Time to Get a Job

And the joy of trust

Last week, two baby teeth arrived on the scene. Which kind of made me choke up. Because Baby Girl has been around for only seven months. And, yes, y’all were right, time flies.

But, if I am going to be honest, those first three months were a colic-doom loop. By the end of every evening, our dog, Lady, was deeply questioning our parenting skills as all of us collapsed in exhaustion.

At three months and one day, it all changed. I didn’t have to spend hours walking the stairs to calm Anisa, she could ride in the car without screaming bloody murder and Lady stopped giving us the side-eye. And I can’t say enough about the miracle of sleep training. Game. Changer.

Now, our baby is a giggling, smiling, squeaking ball of fun. Her head is on a constant swivel as she takes in the world, tracking the sights and sounds of life with a curiosity and alertness that makes nap time elusive. Her contrarian ways (surprising) goes well with her mischievous sense of humor (also surprising). And while she isn’t quite crawling yet, she is happiest standing and preparing to walk.

Baby Girl has places to go and things to do.

So, I tell her, “Since you are in such a rush, it’s about time you get a job.”

Which got me to thinking about work. Because I’ve been working since a pretty young age.

My parents were trained as physical therapists in Pakistan. When they arrived in the states, Dad completed the training necessary to get his license; Mom dealt with the likes of me. Soon, we moved to Salinas, my sisters came along, and my parents worked together to open a private practice.

Which meant I spent a decent amount of my youth working for my parents. Sometimes I was even useful. Folding towels, cleaning exam rooms. Or, after my parents purchased an office building (on 1980’s debt crisis interest rates), I remember helping clean up construction debris as Dad saved money by doing some of the work himself. There was certainly more than one night where my sisters and I slept in an exam room while Mom and Dad worked late.

Other times, I wasn’t very helpful. Like when I took my new pair of “oil resistant” boots out for a spin. Meaning, I ran around the parking lot, through all the oil patches. (Please enjoy the visual of a gangly Ali running circles in an empty parking lot.) Of course, I promptly walked into the office, tracking oil footprints down the hallway.

Which is also when I learned what “oil resistant” didn’t mean.

I was fortunate. My parents made me work out of a sense of responsibility to teach, not a necessity to earn. Which isn’t the case for many.

The Washington Post reported earlier this year that “child labor violations have nearly quadrupled since 2015,” driven “in part by persistent labor shortages and record numbers of unaccompanied migrant minors arriving from Central America.”

Or, this short film about teen farmworkers by Jessica De La Torre, who also grew up in Salinas. She wrote on José Andrés’ Longer Tables, “I focused on Eva’s story, one of 500,000 teens in the U.S who work in the fields. It provides a glimpse of what it means to be a teen farmworker today and the layers they hold.” 

Of course, some see children working in fields or meat-packing plants as on-the-job training for future careers.

So, yes, Baby Girl needs to get a job. At the right time. Meanwhile, since writing meandering newsletters is not a skill that should be passed on, we will teach her how to be responsible, work hard, care about other people and understand the enormous privilege she enjoys.

The Joy of Trust

In 2007, Robert Putnam, he of Bowling Alone, released new research that the Boston Globe’s Michael Jonas summarized as, “the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects.” Keep in mind that this was before the Obama juggernaut, but on the other side of the immigration rallies of 2006 and 2007. So, demographic change was on America’s mind, but it had not yet translated to political power.

At the time I was running the MA Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition and sensed that many in the progressive community would take issue with the results and assume demographics was destiny. So, since I can be a bit contrarian (see above), I told Jonas, “We can't ignore the findings. The big question we have to ask ourselves is, what do we do about it; what are the next steps?"

But instead of figuring out how to help Americans see the value in a diversifying nation, the proverbial “we” believed the election of Obama was the realization of demographic destiny and that if we could figure out the economics, then self-interest would bring along the rest of America. In other words, culture wasn’t as important as economics. “We” were wrong.

Over at Wisdom of Crowds, New York Times Magazine contributor Elisabeth Zerofsky describes a recent conversation with a conservative donor who, “Argued that liberals and leftists tend to look to economics as an explanation for social problems or phenomena, whereas what’s most important to conservatives is culture.”

Which makes a ton of sense to me now. Because you don’t have to look very long to see that the culture wars are fought to protect one culture from dominating the other. Zerofsky believes conservatives are using government to lay the “foundations of a moral transformation.” While the right believes liberals are using corporations and media to advance a “woke agenda.” since neither side is interested in building a broader coalition, this culture war undermines trust in each other, much less our democracy. Which brings me back to Putnam.

In a May Politico interview, he compared the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era to point out that in the 1960s, “Most people in America trusted other people — about 70 percent.” But, each successive generation trusted their fellow Americans less and less – so that only 20 percent of Gen Z trust other people.

Putnam assumed economics was the leading indicator of this drop in trust. Instead:

The one thing we’re sure of is that that story is not true. To me, the astonishing fact was that the leading indicator was actually cultural and moral factors. The first thing that changed was that ordinary Americans became convinced — some through religion, others not — that they had a moral duty to worry about other people, and their morality changed from an “I” morality to a “we” morality. Conversely, the first thing that turned in the other direction [in the 1960s] was actually our sense of moral obligation orders. We went from a “we” society to an “I” society.

In a society where culture wars dominate, the power of “I” drives down trust. So, I would ask again, what do we do about it, what are the next steps?

“We need a moral reawakening of America,” Putnam said. “That’s upstream from political choices. It’s only when people begin to think, ‘Oh, I have an obligation to other people,’ that they begin to support parties and policies that actually do close the economic gap.”

Now that I am a parent of a Generation Alpha kid, I can be part of the solution – or the problem. Which takes me back to work.

Look, I love my job; and, I have been dumb lucky to have multiple jobs that I truly enjoyed. I derive that joy from being able to do something I believe contributes to the greater good. Which probably leads me to work more than I probably should. (Because, why would you do less of something that you enjoy?) More than the joy I find, the experiences allow me to get to know people, understand who they are, how they think about the world. In other words, get to trust them and hope they trust me.

I now realize my parents found great joy in what they did. Dad loved to help people; Mom shares stories of the friendships she built through work and community. And, Toya is positively beaming after helping a client figure out their career path.

That joy – and how valuable it is – is what my parents passed on to me. It is why I trust people, why I am curious about people. Why I feel so damn lucky to be able to do something I love.  

Passing that joy to Anisa will not be automatic. She will grow up with access to more information than any other generation – access that could breed curiosity and trust, or fear and misgivings. Creating the experiences where she finds joy in helping someone, joy in working, joy in being kind to people to earn their trust, is really important.

Fortunately, I am taking August off for a delayed parental leave. As a family we are going to take a couple of trips. The balance of the month, Anisa and I are going to hang out. Every day I will count her teeth, we will giggle together, and we will find things that bring us joy.

Other Items of Note

Big thank you to Anne Snyder and the good people of Comment Magazine to allow me to talk about a Coalition of Conscience on their podcast.

In the last issue of Cranky Dad, I told you about Old Monk Rum, a brew from the homeland. Well, this week, I found a bottle of Old Raj Gin, brewed in Campbeltown since 1972. I haven’t seen a bottle of this gin for a long time, so I snapped one up (and one for a colleague). The distinctive yellow hue is from saffron added post-distillation. In spite of its very strong colonialist vibe, it is a fine beverage.

Like many of you, I have read all of Robert Caro’s books. So, watching “Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb” was just a ton of fun.

Finally, what I love most about the latest Idris Elba thriller, “Hijack,” are the doors in different countries. The lattice of Middle Eastern doors, the blockiness of British doors, the importance of what is behind a glass door. On top of that, it is just a great show.