Entries in Life

Out There: People Who Live Without TV:

"I interviewed one guy who was 31, single, an artist living in Boston, who saw himself as countercultural," Krcmar told LiveScience. "The next day I had an interview with a religious woman with ten children who lived in the Midwest. These people seem like they would disagree about almost everything, but if you ask them about television the things that came out of their mouths were almost identical."
[...]
"It's sort of counter-intuitive, because people think their kids would drive them nuts without TV," Krcmar said. "But parents found that kids became very good at entertaining themselves and didn't need to be entertained all the time by something that was lively and active. They didn’t complain about being bored.

Oh how I wish I didn't have one (sometimes).

(Just realized: I got this from Dan Lyke.)

Jim pointed to this article on Mommy Guilt and wondered if mothers in his own church would concur.

Well, I'm not a mother (but I'm married to one) and I'm not in Jim's church, so what I say will be absolutely meaningless.  Still, I can't shut up.  So here goes.

There is so much in the Ms. McCleneghan's piece that I want to take issue with.  Where to start?

First, I should point out that fathers have guilt, too.  We don't have a cute name for it, at least I've never really heard other fathers complain about "Daddy Guilt", but, all the same, I imagine most dads from the last 20 years feel a little guilty.  For me, I wonder "Am I spending enough time with the kids?" (I work at home, for pete's sake!) or "Am I providing enough stimulation for the kids?"

And lets not get started on the unfortunate fact that I accidentally broke my 11-year-old daughter's nose this spring.  So, yeah, dads get guilt.

But you know what?  Most of it is bogus.

If I feel guilty about repeated physical abuse of my children, that's one thing.  That is valid guilt.  I should feel guilty. And the guilt should be my sign that I need to turn around and do something differently.

But disposable diapers? Formula vs. breastfeeding?

The world isn't perfect and we can't live perfect lives.  And we shouldn't feel guilty because of that.  But I'm sure I don't need to tell an ordained minister that.

Which brings me to my second point.  I'm gonna go out on a limb a little here, but I feel it is a sturdy one.

Prayers of confession should not be done corporately.

If the only time for you to practice confession is in a corporate setting, then you're doing it wrong.  In the Orthodox church, everyone is encouraged to go to a spiritual director and (perhaps separately) individual confession.

The spiritual director will tell you "Why are you beating yourself up about this?"  And then your confessor, if you really feel the need to confess your guilt about disposable diapers, will patiently stand with you and listen to you confess your guilt over disposable diapers to God.

And then he'll tell you Now, having no further care for the sins you have confessed, you may go in peace.

See, corporate prayers of confession are wrong because they're generic.  They don't address my guilt or the things I need to change.  No wonder Ms. McCleneghan is tuning out.  It should be her sign that something needs to change.

(Of course, I had to go look up the Methodist Prayers of Confession and I suppose that in some ways they are similar to the prayers prayed during Forgiveness Vespers so you can see I'm even more full of nonsense than usual, but I still maintain that the missing piece -- private confession -- would be a great way to get rid of silly parenting guilt.  Guilt needs a release valve.  Confession is meant to be that valve.)

In this excellent little message to baby boomers and gen-xers, Steve Olson writes:

When I mention that you refuse to let your kids ride their bikes to the park, you say, “Things are different today. There are more crazies out there.” Yep, and the crazies are us. Middle-aged people are so riddled with anxiety we are eating Paxil, Zoloft, and Prozac like Copenhagen at a rodeo.

He points to Mike Males op-ed on risk-takers:

Today, the age group most at risk for violent death is 40 to 49, including illegal-drug death rates five times higher than for teenagers.

I knew this generation was more protected from risk than those before it. I didn't realize that the older generations were still taking (and losing) such big risks. (via)

Now, don't misunderstand me. I think people should take risks. I think young people and children should be allowed to take more risks. I think my children should be allowed to take more risks, but I'm not the only one who has a say in that.

Robert Epstein, author of The Case Against Adolescence in an interview in Psychology Today:

I believe that young people should have more options—the option to work, marry, own property, sign contracts, start businesses, make decisions about health care and abortions, live on their own—every right, privilege, or responsibility an adult has. [...] competent young people deserve the chance to compete where it counts, and many will surprise us.

There is so much that I want to quote from the interview, I'll just stick with that.  Go read the interview and the book.

I'm just happy to have someone else confirm what I've suspected for a long time: teenagers exhibit behavior problems because we isolate and infantilize them.  Stop treating mature people like small children and they'll become productive citizens.

Oh, and ditch the current factory-based educational system which only serves to provide outmoded skills while keeping potentially productive members of society in lockdown for no good reason.

dvfmama recently took a part time job working the third shift in a group home for the elderly and mentally ill.  She claims it isn't that hard and she gets to nap on the job, so I'm not too worried.

But I'm sure that she is only going to be working temporarily.  A few months ago I found this interview with the author of The Two-Income Trap in Mother Jones:

More and more families today are sending both parents into the workforce -- it's become the norm, it's what we now expect. The overwhelming majority of us do it because we think it will make our families more secure. But that's not how things have worked out. By the end of this decade, one in seven families with children will go bankrupt. Having a child is now the single best predictor of bankruptcy, and this holds true even for families with two incomes.

Most poignant for me was this prodding point from the MJ interviewer:

In the past, it seems like a stay-at-home mom could act as an insurance policy for the family if the dad was laid off or whatnot. But today two-income families have nothing to fall back on in the event of a disaster.

I remember when I first tried to prop up her self-esteem a bit when she was feeling low because she wasn't working.  "You're our backup plan!" I told her.  Little did I know she would have a chance to use it against me.

Tonight, I gave in to my reddit addiction and found this story on the two income trap, with a detailed explanation of the tax problems involved when you have two incomes in addition to the other, more mundane, problems like increased daycare expenses.  Money quote: When you throw two kids in the mix, ... you would get to keep $8,000 a year of a $40k wage.

(Of note, Teri Newton, the author of the bit, writes that it is her husband who stays at home with the kids.)

In Return of the Parents, I wondered if “we could be witnessing the beginnings of a long term shift back towards larger families.” Both jottingjoan and jeff said they didn't think so.

Now, I skimmed a few academic papers in my reply and put a couple a way to read more thoroughly and Attitudes and Low Fertility (PDF) should interest you guys especially. Even danlyke would be interested in some of what it says.

While Barber & Axinn acknowledge that changes in attitudes towards childbearing have contributed to the fertility decline in the U.S. in recent decades, they perceive changes in attitudes less unidirectional. Future trends may see a reversal of ideational change to more traditional value orientations (see also Lesthaeghe & Moors, 1995) as well as movements that discourage behaviors, such a premarital sexual activity, that are frequently seen as defining features of “modern” demographic behavior (e.g., Bearman & Brückner, 2002 [PDF]).

That is, don't assume that society's attitudes about childbearing can’t or won’t change.