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How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

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Re: How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

#41

Post by euske »

jordigh wrote: post #27

I know this is a bit petty, but I've stared to resent a little that even though I'm Mexican, I'm not considered Western. What am I, then? Eastern? Central? Southern? I'm not just arguing about the geography, but about the culture. I feel much more like a Canadian or a USian (or a Guatemalan) than I feel like an African, Middle Easter, East Asian, or South Asian. I speak the same languages as Europe, have been mostly…

I think the term "Western" is often mixed up with "Westernized", which has a rather different connotation. I live in Japan that is not technically Western at all, but very well Westernized.

Re: How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

#42

Post by aaron695 »

jordigh wrote: post #27

I know this is a bit petty, but I've stared to resent a little that even though I'm Mexican, I'm not considered Western. What am I, then? Eastern? Central? Southern? I'm not just arguing about the geography, but about the culture. I feel much more like a Canadian or a USian (or a Guatemalan) than I feel like an African, Middle Easter, East Asian, or South Asian. I speak the same languages as Europe, have been mostly…

I see Western is about a weak social structure.

You don't just respect your grandparents or your boss or your parents or your culture or your coworker. There's no hierarchy.

Respect is earned, and it's constantly challenged.

For Mexico to be Western it would mean a movie like "Coco" is so utter bullshit it totally disrespects the entire country. This I didn't hear, hence I would not say Mexico is Western.

Without the blind respect of your boss or company, the theory is money reigns supreme and the country gets richer, hence why western countries are richer.

The fact you as a Mexican take offence kinda means to me you're not too western. If you were western you'd give less of a fuck about the place where you came from being mis-classified, it'd be more about who you are as a person. (Unless it's because people are stupid and don't realise what a country you know well is really like, that would be annoying)

Re: How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

#43

Post by DoreenMichele »

jacobolus wrote: post #40
DoreenMichele wrote: post #35

"The Mexican-American kids, aged 6 to 7, were doing about twice as much around the house as the middle-class European-American kids, on average," It's implied but not outright stated in the above quote: We are talking about households that are much, much poorer on average than "middle-class European-American kids." This is backed up by the photos in the article. So, if you have nothing else to do because your parents…

There are some other important differences: (1) Extended families live in a small area. There are many nieces and nephews and cousins so kids are playing in a big group of family and other neighbors, and e.g. girls start taking care of younger family members starting when they are 5 or 6 years old. (2) People work close to home, on work that is more or less comprehensible to a child, and often in groups. A group of p…

My mother is one of 12 kids. My father grew up on a farm, dirt poor. Your description to some degree fits my childhood. There were some really good things about growing up that way.

But I was not thinking about romanticizing rural poverty. I was thinking about unfairly vilifying modern people whose choices grow out of wildly different circumstances, as if "your children should be doing more chores!" is yet one more metric to feel pressured by because two career couples trying to keep the family housed in a world where you can't afford to have a full-time parent at home really need yet one more reason to feel like failures who just aren't trying hard enough.

Re: How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

#44

Post by jacobolus »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #43
jacobolus wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some other important differences: (1) Extended families live in a small area. There are many nieces and nephews and cousins so kids are playing in a big group of family and other neighbors, and e.g. girls start taking care of younger family members starting when they are 5 or 6 years old. (2) People work close to home, on work that is more or less comprehensible to a child, and often in groups. A group of p…

My mother is one of 12 kids. My father grew up on a farm, dirt poor. Your description to some degree fits my childhood. There were some really good things about growing up that way. But I was not thinking about romanticizing rural poverty. I was thinking about unfairly vilifying modern people whose choices grow out of wildly different circumstances, as if "your children should be doing more chores!" is yet one more m…

> I was not thinking about romanticizing rural poverty

This is why I led with “but yeah”. I am agreeing with you.

> two career couples trying to keep the family housed in a world where you can't afford to have a full-time parent at home really need yet one more reason to feel like failures who just aren't trying hard enough.

Living in San Francisco, we know many couples who need to keep both parents working and would love to take much more time off work to raise their kids if they could afford it, but also many couples who have plenty of extra cash and still keep both parents working and offload child-rearing to nannies or daycare or grandparents, sometimes it seems because the parents just have no idea how to interact with children or would rather stay at the office. (Maybe that’s unfair; just my anecdotal impression.)

It is definitely a great luxury that I can stay home with my kid while my wife works full time. But taking care of a kid is also pretty time consuming and emotionally demanding.

Re: How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

#45

Post by jacobolus »

jimmy1 wrote: post #29
jordigh wrote: post #27

I know this is a bit petty, but I've stared to resent a little that even though I'm Mexican, I'm not considered Western. What am I, then? Eastern? Central? Southern? I'm not just arguing about the geography, but about the culture. I feel much more like a Canadian or a USian (or a Guatemalan) than I feel like an African, Middle Easter, East Asian, or South Asian. I speak the same languages as Europe, have been mostly…

Reading this article, I don't really get everything under "What About Western Kids?" subheading. Everything listed there you would have found during the frontier days of America (and still do in some parts), so does that make America not western? I don't know it's very confusing. My parents are from Greece from large families and had this exact same experience growing up -- you had to do your part -- and Greece is kn…

My ancestors a few generations back who lived in the American west (or a generation or two before that were rural peasants in western Europe), and my rural Mexican peasant friends today live pretty similarly. You could take many stories of white Americans’ own great-great-grandparents who migrated to the US from Europe, change all the names and places (but few of the other details), and the story would be entirely plausibly that of an undocumented Mexican or Central American migrant today. This is one of the reasons that anti-immigrant hysteria is so ironically and tragically hypocritical.

I think it would be fair to call frontier America “non-Western” in the sense of the word used by this discussion. Maybe “non-industrialized” would be a better word.

jordigh: if you grew up in a middle class Spanish-speaking family in a city in Mexico, you are most certainly “Western” in the sense used here.

Re: How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

#46

Post by dgreensp »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #35

"The Mexican-American kids, aged 6 to 7, were doing about twice as much around the house as the middle-class European-American kids, on average," It's implied but not outright stated in the above quote: We are talking about households that are much, much poorer on average than "middle-class European-American kids." This is backed up by the photos in the article. So, if you have nothing else to do because your parents…

I don’t think the article is saying there is anything magic about culture, just about doing chores around and with your toddlers (I have toddlers). It doesn’t take much money to park your kid in front of a TV or a cheap tablet. If anything, parents with more resources have more options. I can see why children in wealthy families or just “wealthy cultures” would not be encouraged to help with chores, but there’s no reason they couldn’t be.

Re: How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

#47

Post by DoreenMichele »

jacobolus wrote: post #44
DoreenMichele wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mother is one of 12 kids. My father grew up on a farm, dirt poor. Your description to some degree fits my childhood. There were some really good things about growing up that way. But I was not thinking about romanticizing rural poverty. I was thinking about unfairly vilifying modern people whose choices grow out of wildly different circumstances, as if "your children should be doing more chores!" is yet one more m…

> I was not thinking about romanticizing rural poverty This is why I led with “but yeah”. I am agreeing with you. > two career couples trying to keep the family housed in a world where you can't afford to have a full-time parent at home really need yet one more reason to feel like failures who just aren't trying hard enough. Living in San Francisco, we know many couples who need to keep both parents working and would…

Not arguing here either. Just taking the opportunity to add another detail that I felt I failed to clearly state in my original comment.

I'm here to make conversation and sometimes that back and forth exchange sounds like arguing when I in no way mean it to.

Re: How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

#48

Post by dgreensp »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #43
jacobolus wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some other important differences: (1) Extended families live in a small area. There are many nieces and nephews and cousins so kids are playing in a big group of family and other neighbors, and e.g. girls start taking care of younger family members starting when they are 5 or 6 years old. (2) People work close to home, on work that is more or less comprehensible to a child, and often in groups. A group of p…

My mother is one of 12 kids. My father grew up on a farm, dirt poor. Your description to some degree fits my childhood. There were some really good things about growing up that way. But I was not thinking about romanticizing rural poverty. I was thinking about unfairly vilifying modern people whose choices grow out of wildly different circumstances, as if "your children should be doing more chores!" is yet one more m…

I think the article is helpful for a family in such a situation who might not otherwise think of, say, folding the laundry while hanging out with the kids and being receptive to offers of help, with the idea that down the line the kids could have the job of folding the laundry.

Re: How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

#49

Post by DoreenMichele »

dgreensp wrote: post #48
DoreenMichele wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mother is one of 12 kids. My father grew up on a farm, dirt poor. Your description to some degree fits my childhood. There were some really good things about growing up that way. But I was not thinking about romanticizing rural poverty. I was thinking about unfairly vilifying modern people whose choices grow out of wildly different circumstances, as if "your children should be doing more chores!" is yet one more m…

I think the article is helpful for a family in such a situation who might not otherwise think of, say, folding the laundry while hanging out with the kids and being receptive to offers of help, with the idea that down the line the kids could have the job of folding the laundry.

The vast majority of people are raised with either a shame model or a guilt model. If there is any way for it to be interpreted as a judgy lecture that "you're doing it wrong!", most people will take it that way.

If people hear it the way you hear it, that's great. But a lot of people won't hear that. They will just hear some new source of Puritan guilt and that tends to be counterproductive.

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