“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?”
Read More“Some of us are pushing back against the careerist survival-of-the-fittest time and soul famine.”
Read More“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?”
Read More“Why aren’t both parents’ jobs flexible enough to accommodate parenthood during, say, the years one to four of any child?”
Read More“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.”
Read More“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).”
Read More“Morality is real. It is absolute.
Morality does not need religion.
Morality came first and religion a very distant second.”
Read More“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?”
Read More“The evolutionary advantage of being a cultural animal might be described as the learning of altruism.”
Read More“We evolved mercy and forgiveness because we evolved the ability to feel empathy, and we aren’t alone. Love is a thing but not only a human ‘thing.’ Love is bigger than just us. Dogs too evolved the capacity to crave love and to return love and service to others.”
Read More“Joy-filled life begins where our slavish dependency on our material ambition and belief systems promoting the domination. Kindness is made possible by accepting paradox. Let our entire existence be a protest against servitude to a worldview devoid of mercy on the one hand and unquestioning addiction to the delusion of certainty on the other hand.”
Read More“Other people can’t change us but we can do the hard work to change ourselves. Love is a powerful motivator. When our bad ideas that run counter to evolution’s message of cooperation assail us, such as fundamentalist Nationalist Hinduism, White evangelical Christianity, fundamentalist Saudi-style women-trashing Islam, some versions of fundamentalist Judaism, or rape-the-Earth capitalist “achievement” greed cults, we can choose to fight back.”
Read More“It seems to me that besides facing procreation, women’s ability to be happy as parents has been attacked by our capitalist system that makes sure they have no good choices unless they are rich. Fortunately, plenty of people are calling for change with women leading the charge.”
Read More“Bluntly: we’ve designed a society that inhibits our ability to fall in love when hormones, biology, and evolution are screaming at us to do so, when we’re young enough to take risks."
Read More“Genie and I could help our children out. What about people with less family structure, less money, less options? What about young single moms?”
Read More“What’s changed? Lots. Teens living in the ever-darkening shadow of their phones; degrading misogynist, often racist and violent porn and rape-culture invading childhoods; disconnected online ‘life’; the continuing impact of divorce as a ‘normal’ event for millions of children; the well-known pathologies of our disgracefully failing educational system.”
Read More“We need to stop pretending we can do anything to kids and offer parents no good choices or support and it’ll all turn out fine.”
Read More“How is our model of a career-first, family-second culture that provides few-to-no social services—thus leaving countless parents with no good choices—working out for children?”
Read More“I think the words child-appropriate are often used incorrectly. What’s ‘appropriate’ to me is to pass on to a child or grandchild (or to students as Francis does) lessons in being a hands-on, polite, kind, and a capable doer.”
Read More“We can be a parent who does ‘manly’ things like building concrete walls (as I do), as well as a caregiver who “dances” ballets in a bathroom with six-year-old granddaughters.”
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