flexible thinking

I had this conversation with J the other day that got me thinking about kids and how they receive and process information, and form opinions and ideas. It went something like this:

J: Jen's boyfriend proposed to her last week in front of all the kids and the other staff!
K: Jen?
J: the daycare worker. She has a little baby with her boyfriend and now they're getting married! He gave her a diamond ring and it's really pretty!
K: that's what you do when you ask someone to marry you. You give them a ring.
J: You do?
K: Yeah, it's like a tradition.
J: oh. [pause] Well it was a really nice ring. She cried with joy!

So two things struck me about this conversation. First, that J didn't have the slightest bit of confusion about the fact that her daycare worker had had a baby and then decided to get married. Second, that she had more trouble with the idea of giving a diamond ring as a gift when proposing marriage. Is this just indicative of the society she is exposed to, or is it completely attributable to my influence?

I'm not the most conventional person. I wasn't even legally married to J's father. She doesn't have the same last name as me, but rather carries his (a thing that sometimes irks me now that she is mostly mine, but that's another post). Even the fact that I am a single parent is kind of odd, even though most of J's friends' mothers are also single, since most of her schoolmates come from two-parent families.

But I was raised with a consciousness of differences, be they sexual identity or religion or skin colour...mostly because I fell into a number of those categories myself. My mom was a feminist and hung around with lesbians for quite a few years in my youth. I still have many "moms." I'm Jewish, and I remember when I was about to start high school, my mom sitting down with me to explain that some people, for no good reason, don't like Jewish people, and I might get called hurtful names when people found out I was Jewish. I just never had any problem accepting people who looked different from me or who liked girls instead of boys, or whatever. As long as they weren't assholes, they could do whatever or look however they wanted.

When I explained about the giving of the ring and the marriage proposal, I noticed myself deliberately not using genders to describe this exchange. I realized partway through the explanation that, by the time J grows up, same-sex marriage will probably be quite commonplace. After all, it was only a generation ago that drunk driving was socially acceptable, even cool, and now it's an offense that is not only frowned upon by society, but it carries quite harsh penalties under the laws of most jurisdictions. A generation before that, women were only just being allowed to vote -- a thing that would seem ludicrous were it still prohibited today.

If we play our cards right, our children will be the most tolerant and open-hearted people ever to walk this planet and make the rules that govern this country. I'm not saying there are not narrow-minded, ignorant people in the world, still procreating and continuing to instill their irrational hatreds and fears in their children. Unfortunately, we have daily proof that there are. However, I feel proud that my daughter will be accepting of all kinds of people, not because she is coerced into it, but because it is part of her world. If only we could all think so flexibly.