You May Be “Green” If You’re Reading This

If you’re reading this post, you most likely consider yourself at least in small amount an environmentalist. Since you think of your self as pro-environmental does that mean that you perform pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs)? Well, maybe. According to research performed by Whitmarsh and O’Neill (2010), it depends on the behavior and on your specific view of yourself (or identity).

We can think of our identity as having many pieces when it comes to environmentalism – there are specific identities (“I’m a recycler”) and then there’s a general identity (“I’m an environmentalist”). A specific identity is more predictive of a specific behavior, whereas a general environmentalist identity is more predictive of general PEBs. These PEBs can include decreasing domestic energy and water use, decreasing wasteful behaviors, and increasing eco-friendly shopping behaviors (Whitmarsh & O’Neill, 2010).

One would think that if a person values the planet or, say, clean air, that they would more likely perform PEBs (and maybe have a general environmentalist identity) but these authors found that was not the case – values (as assessed by a questionnaire) did not predict PEBs. Being aware of the risks associated with climate change was not a significant predictor of PEBs either (Whitmarsh & O’Neill, 2010). So values and knowledge are not enough to kick humans in the tush regarding the environment.

What else did these authors find? Visible consumption behaviors are more likely (Whitmarsh & O’Neill, 2010) – in plain English that means that people are most likely to change their shopping behaviors in a more eco-friendly way, and they are especially likely to do so when others are watching. Take into account other findings that previous behaviors are important in predicting future environmental behaviors, and there’s some good evidence that you should take your non-enviro friend shopping next time you go and guilt them into buying eco-friendly. They may just do it again (and start thinking of themselves as an environmentalist).

Last but not least, Whitmarsh and O’Neill (2010) tell us that there are certain things in our context (i.e., environment, family, etc.) that constrain or decrease our PEBs even if we have a general environmentalist identity. A lack of available options makes increasing our PEBs difficult. So if you don’t have bike trails or safe bicycle riding areas, you’re not going to reduce carbon emissions by riding your bike to work. If eco-friendly shopping products aren’t available near you, guess what? You’re not going to buy them.

Conclusion

So what does all this mean? The fear-inducing educational campaigns aren’t working folks. Al Gore’s “here comes the sun…to kill us all” stump speeches are getting nods from the people who already have the knowledge, and are getting ignored by those who do not (because he’s a nut job – thank you cognitive dissonance). Rather than guilting or “fearing” people into PEBs, we should start small with offering eco-friendly shopping products to more consumers and increasing the availability of environmentally friendly options in cities. I know you’re probably thinking, “Well it’s too late for that now. We need major change right now.” And to that I say, “I agree. But good luck with that.” Changing minds with a hammer breaks the mind; changing minds with a chisel and small, strategically placed cracks eventually gets the mind to recognize the change (and own it as their own rather than simply conform, i.e., the hammer method). Chisels create identity change. And according to Whitmarsh and O’Neill (2010), identity change is the way to go.

Get To It

How can you start small? How can you encourage others to start that small, strategically placed crack?

References
Whitmarsh, L., & O’Neill, S. (2010). Green identity, green living? The role of pro-
environmental self-identity in determining consistency across diverse pro-
environmental behaviours. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 30, 305-314.

**The post is the beginning of a series of posts relating to articles I'm reviewing for my dissertation. So not only do I get to learn, so do you! Rockin'!**

He’s Got the Moves Like Jagger

For the past few months I’ve been working (and feeling constantly behind), feeling like crud, being a horrible wife (it feels like), and observing this super amazing “baby” grow into a Little Boy. You’d think having an extra person (my father-in-law) around would be helpful but in fact it’s more work/frustration because he feels like Silas isn’t his son to parent so he’ll stand there while Silas wants more food (and be in my way when I come to help Silas). But whatever.

Since I’ve been MIA, I haven’t been sharing Little Boy Bites for the past few months. So Silas is 19 months (20 on the 26th) now, and I can understand why everyone says every age is their favorite (but for different reasons). Why does 19 months rock? Well you can see his personality/preferences developing very quickly. He dances by standing stationary and bouncing at the knees, or moving back and forth from his right to left leg. When he gets really excited he spins in circles, stamps his feet, and/or claps while grinning of course. LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem” is one of his current foot-stamping favorites. He’s also very interested in people whistling and thus Maroon 5’s “Move Like Jagger” is one of his favs too. While he can’t whistle yet, he loves to “sing” to himself in bed and one of his favorite songs to sing is “Ma” where he repeats “Ma” until the end where he raises his voice and sings “Maaaaa!!!!!!” Singing Ma also requires dancing (side to side only).

One of the most fabulous things about this age is that everything’s so cool. Airplanes. Buses. Lights. The Christmas tree (and all its ornaments). HotWheels and Matchbox cars elicit a “Wow!” when he gets a new one. And the “Wow” is very intense and intentionally formed – super awesome. He loves to lie on the floor and roll them and watch the wheels turn. Petting the dogs is now super cool (“Coo”) too – but sadly they run from him, especially Jasmine (the one he covets the most). And he’s started pouting when they run away – how can you not feel badly for a little boy that only wants to pet the puppy and The Dog Who Needs Klonapin runs away afraid for her life?

Speaking of pouting, emotional development is a big part of Silas’ life right now. Telling him “no” elicits lip quivering, as does raising your voice to get his attention to get him to stop quickly. Loud noises in general kind of freak him out and the lip starts. I tell him, “You’re ok! The X just scared you. Let’s take a deep breath and it’ll be ok.” He learned the other day what “accident” means and how we can respond with kissing a booboo when we have an accident. I never realized how hard it was to explain that to someone – it’s something you need to show (“Hey Mike, can you come kiss my booboo so Silas can see you?”). Once he saw it, he easily replicated it. And I love his kisses. He’ll come up and give me a hug while I’m sitting playing on the floor with him, and will push his lips to your lips if you ask for a kiss. It’s pretty cute.

He’s also learning how to get what he wants. He’s started doing the “come here” motion (with both hands at the same time which is pretty funny) and if that doesn’t work he’ll come take your hand and drag you to where he needs you to be. He’ll also bring you toys and hand them all to you then hug your leg until you sit and play with him. Every once in a while he’ll bring you the remote and dance and sing “Uhlihiah!” (“Olivia”). He loves that pig apparently. While language isn’t 100% his thing yet, he’s repeating things more, even just randomly (so guests beware, .25 per cuss word when he’s awake goes into The Jar – and I pick what cuss words are). I’ll be excited when his language is more consistent so he can tell me what he wants all the time.

Enough extolling my son’s virtues (but damn he’s cute). For the next few months I’ll be posting more Little Boy Bites, but I’ll also be talking about environmentalism research articles (thanks to my love-er-ly dissertation work), and throwing in a few reviews and giveaways here and there. If you have something you want to guest blog about, please email me!
-Liz

And I thought I was doing all right…

My son is 19 months old. He can feed himself, use some words, sleeps through the night, socializes well with other kids…I thought was doing pretty well. Then last week the nanny said something about starting to potty train boys at home and how she can’t start with him at her house until he learns at home. So Mike took it upon himself to at least try it out and get Silas used to the idea.

Grandpa and Mike built a little stool (his “pee stump”) and showed him how to use it to get up to the toilet. Yesterday Silas peed after a demo from Daddy and we were all excited. Today we were trying again and Mike said, “Be sure to hold his hands.” My brain said I needed to watch Silas’ hands so that he didn’t put his hands in his own pee. As Daddy demonstrated, Silas attempted to touch the stream and I was caught off guard. “Who would touch pee?!” I wondered. Well, my son, who doesn’t know not to. So first Mommy fail.

After waiting for a bit, there was no pee, so we put him in the tub and waited a few seconds (because he always pees as soon as he gets in), then took him out and put him in front of the toilet again. I threw a Cheerio into the toilet and said, “Get it!” Meaning “Pee on the Cheerio, make it sink.” Instead of doing so, my son looks at me, confused, and then reaches into the toilet to “get” the Cheerios. No no! Oh Criminy. Second Mommy fail.

I really need to watch what I say as my son is still thinking in a quite literal way. And I need to ask for clarification from Mike as apparently I have no idea how to potty train a little boy and what may go on in the process. I’m beginning to think that this is not my cup of tea and should best be left to Mike.

Not Your Average Paper Towel – Review and Giveaway

I sent Mike grocery shopping today and stayed home to clean the house. He was amazed when he got there (he texted me, “Is it a holiday? Why are all these people here?”). One of the things I had on our list was a roll of paper towels. Mike brought home an 8-pack of paper towels, and I laughed. “Well I guess that’ll last us for the next five months.” “Not the way you go through paper towels,” he replied. I raised an eyebrow and pointed to the paper towel roll currently on the spindle. “THAT has been there for the past week.” And it was only ¼ of the way gone.

I used to be a paper towel waster. Super bad. Like a full sheet just to wipe up a little water. I got better by ripping off a small amount to blow my nose on or something like that, but I still didn’t like the fact that I was using paper. Enter Cassie Louis and her fabulous Unpaper Towels. Cassie (of Crafted By Cassie) makes her towels out of birdseye cotton serged around the edges. She makes some with snaps (so you can make a “roll” of them just like paper towels) or without.

Cassie sent me 10 unpaper towels with rainbow serging (stitching around the edge) with snaps.

I snapped them up and rolled them around the regular roll of paper towels. Mike took one and put it in his pocket and it became his “hanky” for the week (I made him wash that one). I brought one in my purse for lunch finger wiping rather than grabbing a napkin, and I used them at dinner rather than paper towels (I always have a napkin or paper towel to wipe my fingers and face). I used them in the kitchen for wiping up spills and sometimes a little boy’s fingers. When we were done with them they went in the “kitchen wash bag” (along with our United By Fluff wipes for kiddo cleanup and our hand towels) and easily washed along with all that stuff.

So using cloth towels has decreased our paper towels usage by a huge percentage. It was amazing to watch the paper towel rolls not disappear. I really can’t remember the last time I recycled a paper towel roll. We’ve stopped snapping them together and rolling them up because it got kind of frustrating if you needed one quickly, but I think the idea is good in general. But obviously if you have snaps on your towels you don’t need to use them. Our cloth towels go in a pile on top of the paper towel holder.

Wait, did I say “if YOU have snaps on YOUR towels…?” I did. You know why? Because I want you to have 10 of Crafted By Cassie’s unpaper towels. If you enter this month’s contest, you could win 10 of the towels just like the ones pictured here. They are sewn and ready to come live with you!

To enter, “like” both the Mama Around the House Facebook page and the Crafted by Cassie Facebook page. On Cassie’s FB pictures, choose which project that she has done that you think is the coolest, and fill out the entry form. Good luck and thanks for reading!

I rarely do this...

I try to stay positive and promote positivity in others in everything I do. I see so much negativity around me, hear so much of it, that I just feel the need to combat it by throwing as much positive energy out there as I can. Some days that feels like a bigger burden than I’m able to deal with.

This past week has been rough. Ok, to be honest, I think the past year is just now catching up to me. Hell, maybe the past three years. But yesterday I finally got to my quiet point – it’s the point where you don’t open your mouth for fear of crying or cussing out your child or loved ones. Freud would talk about this in terms of a neurotic anxiety – worrying what the outcome of our possible behaviors could be even though it might be completely out of the ordinary for you.

Mike and I were sitting on the porch last night lamenting that Wilfred is in reruns now until next season. He asked if I thought I could write a show that was as funny as Wilfred and I wanted to respond, “Right, like in my sleep? Because that’s the only time I’d have to do that.” I shrugged and responded, “Probably not, I’m not that funny. But I was thinking about writing a new book.” Many of the people I know (many of whom are therapists) would ask a clarification question (“About what?”) but my husband isn’t like that; he just moves on to the next topic. When I realized he wasn’t going to ask me what I wanted to write about, I turned to go inside. “Babe,” he began pensively, “do you have any ‘me time?’ Like time when you do stuff for yourself?” “What’s that?” I asked, quasi-jokingly. He thought some more and asked, “Well what if I could give you an hour a day to relax? Do you think that would help? What would you do with that hour? You can’t Facebook or grade or write your dissertation, none of the have to stuff. What would you do?” And I seriously couldn’t answer him except to laugh and say, “Nap?”

But here’s the thing – my husband works and goes to school. He’s out of the house just as long as I am every day, and has homework on top of that. So his offer to me wasn’t even physically possible. But he does spend a lot of his time at home watching TV and playing video games while I spend my time cleaning and chasing a little boy. Doing laundry while he watches TV makes me so angry. But when I tell him why I’m angry he tells me that I’m requiring him to go by my expectations (the laundry or dishes need to be done on my schedule) and that’s not fair to him. My response would be, “If we went by your schedule the dishes would get done once per month,” but I refrain. Not talking back to your spouse takes a lot of mental energy, and is just one of the things that sucks my mental and physical energy during the day. If he just did a share of the day-to-day stuff then I wouldn’t need an hour – we’d both have time left over after the chores for the day are through.

So like I said, I rarely do this. I rarely complain about my stuff or what other people aren’t doing. But when my husband says, “We should start going to the gym,” I would love to respond, “We’d have time to do that if you and I worked as a team rather than me working as a manager and you acting like a non-fireable employee.”