WOH/Kids/Feminism: WDYT?
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| Tue, 02-08-2005 - 9:06am |
Okay, let's debate something else. One morning a few months ago, I was crabby to DH about having to get ready for work. DH said, "Well, if you don't want to go to work, quit!"
Later that day, I told him I was just venting, and then I told him some of the reasons I really do like WOH. One reason was something to the effect that I wanted to WOH as part of at-home feminism for our DD's. He said he had no idea what I was talking about.
I thought about it some and decided that although this is a heartfelt idea for me, it's still fuzzy. I suppose I meant that I want to show my DDs how to live independently of a man, in the sense of income, ability to make one's way in the world, and so on, even if they choose marriage & kids. My feelings of pride in my own mom, who was a WOH mom, come into it, too.
Caution: I don't mean in any way to suggest anything the least bit negative about SAH moms. That's not what this is about. Nor do I mean to suggest that anyone has to WOH to teach their kids feminist or gender neutral values. That's not what this is about, either.
Do you think there's any value in WOH as part of raising kids? Please help me clarify my thinking.
Sabina

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Oh goodie - now you're the emotion police. I'll sleep so much better tonight.
What skin is it off your nose what attachments other people have? Does everything in life have to be a contest with you?
Where did PNJ say her relationship with her parents would be affected?
I'm really baffled by this. Why is it a bad thing to have an emotional connection to place? Houses store memories. They have an energy. (I should know; I've been fighting residual bad energy in my current house for the last four years - it had five owners in six years and you could feel it when you walked in the front door). They provide sensual cues to emotional memories.
I fully understand how you could find that traumatizing to you, even if it would not be to someone else. Isn't that just part and parcel with each of us being unique individuals with unique experiences and reactions to those experiences? (I'm agreeing with you here)
For me, before I was 21, I moved 17 times, I lived in three major wars, I was raped twice, I watched an IDF soldier beat an unarmed teenager to death with their guns, I saw someone have his throat slit on my front porch (I could go on and on with the war violence I witnessed, but it includes stabbings, beatings, shootings, small children with bullet wounds and broken limbs, good friend beaten and tortured oin a meat hook and left to die, etc.), I struggled with bulimia, my mom was diagnosed with cancer, I was robbed at knifepoint while working in a fast food restaurant, and several other things.
But the most traumatic was my brother's wedding to someone I just cannot stand (even now, some 13 years later). I knew it would hurt our relationship, and it has, and that hurts much more than any of the physical pain I have suffered or the fear I felt growing up. Something about feeling like you are losing family just affects me like nothing else.
It's probably not debatable, ultimately, but there's a disconnect in your account of your life. How old were you when you realized that your parents made each other miserable, but your mother was powerless to leave? That realization was less traumatic than the sale of your childhood home, when you had already moved out? It seems odd to me, that's all.
A person who claims not to have gone through the normal, formative experiences of youth (and no, they don't have to include rape or abuse -- I'm talking about not getting picked for kickball, or developing later or earlier than peers, or having freckles -- the tame sort of stuff you'll find in any Beverly Cleary book) is not the product of a blissful childhood, IMO. When a person goes to such extreme lengths (and such a high number of posts) to make herself seem different from other people (ie, exempt from the normal rules of human emotional development), something is going on.
I think you'll dismiss this post as an example of my supposed envy for your utopian childhood. But I'm not envious at all. I wouldn't trade the heartache and disappointment I sometimes felt in childhood for anything.
Where did I say PNJ did say her relationship with her parents would be affected? I didn't say that. I was explaining an instance in which where my family lives would be important.
If you've read the whole thread, you'd note that I, although I find it unusual, have not said PNJ is *wrong* for feeling like that. I explained in one particular post that I think she is simply not usual in her extreme attachment. And that she shouldn't take *her* attachment to a house and assume everyone else has such an attachment. She replied back to that post with a winkie icon and did not seem in the least offended or upset with me. Indicated she agreed.
I don't *understand* her traumatization at that age to such an event. But that doesn't mean it is wrong. There are lots of things I can't wrap my mind around.
Edited 2/12/2005 10:29 am ET ET by savcal_ok
Choose your friends by their character and your socks by their color. Choosing your socks by their character makes no sense and choosing your friends by their color is unthinkable.
"Not everyone turns 18 and is an instant adult."
Absolutely. I've never personally met anyone who was instant adult at 18. Hell, I'm 32, married for almost 10 years, have three kids, a great high-profile carerr, and I don't feel ready to be an adult yet, sometimes.
Exactly. Perhaps you didn't read my posts carefully? I've said throughout that it's a matter of priority. If ones higher priority is to provide a sahp for their children, then there are many ways to make that a feasible reality for *most* families. (Not all, certainly, but most.) Of course, I'm also including into that 'most' the fact that IMO a sahp is a career just like any other that requires forethought, planning etc. As I said before, one doesn't just wake up one morning, decide to be a doctor and set up shop at the local hospital ;) While it doesn't require a degree to be a sahp, it usually *does* require some financial and life planning in order to make it happen. But then, if having a sahp is a high priority, one is more likely to do that. My other point is that there is nothing wrong with being a sahp when one can afford it and having to downsize if, God forbid, something should happen to require such a change.
Wytchy
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