Interview with Holly Hamilton-Bleakley Part 2

SV: Given our culture’s emphasis on individualism and personal freedom, and more parents being out of the home so often, could you talk about the importance for parents spending consistent and quality time with their children (e.g. family dinners, family prayer)?

HHB: Yes, we certainly do emphasize individualism in our culture, as well as a kind of personal freedom that brings with it a kind of unrealistic idea that we are independent from others, particularly our families.  That individualism, however, can be very closely tied to an isolated loneliness, especially in the teenage years (just look at the recent growth in self-harming among teenagers), if it isn’t tempered with a good dose of family connectedness.

And how does a family feel connected?  Time spent together is an absolutely essential part of it.  But it doesn’t have to be ‘perfect time’.  In fact, I’m a big believer in the imperfectness of families.  One session at our family dinner table can go from laughing to fighting to complaining to scolding to edifying in about 5 minutes, and then repeat the cycle for the rest of the dinner.  So parents spending time with their children is not about some kind of perfect world where the child never misbehaves and the parent is never grumpy.   But it is in the acts of eating together, praying together, working together, reading together (I’m a big believer in bedtime stories as well) that those bonds are formed, no matter how clumsy we are in doing them.

What is miraculous is just how important those family bonds are.  There is a very high chance they will save a kid from depression, drugs, self-harm, suicide attempts, teenage pregnancy – you name it.  And even if a child does get involved in those things, he or she will get out faster and recover quicker if he comes from a strong, close family.  So don’t give up on those family dinners and bedtime stories, no matter how chaotic!  

SV: You’ve written about pop music and celebrities in our contemporary culture, and the impact they have on children, particularly teens. Could you talk more about this, specifically the role art and aesthetics play in raising children to be people of virtue? And when and why did this go by way the wayside for parents in our culture? How can we recover the role of art in raising children?

HHB: I wrote about the influence of celebrities on our children in the context of Plato’s cave (http://philosophyforparents.com/2014/04/28/leading-our-children-away-from-celebrity-culture/) , and I still think that is a good analogy.  Children are in a kind of ‘cave’ in the sense that they really do not understand, or are aware of, many things around them.  So when they encounter celebrities, either in pictures or videos or whatever, those celebrities are presented in such a way that they seem to be so much more beautiful, so much more interesting and so much more successful than ordinary people, or say, one’s parents.  I think this is so harmful, first of all because it is false that celebrities are any of those things (indeed, define beauty, ‘interesting’ and success), and second of all because idolizing celebrities stops children from understanding what is of value in their own lives – indeed, what is of value, in itself.  In fact, celebrity culture seems to thrive on our weaknesses as humans – our tendencies toward jealousy, vanity, selfishness, and popularity.

Art definitely has an essential role in helping us all – not just children – to become ‘people of virtue’.  Speaking for myself, I know when I came out of watching, say, Les Miserables, I was a better person, with a greater determination to love and appreciate those around me, and to live closer to God.  I didn’t have a similar determination, however, after I saw Shrek on the West End.  Nothing was wrong with Shrek, but it wasn’t ennobling, either.  It seems to me that many of us have somehow lost the expectation that art should ennoble us somehow.  We expect art to entertain us, but not necessarily to make us better people.  On the flip side, many artists these days seem to be more interested in art as a form of self-expression, rather than in art as a way to uplift and inspire.  So we spend a lot of time watching and listening to things that are substandard and rather mindless, or that do nothing to inspire the virtues.  

How can we recover the role of art in raising children?  That’s an excellent question, and like most questions that have to do with raising children, I suspect it doesn’t require a hugely complicated answer. Essentially, I would say we have to use the time we have together to explore art that does inspire virtue.  Listening to classical music is a great place to start.  Read inspiring books together – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Secret Garden, Heidi, The Giver (my kids loved that book!), and so forth, on a daily basis.  Get on google images and look at Michelangelo’s Pieta, etc.  Take your children to Shakespeare plays, museums, and classical music concerts, from a young age.  If you can’t afford those sorts of things, then go to YouTube and watch a concert, or get art books or Shakespeare from your library.  Indeed, one of my resolutions this year is to memorize passages from Shakespeare with my children.  It may seem like a drop in the ocean against the art out there which leads our children away from virtue, but the investment will pay off, and your children will develop a love of good art, even though it might not seem like it for a while.    

SV: For those parents who are interested more in philosophy, particularly how it relates to parenting, who might you recommend for further reading? 

HHB: That’s a bit of a tricky question, because although I think many philosophical discussions are hugely relevant for parents, the problem is that those discussions are very rarely aimed at parents.  So it is often hard for the typical parent who is not trained in philosophy to see what relevance philosophy might have for them in their parenting challenges.  Another problem is that many of our major thinkers in Western philosophy were not parents themselves, so although they write about issues that are important for parents, one wonders how their philosophy might have been different if they had had that experience.   

Indeed, these problems are among the very things that motivated me to start Philosophy for Parents in the first place!  What I try to do in Philosophy for Parents is to write about philosophical concepts that I think can be of help to parents in their everyday interactions with their children.  I approach, and write about, philosophy as a parent, whereas perhaps many other philosophers approach philosophy as philosophers.  In the future I hope to turn my blog into a book, so that parents will have something to turn to if they want to use philosophy to help them in their parenting.

Having said all that, philosophy is relevant to parents in the sense that it is relevant for all of us:  it provides a discussion about what it means to be a good human being, or live a meaningful human life.  With that in mind, ancient Greek philosophy is an excellent place to start.  Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is a must.  In Plato’s Republic you will find fascinating discussions about why we should be moral, how to educate the young to be virtuous, and the ideal state.  I’ve written about Stoicism before – I think it is an especially applicable philosophy for parents, so I also recommend The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.  I’m fascinated by Thomas Aquinas’s theory of natural law as a way of thinking about our human nature, and that can be found in his Summa Theologica, IaIIae, questions 90-95.  Rousseau’s Emile and John Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education provide food for thought on education and human development.  Immanuel Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals is a less accessible, but profoundly important work on what it means to be moral.   John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism was a significant philosophical work in the 19^th century, and continues to be influential on our moral philosophy today; it contains, among other things, thought-provoking discussions on happiness, morality and justice.

If you can’t bear the thought of primary sources, then as an introduction to philosophy try A Short History of Ethics, by Alasdair MacIntyre.

Holly Hamilton-Bleakley writes at philosophyforparents.com. She has an MPhil and PhD in Intellectual History and Political Thought from the University of Cambridge. She is also a mother to six children.