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Good Lord. What an exasperating woman.

You know, the thing that jumps out at me is that she seems to think that life ought to be a whole hell of a lot easier than it actually is. I've seen this same disillusionment around me so much (and felt it myself from time to time), this upset that feminism didn't deliver what it promised (or what they think it promised), this being crushed by the fact that there are only 24 hours in a day and you have to choose how to use them...and that not all of the choices are between ice cream and candy...sometimes they're between broccoli and brussels sprouts...

It makes me sad, this utter unwillingness to acknowledge that the fact that you have *choices* means that by definition you can't have it all...this author (and I think a whole lot of women) expects fixing society to fix her life, and when it doesn't work out that way she wants to embark on another round of "fixing" everything but her own ability to live in reality...not that we shouldn't find ways to balance our lives, but that it's unhealty to try to live in the world we *wish* we live in...

No, I haven't been thinking about any of this as I adjust to motherhood. Not at all.

posted by Deb on February 16, 2005 08:08 AM

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Another thing that struck me in retrospect is how they think they are staving off failure and disaster through mental stimulation alone.

Are they doing devotions with their children? Taking them to church and Sunday School? Praying with them?

Good grades and intellectual development don't prevent someone from being an alcoholic. Being smart doesn't keep you from giving up on the world and living in the street. Having a large vocabulary and getting into the best schools doesn't mean you don't go bankrupt and lose everything.

The people who fail the biggest in life are the ones who think academic achievement is all you need. Dealing with stress and overcoming setbacks is more important than solving differential equations in your head. It's when someone expects to get everything they want that they despair and give up when they don't get it immediately.

These women are setting their kids up for failure.

And then their solution is to recreate society to help mothers more?

...this is getting silly...

posted by Nathan on February 16, 2005 09:19 AM

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Good point, Nathan, and one I was trying to make in my own post on the issue. We think we're doing our kids a favor by creating this bubble of success and achievement and information around them, when life really isn't like that. We're giving them an inaccurate preparation for reality, and it seems like we ourselves have an inaccurate perception of reality as it is.

It takes a change from within, a re-setting of goals to align with those that God has set out for us, rather than those we artificially adopt from our surroundings. It's too much to expect the godless MSM to ever really get that, I suppose.

posted by Kris on February 16, 2005 09:30 AM

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Kris,
Once I leave for work, I can't access blogspot or typepad blogs until I get back home, so I wasn't able to see what you actually said... :(

posted by nathan on February 16, 2005 09:41 AM

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Amen, Nathan! This happy-happy, let's not have competition so all our kids have high self-esteem crap makes me crazy. My little boy is intellectualy gifted. At 7 and in first grade, he's reading fourth-grade books and doing third-grade math. Great, right? Not so much, actually; the kid doesn't have to work for anything, and that worries the hell out of me.

The only way for kids to develop self-esteem (the *real* kind, not the kind that we now try to give them just for taking up space and breathing) is by hard work coupled with results. Because daily life is not presenting my son with much in the way of challenges, I enrolled him in karate: self-discipline and hard work rolled into one! And he loves it, but he's not very good at it, so it's a great way for him to build self-esteem as he works at it.

If we shield our children from challenges and hard work; if we insist on keeping them entertained at every moment; if we focus every ounce of our attention on them at all times, we're doing them a great disservice, and they'll be paying for it into adulthood.

posted by Kathleen on February 16, 2005 05:46 PM

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Your blog is the first one I've seen that seems to be where I'm at. Below is a cut and past from mine.

Response to Mommy Madness

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6959880/site/newsweek/?GT1=6190

I just read the article Mommy Madness by Judith Warner of Newsweek. She tries to paint a bleak picture of what happens when women choose motherhood over profession. Her portrait of American mothers who lose there identity is based on 150 interviews throughout the US. She appears to be confused about what motherhood is. She confuses individuality of not being a mother with responsibilities of being a mother.

She said she read somewhere and quotes statistics about how mothers are depressed and so forth. I read a statistic on depressed women who chose career over family and now regret it. The point is we make our bed and have to sleep in it. Many tried the career path and in the end did not like the outcome. Some did.

I have one more statistic that we are all familiar with. It was called the National Election of 04. The majority of this country chose an agenda that followed along the lines of Family Values. Yes the "F" word that some don't want to acknowledge. This value crossed all social, economical, religious, and racial lines.

She attempts to find blame for these depressed mothers. The lack of part time child day care and other lacking social programs such as tax breaks for companies. She suggests that we use "...home-grown American solutions.." Then she uses France as an example to model part time day care. Do we really want to go the way of France?

The writer fails to recognize that life gives us individual problems. We live in a country of the free. We choose our own paths and how to live it. As a country we saw the women's revolution in the 70's. More women bought the idea that they could be a professional worker and our children could be raised by someone else. The 70's was also the "Me" era. Remember the phrase, "I know this will hurt you but I have to think about me." It was the battle cry of Therapists and people willing to spend $50 an hour to buy that drivel. I got news for you, that social experiment didn't work.

The article has a woman sitting amongst a crowd of children in a sing along. The caption states that this women is well educated from Dartmouth and is stressful, lonely and tired. Please! What does having a higher education have to do with motherhood? Get off of your social snobbery! Should she have known better because she has a degree in something? Was it in motherhood?

Does somehow having a college education make someone above others? I find it difficult to equate a college education with real life experience of raising children. I went to a college and found that it was mostly Professors with little life experiences claiming to know the answers. I found the real world to be very different from College. It can be unforgiving and sometimes cruel. You get what you put or not put into it. Reality Check.....parenthood is a learning experience that cannot fully be taught in a classroom.

If you ask that women if she had a chance never to have the child you know what her answer would be. Quit trying to blame your desperation on others and the government. It is time we take on our own responsibilities for our decisions. Handouts is not the answer.

From my little corner of the country I see the following. I'm surrounded by working class blue collar women. The women who choose to have children will quit their jobs provided they can afford to be a stay at home mom. Why? Because they choose to. The ones that can't usually long to be at home with their children. Why? Because that is human nature.

It does not have to be forever. Once the children get into school you can go back to your profession if you choose. The rewards of being the foundation outweighs the personal achievements in any given profession.

My wife chose to be a stay at home mother. It's not because I wanted her to. It's because as a couple we decided it was time to set path towards parenthood. We made sacrifices to accomplish this. The obvious is the smaller income. Did we lose something? Sure, sometimes money is tight. Did we do the right thing? You bet. We know this every time our children make the right decisions based on the foundation we gave them by having a stay at home mother!

Our kids are not going to be raised by a Village as some would like us to believe. Our children will be raised by parents who were willing to make the changes and won't look back and cry about it. The outcome will be children who will grow up to be responsible citizens.

posted by Boots56894 on February 20, 2005 04:21 PM

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*Come to think of it, so do your subordinates, eh?

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You have a very humble and mature attitude about the whole affair, from what I can gather. I'm glad you have a place where you *can* vent. As far as being a good parent, I can't speak for anyone else, but I know that without continual uninterrupted grace from God, I'm a horrible mom.

You have given me pause to think about just how much I *am* engaging my own kids. I tend to be on the quiet, aloof side and I'd be happy spending an entire evening alone in a room if it were necessary. Solitary confinement wouldn't be punishment for me. Anyway, I have to struggle to purposefully engage my kids because it's not my nature. Thankfully they're all three pretty good at engaging with me!

Bless you, dear one. Keep blogging... : )

posted by IowaSoccerMom on January 13, 2005 05:48 PM

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Regardless of how you may feel about your ex-wife, preserving your children's love for their mother is absolutely the best thing you can do for them. This will pay off huge dividends as they grow older and mature and understand more about their mother.

My mother left our family when I was seven, due to a mid-life crisis. Despite the pain, anger, and disappointment he must have felt, my father NEVER said anything negative about my mother, at least not in my presence. I was too young to comprehend what was going on, I didn't have any answers, and I tended to take it out (unfairly) on my stepmother. As I grew older I realized that my mother had a lot of imperfections and made some serious mistakes with her life, but I still loved her anyway and forgave her . Today all members of my family (including parents and step-parents) can gather together without fear of conflict. Too many families these days are unable to do this.

I realize I've rambled a bit, but you seem to have struck a nerve. Letting your children love their mother despite her imperfections or your feelings about her is the right thing to do, and I can testify to that. They will thank you for it someday.

posted by diamond dave on January 13, 2005 07:32 PM

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My thanks to you both. Words....fail me.

posted by Nathan on January 13, 2005 07:47 PM

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Nathen- I did not write this but I fowarded it on to you for its wisdom. My daughter left her husband because he was an alcolic. We always treat him with respect and never say anything bad in front of him we we have contact. Good luck with your relationships with your children-BB

The nature of parenting
I frequently have had occasion in the last few weeks to contemplate the nature of parenting, and more particularly how I measure up in the endeavor. There are days, like today, when the work is so hard, so emotional, and so exhausting that I wonder how I can possibly continue with it one more day. We live in a culture that tells us incessantly how important it is to “be true to ourselves” and bombards us with the message that pursuit of our own personal happiness, convenience, satisfaction, and fulfillment is our highest calling. Applied to parenting, such a worldview is disastrous.

Parenting is a selfless undertaking, and I am convinced that if people grasped one scintilla of the daunting nature of the task, they might never willingly agree to take it on, in spite of its many rewards and satisfactions. Being human, no parent can ever be completely selfless, but we cannot afford to act as if our lives can continue unchanged by the birth of our children – because they change everything. (I recently saw a father on Oprah who said, as justification for his incredibly selfish behavior, that his life did not end when his childrens' began. I found myself shouting at the television, "YES IT DID!") It is an enormous responsibility – as parents, we are the primary influences on our children, the primary shaping force. And while we aren’t the exclusive factor in the equation, how we do our jobs will have a direct impact on what sort of adults our children grow up to be, which in turn affects what sort of culture and world we will all live in 20 and 30 and 40 years from now. And it’s all OJT! Although there are signposts along the way, we won’t really know what sort of job we’ve done until it’s all over and too late to change anything. That is a sobering and sometimes intimidating reality.

The other reality is that once the job is undertaken, we don’t really have the option of throwing in the towel. Of course, some people do so, or do it functionally if not literally. But for responsible parents, the option to give up when the going gets tough is no option at all. Of all the relationships we enter into in our lives, the one between parent and child is the one that we cannot end at will – friends come and go, marriages are terminated through divorce, but no matter what goes on between us, my daughter will be my daughter until the day I die.

My daughter is deeply discouraged, and doubts her own worth and value. This is not an uncommon condition in teenage girls, but in my daughter’s case, puberty is complicated by adoption-related issues of abandonment and anger. My job, as her mother, is to simultaneously hold her accountable and build her up – what a painfully difficult line to walk! I believe – though I do not know for certain – that I can train her best in part by setting an example worth emulating – equal parts prayer, grace, strength, compassion, humor, and commitment, at least to the best of my ability and with God’s help. Daughter leads me to believe I’m right in my belief by telling me, when she was crying to me this afternoon, that she “hates” me for being there for her no matter what, for loving her even when she doesn’t deserve it, and for believing in her even when she’s screwed up. I praise God that I am becoming better and better able to love her selflessly, and to resist taking her behavior personally, and I praise Him even more that she is beginning to recognize, respect and value that love – because from that will come a sense of her own value and a desire to be worthy of love and commitment. Out of that kind of desire and sense of Godly self-worth grows a willingness to set and meet high standards of behavior, in thought and deed, which are virtually impossible to impose externally through mere parental discipline.

My daughter doesn’t get away with as much as she thinks she does, and I am not nearly as stupid as she thinks I am. The difference is that she doesn’t see the big picture, and I am trying to. Love is a potent force, and I intend to continue to bathe her in it. I’m sure I am making mistakes, but I will not use my love for her – ever – to make her feel small, or worthless, or hopeless. I had enough of that growing up to know how devastating love can be when wielded selfishly. This relationship isn’t about me!!

I don’t have all the answers, not by a long shot. Parenting is incredibly hard work, but it is also an enormous privilege. God is softening my daughter’s heart, and I see signs of that every day. She’s wrestling with new self-awareness and a new sense of who she is as God’s child, as my child, as a young lady who is no longer a child but not yet a woman. I pray that God will continue to plant the soil of her spirit deeply, and I thank Him for the privilege of watering what grows there and tending it as best I am able. The outcome, ultimately, is in His hands.

May God bless and keep my daughter. May He give me strength, wisdom, and compassion as I undertake to shepherd her through these next few years. May He guard our family and keep it a place of refuge, of encouragement, and of love. May God keep us humble, with eyes and hearts turned eternally toward His light.

posted by The Grouchy Old Yorkie Lady permalink 7 Woofs | Trackback (0)

posted by BOB BAKER on January 16, 2005 01:32 AM

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Yorkie Lady, I can sure relate to you! My 16 yr old and I have been through some rough times.

Nathan, Since I am new to your blog I don't know that background on this, but I admire the way you are handling it. I wish I could say it will get easier, but it won't. Like yorkie said, kids don't see the big picture so it's hard to explain things to them. Just stay strong, pray hard, and keep being the kind of Dad you seem to be.

posted by Rightwingsparkle on January 16, 2005 02:29 PM

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*continuing to run with the idea that parenting and leadership of adults have many common aspects

**Which is an apt description of "setting up your subordinate for success"

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I think your military training is showing, Nate.

Re: *- this is true as my husband frequently tells me. The difference is that you can fire the adults if they don't follow the plan....

P.S. I came in second on the state placement test- right behind you!

posted by Rae on December 28, 2004 02:09 PM

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What, you don't fire your kids?

I fire mine about once a week, on average...[grin]

The sad thing is that there are people in the military with more time in service, higher rank, and more time in leadership positions that apparently haven't internalized or even considered some of these aspects of leadership. Military tradition and the UCMJ should support and aid your leadership, not substitute for it.

posted by Nathan on December 28, 2004 02:55 PM

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This is also an ignored precept of management.

Trust is something that is propagated.
You have to trust your employees, even if they are untrustworthy, because two things happen:
1) If you do not trust your employee, they behave in an untrustworthy manner.
2) If you do trust your untrustworthy employee, they behave in a trustworthy manner.

It seems counter-intuative. But the more you put your trust in someone, the more trustworthy they become. They reflect what you feel about them.

Some of the biggest growth, I've seen, in my co-workers is when someone trusted them with a task; and took the risk of giving someone who didn't appear to be capable of completing it. The worker always seems to meet the challange, and ends up a better employee for it.

All it took was a manager/project leader who changed how they felt personaly about them.

posted by Jeremy on December 27, 2004 08:06 AM

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Actually, there's an additional dichotomy. You start out with two kinds of employees: the kind who respond to being trusted, and the kind who don't.

If you trust your employees, those who respond will become more trustworthy; those who don't will remain untrustworthy.

If you don't trust your employees, those who respond to being trusted will instead respond to not being trusted. Those who don't respond to being trusted will remain untrustworthy.

Trusting your employees will separate the good ones from the not-so-good ones, and you can weed out the ones who are untrustworthy regardless of what you do. It's not a certainty of success, but it leaves you -- and them -- with an opportunity to succeed neither of you will have if you withhold your trust.

posted by McGehee on December 27, 2004 11:30 AM

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Absolutely!

And if I may put in a plug for my own blog (and if I can't do it on my own blog, what good is it to have one, I ask you?), this ties right back into Setting your people up for success. If you trust a seemingly untrustworthy subordinate with a task, but give them the tools for success, they will be that much easier to set up for success the next time, because they've had a taste for it.
You probably need a back-up plan for the more vital tasks (although you should keep it to yourself, or you are demonstrating a lack of trust), but few people can naturally succeed at a difficult, advanced task without training.

That's a good part of leadership: training your subordinates to replace or even obviate you.

Mind you, all this is more easy in the abstract than in the practice, but I get chances to practice in being a parent. Seriously. I may have to write a story about someone who turns out to be a great leader when no one expects it solely due to their experience as a parent...

posted by Nathan on December 27, 2004 02:56 PM

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