About Nathan

Nathan Thornburgh is a contributing writer and former senior editor at TIME Magazine who has also written for the New York Times, newyorker.com and, of course, the Phnom Penh Post. He suspects that he is messing up his kids, but just isn’t sure exactly how.

Back from the Amazon, with Useless Thoughts on Parenting

Posted on April 4, 2012 by Nathan

By Amazon, I mean the jungle, not the online megastore. I was in Peru last week for Roads & Kingdoms, and spent some time in the jungle near the delightfully seedy Amazon outpost of Iquitos.

There were children in the camp where I stayed for three days, preschoolers and kindergarten-aged kids of the workers who took care of the place. The camp was an hour’s walk into the jungle, so the kids lived with grandparents during the week so they could go to school.

They were, in lots of respects, like any other kids. The older boy had some colored pencils and was drawing and doing his homework, writing short sentences. But there was a lot of the stuff you might expect from indigenous people in the Amazon: these weren’t undiscovered tribes or anything of that nature, but they were kids who played with hollowed-out turtles shells and piles of ash from the fire, who helped salt the fatty meat of a giant jungle rat their father had shot in the jungle, kids who lived in a world without strollers, scooters, diapers.

Fast forward a few days, and after a sleepless redeye flight from Lima, I go straight from the airport to a previously scheduled tour of a Universal Pre-K program in the Upper West Side: we are a day away from having to rank schools that we most likely will not get into, so I am trying to make up for my chronic absenteeism with heroic acts of post-flight school visitation.

As people familiar with the process might know, Universal Pre-K tours on the Upper West Side are largely composed of some of the craziest white women on the planet. To whit:

“I don’t like this at all, so chaotic,” whispers one under her breath when we walk into a classroom that was PERFECTLY CALM and NEAT.

“What schools have you been to? I’ve seen PS 165, 163, 84, 92 and oh my god we didn’t get in anywhere last year and here’s the letter I wrote the superintendent of schools explaining why they just HAD to let us in,” upon which she produces said letter from a oversize purse in which, it turns out, she also carries around her two-year-old’s REPORT CARD.

“It’s all black kids in that school, and I didn’t want my daughter to be the only white kid in class, which is why it’s great to find you guys, let’s get together and all put our white kids in class together!” This much was said at a VERY HIGH VOLUME walking to another school tour on Adam Clayton Powell in the middle of Harlem, by a woman I had only just met, within earshot of at least a half-dozen mystified ACTUAL BLACK PEOPLE who must have felt like some new portal had opened up through which they were suddenly witnessing the founding moments of a real-life white-person cabal.

It’s natural to be irritated by all of this foolishness, especially given the lack of sleep and the absolute foolishness of that foolishness. However, my dislocation did not stop at the Pre-K tours. No, instead, I’ve been full of lessons from my (brief) time in the Amazon over the past days here, and it’s gone a bit overboard. Bike helmets? Who needs them? Kids in the Amazon don’t have ’em. Toys? Just give ’em a pile of ash and a turtle shell. It’s fine as long as the little bits of meat are scraped off. Dinner? Lots of rats in New York City, where’s my gun?

This, of course, is completely useless to people who are trying to actually raise children in the first world, people like my wife, who I think is sadly getting used to my returning from the developing world with new, inflexible ideas about how kids should be raised. Somehow I see kids surviving in desperate poverty all over the world and then my own kids suddenly have new standards they have to live up to.

I’ll say it so you don’t have to: thinking that I’ve been enlightened by two days in the Amazon and then making everyone suffer my new revelations back home is, as it turns out, just another form of white-person-mental-illness.

The iFather

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Nathan

Note: This post was sponsored by Linksys and the new Linksys E4200v2 router. For more information on sponsored posts, read the bottom of our About Page.

We moved last month. Did I mention that? Perhaps not. This is the problem with blogging: I want to blog about things that matter to me, but if those things are as time-consuming and life-dredging as the global suck that is moving apartments, then suddenly I don’t have time to blog about it. Even when the move was over, and I did regain some time to write, I still felt spent and a bit too abused by the process to write about it. God forbid real adversity should ever hit this blog. I might not be able to get off the mat to overshare about it.

That said, moving had its advantages. A smaller apartment now means lower rent: who needs space when the kids mainly just wrap their arms around your legs all day anyway? Less moisture in the home: we moved from an apartment that was half in the basement and therefore jungle-dank, which isn’t that much fun even in a jungle. More light: we are now on the 21st floor, which means we are practically assaulted by the sun (haven’t bought curtains yet). Also, it means that we may not survive a loss of electricity, as we have become weird pod-people who must take an elevator whenever we step out of our door.

The biggest advantage, though, is the opportunity to de-clutter, specifically when it comes to electronics. Over the past six years and through two previous moves, I’ve been accumulating a mass of retro electronic parts. Not original-packaging-Atari-retro. Nothing that I can sell on eBay. Just things like a 12-foot IEEE 1284 Parallel Printer Cable from the days before USB ruled the earth. Or my first personal data assistant, a battered Handspring Visor (with stylus!) from the early aughts.

Now I’m losing the junk and detritus. Technology in general in simplifying: instead of having a cable box (and cable bill), we watch shows over the Internet. Instead of the Handspring Visor, my PDA is now my phone, which is also my camera. It’s the world as Steve Jobs (PBUH) wanted it.

Not that there isn’t a little bit of nostalgia for all those wires and clunky gadgets. You see, I am the I.T. guy of our little domestic corporation. And as any good I.T. guy knows, the secret to impressing your boss (in this case, my wife and occasionally my child) is to make your job look harder than it actually is. Those gadgets and wires, the cables that would fit into certain ports but not others: those all made even something basic like hooking a printer to a computer look baroque, complex. Trying something truly ambitious, like manually swapping out a graphics card on my PC, made me feel like I had just changed the transmission on a muscle car.

Alas, as with cars, which are now diagnosed through a process of one computer reading another, the physicality has all but vanished from being the I.T. guy. So I am changing my tactics. I am learning to exult in completing the automated setup dialogue. I can still hoard information to maintain my I.T. monopoly. That is, our television may now be light enough that my wife can pick it up, but I am still valuable because I alone have the passcodes that let the television communicate with its remote and with the internet and quite possibly (though I haven’t verified this) with the microwave and hair dryer. I volunteer to connect all of her gadgets for her, so that the process stays opaque. Consumer electronics are getting easier, more integrated, more compatible. But I am pretending, in front of my wife at least, that this is not so.

Behold the iFather: frailer, perhaps, than his forefathers, and with shamefully softer hands, but every bit as adept at conniving to defend his territory.

DadWagon Q&A: Doug Moe is a Bad Dad

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Nathan

Doug Moe is quite a few things: a comedian, a blogger, a Brooklynite, and the father of a girl who, creepily enough, is almost EXACTLY the same age as my own daughter. He’s also got a well-reviewed one-man show called Doug Moe is a Bad Dad playing on Feb. 15 (that’s this Wednesday night) at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater at 8pm. Buy tickets or, if you are not in New York, just pay a visit to his very funny blog, Man Versus Child. Doug was kind enough to stop by DadWagon for a Q&A.

Nathan: First off: What makes you think you have any idea about being a bad dad? There are lots of REALLY bad dads out there. The bar is high.

Doug: That is true. There are a lot of really bad dads out there. I’m merely claiming that I am one of them. Actually, my show is much more about the FEAR of being a bad dad…whether I am or not.

Nathan: Seems like if you can avoid murdering your kids’ mom and then blowing them and yourself up, you’re doing pretty well (or is it too soon to joke about Powell?)

Doug: Yes, there is a point at which there’s no denying that you are a bad dad; probably Murder/Blowing Up Your Family is beyond that point. Most of us never get to THAT point, but when you’re in a music class singing “Wheels on the Bus” and you REALLY don’t want to be…I think even then you might think: “I’m a bad person, I should be better at this…”

Nathan: Goodness. I have been there, too. [Editors note: who fucking hasn’t?] Do dads really have to do that crap to be good parents?

Doug: That’s what we’re told and what I try to do in my show is talk about that fear… like every little misstep will ruin your child. And then I also think that so much “bad” stuff can be justified. So like you say, “Well watching Dora again isn’t really good parenting…but THEN AGAIN she did learn the proper use of the word “calculate” from Pinkie Dinkie Doo…”

Nathan: Aha. Now you’re at the heart of why we wanted to talk to you. If there’s a theme on DadWagon… actually, there is no theme. But I wish there were, and I wish it had something to do with figuring out why parenting got so oppressive and what we can do about it.

Doug: haha. Yes.

Nathan: Is the proper response to go full Mad Men as a father, and just drink and work like the old days?

Doug: That seems to be working out for Don Draper, so probably. But then again… I think one of the things that can be tough now as dads is that there’s been this shift to us being maybe more involved or at least feeling like we SHOULD be more involved, but the template for HOW to be involved is still very much the “Mom” template and maybe there’s no difference, but there shouldn’t be an automatic assumption that dads will do parenting like moms! Boy, that sounded REALLY INTENSE.

Nathan: Revolution!

Doug: Yes! Overthrow the moms and …. oh shit…COME BACK MOMS! I have one part in my show (I know it probably seems like I’m trying to plug my show, but this is how I talk) that is about how the Disney Princesses are TOO SEXY and goes into that OUTRAGE. But in the show, the outrage over the sexiness shifts into being sort of turned on by them. It’s wrong and (hopefully) funny. But there is this sense out there that if you GOD FORBID let your kid play with a princess doll or a pink lego that they will become unempowered for life or something.

Nathan: Which [princess are you into]? Ariel? Cinderella?

Doug: Oh all of them. Cinderella because she’s not afraid to get a little dirty and cleans up good. Ariel because of the clam shell bikini.

Nathan: Noted. I hear you about playing with dolls, etc.: the stakes feel so high with everything. We used to get into huge fights with my mother-in-law about how she let the kids watch too much TV. What if it all doesn’t matter, or at least not that much?

Doug: Haha, oh man. I think we all do that. I grew up watching a ton of tv. So you can justify it like, “I turned out okay”. But you also read the article that says, no TV before they are 12 years old or whatever.

Nathan: I hate that article

Doug: In my childbirth class… ya know the one that you have to watch the weird videos from the 80’s about the cooperative child birthing practices of the Norwegians or whatever… my teacher there said one really helpful thing. She said “Parenting is more about long-term consistency”. And I repeat that to myself every time I am letting my daughter watch Dora again. As long as IN THE LONG RUN she hasn’t really watched too much Dora, we’re fine (and she probably won’t even LIKE Dora when she’s a grownup, so it’ll all even out).

Nathan: Yes, be consistent. What if my consistent is: I consistently read the Times to find out which new survey is telling me I’m doing it all wrong and I need to change everything or else my child will kill hookers at truck stops for the next forty years?

Doug: Yes, that is a problem. Don’t do THAT. That specific thing.

Nathan: How has the show been going? Do you find it’s more moms than dads (I think our blog readership is—hi moms!) in the audience? Or is a real Man Show crowd?

Doug: It’s been going great! I’ve been running it since the tail end of August. It’s hard for me to judge if more moms/dads…there’s been a lot of parents there but it’s not a Man Show kind of show really. Because it’s at the UCB (Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre), it’s got a lot of comedy nerds there.

Nathan: They have sex and children too.

Doug: Nerds definitely have sex. Part of what’s been fun about the show is that parents have come up to me and been like, “oh man, that one thing is so true” but also comedy nerds and hipsters who probably still hate babies have also liked it. You don’t have to be a parent to relate to it, I don’t think. Even if you’re not worried you’re a bad dad, you can worry that you’re bad at something. Like if you are from Bushwick, you can worry that you are a Bad Barrista. I say this as a true dependent on Good Baristas. I’m just saying: “Baristas: Buck up!”

Nathan: Last question: who are your role models in talking about parenting: comedians, authors, musicians? Was there anyone that took inspiration from in making this show?

Doug: hmmm…good question…the rest of those questions, not so much…I kid.

Nathan: And listen, if the answer is DadWagon, don’t be shy. I don’t blush easy.

Doug: Ya know, I had great parents so clearly them. AND DADWAGON. Pretty much an even split.

Nathan: Awesome. End interview there.

NYC Blue

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Nathan

There are plenty of chances for the children to bump into the saltier world of cursing. Network television can bleep profanity, but life doesn’t. And my kids, at least the newly minted 6-year-old, are well aware of these words. Case in point: a relative, on our recent trip to California, couldn’t fit something in the trunk. “Shit,” the relative said, upon which Dalia reflected for a moment and asked: “What does ‘shit’ mean?”

Side-note: The great thing about that is that she knows very well what ‘shit’ means. Her question was just a way of gently busting the chops of the adult who had said it, while pretending that she wasn’t busting anybody. At the precocious young age of six, my daughter is mastering passive-aggressive behavior. She’s almost ready to go work in a corporate office where cubicle-dwellers stab each other in the back all day!

I’m obviously not too worried about the language, probably because through dumb luck and nothing else I’ve been given an older child who prefers not to work blue even though she could.

HOWEVER.

Our daily walk to school through Manhattan—not a long walk, just six blocks or so—is starting to remind me more and more of a stroll through Deadwood, except with puffy jackets and snow instead of trenchcoats and dust. I don’t know if it’s just our little slice of the island, but we have some very foul-mouthed individuals living around here. And they get after it EARLY. I mean, I try to resist that first mutherfucker of the day until at least 10am. The day is long. There’s plenty of time to mutter fuck fuck fuck under your breath around lunch, or type listen, asshole as the header of an afternoon email that you decide wisely against sending.

But we walk to school at 8am and already the Germanic cognates are flying. Often the person is on a cell phone, doing that New Yorker half-shout into it. Not in direct anger—they’re usually talking to a commiserator, as in, “So you know I told him to mind his own fucking business, right?”

Dutiful controlling parent that I am, it’s actually tempting sometimes to say something: “seeing as we are all waiting together for this light to change, could you at least not shout motherfucker?”

Saying something would be a terrible idea, I’m pretty sure, in that it would most likely add ten minutes and three fistfights to our little morning commute.

But still, I wonder, how could these good people of Manhattan, my neighbors—often women, no less—curse like Carlin, with such vigor, right next to my preschoolers? And then often I look at their other hand—the one not attached to the cellphone into which they are currently announcing plans to fucking kill that bitch—and find that they are holding something altogether unexpected: the hand of their own preschooler, young and smooth-cheeked and headed for school.