Will "pro-life" advocates helps support the Suleman octuplets?

Nadya Suleman, single mother of six who recently gave birth to the longest surviving octuplets, has said that she decided to have so many embryos implanted so they wouldn't be destroyed. The "culture of life", which claims that an embryo at any stage of development, or even a morula is equivalent to a baby, should get some of the blame for this mess (obviously Suleman and her doctor are responsible as well).

For some reason, I haven't seen any pro-life organization stepping up to provide any kind of support, moral or financial, for Nadya Suleman's family, who exist because of Suleman's pro-life ideals. Pro-Life News currently has only one article about Suleman, and it's a call for greater regulation of fertility treatments to prevent families like Suleman's.

The pro-lifers I have seen commenting on Suleman take issue with her not having a father on the scene. So what, they think that the embryos of single women aren't babies? (And before anyone claims that single women shouldn't conceive: she was married when they were conceived.)

Petition to Wal-Mart about Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition and other magazines that sex-negative people object to

Through Morality in Media I learned of this petition asking Wal-Mart to require their suppliers to cover up magazines with "ANY nudity OR sexually explicit language on the cover". The petitioner, Angie Smethers, started the petition because she was upset when her daughter saw the 2008 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition cover, shown.

Smethers believes that children need to be "protected" from images like this (without explaining why).

I, on the other hand, believe that children need to be protected from harmful ideas like that the body is shameful and must be hidden. What kind of message is this mother giving her daughter, when she indicates that while males routinely wear topless swimsuits, it is a terrible thing for a woman to do the same thing?

Wal-Mart is so huge that if they were to develop a policy requiring magazines to censor their covers to satisfy people who are unhappy and frightened about sex and nudity, it could well result in many magazines being censored--magazines are unlikely to produce a separate uncut edition for other retailers.

So please, take a minute to sign my petition asking Wal-Mart to continue selling law-abiding magazines such as Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition rather than censoring them.

Good news, bad news on Noellee Mowatt case

Here's the latest on the Noellee Mowatt case. I wrote earlier about Mowatt's plight: after calling the police because her boyfriend was abusing her, she was jailed, while 9 months pregnant, to make sure she would show up at his trial to testify against him.

The good news: she appeared in court today and testified, which means that she was released from jail (on bail though--why? Who is the criminal here?)

The bad news: she recanted her earlier report of his abuse. This is common in domestic violence cases. Hopefully the courts understand that this does not prove Christopher Harbin is innocent, but given the inept handling of Noellee Mowatt's case so far, I am not optimistic.

Earlier, as she reported that "she was punched, kicked in the side, strangled, had her lips squeezed together hard when she tried to speak, and was 'chopped' in the foot when Harbin swung a knife at her to back up a threat but accidentally sliced her big toe." She also reported that he masturbated in front of her despite knowing that it upset her and was verbally abusive.

I hope that Mowatt's birth goes well and that she and her baby find a safe living situation.

Free Noellee Mowatt

Noellee Mowatt, 19, is due to give birth to her second child April 15. In December, she called police to report that her boyfriend, Christopher Harbin, was abusing her. What does our so-called "justice" system do?

They put her in jail.

Mowatt, who is not charged with anything, is being held in a jail cell at Vanier Centre for Women in Milton, to make sure that she shows up to testify at her boyfriend's trial. According to her lawyer, Lydia Riva, "She's contracted the flu since she's been in jail. She already had to seek medical attention. [...] She's obviously stressed out and concerned about her pregnancy. She's afraid to have her baby in custody."

Why is this poor woman, who obviously has enough stress in her life already between raising two young children and coping with an abusive boyfriend, being victimized by the justice system, which should be protecting her?

If Noellee Mowatt was 30, and married, would she be treated so appallingly badly in these circumstances?

Blaming mother

As a single mom, not by choice, it has long irked me the way the media constantly blather about the problems suffered by children of single mothers, as though it is the mothers who are lacking, and not the fathers who abandoned their responsibilities in the first place.

For example, I recently attempted to read The Wonder of Boys by Michael Gurian, a book about parenting boys which apparently is intended for families in some parallel universe, where the chief problem experienced by boys is that they expected to act like (stereotypical) girls. (The solution is to accept their stereotypical boy qualities. Of course this doesn't seem to have much application for the universe I live in, where stereotypical boy qualities are not just accepted, they are often forced onto boys, and woe betide the boy who is sensitive, or likes ballet, or otherwise transgresses against the "boy code", as Elaine Aron put it.)

Gurian tries to be nice to us poor single moms, but his attitude is, sorry ladies, you haven't got what it takes. No where (as far as I can tell; I didn't finish the book) does he take the absent fathers to task for their actions (or inaction) which affect their children.

Of course, Gurian's approach is pretty standard these days. But CTV reached a new nadir today in mother blaming.

On March 6, Alnoor Amarsi threw his daugher Inara off a bridge before jumping after her to his death. Incredibly, Inara survived, though she is still in critical condition. In his suicide notes, he said he was going to kill Inara because he hated his estranged wife, Shamsha Amarsi.

To me, it's pretty obvious which is the problem parent here (duh). But evidently not to someone on the CTV.ca news staff, who wrote:

Earlier this month, CTV News Toronto reported that the incident started when the 48-year-old man asked his estranged wife for more time with their daughter.
She said no. That appeared to trigger the tragic chain of events—one which he had apparently threatened before.

Ah. So despite appearances, it was mom's fault that Inara was dropped off a bridge. I guess she shouldn't have selfishly refused to let dad spend more time with the kid. So what if he had already threatened to kill Inara before? Fathers have rights, you know.

Does institutionalized schooling help disabled kids, or create them?

The current vogue for cochlear implants, and the associated difficult finding classes in Sign for intact Deaf children, is yet another example of how institutionalized schooling (and mainstream society) inevitably ends up imposing conformity on students. All kids assigned to the same grade (based on their date of birth) are expected to do and learn the same things at the time. Those who are on a different timetable, if they differ "too much", are diagnosed with "learning disabilities" (or "giftedness"). The ones who are too active to put up with sitting at a desk all day are drugged, and now the deaf kids are surgically altered to suit the system.

I know there is a big desire to mainstream disabled kids by getting them into the same schools as nondisabled kids, but the more I learn about institutionalized schooling the more I am convinced that it will always be problematic for everyone. Even the best teacher in the world cannot truly know and meet the needs of the 20 to 30 kids in the class.

I am determined to continue unschooling my son.

Recently, my landlord asked me, how can unschoolers know if their child is learning disabled?

I replied that the concept of learning disability is controversial. Kids vary a great deal in when they are ready to learn different things--for example, my son learned to walk when he was 16 months, but my landlord's daughter learned to walk when she was 10 months. This doesn't mean that my son is "walking disabled" or her daughter is "walking gifted"—they both learned to walk, and in the long run who cares what age they started? Kids also vary greatly in when they are developmentally ready to learn to read—some kids teach themselves at 4, others don't get it until they are 9 or 10 but in a few years you can't tell the teenagers who were early readers from those who started later. But by putting them in the institutionalized schooling system which demands that everyone do the same thing as their agemates, these differences suddenly become a problem, and are pathologized.

I would like to dismantle institutionalized schooling and the associated societal attitude that everyone should learn the same things and have the same abilities. Instead society seems to be moving in the other direction, with more drugs, surgeries, genetic screening, etc. to ensure our children are more uniform. And here in Canada there is talk of extending the school system to younger children. Maybe at some point in the future the 16-month-old walker will be diagnosed with some kind of disability because he isn't following the system's timetable.

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This article first appeared in a slightly different form on the Bioethics Yahoo! Group.

Babies who love too much

The other day, I was reading an article by another single mom about her son's infancy. She described waking up in bed with him, and how he gazed at her as if she were bliss personified.

My glow at remembering those own heady days when Nick was a baby were shortllived. The author concluded that her son was getting too attached to her, and that if she didn't get him out of her bed now (aged 6 months), she would be sleeping with an 18 year old! Her solution to the imagined problem was to force him to sleep alone, and ignore his heartrending cries.

I do not want to seem like I am trashing this mom, because I think this is a typical fear in our society. Indeed, I myself wondered at times if Nicky and I were too close. It is clear that she acted in what she thought was his best interests in pushing him to be more independent, even though it was something of a sacrifice for her.

Isn't our species messed up? What other mammal expects its infants to sleep alone? A six month old human cannot be independent--he is utterly dependent on adults for all of his needs. Does a mother lion or bear worry that her cubs are not independent enough when they are so little that they need to snuggle up to her at night? Do lions and bears grow up to be sissies?

When Nick was around 5 months old, I attempted to participate in a mothers' support group. The babies were expected to spend an hour and a half in the childcare room down the hall, which met all official guidelines, etc etc. Nicky was confused the first time we went. The second time, he had to be brought to me a couple of times. The third time, he freaked, screaming so loudly that everyone came out of their offices to see what was wrong.

The experts who ran the programme assured me that he would get used to it, that this stress now would prepare him for stress later on, he needed to be more independent, yadda yadda. It was obvious to me they were wrong. Nick was not getting used to it; he was getting more and more distressed each time we went there. He was clearly not ready to spend that time apart from me at such a tender age.

We didn't go back to that group.

Was Nick somehow harmed by my not forcing him to be more independent? Hardly. At 18 months, he was ready to enjoy a whole day at his daddy's house, by two he could handle me going out in the evening (which means bedtime without me and my magic sleep-inducing milk) and now he is taking a dance class with big kids (4 year olds)!

Why do we have so little faith that our babies will grow up? Why do we see intimacy, nurturing, and responding to our babies' needs as damaging rather than wholesome? Maybe it's the whole no pain, no gain idea - if the child is getting what he wants rather than screaming with despair, he won't learn what the "real world" is like.

I like to think that by letting Nick move to independence at his own pace, he will be more self-confident (by having success the first time he tries, rather than the difficulties that come from trying before he is ready), and that he will learn that he, and other people, deserve to be treated with respect.

Is parenthood a career?

Many parents who spend most of their time caring for their children, in lieu of paid employment, speak of parenthood as their career. In some ways, the description is apt: we work long hours, doing physically, mentally, and emotionally demanding tasks. A lot of us also engage in "professional development" by reading extensively about child development, psychology, health, nutrition, and education, and attending parenting support groups and conferences.

Despite these parallels, I feel there is a danger in analogizing parenthood to a career. Treating parenthood merely like a job can lead to the misconception that, like other jobs such as programming computers or fixing cars, it doesn't matter who does it, as long as it gets done. In some jurisdictions, this leads to low-income parents being pressured to place their children in the care of strangers, so that the parents can seek paid employment. If raising children were only a job, this wouldn't matter. But of course it does matter, a great deal, to the children and parents involved. This is because parenting, while hard work, is not a job, it is a relationship.

Nonparents seem to have trouble understanding why I insist on staying at home with my toddler, at considerable economic hardship, instead of seeking paid employment and placing my son in daycare.(1) After all, they seem to think, anyone could feed Nicky(2), change his diapers, play with him, read him stories, so what's the big deal? (Indeed, before I got pregnant I had planned to return to full-time employment when the baby was three months old, and put him in daycare.) But to Nicky, it is a big deal. He has always been more separation-sensitive than many babies. He wants mommy, and when I tried placing him in a daycare setting for an hour and a half a week so I could attend a mother's support group, he made this need loud and clear. Now that he is older, he spends more time with daddy, 16 hours a week, but he still needs familiar, safe, people, and lots of one-on-one adult attention. And it matters to me that he spend his infancy and toddlerhood forming deep bonds to me and his father, not an employee (which is not to denigrate parents who are comfortable sharing their children's love with a good, qualified, loving caregiver).

Right now, I consider motherhood as my primary occupation, as it occupies the vast majority of my time (152 hours a week). But motherhood is not my career, it is a relationship, one that will last our lifetimes, regardless of how much time it occupies.

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Notes

(1) Actually, I have chronic health problems which interfere with my seeking employment, but I would probably not want to seek employment anyway.

(2) They wrongly assume that at his age (21 months), he is no longer breastfeeding. Actually, breastfeeding is an important part of his diet (we do not use nonhuman animal milks for ethical reasons) as well as being a signifiant source of comfort.