Frank Azzurro began writing about politics for Corrupt, but later on started up what is now a family & parenting blog. What differs his blog from most other like it is his perspective, which attempts to reconcile conservative parenting values with a modern age, without going dogmatic in either direction. The result is what you could call a common sense philosophy. Frank's perspective, regardless if it concerns politics, economics or child rearing, always makes rational sense. Maybe that's why he's so appreciated as writer.

All men with children claim that becoming a father really changes your whole way of looking at things. Have you felt this too?

Without sounding preachy, it does – to a point. It’s true that having someone else to live for who depends on you for their every need & want changes a lot in your life. And it’s a process, so being just five months in, I’ve seen my son grow & change at a rapid rate and the highlight of my day is seeing him. But if you’re a mature, intelligent adult who views life as a process, it’s simply an extension of that philosophy. As a parent, you’re a more direct part of that process of life. It’s also helpful if you’re prepared mentally for a child, and let’s face it, you have nine months to prepare.

That said, the moment I saw my son’s head and then his whole body as he breathed his first breath of life was a miraculous, life-affirming moment, and it only supported my views on overpopulation and overconsumption that I discuss here on Corrupt. People who don’t want to be told what to do talk about personal freedom and fascism if you say you feel the world could use some serious people-trimming, but wanting more quality humans in a smaller pool of us translates to respecting life more, not less.

Nowadays it's becoming more and more rare that young people settle down to have families. What are they missing out on?

In my opinion, people nowadays want to extend their adolescence even toward middle age. This can be observed in men in their late 20s and even 30s and 40s playing video games with a significant portion of their free time; spending less time outside & working out; and of course chasing sex over a meaningful relationship. I laughed when I read this article, for example. These are all adolescent traits, and instead of realizing that these things have a place and time (adolescence), more of these people are becoming hipsters of sorts. But instead of just ”being vintage”, they fail to ever grow up, and never blossom into adults – they’d rather pleasure themselves and ignore the outside world.

If you’re used to pleasing yourself only, how can you provide anything meaningful to another man or woman, let alone create human life? These people are missing out on life’s ultimate experience: exploring what the natural world has to offer, and if you meet someone you love, to create more people who respect and love life, and take the best traits of each parent into a better future. This is a beautiful process, and to remove oneself from it due to selfishness seems insane to me. If you feel you wouldn’t be a good parent, then of course, you should avoid reproduction.

You've talked a lot about the Continuum Concept on your blog. While you've seemed to embrace its basic ideals, you've rejected it as a working model today. Why?

The concept comes from a good place, as it’s partly a reaction to 1970s new-liberal philosophy toward child rearing. That philosophy took far too progressive an approach toward modern parenting, which was a product of 1960s feminism (less breastfeeding, more formula; more discipline and being left alone at far too early an age). So it’s understandable that something like the Continuum Concept (CC) would appeal to many.

My understanding of it is that the Yequana tribe and in particular their child-rearing and parenting methods were observed, then turned into a philosophy that parents could implement even in modern life: sleep with or near your children for years, not just a month or two; breastfeed where possible for as long as possible; always have the baby with you. Further, it dictated that when children could walk & talk, they should be allowed to roam reasonably free and do what they wish with as little discipline as possible. The child will learn via trial and error, instead of being told what to do and being confused about parental affection & not being able to explore the wide horizons of their imagination. The idea here is that parents wouldn’t let fear and too much structure run their children’s lives, and this is a great idea. I remember playing with neighborhood children when I grew up and being allowed to roam my backyard with my friends – these are invaluable experiences, but my backyard is different from the land the Yequana tribe lived on, so context is important.

The philosophy was read by the its followers as a license for children to do what they wish, since parents in the Yequana tribe didn’t really discipline their children or give them strict schedules. Again I’m reminded of context - without video games, television, twelve years-plus of public education, recreational drugs, or other modern distractions, it’s easy to say ”the Yequana have the right idea, you should follow a similar approach”. Children living in a tribe much more connected to nature would of course have far different parenting philosophies, just like cavemen or people in ancient Egypt. A close relative of mine just spent a year in the hills of Costa Rica with a non-profit, and I was not surprised to learn that the parenting and child-rearing methods used there are much like those of the Yequana.

Now, I’m sure this relative may look at my son and think to himself: ’wow, compared to these poor villagers, this kid has everything!’ But this doesn’t mean I should pretend we live in a tribe of dozens of other people, all of whom share the responsibility of parenting. Modern life and the options available to people in first-world vs. third-world countries are different. I go to work in an office every day, but we have managed to avoid day care – you have to pick your battles.

This wasn’t accepted by the small but vocal minority on the CC’s forums. Most of them embraced the philosophy as all-or-nothing, ignored context, refused to discipline their children and in some cases refused to educate them formally – likely because they needed a cause to latch onto and lacked any kind of cultural background to guide them with parenting. All of that is fine if you’re living in a tribe and your existence only stretches as far as you can see or hear. That has merit to it; I’m not dismissing it as beneath me. I feel as long as you bring up the child in a loving environment and teach them to respect nature and reality – a key point given many of us live in the modern world and can’t just shut it out - the rest will flow more naturally than pretending we live in a tribe and in huts. We don’t, and parents do more damage to their children as building a false reality around them from an early age.

Does being a father really obstruct you from seeing friends, drinking beer, going out and having some fun, like on the sitcoms? If not, what other sacrifices have you been forced to make?

There are of course choices one has to make once a child is in the picture. Since we don’t do day care and only like to use babysitters when necessary, it’s rare that both my wife and I are out of the house at the same time in the evening, as our son is only about five months old. We realize that as time goes by and he requires less bottles and less constant care, we’ll be able to go out together more. We’ve already had some date nights and it is extremely rewarding to do that even occasionally.

I still manage to get out and see my closest friends on nearly a weekly basis, but there will be weeks at a time – around the holidays, for example, or during busy times at work – where either I don’t have the energy to go out, or scheduling conflicts (now more common) prevent me from going out. Per the answer to question #1, this is expected: having children does change your life, but it brings you closer to your spouse and closest friends, just in different ways.

Many people fear these changes because it reminds them of their own mortality or takes away personal freedoms like spending hours playing video games uninterrupted. But they are changes, not eliminations: we still go out & have fun, but our lives are different.

Other sacrifices include discretionary purchases and eating out, but we’re happy to cook more meals at home and we don’t have the normal insatiable appetite for products as many Americans.

German Americans, Irish Americans and English Americans often show great respect for their cultural heritage. In what way, if any, do you feel your Italian heritage plays a role in your life?

Great question. It’s always been a part of my identity. My father is an immigrant and came here when he was young; my mother was born here but both of her parents were born in Italy. My father also owns what some would call a bottega or deli. We have a fairly large, interconnected family of many cousins, second cousins, etc. It’s helped shape my views on culture, and it’s partly the reason I gravitated toward sites like ANUS.com, Amerika.org, and of course Corrupt.

While I identify with my Italian roots, I don’t speak the language fluently and have always had my feet in two worlds: my Italian roots, and my New England roots. I grew up with people of some different backgrounds, so I’ve had that exposure, but my family life was a lot different. Both experiences have been valuable. Sometimes I feel closer to my New England roots because it’s what I live and breathe each day in the ”real world” (work, neighbors, etc.).

My sister and plenty of my other relatives speak Italian fluently and I want my son to learn the language. It’s important for children to know where their parents and grandparents came from. I’m settling in the same area I grew up, so it’ll be easy for my son to know & learn where his father and his mother spent all their lives. But any white person in America has European roots somewhere down the line, and having visited Italy, visited relatives I didn’t know I had and even the very house my father was born in, I want my child to have that experience in Italy (and other European countries, as my wife’s roots are mainly in England & Scotland).

You seem to come out of a libertarian-style conservative camp, but you often take distance from hardline libertarians like Ron Paul. How come?

When Ron Paul ran for president in 2008, it was easy to get swept up in his message: end the Fed, end most government interference in our lives, and follow the Constitution strictly (meaning anything not spelled out as a power of the federal government can be managed by the states – and for God’s sake, get our military the hell out of most countries). I still feel he’d be the best President out of any of the candidates I’ve seen in my lifetime, simply because he’d be a federal employee who would, for once, rescind federal authority and let states do most of the work.

Where I part ways with Dr. Paul is that I don’t feel private enterprise is the answer to *everything*, though it does a much better job than our federal government. I also don’t feel we should ignore environmental responsibility or allow personal liberties – as defined by the Constitution – to become the be-all, end-all of any decision we make in our court system. The Constitution grants personal liberties to human beings but doesn’t really speak of the beauty of our country or how it should be developed (or not developed/left alone). Dr. Paul would probably (not 100% sure on this) support just about any piece of land being developed as long as there was some way to capture the pollution and do something with it that didn’t involve polluting someone *else’s* land, thinking economics and the free market will dictate how much arable land we should keep, or what land not to develop.

I feel that approach is too human-centered and ignores realities like overpopulation. Dr. Paul would, for example, never support any type of government mandate which restricted human breeding. He’d likely say the economy would force people to have less children if overpopulation became a real problem, and it would all work out, but planning ahead is a better method. I’m not sure I would support the government instituting laws on breeding per se, since they’d screw it up, but I think if a state was getting overpopulated and decided to limit new residents from out of state/illegal aliens/new housing developments to force the numbers down or to stabilize them, that would be okay.

Like many Right-leaning Americans you've come out in strong critique against Obama. Why do you think people are worried that the new President is going to change America in a direction opposite to traditional American values?

President Obama isn’t the savior people expected. He’s sent more troops abroad in his first year in office, hasn’t limited any of the broad-sweeping powers George Bush gave to the executive office during his eight years, and supports Ben Bernanke’s Fed policies because he needs a savior of his own and Bernanke is what he’s stuck with. He also wants to push a government health care bill through that the country can’t afford, continue to limit American sovereignty in our dealings with other nations, and hasn’t seen any reduction in unemployment. All this while our nation has a huge national deficit and other countries are buying up pieces of America (see Fiat owning Chrysler). Obama is finding out that most people are loathe to give more of their paychecks into a pool of money for the government to mismanage.

All of this contributes to a higher level of power centralization in the US. We certainly need direction as a society and some strict rules surrounding what certain cultures (be they states, municipalities, counties) can and can’t do within the confines of the country’s borders. The federal government takes the personal aspect away from things like welfare, meaning a general failure to judge anything based on merit but merely handing out entitlements. I’d like any centralized power to be tough, but fair, and supporting a municipality’s decision to run things its own way unless there’s an imminent danger or failure to other municipalities. If a municipality wanted to allow people to set themselves on fire, that’s fine. If they wanted to allow people to set themselves on fire *and* run into a church or gas tower, then of course we’d want to limit silliness like that. Poor example but you see the point.

Many economists and high-ranking leaders, like the French President, have spoken of a ”crisis of capitalism.” Are they right?

I’m no expert on the economy; perhaps what they mean is that capitalism is reaching some obscure tipping point and that we need to think about other economic systems to replace capitalism. It’s not surprising the president of France would speak of this because many nations in Europe are pseudo-socialist or outright socialist, meaning they are used to the government taking care of the needs of the citizens. Capitalism is just a system inside of a larger structure, though, and it takes a lot of blame for lack of a country having cultural values that extend past capitalism. Capitalism is merely an economic system that monetarily rewards those who obtain and use capital. The profit motive will always exist, so it’s erroneous, in my view, to believe that capitalism is going to die out at some point simply because people prefer a system called socialism this decade.

When people speak of a crisis of capitalism I feel they are giving too much merit to the type of economic system used as a means to an end, instead of talking about the end itself. Whether you call it socialism, capitalism, or a mix of both, what’s important is a culture’s values and its overall sustainability. Part of this is economic sustainability, and that needs to be held in further context to more important things like environmental sustainability. For example, if a country cannot survive without important basics like food and water, it should learn how quickly – whatever economic system is used – rather than rely on natural exports to trade with other nations.

How do you manage to wind down after job, house work and hectic family life?

A glass of quality scotch, bourbon, or maybe wine. That’s if I happen to be home alone and after putting the baby to bed. Typically, my wife and I will talk, maybe watch some TV or a movie, and cook a meal together. We find cooking to be therapeutic and fun. Reading after dinner is nice downtime too, to get one’s mind off the day.

What do you regard as the greatest mystery of life?

For me, there are two answers to this: ”micro” and ”macro”.

The ”micro” answer has to do with human life / life on this planet. The greatest mystery to me is our progress as a species. Will we ever learn the lessons of our own history, will we ever learn to truly advance? In advancing technologically, we’ve left culture behind in favor of materialism and of course individualism. Philip K. Dick loves to poke fun of humans in the context of sci-fi by indicating we will make a lot of the same mistakes as a species no matter how far our technology advances – see any collection of his short stories for some good fun on this topic.

Technological advancement is nice, but I want to know whether or not we’ll ever become enlightened enough as a species to advance intelligently – meaning using our technology in a responsible fashion. Most of our technology is used to find ways to stretch resources even thinner than they already are, or to give people gadgets and devices they certainly don’t need.

So for me, something like this: Baby Einstein DVDs? Eh – we can do without that. Safer child seats in cars? Good, in the context of driving. Eliminating driving as a ”need”? Now we’re on the right track.

Now, the ”macro” answer: The universe. Its size is simply unimaginable, and we find out more and more each day that there has most certainly been life before, in our own solar system (Mars), and very likely there is life, perhaps civilized, near other stars. Most of it is a vacuum with no matter at all. I like Carl Sagan’s views on this: that humanity is small, tiny in fact, but precious to *us*, and this ties in with the ”micro” answer – that we need to keep humanity and our place in the world, let alone universe, in perspective. Read Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot for more about this. He pushed for one of the Voyager crafts to turn around and take a picture of Earth from the furthest vantage we’ve ever seen it in space. It just looked like ”a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam” when the picture came back. Not many people would have the foresight to think of that, then write a book about it.