks, and then filter it as they pump it into the house to drink, rain barrels are one of those things that everyone should have. The water can be used to wash the house, the car, and water the garden.  Pumps and hoses can even be attached to spray the water.  While the benefits of this should be obvious, the selfish father rarely thinks of a rain barrel as an option, choosing to instead hook his hose to a spigot and douse his SUV, yard, garden, and house in perfectly drinkable water.

Stay aware of the water he and his family uses.

Of course, this could include all of these things and many more, but the selfish father, since he values his time so severely, and tends to spend most of it satisfying himself, doesn’t think of his family as he should, and, of course, doesn’t think of the earth like he should. Staying aware of the water his family uses is important for many reasons, too many to name here, but let’s just say that, like anything, even though it may not seem like it, and it doesn’t cost very much, water is precious.  Please take some time to browse the Internet today and see what everyone is writing about water conservation to learn more about how the lack of fresh running water leads to unnecessary death, reinforces gender roles, and sparks war. This post is small potatoes compared to how serious this issue is, so doing anything you can manage will show your support.

Water is a fundamental right, and, by changing his behavior just a little, the selfish father can help preserve and build excess, which could in turn be provided for those that need it more.

In this post, I’ll be talking a bit more about advertising in general, before moving on to a quick roundup of commercial free entertainment we can use to keep our children away from advertisements.

This isn’t to say that ads are bad.  I mean, they are bad, but they’re also useful to get people to keep spending money on the same product over and over. Take Coke for example. People spend a ton of money on Coke ($31 billion, $6.82 billion profit in 2009), but Coke isn’t changing. I mean, remember New Coke in 1985?  That was a disaster because Coke has to stay the same to keep loyal customers.  However, staying the same is a bit dangerous, since it means that Coke runs the risk of losing some of these billions of dollars to new products, Soda Stream, for example. This is where advertising comes in.  Advertising can actually reinvent products to make them seem different even when they’re not. Some people say that New Coke was actually a calculated and complicated way of reinventing the same old thing in a different guise.  The results of New Coke: Coca-Cola Classic. The same thing as something different.

So imagine what this does to children. The same plastic masks and costumes, blankets, action figures, all being branded Dora the Explorer and then Toy Story and then Iron Man and so on into adulthood where adults just might have the ability to understand what is happening, all of the rhetorical appeals involved, but even we can be fooled from time to time into choosing products simply because they’re advertised in a certain fashion. Think of all of those happy people sipping Coca-Cola Classic after New Coke was eliminated.

Though we can be fooled, I like to believe many of us do a bit of research to avoid getting swindled. However, kids don’t know anything about this.  They don’t know what’s going on most of the time.  I tutor freshmen and sophomores in college and most of them don’t know what’s going on, so a child deciphering between fact and fiction and separating a product from an idea is simply impossible.

So what does all of this m(ad) ranting have to do with the selfish father?

Well, because of his selfishness, the selfish father will subject his family, and his children to more advertising than need be. He will watch more television because if the television is on he can tell everyone to be quiet so he can have time to himself even when he is around his family.  He will also attempt to have his children sit in front of the television rather than monopolize his time, which he values like currency.

Since the selfish father will subject his family to more television advertisements than anything else because of his selfishness, I think that finding alternatives to cable television is a good way for the selfish father to get more involved with his family.

So, when the family must watch television, what is out there that is still good quality, but is commercial free?

Netflix, Apple TV, Google TV, and Amazon Video on Demand

All of these alternatives are ways to avoid advertising’s largest venue—radio and print only reach children a fraction of the time as television ads—and I feel strongly that paying an astronomical monthly payment for things you don’t even watch is a waste of the family’s money and something people do just because they don’t know about other options. All of these options will limit the family’s television intake, can ultimately be cheaper than cable, and get the family more involved in what they watch since they must choose what to watch rather than have it wash over them.  It also will eliminate all the dead time when there is “nothing to do” so the television comes on.

Remember, television isn’t the best choice, if the family is going to get together for the evening, they might as well be reading.  Maybe even reading aloud to one another or splitting up and reciting the different parts to a nice play like Peter Pan or Our Town. However, when the television comes on, make sure that, first, everyone wants to watch the program, that it has educational value, and that there are no advertisements getting your children accustomed to buying ideas rather than products.  Nobody needs to be told what to buy, they can decide for themselves.

Thanks everyone for reading.  Now, join me for a great cause this Friday when I’ll be posting on behalf of Blog Action Day 2010.  After that, I’ll continue my discussion of television alternatives later on this month, and then, by request, give another list of things that selfish fathers can do around the house to make it seem like they’re not just thinking about themselves all the time.

First, there are the obvious signs of selfishness.

The selfish father may

1. Become angry when he must give up time to help his wife or kids.

2. Neglect chores to watch television or sit on the computer.

3. Not go to gatherings with his wife and kids.

4. Choose what the family does, versus letting it be a collaborative                               choice.

5. Talk/browse on the phone/laptop during family time.

6. Use childcare resources more than necessary.

7. Look for unneeded things to do.

8. Sleep/lounge longer than necessary.

9. Not take the time to fix wear and tear on the household.

10. Spend too much time with friends.

The Onion had a great article about how many of us think we have no time.  It’s funny and satirical, but, like the Onion tends to be, quite accurate.  Time is precious, I’ve talked about this before, but the biggest thing that the selfish father has to realize is that there’s always a way to prioritize time correctly and eliminate unneeded chrono-clutter. Eliminating this clutter ensures the selfish father can spend an adequate amount of time with his children, and it also ensures that his significant other doesn’t feel burdened by undone housework. I’ll get to how the selfish father controls his environment in the third category, but this category has everything to do with how the selfish father attempts to make his environment how it was before he had kids or before he was married using negative emotions, unneeded responsibilities, and distractions.

Next, this category is the longest, for it includes more specific actions that affect the wellbeing and growth of children; things that stem from the above behaviors.

The selfish father may

11. Not encourage or become involved in imaginative or solo play                                  because it means he gets some alone time.

12. Discourage destructive play because it means he must clean it up.

13. Not encourage his kids to use new words, or refrain from asking                             them open-ended questions such as “What color is that?” or more                         elaborate questions as they grow older.

14. Not take his kid’s temperature, or perform some other basic                                       health assessment, fearing he’ll have to take them to the doctor.

15. Distract his children in the store, restaurant, car, or at home with                           television/video games.

16. Not read to his kids, even when they’re on the floor looking                                         through books.

17. Not buy new toys based on his kid’s needs, preferences, or                                           developmental level.

18. Simply parent how he “believes” he should parent, rather than                               actively consult books and reliable online sources.

19. Not take the time to plan healthy meals for his family, and instead                         go with frozen, or restaurant prepared meals.

20. Spank rather than use timeout/grounding/restriction as a main                              source of punishment.

21. Send his kid to bed earlier than necessary for no reason.

22. Not allow his kids to have sleepovers because of the added                                         responsibility.

23. Not allow kids to make their own decisions because of the added                            time.

24. Put his kid on a leash.

25. Say, “I’ll give you something to cry about.”

26. Not get involved with his kid’s school functions.

27. Not promote healthy homework habits or offer assistance.

28. Refrain from involving his kids in his hobbies.

29. Not encourage his kids to take up hobbies.

30. Not plan regular family vacations away from the house.

No one said parenting was going to be easy, yet the selfish father makes many decisions with his kids that, with a little effort, could have been better for them, and for his family in general.  The selfish father, to avoid being selfish, can prepare healthy meals for the week and freeze them, put down “Playtime” in his weekly planner, sit with his kids in timeout reminding them why they’re in timeout, and find his kids an active rather than a passive form of entertainment while in the car. It just takes a little more effort to reassess and research the best option rather than going for the immediate solutions, which are usually wrong. The selfish father has time to do this, everyone does. If you’re not sure how to find the time, Zen Habits is just one of the many sources that can help carve out that little bit of time you need to spend more time with and make the best decisions for your kids.

Kids act out largely because they want to be in control of their environment.  They throw sand at the beach, pull things off of tables, and make messes for seemingly no reason at all.  The selfish father is the same way, though he’s learned to control some of these tell-tale signs, he still desires to control almost every aspect of his environment.

The selfish father may

31. Decide to buy expensive things for himself, but fail to do so for the                          rest of his family.

32. Not consult proper sources before making such a purchase.

33. Yell constantly and unjustifiably.

34. Spend most of his time in a closed off place he calls a “mancave”                            or “dudeville” which usually contains a pool table and various                                liquor signs, and probably at least one neon sign.

35. Buy too much alcohol when his friends come over.

36. Host football night every Sunday in the fall.

37. Get upset when his wife hasn’t bought his favorite snacks.

38. Have the final say in disciplinary decisions.

39. Have the final say in picking out house accessories.

40. Not clean and claim his wife is “too clean.”

Gender has been erased, at least theoretically. However, intellectuals can talk all day long about how gender is nothing but a social construction, but many still see marriage as solely between a man and a woman, where, once the ritual has been performed, there are certain previously conceived roles for the man and woman to play. The selfish father loves his previously conceived role as it allows him to do some of the above.  It’s interesting because it’s almost as if the selfish father feels he is supposed to do these things and his wife is supposed to accept them. It’s this same notion of ritual and previously conceived roles that make some selfish fathers respond negatively to gay marriage. It threatens his role, and threatens to change the definition of marriage. My advice for the selfish father finding himself in this category is to seriously examine how he acts, asking himself if he acts according to what he knows is right, or according to what he believes is right.  It’s discovering this difference that is crucial in becoming a better father and husband alike.

Finally, this category is something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently.  When I’m speaking of the selfish father, I’m not only talking of the father who is self-absorbed, and preoccupied to the point where he becomes distant, but I’m also talking about the father who doesn’t accept fathering advice, who thinks that he has learned everything there is to know about raising a child from his parents and from the sources he’s consulted.

The selfish father may

41. Make fun of other people’s parenting decisions.

42. Find fault in parents too quickly when a child acts strangely or                                acts out.

43. Choose not to implement anything anyone says into his                                                parenting style.

44. Only trust a few choice books and websites.

45.  Scare rather than teach his children.

46. Adopt truly bizarre and backward parenting rituals just to be                                   different.

47. Blindly follow unhealthy trends/fads.

48. Brag about his kids.

49. Refuse to admit his kids’ behavior is unsatisfactory.

50. Ignore advice from doctors.

I think it is most important that the selfish father realizes he should always be open to what is working and what isn’t, by which I mean constantly being aware of what he is doing that is causing hardship or damage to someone else, most importantly his kids. He should also be quick to compromise and quick to offer assistance and companionship to his wife, kids and even those he doesn’t know. Not doing these things can result in not only an unhappy marriage, but in perpetuating these behaviors and these bogus previously conceived marriage roles.

Last week, and this week as well, I’ve talked quite a bit about passive entertainment, television, and more importantly, advertising.  Join me next week for a brief look at how advertisements affect our lives, our kids, and our parenting.

I still don’t know what I feel about Your Baby Can Read. Seeing it in a store with “As Seen on TV” emblazoned across the cover sure isn’t putting it in my win category. My feelings are, if it’s so innovative and good for kids, then Titzer should have worked with certain people to ensure it’s offered for free to as many children as possible rather than trying to make all this money.  But, the reason I wanted to start the post with this is to say that it is definitely good for at least one reason: it gets parents actively involved with their children’s learning process, which I’m going to be spending most of my time on in this post.  Another reason I started with this was to illustrate how the debate about Your Baby Can Read shows, first of all, reading is indisputably interpreted as an activity that builds intelligence, and second that people like to argue about and resist the fact that reading can make someone smarter.

So let’s argue about it.

I can guess pretty accurately that television is more popular than reading. However, there is some proof to the contrary.  This poll, which a lot of articles use, lists reading as the top leisurely activity, also note that 4% of people listed sleeping as their top leisurely activity in 2004.  However, though people may list it as their top leisurely activity, there’s also a poll here from MSNBC saying that last year only 1 in 4 people read a book, just one book, for the entire year. The poll that listed reading as the top leisurely activity surely didn’t take into account how many times someone sat down to watch a television show versus how often they read a short story.  It also didn’t calculate total time spent watching television versus reading.  My guess is that the overwhelming majority, a majority so major it would make you sick, will see more hours of television than they’ll spend reading even if they consider reading as their preferred leisurely activity, simply because television is an easier form of entertainment, which I’ll get back to in a minute.

I understand that I’ve skipped the part where I demonize television. It’s not to be demonized, and there is quality television that should be watched, especially documentaries, so long as it’s kept to moderation. We also should do our best to soften how hard advertising pulls at our kids’ desires, and place reading, or some other healthy, intellectually stimulating activity first.

So what does this have to do with the selfish father, and what is the selfish father’s role in alleviating some of this behavior?

Sure, there were times when I found that putting my daughter down in front of the television was an easy go-to so I could get some work done. This is something that is quite common, and honestly may happen more than I want it to in the future. But I’ve found that simply by taking television out, I’m forced to get involved. Haydn will play for a little while by herself with her toys and then she’ll start wanting attention, so I have to get up and play with her.  Not to make it sound like a chore, because it isn’t. Once I do get up and start spending time, I hear her laughing at me, and I end up much happier I find, than when I’m just looking at a screen. I’ve also found that simply by taking television out we become a more active family as opposed to passively letting images and advertisements wash over us.  I ask Haydn questions, I see how far she can get in her ABCs, I ask her colors, and how many blocks there are.  What other time, at this age, would her brain be stimulated like this? So, I’ve concluded that, even though I’m a selfish father constantly desiring my own time, part of that time needs to overlap with my daughter without the television in order for me to perform the duties that my brain, and my own happiness, tell me I’m supposed to be performing.

So, here’s how I feel about it: you might as well just rarely watch television, if at all.  If you’re all going to sit down and watch television anyway, you might as well be reading.  What’s reading have over television?

• No advertisements creating false needs
• Mental stimulation
• Proven to make you smarter

The only thing that reading doesn’t have going for it, if you can call it that, is that it taxes the intellect I guess. It also forces us to

• Envision
• Imagine
• Interpret

But since reading forces us and our children to do these 3 things much more than television, then by its very nature it prepares children better for higher learning and successful careers. Reading and talking about texts with the family will also ease the transition from home literacy to academic literacy which is important early on, yes, but deeply important in the dramatic shift from high school senior to college freshman. In my opinion, it should be the highest priority for parents to arm their children with all the knowledge and resources they can afford to ensure the child is given the best opportunity for success, whatever their definition of that word may be. By simply removing superfluous television and other forms of passive entertainment, the selfish father, despite his selfishness, almost automatically takes on a more active role in providing these ingredients for success.  Which is the goal here, to be an active, involved, and participatory parent without even trying.

Speaking of active, involved, and participatory, join me next week for a list of 50 day-to-day things some selfish fathers do, and what can be done about them.

1. Shop primarily along the walls of the grocery store.
2. Rarely eat it if it has corn in it (maltodextrin counts) and isn’t supposed to, like tortillas, except tortillas are usually fried; in which case, see #5.  Also, never eat it (or drink it) if the corn comes as some kind of syrup.
3. A “healthy” diet can cure and prevent sickness, and it is much cheaper than medicine. It also hasn’t killed anyone like medicine, which is responsible for 106,000 deaths a year, which doesn’t include accidental overdoses, allergic reactions, or clinical errors.  Yep, medicine kills that many people a year that take it correctly.
4. Take your vitamins, at least a multivitamin and vitamin C.  The number one thing people against vitamins will say is, “Oh, you just pee it out.” Not true.  If you pee out any vitamins it’s overage, not waste.  What this means is that vitamins in your pee indicate your body is well nourished and fortified, probably because you’ve been taking vitamins.
5. Don’t eat fast food; actually, don’t eat any fried food.
6. Make sure at least 51% of each meal is raw.
7. Eat as organically as you can afford/are comfortable with.
8. You don’t need dessert. In fact, you don’t need anything that’s not already sweet.  If you absolutely must sweeten something, use raw honey.
9. Don’t drink calories. Don’t think diet soda is some kind of magical elixir either. Though it may say 0, it keeps you from losing weight.  Diet soda also contains phosphorus, which takes calcium out of your bones.  Yeah, leaching is the proper term, it leaches calcium from your bones.  Plus, it can make you continue to crave sweet stuff, which, well, see #8.
10. Eat less per sitting, but sit down to eat more, and when you sit down, eat “healthy.”

Sure, that’s what all of these people say. And I do believe it. I wouldn’t have spent all that time wording those 10 points correctly if I didn’t believe it. However, following through with all of this is another story. This story:

Sometimes I just want to stuff my face. I’m not even sure why. Maybe using some of the income I share with my wife to purchase Chinese food, eat it all in front of the computer, and throw away the trash without her knowing about it means I’m selfish—I’ve also done this with pizza boxes.  Maybe the secret indulgence does something for me. Some men go the immoral route and have affairs.  I find solace in terrible clandestine cuisine.

But is this selfish?  I think so.  For one, it’s needlessly expensive.  Us selfish fathers can do things that are expensive, don’t get me wrong.  The father who builds model airplanes or restores antique cars certainly knows how to spend the family’s money, but that’s a hobby.  Hobby’s don’t make you fat and sedentary, crave things that will cause you to subject your family to them, or make you sick, with the possibility of causing all kinds of health problems later. That’s not what a hobby should do.

A hobby should actually keep you from all of these things. It should also produce (remember all that talk about deeds and accomplishments?) something useful, something that makes you proud.  When it comes down to it, eating terrible food, for me didn’t produce pride, or happiness.  It didn’t produce anything useful, and in fact, everything it did produce was unwanted—larger waste line, smaller bank account, sickness, and unhappiness.  If those rules above are too much to handle at first, just start by asking yourself these questions before you sit down to eat: “Is this good for me? Does it make me happier because I’m eating it instead of something else? Could I make a better choice?”

Because following that list up there is really hard.  I can’t do it yet.  Part of what makes it hard is that the people giving us those messages don’t really tell us how to deprogram ourselves first, how to not crave the sweet, fatty, oily stuff that was sold to us in commercials on kids’ television growing up, served in our school cafeterias, and embroidered into the American landscape.  Instead of going all in, start with those questions and work your way up.

Part of being selfish is the constant need to satisfy ourselves immediately. Bad food is probably the quickest way to do this, and so it’s the hardest thing to take out of our lives.  However, once you get going on that list, once you see how making this a priority—making enough food beforehand for everyone to take to work, and whipping up a quick dinner on those nights where everyone gets home late instead of grabbing a bucket of fried chicken or ordering a pizza—it just kind of happens, and you become proud of your cart in the grocery store.  Which is the goal, to be proud of yourself and what you’re doing, because a proud father, even if he’s selfish, will include his family.

Since I’ve wrapped up the food segment, I want to spend some time on books.  Just like finding time to eat correctly, it’s difficult to get in that bit of intellectual stimulation at the end of the day. Next week, I want to talk about the active family versus the passive family, and how books play a key role in this difference.

Anyway, I didn’t close the book, and flipped to a page where he provides a bunch of blanks to write in what kind of fathers we’ll be.  I cringed, but read on. “Having a child,” he writes, “may evoke previously repressed feelings of anger, frustration, deprivation, and resentment.”  Admittedly, this is me, and probably the majority of young fathers out there.  But this was something that I noticed long ago, feelings that were strengthened at times when I was stressed from school, or when I had a couple beers. This post is about how I’ve handled these feelings using the one thing in all three of our lives that I have complete control over—food.

A few months ago I had to create an extra belt loop for myself, first time ever since I stopped growing. It was a sad occasion, the death of such a chaste and loving leather belt.  The hole is only about an inch from the end, and each day I saw it starting to give more, like even that wasn’t long enough, like the strain of just wearing the belt was tearing it to pieces.  This kind of thing can happen to us if we’re not careful, all of those repressed feelings will start to well up if we don’t insert something within our busy work and parenting lives to break them up.  If this isn’t done, it’s difficult to be happy and we end up placing unnecessary stress on ourselves and those around us.  After being married a couple years, I’ve learned that TV, like it is for most people, is the natural distraction I use to break up my day. However, I also learned that watching TV keeps me so distracted I can’t really listen to what my wife says.  I found myself shooshing my daughter when she wanted to talk or play.  It took some motorvation, but I finally realized that television wasn’t helping anyone in the house.  This isn’t to say we don’t watch. Seinfeld makes an appearance semi-daily, and Haydn watches Dora and Diego, television I’m still on the fence about, but she likes it, and learns new words like “armadillo” and “map.”

With television largely out, I had to find something new, and after cooking a meal here and there while Sam was too busy with school, I just made it my job.  Since it’s my job and she knows I enjoy it, I know I can always have that time.  So I’ve found that cooking is a way for me to have my selfish time, and eat it too.  Cooking allows me to stand in the kitchen and be completely devoted to making something that I will enjoy.  That’s how I think of it.  It’s a selfish thing that is only a family thing residually.  I like cooking and I like food, so it satisfies only me, but the food satisfies the family.  Anytime this can happen should be exploited to the highest possible degree.

In addition to exploiting my joy for cooking, I exploit my natural inclination to collect as well.  I enjoy collecting and organizing things, hence the armoire. My iTunes library is more organized than yours, I guarantee it.  The books on my shelf are in alphabetical order.  I create folders in folders in folders in folders on the computer to keep everything in a logical place.  So, I did this with my recipes. I bought a binder and some of those plastic sleeves and each week I make new entrees.  If we like them, I put them in the binder for another time, grouped by main ingredient.

This means that even without the television, I have something I like doing that I get to do on a regular basis. The self shines through, but it’s contributing to my family now and for the future.

I didn’t read any more of that fatherhood book.  I didn’t want to, I’d rather buy a ticket to the 11:20am showing of Piranha and sit through every showing until the theater closed than read any more of that book.  But what I did read helped, so thanks Dr. Hass. However, I do still wear that belt. Now that I’m eating better, I try every now and then to return the metal pin thing to an original hole.  I can do it, but it makes my top half look like a cupcake.  I urge those of you who don’t cook often to try it and see if you can replace some of your TV time with food time. Like I was saying last week, and like those food documentaries (Supersize Me, Food Matters, The Beautiful Truth, etc.) are quick to point out, television makes it easier to eat a diet with all kinds of nutritional deficiencies, all while selling you products with those same nutritional deficiencies.  Believe me, when milk turns pink or brown, there’s a problem. Better stick with real food instead.  Turn off the TV and try it.

Next week I want to continue my discussion of food and get a little more serious with it as I talk about how this selfish father struggles with nutrition.

The way we communicate with each other and with our devices is pretty neat.  My wife works on her schoolwork from her computer and emails it to me for proofreading.  Anything that needs printing is sent via Bluetooth to a distant printer. We like each other’s posts on Facebook, and comment on each other’s wall.  In our home, we don’t have cable television; movies are sent to the computer and then to the television.  Or, they’re simply streamed over Netflix.  Most of you know all this, and of course, the home can get much more advanced, but this post isn’t to cover what all of the new technology is, but to discover what all of this individual (meaning by one’s self) interaction with devices does to the contemporary family.  How has family life changed with the introduction of these amenities? And has it made married life and raising children any easier, or harder?

The goal for this post is to first get a good idea of what family was when my parents were growing up in the 70s, as well as when their parents were growing up in the 50s.  By doing this, I’ll be able to highlight a few ways in which the family has been changed by various elements of technology, and seek to understand if this neat technology has any negative effects on the family.  Ultimately, what I hope to do is show that technology brings out the selfishness in us, and it’s something we must learn to pitch aside in favor of spending quality time with our significant others and our kids.

An old record collector, Joe Bussard, says in the documentary Desperate Man Blues that he collected most of his 25,000 records in the 50s because people threw everything out in favor of new televisions. He continues to say that, for this reason, “anybody that ever collected anything got it in the 50s.”

In many ways, this, and our present discussion, are simply results of a homogenization process that has been going on for a while. Sure, before all this electronic stuff, there were books and other media. There were traveling tent shows, carnivals, and other nomadic performances, ancient traditions that predated books. These were early ways that many people across a wide geographic area were privy to the same entertainment. But these things didn’t happen quickly, they had to be distributed.  Fordism ushered in a new way of production—quick, inexpensive, identical products flowing off of an assembly line. Of course these identical products had to be distributed as well, but when Fordism is applied to mass media, then we see the beginning of our discussion.

The Music Industry

Skipping early record technologies (tinfoil records?) the groundwork for today’s electronic entertainment was laid in the 20s when the historic broadcast of KDKA in 1920 sparked a radio frenzy causing 60 percent of American families to purchase radios by the end of the decade, radios mass produced on an assembly line, or there were some like this with poor reception that teenage boys built out of do-it-yourself kits.  With radios came the desire for the music playing on the radio, so record players (a lot of people still called them “talking machines”) and records themselves sold well, both in stores and through the mail, meaning not only people in urban areas, but rural areas as well could order these luxuries that they read about in newspapers and magazines. This meant that folks across the country could listen to something on the radio at the same time and then go and buy the same record to play it out of the same record player.

The Food Industry

Also in the 20s, Clarence Birdseye (after observing Eskimos freeze fish) invented a machine to flash freeze vegetables, meat, and fish, distributing it around the country.  As well, Piggly Wiggly opened its first store in Memphis just before 1920, and the result was a revolution in the food shopping experience for most families nationwide.  After Piggly Wiggly, almost all grocery stores went to the formula we know today, the formula which makes brand recognition and packaging on things like Birds Eye frozen vegetables the foods’ most important aspects. The foundation for this new way of doing business, of course, was ubiquity. Brands had to be in every store everywhere.  These are just two of the forces working to make every household more or less uniform.

I promise this is all coming back around, just give me a minute.

The 50s

So, by the time the 50s rolled around, folks were certainly used to this. Plus, like Lassie’s Ruth Martin, most of them had refrigerators to keep all of that Birds Eye frozen food nice and frosty.  In addition to the refrigerator, something else happened in the 50s as well—AT&T finished the coaxial infrastructure.  While many had televisions in the 40s, they only saw what was broadcast locally.  Sometimes this meant material mailed from ABC, CBS, or NBC, but never anything live, or in real time.  However, with the cable in place, the three big networks were able to broadcast the same programs to every awaiting television in the entire country in real time. This means more demand being met, more revenue from advertising, more brand recognition, more money being spent on the same products nationwide, and finally more money being contributed to higher quality programming.  Meaning all of the adults threw out all of their “useless” stuff in the 50s in favor of the television.

But what did this do to the family? Divorces were still low, averaging just 2.3 per thousand marriages. Only 9.3% of homes had a single occupant in 1950. Also, the average household size was 3.33 members. So, more often that not, couples were having at least two kids (Boomers).  Since we know now that those couples threw out their records and didn’t do anything but talk about how good everything was while they sat around and watched television, what happened in the 70s?

Boomers

All the boomers that had to otherwise settle for whatever their dads were watching on television instead went and listened to the unoccupied radio and record player.  With so many kids listening to, and buying records, a new music niche was formed.  All that malt shop crap like “Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen” by Neil Sedaka or the ever-terrible “Teen Angel” by Mark Dinning was huge business. But as they grew older, this music hungry generation wanted something a little more apt.  Even more so, they were tired of the prefabricated assembly line lives their parents had fallen into, so they sought to make themselves individuals, which is where we get the moniker the “Me Generation” led by anthems like “I Am a Rock, I Am an Island” by Simon and Garfunkel.

By the time these kids grew into adults with families of their own, cable television was really taking off.  In 1970 cable had barely a million subscribers, but, because of various deregulations which lifted bans on the broadcasting of sports and films, by 1979 there were 16 million cable subscribers.  This meant more channels that everyone could watch everywhere in the country if they paid a little extra, meaning more advertising opportunities for those important restaurant chains like McDonald’s who opened their first drive thru window in 1975, and upstarts like Burger King and Wendy’s.  This is the point where the number of family meals eaten out per week starts to grow.

What did this mean for the family?

At the beginning of the 70s, there were only 3.5 divorces per 1,000; however, by 1979, 5.3 marriages per thousand were ending in divorce. 11.3% of homes held a single occupant, and the number of married couples with children dropped from 44.2% of all American households in 1960 down to just 30% by 1980.

Where has all of this taken us today?

Today

It seems like to me, that all of these factors playing off of one another—the stuff on television, games on the computer, the sweetened, fried, salted mess that’s in the grocery store, and in the drive-thru window, the more flash frozen meals there are to quickly eat rather than a nice sitdown dinner to prepare for a family– may have something to do with the number of single occupant households, and the lower average household size.  This is a wildly unfounded blanket statement, but it seems possible, at least in the world of this argument. It makes sense that the more technology with which a person may be entertained, the less the person would be concerned with other people.  It also makes sense that family time being usurped by television, and ready-made frozen meals or To-Go restaraunt orders taking away the careful planning and togetherness good food facilitates, has something to do with this trend as well.  The census this year will tell us for sure, but if the 2000 census is any indicator, while divorces stay constant at about 4 and half per thousand, household size and single occupant numbers will have dropped and risen respectively.  I’m not saying that everyone should snap out of their selfishness while gorging their gargantuan stomachs with Big Mac sauce, run out, get married, and have children.  However, I am saying that it’s easy to let the selfish parts of us hinder what could be something much more satisfying. Selfish parts that are allowed much more room to flourish with today’s distractions.

Distractions like Netflix, a catalog of films that could occupy me for years. Facebook, where we can spend all day with the live feed streaming what everyone’s doing, yet, in looking at these statuses, we ourselves are doing nothing, we’re not participating. I know I’ve written before about reaching for my iPod touch while giving my daughter a bath, but honestly, even though both of these activities do satisfy, it’s undeniably in a different way.  Making Haydn laugh is a good deed, it’s participatory, and the satisfaction comes from inside my chest. It’s an authentic satisfaction, it’s not mass produced or flash frozen and heated up, it’s not deep fried satisfaction picked up from a drive-thru, it’s fresh and whole.  Yes, like a fine red cabbage.  And as long as I keep going after that, while I may reach for fries instead of cabbage during a weak moment, I know that, selfishness aside, I, my family, and my daughter are going to be alright.

Join me next week for a follow-up on some of this material as I talk about what cooking a healthy menu can do for the selfish father.

It’s really good. Ruth Martin gets an electric refrigerator and, as a result, the Martins put their old icebox out in the shed. Well Lassie doesn’t like this one bit, and won’t eat his food, that was customarily kept cool in the icebox, out of the refrigerator. Mr. Cuppy, the iceman, is beginning to feel the strain of refrigerators on his business and there are many shots of him looking depressed—like John Henry, technology is overtaking his livelihood. Both of these situations are familiar, of course, but what do they have to do with being a father?

Here’s what the selfish father in me wants to do when I get home: leave everything I have in my hands and pockets on the dining room table, drink beer, sing-along to Auto Tune the News, exhaust myself in 5 minutes trying to do a Beach Body workout while drinking beer, order in a terrible meal with the correct ratio of salt, fat, and sugars, eat it all in front of the computer while watching Black Dynamite, and then leave the take out boxes on the chair beside my computer desk before I pass out on the bed too tired from the grease and alcohol to even brush my teeth.  This is the “natural state” of things; I know this.  At least it’s not hard drugs or something, but this is bad enough.  It follows then, that my puny, reptile brain interprets everything standing in the way of these self-indulgent events as threats to my comfortable–though unhealthy–existence. This necessarily requires reason to overcome, reason I’m not always capable of providing.

One would assume that if I pulled into a self-serve carwash to vacuum out the car, and inadvertently left a bunch of library books on the roof after the job was done causing them to fall all over the road when I drove off, that I would have immediately hit the breaks, stopped traffic, and gathered them quickly.  This is what one would assume. Not me. To me, that stuff is gone.  I’m not stopping, I have things to do, I can’t have that crap standing in the way of what I have to get done, I can pay for them later, that’ll take care of it.

Like I said, I’m not always capable of providing reason, that’s why I married my wife.  Through her protest, we did pick up those library books, using reason, we came up with the better choice, and though it took a bit longer, I felt better for picking them up.

It’s also the better choice for me not to adhere to the above “natural state” of things. I’m not sure what made it the “natural state,” but it has a lot of flaws, most notably: it’s a non-productive, high calorie, low exercise, state in which many find themselves these days.  But how do I get of out this routine?  How can I tell myself that none of those things—ok singing along with Auto Tune the News is fine if kept to a minimum—is actually what I should be doing?

I have to look at it in terms of happiness.  I’ve been doing this a lot lately, judging what makes me truly happy.  I’ve thought before that perhaps this “natural state” is what makes me truly happy.  But true happiness, according to Aristotle, not to name drop, but it’s true, I think, lies in deeds.  The highest pleasure is in that which we accomplish, and she/he that receives the most satisfaction doing one thing rather than another should seek to perform that which gives her/him the greatest degree of satisfaction at a higher and higher frequency.  My “natural state” cannot be the highest pleasure, for it accomplishes nothing.  Looking at it this way, I’ve been able to get much more done over the last month or so, and I’ve been smiling more, making my family smile more, which is the reason for all of this to begin with, it’s the highest pleasure of them all, and it quickly replaces those selfish yearnings of my “natural state.”

But, what happened to Lassie? Ultimately, Lassie did start eating his food out of the refrigerator, but they had to fool him by secretly taking it out of the refrigerator and putting it in the old icebox in the shed really quick. What we used to love dies hard; those too-small clothes are still in my closet, I don’t know if I’ll ever get rid of them.  We love to hold onto these things because they remind us of how easy life used to be, something called euphoric recall, but this easier earlier life had hardship as well. So we must be sure to keep those earlier hardships in focus, if for nothing else than to get a laugh at the dinner table.  Because there’s no sense in pretending it used to be better, because it didn’t, we’re smarter now, we’re always smarter, now.  Any time I participate in this “natural state” of mine, I know it’s how those earlier times peek through the keyhole of my life now. I’m drawn to it irrationally, like Lassie is drawn to the icebox.  We can’t hold on to what’s dated.

And what about Mr. Cuppy? What about his livelihood that was slowly usurped by technology?  I’ll talk about that next week while I discuss the digital family.

Recollecting, I realize now that this vacuum shortcut reverberates into a lot of my day-to-day functions.  I love to spray out a bowl I used for leftover stir-fry and rub all the crap off with a finger, no soap at all, and place it in the dish rack. I’ll use a knife once, wipe it on my jeans, and place it back in the knife block, even if I’ve cut a piece of cheese.

Though most of these actions don’t have any serious ramifications (maybe mold?) and there’s really no way to prove I’ve done them—short of this blog I mean, and the mold—taking these shortcuts must mean something in the larger scheme of things.

For starters, I’ve duped my wife.  She comes in and says, “Thanks for vacuuming, sweetheart.” And I say, from the computer “Oh yeah, no problem.” And I giggle to myself a little bit, but there’s really more guilt than giggling.  I might as well have spent twice the time actually vacuuming and have some satisfaction as well.  Because, let’s face it, with the extra time I got from not actually vacuuming, all I did was find out that the Irish eat pickled pig’s feet too (they call them cruibini), watch a Paul Rudd clip a couple times on YouTube, look up the definition for terpsichore (that’s terp-sik-uh-ree; choreography, the art of dancing), and find out that ultra nudity is a real thing where people replace their skin with clear plastic so folks can see how their body works inside all the time. None of this is actually productive and means nothing, except to me.

Secondly, like I was talking about last post, I’ve failed to contribute to my family. I’ve satisfied only myself, when, with a little more effort, I could have satisfied all of us.  Plus, one lie just leads to another.  Now I actually do have to vacuum at some point. Because, even though the stupid cat might eat a few, those cheerios on the floor aren’t just going to evaporate.  The stupid cat is quickly going to find out that his cat food is more appetizing than cheerios embedded into carpet fibers. But maybe, as its composition suggests, carpet is high in fiber and the stupid cat, languishing in all of his dumbness, still recognizes this. But who knows? Anyway, so when my wife comes home, she’ll say, “You vacuumed again?” and I’ll say, again from the computer, “Sure did, how bout that, huh?”

Like I said, one lie leads to another.

All of this of course has to do with a lack of motivation—a lack of motivation to accept this as my life now, a lack of motivation to get up from the computer and contribute.  Realizing all of these problems are motivation problems, here’s what I’ve done:

I have bought myself a 10-hour timer.  Not to say that I’d ever come close to doing any one thing for 10 hours, unless of course there was some way I could eat for 10 hours straight without absorbing any calories.  This timer, unlike a clock on the wall, counts down instead of up, letting me truly see my own progress.

So what does this have to do with motivation? And how can I still be a selfish father, yet get the vacuuming and other family chores done as well?

I set the timer for 30 minutes.  30 minutes isn’t a lot of time, especially since as soon as you set it for 30 it goes down to 29.  I tell myself, “Ok, for 30 minutes I’m going to do housework,” and I can check the timer periodically and say, “Just 18 minutes to go.”  I can vacuum, empty the dishwasher, do a wash, and put away the clothes in the dryer in 30 minutes.  Of course, my wife cleans the house really well on Saturdays without complaining a bit, but each day requires some maintenance that she’s not always capable of providing, and besides, it’s not all her job anyway. That’s what my timer is for, it’s just my way of pulling the pullstarter for my motorvation; it’s what successfully gets me going.

I also set it for things like homework.  I’m working on a 50 page thesis, which is no joke, so I set it for two hours and it works the same way. I can look up from my pretentious scholarly articles and say, “Whoa, only an hour and 20 minutes left.”  It’s a great way to motivate myself and divide the day between the selfish things I want to do and the married father things I have to do, and I urge anyone with time management trouble to try it.

Oh, and speaking of motivation, I still haven’t motivated myself to take my clothes to Goodwill.  It’ll happen, maybe, but stay tuned for next week’s post about holding on to things that signify youth, to see if I’ve managed to let them go.

Nevertheless, despite this reserved approach, I’ve still managed to amass a closet full of unworn clothes. The far left of my part of the closet looks like an old country yard with cars and parts sitting in unkept yellow grass. Yet, I can’t consign or take them to Goodwill because, while my waistline swells, I still dream of fitting into them.

My waist is size 33.  Digging in my closet, I just found 30s I wore when I first met my wife, when I took off my shirt in the summer air and looked at my reflection in beach parking lot car windows before realizing someone in the car was staring at me giggling.  I swear I was fit once, I remember walking past a bus of middle school students and one girl goes, “He’s so sexy.”  And I felt bad for being flattered, but I still was, I couldn’t help it, neither could any of you.

Not to say a middle schooler wouldn’t call me sexy now.  Statutory rape aside, I’m sure a few women my own age would consider me sexy now as well, a group that includes my wife, the only one that matters, health nut and fitness guru that she is.  But I’m only 26, I can get into shape again, it’s anatomically and physiologically possible; however, I’ve realized that there are many more things I must do before exercising comes up on my list, like vacuuming, and changing the stupid cat’s litter box. Though these things only take a few minutes—vacuuming even less if I fake it—there is still a larger investment of time that must be considered, a deeply important thing functioning as an obstacle between myself and the body I know I can have–spending time.

There’s this concept of time unrelated to a clock rotating, it’s different than that, outside it. Spending time is sitting on the floor and making silly faces, stacking up cartoon character figurines, rolling around in piles of blankets and pillows, giving baths, dressing my daughter and applying sunscreen and combing her hair, and stopping in midcoversation to tell her “be careful honey” at the park.  It’s not enough to just be around her for the same amount of time, spending time requires involvement and interaction.  This, by far, is the largest time suck of fatherhood, yet it is what separates the good ones from the bad ones.

Sometimes I resist this portion, I do spend a little too much time at the computer. Also, occasionally, while my daughter is in the bath, I sit on the closed toilet beside her looking up things on my iPod touch, but I feel bad for gratifying myself in that way, when, with a bit more effort, I could be gratifying my entire family, since me making my daughter laugh makes my wife laugh. So, I turn off the computer, I lay the iPod touch aside and I get involved, I spend time even though I know doing so isn’t necessarily helping me in any way other than strengthening the relationships between myself and my family.

As a result of the extreme time investment spending time requires, I’ve reasoned that I need to let go of the picture of myself in my mind and forget I ever fit into those jeans.  I think my friends would tell you I’m the same person I always was, and that’s true to an extent, but after having a kid and learning to foster a healthy relationship with her and my wife, I feel that my definition has changed. I haven’t gone through a metamorphosis per se, I’ve just shifted a bit, and part of that shifting entails me not spending 2 hours at the gym every day.  I can’t, and never will be able to, so I need to let go of that and many more desires pulling those nostalgic marionette strings.

But I still want to be in shape. In this situation how do I get some time to myself to workout? How do I still reach the same selfish goal?

Fast workouts.  Beach Body workouts, the most famous of which, P90X and Insanity, take very little time per day, and several of my friends have had some wonderful results.  They also require just minimal equipment, so if a gym isn’t readily accessible, or you don’t want to commit to Gold’s ridiculous two-year contract, which is carefully orchestrated legal robbery, this would be a one-time investment for a very healthy, versatile, and stable exercise and nutrition routine.

Now if only I could find the motivation after a 2-year exercise sabbatical to kill myself with these intensive programs.  Read the next post on motivation to see if I can stick with it, and also if I’ve motivated myself to donate my old clothes.