How "Design Mom" Gabrielle Blair Prepares Her Kids for an Unpredictable Future
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I fell in love with Gabrielle Blair’s work when I came across her newsletter almost a year ago, in which she writes with perfect clarity about the multiple crises we are facing, the rampant misogyny in the U.S. and its overlap with rising Christian nationalism. (A recent piece, No One Hates Women as Much as America Hates Women,” is a perfect example of her voice).
So I was thrilled when I got to speak with her a while back about her newest book, which she co-wrote with her husband, Ben Blair: The Kids Are Alright: Parenting with Confidence in an Uncertain World.
The book funny, intimate and thoughtful, and touches on everything from giving your kids permission to reject your family religion, to encouraging them to be life-long learners, to — most importantly — teaching them to be flexible and adaptable in the face of an unknown and often terrifying future.
(I read it while sitting side-by-side with my husband, who was reading another of Blair’s books — Ejaculate Responsibly: A Whole New Way to Think About Abortion - also highly recommended!)
In addition to her newsletter, Blair maintains her popular Design Mom blog, while living in northern France. We chatted over Zoom.
There are four pillars in this book: One is that the idea of a reliable path of success is a cultural myth, and it does a lot of harm to people. Another idea is a commitment to staying flexible, and open to change. Part of your approach here is to remember that your child is not you and their childhood is not your childhood.
That one comes directly from thousands of questions from Design Mom readers over the last 18 years.
There’s a realization that you had something great in your childhood and you're trying to replicate that, or you had something horrible in your childhood and you're trying to avoid that.
That's what we're talking about here. It really has nothing to do with your kid.
We don't get an instruction book for being parents, but we were all kids, so we're using our own childhood as the closest thing we can have to an instruction book, because that's all we've got.
We use an example in the book where you bought a house on a cul-de-sac because you loved it as a kid. And you say, “I'm making a sacrifice. I'm taking an extra job so you can get this house because I want this for my kids so much, because I loved it so much when I was a kid.”
And then fast forward eight years, and for your kids, this is the worst possible location. “I wish we lived right on a public transit line. I wish I lived in a city on a subway line. I can't get anywhere. I'm not interested in driving, because my generation doesn't drive.”
So we're constantly making decisions that may or may not be good for kids based on what we had ourselves. I find that when I'm butting heads with my kids, that is often the reason.
If I really can step back for a minute and say, “What is the disconnect here?” It's often that I’m trying to give them something, or help them avoid something, from my childhood.
So instead I have to ask: What is it that they need? Need right now, in this childhood? Not, What did I need when I was a child?”
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You advise parents not to expect your kids’ baseline emotion to be happiness.
I love this: “Our expectations aren't related to our child's emotions, but to their participation. We try to show them how to participate, and expect them to participate meaningfully.”
But it's very, very hard to see your child be unhappy. So why not expect our child's baseline emotion to be happiness?
I think people can see it more easily if we talk about perfection.
I'm very critical of the church I grew up in and that I'm still a part of. One of the things I'll do is criticize the leaders of our church when I see them do something that I disagree with. That can really stress people out in my church community. These leaders are often held up as just as close to perfect as you can be on earth. And I will repeatedly say to these people, “You are doing them a disservice if you're expecting them to be perfect. I know you think that you're honoring them by saying that. I know you think you're treating them with respect by thinking they can't make mistakes, but you are wrong. They have to be allowed to be human.”
If you're expecting them to be perfect, and then they eventually do something that you or disagree with, you have to reject everything now. They were never perfect, so everything they said was wrong.
I'm much more respectful by allowing them to be imperfect, to make mistakes.
So having your kid have to be happy all the time is a little bit that. They would only be happy and grinning all the time, if life was somehow perfect, right?
But we know it's not. I certainly don't walk around happy all the time. So if I'm not happy all the time, and we know life isn't perfect, why are we expecting our kids to be happy all the time?
One, it doesn't make any sense. Two, it's putting a lot of pressure on these kids. They feel that. Even if we haven't stated that outright, they feel it. Your ability to feel happiness comes in part from your ability to feel sadness.
You talk about the idea of a “reliable path to success” as a cultural myth. It’s one of the main ideas of the book: that this path isn’t so reliable.
Some of this comes from me and my personal exasperations as a parent.
I have this example from when we were living in New York and we enrolled our oldest in a T-ball team. I had, at the time, two other younger kids, so there's three kids having to get to T-ball practice. Get the uniform ready, get the snack, all that.
And I'm exasperated after two weeks. I'm like, “What is this about? Am I insane? What is this for?”
There's all sorts of good reasons to do sports, but it doesn't mean we need to spend 20 hours a week on a T-ball team from age four. We don't have to force them into these things.
Our obsession with this myth of this reliable path to success is, like, “If I just do step A, B and C, and then follow up with D, then somehow I will be ok.”
It comes from a good place, but in fact does not work. And, in fact, it is very harmful.
This is a chance to talk about something that could feel really scary, but you're embracing it: The future is unknowable and unpredictable. We want to get our kids on the train and send them in the direction of the path to success, and yet the future is completely uncertain. How are we supposed to relax in that context?
I cannot spend this much of my brain worrying about this future that I cannot control. It is too painful. It hurts, and it doesn't help me do anything.
It doesn't improve my life in any way. The future was always unpredictable. It's crazier, for us, and crazier for our kids, because the future is changing so fast.
So how do we prepare them?
Well, you've got a home base, you've got security and safety as deep as I can offer it to you, so that you can try whatever you need to try.
Say you went to college, and you say, “I'm going to be a lawyer,” and then you find out your law job that you were excited about has been taken over by AI. It's okay. You can absolutely come home. There will be no one mad at you, no one mocking you.
If I can offer you physical safety and comfort, great. But if I can offer you that emotionally as well, super. You're going to switch jobs a million times. We're not mad about that. Or, you're not going to be able to find a job. Job hunting now is ridiculous. It's all these things.
They're going to have to take risks, they're going to have to make decisions. They're going to have to choose things that aren't familiar to us, that we can't predict, that they can't predict.
Take risks and try something new and shift gears.
That's all we'll be able to do to navigate the future. We don't know what's coming right?
This is a slightly edited version of an interview we ran earlier this year. You can read my full conversation here. And, if you’re loving MR, give us a like and leave a comment so new readers can find us!
What is it that they need? Need right now, in this childhood?
I liked this question and the general notion that kids are not happy all the time, and that's not a healthy goal--kids need to be given meaning rather than constant "happiness."
Really appreciate this, thank you.