Family

How To Take a Crap ...or The Most Important Parenting Advice I can Give Anyone

sastyk — Wed, 20 Jan 2016 12:38:33 +0000

How To Take a Crap ...or The Most Important Parenting Advice I can Give Anyone

Are you new to this parenting gig? About to give birth or adopt or take on a foster placement? Or maybe you've had one easy kid, and are about to go to two and sense that things are about to change radically. Or maybe you have them, but you feel like you are missing something in the "how to stay sane and meet everyone's needs" department. I want to give you the single most important piece of advice I have - which is about how not to lose your mind as a parent. I know, I know the title isn't all that prepossessing, but stick with me.

Let's say you just had or adopted a beautiful baby. You can't imagine anything more wonderful than rocking and holding this wondrous, sweet creature. You are filled with joy and love. Right now she's soothed by your motion, or taking a breast or bottle and absolutely peaceful. Life is perfect. Except for one thing.

You really need to go to the bathroom. Like now.

If you put her down, she's going to scream. If you try and and do what you need to do, you'll have to shuffle her around and move a lot and she's going to scream. What do you do? You get stressed. Because either you put her needs first or yours, and yours are increasingly urgent. But if she screams, you'll feel terrible - almost as bad as you will feel if you don't. So what to do? What's my wisdom? And could I hurry up with it, because remember, there's something you have to do?

You should have gone before you became a parent. Now you can hold it for eighteen years. Problem solved.

Ok, I'm sort of kidding.

This is just the first of many times that you will find yourself in this situation - you need to take a crap, and your kid needs you right now. Or maybe you need to go to work and your kid needs to go to Little League or school or play rehearsal and you cannot miss any more work. Or you need to cook dinner and your kid needs to memorize their times tables. Or change the new baby's diaper while your toddler is having a tantrum. Or maybe your need is less of a need than a really, really want because you are dying to take five minutes breathe all alone for a few minutes and they will not let you and if you don't you feel you are going to scream. Whatever it is, taking a crap is a metaphor for every single moment for the next two decades in which you will find yourself struggling to balance the needs of child and adult. That very first conflict, when the baby needs you and you need to go - that's the beginning of all the stuff that makes us feel like failures.

You may feel like if you were a good parent, you would put your needs aside. Or maybe you'll just feel resentful that you should feel that way. Or maybe you'll just be overwhelmed and believe that no matter what you do you are failing. You will make plans for how you are going to fit in this one thing, and then you will panic when they are overturned and it doesn't work and feel worse. And then you will look over and someone like me, who has 10 kids and think "She must have this figured out. I'm never going to figure it out."

Lo, young Grasshopper, I can help with this one. Because I did sort of figure it out - not perfectly, not magically, I still lose my mind occasionally (or more), but I do sort of know how to handle this one. And the truth is that probably 50% of the hard in parenting is this - when your needs and your kids needs are not in any way aligned and they are both incredibly pressing. This makes us crazy, it makes us yell, it makes us panic, it makes us anxious and miserable and convinced we're bad. It is the root of a lot of parent crazy.

The reason I have ten kids and have not killed anyone or run away to Mexico isn't because I don't have experience with this - it is because I'm USED to dealing with this. You can't make all the feelings go away, but you can manage them, including managing your own sense that you suck. So I'm going to offer some strategies for taking a crap. They will not fix everything in your life, but maybe they'll help you do feel better while you are doing it, give up that little extra anger and frustration at yourself. Maybe it will even make your life easier. I will also assume that you are not so dumb that "get help" didn't occur to you - either you are in a situation where help isn't available or all or both of you are just so overwhelmed that more is not better. So let us begin.

1. Expect it to be a problem. The first thing to do is recognize the problem, and recognize that it is a real and legitimate issue, not a sign of personal failure - that is, you have to poop, it is going to happen at inconvenient times, and it is going to be a pain to deal with. You are not failing, you are just doing what parents do - dealing as best you can. Same with getting out the door to work and school. Same with helping with homework. Same with dealing with a tantruming toddler. It is going to happen, so don't let it surprise you. If you are watching for it, you will expect it. Let's be honest, half of your parenting life you will be squeezing something back that you'd rather let out. Half of your life as a parent you'll be wishing you could do something else or anxious because you aren't doing it. It is not the fun part of this gig, but it is normal.

2. Go before you leave. Imagine you are four again and your mother is reminding you to go potty every single time you leave the house for more than two seconds. Look for opportunities in your life to take a crap. Remember how when your parents reminded you to go before you left you argued that you didn't have to? But it was still a good idea. Same principle here - try and go before it gets urgent, even when you don't need to. Same with everything else - just because you never really thought about putting dinner in the crockpot at 6am before, and dinner seems kind of gross at that hour doesn't mean the 10 minutes you have free then wouldn't be well used that way. Yeah, you can do homework over breakfast. Feed the baby in the car if you have to. I put out everyone's clothes for tomorrow and pajamas often at 7am - because that's when I can, and it is easier than finding them at the last minute. On weekdays, dinner has to be done before lunch often - do what you can, when you can.

3. Accept that the best laid plans of Mice and Moms gang aft agley. You want to know what makes my spouse insane? Breakfast. Not so much providing it to everyone, but when he thinks he's finally provided oatmeal, cereal, toast, whatever to all the relevant children and can finally, finally eat his own breakfast - and someone needs seconds, or spills their oatmeal, or throws it at their sister. You know when you have a plan in mind, and you are super committed to it, and you are almost there and it gets derailed - and you go completely nuts because you have worked yourself up into the feeling that it has to work this way? Yeah, me too. But if you go into ita figuring that you are going to have to wipe up at least one bowl of oatmeal and stick the toast seconds into the toaster anyway beforee someone asks, you might just get to eat. Same with taking a crap - you've convinced yourself that you just have to get this one thing in before everyone is back from school and it doesn't work....panic. Instead, have a couple of mental backup plans - then you'll be pleased if you get to the bathroom before the bus comes.

4. Is this a real need? Prioritize. Seriously, how bad do you have to go? Sometimes, you really have to. And sometimes you are just accustomed to doing it now. If you have to, you have to. But remember, if it isn't an emergency, don't treat it as one. Similarly, you may HAVE to go to work, but getting the dishes done before you go to bed is a want, not a need. Sometimes we get more worked up over wants, and that's normal, particularly if you've been deferring your wants for a few years or decades and it feels like "This one damned time, I just want to..." but do remember it is a want - and there's probably a time when you CAN get that want met, even if it isn't right now.

5. Your child will learn to live with the disappointment. You know, if you put your baby down on the floor or in her carseat or in the infant chair to go to the bathroom, and she cries, she'll be ok. I know that if this is your first and you are struggling that you want to be a good Mom it may not feel that way, particularly if you are taking a while. Moreover, if anyone is watching you or around, you may feel even worse.

Here's the one thing that parents with more experience have up on you - we've already screwed up a whole bunch of times. We've already messed up enough that we can listen to our child fuss and feel "Hey, I wish I didn't have to do that, but this is not the worst thing I'm going to do to you by a long shot." So you can treasure your guilt, and enjoy for the moment that you've made so few parenting mistakes that this is an important one, or you can let go and accept that you too are probably going to do way worse than this over the years. Same with not making it to Little League on time, or not doing the reading homework the teacher sent home or helping enough in the classroom. Maybe you are a better person than I, and the worst thing you ever, ever do to your child will be to disappoint them a little because you aren't SuperMom. If so, I have nothing whatsoever to teach you. Speaking as someone who regularly screws up in much more dramatic ways, however, ultimately better you worry about those big things than this. Seriously, if you parent you will probably do some things that you really do have reason to be ashamed of - no point in adding anything you don't have to include on that list.

6. Take 'em with you. Seriously, sometimes that's the answer, even if what you really want is five minutes alone with a magazine and the silence. Find a way to cook dinner with the child. Find a way to get the project done, even if you have to let them make a horrible mess in your office. Say the hell with everything in make it work when you have to. Keep a stash of emergency plans here - can they wash the dishes in a bucket with towels on the floor? Can they help you cook? Can you have them read you the assignment while you are driving? Will the cat really mind if the toddlers smear glitter on it if it gets you through the 57 emails you missed when you were home sick with them?

7. If what you are mostly worried about is other people's values, the answer is "La la la, I can't hear you." Sure, good parents don't give their kids cheetos - except that most good parents do sooner or later. Or they do something else just as bad. So yeah, ignore them and do what you have to get through. Same with your kids. Sometimes the only answer if they are safe is to not hear them while they cry at the door so you can take care of business. Silence the voices - outside the door, on the internet, among your friends, and even the little guys in your head with names. Tell them to shut up and move on.

8. Frankly, you will be a better parent if you are not spending all your time clenching your butt cheeks together so you do not soil yourself. Ultimately, you can be more loving if you are not spending all your time trying to hold it in or be the perfect parent. Let go. Let the baby cry and then be able to give her your full and loving attention in a relaxed manner. Because no one enjoys hanging out with someone whose entire focus is on being perfect. Sometimes going back to work or taking a break or making your kids a little less happy is ok, because it gets you to where you need to be. We parents of many mastered this one already. Let go. Meet your needs, and then come back and meet your kids' needs. And unclench a little.

It is going to happen over and over again for at least 18 years and probably forever - your needs, your kids needs - bang! You can do this - you have my permission, and, I hope, your own.

sastyk Wed, 01/20/2016 - 07:38

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Family

humor

So this is what passes for "science" writing on "scienceblogs" these days?

This is seriously good advice! I can't quite bring myself to pass it around to new-parent friends, because the core example is a bit too visceral. E.g., the first sentence in summary #8 just takes it too far out of the pathways our conversations normally run. I can talk about this sort of thing with my spouse and some friends, but less-close friends? colleagues? acquaintances?

When you become a parent you become rather more comfortable breaking social taboos around discussion of bodily functions for children, but... well, we still don't normally talk much about adults pooping at dinner parties, while getting coffee at the office, in a chance meeting at the grocery store, or in a random email either, really.

Thank you for this. I have 5 still at home, with one who has flown the nest. Balancing everyone's needs is such a tricky skill.

Greater than the Sum of its Parts: Why Being the Parent of Many Isn't as Hard as You Think

sastyk — Mon, 13 Jul 2015 13:04:18 +0000

Greater than the Sum of its Parts: Why Being the Parent of Many Isn't as Hard as You Think

My children made me try a chocolate-covered gummy bear the other day. Now a chocolate gummy bear is not a local, sustainable or home-grown food, and frankly, I don't like gummy bears (the only good use I ever had for them was in college, where nothing would keep posters on cinder-block walls without damaging the walls like a gummy bear melted on with a lighter), and I'm not that big a chocolate person. But the kids kept telling me that this was better than either the low-quality chocolate used to cover them or gummy bears. I tried one, and they were right - it was better, an official addition to the category of things I think of as "greater than the sum of their parts." In this case, that'a pretty low bar, since we are combining crappy chocolate with something that's barely a food - but "things that make something more than the sum of their origins" is a meaningful and important category, and here I must give the chocolate-covered gummy bear very mild props.

Many better foods than the chocolate gummy bear fall into that category - things where a list of the ingredients does not convey the true yumminess of the outcome. Consider tomatoes, basil and balsamic vinegar - all great things, of course, but together a perfect synthesis. Red wine and dark chocolate. Lime juice, chiles, sugar and fish sauce for the ubiquitous hot/sour/salty/sweet of southeast asian food. One could go on and on about the perfection of certain combinations.

Food is not the only place where you see optimization when you make perfect combinations The agricultural Three Sisters are an example of a classic agricultural polyculture that creates something greater than the sum of its parts. Stocking animals together on pasture can produce a pasture health, habitat for animals and good animal husbandry greater than the sum of its parts. Everyone has seen a painting or a piece of music much greater than the sum of its brushstrokes or musical notes, a piece of writing made up of ordinary words that achieves transcendence. In fact, the creation of something that is greater than the aggregate content, that has that artistry and flow that makes it great is one of life's worthy achievements, and occurs in most areas, and is a worthy endeavor of a lifetime.

Parenting a large family is a similar art - the exercise of making something more than the sum of individual members. Every family is like this in some measure, but a large family HAS TO BE greater than the sum of its parts. I think a lot of people look at the energy and resources they put into their 1, 2 or 3 children and think that I must do 9 times what someone does for one child. But while more children does mean more laundry, more dishes, more melodrama over who got more hot chocolate in their cup and more diapers, it does not mean 10xs as much work for me or Eric. That would not be accomplishable - in fact the mere thought makes me want to crawl under the covers and not come out. Instead, what it means is a mandated artfulness. Not always, we have our graceless moments just as much as the next people, but there is a smoothness to life that makes it a lot less hard than you probably think it is. It also makes it more fascinating, more fun, more engaging - that is, the worthy practice of one's attention and thought, a job worth building a life around.

In fact, the addition last month of our foursome's younger brother, C., who is 2, gave us more than a tenth child and a 7th son, it gave us a nice test of the ways that things can flow in a larger family. It wasn't without its challenges, but was easier than you'd think. And we're just thrilled that all five kids are together now and will eventually be adopted together. The fact is, our family of nine did not feel overwhelming, so it was really possible to say yes to another child and another toddler with relative ease. That wouldn't be the case if it weren't for the magic of optimization.

Now some things are harder with more kids. Five of my kids are little (5, 5, 3, 3 and 2) and they require more hands to hold in a parking lot, help with hairwashing, extra time for potty training and someone to spot them when they climb on the monkey bars. There is 10 times as much laundry as one child would need (if theirs was a conserving household like ours), and 10 times as many dishes. And when they are all bickering, the noise is exponentially increased - I'm guessing about 10,000 times what a single child might make at peak decibalage ;-).

But a lot of things are actually simpler in a large family. Bathing three young kids in the same tub does not take three times as long (although at least twice as much water ends up on the floor, and there is at least six times as much giggling). Making a chicken pot pie or a pot of lentil-kale soup for 12 takes only minutes longer than making one for four or six. Four little people read a story very comfortably together (one on each knee, one snuggled at each side). While you do need a baby doll and a couple of stuffed animals for each child, as well as a few basketballs, you only need one copy of The Jungle Book, one toy kitchen, one set of blocks and one Monopoly set whether you have one child or a dozen. Or no Monopoly sets, if I had my druthers ;-).

The logic of large families is different too - some things that take up a lot of time in small ones simply aren't part of the equation. Consider the practice many families have of making a separate meal for each picky child, and another for adults - that simply cannot happen in a large family. Even young children understand that if nobody ever had to eat less-favored foods, there would be nothing to eat. Kids learn quickly that while we never force them to eat anything they don't like, picky eating is not rewarded by special meals. Similarly, when a friend of mine laments it takes an hour to get her daughters out of the house in the morning because they spend so much time picking and choosing their clothes (these daughters and 5 and 8, not 13 and 17 which might have a different solution) and asked why we were at an event before her, I noted "Because I offer my daughters a choice of two outfits. They pick, they wear that one, no backsies." Fussiness about trivial things is not rewarded (although everyone is entitled to their quirks, which we try to respect.)

Some things are easier in a large family. We drive to few play-dates - it is easier to host people here and there are always combinations of children who are friends for playtime. There are lots of merry hands to take on some of the bigger jobs - of course Mom and Dad can and do read stories, braid hair, make sandwiches, help with homework, carry groceries, scrape plates, bake cookies, explain a law of physics, make holiday decorations, collect eggs, try to show how to do a cartwheel,lead dance parties, discuss the facts of life, pitch a ball, catch a baby goat or make a snack, but there are always other people not only able, but often anxious to do these things. Two of my boys are thrilled to do their little sisters' hair - it is a treat for them, and they come up with some remarkable combinations of barrettes and hair ornaments - many quite fetching, occasionally very funny. Simon and D. both like it better when Simon helps her with her homework than when an adult does (both are 13, but he's 7 months older and 2 grades ahead). Even five year olds K. and R. appreciate having the opportunity to do something meaningful like lay out the silverware, help their two year old sibling play ball or learn to spread peanut butter and jam on a slice of bread. A new reader really thrives on having a small child who can't read yet hang on to her every word of _Goodnight Moon_. A teenager may not want much to do with parents, but the adoration of a younger sister or brother can provide happiness and it can be a real pleasure for them to play a board game with that adoring sibling.

Some things that are a source of stress in smaller families seem easier in ours. Screen time is not much of a battle here - perhaps because we have one computer, no cable, limited internet speeds, no cell reception where we live and one tv that only plays video. Everyone takes it for granted that they must take turns and that it will be time for someone else (most likely Mommy and Daddy, who both work on the computer) to take over soon, so screen battles are pretty few and far between. We do one birthday party with some seasonal variation (ie, you play with squirt guns and the creek in July, in December we have balloon fights indoors and eat roasted vegetables, but it is essentially the same party, just done a lot of times every year) but no one seems to get tired of it. Thus, I never research birthday party locations - who needs a bounce house when you've got goats? With a dozen birthdays unevenly scattered, my kids don't mind sharing their parties with a near-birthday sibling, 'cause, well, we throw really good parties and a lot of them, even if you are sharing. And we rarely worry about providing "activities" for visiting children - racing around with the goats, splashing in the creek, grinding corn for cornbread and making fun of your brothers seems to cover most activities.

There truly is something about taking up two full rows at the front of our synagogue for our child's bar mitzvah, the cheering at concerts and games from a huge family who are there to support and love you, the anticipated future multiplication of spouses and grandkids, the warmth of knowing that 50 or 60 years from now, my children will have each other when I'm long gone to share memories like "Wasn't Mom annoying when she used to..." All the nachas is greater.

Is it perfect? Nope, when the first small child squawks at 4:55am, when D. needs homework help while two un-napped preschoolers are melting down and I still have to make dinner, when the laundry pile reaches the sky and it seems like I am never, ever, ever going to be alone without someone climbing on me, when everyone is sick or everyone is tired and me too, well, I wonder what the heck I was thinking in having all these children. But I never get the sense that those moments happen to me all that much more than other parents. More, sure, but not that much more.

When I return from something to have five little people screaming "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!" like I'm a rock star, or when my 13 year old, almost-looking-grownup teenage son cradles his sleepy baby brother on his shoulder, or when three toddlers march around the room singing "Wain, wain go today!", or even when my teens and preteens have burping contests and my 13 year old burps her Dad under the table, I wonder what other people do for entertainment (ok, I really do think there could be less entertainment from burping, but you get my point).

Not everyone should have a large family, because well, some people don't want one. Family size is a personal decision, mostly. But sometimes it isn't so much a decision at all as an event that is taken out of your hands - the little pink lines on the stick, the grandchildren whose parents can't care for them, the neighbor teen in trouble with nowhere to sleep, the child you adopted or fostered suddenly has a baby sibling.... And sometimes it is a choice to say "Hey, I can stretch my comfort zone. 'Cause maybe it isn't as hard as it looks, and out there are a whole heck of a lot of children who would love to be part of your big family." And for a few of us crazy ones, the art of making a family greater than the sum of its parts is its own kind of reward.

sastyk Mon, 07/13/2015 - 09:04

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foster parenting

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Nice to see you've still got your heads above water :) I'm more of a community person rather than a kid person but my take is everything helps.

viv

Interesting to hear this. We fostered and adopted an older child (age 11) from foster care, who was only cleared for placement as a "youngest by 5 years or only child" due to his high needs. Parenting him has made me feel baffled by how anyone could be crazy enough to have more than one child. But I recognize that his behavioral needs and life history probably make him way harder to parent than a bio kid or a foster child with fewer special needs.

Love this. People can't understand why we still want to add to our family. And they can't understand why we want to adopt more older kids. It's HARD. But not that hard. We're limited by our physical space. With only 4 bedrooms we have one for mom and dad, one for the girls (2), one for the boys (3), and one we're holding open for another adoptive placement. But I have the van, 12 passengers baby!!

Very interesting story.........very great effort.

Good on you. I noticed when my second child was born I dropped my standards. But that's a good thing! Just about everything in our house is grubbier but no one is unhappier.

Thank you for this! We only have one adopted child and one foster child, but some people seem to think we're pushing our limits and a little crazy. Your story is a reminder that most of us are capable of way more than we think — and that many things aren't as impossible as we think.

Good to hear from you again! Your adventures are crazy-wonderful. I have always admired large families and their ability to bond. Keep up your spirits. You are an inspiration to us all.

Hi Sharon!
So glad to see you are still in the running with all those lovely children! My kids remember coming to your farm for turkeys so fondly! When I told them you had added 5 or 6 more children to the mix they thought it was the greatest thing ever. Even though at 18, 16 and 13 they aren't thinking they'll EVER have kids! LOL!! I tell them...just wait! You don't know the plan!! xo to you and yours!
Heidi, Ivy, Hannah and Wells

It's really out of my expectation.

Wow, that's a really wonderful experience of running a big family. And I do think being the parent of many children is not harder than the sum
-TPT-197 HCl http://www.bocsci.com/description.asp?id=462306&cid=84

At Long Last....Introducing Zion!!

sastyk — Fri, 13 Jun 2014 08:27:46 +0000

At Long Last....Introducing Zion!!

We adopted him on Wednesday, with 30+ family and friends in attendance. It was fabulous. The judge did a wonderful job of including ALL my children in what was a special day for our family, and then we partied.

The funniest moment was that the lawyer had spelled his middle name incorrectly (Raphael/Rafael) and the judge was clearly prepared to delay things to change the paperwork when I announced "Nope, we're good, we'll take your spelling!" I wasn't doing ANYTHING to make this take one minute longer.

It takes a little while to sink in, since he's always been my baby, but now he's my baby in a new way, and that can never change. And damn does it feel good.

Sharon

sastyk Fri, 06/13/2014 - 04:27

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adoption

Family

Sharon I'm so happy for all of you! And what a cutie!

Congratulations! I am so happy for all of you!

Congratulations to you and your entire family :)

As my fishing buddy would say "Them's a keeper".

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!!!

Oh, so many wonderful thoughts and congratulations. What a wonderful special day to share with your family and friends.

So happy for you and your family!

Congratulations! He is the most gorgeous, happy looking child.

That's wonderful news! Congratulations to you and your family!

Congratulations! Are all adoption judges so caring? Ours even let us include him in the pictures we took at the end.

Brilliant news- congratulations!

Congratulation! What a darling smile!

Congratulations! You are right he is just full of cuteness!

Congratulations! He is so adorable!!

Congratulations!! And yay pictures; he's a cutie!

Congratulations

Blessings on you all!

Congratulations to all the family, Sharon. I'm happy for you all.

Over-the-moon happy for you!!! Congratulations!!

What a handsome little boy, congratulations!

So very happy for the whole family! Congratulations!!!
Doesn't hurt that he is absolutely gorgeous! ;-)

Hooray! Congratulations! He looks like such a happy boy.

Mazel tov!

Congratulations, he is adorable!

On the Variability of Parenting Ability

sastyk — Fri, 13 Jun 2014 08:14:44 +0000

On the Variability of Parenting Ability

(Some of my kids watching sheep mothering their babies)

Over the last decade a whole lot of babies have been born on my farm or brought home to it. We have had calves, chicks, kids (goat), kids (human), ducklings, goslings, kits and lambs. One of the most fascinating revelations of this is just how variable the instinct for parenting is among animals. Among closely related goats, for example, we have had among our best mothers, and our single worst one, a doe so dim that she would stand there screaming for her baby but refuse to move any closer to the baby who was screaming just as hysterically from hunger only a few feet away.

Some domestic species are bred for mothering ability - for example our Cochin and Wyandotte hens have been spectacular, devoted mothers. Some breeds of duck are good mothers, others are famous for leading their babies through cold wet grass and then drowning them. When panicked rabbits will devour their own young, and occasionally a new rabbit Mom will do this with a litter - but there are some that seem to just enjoy eating their babies.

Even within those breeds known for their parenting ability, however, there is a fair degree of variability. Khaki Campbells are supposed to be good mothers, but we have had a khaki whose relationship to the eggs she hatched out was "Sayonara, Suckas" and who had to be penned in with her babies, and others who are terrific. Runner ducks are generally poor mothers, but one of ours raised hatching after hatching, nurturing them even as adults.

Our late goats Morgan and Selene would happily "granny" any babies that other goats couldn't care for - both of them fostered other goats, and both would stay with the young ones even if none of them were theirs. Selene even tried to raise a lamb once, having an intense relationship through an electric fence with a baby who called incessently for her mother (this sheep mother was fine, but laid back, kind of like me "I don't see blood, so I'll get there when I get there..." ;-)).

It is not clear to me what makes this variability either - Selene, one of my best mothers, was the mother of one of my worst mothers. This doe had the experience of both good parenting and the genes for fabulous mothering, to the extent these things are heritable in goats, and she still was pretty much a loss.

Male parenting ability too is highly variable - we've had roosters who were incredibly diligent about bringing food to the babies and protecting them, bucks who stayed with the mothers and babies rather than foraging, and a goose father who got left to single parent when his partner took off for a neighboring pond, and did a fine job.

We get a certain amount of opportunity to watch wild creatures parent as well - and we note the same variability. One pair of barn swallows invariably chooses poor nest positioning and loses babies, while the Pheobes that return year after year to my front porch do quite well. This is not a scientific sampling, nor would I attempt to draw any real conclusion from it about parenting ability in any particular species, including human, but as a set of broad views of a lot of breeding creatures, it does tend to lead in one general direction - parenting ability is highly variable, even allowing for the also-highly-variable norms of various species and breeds within species. While it is possible to make generalizations, it is also necessary to acknowledge individuation.

This is one of those things that you can come to accept and expect in animals, particularly domestic ones. You can select for good mothering in your breeding programs, or select against it (for example, for people who want eggs but not chicks, selecting against setting behavior makes sense), raise animals by hand or foster them on other animals with better mothering ability, or change breeds. With hens and ducks we tend to encourage mothering ability, even though it costs us some eggs since we like self-perpetuation in our flocks. With goats we strongly encourage it, removing from our breeding herd any goat that does a poor job (very rare with Nigerian Dwarf goats, but it does happen).

But for all the degree to which this is visible in farm life, we tend not, as human beings, to expect variability at all in human parenting ability - despite the fact that such variability is evident to us. That is, some human beings are good at parenting, some not so much, but we tend to work on the assumption that not being a good parent makes you monstrous or evil, rather than lacking in a natural ability.

There is also a lot of variability in how well we are able to know ourselves on this issue - and how much choice is actually available to us. Some people realize from early on or in adulthood that they do not want to be parents or would not be good at it, and choose not to be - but this can be challenging, because there is enormous pressure o parent in our society, and it is assumed that most people can and should want to.

My favorite scene in the 80s movie "Parenthood" (which we have a tradition of watching every time we add a child or sibling group permanently to our family) is archetypical absent father Jason Robards' speech about why he hated being a father. He admits he knows his son thinks he was a lousy Dad, admits it, and that his son has become a good father in contrast. He tells Steve Martin (the oldest of Robards' character's four children) how much he resented his son for making him be afraid of losing him, and that that feeling does not goes away. "It never ends. You never get to spike the ball in the end zone and do your victory dance. It never ends." It is a stunningly moving moment.

The movie itself has its limitations, but that alone transcends them - the fact that a movie about parenting can admit that you can become a parent and find you've made a terrible mistake and are now caught up in it. And it never ends. I wonder how many people have that experience - and cannot speak about it.

I think I find that scene so moving because when I was pregnant 15 years ago with Eli, that was my deepest fear - what if I hated it, what if I felt trapped and angry, what if I didn't love my child, what if no instincts kicked in and I always felt awkward and wrong and couldn't take good care of a baby? That did not happen for me - it turned out that while I'm not in any way perfect at it, I like this mothering thing, and while I make my share of mistakes, for the most part, I can hack it. BUt I knew in my guts from the moment I became pregnant that my wanting children, my wanting to be a mother, did not necessarily mean that my interior abilities would match up.

Even if they had not, I was committed to doing the job. But that was comparatively easy for me, middle class, educated, with a supportive family, an experience of loving parenting and a lot of practice babysitting in my youth. I also had the cultural capacity and education and inner-understanding to say no to parenthood if I had not wanted to be a mother.

That is not, however, the only way to be in the world. Some people clearly do feel a strong desire to have children, but experience little capacity to parent successfully. Others may not feel a desire to parent but lack the resources to prevent pregnancy, withstand cultural and familial pressure or even make choices at all in a conscious way.

My own sense is that parenting ability is not a function of class, culture, intelligence or many other factors, but something distinct in itself. Those things can help, but they are not the same as ability to mother or father. One of the best and most loving and devoted fathers I have ever seen was severely developmentally delayed. Wonderful, loving parents exist in all cultures and societies and throughout human history, despite enormous cultural variation in parenting norms. Desperately poor parents can be wonderful, and many parents facing huge barries to good parenting overcome them.

Inability to care for or attach to your children properly can be better concealed or compensated for with more money or education to outsource some things - middle class or upper class educated people who cannot parent are more likely to keep their kids, but that doesn't make parenting ability a function of money, education, culture or a particular set of prior experiences.

Trying to explain some of the parents my children have encountered in our foster journey to my kids, I point out that there are multiple factors in parenting ability. First, there's that biological thing that goats and chickens and people all seem to have - something that exists in all species that raise their young.

Then there is the experience of being parented yourself, which is highly variable, and while a lot of different ways of doing it can lead to good outcomes, there are some things we know we need, particularly that root attachment to a caregiver in infancy. Third there is learning and practice - people can learn to parent by helping out with the baby, babysitting, taking classes, watching good role models, etc... Finally there are how high the barriers are to good parenting. Barriers are things that prevent you from doing a good job - could be physical or mental illnesses that sap your strength or resources, could be lack of shelter or economic resources, could be lack of experience with being parented or attachment disorders, could be drugs or alcohol, various physical dangers...and so on. Everyone has some barriers, everyone has some ability to parent, everyone has some experience, good, ill or mostly mixed, of being parented, and everyone has some ability to learn. The question is how much of each and what can you do to help facilitate - to teach, to lower barriers, to help people understand the ways that they were parented and what that means for how they parent...

Of these the biological parenting drive is the one we are least familiar with in many ways, most likely to mythologize and also, I think, most likely to mistakenly assume uniformity in. We tend to assume that all of us have some natural ability to parent, and if we didn't, we wouldn't - but the truth is that the level of insight that allows people to decide they would not be good parents is a rarer thing. And not everyone fully chooses their reproductive life - particularly among the poorest, most vulnerable and most disabled, who are often the parents of my children. It can be frustrating to watch and tempting to judge parents harshly when they fail unless there is a clear reason - but it is possible that reasons exist that have not been fully obvious to us.

I make no claims about how common or uncommon low biological ability to parent is, or which people have or don't have it. I would only suggest this - that while certain acts of birth parents are unacceptable and wrong, not being able to be a good parent is not, in fact, necessarily a sign of evil or being a bad human being. It may simply be that we need to expect that parenting ability is complex, poorly understood, and may include some innate abilities that some folks just don't have - and that judgement for that lack of ability (as opposed to judgement about specific consequences for offspring) may not be fair or just.

Moreover, that if we want to reduce child abuse and neglect in our world, we need to have a world where it is possible to articulate our interior experience of both desire to parent and our sense of our own ability, and also where there is simply much less pressure on people to parent and conform to perceived norms. What if it were possible to describe and discuss our sense of our own parenting ability the way we talk about eyesight - some very clear, some very limited, but no personal judgement on what you were born with? I wonder how many people might feel free to not have children - or if they discover too late that they do not make good parents, to openly and freely make other arrangements for their children, rather than facing a huge stigma, because everyone who loves their kids is supposed to want to parent them. Even though if they don't.

sastyk Fri, 06/13/2014 - 04:14

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biology

Family

Our Family Discusses Love, Favoritism and Fur

sastyk — Tue, 04 Feb 2014 08:45:43 +0000

Our Family Discusses Love, Favoritism and Fur

Yesterday morning Isaiah (10) asked me with a grin on his face: "Which one of us is your FAVORITE child?"

My answer "None of you. I like Rubeus best. He's quiet, and soft, never talks to me, and takes care of almost all his own needs."

D. (11) "But he's not a kid, he's a cat."

Me: "Shhh...you'll make him feel bad. He's my baby too."

D. "But you aren't a cat and you didn't give birth to him."

Me: "I didn't give birth to you either, and just because you don't look like me doesn't make you not my baby. We don't discriminate in this family on the grounds of fuzzy ears and paws either."

D. "He's still not a kid, so he can't be your favorite."

Me: "You are just jealous because you can't lick yourself clean."

D. <Cracks up.>

---------------------------

Isaiah (again with a huge grin on his face - he likes to start trouble): "I think Simon and D. are really suffering inside since they learned you love the cat better than them."

D: "I'm not. I don't care if you love the cat."

Simon(12): "Well, I am a little, and there's definitely a coldness now between me and Rubeus. So Mom, are we at least in your top 100?"

Me: "Absolutely."

Simon: "Where in the top 100?"

Me: "Well, behind the goats, the cats and the dog. But I don't think I love the individual poultry better than I love you guys. You are definitely in the top 75, even."

D. "She's just kidding."

Simon: "I don't know, Mom - I see you tucking the chickens in at night and reading bedtime stories to the ducks. I'm a little hurt that you like them better. But I think chocolate cookies and watching three hours of Muppet Show episodes would help me feel better."

Asher (8): "Me too - I definitely need to feel better."

D. "I'm going to need a LOT of cookies."

sastyk Tue, 02/04/2014 - 03:45

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Family

Well-played m'lady. Well-played :)

Always nice to see that a sense of humor is inheritable!

Sorry for the Radio Silence...Update on Classes, Posts, Kids and More

sastyk — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 13:56:52 +0000

Sorry for the Radio Silence...Update on Classes, Posts, Kids and More

Things have been a little nuts here.

Two weeks ago Eric and I took an emergency placement of two children, six and 17 mos. It turned out to be one of the most exhausting and stressful placements we've ever had, not because of the kids, who are delightful (although I had somehow forgotten what 17month olds are like - the "oh, yeah, I was hoping you'd pull all those books off the shelves and try and feed them to the cat" quality of that age toddler ;-)), but because of really complicated circumstances I can't talk about. Let us just say it involves a lot of things we've never been buried in and there have been a LOT of ups and downs for the kids, for us, plus some language complexities since the family is partly non-English speaking (I forgot how tiring it is is to constantly be translating, until the "automatic" kicks back in) and everyone is pretty exhausted. The children are wonderful, but the circumstances are hard. They will probably be with us until the middle of next next month.

Add in finishing my book (which was supposed to go to the editor umm...a bit ago), Passover preparation plus seder for 26, and Eli's rapidly approaching adaptive bar mitzvah (he doesn't have a lot of language due to autism), and we've been overwhelmed. In the midst of all of this, I had the odd experience of something I wrote (My piece below "What Foster Parents Wish Other People Knew) going semi-viral, showing up on Andrew Sullivan, including an appearance (sadly without me, I was out foster parenting when they called to get me on the show) on Talk of the Nation. Which was pretty freakin' amazing. I've had a lot of interview requests about it since then, which have also been keeping me busy.

Oh, and we had six baby goats born in early March due to an accidental fence crossing last year, and have been nurturing our babies through - Clara, Beethoven, Mussorgsky, Nocturne and Sonata are all doing beautifully now, as are their mothers. Normal baby goat season will resume shortly, as hopefully spring actually comes.

So, apologies for the comparative quiet. Things seem to be settling down a little now, we're actually getting a tiny bit of sleep, and I hope to be back to normal, finish the bloody book, and get started on other things.

Among other things, I've had a LOT of questions about when I'm going to run classes again, and I had planned almost two weeks ago to put this information up, but well...things ensued. I'm offering three classes, two of them brand new over the next month and a half, so please email me at jewishfarmer@gmail.com to find out more.

All my classes are offered ONLINE on FACEBOOK (you do have to use FB to participate, but I'm happy to help you create an anonymous account only for this class) and are ASYNCHRONOUS (ie, you participate when you have the time, I put material up on particular days and respond as we go) The classes I'm offering are:

1. NEW! Sustainable Garden Planning to be offered over 4 weeks, Starting Thursday April 5 and running to Thursday April 26. The class will focus on maximizing your garden, whatever its size or shape with perennials, season extension, critical edible crops for sustainable production and food security, and crops suited to preservation. I'll help you come up with a garden plan designed to get you the most from the fewest inputs both purchased and of time and energy. Cost of the class is $100 and I have a couple of scholarship spots available as well, email me for details.

2. NEW! Crisis Intersections and Personal Planning This is a four week class running from Tuesday April 9 to Tuesday April 30 on how energy, climate, economic and various social and demographic issues are likely to intersect. The class will focus on the feedback loops and connections between them with an emphasis on understanding how the future may play out given our complex collective crisis. My husband Eric Woods, a Physics Professor focusing on Environmental Physics will also participate in this class to provide some additional perspective. The goal here is to help people understand more fully what is coming, and also to be able to get a better sense of how it will play out in their region, their local economy, their communities, etc... Cost of the class is $100 and I have a couple of scholarship spots available. Please email for details.

3. Food Preservation and Storage This is a six week class beginning May 2 designed to get you ready for the garden/farmer's market season, to teach both basic and advanced food preservation, and also to help you build up your storage. We'll cover all the major techniques from canning to drying to lactofermentation, we'll also talk about bulk purchasing, food storage on a budget, dealing with special diets and health issues and many other subjects. I'm going to limit the class size here to make sure everyone comes out with a plan for their next steps and the skills to take advantage of the season's produce, so please register early. Cost of the class is $150 and I do have a few scholarship spots available. Please email at jewishfarmer@gmail.com for details.

sastyk Fri, 03/29/2013 - 09:56

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classes

Family

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Mothering for Money

sastyk — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 15:41:05 +0000

Mothering for Money

Most of the comments people make about our slightly changeable and somewhat odd family are lovely. Like all parents my husband and I love hearing how beautiful our kids are, how well behaved (even when it isn't always true), how nice it is to see us all together, what fun it is to see a big family having a good time.

There are a few that trouble me a little, but I understand why people make those comments - our family is different and strange, and people are processing how to respond to it. I've made mistakes when in those kinds of situations too, so I don't mind it. I know some people get offended easily, but I generally don't - the reason is that our family DOES occupy a strange and unfamiliar place in the cultural landscape, and people don't always know what to say in those cases. Indeed, I'm going to talk a lot more about just how strange that space is in a moment.

Among the comments that do trouble me, I dislike being called a saint or told how noble we are. The reality is that no one has children by any mechanism because they nobly want to help children. For that there are plenty of outlets of service - lots of ways to help children. The only reason to take kids into your home day and night and love them and live with them for the rest of their childhoods is because you love kids and want to have them there. We don't do it out of nobility of spirit, we do it because the kids give us something we want, just like all parents. I know this one is totally well intentioned, but it bothers me just a little because the implication seems to be that THESE children are different, that one takes them because of a charitable or noble impulse, not for the same reason anyone becomes a parent. In fact, that's not true - the kids we've had have been some of the most wonderful, fun, loveable people I've ever known, and I'm by far the richer for them. I didn't have my own biological kids out of selflessness, I don't do this from that impulse either.

A lot of people say "I could never do that." I don't usually say what I think about this, but I always want to say "Well, yes, you could. And in another time or another place, you probably would have." Consider what HIV did in Africa. A whopping 95% of all Ugandan children were taken in by family - often older teens just barely able to care for them or grandparents. Think about what happened in Haiti after the earthquake when rural families took in whole families - and thousands of orphaned children. Yes, you could do it. The difference is that in our culture, only a few people have to want to do this work - but you could.

Often what people mean is "I couldn't give them back." And I get that - giving them back IS really hard. At the same time, most of us love and lose in our lives and it doesn't stop us from seeking to love again and again. Moreover, I think the underlying assumption is that you will be giving the kids back to terrible, horrible people. And sometimes that does happen in foster care, although so far never to me, but thankfully more often what you are doing is giving the kids to extended family, relatives who have done no harm and love them, or maybe to parents who really are trying to pull their lives together. Faced with a grandfather who travelled 30 hours on a bus to carry his beloved grandkids home, with the aunt willing to take a fourth child into her two bedroom public housing project because he's family, you could do it too. Because if it was your nephew or niece or grandchild, no matter how wonderful and loving the foster parents, you would want them in YOUR family.

I know that is hard to understand from outside, when people ask "But how can you do it?" I really get it. Until I did it, I didn't know either. And some days the thought of giving Baby Z. back is the worst thought in the whole wide world. When recently I learned more about the biological family that may take him eventually, I thought "Dammit, I don't want to humanize them. I don't want to understand that they grieve that this little part of their family is out of it. I don't want them to be real - I just want them to go away." But they are real, and I don't know what the future holds for Z, and it may be that as hard as this will be, I may be glad to give over the child - in the same way that I'd be glad if someone had taken in my nieces in a crisis point in my sister's life, and grateful to that they gave them to me when the time came. It is hard. Most of the best things I've done in my life were hard.

Sometimes the questions are funny. My favorite was the time I was on a playground with 2 1/2 year old M., watching my little, very black foster son go up and down the slide. An acquaintance came up and asked "Are you going to tell him he's adopted?" There were so many things wrong with that question that all I could do was laugh and ask "Why? Do you think he'll guess?"

A childless person once accused me of foster parenting as an ego trip, getting to view myself as a heroic child-saver and getting all sorts of praise for it. Now I do get a lot of praise for this because I am a semi-public person. The problem is (and the reason I mention childlessness) is that that praise doesn't necessarily do what you think it would. Like most parents, I walk around with a voice in my head when someone says "What a great parent you are" thinking "If only you knew." I know all of us do (one of the best parents I know recently used just those words), but parenting for me isn't really an ego boost, and foster parenting even less. The reality is that children in general, and traumatized children in specific push you to the wall and show you the limits of yourself in ways that are hard to imagine if you've never parented. Foster parenting, with a whole host of ethical dilemmas and complicated issues from "What kinds of disabilities am I really ready to accept" to "How do I judge other people" to "How hard it is to love a kid who is furious at being here and who hates you for not being their parent" to "What is my temper really like" is really a great way to come to know yourself. It is a lousy place to feed your ego. I don't mean that in a bad way - the best experiences are the ones that push you hard and make you know who you are. But it isn't something you do to raise self-esteem.

A few questions aren't offensive, but are too intrusive - I do have an obligation to maintain my foster children's confidentiality, so while I reveal some general details "His parents just can't parent..." I can't really tell you everything - and honestly, I don't really want to. The kids have the right to privacy too. Again, these don't upset me, because I know they don't extend from malice - and in some respects, because I tend to be so open about my life in a public way, they are a logical thing. I just have to draw a line at some point, but I don't take offense.

The only one that really bothers me is one of the most common - it is the statement that we must do it for the money. This one gets on my nerves for several reasons - and one of them is that the money is a real issue for foster parents, but probably not how you think - but I'll get to that in a minute.

The first thing that bothers me about this idea is that it presumes I'm dumber than dirt or malicious. While it is true that there are a few really rotten foster homes that "do it for the money" and deprive their foster kids in order to turn a profit, these are a tiny minority - and you really have to be pretty evil to take your profit from the neglect of traumatized kids. I make no pretensions to nobility or sainthood, but defrauding the elderly and small children is a too sleazy for my taste.

Moreover, as a way of doing anything for the money, it is one of the dumbest ways I've ever heard of. For example, the per kid rate for subsidized daycare in my area is $40 per week more than my foster stipend for taking the same child. The home daycare certification process is less onerous, daycare kids go home at night, if they are throwing up the provider can ask them to stay home, parents often provide diapers and clothing, etc... (which should NOT be taken as any kind of a slur on childcare providers who often work long hours and provide a LOT for their kids, this is just an example for comparison). So why on EARTH would I do this for the money when I could make much more money and get tons more sleep? Flipping burgers pays MUCH better (I make about 62 cents an hour - and that's before costs). I vaguely resent the assumption that I can't do arithmetic.

In fact, most of the foster families I know lose money. I lose it in time I don't spend writing (way more lucrative), in lost hours for dealing with illness. We lose it in having to maintain a household ready for up to 10 kids, while in fact, we have only five. We lose it in household costs to please the state (buying milk, for example, because foster kids can't drink our goat's milk, or home structural changes we had to make and pay for before we could be licensed). We feed our kids what we eat - wholesome, local food for the most part. We get a per diem for clothing - but I'd have to wait a whole year to get the $300 annually we are paid back for - but a kid who is in my home a month needs a full wardrobe and several sets of shoes, a winter coat in season, etc... even though I'll only ever get $30 for everything. There are dozens of little things like this that make me really grateful for all the help I've received from so many people - because if we had to do this all outright, we never could.

Many foster families are seriously challenged financially - the kids may have special needs that require tons of time - and lost work. I know several who have lost jobs due to the needs of their kids. Others spend all the subsidy on childcare (some states subsidize childcare, some don't). Sometimes even if the state reimburses for things, they do so so sporadically that I know more than one foster parent who are fighting collection cases for medical services or other things that months later they still haven't gotten a check for. I recently was told politely by our beloved pediatrician's office that while they won't send our case to collection (punishing us for a Medicaid problem, which technically they legally could do), they won't take any further foster children either due to chronic non-payment by the state. Yikes. Another family was told the state will reimburse them for their son's medical needs...eventually, as long as they are prepared to put out the 3,000 bucks up front.

A sibling group of four would provide a monthly income on the order of what I'd make burger flipping full time - but foster care isn't consistent, either. We go months in many cases without a placement, and have to keep everything in place and ready for that group of four - even when there are no kids in our home.

But besides the "they think I'm an idiot and can't do arithmetic" issue here, there's something much more serious. The prevalence of the "doing it for the money" belief is really tough on the kids. I know more than one foster child who has come home in tears - or simply resolving not to trust their foster family because they were told at school or by a "helpful" grownup that their foster parents don't LOVE them, they are getting paid to take care of them - that they aren't part of a family, and it is just a job. This is SO destructive to kids who have no real reason to trust us anyway. I try to warn older kids of this upfront, and to be very clear about what the money is and is not - it is a stipend (not a paycheck, more on this in a minute) for the kids' care, one that by no calculation covers the actual cost of raising the kids (at least one independent evaluation places New York state stipends as covering about 1/2 the cost).

The reality is that the answer to "You don't love me, you just get paid to take care of me" from either your biological or foster children is the same. "Honey, I must love you, because there isn't enough money in the world to make me put up with you otherwise sometimes." The truth is the pay is poor, the burdens onerous, the work exhausting - and the joy well worth it. The money doesn't enter into it - I lose money on all my kids, and I'm delighted to do so.

Except, of course, that it does. It does when families push themselves to the financial limit to keep fostering. It does when families use the stipend of several kids to enable parents to stay home - and are made to feel tremendous guilt for that. And it does when foster parents with children who really need an at-home parent struggle to provide that because of the skimpiness of the stipends. It does for me too - I'd still foster if there was no reimbursement, but would my family be able to swing sibling groups of 3, 4, 5, 6 kids? Maybe. Maybe not. I admit, I have never quite wanted to do the math.

The money lurks under all of this. We don't do it for the money - that's too easy and too cheap, but money is no less a part of our lives than anyone else's. But the fear that we might actually be doing this for an income is a very interesting one in and of itself. Think about it - you don't ever say of your doctor, working with the most desperately ill patients "she's only doing it for the money" or of a teacher selflessly devoting herself to her severely disabled students beyond the call of duty "She's only doing it for the money." Yes, they get paid, but there is a fundamental recognition that they get more than that.

In fact, Foster Parents DON'T get paid, but we are constantly accused of doing it "for the money" as though we've done something wrong - because we feel so very squeamish about the issue of parenting as work and about money in domestic life. That's the really interesting part of this for me, besides the fascination of seeing the collapse of my society from the people hit hardest up close, and the joys of the kids - that my work "mothering for money" places me at an intellectual margin that challenges what we think family is, what we think constitutes work and how we value children. I couldn't do this if I didn't love and want kids, but the view from here of the larger society is one so fascinating that I think it is worth some more exploration. Why are foster parents so vulnerable to this accusation? The implication, of course, is that if they do it for the money they don't love their children, that is all that there is - but why? I would argue that foster parenting opens up a space that we're not very comfortable with - the question of whether being a parent is really work or not.

The easy answer would be that we are judged this way for the same reason prostitutes are assumed to be "doing it for the money" - once you intrude a check into what is among the most intimate and personal of all relationships, you have made the entire thing questionable - no one can ever sincerely trust that the money IS NOT the fundamental motivator. Except that we don't assume it is just for the money when you are a parent of a disabled child receiving SSDI, or when you are receiving child support, or for that matter, receiving a tax deduction for your children.

Indeed For most of human history, as I've written elsewhere, the economic relationship between parents and children was a real one - SOME kinds of economic relationships are viewed as tainted - taking a couple of hundreds for sex does seem to call into question your love for one another. At the same time, my receiving my husband's share of SSI later on doesn't (if, by any chance, it is around, which it probably won't be) evoke charges that I just spent the last 40 years with him for the $693 bucks a month. So I think that's too simple. Or maybe I just don't want to be called a Mommy-whore.

What do I mean by saying we don't get paid? I mean that quite literally - all states are entirely clear on this - foster care board payments are STIPENDS for the use of the children. Because of this, foster parenting is not a profession. In fact, no one is really sure what we are - except marginal. We're something strange and bizarre - because the state feels strongly that being a parent is not, in fact a job. So we get no paychecks, no benefits, no social security. We have no unions, we cannot really organize, and have no clear status. On the other hand, we also aren't taxed on the stipends.

We're often implicitly treated as low-grade employees of the county or agency we work with, and we can be critiqued and shut down on grounds of not complying with our "bosses" requirements. Because not professionals, so there's no need to listen to us or give us status and standing. We still have to take training, accept regulation, and get fingerprinted like any professional who works with kids, but we are not professional. And to our good, it is still not clear what constitutes a "good" foster home - that is, it isn't possible to standardize it. Social workers must visit regularly to ensure that we're treating kids well and safely, but most places have to acknowledge that there are a lot of really different kinds of homes that make good foster homes - that there's no one thing out there that constitutes the "right" foster family.

This is because the state doesn't think that parenting is a job - it is something else. An avocation, a volunteer role, a semi-professional state - no one really knows. But let's be honest, most of us don't really think parenting is a job either. Remember I said that it was really revealing to stand in this marginal space?

A few months ago, we all stood their when Hilary Rosen pointed out that Ann Romney never worked a day in her life. There was a lot of outrage at Rosen. But let's be honest - how many of you didn't know what Rosen meant? What we thought was "Oh, that was politically stupid because she forget to give nominal credit to "motherhood..the toughest job you'll ever...whatever" but none of us failed to understand the distinction between parenting work and outside work. We didn't think "What does she mean?" We thought "what a jerky way to say it." And it is precisely here in the foster trenches that you see the ambiguity of motherhood and fatherhood as work - we do not, in fact, view parenting as real work. And it isn't even entirely clear that we should - or that we can.

This stands outside the larger question of whether money is involved. Of course money is involved - money is always involved in all issues of family. I have written before about the danger of trying to write economic costs and benefits out of family narratives, whether in marriage or with children, but saying that money is bound up in this does not answer the question - what kind of work is mothering and fathering?

Don't get me wrong, I think parenting is one hell of a hard job. But then the reality is that you get to call your job your job whether the work is hard or not - someone who picks beans for 12 hours a day has a job. A long-tenured faculty member who hasn't published anything or taught a new class in 20 years also has a job. So really, the idea that mothering the rich isn't work doesn't hold up logically - we don't evaluate the category of work by its difficulty. While I agree with Rosen's attempt to call out Mitt Romney's social welfare policies, that wasn't a great way to do it. At the same time, the fact that we all knew exactly what Rosen meant comes from the fact that we are at best ambivalent and often openly hostile to the idea that parenting is work that has real social value.

You see this most clearly at the margins of society - with welfare recipients, and also in foster parenting. Consider the radical change from the Great Society Era of "welfare" to the modern one. In the 1960s it was considered eminently reasonable to pay low income women to stay home and raise their young children - after all, parenting was work, and someone engaged in that work was deserving of support. That's not to say that anti-poverty programs haven't had their critics all along, but enough people agreed that poor women should be able to be with their kids that such a program was viable.

By the 1980s it was under intensive fire, and by the 1990s dismantled - parenting was no longer a "real" job, and low and middle income women who struggled with jobs and childrearing resented the heck out of poorer women getting to stay home. Mitt Romney's welfare-to-work programs, which insisted that women be out there getting a job right away is a legacy of that - and it isn't only a legacy of the right, because after all, it was under Bill Clinton that the programs were dismantled. Ultimately the mainstream ceased to feel that domestic parenting labor had significant value, value enough for society to support. It was enough that poor women were home with their kids a bit at night, just like all the other working women - they didn't need to be with them all the time.

Society does support foster parenting...sorta...kinda. But it resists very strongly the idea of professional parents - even though they exist. The reality is that group homes and some specialized foster homes (those dealing with kids with major medical needs that require constant care or theraputic homes dealing with the most troubled foster kids) ARE professional foster parents (and also loving PARENTS) - and they need to be, because the kids need full time parents, and money does not grow on trees. Indeed, many kids in the system who don't qualify for theraputic care could use just that - a full time parent to deal with medical and behavioral needs, but that often isn't an option, precisely because the system is so deeply averse to professionalizing parenthood.

Ultimately, working with the poorest, most troubled and most vulnerable kids gives you a sense of how much segments of society want to value everyone equally - and how badly we fail at this. My kids get access to some amazing resources and generosity. And yet there other very basic needs that no one fills because of budget cuts and lack of interest.

Last year my county issued new guidelines for reimbursement in the face of substantive budget kids to foster care - among them the fact that they would no longer reimburse for transportation for any "routine" transport that was consonant with the ordinary realities of family life. That means no more reimbursement for educational transportation (even though many foster kids attend schools in districts very far away from their new homes), court dates (of course, doesn't every family have those), jail visits (ditto) and a host of other "normal" family activities that don't come up a lot in my household except when fostering. Now there's nothing wrong with those things being part of your life, I just was fascinated by the emergence of a new sense of what constitutes normal family life. Ultimately the circumstances of many of the most marginal families are the ones that my family can be expected to mimic in financial expectations - that is, the families that are clients of social services have court dates and jail visits - why should I expect to be different, or expect to get paid for hauling my kids to and fro to them?

This can be tremendously frustrating for foster parents for a host of reasons. It is tough when high-need kids (and most of the kids in the system simply have needs that are much greater than most (not all) biological children will) can't get what they want because both Mom and Dad (or Mom and Mom or Dad and Dad or whatever) have to work full time to keep them fed. It is frustrating because of the lack of respect for foster parenting that is fostered by ambiguous status. Foster parents need nothing so much as a union, I believe, because often they are taken advantage of by a county that is focused on the kids (rightly) and see the family as a means to an end and nothing more, tools to be used and abused. Better reimbursement could attract more and better foster families, and it could make it possible to give kids some things they really need.

This ambiguous status reflects something important, however. That is, that the FAMILY cannot be fully industrialized. We live in a society that has professionalized, externalized, commercialized and industrialized pretty much everything that was once domestic, local, part of a commons or private space. Dinner? Available at thousands of locations near you. Caring for grandma? A host of assisted living options at your finger tips. Breastfeeding? Formula is just as good - and far more profitable. Self-provisioning? Outdated, just shop - there's plenty of food at the store. None of the things that the domestic sphere have historically provided remains outside the realm of the industrial - except this one.

The single and only thing that has resisted full industrialization is the family as a space for the raising of children. It has been partly externalized - daycare centers, preschools, schools and creches create public and for-profit spaces that share the basic role of childcare. But while there's a lot of debate about how much good or bad daycare is, what isn't debatable is that children MUST have a family to go home to in order to be successful. Attachment to a few primary adults in your life as an infant and young child is critical to both neurological development and the ability to have normal human relationships. No children's house, no orphanage, no other institution has ever been able to take the place of the family at this level. The destructive cost of not having this to society is so clear and so great (you can begin looking at research from Eastern European orphanages to start with this, but even kibbutz child houses ultimately went the way of the dodo) that we MUST provide families for children who cannot live in their families of origin.

I rail against the system that doesn't value domestic labor, but I wonder sometimes - would I really want to live in a society that managed to fully professionalize what I do? I don't mind losing money, although it is a struggle sometimes - but I don't make money on my bio kids, so why would I expect to on other kids? Moreover, the fact that this one kind of work I do can't be replaced - not by paid caregivers, not by robots, not by certified pros - because the reality is that no matter how awesomely trained and certified you are, the fundamental coin of family life is not money and it is not training - it is family-ness. It is a thing you can't buy or sell, coin or organize, collectivize or privatize - it is the reality of you are mine and I am yours and I'll jump in front of a bus to protect you if I have to or more realistically, figure out a way to make the paycheck stretch a little further so that we can go do something fun on Thursday. It isn't necessarily done best by the smartest guys in the room or the most savvy (although smart savvy people make awesome parents and foster parents too), but by the most ordinary people. And it cannot be replaced, unless you are willing tolerate unbearable harm to children.

As much as I would love to see foster parent reimbursements pegged to income (for the lowest income caregivers, often kinship providers who take in family members, the rate of reimbursements are not merely inconvenient, they are appalling), and for us to revisit the question of how domestic family labor is work, I do feel a certain fascination and satisfaction in occupying a space that can't be bought and sold or made into a job, because it isn't one. That doesn't mean it isn't hard, hard work, but the very inability of the state or ordinary people to really get what it is I am doing is not because anyone is ignorant, it is because we really are very uncomfortable with parenting-as-work - we're uncomfortable with the idea that it has value to anyone outside of ourselves. Some of that discomfort is dismissive - the idea that either Ann Romney or a woman receiving welfare nursing their respective babies isn't doing "real" work is destructive. The idea that I'm not a professional Mommy not because I don't resemble one but because such a thing cannot exist, however, has its uses.

At the margins of the norm one can begin to find a way into the extant reality of a semi-private sphere in which domestic work simultaneously has value and cannot be taken out of the domestic sphere. Only here do you find this - and oddly, I find that hopeful. If we can acknowledge (and we are a long way from fully recognizing and acknowledging this) that some spaces are not well suited to industrialization, are the spheres of an economy that is greater than the formal one, than perhaps we can begin to locate other spaces, also not well suited to extenalization and privatization that we could colonize, hold and adopt as our own.

sastyk Fri, 09/21/2012 - 11:41

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Where the Heck Have I Been?

sastyk — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 09:56:24 +0000

Where the Heck Have I Been?

Apologies to everyone for the radio silence - lots of stuff going on here and the blog has been horribly neglected. Between trying to get the final garden push done, a bunch of goat birthing (including four beautiful babies yesterday for Eric's 42nd birthday - Urania gave us Tybalt and Mercutio in the wee hours while Calendula delivered Beatrice and Benedick), a lot of legal and medical proceedings involving C. and K, our foster sons, and the end-of-school stuff (Eli is transitioning from the program for kids with autism that he's been in since kindergarten to a new program for middle school kids and older, C. and K. are finishing up their school year and making plans for a major transition, probably to family in another state), and the usual farm stuff, and well, we're behind. I didn't plan a hiatus, it just kinda happened.

We're also TIRED. We've always been early morning people, but C. and K.'s school buses arrive at what we call the "Crack of Doom" because of the long trip into the city of Albany for school (way, way better than the days when they used to just make foster kids switch schools every. single. time. they moved) and we're getting up earlier than usual. Visits and supervised phone calls with family, very good and important for the kids, take up time. Goats think it is amusing to give birth at night, when we could be sleeping.

The good news is that school ends Friday and sleeping normally begins again immediately afterwards. We've got a great week planned at a nearby lake, with my parents, sisters, brothers in law and nieces all camping there. Once everything doesn't have to be arranged after school and the kids aren't getting home so late, there will be time for life to go back to as normal as life gets on a working farm with six kids (and the knowledge that it could be eight or nine or ten pretty much any time the phone rings). If the goats will just voluntarily go to diurnal birthing, I'll be one happy, relaxed camper.

The good news is that as I've been digging in the garden or waiting to pick up my sons or sitting through incredibly boring meetings about bus transportation or waiting for a goat to pop some babies, I've been composing in my head, so I promise, there's more stuff coming. If I didn't write, my brain might explode, and that would be messy.

Meanwhile, in honor of the new babies, goat song!

watch?v=pjSjB-3xPVM

Cheers,

Sharon

sastyk Wed, 06/20/2012 - 05:56

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Uncategorized

Family

farm

Although I've not been around them a whole lot, I've noticed that goats seem to find most things to be amusing.

@Martin: I imagine that's part of their charm.

Honestly, Sharon, I've been so busy I didn't even notice you were gone -- it's been over a month since my last post. I do hope you can make it out to the Age of Limits 2013 conference, though.

The View From My Place

sastyk — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 17:36:19 +0000

The View From My Place

I really wish I could share pictures of K. and C., who are having their first farm springtime, complete with baby goats, dam building in the creek, their own gardens, finding nests of newly hatched chicks, catching toads and salamanders, eating salads made with wild greens they collect themselves, but that would violate their privacy. Still, I think I can give you at least a sense of the Hun-like decimation of food that goes on in my house with six little guys - they all stuck their hands in over the jambalaya to show how a pan the size of Idaho makes just over one meal:

Meanwhile the general population is expanding - goats, chicks and now cows:

Meet Dulce du Leche (in black) who is our new house cow. Well, right now she's our house calf, but eventually she'll be our family milk cow. She comes from wonderful friends who are doing amazing things with breeding for sustainable milk. It will be two years before we get a drop from her, but we're very excited. Isn't she a beautiful girl?

Meanwhile, the usual things are blooming like crazy - I'd show you more but the pix are taking forever to load, so that's why I'm posting so little - too much fun stuff going on!

How about you? What's new in your neck of the woods?

sastyk Thu, 06/07/2012 - 13:36

Tags

We just got the keys! Have been working on starting a community-run market garden on the housing estate where I live for just over two years. Got help on CSA-startup from you and Aaron on one of your courses. The site is an old school playing field that's been derelict for ten years, so we have a way to go to get it planted up.

We are having a Big Opening shindig this weekend with cooking activites, cake raffle and so and and we are having the Deputy Lord Mayor coming to turn over a ceremonial first turf. We have got to make the most of having got this far. First milestone. (New FB page - https://www.facebook.com/CanleyFoodProject - would love folks who like local food to 'Like' our page please so we can get it started up, hope it's ok for me to big it up here.)

This is our second year in our new place. I can tell that the soil is improving. Everything that was small last year is already bigger and a little more productive. I love watching the results from improving soil.

We have two new ewes. They are young and chatty. When I am head down in the garden I can hear them muttering in between bites of grass. One ole' girl is losing her sight and we have to help her find her way out of her paddock. But she is still quite spunky and otherwise healthy.

I have been helping the group of mom's I hang out with with some canning. We get together about once a month and do some community canning. So far we have made dandelion jelly and rhubarb salsa. It sorta give me a bit of a boost by adding a communal element to what can be a solitary activity.

You call that a big pan? Failure of the imagination!

The calf is a beauty! Nita at The Matron of Husbandry has very specific and what seems to me to be very sound information about raising milk cows- you probably have already read her stuff because I notice she is on your side- bar of favourite blogs. Your life seems very full and blessed Sharon!

We have had a few visitors to the one year old forest garden, and reactions have been positive. The Rugens alpine strawberries are producing some nice snacks, elderberry getting ready to bloom, most perennials doing quite well. Ducks are fine and laying, and so far we have avoided plagues such as we had last year. For all this and more, I am grateful.

Despite another wet, non-spring here on the west coast, the veggies are surviving and some thriving. I'm very pleased to be taking the Master Preserver class through the Extension, and look forward to demo-ing food preservation this summer. I've gotten involved in planning the first local Food Preservation Fair (slated for fall) and getting to know those who put on local famers' markets. It's nice to finally find a community of like-minded folks, after having friends and family roll their eyes and laugh gently at me.

Dulce is beautiful!

We are on calf-watch here, Sasha, our milk cow, should deliver any time in the next week or so, judging by her udder and the state of her hip ligaments. I'm so excited!

The garden is rather appalling this year, but I do have some potatoes and onions in and some beets and carrots and things that may start to sprout now that we've had a bit of rain. The pastures are doing really well, at least, so we've had a nice balance of sun and rain so far.

Congrats on the critters and the happy kids! You have a good life, and I'm glad you share it with us.

"finding nests of newly hatched chicks, "

Oh, yes? I think way back there, one of my "eaten" comments was requesting specifics on how you propagate your chickens. Do you have an incubator? Just let them lay where they may? And how well does that work? It's very relevant to me; I'm trying to work out how to do it in my own very peculiar circumstances; and I'm not doing well.

When my chickens "steal their nest" and start setting- the outcome, 98% of the time is; predation. Either the eggs are eaten; or the hen and the eggs are eaten. Thing is; they're living far from any buildings; they have no barn access.

On my mind. I've just had reports radioed in by two sets of workers: "there's a pile of Cochin feathers in the orchard, west end.." which likely means I'm out a rooster. And 3 hens went missing last week... so some kind of drastic action is being called for.

Greenpa, we do have an incubator, but it belongs to Isaiah (8) and he mostly uses it to hatch out more ducklings than we need ;-). We've had very good luck with letting the hens set, but they mostly either set indoors or under the calf feeders or milk stanchion outside, and we do have an LGD - been a while since we had a predator in the farmyard. I do have to take the hatchlings away for the most part, though, since the chicks are lost to predation after hatching if not.

After three years of trouble-free goat rearing and wonderful goat milk production, one of my does has mastitis which won't resolve and I had my first case of diarrea in a kid. Was so use to caprine perfection, but I am coping and getting enough milk from my healthymdoemtombe back in the swing with yogurt , cheese & milk.
One of my hens did hatch seven keets and two chicks for me, and six weeks later she is still bringing them to "lock up" each night. She keeps them close by in our predator-resistant yard during the day. So far, so good.
Lots of goodies from the garden, although I have to water daily. New baby feral hog to try & contain and eventually butcher. Vermicomposting a bit slow & have a new grub (Black Soldier Fly) composting biopod starting to provide chicken feed and better food for the red worms. Neglecting the donkey, mule & cows some, but they don't seem to mind as long as they have feed, water & pasture to roam.

Celebrating the Good News

sastyk — Thu, 10 May 2012 06:44:43 +0000

Celebrating the Good News

Let's be honest, when you work on energy and environmental issues for a living, good news is always welcome. And when it is good news that makes your kids happy, well, even better. President Obama's coming forward in support of gay marriage didn't fix all problems, but it made everyone in our home more cheerful.

All the children living in my house have close family members - parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles etc... who are gay. I would say that there is more than passable odds that one of these days one of the little boys in my house will be coming out. All of them know that presidents have historically not stood up for GLBT folk, and that the protections they enjoy in most of the Northeast are not universal. All of them, at various developmental levels get that something important happened yesterday. So we're celebrating.

Eric and I, of course, have more complicated reasons for being pleased. I'm not always a fan of President Obama, but I'm grateful for this - I can remember the bad old days when my parents worried about what would happen if they got sick, or if a judge found out that they were gay during my parents' divorce. I remember well that not very long ago it seemed that marriage equality was a pipe dream.

Moreover, as I've written before, I think that the gay marriage movement has been hugely important to the larger cultural changes that have to take place in our society. One of the side effects of our cheap energy world has been the erasure of marriage as a fundamentally economic and extended family institution, and its transformation into an institution fundamentally about a private connection between only two people. I believe that that kind of marriage is an artifact of a very temporary stream of resources that is drying up.

By this I do not mean that marriage has no private and purely personal elements, nor do I mean that we should go back to the days of arranged marriages. Instead, I would argue that much of the failure of marriage in the modern era has been its recasting as a narrative in which love conquers everything, no one has to worry about money or extended family, and that the economic and collective components of marriage are unimportant. And yet, marriage after marriage is taken down by economic stress and complicated family problems that the stories we tell ourselves don't give us the equipment to handle. We did not make marriage less about money and extended family by implying that those things are irrelevant, we only made the stakes of dealing with those issues higher.

I think the late historian John Boswell in his _Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe_ puts it best:

"In premodern Europe marriage usually began as a property arrangement, was in its middle mostly about raising children, and ended about love. Few couples in fact married "for love," but many grew to love each other in time as they jointly managed their household, reared their offspring, and shared life's experiences. Nearly all surviving epitaphs to spouses evince profound affection. By contrast, in most of the modern West, marriage begins about love, in its middle is still mostly about raising children (if there are children), and ends - often - about property, by which point love is absent or a distant memory." (Boswell, xxi-xxii)

Our narratives about marriage impare our ability to be married - the idea that we must create a separate nuclear household, autonomous, complete, with a full set of appliances and possessions leaves many struggling to meet that ideal. The idea that the ideal involves separation from family into a new, isolated unit that meets its own needs in the formal workforce is hard on everyone. That does not mean being part of an extended family isn't also difficult at times, but the presumption of separateness places tremendous economic and social pressure on families - pressures they often succumb to. Those pressures only get greater given the economic consequences of our instability, and they play out with costs to everyone.

Enter gay marriage. Gay people partner and marry for love, just like everyone else. They may enter a marriage as a religious institutions, but never only a religious institution (And no conversation about religion and marriage can fail to acknowledge that many gay and lesbian people were married in their churches and synagogues BEFORE they could marry in any state!) because they cannot pretend marriage is an institution purely about their private emotions or their religious choices., Because gay and lesbian couples are denied legal protections the rest of us have the luxury of taking for granted, they must talk about them. The economics and social protections, legal relationships and issues of long term security MUST be on the table for gay and lesbian people. And by bringing this issue to the state and national stage, they've put the legal and economic qualities of marriage back into our public conversation. This is a signal service to all of us, gay and straight.

The simple fact is that even the Biblical marital relationship was intensely legal, deeply focused on rights and responsibilities. As I wrote in an essay about gay marriage and why it is good for straight people in 2010, the religious history of marriage is rather different than the rhetoric of most religious folks who oppose gay marriage:

...there is something fundamentally empty about the rhetoric of most gay marriage opponents. They too speak mostly about love and blessings and holiness and religious institutions - they too leave out the secular elements, or at best, speak disparagingly of them, suggesting that a preoccupation with those elements is trivial in comparison to the holiness of holy matrimony, and that if marriage is "only" about rights and legal issues that it doesn't really matter whether gay people get a separate-but- equal civil unions setup.

And yet they ignore that the holy institution of marriage (for them that care) is in its origins about those contractual rights. The Ketubah, the marriage contract of ancient Israel, primarily set forth the legal obligations of husband to wife - rights of survivorship, of maintenence in the case of widowhood or divorce, the right to things like sexual satisfaction within marriage (yup, Ketubots include the requirement that the man satisfy the woman sexually - the reciprocal obligation is not mentioned).

Early Christianity was deeply ambivalent about this preoccupation with legal arrangements - mostly because it was seen that marriage was a sub-ideal state, secondary to celibacy. It wasn't until a thousand years after Christ died that marriage was stabilized as a "holy ideal" with fixed rituals in the Catholic Church - before that, rituals were many and varied, and mostly involved adding blessing to extant legal practices by various states. Boswell and many other historians have traced the emergence of holy matrimony from a variety of sources, many of them decidedly non-theological. The Roman, Germanic and British rites and their roles created a hybrid that became holy - but began as much in money, property and family ties as it did in any faith.

The sacredness of marriage for religious institutions descends in large part not just because of its recognition that love is sacred, but also that families and households and the society as a whole are best served by offering protections carefully and wisely. There are many things to criticize about ancient religious models of marriage - the idea, for example, that women were primarily an object of exchange or for the cementing of alliances, the idea that the victim of rape was the husband or father whose woman was devalued, the fundamental priority of male interests and the mistreatment of women.

But underlying both the Ketubah and the Christian marriage ceremony, and indeed, most marriage rituals, religious and secular - is the sometimes effective, sometimes failed recognition that we do not profit from a society in which unsupported widows and orphan proliferate, where families do not have formal ties and legal rights that have been fully established.

It is not that that marriage is sacred and that economic, property and legal rights are the dirty necessities - marriage is sacred in part *because* it provided those protections to those who were rendered by their society unequal, vulnerable and weak, rather than only to the powerful, *because* within the rites of holy marriage, it is possible to do better by people than if they were cast upon the world without those protections. The claiming of people, their inclusion and the giving of a structured, meaningful and protected place in society is part of what makes the ritual of marriage holy - and this is precisely what gay marriage advocates seek to do.

I think reasonable people can disagree on this issue. I dislike the assumption that all religiously motivated people who oppose gay marriage hate gay people. At the same time, I think the rhetoric of many who advocate against gay marriages rests on two fundamentally wrong premises. The first is the assumption that some religious communities should get to set the parameters of the secular law. The second, and I think more important, is that there is something flawed in a rhetoric that has to minimize the legal and economic importance of marriage in society. In some measure, I think the choice of rhetoric has helped doom the movement of failure.

I think the odds are good that by the time that my boys are all grown, gay marriage will be nationally legal. I'm glad for them and for me. Yes, it is still a long road ahead from the days when you can get married in New York to the days when you can get married in Arizona, but we took a giant step yesterday, and we're partying - because it isn't just good for our gay family members, it is good for all of us.

sastyk Thu, 05/10/2012 - 02:44

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Family

foster parenting

gay and lesbian

economic relationships

Gay Marriage

I bet you're going to get some flack for this post, so I wanted to jump and start out the comments with a big THANK YOU for this intelligent and deliciously history-geeky analysis. (John Boswell! *love you*)

As a gay person myself, it's great to see how much progress has been made in terms of people's perceptions of gay folk, the rights of gay people, and so on.

If only government wasn't becoming so overpowering in everything it does regarding controlling the rights and lives of individuals. I said back in 2010 that it would be better if government just got out of the marriage business altogether and I still think that. With this announcement, people in the conversation unfortunately continue the huge (and mistaken) assumption that government has the power to grant rights to people to begin with.

Rights flow to us as a part of natural law and government is to be kept out of the way. By granting government the right to marry people, we tacitly give government the power to not marry people, to recognize or not recognize a great many rights that are ours (meaning all people, gay and straight.)

With this development today, government just got even bigger, extending more controls over our lives. No wonder we then cede the power to government to control our houses and farms, decide what we can and cannot do for a living, transfer power and money from the mainstream citizenry to the Power Elite, even going to war, mainly for the latter.

It's good news that we gay folk are every day closer to being accepted normal citizens and indeed its been rather easy to see it coming over the past 30 years or so, especially for those of us whose work and daily experiences revolve around young people, where the attitude change has been most obvious.

But it's also true that the ideas and attitudes about what government has the right to grant citizens has mushroomed in a very scary way. That is, the younger people I come in contact with (not just kid/clients, but younger, sub-35 yo staff), grant way too much power to government to control their lives, and that remains quite disturbing.

Stephen, I don't agree with you - the articulation of rights by governments does not imply that those rights stem FROM government. Indeed, "we hold these truths to be self-evident" implies the contrary - that rights both need state articulation and stem from a greater root than the state alone.

Because marriage historically and in the present, both gay and straight, involves children who cannot speak for themselves as equals before the law, it is impossible to imagine a society without marriage law - either explicit or implicit. The oldest marriage contracts in human history demonstrate an extant marriage law. Even societies with no explicit courts and regulatory bodies generally regulate marriage at some level - tribal, communal, etc...

The implication that the state's claiming of marriage is something new seems incorrect to me - the recognition that there is an interest that extends beyond the two people involve - property interests and interests for disabled and incapacitated partners, post-death intersets, but most of all, the interests of children mean that the state, whatever it is, will always be and has always been involved in marriage. It could be less or more so, and I have no problem with the idea of universal civil unions, separating religious ceremonies from legal ones - that's one answer to the problem.

I do not, however, think I agree with you on what I take to be either of your main points, though - that this state role in government is a modern expression of big government or that a government role in gay marriage necessarily implies that the right to marriage equality stems purely from the government.

Sharon

I just see government growing impossibly monsterous, taking over everything from relations, to food, to sanctifying births and deaths and I don't think government, especially large, detached, remote, national governments, execute these functions all that well. An old essay of yours comes to mind, in which you discussed people ridiculing people of faith, and who exalt the supremacy of secular institutions:

"And the reality is that there are few secular institutions that are prepared to fill the needs that people have at moments of crisis â this is what religious communities tend to do very well â they offer people access to familiar, structural ways to deal with events that change your world. That is, they are there when you have a baby, and provide some ritual for welcoming that child. They provide a kind of education in faith, even if the parents havenât figured out all that they believe â they can pass it off (Iâm a religious person who thinks that faith starts at home, and I donât love parents who do pass off the big questions to Sunday school or whatever, but I recognize that religious institutions are used this way, and in general, I think some exposure is better than none, though perhaps not much better), they provide ways of dealing with death, places for people with no place, support for the aging, ways to incorporate new family members through marriage. They may be the only place most people get sit down meals with other people who arenât related to them. They may be the only place where people who are socially inept can go and find some kind of community that will tolerate and support them because that is part of their mission. Many communities provide volunteer services for the poor â they run the food pantries, the shelters, the relief organizations. They get people in transitional and crisis moments and they offer formal structures to aid them- and those services get people in the door. Thatâs not why we do it â or all of why we do it, but it is worth asking â what secular institutions can meet the same needs?

"There are some that try. Food Not Bombs does a great job of providing food to the hungry. There are humanist and secular organizations, funeral homes and other groups. But few of them do so many things, so cohesively. And this is one of the things that sometimes drives me crazy about the hostility people have to religion. Iâve no objection to people thinking my faith is a fairy tale â thatâs fine. But when people begin ranting about the evils of religion, but wonder why so many adhere, I ask them â ok, fair enough. But are you burying the dead? Where are the organizations to provide secular burial and rituals for the grieving? Where is your rationale for loving even the really annoying people in our society who still need people who will talk to them and care for them? Are you out there at the secular food pantry? The secular shelter? The justice work, the fundraising for the poor? Where do you provide free counseling for those dealing with personal trauma, help people wed and welcome babies into the world? Iâve no objection to strong secular institutions these things arising â I would welcome them. But I donât see them, and I donât think they will come rapidly into place before the hard times hit â since that would be now."

(I'd stick in the URL, but then Scienceblogs is more likely to hold me for moderation....heck it might anyway on the shear length of my comment.)

You were talking about mainly secular, non-government institutions, but I would say that the government also does a fairly inept job of fixing those things, compared to religious institutions, so I don't trust government moving into these areas especially as government forces other institutions out by its mere overbearing presence and I say that as a person that isn't particularly religious myself.

Thus I worry about government getting overly involved in marriage. I get your point that due to property and child concerns, there will always be a role that government has to play, but I'd be careful to lend its role anymore credence than absolutely necessary.

Anyhow, I am glad Obama took this position, don't get me wrong on that.

Stephen B: "I worry about government getting overly involved in marriage."

As a lawyer, all I can say is, when hasn't it been? (I am applying a rather broad definition of "government.")

Stephen B: "so I don't trust government moving into these areas especially as government forces other institutions out by its mere overbearing presence"

Any religious institution with the scale to meet the needs the government does would be scary indeed. By definition it would be a government and a church. You might think about how well the inquisition worked out, and then you have the Ayatollahs in Iran.

Sharon, thanks for posting this. I've been puzzling for awhile how to say what I was thinking, and now you've done it for me. Yay!

As someone who has been through a divorce, the legal and financial aspects of marriage are very much in the forefront of my mind (my second husband and I have a very carefully thought out prenup agreement). Marriage is very much about "what happens if...", I think, and we ignore that at our peril. I married my first husband in blissful ignorance, certain that even if things went badly between us, we'd be civilized about it and all would be well. Then he developed a brain tumour and became an angry and aggressive stranger ... and I got taken to the cleaners. Even though I was still legally married to him, thanks to a lot of family drama I ended up on the outside: I know the torment of being blacklisted at the hospital, unable to find out what was happening, refused permission to visit ... and I would not wish that on anyone.

The stories we tell about marriage and family *used* to include things like "a good provider" or "trustworthy" or "able to take care of me" and now we just talk about romance with starry eyes. We *do* need to be compatible with our partners, definitely - but we also need to choose partners wisely, with an eye towards making a home that we can contentedly live in even if things go sideways a little, even if the rose tint comes off our glasses in a few years, even if someone is injured or becomes ill. The discussion of rights for gay partners has made a lot of people think about the rights of *all* partners, I think, and thatâs very much a good thing. And, I think that everyone should choose their life partner carefully â¦ and I think that society as a whole should make darned sure that partners *of all types of families* are protected.

Kal, that's exactly the kind of stuff I'm thinking about.

Sharon,

President Obama has made many promises, few that haven't been broken have been to the detriment of most Americans. Having won the Nobel Peace Prize for his non-confrontational foreign policy (at least, before he became President), he has instead been one of the most militant Presidents in recent times.

Despite his movement on the abhorrent "Don't ask, don't tell" policy in the military, I would hold back on the expectations and celebrations until there is some substantive action taken. Right now all we have is cheap, try-it-out campaign rhetoric.

Blessed be.

The point, as anybody who has read Orwell's 1984 understands, is that once the state can redefine any word, free discussion become that much more difficult. However the overwhelonmg majority of "scienceblogs" runners would doubtless redefine "free discussion" to mean the censorship thay depend on. So they will be happy.

On the other hand there is a lady in Germany who wants to marry a roller coaster & some gentlemen who have sexual relations with their cars. Presumably in due course no spoilsports are going to be allowed to prevent them marrying.

Stephen:

You start by saying that a government that can give people the right to marry can prevent people from marrying, and then argue that, in saying the government should not prevent some people from marrying, the government becomes more intrusive. How is it more intrusive for New York to tell me that I may marry either a woman or a man than for Virginia to tell someone that she may only marry a man? Limiting marriage to mixed-sex couples is more of a restriction, more of an intrusion, than not limiting it. (Would you argue that Loving v. Virginia was intrusive in stopping racists from controlling who their neighbors could marry on the basis of skin color?)

"Keep your nose out of your neighbor's business" is not an intrusion on people's person lives and choices. The best reading I can see for your comment is that you are sufficiently worried about government power that you will see any change in government policy, in any direction, as a sign of oppression.

Brad, I'm not Obama's partisan in any deep way (except in the sense that I strongly prefer him to any other extant option, which is not a very powerful affirmation), but I don't think this is a promise, merely a statement - which is why it matters.

Neil, I love your use of quotation marks. I think you need more of them.

Stephen, speaking as a member of a religion that does have its own courts (bet din), its own divorce decrees and legal settlements, I do take your point, but I do think we want one legal situation for all of us. In fact, I think the Jewish model is a really good example of why you do have to have marriage law as well, for reasons too complicated to probably bother with for this discussion.

I do take your point that the legal question is real and has consequences for privacy and in our lives. I may be biased - now even without marriage, most gay people don't have to worry about losing custody of their kids the way my parents did. It may be the traumas of an older era that make me see this as so essential. At the same time, while I don't expect to get SS myself, I do want my mother(s) to get the other's when/if one of them dies. And without marriage, there's something fundamentally discriminatory towards poor gay folk who can't afford lawyers to draw up documents to give each other rights naturally extended by marriage.

Sharon

In the end, I do pretty much agree with you Sharon and the other commenters on the importance of what the President has come out for here.

I guess I'm just splitting hairs because I've become very cynical about government, especially the national, federal government, and especially over the past 6 to 10 years. I find that as it wages an all out war on ordinary people both here in the US and around the world, on behalf of a very select few, well-connected, wealthy individuals and groups, via economic hegemony and militarism, I am a bit suspect of anything this government now does, even when, on a rare occasion such as this, it all actually seems to be in our interest, for once.

Lastly, this *almost* makes me want to vote for Obama, especially compared to the other venture capital, Two-Head, One Party candidate, but then I recall all Obama's own war making, how he also did the biddings of The Powers That Be on the financial crisis (and continues to do so), and how he and Rahm Emanuel will be turning Chicago into a virtual gulag for the upcoming "NATO Summit" just to name the latest travesty.

Sometimes, I just feel we're being thrown bones to placate and distract us while the real, major crimes continue to bring the whole world and country down.

No, I won't be voting for either major party candidate, despite this, not by a long shot.

This essay recalls to mind Great Britain where the legally equivalent institution of civil partnership has been created specifically for gay people. Interestingly some straight people ... wanting to shed the religious connotations of marriage altogether ... began to ask if they could be joined in civil partnership.

A case made the news of two elderly sisters who applied for civil partnership. They had lived together in their house all their life but when one died, it was clear the other would lose the house and be forced into a nursing home. A case for partnership based on love and property ... without the element of sex at all.

I would hardly call it "support" from Obama. It was rather wishy washy. Of course when the alternative is raging hatred and homophobia, even that starts to look good.

But since it made a few heads spin from just the shock of that, I suppose i'll be happy with that for now.

The good news is that this is on top of and severely behind an entire generation that are more accepting of everyone and less oppressed by the puritanical nuclear family attitude that plagues the older generations.

Sharon if I didn't use quotation marks and referred to "scienceblogs" simply factually as a group of corrupt lying fascist parasites attempting to steal the attribution of science to promote their cargo cultism, with less integrity or humanity than a rabid dog, you would censor me. You have often for far more circumspect remarks.

Of course you don't censor name calling against those you oppose, like saying people are guilty of "raging hatred and homophobia" even when you know, that unlike what I say, it is a total lie that could never be said by anyone with more integrity than a rabid dog.

No offence Richard.

Dear me Sharon, we appear to have been insulted. Fetch the fainting couch!

I didn't realise that it was "name calling" to point out that republicans have long been against gay rights for the simple reason that they are homophobic. A basic google search is enough to remove any such illusions you might be harboring... at least on this one particular subject.