Nine Kids Aboard a Camper Van

Life in the Paskowitz Surf Family

By Anne Brugts, Content Manager, Story Terrace 

Your family shapes the person you are. It influences the way you act, think and make your choices in life. Though some families have greater influence than others. Take families that are raised according to a powerful system of belief. Following his own doctrine of surfing, Dr Paskowitz raised his family to think, feel and act surfwise. 

Dr Dorian ‘Doc’ Paskowitz gave up his career as a doctor to live a life according to his beliefs. Using animal behaviour as the basis of his personal belief system, he decided his kids had to be raised just like a gorilla mother would raise her babies. The only element he added was a surf board. He bought a camper van and drove his wife and nine kids from one coastal town to the other, doing almost nothing other than surf all day.

Paskowitz rejected multiple facets of American society and started his own nomadic way of living. Following his own principles, he enrolled his children at no school and rejected money as a resource for anything other than the necessities of life. His aim was to stay as poor as possible, and he wished his kids to live without notions such as bank accounts and mortgages. All Paskowitz life revolved around the spirituality of surfing.

With nine kids aboard a camping van, the Paskowitz family travelled the west coast of the United States during the seventies and eighties. Their extraordinary life journey is captured in the documentary Surfwise (2007), which combines historical home video footage with recent film material and interviews. This powerful documentary shows the willpower that is needed to break away from the strict, unwritten rules of society, and the side effects that result from denying your children a reality that is consistent with the outside world.

Watch the trailer to the Surfwise documentary here.

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This month we serve up stories in our monthly theme ‘It’s all in the family’. What’s your fondest family anecdote? Write to us and let us know!