I am going to assume that since you are reading this essay in Wednesday Journal, you already have a handle on basic biology.
Step 1: Give birth.
Warning: It’s not a lot of fun, and pretty messy, but you do get the opportunity to try some pretty nifty drugs and you get a squealing, sweet-smelling door prize when you go home.
Did I have any idea when I brought my son home from West Suburban Hospital on that sub-zero morning in 1985 that, as an adult with 26 years of education behind him and a PhD hanging on his office wall, he would be analyzing gut viruses in Peru, extracting DNA and dentin from chimps in Gombe National Park, and studying the migration patterns of ancient bovid mitogenomes from Pinnacle Point, South Africa? Nope. At the age of 3, he wanted to be a Ghostbuster.
As a young parent left mostly to my own designs, I never once considered forcing either of my offspring into any type of category or pointing them in any one professional direction. Honestly, it probably never even occurred to me. I was still busy trying to do that for myself. I put no limitations on them as far as what they could do with their imaginations or their lives, and while I may have opened them up to the possibilities around them, I never pushed them in any one direction. From the day they could ride in a snuggie on my chest or sit upright in a stroller, I took them right along on my daily adventures, never thinking I could not handle it. Naïve? Maybe. Selfish? A little. But we learned together: art museums, the zoo, botanical gardens and conservatories, plays, music classes, the library. We even took trips together, everywhere from Washington D.C. to Disneyworld and, as they got older, Alaska, Hawaii, Europe …
As a writer, my children were not only the “subjects” of most of my articles but they often accompanied me on many of my off-site interviews to nursing facilities, foster care homes and homeless shelters. They witnessed firsthand the plight of those less fortunate, and what it means to take care of those who are not capable of taking care of themselves. Our little field trips showed them just how lucky they were to be able to choose their own paths in life and that not everyone has that choice.
So how do you raise a molecular anthropologist? I have no idea. There is no secret recipe to raising a successful kid — it’s 25% good genes, 25% good parenting and the other 50% is just dumb luck.
I do know this much: If you let your kids play in the mud, collect bugs and empty bird’s nests, play noisy instruments, take apart old appliances, wear superhero costumes on picture day, and let them win at Chutes & Ladders, you too can raise a molecular anthropologist — or a writer, or a Ghostbuster.