Peak oil parenting … back to the future style.

June 3, 2008

Last week, I talked about how society looks at children and how that in turn creates the parenting methods in use. This week, I want to concentrate on peak oil and the upside of the coming transition. Too often, we dwell on the negative and although many of the changes may be difficult to contend with, they may bring with them unanticipated benefits.

The first and perhaps most obvious change is that as fuel becomes precipitously expensive, two car families are likely to become one car families. Most people would probably consider this a bad thing but let’s for a moment look at how it might change our lives for the better.

For the vast majority of Canadian and American families who do not have access to decent public transportation, life is likely to become much more home-based. Whether parents work in the home or outside the home, daycare is only practical if it’s available in the community in which you live and as such, community will suddenly take on a new relevance. If you’re an at home mom or dad, instead of driving your kids to play school or play dates in neighboring communities, you’re more likely to involve your child either in a community school or be content with the unstructured play opportunities that will spring up as a result of more people staying at home. This is likely to have additional benefits.

Released from the organizational paranoia that many parents display, kids are likely to become more resourceful. As their children’s resourcefulness grows, parents will find themselves taking on other activities with the result that ad hoc gardens are likely to start springing up on common and private ground. These productive gardens will provide children with valuable and real learning experiences with the added benefits of helping them become more connected to the land around them.

We might even see the sense of ‘backyard farming’ with animals such as chickens, rabbits and other small creatures that can provide us with a more diverse, healthy and local dining experience.

The car when it’s used will be used with care. To cut down on trips, progressive small business owners will start to offer the delivery of many of our staple products. Instead of visiting a grocery store as we do now, we may instead choose our groceries online and have them delivered. A delivery charge is likely to be vastly less costly and far more efficient than each individual family undertaking grocery trips. We may even have the return of the ‘milk man’ or ‘fresh produce purveyor’.

For older children the entire school experience may change. I don’t know what it’s like where you live but where I live, schools are often built far away from the people they serve. To make them accessible, giant yellow school buses meander their way along the highways and byways picking up kids and taking them to school. As prices rise, this is going to become an increasingly large part of both the school board and the family’s budget to the point that it may eventually become out of reach. As a result, many parents are going to keep their kids at home. This will lead to a surge in home schooling but it also may spearhead a resurgence of the true ‘community school’ in which teachers are members of the community they live in and tasks as a community, are shared out.

For young adults, school may finish earlier with further education in standard colleges or universities becoming more elitist. Although this has an obvious downside, it may also challenge us to redefine what we regard as ‘achieving success’ and lead to the development of practical skills and opportunities that are currently undervalued or unobtainable. For those that don’t go on to further education, multi family dwellings are going to become more commonplace. It’s likely your children will stay on with you and not in a temporary way. Instead of society viewing older children that live at home in a negative light, we are likely to have an altogether different view. Right now, we perceive older kids who still live at home as unwilling to leave the nest and unable to cope on their own. In a changing world, we are more likely to view their presence as helpful. They are after all, another adult who can contribute to the family’s economic well-being. A relationship based on mutual need and the respect it generates, is likely to create much richer relationships for all involved.

Children will also benefit from multi generational contact as elderly relatives live with the rest of the family. This would create a greater appreciation of older people along with the past they represent. They would once again become useful, perhaps caring for smaller children or using their time to teach forgotten skills.

If this all sounds remarkably familiar, that’s because it is. Welcome to the world of your grandparents or your great grandparents, as the case may be. Kind of like ‘plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose’ or ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same.’ In a very real sense, it’s back to the future.


Tags: Building Community, Culture & Behavior