Changing Her Little Piece of the World

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This came from Kami, one of my radio listeners:

I am a stay-at-home Mom with a Master’s degree who chose to quit my job to raise my three sons (ages 5, 2, and 11 months).  I never dreamed of growing up to be a Mom.  I wanted to use my brain, get an education, and change the world through my career.  Now, every day, I find myself using my brain, getting an education, and hopefully, changing my little piece of the world as I work to shape my boys into men.

Instead of having them sit in daycare or pre-school for a big part of the week, I want my kids to play and read with me, and go to the library and find books of their own.  I want the freedom of knowing I can wake up and decide that we are going to hang out in our pjs until noon, and make bread or watch the birds building nests on our porch.  I want to help them make forts and play “hide ‘n seek,” and go on adventure walks around the neighborhood, even though it takes us twenty minutes to get past two houses.  I want them to go to the store and pick out their own veggie seeds to plant in the garden.  I want them to have snowball fights with me when I’m shoveling the driveway, and to help me fix dinner for someone who is sick.

My son has taught me so many things while he wasn’t in pre-school.  I learned that yogurt, pudding, and shaving cream can be used to draw with your finger; that bad weather, not necessity, is the mother of invention when it comes to craft projects; that math can be learned when baking cookies, cleaning up toys, handing out snacks, and putting away laundry; that some of the best talks happen in my bed when we just don’t feel like getting up.

And talk we do.  We talk about life and death, how planes work, where snow comes from, and whether pirates are decent.  We study geography as we drive around doing errands, and learn about engineering as we watch the progression of building construction.  We even tried to figure out why God made flies.

From the moment my first child was born, my life has been about my children, and some of those sweet moments can bring me to tears when I think about how fleeting they are.  My kids will get to be little, and they’ll get to have fun.  They are not in a hurry - and neither am I.”

Parents Need to Plan…to Be Parents

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It used to be that people planned for such important things as marriage, child-bearing, child-rearing, finances, and living arrangements.  Now it seems that these important milestones and responsibilities are quite secondary to impulsive behavior and immediate gratification.  I have been stunned at the growing number of callers who marry without consideration for religion, finances, extended family problems, lifestyle, goals, and even personality differences.

For example, it flabbergasts me to get so many calls from young women complaining about their overbearing mothers-in-law, then admitting that the young couple is living with his mother because they don’t have the wherewithal to take care of themselves.  So, they’re living as a married couple, but also as dependent children in his Mommy’s home, and the wife wonders why she doesn’t have the power at home?

It’s also unbelievable to me that so many couples will marry before either one of them is in the position to support a family, yet they start making babies and then the fights begin — over not having enough money or time to have any freedom, fun or opportunities.

It is not surprising, however, when women call to complain that their bosses are cutting back on maternity leave.  That’s because we’ve become a culture that makes everyone else responsible for our choices.  Maternity leave pay generally comes in the form of six to eight weeks of disability pay, and such payments have been cut back due to economical issues.  According the non-profit Families and Work Institute, only 16% of employers offer full pay for childbirth leave, down from 27% in 1998.  The average maximum length of job-guaranteed leaves for new mothers dropped from 16.1 weeks a decade ago to 15.2 weeks.

The Wall Street Journal’s “Work and Family” column (6/11/08) admits that “This comes despite research showing attentive nurturing has particular developmental power in a baby’s first year, and that longer leaves can ease postpartum depression in some mothers.”  Boy, was I ever glad to see that truth in print.  But when we are grousing about employers extending maternity leave by weeks, whose responsibility is it to maintain at least one full year of hands-on mothering?  The government?  Corporations?  I think not.  The first five years before kindergarten, and not just the first year after birth, are crucial in the emotional, social, and psychological development of children.

Children are not pets, only needing attentive care in case of danger, or who are just fed at one end and cleaned at the other.  Every day, their brains grow and develop, and each day, they experience life and feelings.  Each day offers significant opportunities for a loving and educational interaction with a parent who ought to be experiencing it with them, and supporting them in their explorations.

What is the solution?  Better planning.  I have often suggested that people live on one salary, putting the other in savings and/or conservative investments before they start building a family.  I have suggested that they research areas where they wish to establish their family lives and roots, and make sure they are affordable. 

The point is that when you become parents, you must shift the focus from individual gratification (through career) to group gratification (through family).

A Canadian Court Has Lost Its Mind

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A Canadian court has lifted a 12 year old girl’s “grounding,” overturning her father’s punishment for disobeying his orders to stay off the Internet.  The girl had taken her father to Quebec Superior Court after he refused to allow her to go on a school trip for chatting on websites he tried to block, and then posting inappropriate pictures of herself online using a friend’s computer.

Unbelievably, the judge, Justice Suzanne Tessier, decided the punishment was too severe, and basically severed this father’s parental authority.  Unbelievable.  Unbelievable.

Evidently, the girl’s Internet transgression was just the latest in a pattern of broken house rules.

Obviously, this situation should never have been accepted for adjudication.  Obviously, this judge has taken leave of her common sense.  Obviously, this judge should lose her position.  Obviously, this is going to undermine parenting in Canada, and anywhere else such nonsense is permitted.

By the way, there’s a twist to this story - one which may explain the judge’s behavior.  The court-appointed lawyer who represented this child is the same lawyer who has been involved in the child’s parents’ 10 year custody battle!  If I were suspicious, I might wonder if this judge is a feminist type who identified with the mom as a co-oppressee and misused judicial power to support women - right or wrong.  Not an accusation, you understand, but just an attempt at understanding the unacceptable.

Fathers DO Matter

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This is from one of my listeners (whose name is not given in order to protect her privacy):

I’ve been hearing a lot lately about egg donations, surrogacy, and intentional single mothers, and I don’t know if you were aware that it had gone this far!  Don’t get me wrong, egg donation put me through school with no debt.  Over the past 4 years, I have donated my eggs to 4 different families, going through a total of 7 different surgeries in order to do so.  I know that at least 3 of these donations resulted in the birth of a child that was a miracle and a dream come true for the parents of these children, and I am grateful to have taken part in this dream.

Recently, my agency contacted me again.  They had another donation for me.  I was thrilled because my husband and I are planning on starting our own family, and we were going to start trying in the next few months.  The donation would end in $10,000 in our pockets, which I thought would be a nice little nest egg or college account for the child we are planning.  Well, the agency sent over the contracts for me to sign, and luckily, I read them thoroughly.  The recipient was not the expected married couple with unfortunate infertility problems, but a single woman who, after having conquered the corporate world, realized it was too late to get married and make a baby on her own!  My heart sunk.  How could I intentionally give life to a child knowing it would not have a father?

Then the thought crept in:  this woman is going to do it anyway, so I might as well be the one to profit from it, right?  As I was talking to my husband about my concerns, I realized, ‘How can I donate part of myself to this woman and still expect my husband to believe that I think he is an asset to raising our children? How can I force another baby to grow up in daycare with no masculine influence, and still show my husband that he is a hero for wanting me to stay home with our kids while he supports us?’  I couldn’t.

I let the agency know:  I will not be available to do this donation, as I believe a child deserves both a mother and a father.  And I hope that my “passing” on the opportunity will make the potential “mother” reconsider her options and buy a puppy.  I may have lost ten thousand dollars, but as my husband said, I still have my morals, and that’s worth more to our children than a college account.

Britain Forsakes Families

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Besides the assault on Western civilization from the outside by Islamist jihadists, we are deconstructing our own society by declaring null and void basic concepts of mother- and father-centered lives for children.

Forget the biology:  Male and female create offspring

Forget the psychology and sociology:  children who do not have Mom and Dad-centered home lives tend to have higher poverty rates, and more problems on all levels with education, violence, and substance abuse,

Forget everything that is basic and makes sense, because some women are so selfish and/or incompetent to have a healthy relationship with a man that their desire - desire - is to have a child, intentionally robbing that child of a father and a mom and dad-centered home.

Well, permission to do so has been granted by the British government to do just that.  The British government voted just last week to remove the requirement that fertility clinics consider a child’s need for a father.  Let me repeat:  they removed the requirement that fertility clinics even consider a child’s need for a father.  Can you believe that?  The best interests of a child are eliminated from discourse, because a female wants to make a baby for her own pleasure - and a historically civilized government backs her up?  Sheesh!

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, in an interview with London’s “The Times,” said, “I think it strange that the government should want to take away not just the need for a father, but the right for a father.”

This action effectively declared fathers an irrelevance in modern Britain.  It is scary that only 60% of Brits who were polled believed that a child should have a mommy and a daddy - that’s the power of the “feminista” movement!

Here are some letters that were sent to London’s “Daily Mail:”

1. Raised in a single-parent family, I can say from experience that a child needs a father.  Mothers alone cannot take his place.  It’s a selfish act and implies women are more concerned with fulfilling their own needs to have a child than thinking of the child’s welfare.  Men:  STOP DONATING SPERM!

2. What about a man’s right to have children without a mother?  In order to avoid sex discrimination the [government] must surely now provide surrogate mothers for any would-be father who asks for one in order that he might have children.

3. With all our problems with ‘feral, fatherless’ youngsters in modern Britain, this vote seems utterly baffling, and frankly, obscene.

4. Is there really any need for a mother either?

Why Day Care Kids Don’t Play Outside

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More than half of American children between the ages of 3 and 6 are in child care centers or preschools, so the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center recently released the results of a study of children’s physical activity in day care settings. (NY Times, 5/6/08)

The researchers surveyed staff members at 34 area child care centers to find out more about how kids spend their time while they’re in day care, including the reasons why they may or may not spend time outside. They presented the findings recently at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies in Honolulu, Hawaii.  The findings may surprise you.

Children are kept inside by day care workers if they show up in flip-flops rather than sneakers, or if they don’t have a coat on a chilly day.  If only one child doesn’t have the right clothes for outdoor play, the whole group may be kept indoors.  Occasionally, parents will deliberately drop off a child without a coat, because they don’t want the child going outside that day.

Mulch is often used to landscape playgrounds and outdoor spaces at child care centers.  The researchers found that kids eat the mulch, get it caught in their shoes or use it as weapons, so day care staff indicated that outdoor play can sometimes be troublesome.

Also the feelings of teachers and parents influence whether or not children play outside.  Children learn important motor and social skills by learning to kick a ball or negotiating with another child for a turn on the swing, but teachers said they felt pressure from some parents who were more concerned with children spending time on academic skills.

In addition, some day care workers said it was just too much trouble and took too much time to bundle up the kids during cold weather, while other workers said they just didn’t like going outside.

What more can be said about institutionalized day orphanages?

More on Parental Irresponsibility

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Sue Shellenbarger writes a column for The Wall Street Journal that generally sends me up any available wall. The column is entitled “Home & Family,” and I keep up with it if only to counter its content.

She recently answered a reader’s question (4/30/08) that had to do with a divorced father wanting to take his 10 year old son to his native Australia for 10 days, but his ex-wife is fighting the plan. The father contends that life lessons of such a vacation trump school. He’s going to court for the right to take him, and asks Shellenbarger what she thinks.

First of all, there are laws which prohibit one parent from taking a child out of the country without the express permission of the other. The reason is obvious: child-stealing. Secondly, having divorced parents at war with each other over a child hurts the child as he or she feels divided loyalties and tremendous anxiety. Thirdly, taking a child out of school for a protracted trip teaches the child that education is less of a priority than personal desires for fun. This father could arrange a summer trip when no school is missed. My guess is that this is a major power play.

Shellenbarger not only doesn’t deal with any of these issues, but she focuses on the whim of the child: if he would be comfortable with the trip; if he would see it as an adventure….in other words, just considering what the kid wants. What?? Of course the kid wants to be out of school and hanging out with dingos and kangaroos!

“The ideal route would be for you and your ex-wife to set aside your personal feelings and focus on what he truly wants,” contributes a New Jersey Marriage and Family Therapist. “[It] depends on your son’s openness to the experience. Try to give him a free and honest choice, unfettered by feelings of loyalty to either of you or fear of letting you down.”

Is she kidding? How can a ten year old do that? And why put the burden on the child? Aren’t the parents supposed to want and do what is best for the child? This is more of the “if it feels good it is good” school of thought - an experiment whose failure doesn’t seem to curtail its perpetuation.

Father and Mother Know Best

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“Home-schooled students are routinely high performers on standardized academic tests, beating their public school peers on average by as much as 30 percentile points, regardless of the subject.  They perform well on tests like the SAT - and colleges actively recruit them both for their high scores and the diversity they bring to campus.” (Wall Street Journal 3/22/08).

The 166,000 families in California that choose to educate their children at home do so largely for three reasons:  religious, protecting their children from gangs and drugs, and mostly because they want to ensure their children a good education.

Considering the overwhelming success of home-schooling, one would think it perplexing that a California court ruled in March that parents cannot home-school their children without government certification.  Fascinating, since non-credentialed parents spend their time teaching English, math and science precisely because they don’t think the public schools do a good enough job!

You should know that this whole court case was not about quality of education.  The case was initiated by the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services after one - ONE - home-schooled child reportedly complained of physical abuse by his father.  A lawyer assigned to that child invoked the truancy law to get the children enrolled in a public school and away from the parents (California law requires children between six and 18 to attend a full-time day school.  Failure to comply means breaking the truancy laws).

So, a single case of parental abuse is being used to promote the certification of all parents who make that huge commitment to their children’s education.  Unbelievable.

Between 1999 and 2003, the rate of home-schooling increased by 29% and the performance results speak for themselves.  Of course, the California Teacher’s Union is ecstatic about this outcome - in spite of the facts that demonstrate that, on the average, children do better academically outside of their classrooms.