January 19

This morning I got the opportunity to talk to one of my professors about my research project and it got me thinking about a lot of ideas that I had for my research. I wanted to focus my study on marriage and family specifically toward women, and he gave me an interesting topic. He talked about how I can study motherhood and then compare it to the western/modern ideas of parenting here in the US.
Coming onto this project as a sociologist wanting to do an ethnographic study, it was hard for me to justify my research into something that would be not only meaningful but interesting for people to read. If I do a study of the Tongan lifestyle, a society we would not consider especially "modern" and then use that as a commentary on our society in the US as modernists, then I could make interesting statements on society and lifestyle.
So, more about the topic, we talked about how women in the US have a very privatized style of parenting. This is where each mother is responsible for her children and no one else's, and does not necessarily want other people "raising" her children since she wants to do it her "right" way. Dallin discussed how in Tonga children are raised communally and parents take care of, shelter and even feed other people's children. I read an article about how Tongans consider themselves weaved together just the cloth they weave. Not only to people aroung them in the community but to their ancestory as well. Maybe the people in Tonga don't necessarily act as rational, individualistic beings. Maybe they look at themselves in relation to others, whether this be their parents, grandparents, or simply the people around them with whom they associate with. In the United States the modernists are primarily rational individualistic where people pursue the means to a desired end and act according to their desires.
This way of looking yourselves affects the way you look at parenting. this is interesting because in the US only biological (or adoptive) parents are allowed to teach their children, discipline them and instill values and religious beliefs on them. This goes along with the individualistic rational approach to life, and your children are simply your means to a certain end, whether to bring another person in the world just like you, or simply to fufill societal duties and expectations of raising a family.
Comparing our society to a society like Tonga might be problematic since Tonga is much more homogeneous than the United States where backgrounds, cultures, and beliefs are extremely varied. Not only that, the culture of US being over sensitive over their beliefs is part of the reason why parents are so privatized over their child rearing. It could also be why teachers and schools of the public sort cannot, in any way, discuss religion or moral beliefs for fear of "offending" a parent who wishes to instill different values in their child.
Perhaps the best way of looking at this is questioning our ideals of parenting. Perhaps the worst way of raising a child is to drill one set of beliefs and not allow them to explore other options. Such a close-minded way of raising a child probably results in closed-minded people who believe there is only one right way of doing things. It will be interesting to see what kinds of effects the Tongan lifestyle of parenting has on children.
Another interesting topic we discussed was the modernists perception of time. Dallin spoke to me about how Tongan’s have a different perception of time. Sometimes the people just didn’t follow through on appointments etc. In the US our society is so glued to our watches and have a strict schedule that follows time by the very second. This is a way of organizing life in a way that we can “maximize” our potential and get the most done. The modernist would argue that this is the best way to order society however looking at another perception of time might argue against such enslavement to a unit of measurement.
From a religious perspective, time is something man-made. In order to organize days and in an effort to control the sun rising and setting, people have a set clock and even daylight savings time in order to maximize on sunlight etc. This is interesting because God has no time. He is yesterday, today and forever. Maybe the best kind of lifestyle isn’t necessarily one that is strict on clocks and time.
Anyway, these were just some interesting topics that go along on the path which I wanted to study. Studying tonga isn’t necessarily looking at a primitive society and seeing how they are going to evolve into what we consider “modernism.” In fact, I would argue against that. Tonga has its own modernity in and of itself. So rather than looking at Tonga as a “time machine” and criticize modernism, I want to look at is as sort of an alternative modernism. Because the way that we are right now isn’t the way we have to be. We can't study people as objects that are contained in and of themselves. People are changing, and studies of them have to reflect changes and the idea of "becoming" rather than people as they "are."