This is an op-ed column that appeared in "USA Today," 
for which I am a regular contributor, on August 5, 1998.

Moving to the Same Beat
by Robin Marantz Henig

The most fun my daughters and I have had this summer has been at our weekly swing dancing lessons. I don’t know whether the fun lies in the fact that the three of us -- two teenaged girls and a mom in the throes of a mid-life crisis -- are doing something adventurous together, or whether it’s the dancing itself that gives us such a kick. But every Thursday night, we move around a 1930s-era ballroom for an hour or so, and come home sweating, giggling, and oozing stories.

Up until now, my daughters’ extracurricular activities have been theirs alone, and my role has been as chauffeur and cheerleader. I’ve carted Jessica to fencing lessons and Samantha to soccer practice, sat in the audience for Jess’ performances and in the bleachers for Sam’s basketball games.

But swing dancing is different. This is something we’re doing together. And our family is not alone in this. The move toward finding joint activities for parents and their kids seems to be the latest -- and probably the best -- way that baby boomers have found to connect to our too-rapidly-growing children.

Finally, we’re getting ourselves and our kids out of the TV room and away from the computer and trying to DO something together. Just last week, a notice appeared on my neighborhood e-mail list to organize a weekly pick-up baseball game for parents and their teens and pre-teens. At the local pool, parents and kids swim laps together; in the park, I see fathers and daughters, mothers and sons out bike riding or roller blading in intergenerational pairs.

How much better this cross-fertilization is than the way things were just five or 10 years ago, when parents would drag their children to ballet or gymnastics and sit leafing through magazines in a waiting room till it was time to take them home. Not only is it healthier for the parents to get moving too, but the joint activity fills a basic need that most of the chores of daily life just can’t. It gives us a joyful way to connect with each other.

This change is a welcome relief. When my friends and I started having babies, it seems in retrospect that for a while we lost our way. We became self-conscious, turning to experts instead of listening to our hearts. We tried to entertain and educate the children in ways we thought would be best for them – ways that didn’t really involve us very much, except as ancillary support staff.

But now that we’re more comfortable with parenting, we seem willing to go back to an earlier, less structured time, when it was okay for families to find things to do that every member actually could enjoy.

I remember happy times from my own adolescence when my parents and I went down to a nearby tennis court for an evening of outdoor folk dancing. The best part was watching my parents, especially my father, in a totally unfamiliar context. Here he was smiling, sociable, engaged, and surprisingly graceful and light on his feet. He was not just my father anymore; he was someone with his own life, his own emotions, his own unique style.

That’s how my daughters probably see me on Thursday nights as I move from one dance partner to another. For my part, I see the two of them as glowing young ladies who can hold their own in a roomful of strangers, and it delights me. I’m sorry that my husband doesn’t join us in this escapade – the poor man is dance-disabled, and truly cannot hear that music has a beat – but in a way I’m also glad that swing dancing belongs just to the girls and me.

Our tandem evenings out allow us to draw all sorts of life lessons from the people we encounter in our strange little class. On the dance floor as in life, you’re only as good as your partner. And with the right partner – someone like Brian, the family favorite, who knows what he’s doing and who can get you to do it too – everything is easy.

This obvious little metaphor will no doubt come in handy as the girls and I, together, navigate their journey toward womanhood and mine through middle age. And the metaphor, cliched though it is, has become meaningful for the three of us because we stumbled on it while doing something fun together.