I'm at the Northrup family reunion of four of my brothers and sisters in Asheville, NC. All of us were born in upstate NY, but so many of us have moved South that we've held our reunions in Atlanta and Asheville. My home in Kentucky is now too far north for a family reunion.
Notes.
1. Who's in shape. It's Mrs. RSI! She's been working out twice a day as part of her diet and it really showed when we went hiking. She did all the hikes on Mount Pisgah the younger people did while I had to pass on the last steep one. My turn to get in shape next.
2. Turning my stomach. I had to leave the conversation when it turned to the neighbor's botched gastric by-pass. It turns out that lots of people have botched gastric by-passes. Personally, I don't have the stomach for it.
3. Bucking the Tide. Septuagenarians Aunt Shirley and Grama Marlene were singing the praises of being a stay at home mom. I thought that being a stay-at-home mom was a terrible idea when I was ten and haven't changed my opinion since. So it was good to hear that my oldest daughter told them that the world has changed since feminism. Because it has.
4. The Popularity of Dogfighting. My Aunt Shirley and her husband Lou talked about the popularity of dog fighting and dog and pig fighting in South Carolina. It's sickening but it goes way beyond Michael Vick.
5. The Power of Plants. Three of my friends in Morehead have bad cases of cancer and a woman I knew died a horrible death after being pinned under a lawn tractor for five hours. Whenever I hear about death and dying among those I know, I imagine myself fathering 5,000 more children just as a way to stick it to death. But it's not necessary. I can always see the force of living things when I see plants growing along highways. Even the sheerest rock faces have plants growing out of them. So does the asphalt on road shoulders. The tenacity of the plants is unbelievable. So is the beauty of some of the flowers that grow alongside highways. The periwinkle blue corn flowers and black-eyed Susans were especially beautiful as we drove down to Ashville from Kentucky.
It was a beauty I needed to see.
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7 comments:
That was quite poetic Ric. What a shame that so few people take the time to notice the simple grandeur of nature. I'm glad you posted this.
Hi Ric. The beautiful thing about feminism is that women now have the CHOICE to be stay-at-home moms or wage-earning moms (except, of course, those women who feel forced into one role or the other for financial reasons).
Feminism will really triumph when the structure of the paid working world shifts to make child-rearing more compatible with wage-earning for both women and men.
What exactly is the matter with a mother that chooses to stay at home with her children? Shouldn't we all be that fortunate to have that type of choice?
Being a stay at home mom was bad for my mom, and, from my observations of other stay-at-home moms and my own experiences of having the kids for stretches, it seems like it's the same for other people as well. Staying at home isolates people from the rest of the world, is boring because of the repetitive nature of cooking and cleaning tasks. Trying to impose your will on kids is generally very frustrating. And that's beside the distortions in relationships caused by financial inequities, the distortions in children's relationships with parents brought about with one parent giving the lion's share of the attention, and the lack of respect which stay-at-home mothering has always had in the broader society.
Both Mrs. RSI and I have found staying at home to be literally depressing. Of course, a lot of women try to make staying at home less mind-numbing and depressing by being over-involved in their kids lives, micromanaging their schooling and social lives, and being a Martha Stewart as a cook and home decorator. But that ends up being extremely harmful as well.
Obviously, there are women and men who are inspired and gifted at stay-at-home type activities. But I think most people should avoid it.
The benefits for yourself, in the short term, for staying at home are almost nonexistant. That misses the point. Doing so, by nearly every measure benefits the kids. It is an extremely un-selfish choice that carries with it a great deal of frustration. Not everyone handles it well, and nearly everyone gets some part of it wrong. That should not disqualify it as a viable option for many or most people. Those challenges can be overcome.
Ric - That is an incredibly self centered and selfish approach towards parenting.
The stay-at-home mom who focuses on the kids is a tradition that stems from the Victorian period orf a little before. As a tradition, it still has weight in American society. But it's a distorted system that doesn't do any good for the male breadwinner, the stay at home mom, or the kids. Feminism did a lot to discredit the idea and I'm glad to see that my daughters have no discernible interest in it. But I'd like to see stay at home parenting limited to the few who would enjoy it as well as be good at it.
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