Why isn’t the red jacket in the choices?
This morning, as we were trying to get out the door, I asked D. whether he wanted to wear his purple jacket or his silver jacket. (He’s sort of between sizes, so has two wearable winter coats.) My red jacket, he said. No, I said, silver or purple. "Why isn’t the red jacket in the choices?" he asked.
I absolutely love that question. If this blog has a recurring theme, it’s about looking at what’s missing from the options that we’re presented with. What are the factors that determine the range of choices from which we select? And how can we expand that range?
Earlier this month, Julia of Here Be Hippogriffs wrote a long post in which she talked about her and her husband’s division of household labor, and concluded:
"So that is our distribution of labor and it makes us shimmy. Does it follow some bold 1950s pattern? Yep, pretty much. Was it derived from that pattern? Hell no. We have just gravitated towards the tasks that best suit us."
I agree with Julia’s argument that what "matters is that everyone involved is in agreement over how the work gets divided." But I’m not convinced that these decisions are ever made entirely free from societal influences. I really liked Laura’s post today about how her life has been affected by the choices she’s made at different points and what the constraints were at each step of the journey.
Oh, the answer to D.’s question? His red jacket is just fleece, not warm enough for the weather today.
January 27th, 2005 at 4:51 pm
I love how brilliant and organic children are. Their minds are not yet roped down to the tracks.
My son informed me one day that he wanted a blue fluffernutter for lunch. I didn’t understand, so he pointed to my baking section in the pantry. And fiannly I got it. So we had blue bread and blue fluffernutter and the usual brown peanut butter (because peanuts are yummy when they are brown).
“Why not the red coat”? That is an EXCELLENT question. And how amazing you are for fostering those out of the box thinking patterns 🙂