Raising Eco-Terrorists and Other Environmental Concerns of Parenting

So, Al Gore and the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have won the Nobel Peace Prize for their work on global warming. I’m glad someone is working on it. I often find myself wondering if I can get my bright daughters to take up careers in…meteorology? Environmental engineering? It’s hard to tell what sort of fields will even exist in a few years, but I know that we parents have a responsibility to get this younger generation thinking about how to use their minds in the service of humanity’s greatest challenges. It is pretty clear to me that environmental crises and the human crises they create will be first among those challenges, but it is less clear what we, as parents, should be doing.

I know my family doesn’t recycle enough. I know the disposable diapers and single-serving applesauce containers are sins indeed. Such things tend to be an exercise in immediate versus long-term consequences: saving the earth for my children’s future or saving my sanity for their present. The hectic life of two careers plus two kids plus several part-time jobs make it tough to do all we should. We can’t afford to get rid of our paid-for cars and get hybrids. We live in Texas and so do a good bit of driving. Our sins are legion.

On the other hand, I breastfeed my kids for the full natural, biological course, something practically unheard of in most of the U.S. That saves a whole lot of formula-feeding and pharmacological waste byproducts. Also, the kids and I are vegetarians. That means it takes sixteen times less land to grow our food than to grow the food of meat-eating folks, so I tend to think our sins are largely balanced out, even though that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t all be constantly striving to do more. And, somehow, for all of my sins against the planet, I have raised a pre-teen daughter who is always ready - all too ready - to kick some ass when it comes to saving the world, or at least her corner of it.

I recently found myself telling my daughter’s new science teacher how much my daughter enjoyed being in her class. I qualified the statement by saying that my daughter wasn’t looking forward to the dissections, but she really liked her, the teacher, a lot. The teacher said she was sure my daughter would feel differently by the time the dissections rolled around. I smiled thinly and let her know I was pretty sure that wasn’t the case, visualizing with concern what the middle school would be like the week of the dissection, what with the petitions and picket lines and pictures of mutilated frogs. My daughter already sticks PETA stickers that say “I cut class, not frogs” on things and is researching the cost to the district of dissection software versus preserved frog-bodies in her spare time. The elementary school should have warned them, I thought, as I muttered something about eco-terrorists in training. I am being tongue-in-cheek about the eco-terrorist thing, of course. Mostly. My daughter would never participate in anything violent, but I expect she would not be averse to a little non-violent liberation action, either, so…call it what you will. I think she’s more Greenpeace than Earth First, though. At least I hope so.

My daughter was six when she engaged in her first ecological protest. She refused to let her father mow the dandelions in the yard. For months. Placing her small body in front of the mower. We were proud of her for trying to speak up to save something, however immature her understanding, and felt it would be a valuable lesson for her to have a little success in the matter, so we didn’t mow the dandelions. They got very tall. Needless to say, we aren’t favorites with the more yard-conscious neighbors.

When my daughter was eight, her principal called animal control when a stray dog that was hanging around the school bit a child who was messing with it. By the next day, my daughter’s third grade class was peppered with kids wearing t-shirts saying “Save The Dogs”, carrying signs saying the same as well as “Sue The Pound”, and petitions and letters to the mayor were circulating. Her school, heaven bless them, was very understanding.

Last year, the elementary school tried to put up mesh to keep birds from nesting over the blacktop, but used a mesh that was too wide and birds got caught and strangled in it. My daughter said the assistant principal started saying “I know, I know - I had nothing to do with it. The district put it there!” as soon as he saw her coming. They took it down.

I’m not sure quite how my daughter got to be such a passionate eco-activist, given our aforementioned sins as parents. I suppose that raising her as a vegetarian was part of it, though my own vegetarianism is much more informed by my concerns about world hunger than by her concerns about animal rights. Our early support of her use of her voice and the truly precious tolerance of her understanding elementary school were, I am sure, also a big part of it. In the main, though, I don’t know how much credit we can take.

I want to raise my kids to be environmentally conscious, but I know I haven’t done nearly the job I should do at it. We certainly raise our children to let their lives speak for their beliefs, but that ecology is a belief my daughter has grabbed such tight hold of is probably more luck than parenting. Luck for the world, I hope, as she grows up in this time of frightening challenges.

Meanwhile, I’m going to try to set a better example. Soon.