“If we hadn’t demeaned parenthood in favor of elevating career-achievement to a quasi-religious cult, and if we hadn’t in effect become nomadic, rootless, individualistic, disruption-venerating, thrill-seeking strivers, we might have our priorities straight when it comes to what a good life, a happy life, and fulfilling life actually can be.”
Read More“We used to talk about childcare as if its purpose was to ‘free’ women to get jobs. We updated that to ‘freeing parents’—men and women—to get jobs.”
Read More“To get respect, women with children or caregiving males or nonbinary caregivers must identify themselves as having some other job besides ‘just childcare’ or being ‘just a houseparent’ because childcare is regarded as unskilled labor.”
Read More“Evolution built us to expect help from others and to give it. That’s the reason we instinctively wanted to know why our government “isn’t doing anything” and expected someone to ‘do something’ when Covid-19 emerged as our version of the Black Death.”
Read More“Americans on the move, chasing jobs, leave behind family and other deep connections again and again and again. Then we wonder why our relationships and marriages go bad and why we feel lonely.”
Read More“Today, parents face crises alone as a result of:
Providing no government-funded services for childcare while at the same time encouraging (actually, forcing, though social pressure about what is ‘cool’ to do) both parents to work outside the home—even when they have very young preschool children.…”
“Providing a space for the inner stillness a child needs to contemplate the beauty of life—their very own encounter with the spirit of the Primavera—is what grandparents are ‘for.’”
Read More“Parenthood is often delayed past what makes sense biologically. That’s because people are given no good choices. Help from family evaporates into thin air when jobs change and people move far away.”
Read More“There’s a reason infant and child mortality rates dropped when kids were with parents during the Covid lockdown rather than with strangers.”
Read More“Younger people with callous or indifferent or (most likely) uninformed attitudes about the elderly are cutting their lifespans shorter.”
Read More“Kids who grow up with active grandparents involved in their daily lives do far better through their entire lifetime than those deprived of such contacts.”
Read More“What is evolution “telling” us? Answer: if we’re deprived of love, we wither. If we get “born again” into the religion of greed, we kill ourselves.”
Read More“Grandparents pay a steep price for being cut off from childcare work, inspiration, and fun. They die sooner, according to the ‘Berlin Aging Study.’ It was first published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.”
Read More“Children visit a grandparent from time to time. The rest of their lives are spent in hermetically sealed childcare, preschool, school, trade school or college, and then career age-specific bubbles. When older people are put at risk, this is accepted because ‘they’ are so isolated from the rest of us.”
Read More“By our career-first model we have effectively removed actively involved grandparents from the family reciprocity love-motivated childcare picture. This is insane. Is insane too strong a word? No.”
Read More“Some former evangelical believers like me face major struggles because discarding specific beliefs no matter how ridiculous they are does not erase the associated toxic assumptions and feelings about self and life.”
Read More“Point being: With a few exceptions, money and/or fame seem to be among the worst things that can befall anyone, let alone happen to their kids.”
Read More“What types of people venerate the joy-smashing cult of career?”
Read More“What is true of hurried sex and bad cooking is true of hurried family life ‘cut’ (as it were) to the pace of a TV commercial or a frantic sex scene.”
Read More“Great sex is (to me anyway) relaxed, happy, and friendly and built on learning what another treasured person loves to do, feel, and be.”
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