“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.”
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“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.’”
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“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.”
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“There’s a reason infant and child mortality rates dropped when kids were with parents during the Covid lockdown rather than with strangers.”
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“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.”
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“What types of people venerate the joy-smashing cult of career?”
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“Can we see our relationships as acts of cooperation, not as a competition? Why should it take a pandemic to remind some parents of the pleasures of actually being parents? Can more parents be freed to be parents and stay home for a few years even when there isn’t a pandemic?”
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“Some of us are pushing back against the careerist survival-of-the-fittest time and soul famine.”
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“What if we changed our definition of success so none of us faced social pressures or economic pressures during our children’s little-child years (say birth to four years old and preschool) to conform to a pro-business, one-size-fits-all, Goldman Sachs’— style model of life focused on our job title?”
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“Bonds form when you become home, protector, caregiver, nurse, best friend, teacher, co-adventurer, and above all a most constant and loyal figure in your child or grandchild’s life can’t be faked with ‘quality time’ or visits. I’m sorry I didn’t know this many years ago.”
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“In other words, evolution taught us that we actually are our brothers’ (and children’s) keepers long before the idea was folded into religious concepts expressed in passages such as these: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2), and “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Matthew 25:35).”
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“Morality is real. It is absolute.
Morality does not need religion.
Morality came first and religion a very distant second.”
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“But what if an individual in a community reduces their relationship with others to brute strength and/or to a career stepping stone? What if we call for family values and then do everything we can to undermine them by refusing to support parents?”
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“I’ve learned the hard way that a happy life is not about career success. It’s about using the time we have to experience the simple things that bring us joy. But we all have a problem: our society is designed to deny this joy. We have another problem, at least I do: I’ve made such big mistakes they haunt me. Everything I do is mostly second best compared to my ideal.”
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“As my daughter Jessica, who is the CEO of a green-energy investment company in New York City, put it: ‘Businesses were established by men. They pretended they had no families. Families and women stayed home. When women joined the workforce, the deal was we pretended we didn’t have a family either and played by men’s rules. Then came Covid, and business meetings were on Zoom.
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