Sheltering each other

There’s a book called The Shelter of Each Other: Rebuilding our Families. I read it back in the nineties. I found author Mary Pipher’s analysis of the ways that our families have changed in the last one hundred years intriguing. Our kids were small then, and the internet wasn’t a member of our household, but I could see that Game Boy, Nickelodeon, McDonalds, and the Mall of America were invading my sense of hearth and home.

Pipher warns in her book that our “tools” and “toys” can alienate us from one another. She says that the shopping mall/ fast food culture isn’t conducive to good family life. We can also get too preoccupied by our careers (as parents) and too involved in extracurricular activities (as kids).

Family after family, Pipher reported that she heard cries of distress from households where people who are all related to each other share less and less in common and turn more and more to technology for companionship and to the media and malls for affirmation.

Pipher spoke at The Edina Parent Communication Network this week. Organizer Theresa Brunker reported that 500 people showed up to hear her.

Parents are anxious to hear Pipher’s message. She wants us to remember how families thrive: by staying in everyday contact with each other. By making our own rituals around holidays and weekends. She says we should walk the dog together, play a board game, make brownies. And eat dinner together.

There’s a sense that if we do these things, we’ll connect again. And you know what?

I believe it.

Resources:

Mary Pipher

Fortifying Families is Mary Pipher’s Mission

Edina Parent Communication Network (where Pipher spoke February 4, 2008)

National Institute on Media and the Family

Note: Mary Pipher will update The Shelter of Each Other: Rebuilding our Families later this year.

Mary Pipher is a sage and I also read The Shelter of Each Other in the 90's. I will be thrilled to read a new edition with her perspective on the contemporary changes that have happened since she first wrote it. I am very bummed to have missed her lecture last month but glad you did a refresher of the solid advice she's so good at.

Terre

I'm glad that you've read Pipher's book. Did you also read REVIVING OPHELIA?

I have 13 and 14 year old girls now, and I've had REVIVING OPHELIA on the shelf for years. I finally read it in anticipation of my meeting with Mary Pipher.

It is hard to take in story after story of girls suffering from loneliness and low self esteem.

I recommend it, especially for those of us raising girls in a culture that seems to demand that they be "perfect" while giving them such a narrow definition of what that is.

Pipher has a number of good ideas about how to stay connected with our girls and our families.

Nanci,

I just listened to your podcast interview with Mary Pipher. I have also read her books (Reviving Ophelia and Shelter) and am an advocate of keeping kids as critically independent of the media-saturated consumer culture as possible. Don't get me wrong, I'm not nurturing a household of Luddites, but the glowing screen is very, very alluring and it does take monitoring to make sure kids (and adults, I would add) are using it well and wisely and not at the expense of real experiences and interactions with people.

But here is an interesting use of technology to foster family communication: My husband just now e-mailed me and our three kids to remind us that we have slacked off on our agreed-upon weekly chores and request commitment to particular jobs. Everyone is expected to sign off on two jobs and "reply all" so we know who will do what! Also, he is calling us all to accountability on a New Year's pledge we made to institute Sunday family dinner--intended to be a pretty sacrosanct time where we would forego other invitations, whether social or work-related, in favor of family dinner and activity. We did it just once, then everyone forgot or had previous engagements. As Pipher rightly notes, it is really important to ritualize our connections. Ritual means the same activity (place, time, participants, activity) that is planned and regularly scheduled.

Great subjects to keep in front of us, especially we parents of older kids who are sometimes tempted to just give over to the leave-taking and the growing up and away. Family is so important for our teenagers even if we or they think it pales next to peer involvement. Thanks!