Archive for the ‘Designer Families’ Category
Other Cooks in the Court Kitchens — California
After reading some more today, and processing information I’ve had, I wish to post this link:
TITLE OF REPORT:
CALIFORNIA’S ACCESS TO VISITATION GRANT
PROGRAM FOR ENHANCING RESPONSIBILITY AND
OPPORTUNITY** FOR NONRESIDENTIAL PARENTS
2001-2003
WHO THIS REPORT WAS ADDRESSED TO:
THE CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE
WHO SUBMITTED THIS REPORT ON THE ABOVE TOPICS TO THE CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE:
(The) Judicial Council of California
Administrative Office of the Courts
Center for Families, Children & the Courts
This report has been prepared and submitted to the California Legislature
pursuant to Assembly Bill 673.
Copyright © 2003 by Judicial Council of California/Administrative Office of the
Courts. All rights reserved.
This report is also available on the California Courts Web site:
http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/programs/cfcc/resources/grants/a2v.htm
I HAVE A QUESTION:
HOW COME DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
OR CHILD SUPPORT LITIGANTS ARE NOT DIRECTED TO THIS SITE
or INFORMED OF THIS PROGRAM
SO THEY KNOW WHY THEY ARE BEING
FORCED THROUGH MEDIATION PROCESS?
(FYI: “mandatory mediation” is the one of many way to achieve the grant-mandated “required outcomes”attached to this particular program funding. The “required outcome” is more hours, more time, more “accesss” going to the noncustodial parent. While “parent” is said, “father” is basically meant. Any legal process (with “due process”) that has a “required outcome” is by definition going to be, in some fashion, “rigged.”)
(It’s a rhetorical question.)
most of us are not checking up on the California Legislature while in an abusive relationship. . . . .
MANY of us cannot afford attorneys, and have come to this place through nonprofits. . . . . not police. . . .
Most of us are not rolling in extra time to do this research.
DURING THE YEARS IN QUESTION, I was dealing with transition from domestic violence.
It would’ve been helpful to know these processes and intents!
Brief Quote (I am running out of time to post today. . . . . )
Over the past five years, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has awarded
a total of $50 million in block grants to states to promote access and visitation programs
to increase noncustodial parents’ involvement in their children’s lives. The federal
allocation to each state is based on the number of single-parent households. California
has the largest number of single heads of households (1,127,062) in the United States.3
California receives the maximum amount of possible federal funds (approximately
$1 million per year), representing 10 percent of the national funding. Federal regulations
earmark grant funds for such activities as mediation (both voluntary and mandatory),
counseling, education, development of parenting plans, visitation enforcement (including
monitoring, supervision, and neutral drop-off and pickup), and development of guidelines
for visitation and alternative custody arrangements.4
Assembly Bill 673 expressed the Legislature’s intent that funding for the state of
California be further limited to the following three types of programs:
q Supervised visitation and exchange services;
q Education about protecting children during family disruption; and
q Group counseling services for parents and children
NOW, FRIENDS, FOES, AND VISITORS: HERE’S YOUR ASSIGNMENT:
READ THIS DOCUMENT, AND OTHERS LIKE IT (FROM OTHER YEARS, FROM YOUR STATES — I’M SURE THERE’S SOMETHING SIMILAR). “RESPONSIBLE CITIZENHOOD.”
And take a GOOD look at the “Fathers Rights” languages it’s laced with, and references to publications in footnotes on these matters.
This is social sciences through the courts. . . .
. . .
A recent study by Amato and Booth (1997), who
looked at several trends in family life and their effects on children, found divorce of all
factors considered, to have the most negative effect on the well-being of children.7
The trends of separation, divorce, and unmarried parents, have potentially adverse effects
on the financial, social, emotional, and academic well-being of America’s children.
Noncustodial parents, generally fathers, struggle to maintain healthy and meaningful
relationships with their children. A recent report by Arendell (1995) illustrates the
gradual disengagement of noncustodial parents. Contact with separated dads is often
minimal, with 30 percent of divorced fathers seeing their children less than once a year
and only 25 percent having weekly contact.8
Or, on page 6, Footnote 17:
K. Sylvester and K. Reich, Making Fathers Count, Assessing the Progress of Responsible Fatherhood
Efforts, (Social Action Network, 2002), p. 2.
In a nation where 23 million children do not live with their biological
fathers and 20 million live in single-parent homes (most of them lacking fathers)
AMONG REASONS, POSSIBLY, WHY, MIGHT BE”
(intake forms to screen and assess for safety risks; separate
orientations and interviews with parents; written child abduction procedures; policies to
respond to allegations or suspicions of abuse, intimidation, or inappropriate behavior;
copies of protective orders, protocols for declining unsafe or high-risk cases).
(POST TO BE CONTINUED)….
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What kind of choices are THESE for women!?! 1. Marry, legally WIN custody of child from former partner, and possibly die, possibly with others. 2. Due to “unhealthy alliance (marriage?),” Get a domestic violence restraining order and possibly die. 3. DON’T seek a domestic violence restraining order, and possibly die.
Or, 4. like I did
a. Obtain a domestic violence restraining order, in hopes NOT to die.
b. See ex given almost immediately (Search this blog for “Access Visitation Grants” or “SAVP”) liberal, unsupervised overnight visitation.
c. Comply with it, consistently, and try to insist he does also
d. After warning authorities and all involved of one’s concern about abduction, (and seeking child support enforcement), have them abducted an overnight unsupervised visitation to nearly permanently (or permanently) lose contact with them.
That at least beats some of the ALTERNATE version of Choice 4 (Obtain a Restraining Order)
4.d.1 REISER: YOU go “MIA” on an unsupervised visitation exchange of the children, and show up years later (as part of a plea bargain of DA’s with husband who murdered you, with kids present), a few (less than 6) feet under — Google “Hans Reiser,” only a moderate tweak of too many others to categorize, where MOM was either murdered, or an attempt was made to murder her, during an exchange.
4.d.2. CASTILLO, GONZALES, CONNOLLY, OTHERS, SOME OF THEM NOW BEFORE AN INTERNATIONAL COURT: After warning the courts and others that you feel visitation is unwise (or he just failed to return them at the appointed time), have your children drowned, shot, hung, or gassed to death – on an overnight visitation. Note, like some of the driving theories behind families, this is now international in scope.
4.d.2.a. Possibly go homeless from inability to retain work after so many years in the system, and so much prolonged exposure to stress and trauma that chronic PTSD, plus the unstable job history renders one unemployable.
(I know currently two women who became homeless after the custody switch following domestic violence, and many more who are impoverished and unemployed, but thankfully not yet homeless).
There are endless varieties of option 4, and sequential consequences to it, none of them, for the most part, helpful for the children, or society at large, so long as the current AFCC-run, Mediation-focused, due-process eradicating family law system continues to be the next step after domestic violence restraining orders. The venue, players, and stakes just get higher, if this be possible, than when they were originally. And are likely to remain so until one of these 3 possible consequences follows, at which point, there simply is no more money, or press, or government program to be squeezed out of the situation, just possibly a few press headlines for the first one below:
1. Someone is killed.
2. Someone, or both parents — and their allies — are destitute.
3. All children have turned 18.
NOW ABOUT THE PAST 2 SUNDAY/MONDAYS IN THE GOLDEN STATE, THE STATE OF THE +/- $1 MILLION/YEAR OF ACCESS VISITATION GRANTS FUNDING (AND I HAVEN’T EVEN POSTED THE HEALTHY MARRIAGE DEMONSTRATION GRANT INFO YET) . . . . WHICH HAS (FYI) BEEN GOING ON AT LEAST SINCE 1998. . . . . (which for all I know simply represents when the on-line database geared up)
Some readers may wonder why the motto (top right, button) on this blog reads:
Not a private matter —
why “family” “law” hurts us all
Just another two sunny Mondays in Sunny California
illustrate the under-publicized dangers of actually
WINNING in court:
1. Under, “win custody and possibly die”:
Monday, 07/06/09 San Jose
No independence week for her:
Bitter Ex Loses Custody, so “Wins” with a Gun.
THEIR Daughter, Her StepDad, the Neighborhood, and everyone else involved, LOSES.
Two reported dead at San Jose townhome after shooting and hostage situation
By Mark Gomez and Lisa Fernandez
- Shortly after 8 a.m. Monday, a neighbor bleeding from a gunshot wound ran by Anthony Gallardo’s San Jose townhouse shouting that a man had shot his wife in the arm and taken her hostage.
- A relative who asked not to be identified said Coffman was wounded in the earlobe by a gunman who had entered his home and taken his wife hostage. Gallardo let the neighbor and a hysterical 9-year-old girl into his garage to call police.
- The woman had recently won a drawn-out and bitter custody battle with her ex-boyfriend over the 9-year-old girl, the relative said.
- That was how a 5 1/2-hour standoff started in the upscale Montecito Vista townhouse development Monday. It ended when San Jose police, failing to make contact with the gunman, entered the townhouse and found the bodies of a man and woman.
- Police declined to identify the victims but said the shooting appeared to have stemmed from “a family dispute.
- Damon Cookson, manager of an evacuated mobile home park near the townhouse, said mobile home park residents were let back into their homes at 2:45 p.m.
- Police had evacuated homes in the townhouse complex and a mobile home park located next door so quickly that some left their homes shoeless, without money or cell phones. Other residents were picked up by friends or relatives so they didn’t have to stand outside in the sun.
According to the “Healthy Marriages and Responsible Fatherhood” advocates, she did the right thing. She had a man in the home and was married to her; possibly she ran across one of their ubiquitous classes and, or had a religious conversion, and realized that having children with boyfriends (as opposed to committed and financially self-supporting, faithful spouses — like, say, Steve McNair?) was not the upright thing to do for herself, health, or her daughter. Perhaps there was even a child support order in place on the Dad, which may or may not have contributed to the bitterness of the divorce. THAT 9 YEAR OLD GIRL WAS IN A HETEROSEXUAL 2-PARENTS, MARRIED HOUSEHOLD. HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES WOULD’VE HAD NO ISSUES OR INTERVENTIONS IN PLACE FOR THIS HOUSEHOLD.
Perhaps the man who married her (let’s hope) really loved her, and vice versa, enough to take public vows and make it legal. ACCORDING TO THE DESIGNER FAMILY MENTALITY, THIS ONE SHOULD’VE WORKED. SHOULD THEY TAKE IT BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD AND PUT A FEW $$MILLION ON HOLD BEFORE SOMEONE ELSE GETS KILLED AND SOME OTHER KIDS ARE ORPHANED? WAS THIS HOSTAGE/SUICIDE/FEMICIDE SITUATION PREDICTABLE?)
History of domestic violence, stalking, or other criminal activity, or NO history of domestic violence, stalking or other criminal activity, her attempt to pursue child support on behalf of the child, the answer is: YES. Being stuck in family court is rough on everyone. Rules of evidence are weakened in this venue (See link in my last post), making hearsay accusations easier. Psychology reigns, and there are people who profit from this. Money trades hands for sure.
YES, in the fathers rights vs. feminists (supposedly this is the war) climate overall, it was probably predictable, though maybe not perhaps not the timing of it.
Will people sit up and take notice, and change policies because of this death?
I doubt it.
She was married to Coffman, who texted the relative short updates all day long. The woman was a respiratory therapist at a local hospital.
(More detailed background story, and link, on this case at bottom of today’s post)
This case was not a week old before another one in Northern California hit the press, and the late-night TV stations:
2. Monday, 07/13/09, Novato (not including multi-county Amber alert)
File Under, “Win a temporary domestic violence restraining order, and possibly die, leaving your infant with Child Protective Services,
after she experiences a nice little kidnapping.”
(Did the infant witness her mother being beat to death with a baseball bat also?)
Actually this was a SUNDAY, and the father was caught, apparently on Monday. Good thing, being as he was a murderer, son of a murderer, a child-stealer, his brother had a drug habit and he himself was in the family porn industry (makes one question the advisability of the match, for sure). I wonder if Access Visitation Grants funding would’ve come into play under THIS one. Maybe when he’s been in prison long enough, they will come after him to make contact with his daughter, after all, there IS a plague of fatherlessness, and he WAS (apparently) his little girl’s father.
Which is likely what he was thinking when he killed the Mom and kidnapped her, too. How DARE that woman separate me from my kid and accuse me of violence! I’ll show her what violence is!
I cannot stand to read every report on this one…
Porn King’s Son held in Baseball-Bat Beating Death
NOVATO, Calif. — A 1-year-old girl was safely recovered early Monday and her 27-year-old father in custody after he allegedly brutally beat the girl’s mother to death with a baseball bat, authorities said.
He was suspected of beating Danielle Keller several times with a baseball bat before fleeing with the girl — who was celebrating her first birthday — and threatening to kill any law enforcement agents who came into contact with him, according to police.
The baby has an age. The murderer kidnapper father has an age. Is there any particular reason why the Mom in this story doesn’t merit one?
Family members told KTVU that there was a history of domestic abuse and restraining order had been issued against Mitchell in both San Francisco and Marin. Keeler’s mother, Claudia Stevens, said Mitchell had stormed into her Novato home three weeks ago and threatened violence. He also had been making threatening phone calls, she added.
…And this did not result in his IMMEDIATE arrest and incarceration for violation of restraining order WHY?
Mom didn’t know? Courts didn’t function? Mother still traumatized, didn’t register the importance of this? Police were called on the violation, but didn’t do anything? Police weren’t called? Police reported, but no one prosecuted? No precedent that this was a danger sign existed?
3 weeks. Hmmm. Was the case was in family court? Had they been to the mediator yet? Did the mediator say to them, as the mediator did to ME (shortly after I filed domestic violence restraining order with kickout, AFTER the violence had escalated to the guns, knives, serious injury phase,putting this “family matter” at a clear domestic violence, felony, not misdemeanor) “just peaceful communications about the (children)” — and totally failed to specify: Place of exchange. TIME of exchanges around holidays. Or child support, resulting in the soon thereafter need to resort to welfare, until I could rebuild some income.)
Excuse me. File under,
“Another needless death, another burden on California taxpayers, another traumatized little girl,
family, and neighborhood”
(I imagine it also might be filed under, don’t hook up with men involved in the porn business. What are women, desperate these days? Was she attracted to his testosterone? There are down sides of too much of that, I suppose….)
This is a cruel thing to say, but I am searching about for WHY this bloodshed just doesn’t stop, no matter how many policies or laws are in place. There HAVE to be a few consistent reasons. Added to my concerns are, why is that our nation is raising — or inhabited by — so many dysfunctional adults of criminal nature.
Perhaps the problem is with the concept of the Nation (as opposed to individual families) raising them. But, as I say sometimes, this is a family law blog, not an education blog. Perhaps the problem is religion, as I KNOW this is a factor in many domestic violence cases. Perhaps the problem is LACK of religion (morality / common sense // ethical behavior). Perhaps the problem is an alienated populace — from each other as well, except within the various cliques. Perhaps the problem is fatherhood vigilanteeism (actually, I think this is VERY close to the truth, and filed, at least in part, under religion). Perhaps the problem is that reaction against feminism, AND against the perceived lack of religion nationwide, breeding neo-con and worse versions of what went before.
OH — PERHAPS it’s that we don’t teach women how to defend themselves, or that this is a feminine and desireable life skill.
PERHAPS it’s that we don’t teach women boundaries, and how to defend themselves.
PERHAPS it’s that WE think someone else is teaching or doing something else that, in former centuries, “we” had to do ourselves. Like, raise and prepare food, learn to read, teach our kids to read, and so forth.
LAST ONE, MORE RESULTS. . . .
Amber Alert Novato, Search Results 48,000
Brewer, Victoria E. & Derek Paulsen (1993, November). A Comparison of U.S. and Canadian Findings on Uxoricide Risk for Women with Children Sired by Previous Partners. Homicide Studies, 3(4), 317-332.
Bunting, Helen. (2008, February 19). Women and Daughter Killed in Chile’s Latest Femicide. The Santiago Times, http://www.santiagotimes.cl/santiagotimes/news/feature-news/woman-and-daughter-killed-in-chile-s-latest-femicide.html
Bunting, Helen. (2008, February 6). Femicides in Chile: 10 So Far This Year; Three in 24 Hours. Santiago Times, http://www.santiagotimes.cl/santiagotimes/news/feature-news/femicide-chile-10.html
Bunting, Helen. (2008, January 24). Three Femicides Recorded So Far in 2008. http://www.valparaisotimes.cl/content/view/296/1/
And the well-known, and still not part of policy in family court matters, studies by Jacquelyn Campbell:
- Campbell, Jacquelyn C. (2004, December). Helping Women Understand Their Risk in Situations of Intimate Partner Violence. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 19(12), 1464-1477.
- Campbell, Jacquelyn, Carolyn Block, & Robin Thompson. (1999). Femicide and Fatality Review. Next Millennium Conference: Ending Domestic Violence. http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/184570.pdf
- Campbell, Jacquelyn, Nancy Glass, Phyllis W. Sharps, Kathryn Laughton & Tina Bloom. (2007, July). Intimate Partner Homicide: Review and Implications of Research and Policy. Trauma, Violence & Abuse, 8(3), 246-269.
Oh, Mea Culpa. The word “femicide” is for a specialized field of study. Maybe it’s under “homicide/suicide.” Better also be more specific, since “homicide/suicide” would jam my software again, too large.
San Jose homicide/suicide— Google results
Was THIS one avoidable? Answer: YES!
“San Jose man recounts murder-suicide that left wife dead.”
Mercury News, 07-10-09 8:49am updated
The couple had long been leery of Liang and worried he could be capable of violence. A 2003 stalking charge was dismissed against Liang for threatening to kill the two of them, even though Coffman said neither he nor his wife were called as witnesses.
Ying He and Liang came to the United States from China in 1999, Coffman said. They had a baby girl in the Bay Area on June 14, 2000. Liang sent the girl to live with his wealthy parents in Guangzhou, and because Ying He had pending immigration status, she couldn’t freely travel between the countries.
In 2006, Ying He discovered her daughter and Liang were living in Southern California. She also discovered, Coffman said, that her ex-boyfriend, a gambler, was short on cash.
“They made a deal,” Coffman said. “Brandi said she’d give Nelson some money and he said he’d give her their daughter.” {{NO CONTACT WITH MOM FOR SIX YEARS…..}}
But Liang reneged on his part of the deal, Coffman said, and disappeared with the girl. Coffman and his wife hired an attorney to find Liang and fight for full custody. After about two years, Liang and the girl surfaced again in Southern California. In March, Liang didn’t pick his daughter up from school one day, and police reports show Liang told school officials in Arcadia that he no longer wanted to care for his child. He was soon arrested and pleaded no contest to child endangerment. The girl was put in state care
Let’s get that timeline again:
2000 — baby born
Shortly thereafter — Dad sends baby away, no contact with mother.
2003 Dad found stalking and threatening to kill Mother AND her new husband. (SOUND FAMILIAR?) Doesn’t apparently even make the DA’s radar, although there are anti-stalking laws in California, and stalking has been listed for many years among lethality indicators. Perhaps he also had some concept of maybe extorting the new couple (in re: gambling habit?).
Also (sounds like my own case in this regard), stalking as seen as irrelevant to child’s welfare. Dad retains custody, and this couple is not really on the map, or the child, legally speaking??
Unclear (here) whether they still thought daughter was in China (no mail or phone contact?)
2006 – child is located, and mother and new husband invest money and time attempting to get her in their household.
Father receives money in exchange for daughter, obviously they were trying to settle out of court. Father agrees, takes money, and doesn’t turn over daughter. Possibly the FBI should’ve been involved here?
2008?– Father, changing his mind again, abandons daughter (note: that he sent his daughter back to China MIGHT be an indicator he didn’t want custody, right?) and the state picks her up. It MIGHT be deduced from the court records, by “the state” that a parent who wants the daughter, and is in a stable situation, exists. However, that parent was a mother….
2009 – April. State figures it out, and gives child back to mother. Child-endangering, stalking Dad still has visitation rights:
Liang still had visitation rights and weekly phone calls.
Why doesn’t that surprise me? You still in favor of shared parenting, frequent visitation, fathers — ANY fathers — return day? If not, find out which Congressmen (and if any women) voted for this in 1998 and 1999 in the U.S., and write them why they should re-think the resolution — what WAS that about, opting for population control by homicide/suicide??
Which tells you about family court in California: Far be it from Family Law Judges to notice that trivialities such as sending kid back to China, where her own mother couldn’t nurture or see her for YEARS, while staying here and racking up a gambling debt, stalking and threatening to kill the mother and her new partner, and child endangerment by abandonment, should be taken into account in designing a custody/visitation order!
On Sunday, the day before the shooting, Liang called to speak with his daughter, asking her strangely specific questions about her schedule. Coffman believes Liang was casing the family for the attack.
My question: WHEN did Coffman or his wife hear of those strangely specific questions? Was the daughter alarmed? DId no one catch the anomaly. That instinct of “this is strange, isn’t it?” can save lives — in a family, even if the state misses the boat… I suspect they hadn’t processed that information yet, and didn’t think that Liang would act so quickly.
ALWAYS play it safe!
I see we bloggers are going to have to work harder at getting the news out: Before entering family court situations with difficult custody battles, get martial arts training — and exerrcise your second amendment rights.
QUESTION OPEN: WHY DID THE COUPLE COME TO THE U.S. TO HAVE THE BABY?
ENDNOTE: China is known for not valuing girl babies as much as boy babies.
But the U.S. ought to have understood when children are viewed as poker chips in a high-stakes custody battle.
I think this one might be more gambling debt as much as jealousy contributing to the problems
IT TAKES MORE THAN MONEY TO BE A GOOD SECOND DAD WHEN THE FIRST ONE WAS A NUT CASE.
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How bad Is it? ~ Skirting the Truth at Cairo, Telling it in America, Turned Down at Brown, Left to Tell after Rwanda
I was told to shorten my titles. This was the original:
In Cairo, Obama Delicately Skirts the Issue of Islamic Violence Towards Women, but Chesler (Honor Killings), LetsGetHonest (DV and Christianity), Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Infidel), Nonie Darwish (They Call Me Infidel), Immaculee Ilibagiza (Left to Tell, 91 days in a Rwandan bathroom) shoot from the hip on the dangers of ANY pride/shame/hate-based culture
Note: Of the above “notables” obviously President Obama’s OFFICE outranks the rest of us, but I’ve put 4 famous female voices (& mine) to 2 male to underscore, well, who and what the others have downplayed
[Have been told to shorten the posts, too, not just the titles. Working on it!]
This post, July 2 (2 days before “Independence Day” USA) had been on hold. Unlike several women featured here, I added my voice to theirs, telling it like it is, then self-censored out of fear: I felt MY contribution was too radical, too out-spoken, and too indignant.
Well . . . .
BUT, I have noticed the headlines since July 2nd — a litany of murder/suicides, family annihilations, and slaps on the wrist for men punching, stalking, kidnapping or threatening to kill women, after which they then kill. I had my children stolen for daring to report abuse, violations of court orders, and for refusing to “submit” to arbitrary orders on how to dumb down my smart daughters. I know what “shunning” is. I know what “enabling abuse” is.
I have never experienced fundamentalist Islamic violence against women, but the sense of the Christian version of it over here is starting to feel like a sort of ritual purging process. It is starting to ffeel like “No Exit” unless there is a miraculous parting of the Red Tape, a CLOUD covering my behind and a FIRE leading the way. We already tried the “appeal to reason” paradigm, or the “appeal to law” ONE, ALSO. We also did the “it’s not in your best interest” reason, but some people will pay a lot of money for the privilege of refusing to stop abusing. Like they say, truth is on the auction block, and was sold cheap, Lies fetched a higher price.
I pay attention, and have SEEN Protestant so-called Christian Caucasian men drilling young men how to dominate women twice their age in the name of their god, and been subjected to this as well. Recently. Yeech — Retch! What kind of “sanctuary” is that??
However, now that a suburban California back yard finally released ,29-year-old Jaycee Dugard and her 11 year old and 15 year old girls fathered by the man who kidnapped HER when she was only 11, I felt this post is quite appropriate:
This case is shocking for its combination of statistics (18 years! Missed opportunities! “We never knew!” “But they looked like a nice couple!” “I spoke with Jaycee on the phone, she was courteous and professional” (She was not only a sex slave, but also supported this man’s business while living in shack-like conditions in a back yard with her kids). A WOMAN called the police reporting that people were living in the back yard. Like my calls and reports to police that another man, their father, was going to kidnap MY daughters, her voice was not heard.
Are we willing to listen and change behavior YET? The behavior “we” need to change is to get smart and act on hunches. While people who take the scriptures too literally are castigated and censored, disdained in public media, how about some of us in the U.S. start taking the 3 charters of freedom: Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights literally for a change? Starting by knowing their INtents based on their CONtents! And then recognizing that humanity is a DNA thing, not a color thing or a gender thing! And the usage of “all men are created equal” in the first was NOT “men vs. women” and did not say, although it was so practiced, “all Caucasian landowning males.” It meant ALL EQUAL and not to be colonized, or, like Miss Dugard (sr.) was, pimped.
I am United States citizen by birth, and was never beaten, or degraded because of my gender before I married. Nor was I forced into marriage. But women of faith or no faith nowadays who attempt to leave, risk being stripped of children, or killed, for the act of — leaving their marriage and asserting legal rights they already have.
While our current President has described the angst and sense of loss he felt not having his father in his life growing up, the rest of us describe some of what it’s like to be a target of violence and punishment for the crime of having been born without a Y chromosome, for some, a life sentence punishable by death.
President Obama, pre-election, helping out Senator Bayh in Indiana, with some more Mother-Omission:
2006 – EVER TRYING TO RAM THROUGH ANOTHER BILL, FINE-TUNING & REDEFINING FATHERHOOD AND HEALTHY MARRIAGE
As one of my fellow-bloggers commented in Indiana Mothers for Custodial Justice: Evan Bayh is not his Father’s Son,
Senator Evan Bayh’s (fatherhood-promoted) own father Senator BIRCH Bayh, was in favor of equal rights for women: so much for a chip off the old block, and passing down values from father to son, politically.
According to this post (Verifiable Here) both Senator Evan and then-Senator Obama co-sponsored YET ANOTHER “Healthy marriage and Responsible Fatherhood” bill, which was defeated in 2006.
Like this Senator, and another well-known FR attorney from the Chicago Area, both the Senators also remembered all the Hoopla around Father’s Day, Fatherhood, Father Celebration, and etc., etc. (can we say “patriarchal?”) in June PR (June is Father’s Day month, FYI), but forgot the same on Mother’s Day, in May. Actually, in 2009 and (I found) 2008, PR around now-President and then-Senator Obama eclipsed this acknowledgement of where they came from, literally (they had mothers, right?), as the word “Mother” has become, as I blogged elsewhere, virtually invisible linguistically in connection with “families” on the whitehouse.gov site. The preferred term, for those of you not in the know, is “Parent” when it comes to the divorce situation, and “Women” when it comes to who’s having violence (including murder) perpetrated against them by, often enough by the father of mutual children.
~ ~ ~ ~
It is difficult to control a population aware of their “unalienable rights,” not intimidated by verbal derogatory talk, or economically dependent upon abusers or captive to them by the threat of death as they leave. Now one factor that often gives a mother courage and motivation to LEAVE abuse is precisely her motherhood, so no wonder it would be threatening to any:
Fear/Shame/Pride-based culture or religion.
The mother/daughter/son bond, culturally needs to be degraded and broken (stepmothers will do) if we are to have a truly sheepish culture that will do what they are told without protest. Family Court venue is GREAT for this, and I happen to believe was designed for the purpose, despite all the hoopla from under-funded (??), under-recognized (????????) fathers, especially those who like to minimize their own violence towards their own women, often prompting separation, which even that bill (above) recognizes is a primary cause of separation!
@@@
The link “parsing Obama” caught my attention, and led to an article from “Real Clear Politics” on the Cairo Speech.
I have just written on “Women” vs. “Mother” and the weak (# occurrences) presence of both when it comes to Family Issues being discussed under the current US Administration’s “White House” page. Not only were the words barely absent, but their usage (which I didn’t analyze and post — but noticed) was also weak. In looking for the word “mothers” I would have to assume that after the age requiring home nurse visitations, we don’t exist. For example, the President’s own mother was transformed into the word “parent” in a sentence highlighting absence of a father. To people who haven’t been through systemic prejudice against their “mothering” it may not register, but when examined, it’s blatant PR omission. It undermines the credibility of the whole page. (granted, the month was the month of Father’s Day, however, if someone has a record of this page during May and wishes to countradict my post, please feel free to comment).
SIMILARLY, when it comes to speaking in this nation, Egypt, the mention of Islamic violence (not bias, but violence) toward women, the omission is just as loud.
So, I just slapped up the article, with someone else’s commentary on it, for your consumption. Then I searched out and pasted up interviews, articles or book reviews from several women who do NOT Delicately skirt the issue of violence towards women, and hate talk in general. Two of these women came to America, and one of them, since coming, has converted from Islam to Christianity.
A third woman from Rwanda didn’t convert, but was already Christian. Her story isn’t about gender violence, but it was another “can’t put down” book of survival in the face of hate, and refusal to hate back. The individual verbal abuse or hate talk that often DOES escalate to physical domestic violence got me (in marriage, after marriage) sensititve to moods and fluctuations in language that might indicate an “event” about to erupt also precedes genocides or attempted genocides. The speech sometimes works the speaker or groups of speakers up, or justifies the abuse. Whether the Holocaust or Rwanda, hate talk is a danger sign. Just as PTSD from domestic violence does indeed have similarities with PTSD from actual war.
So, this had me also noticing books and commentaries on the languages preceding genocides or attempted genocides; Rwanda had caught my attention earlier from the book on which the movie “Hotel Rwanda” was based. This book details times when pastors protected, and times when pastors betrayed, those that were being hunted down. So I include the “Left To Tell” book because it seems relevant.
And I added my two bits. And a few links indicating that this fatherhood stuff is turning to vigilante behavior, unfortunately. And pointed out, again, what our Declaration of Independence was about….
On my blogroll to the right, is a little Youtube showing just how low my President bowed, casually, quickly, to the leader of a Muslim country, in the company of Queen Elizabeth and a G20 meeting. This disturbs me, and was of some serious debate in a blogtalkradio dialogue (as I recall the source, anyhow) moderated by Dr. Phyllis Chesler and Marcia Pappas of NYS NOW. Is he the leader of the free world, or at least part of it? Then what’s that obeisance about? Would he kneel to the Pope to be politically correct, kiss the ring and insult all those boys and girls abused by priests, and the concept upon which this nation was founded, Bill of Rights Number I?
I myself am VERY disturbed at how domestic violence killings are starting to take on a vigilante nature, as if in retaliation to a woman leaving a family, or exposing a sin, how DARE she? As a mature woman and mother who has been dumped by the roadside by a combination of my own family and my ex-batterer, apparently for — again, exposing family something or other — I am thinking about:
- How
- Why
- Who ARE these people?
- What IS this world?
How many OTHER myths have I believed about life, my country, my family, the legal system, etc.? I will tell you one I have let go of: “The American Dream.” I have switched this my dream from anything material, and am changing it to a character issue, a personal one with myself.
I am calling upon the combination of my God (NOT the one that is a respecter of persons, or genders, or legalistically profiling and whimsical in judgment, that I have seen in certain places), and my courage, and putting my intellect a good bit lower, respectively, than it used to be. Plus, from within, my emotions of concern and compassion for others, and whatever picture I can imagine. Indignation about injustice only goes so far, and as the injustice basically never stops, another motivation must be found.
I think part of the trouble around here is that people pretend to be neutral and detached (a high value) when they aren’t anything of the sort. They can incite to violence, ride roughshod over families, due process, and civil rights, as easily as any other nation or culture, but claim this is based on “evidence-based practices.” In one place on this post, I included a Rwandan woman — the issue was not on men versus women, but the same principles: hate talk towards a certain group of people (Tutsis) and how quickly it ignited.
We have become an incredibly morally bankrupt place (as well as fiscally — and they are related), while drowning in certain materials and products. However, the solution to this is not to be found in the institutions, but rather in the people who are aware that these institutions are not going to replace human basic functions of: produce, protect, educate, alleviate, CREate (when it comes to arts, ideas, concepts, etc.), that which we have procreated. If you’re new to this blog, you’ll notice that when I have a strong emotional reaction to a certain thing (or idea), I pile on labels, like sauce on a hamburger, or whipped cream on a milkshake, or, . . . . or. . . .
I was referring to the churches, some of which I left voluntarily, and one of which I got thrown out of last month for being female, having understanding of a Biblical passage, and speaking up (even with permission). How dare I think I knew something!
See:
“Family Values” Pundits not so upstanding themselves.
This is a new site to me: REAL CLEAR POLITICS. This dates to June 2009
I simply posted the whole article. Any italics are my emphasis, some (not all) of the other style changes are mine, too:
Did Obama Say Enough About Women’s Rights?
Posted by Cathy Young | Email This | Permalink | Email Author
As I said in my previous post, I had a largely positive reaction to Obama’s Cairo speech. However, I agree with David Frum’s criticsm of Obama’s comments about women’s rights — which should have been a key part of an “outreach to Muslims” speech. In contrast to Obama’s strong affirmation of the principles of democracy, his discussion of women’s issues and Islam was too general, too weak, and afflicted with excessive even-handedness.
{{with which “even handedness, as I have beLABORED in previous posts, the Whitehouse.gov agenda on families is not even remotely afflicted. It flat out ignores the fact, practically, that mothers exist. Period.}}
Here is the passage in its entirety: (OBAMA):
“The sixth issue that I want to address is women’s rights
“I know there is debate about this issue. {{“debate”?!?}} I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal, but I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality. And it is no coincidence that countries where women are well-educated are far more likely to be prosperous.
Now let me be clear: issues of women’s equality are by no means simply an issue for Islam.
{{EXCUUUUUSE me? Is this or is this not a dodge, or an understatement? Was there a political or safety reason for this understatement at this particular conference?
http://www.phyllis-chesler.com/211/are-honor-killings-simply-domestic-violence
I have posted an excerpt below. And photos. OK, now you may continue reading President Obama’s speech…}}}}
“In Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia, we have seen Muslim-majority countries elect a woman to lead. Meanwhile, the struggle for women’s equality continues in many aspects of American life, and in countries around the world.
Our daughters can contribute just as much to society as our sons, and our common prosperity will be advanced by allowing all humanity – men and women – to reach their full potential. I do not believe that women must make the same choices as men in order to be equal, and I respect those women who choose to live their lives in traditional roles. But it should be their choice. That is why the United States will partner with any Muslim-majority country to support expanded literacy for girls, and to help young women pursue employment through micro-financing that helps people live their dreams.”
Frum takes issue, in particular, with Obama’s remarks about the head-covering issue: he points out that not only “some in the West,” but many women in the Muslim world regard the hijab as a symbol of female submission (not to God but to man), and that many women who “choose” to cover themselves (sometimes not only their hair but their face) do so because of coercion and intimidation either by family members or by radical Islamic militias. I do believe Obama was right to affirm a woman’s right to choose hijab; quite a few Muslim feminists regard it as a legitimate and positive form of religious expression, no different from the Jewish yarmulke, and quite a few moderately traditional Muslims are alienated by the categorical rejection of the hijab as oppressive. However, it would have been fitting to balance his statement with an assertion of a woman’s right to choose not to cover their hair — a right that, in some countries, they are denied not only by informal pressure and harassment, but by law and official policy.
As for the rest of this passage, it was nice of Obama to assert the importance of educational opportunities for girls and women, but that’s about as uncontroversial as it gets: who, except for the Taliban, disagrees? In all too many Muslim countries, the main problems facing women are far more severe: forced marriage, vastly unequal treatment when it comes to divorce and child custody, and socially sanctioned violence. How can one talk about women’s rights in the Muslim world and not mention honor killings? Or the horrific recent public flogging by a Taliban militia in Pakistan of a 17-year-old girl whose apparent offense was to have stepped outside her house without a male relative escorting her? Or cases in which Islamic courts have sentenced rape victims to death for fornication or adultery when the rape could not be proved under a stringent standard requiring two male witnesses? (While we’re at it, how about the fact that in Islamic courts, the word of a female witness is officially given half the weight of a man’s?) What about female genital mutilation? Against the backdrop of these genuine horrors, literacy programs and micro-financing for young women’s employment look like a rather feeble response. How about first ensuring that the girl who participates in a literacy program doesn’t get brutalized for showing a strand of hair in public?
In this context, Obama’s comment that “the struggle for women’s equality” is also a problem in America is also, to say the least, unhelpful. Yes, there are still gender disparities in the U.S., though I think many of them are due to, as Obama put it, women not making the same choices as men. But to mention what sexism still remains in American society in the same breath as the violent misogyny and patriarchal oppression still pervasive in much of the Muslim world today is a truly misguided attempts at even-handedness. It’s a bit like saying that of course it’s a bad thing that of course it’s a bad thing that Joe locks his wife in the closet, beats her senseless, forbids her to talk to any other man and monitors every penny she spends, but hey, Bill spends only half the time his wife does on housework and child care and treats his own career as more important than his wife’s, so if he voices disapproval of Joe he’d better mention his own failings too.
Yes, of course it’s not only in Muslim countries that women face severe oppression. (The issue of women being elected to lead in deeply patriarchal cultures is a separate, and fascinating, one, but I don’t think it’s a good measure of the overall status of women in society.) And I know there is a vigorous debate about whether Islam is inherently more female-unfriendly than other major religions and whether an Islamic feminsm is possible. Nonetheless, the fact remains that in recent decades we have seen a rollback of women’s rights in many societies — sometimes a drastic rollback — due to the influence of Islamic extremism. Obama’s failure to mention this fact was extremely disappointing. Talk about a missed opportunity. In my previous post, I said that Obama’s comments on women’s rights deserved no more than a B-. Analyzing them now, I’m lowering the grade to a gentleman’s C.
I give it an “F.” See below:
PLEASE READ THIS ARTICLE: I PASTE ENOUGH TO ENCOURAGE YOU TO GET OVER THERE AND READ IT!
Dr. Phyllis Chesler:
Are Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence? (title is URL)
by Phyllis Chesler
Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2009
Families that kill for honor will threaten girls and women if they refuse to cover their hair, their faces, or their bodies or act as their family’s domestic servant; wear makeup or Western clothing; choose friends from another religion; date; seek to obtain an advanced education; refuse an arranged marriage; seek a divorce from a violent husband; marry against their parents’ wishes; or behave in ways that are considered too independent, which might mean anything from driving a car to spending time or living away from home or family. Fundamentalists of many religions may expect their women to meet some but not all of these expectations. But when women refuse to do so, Jews, Christians, and Buddhists are far more likely to shun rather than murder them. Muslims, however, do kill for honor, as do, to a lesser extent, Hindus and Sikhs.
{{Everything underlined here, was an issue in my Western, non-Muslim marriage. I snuck education. I was stalked, through my own family and individually for leaving to the point that I have had major fear to finalize this divorce, and have not; I experienced retaliation consistently of engaging in activities outside the home, specifically anything that related to my former profession. This retaliation could come in the form of interfering with me getting out the door, or sabotage — allowing me to start, but making it hard to complete, a simple season’s engagement; complaining about or withholding funding for something as elementary as a simple black skirt and shirt to perform in; display of weapons immediately after returning from a rehearsal, leaving the car with insufficient gas to get back from one, and other night-mare-inducing behavior. This extended also to times my daughters were engaged in music as well; UNBELIEVABLE. I have watched my piano be physically attacked, buried under virtual trash, and then I was mocked for not practicing it enough, which I barely could find time to do in a day. I left home once, with an infant, in another state, for a week. I was given extra tasks to complete before leaving, and I came back to a house that was dangerously trashed –NO dishes had been done, broken glass on the floor (and we had a baby), and a special plant/bush I’d given him had not been watered, and was dead. Food in pots was moldy; I was stunned. In subsequent (to marriage) public times, in court, he repeatedly talked about the condition of the house, as if I didn’t also work, or was solely responsible. I had an unbelievable time getting access to a car, which was resented.
Finally, when I was able to leave the family home for two weeks, for a music camp, with daughters, when I returned, I’d been thrown out of the bedroom, a lock installed, and in short, this was when I determined to leave. These TYPES of activities continued, to this day, post-separation. Every decision I made that entailed putting daughters in a music class, or lessons, was permitted reluctantly, but eventually stopped. Then public declarations were made that I was isolating and depriving them. I attended a VERY liberal Midwestern college, and as a young person, was not restricted or berated for anything regarding my gender. The place I met this man was not illiberal — it ordained women, we preached in teams, and sometimes lived together.
During this marriage, I began to doubt that I was indeed in America. I had never heard of any experience like this, or known anyone who had experienced a situation like this violence, and abuse. Speaking of it to the variety of people I did, indeed, come in front of year after year, few of them had words to describe this thing that was happening to me. To this day, my “liberal” relatives will not use the word “domestic violence” or “abuse” in front of me, practically, and appear to be furious that I have actually spoken in these terms and insisted that this is indeed what happened. The denial has taken it beyond the legal terms — there has been, within my family — a literal denial that any of the laws to protect people from domestic violence exist, apply, or have anything to do with our case, or my many difficulties. Experientially, it needs a name. Now, gradually, through blogging, networking, reading, talking — and I have not been through ANYthing like the women below here — I have come to understand that this is a serious moral / emotional / social crisis our country is in. There are powerful political factors that HAVE to say the words “domestic violence” with their mouths, because the cat is out of the bag, and the horse is out of the barn. BUT, they are diluting, reframing, derailing the conversation and attempting, in many and disturbing ways, to turn back the clock on this matter of women saying NO! You can NOT do this! and saying it through the courts.
Every woman has to determine how she is going to respond to this shunning, when women in our world survive, and are emotionally supported primarily through their connections with others. that is the value that is respected (often) with American women. We are in our communities, we have children OR, we have careers, or juggle both. For women of my age (middle, OK?) to have both lost children AND career, and contact with their family, but not be a radical feminist, is indeed interesting. We can come into the church perhaps as ministers, acolytes (so to speak), or servants supporting its infrastructure. I, for one, no longer care to support the infrastructure of anything so dysfunctional. I consider myself to be courageous and independent (in certain ways), but there comes a burnout level. I have PTSD, and when exposed to more “women, get thee behind me, Satan” talk in certain denominations (many of them), I simply have to speak up, then leave. I will not hang out there. At least I have a few options.
To survive abuse, sometimes, one has to become two people: a public one and a private one. This includes sometimes with one’s spouse. At some level, my soul was not going to show itself any more, for another verbal beating for mere existence. Instead, I took the verbal tirades for being, supposedly, apathetic, wimpy, not caring and passive. Well, being anything else got me physically assaulted, or some other form of escalation, sometimes involving property destruction, or attack on pets. Children were in the home. I just couldn’t keep that up, and guess what: No one was backing me up. No one was confronting this man, really. At the end of the day, I had to come home to sleep. He began accumulating guns, and large knives. I don’t use these, or know how to, and it wasn’t too long (although more than a year) after this that I realized — we had to separate. I cannot tell you the level of shame and embarrassment I had, with or without children, having to hide my mail, ask strangers for rides, or a few $$ to put in the ggas tank (if I had a car). One night, I got stranded late at night in a downtown urban area after my night job. I took a ride with what might have been a drug dealer to get to a gas station. My ex came and got me, but with the news that someone had run over the cat that day, my favorite one (I always found this suspicious timing). The concern for my personal safety was at zero level. I kept journals. My journals were targeted, and I had to remove them from the home for safekeeping. He went after, and befriended the people keeping them, I got them back.
NOW: Now, I cannot live that dual personality way, and will not. When I go into a church and am expected to adopt a certain demeanor — I won’t. It’s like violence to the soul. I am one person: I will tell someone (in my family) if I am upset with them, and why.
The Court System:
The Family Court system in this country has become a charade. It rewards short-term performance in front of evaluators, mediators, judges, and other people. No one really looks behind the scenes — there is no interest, time or resources to fully check facts. For the most part. This system rewards the batterer “snake” personality: Charming, manipulative, dissembling. Or, alternately, wounded and looking helpless. I have seen a (female) judge leap to aid my ex, to the extent of testifying for him, as if he could not speak. I have watched him interrupt an attorney and derail the direct question, and get away with this. When I go to court, I am primarily PTSD, although I try pretty hard. All such a person needs to do is get through the next appearance with some person in authority, get their way, and afterwards, do whatever they want.
There are too many similarities between the hypocrisies and coverups of fundamentalist religion, and what I see in these courts. It is going to take women, feminist women, to address it. The other factor is, in this court, children are involved. We are not always 100% on board with the radical feminist regimes. I cannot tell you how many women in my situation, leaving batterers, losing their kids to stand by helplessly as their kids are showing symptoms of abuse, including child sexual abuse, are themselves religious. Many of them, their husbands or partners specifically targeted them in these circles — because the environment is male-domination-friendly.
When I say in my posts, that churches are NOT havens for women leaving violence, or necessarily shelters for them, I am absolutely in earnest. i hope, in my way, to be able to speak to this and do something about the shameful failure to support — or even SPEAK about — the laws against violence towards women, and children — in these venues. They are in their own ether, with their own agenda, and their own intents. I do not believe this is the genuine religion of, in my case, the man Jesus Christ as I read about him in scripture. I read nothing about his abusive or dismissive treatment of women; in fact it is the opposite. I think what we have now is a charade of that. For the most part. I don’t think most people have the guts to do what he did, but some do.
(WOW — where did THAT come from? Well, I’ll post. I may erase some of it another day…..)
Amina Said (L), 18, and her sister Sarah, 17, were shot dead by their father Yaser at their home in Irving, Texas, in January 2008. Said was upset by his daughters’ “Western ways” and was assisted in the killing by his wife, the girls’ mother. The victims of honor killings are largely teenage daughters or young women. Unlike ordinary domestic violence, honor killings often involve multiple family members as perpetrators.
Let’s Get Honest comments:
In “ordinary domestic violence” family members could be either hostages, victims, OR enablers. The truth is, it takes enablers for a PATTERN of domestic violence to thrive and grow. There is denial, there is incompetence, there is scapegoating, there is helpless ignorance in what to do. Many people in my culture have very strong emotions, but in certain classes and circles, this is not “socially acceptable.” So they suppress them behind circuitous speech, evasive answers, or simply no answers. When I got, out, I had some strong emotions (anger) as I began to stop hating myself (which was safer) and be angry. My anger was noticed – his violence, and the danger this represented — was not. I only recently simply decided to forgive, and do this entirely detached from any reason to, other than a decision, and a desire to be free from anger, and reactionary mode, which is typically either anger, or depression, when the insults, aggressions, etc. continue. That’s how I am choosing to handle it at this point.
I am posting quite a bit here about Islamic violence towards women. However, I am doing so with an understanding that forms of Protestantism (mainstream and nonmainstream) Christianity can still kill, destroy, and maim — physically and emotionally. I am here to warn out country not to ignore this hate talk from governmental circles towards women. In the lingo of domestic violence, denying it is a form of it (a.k.a. crazymaking). Below, is a passage from “Infidel” about “baari.” If I am able, I will find the passage from a Focus on the Family publication that sounds uncomfortably similar. And I will say, the “shunning” and patronizing (social, psychological) takes a different form, but still exists, when a Christian woman throws out an abusive husband and then shows up in church unapologetic.
And expecting to be treated with respect. Or worse, looking for an opportunity to actually speak or teach the Bible (this was why I got thrown out of the last place, and I was entirely too submissive in that as well). I finally came to the conclusion that it was safer outside those buildings.
Another alarming trend, vigilante-style behavior — AND TALK — around the issues of the family courts. Continuing on the topic of Honor Killings, which was “skirted” nicely in the Cairo speech, above….
The United Nations Population Fund estimates that 5,000 women are killed each year for dishonoring their families. This may be an underestimate. Aamir Latif, a correspondent for the Islamist website Islam Online who writes frequently on the issue, reported that in 2007 in the Punjab province of Pakistan alone, there were 1,261 honor murders. The Aurat Foundation, a Pakistani nongovernmental organization focusing on women’s empowerment, found that the rate of honor killings was on track to be in the hundreds in 2008.
There are very few studies of honor killing, however, as the motivation for such killings is cleansing alleged dishonor and the families do not wish to bring further attention to their shame, so do not cooperate with researchers. Often, they deny honor crimes completely and say the victim simply went missing or committed suicide. Nevertheless, honor crimes are increasingly visible in the media. Police, politicians, and feminist activists in Europe and in some Muslim countries are beginning to treat them as a serious social problem…
(SO WHY ISN”T OUR PRESIDENT?)
PLEASE ALSO, READ THESE TWO BOOKS. OK, THREE. I DID. I COULDN’T PUT THEM DOWN, IN FACT. AND I FELT I WAS READING ABOUT MY OWN FAMILY. I LIVE IN THE WEST. I LIVE IN THE USA. I DIDN’T EXPERIENCE, PHYSICALLY, AT ALL THE SAME AS THESE WOMEN. WHY DID IT FEEL FAMILIAR?
I FEEL AS THOUGH OUR FAMILY HAS BECOME LIKE A POLYGAMOUS CULT, AND WE ARE A SMALL, NUCLEAR, PROFESSIONALLY INVOLVED FAMILY, ABOUT 3RD GENERATION IN THE COUNTRY. NO ONE HAS BEEN JAILED. WHY DID THE BEHAVIOR SOUND SO FAMILIAR, AND WHAT’S GOING ON? I BELIEVE THAT IT IS THE EMOTIONAL, SPIRITUAL CONTENT OF THE BEHAVIOR WHICH IS THE SAME, FROM CULTURE TO CULTURE, EXPRESSED DIFFERENTLY. HATE IS STILL HATE.
This book, and woman, are so well-known, I don’t think there is too much to be added. However, if not, READ.
WIKIPEDIA: (evidently not fully current)
Ayaan Hirsi Ali (
pronunciation (help·info); Somali: Ayaan Xirsi Cali; born Ayaan Hirsi Magan 13 November 1969 in Somalia)[1]is a Dutch feminist, writer, and politician. She is the estranged daughter of the Somali scholar, politician, and revolutionary opposition leader Hirsi Magan Isse. She is a prominent critic of Islam, and her screenplay for Theo Van Gogh‘s movieSubmission led to death threats. Since van Gogh’s assassination by a Muslim extremist in 2004, she has lived in seclusion under the protection of Dutch authorities.
When she was eight, her family left Somalia for Saudi Arabia, then Ethiopia, and eventually settled in Kenya. She sought and obtained political asylum in the Netherlands in 1992, under circumstances that later became the center of a political controversy. In 2003 she was elected a member of the House of Representatives (the lower house of the Dutch parliament), representing the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). A political crisis surrounding the potential stripping of her Dutch citizenship led to her resignation from the parliament, and led indirectly to the fall of the second Balkenende cabinet.
She is currently a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, working from an unknown location in the Netherlands.[2][3] In 2005, she was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.[4] She has also received several awards for her work, including Norway’s Human Rights Service’s Bellwether of the Year Award, the Danish Freedom Prize, the Swedish Democracy Prize, and the Moral Courage Award for commitment to conflict resolution, ethics, and world citizenship.[5]
HERE IS A LINK TO A 2007 Interview (NY Mag Review of Books). “The Infidel Speaks,” by Boris Kachka, Feb. 4, 2007
SHE SAYS SOME EXTRAORDINARILY RELEVANT THINGS.
I THINK IT EXTRAORDINARLY REMARKABLE THAT MY PRESIDENT DIDN’T MENTION MUCH ABOUT THE TREATMENT OF WOMEN, OR ANY OF THESE EXTRAORDINARY ONES, WHEN VISITING A MUSLIM COUNTRY. NOTE (AS TO “CAIRO SPEECH”), NONIE DARWISH, BELOW, FLED EGYPT FOR THE USA, AND CONVERTED TO CHRISTIANITY. HER YOUTUBE AND A PARTIAL INTERVIEW IS BELOW (SO LABELED: THIS IS THE SOMALIAN SWEDISH AMERICAN WOMAN HERE:
To her admirers, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a maverick, bravely defying the Netherlands’ political correctness to address Europe’s growing cultural rifts. To detractors, she’s a charismatic bomb-thrower with as little regard for her adopted nation’s safety as for her own. Both sides would have to admit that the former Somali-Dutch politician is a master of self-reinvention. After a rough childhood (circumcision, daily beatings) in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Saudi Arabia, she escaped to Holland from a forced marriage, eventually joined the Dutch Parliament as a Muslim criticizing her own culture, and made a provocative film with Theo van Gogh that got him killed and sent her into hiding.
This is why I think that, just perhaps, President Obama might have been a little remiss to simply not address this issue in a Muslim nation. Nonie Darwish’s father was killed in jihad, and she left Egypt for the US. Now here is an American leader back in Egypt, speaking on this topic, and nothing substantial?
When a rival threatened to revoke her citizenship, the resulting furor toppled the governing coalition. But Ali just moved on, resigning and moving to Washington, D.C., where she now works for the American Enterprise Institute. It’s all retold in her eloquent new memoir, Infidel. Stopping by Soho House recently, she spoke with New York about life and politics in her latest adopted land.
You’ve been here for six months. How do you like the U.S.?
That is the question they all ask! I love it. The most comforting thing is the anonymity. I’m not allowed to talk about security—to tell you who in this room is security and who is not—but the pressure cooker of Holland is over. I am now just one individual in the melting pot.
You’re at a conservative think tank—perhaps an odd place for a harsh critic of religion in political life.
I consider myself nonpartisan, but I’m a liberal—not in the American sense, because Americans seem to refer to communists as liberals. What we see in Europe, because of the welfare state, is government pretending to provide all sorts of services they shouldn’t be providing.
Let’s Get Honest comment: My point EXACTLY, in many of these posts!
But what do you make of Christian conservatives in your ranks?
No one in the American Enterprise imposes their beliefs. We clash, and I think that’s what the West is all about.
But you’re with them on the whole “clash of civilizations” thing?
When I was in Holland, the idea was, all cultures are equal and all are to be preserved. My idea was, no, all humans are equal but not all cultures are equal. In the culture of my parents, we never seemed to be able to succeed in such basic issues as getting food, interacting and living in peace with each other, or adapting to our environment, and the West, they’ve succeeded in all those. I’d been taught Western culture’s only bad. Maybe that’s good for your self-esteem, but it wasn’t taking us anywhere.
This woman comes from WHERE? And she understands the Declaration of Independence (principles) better than we do? It’s not the CULTURE, it’s the HUMANS:
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
THAT IS THE PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENTS. NOT DISHING OUT HAPPINESS AND HEALTH, BUT SECURING THOSE RIGHTS!
That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
LOCALLY SPEAKING, SOME WOMEN NEED TO DISBAND THEIR FAMILY UNIT, TO SECURE THEIR SAFETY. WHO THE HELL IS THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES TO UNDERMINE THAT DECISION BY GOVERNMENTAL DECREE, AS HAS BEEN DONE IN THE FATHERHOOD RESOLUTIONS, GRANTS, INITIATIVES, AND TASK FORCES ?? ???
THE MAIN QUESTION IN THESE MATTERS IS WHETHER OR NOT WOMEN ARE INCLUDED IN THE INCLUSIVE NOUN “MEN” NOW, WOMEN HAD TO FIGHT FOR THIS, BUT IN 1920, AFTER SLAVES, WE MANAGED TO GET THE RIGHT TO VOTE. THIS WOMAN CAME FROM A RELIGION, THE NAME OF WHICH MEANT, “SUBMIT.” THE NAME OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT, PER DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE FROM GREAT BRITAIN, ABOVE, IS IN ESSENCE, PERMIT.
NOW AS TO FAITH-BASED INITIATIVES, I’D LIKE TO CITE THE PRIMARY CHRISTIAN VERSE USED TO JUSTIFY WIFE-BEATING:
You’ve dismissed accusations that you’re lashing out because of childhood traumas. So why write a memoir graphically detailing the abuse you and your siblings suffered?
It became important to say, “Okay, you guys keep accusing me of using my past. Let me tell you my story, and my story shows that I do not blame the death of my sister on Islam. I do not blame female genital mutilation on Islam.” My whole awakening was triggered by the eleventh of September, and it did not affect only me, it affected a lot of people.
Do you regret certain things you said about Muhammad—like that he was a pervert and a tyrant?
I don’t regret that. I’m still convinced that for Muslims to integrate fully into modern society, we cannot avoid discussing the prophet. We didn’t only deal with communism militarily, but we said it is a bad idea. The works of Karl Marx were discussed.
Maybe academia would have been a better—and less dangerous—venue.
Politics is not a good thing for me. But I wanted to bring out the issue of Muslim treatment of women in Holland, and I could only accomplish that in Parliament. If I had been a professor, it would just have disappeared in a cabinet.
“the Territory that is now Somalia was divided between the British and the Italians, who occupied the country as colonizers, splitting it in two. In 1960 the colonizers left, leaving behind a brand-new, independent state. A unified Somalia was born.”
“If in the process of baari you feel grief, humiliation, and everlasting exploitation you hide it. If you long for love and comfort you pray in silence to Allah to make your husband more bearable
AND:
“They call me infidel”. Ex-Muslim Christian Nonie Speaks out
This was of interest to me because the author had experienced a regime change within her home country, and then come to America and experienced a change of religion. So she spoke of the qualitative differences.
(11/20/2006)
Egyptian-born Nonie Darwish is “too controversial” to speak at Brown University, where her invitation to speak was just taken back. The title of her new book about says it all Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror . Good luck with that one. Here, where we’ve been attacked by jihadists, we don’t like to hear about the enemy we face.
(THIS IS AN INTERVIEW. EXCERPTS, HERE:)
LOPEZ: Are the majority of Muslim women oppressed? What can be done for them?
DARWISH: The majority of Muslim women are oppressed and that is due to Islamic sharia law which severely discriminates against women. Even the most educated and powerful Muslim women are faced with a legal system that is very discriminatory against women. Muslim women start the marital relationship from a weaker position. The Muslim marriage contract itself is unfair to women because Muslim men can add three more wives if he wishes. That changes the dynamic of husband/wife relationship even if a Muslim man does not exercise this right. Polygamy has a devastating impact on families. There are chronic social ills and tragedies stemming from this single right.
The court system is designed to oppress women, without a doubt.
{{Commentary: I read her book. She talks about how polygamy (one man, many women) pollutes relationships not just between the man and the woman, but also between women: backbiting, whispering, intrigue. I remembered my own case, which has many women involved in protecting a single man, vigorously defending his behavior, which was criminal, as though it were honorable, and I were the criminal for speaking up. I could not put this book down, asking WHY? does this sound like my family? I think these are spiritual issues, and that while the West does NOT endorse polygamy, within the court systems, at least, many of these dynamics are at play — first wives, second wives, etc. They are used against each other, undermining ALL women. }}
LOPEZ: How prevalent is “honor killing”?
DARWISH: According to Islamic law sex outside marriage is prohibited and the penalty for that is often death. The woman is always to blame because she is regarded as the source of the seduction. Muslim men’s honor is dependent on their women’s sexual purity. It does not matter how honorable the character of the Muslim man; but if his female relatives commit any sexual taboos, Muslim society will dishonor him. Arab culture is based on pride and shame** and a Muslim man cannot survive with this kind of shame unless he kills the source of that shame which is the female relative who have had sex outside of marriage. It is not known how common this crime of honor killing happens since it is often goes unreported and the police often looks the other way, but I believe it is common in certain parts of the Muslim world if the girl is discovered to be no longer a virgin or pregnant. That is why most girls in the Middle East remain virgins till marriage and there are very few births out of wedlock in the Middle East.
{{**I am concerned about the culture of “manhood” in the west being based on the same things. It is not a good basis. I also believe that, despite the level of indoctrination being nothing of the like, this same BASIS of education in the U.S. exists — and that is not a good basis for human behavior. Rather, how much better, to respect accomplishment in a variety of life situations. But school is NOT a variety of life situations, it is ONE of life’s many situations. To teach people to be puffed up, or feel inferior, based on their grade performances (although it is good to study and learn, and be able to have those skills), is simply wrong. How much better to be, rather engaged in the process of learning, and let that be the intrinsic reward. We will have better people.
I believe (opening up a bit here) that what happeend to me in music was, I was allowed to be more expressive, and less analytical, also less about, producing a grade. I didn’t value grades — already had them. They did nothing for me socially and weren’t hard enough to earn. They di dnot increase my sense of self-worth at all, as an adolescent. I learned to be ashamed about things that had no basis in shame, including my (good) grades, and so forth. The act of going to and from a classroom is not exactly a major accomplishment in life. The ability to help others learn to do something, or to engage as a human being; to build something, to design something, to perform something. But to fill in the correct multiple choice answers on a test sheet according to data you were fed in a textbook? That’s nothing; it’s for the convenience of the school comparing you to everyone else. . . . .. I remember failing on purpose, just to see what it felt like. I still graduated at the top of my (public high school class). The skills needed in college were entirely different. Thank God, there were pianos and there was singing, which led to different types of social interactions.
I believe that what I noticed about this book was when she spoke about the intense hatred, rivalry and bitter suspicious, ongoing, between women in particular. I have been dealing with this for the many years since I left my ex-husband, after the difficulties while dealing personally with him in the home. It really is wearing to the soul, and saddening. I am still seeking and believing for some of these family issues to resolve, but I feel sad when I see that, for the sake of eradicating my world view and values, my children were, literally, uprooted from contact with me, as if I might contaminate them somehow, with self-confidence, and the courage to be different. The courage to expect a woman to have equal legal rights to a man, in America, our country. So far, “NO DEAL”!!}}}}
LOPEZ: What’s it like to be a journalist in Egypt? Worse than life under the Patriot Act?
DARWISH: I was a journalist in Egypt in the early seventies when I worked at the Middle East News Agency in Cairo, Egypt. I was an editor, translator, and censor. As a censor I decided what was to be allowed for publication and what was not allowed. Egyptian media outlets at the time were controlled more or less by the government. Journalists were not really journalists in the Western sense of looking to expose government corruption and internal problems; they were more concerned in blaming the outside world. Military information was totally off limits in reporting. I once said to a fellow journalist that I met a Jew in one of my trips and that that was the first time I met a Jew. The colleague warned me that Arab journalists who communicate with Jews in foreign countries come back to Egypt in a box. Very few Arab journalists were even aware of the true role of media in a society. As to Western life under the Patriot Act, I think it the opposite Arab government controlled Media. In the West it has often become Media controlled government where freedom of the Press (having too much of a good thing) often comes before other important things in Western society, such as for example national security. Sometimes Western media has no tolerance for any restrictions and that can help America’s enemies.
LOPEZ: What made you leave Egypt?
DARWISH: I always regarded America as the land of hope, equality, and opportunity and that was my motivation. I also wanted to leave the Middle East with its problems, its jihad, its pride, anger, and anti-Semitism and above all the constant state of war with Israel.
I CAUTION, the United States of America, I CAUTION them to monitor the “us/them” mentality in every area of life. I CAUTIOn them to keep a lit on this vigilante return to Fatherhood, and the farming out of any conscience, guidance, and education of their young to anyone such as those in those in the Executive Branch of Government, who are presently engaged in establishing, on one hand a national religion (through a variety of means) and on the other hand, a totalitarian system in which choice is the heresy. Opting out of government involvement in the basic processes of life is a heresy.
There are aspects in which the fatherhood movement — as practiced, reminds me of the KKK. It is the same type of hate speech.
I am going to talk about another, very uncomfortable genocide I have read in some detail about (it just came up, and I continued reading, OK? It’s what I DO!) Rwanda. This is of interest to me because some churches protected, and some betrayed. Here is a personal, amazing story I ran across. Again, it is told by a woman:
“LEFT TO TELL“
In 1994, Rwandan native Ilibagiza was 22 years old and home from college to spend Easter with her devout Catholic family when the death of Rwanda’s Hutu president sparked a three-month slaughter of nearly one million ethnic Tutsis. She survived by hiding in a Hutu pastor’s tiny bathroom with seven other starving women for 91 cramped, terrifying days. This searing firsthand account of Ilibagiza’s experience cuts two ways: her description of the evil that was perpetrated, including the brutal murders of her family members, is soul-numbingly devastating, yet the story of her unquenchable faith and connection to God throughout the ordeal uplifts and inspires. This book is a precious addition to the literature that tries to make sense of humankind’s seemingly bottomless depravity and counterbalancing hope in an all-powerful, loving God.”
-Publisher’s Weekly, Starred Review, March 2006
We all ask ourselves what we would do if faced with the kind of terror and loss that Immaculée Ilibagiza faced during the genocide in her country. Would we allow fear and desperation to fill us with hatred or despair? And should we survive, would our spirit be poisoned, or would we be able to rise from the ashes still encouraged to fulfill our purpose in life, still able to give and receive love? In the tradition of Viktor Frankl and Anne Frank, Immaculée is living proof that human beings can not only withstand evil, but can also find courage in crisis, and faith in the most hopeless of situations. She gives us the strength to find wisdom and grace during our own challenging times.”
-Elizabeth Lesser, co-founder of the Omega Institute, and author of Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow
“Left to Tell is for anyone who is weary of the predictable “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” trance most of the world suffers from. Immaculée Ilibagiza breaks that spell by bravely quelling the storm within, and contacting a force so powerful that it allows her to calm the storm “without,” and more important, to forgive the “unforgivable.” Her story is an inspiration to anyone who is at odds with a brother, a nation, or themselves.”
-Judith Garten, teacher and counselor of The 50/50Work© and a child of the WWII Holocaust
(As far as I got on this post July 2, 2009
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Experts Examine WHY Breastfeeding is best: We MUST Know!
Sniffing Language
Cobblers notice shoes, hairdressers notice the other end of a person. I’m a domestic violence survivor, writer, reader, and I notice (sniff, I observe, I sense dynamic alterations in) LANGUAGE — the linguistic environment surrounding present and potential policies that might affect the personal survival, health welfare, and safety of my kids, me, or others I know and love, to be quite blunt about this.
I can detail about when and where this started to happen too. I noticed it, a shift in mental processing of things, a heightened sensitivity to the environment. This was odd — the less time I could dedicate to planning a rehearsal, or choosing a method or approach to a certain topic — because my life was totally dedicated to the safety and survival issues at hand, and seeking ways to ensure them, change the dynamics, and safely set a distance from a man that I simply couldn’t get the courts to give me a restraining order on, or enforce an existing court order of ANY sort, upon. Nor could I get any social group to communally put some pressure on the guy to get real, get a job, or get lost. Or, as I say here, “get honest” about any number of manners. So, I didn’t do the usual things I formerly was taught lead to good rehearsals leading to good singing. I had to get the general idea (as in, repertoire), get in there, go on instinct, respond to the singing I heard in the situation, and just lead.
The odd (and disturbing — at least to certain theories about how things work) about this was, they started singing better. Rehearsals were more dynamic, and skills and sound improved. In more than one group. Go figure! Hmm. . . . .
I came to understand that the habit of being dynamically sensitive to my environment, and little details in it, had carried over into the rehearsal situation. And in the arts, this is GOOD, because they come from the spirit and soul within. I had no time to be cerebral, cognitive and detached, I had to be present, open, and responsive. And that was EXACTLY what the job required!
The exact opposite of this approach to life and relationships can be seen in the detached, categorizing, labeling, and pronouncing language of some of the social sciences. I do not think the entire field should be tossed, but I think that there are serious loopholes when doctrine is made in a laboratory, without understanding that people (adults, children, and others) really DO behave differently under observation, for the most part, than when not. If the family law system acknowledged this, I think custody evaluators would probably be done away with. You can’t really evaluate someone who is doing a performance for you, come on! And if anyone is GREAT a “performance” it’s a family, or an individual, caught up in the cycle of abuse, incest, or domestic violence. Or, alcoholism, for that matter. The whole DEAL is about keeping up the pretense, not talking about it.
A woman’s or a child’s safety could be literally dependent upon how good a front she puts up for public, once the abuser knows he’s being looked at more carefully. I know about this.
For more on this hypersensitivity, see the book “Animals in Translation” by Temple Grandin, an autistic (or autims survivor?) animal behavioralist. I understood, after reading this, how my mind had begun to behave more like a deer in the headlights, after a few years post-restraining order, mid-family court, weekly-exchange of kids-wise. I had lost the sense of predictability in our daily schedule, and I had lost this because EVERY weekend, and leading up to it or recovering from it, I had to deal with a potential incident with the father of our children regarding picking up or, if I was able to, retrieving our children from exchanges. This was one of the most insane custody orders post restraining order I have EVER heard of, but it was all we had to deal with. This also relates directly to why I no longer work in a certain field, in which jobs happened on weekends. The two became so associated in my brain that engaging in in the one, to this day, reminds me of that trauma. This can be great on certain arts, and hell on the rest of life.
PREY animals notice more and interpret less. This is why sometimes horses wear blinders, when pulling a taxi in traffic, for example. Humans are designed to interpret more, and once they have got a label, enabling mental filing, notice less. However, a teacher (or conductor) must both keep the goal in mind AND notice, and reconcile the balance. They learn how to do this (for survival).
Theorists, on the other hand, may continue to get a government funding grant, whether or not their theories are true, work, or help or hurt people. There is a considerable distance between funding and performance. I notice, therefore, cognitive detachment in linguistic descriptions in some of these topics.
Sometimes this “noticing language” habit is entertaining and fun. Sometimes, it’s disturbing and annoying. HOWEVER, I think that society might do well, in general, to listen to some of the people on its outskirts. We are the canaries in the coal mine, and certain things we have to say might contradict (in fact generally WILL contradict) the experts.
Of course, the experts are the ones who have the platform, even when their opinions contradict each other — they seem to carry more weight than anyone whose degrees are not as high or deep (Ph.D.) as others. Remind me, next decade, to go get that Ph.D., maybe it will help…..
That’s one way of explaining that I happen to notice language. And there is a style of talking about basic human behavior (of which stalking happens to relate to hunting, which is sometimes followed by a kill, which is why I don’t like being the one followed, or told by people I report this to, you’re exaggerating. No, I’m not…. I trust the instinct in this one.) I’m almost getting to the point that I don’t trust language that doesn’t take into account some basic human instincts and realities –ONE of which is, soon after birth or after giving birth, making the nipple connection, and nursing — or allowing it to take place.
. . .
OK NOW….
Is there really a war on fatherhood? Or is it on motherhood? Where’s Mom?
Consider this word:
Breastfeeding,
When, where, how and why did it become so odd a human behavior that it required research papers to be published, to examine — or safeguard — it?
What is now called breastfeeding used to be (culturally, and universally) commonplace.
Trailer words associated with the fact that both a breast and getting fed happened to be involved, included:
Nursing, Cherishing, Protecting, Imparting,
Loving, Knowing,
Gentleness, Compassion, Confidence one is loved and wanted,
just being there and looking at each other, or nudging each other in a relaxed, nondemanding fashion,
were formerly normal, healthy human behaviors, and not only right after sex.
(If you’re unclear, see “google images” for some visuals)
I CALL THOSE GOOD THINGS.
Now the relationships between some of these must be studied, so as to better predict [and manage] outcomes
I predict that studying what used to be normal, healthy human behaviors (but have been dismantled by various institutions, and industries in “developed’ countries) will soon become the normal human behavior. It certainly appears to be a healthy way to make a steady income, healthier than most. these days, including producing food, if you’re a small farmer, or milking cows.
Asking, well, was it GOOD or NOT good? If it was good, WHY was it good? How can we duplicate it, or better yet, multiply it, without dismantling, if possible, some of the institutions that formerly dismantled, or put some pretty weird warps, in the human family situation.
Who funds these studies and poses these questions? Typically, a government, or a private foundation funding either the government, or some nonprofit, that has an agenda, or some combination of all of the above, as we find in the Fatherhood Movement’s cooperation between many entitities, casting its wide and technically superb (inter)net (presence) over the human, well, language, eliminating the usage of the word “mother” in order to restructure society into a different image. I am going to post another time about a former (not very reputable) campaign from the heart of Fatherland America, which trumpeted the virtues of “motherhood, virtue, patience, temperance” and so forth. And what they did to whoever they thought wasn’t promoting these.
WHY is Breast Best? Well for one thing, anything so many men are fixated on can’t be all that bad.
Just kidding — WHY is breastfeeding best? Why not ask a Mom? (Where did Mom go, anyhow??)
Nursing is normal. Did I know much about it before I began? Honestly, no. I just, well, there was this brand new kid on my tummy, and it seemed the right thing to do.
Seems to me that slavery was one thing that used to break up families, intentionally so. Hmm. SOME folks got educated, but others weren’t supposed to be. They were to be educated to the limit of their job prognosis. Hmmm.
I also predict that with the womb to tomb categorization of humanity, from the moment they are born, caught, extracted, or brought forth (depending on how literary you are feeling) and begin to wiggle, the measuring WILL not stop, we will forget what a normal human, bonding relationship WAS. We won’t have living examples of it to learn from.
Now that ATTITUDE worries me. I have been worried about this for many months, as I began to examine where my justice went, especially this last year. Where my children went had already been determined, and I had also correctly looked up that the correct label for the manner in which they went comes under the category “child-stealing.” The next question was, why was there no concensus on what the law already conceded, and what could I do to get them back? I looked around with wonder and amazement to see that with flip of the coin, what in one situation was a felony, in an entirely different one (see title of this blog) was interpreted as initiative to be rewarded with custody. SURELY a father who would love his children enough to steal them, and harass their mother with court case after court case must have been motivated by love and concern. And SURELy a mother who actually resisted this, and attempted to retain an emotional connection (let alone visual contact) with BOTH her children AND her livelihood (profession) through choosing an alternate educational arrangement must have an unnatural attachment thing going on. Now, I didn’t have one set of kids I DID nurse and one set I DIDn’t for comparison, but I do know that, even absent from them, there’s an attachment there, and it’s weird every day to have it suddenly aborted. Yes, I did use that word.
In my last post I looked at “Where’s Mom?” in a website representing our national direction, and suggested that the ship of state may have lost its moorings, possibly by ignoring the obvious: So far, technologically, you DO need a Mom to actually get a family, even if it’s dis-assembled shortly after birth.
Where’s Mom? is a very relevant question, I thought.
So, here’s an article that came across my (virtual) desk, my Inbox, on some astonishingly new and revolutionary perspectives on WHY breastfeeding is best, at least up until a judge decides she’s doing it for the wrong reasons, to get even with an ex. . . . . and sets a limit on how long this parental alienation can be permitted. The things judges must know these days . . . .
We noncustodial Moms (yes, we converse with each other about how and why that happened, and we research and blog, and vote and call our Congresspeople, and write, and support each other, because the court system sure ain’t…..) were happy to find one that counteracted some of this “father-absence” hypocrisy. YEAH, a lot of fathers are absent. Now let’s talk about WHY! and stop scapegoating an entire gender!
This article supports the premises that for an infant to have a bonding time with Mom growing up (which may or may not contradict our present government’s wish to push things in a different direction, send Mom to work and give us those babies; we have Ph.D.candidate Human Behavioralists needing a grant-funded slot at the local Head Start outfit, think about their job futures, OK? If they do not publish, they might perish! It’s your civic duty to produce low-income babies (or neglect staying home if you’re not low-income) for them to study.)
It IS interesting too, it talks about more than the nipples and what spurts out of them, it talks even about more than the cuddling. It looks at subsequent behaviors. So do I, at the bottom. I picked a few well-known names.
(Did I mention it’s written by women, also?)
Abstract
Research paper no. 43
Breastfeeding and infants’ time use (title is link)
Jennifer Baxter and Julie Smith
Australian Institute of Family Studies, June 2009, 48 pp. ISBN 978-1-921414-09-1. ISSN 1446-9863 (Print); ISSN 1446-9871 (Online)
Being breastfed during infancy is known to improve developmental outcomes, but the pathways by which this occurs remain unclear.
Research Paper no. 43: “Breastfeeding and infants’ time use.”
(More commentary on what governments are studying these days…..)
While I’m glad this study DOES support the concept that breastfeeding is good, as when judges in Canada and Australia have to decide on whether or not to agree with the obvious, or respond to the gentle tug on THEIR consciences from the “But Dads are Nurturers TOO!” demands, Moms (Noncustodial ones, through family court matters) were happy to read this, I still have to ask, WHY do we have to even ask? I mean, in what kind of world are studies needed of this?
Here’s what kind of world:
IN a world of ever-shifting psychological and spiritual plate tectonics, it’s only human to want to be oh so sure about the obvious. WHY do we need to be oh-so-sure? (Using the word “we” loosely, I am not in that mix)
WHY is how to develop and serve “humans” and “families” really necessary?? What are they, food?
Why not leave them alone to figure it out? Why not treat them as animate beings with spirit, soul, body, desires, individuality, and what’s more, hopes, goals, and a variety of pathways in which to wend their way through life, like their hunter-gatherer ancestors?
That is, FYI, what they are — not slabs of flesh, inanimate, passive, waiting to be directed, injected, detected, and projected upon the motion picture screen of some faraway government policy! Unless they (translation: WE — ALL — begin to see each other in this manner, the only logical consequence is more and more literally inanimate, and in fact lifeless (or is it comatose?) slabs of flesh, and there may not be enough slots to store us in. Please, PLEASE, remember Auschwitz, and the ATTITUDES that preceded this, and stop the stereotyping and detached, detached, well thank God it ain’t ME, emotional noninvolvement with other human beings, when it comes to running nations and large enterprises.
People have been born for many, many centuries and millennia. Nations (if not religions, unfortunately) and empires have come and gone.
(And these two are related).
With each new empire, history, and culture, is often re-written, by the winners.
They can crumble over germs or steel, over oppressing people so bad they simply well up and oust a regime, assassinate a dictator, and/or each other. Or assassinations, oustings and regime changes can happen for other reasons. In this world there are now, and have historically been famines, floods, fires, and wars; there is cruelty and prejudice, there is waste and greed. These are qualities that, as far as I can see, have been around a long time, and are not going anywhere soon. And I ABSOLUTELy don’t believe they are going away by government fiat, design or study.
Given that generic assessment of history, I have to ask, then what exactly are were DOING in this profession of Human Behavioral Sciences? What were its origins, what are its purposes and why are “we” doing these things?
I’m a researcher, in fact both my parents were too, one a scientist, the other a librarian. I’m a SEARCHER, I’m curious about causes.
One thing in my searchings I have come to conclude: some of the worst damages to human rights, and people, has been in the name of theories (or doctrines) similar to the ones I’m reading about now, in our country. I think it’s an ATTITUDE thing, to study human populace as if they were rats, or mice, or microbes. I’m not anti-medicine, nad I do appreciate knowing things about molecules, hormones, and, say, that what just happened to me when that stalker called, again, may relate to adrenaline or cortisol, and has some sense behind the chemistry of it.
However, I think in the social sciences, it’s gone off the deep end into crowd control. I think it is a clear indication of caste-maintenance, which ain’t supposed to be in the USA, but is.
Who’s developing this master race and utopia?
Didn’t we learn anything from Hitler, or any other genocides? Didn’t we get embarrased enough by the study of “phrenology” (measuring skull sizes, to assess intelligence) which to me has an uncomfortable sense of sociology.
Anyhow, this study may be supportive of more maternal time. Governments have already determined it’s Breast is Best, but what to do when a couple can’t keep it together til the kid is weaned? Then there have to be policies, judges have to decide, and these judges need experts. W ell, experts are just handy to have around.
Are there any MOMs around who have actually seen children grow up that they nursed (and haven’t been incarcerated for this on the basis of unnatural attachment theory)?
Isn’t smarter, healthier, loved and having been held by Mom at least several times a day enough to know? Apparently not. I tend to wonder if this isn’t because another artificial nipple, breast, nurture and cuddling experience is in the mix, and will need justification. OR, it’s been challenged, and then a study is needed to maintaing a semblance of nature in nurture of infants.
Given what I’ve been reading about our Present Administration’s Parenting Advice (yes, that spells “PAPA”), motherhood is no longer acceptable. It has a conflict with Early Head Start and propping up a seriously design-flawed educational system that neither nurtures nor educates adequately, and was based on producing factory workers who don’t take orders or think too much. Crucial to this is boxing them up, and mediating all experience through the teachers and textbooks (which are highly censored).
I just watched the video of Michael Jackson recently, being interviewed about his father’s severe abuse of all 5 Jacksons, including having them perform with him sitting in his hand with a belt, and ironing cord, using Michael, the youngest, as a role model to chastise the other children, mocking his facial features (you didn’t get it from MY side) and a fairly normal adolescent thing called pimples, about how he didn’t want to grow up (and the uncanny transformation of his own face into something that looks like his hero, Peter Pan), about how his dermatologist nurse (and another surrogate Mom) gave him 3 children, which were snatched at birth (never got to nurse a drop), although by agreement, and now they are going to live with — either Grandpa (that same one that would’ve/should’ve been arrested in our day and time) or Mom (who volunteered her womb and viewed human beings as presents, not people).
The most common sense reason for nursing I can think of is that it APPEARS to be part of the design plan for human beings, and a host of other animals also. Take it away, and they’re sucking down something else for a lifetime perhaps, substitute attachments. I don’t know. It just kinda makes sense. Give the Mom and baby a chance to sit together and make a physical connection. It works together, it helps her womb return to normal size right faster, it’s overall a good arrangement unless she’s been on something harmful which would get into the child. LIfe is rough. Give’em a break!
In the US, we have HHS.
IN Australia, it’s “AIFS”
Australian Institute of Family Studies.
And has these clearinghouses:
- AIFS research
- Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault
- Australian Family Relationships Clearinghouse
- Australian Temperament Project
- Communities and Families Clearinghouse Australia
- Evaluation of the family law reforms
- Family Pathways: studies of separated families in Australia
- Growing Up in Australia: the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children
- National Child Protection Clearinghouse
Like over here, they publish, they serve, they have resources, and they have events. That’s nice…
The natural human response, anyone with some spirit at least, is to resist being managed, and only put up with so much as is necessary to get by. People are MOST human and I say most happy, really, pursuing things — that they CHOSE to pursue. Ask an adolescent male. Ask a stalker. Ask a Mom or Dad going to night school. There’s something about the pursuit of it, not the having it served up in a soup line. There’s something about making one’s own personal goals, that brings out the best in a person, or when it’s in a community, that community. When it gets too large, we lose the human element.
There’s not much more intimate, at the start of life, than what’s now called “breastfeeding.” And there’s not much more tenderizing to a Mom, when it’s in a supportive environment especially, and producing a feeling of well-being, etc., than nursing. I do not mean to idolize this, but I do mean to call attention to this.
I think this term must have come up when other ways of feeding began to compete with it. It’s not just about FEEDING. It used to be called NURSING. Now, Nursing has become a profession (and a great one, I acknowledge), and I hear there’s a shortage of it too. Perhaps if we could give people better EMOTIONAL and PHYSICAL support near the beginning of their lives, they wouldn’t need so much – or go about getting so much in other, unhealthy ways — later on in life. Many diseases and compromised immune systems have origins, it’s coming out, not only in antibodies not received as a kid, but sometimes emotional abuse and trauma — the exact OPPOSITE of nurturing.
So, here’s an article that came across my (virtual) desk, my Inbox, on some astonishingly new and revolutionary perspectives on WHY breastfeeding is best, at least up until a judge decides she’s doing it for the wrong reasons, to get even with an ex. . . . .
Abstract
Research paper no. 43
Breastfeeding and infants’ time use
Jennifer Baxter and Julie Smith
Australian Institute of Family Studies, June 2009, 48 pp. ISBN 978-1-921414-09-1. ISSN 1446-9863 (Print); ISSN 1446-9871 (Online)
Being breastfed during infancy is known to improve developmental outcomes, but the pathways by which this occurs remain unclear.
Well, God forbid the us not knowing by what pathways developmental outcomes can be improved? We are, after all, in the business of improving development.
One possible yet unexplored mechanism is that breastfed infants may spend their time differently to infants who are not breastfed.
Please — PLEASE tell me, some institute is not about to intervene with that Mom’s growing relationship with an infant, and either put a video in the home for later analysis, send a social worker with a note pad to take notes, or ask the MOm, self-reporting, to distract her attention from that little being, to documenther time use. Give them a break! They’ll be in school before age 5 (at least in the US) all right already.
This paper analyses infants’ time use according to breastfeeding status in order to help inform the debate about how breastfeeding leads to improved child outcomes.
“improved child outcomes”
??
OK, well that sounds desirable. I’m just not used to the terminology yet. It sounds odd on my tongue. It sounds like a process that might belong more in an auto assembly line.
Now me, I’m more practically minded. If it works, keep doing it, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That’s what my ex used to tell me when our children were sleeping, and I’d go to adjust something, make them more c omfortable, more covered, more something. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
If it works — keep doing it. If it doesn’t work — as, for example, pushing fatherhood on an entire nation as a response to violence against women and/or feminism, appears to be gettingi more women and children, and men, killed — THEN I’d think this should be closely examined. But why breastfeeding works ???
The analysis uses infants’ time use data from the first wave (2004) of Growing Up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC), derived from diaries completed by the parents of almost 3,000 Australian infants aged 3-14 months. It explores how much time infants spend in activities such as being held or cuddled, read or talked to, or crying, using data on whether or not infants were still breastfeeding, and taking into account other child and family characteristics. It also compares time spent in different social contexts. Finally, the paper uses the time use data to analyse which infants were still breastfeeding, and what factors are associated with differences in time spent breastfeeding.
The results show that breastfed infants spend more time being held or cuddled and being read or talked to, and less time sleeping, or eating, drinking or being fed other foods. {{Well, in America, Obesity is a major issue}}
They also cried slightly more, and watched television slightly less {{I’d say that’s positive}} than infants who were not being breastfed. Those who breastfed spent more time with their parents, and in particular, almost one additional hour a day alone with their mother compared to non-breastfeeding infants. {{This beats being ignored in a daycare situation. This gives baby and Mom some down time, which she could use also!}}
These findings have important implications for how children grow, and show the value of time use data in exploring pathways to development for infants and young children. The possibility that cognitive advantages for breastfed children may arise from their distinct patterns of time use and social contexts during the breastfeeding phase is an important area for future research using survey data such as from LSAC.
Summary
Being breastfed during infancy contributes to positive developmental outcomes, as well as to good nutrition and health. Expert guidelines for optimal infant feeding recommend that infants be exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life (National Health and Medical Research Council, 2003) and, along with appropriate complementary foods, continue to be breastfed for up to two years and beyond (World Health Assembly, 2001).
{{I did this for one child. I couldn’t for the other, but there were intervening factors (like Dad hitting me, and I know this affected the hormonal balance) intervening. Neither child has ever had an issue with intelligence or obesity, and they were healthy growing up. They weren’t clingy and they weren’t overly aggressive either, until years later, and this was when they became property fought over, and in the light of this, they were institutionalized again — at least their education was. I know that in our case, this was not aimed to help their education, but to break their bond with me. I cannot speak for every case.}}
While being breastfed during infancy is known to improve developmental outcomes, the pathways by which this occurs remain unclear. Components of breast milk are known to be important to brain development, but an important question remains as to whether the observed developmental advantages of children being breastfed also represent unobserved differences in the early life experiences of infants who were breastfed compared to those who were not. For example, there may be aspects of the breastfeeding mother’s behaviour or her interaction with the infant that differ from the non-breastfeeding mother. {{I KNEW THAT!}} One possible yet unexplored mechanism is that breastfed infants may spend their time differently to infants who are not breastfed. Time use research provides a potentially useful tool for further investigation of this issue.
A possible link between time use and children’s outcomes has a basis in the literature on infant development – for example, attachment theory – which indicates that positive interactions with caregivers have implications for secure attachment and socio-emotional development.
CAREGIVERS are mother-substitutes. They are not in the original plan. If you believe in plans. The word is longer. The short word is “MOM.” or “MOTHER” (pick your language).
I know, from the family law experience, that my behaving as a protective or educated mother was not wanted by certain other parties. My children themselves did not have a problem with this until we went into court, which even the mediator documented. It was a manufactured problem. The mantra, the ostinato, the continual claim was that by refusing to worship the government education factory (based on its performance), I was a heretic, and eccentric, and those kids were going to grow up weird and isolated. It was viewed with suspicion, and it was STOPPED. I have often thought that is children were simply allowed to be in their families (and the families were not violent) for as long as the individual kid was ready, before going to schools, schools would be far better. They do not need to be clingy and run in packs and herds, hurting each other or (when older) their teachers, and vice versa. They might have a sense of identity and belonging, and being loved. Unfortunately, this is NOT part of the economic development plan for “developed” countries.
Children’s development opportunities may therefore be affected by who they are with across the day, and where they are. Further, associations between somewhat older children’s time use and their development have been explored, with some relationships apparent, which lead us to question whether such relationships may also be apparent for infants. In addition to exploring the association between breastfeeding and time use, this paper also provides a broader examination of infants’ time use, to help understand the possible development opportunities for these infants.
And so forth. You can read it. I would just like to end with, after breastfeeding has been properly explicated, I suspect the conclusion would be the same:
DO IT.
Just like after the interrelationship between domestic violence and custody in family law settings has been properly explicated, I suspect that the CORRECT conclusion would be, as to domestic violence.
STOP IT
and as to when this is mixed with custody
DON’T!
THERE IS A REBUTTABLE PRESUMPTION AGAINST CUSTODY GOING TO A BATTERER. BATTERING A WOMAN IS A POOR ROLE MODEL. BATTERERS DO NOT MAKE GOOD PARENTS UNTIL AND UNLESS THEY HAVE ADDRESSED THIS ISSUE AND CHANGED IT AND KEPT IT CHANGED. ONE HIGH MOTIVATION FOR CHANGING IS TO GIVE THEM A DOSE OF THEIR OWN MEDICINE, WITH EXPLANATION. THE ALTERNATIVE BEING, TO KEEP PROVIDING HIM OPPORTUNITIES FOR MORE OF THE SAME. THIS INCLUDES STRICT ADHERENCE TO THE RESTRAINING ORDER (ONE VIOLATION = IMMEDIATE ARREST). PART OF ABUSE, IN CASE YOU HAVEN’T BEEN THERE YET (LET’S HOPE) IS SETS OF MEANINGLESS, TRIVIALLY JUSTIFIED, AND EVERCHANGING RULES APPLIED TO THE TARGET PERSON, NOT THE PERPETRATOR.
(I’D BETTER STOP, THIS RESEMBLES MANY SCHOOL SITUATIONS).
I expect that after I’m a long gone (which I hope will be a long time away) that family law system will still be around, and attempting to dilute and explicate the truth, that it just don’t make sense to say a person can beat another person (or have sex with a minor child) and be a good enough role model for custody, let alone visitation, let alone supervised visitation. These things — giving custody, visitation or supervised visitation, to a person who has not addressed this problem, called criminal behavior within the family — are going to naturally confuse a child about what’s right and what’s wrong, not exactly something I’d like the next generation to be confused on.
I’d like to end with what I’d consider a common sense and practical outlook towards human development, both in the womb and immediately after birth: this is a healthy attitude towards onesself, I believe. It just makes sense:
While all these things are wonderful to understand, and be aware of:
List of tables
- Overview of infants’ activities
- Who infants were with
- Breastfeeding time use
- Effects of breastfeeding on infants’ activities after adjusting for other characteristics
- Effects of breastfeeding on children’s social contexts after adjusting for other characteristics, different estimations compared
- Infants’ activities in minutes per day, OLS results (coefficients and [95% confidence intervals])
- Infants’ social contexts, OLS results (coefficients and [95% confidence intervals])
Can I summarize this?
Psalm 139
12Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.
13 For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.
14 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.
15 My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
16 Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.
17 How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them!
18 If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee.
Those are the words of a man who understands he is in relationship with Someone who loved him, wanted him, knows him, and that he knew was constantly thinking of him, that would never leave him alone. What better model for this than, at the beginning of life, being held, loved, and nursed by a mother? That act of nurturing and loving is at times attributed to God who, although He is portrayed as a Father, has also these characteristics:
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Nursing and compassion go together. It’s not just about the baby! It’s about the relationship. Not forgetting . . . Not having compassion for a child one has nursed MAY happen, but it’s not the norm.
Here’s another verse about “cherishing” like a nursing mother, Paul (who takes a lot of heat for his supposed views of women):
I Thess 1: Nor of men sought we glory, neither of you, nor yet of others, when we might have been burdensome, as the apostles of Christ. 7 But we were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherisheth her children: 8 So being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you, not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because ye were dear unto us.
These are from before the days of Enfamil, and babies were nursed by another human being. For the most part. It wasn’t always Mom, but it was a woman. Why? because there weren’t factories, cubicles, etc., to the extent we now have them. And it was common knowledge that this was a cherishing, tender activity, and associated with it, the desire to give to that child, because the child was precious.
I understand this. I nursed my children. I don’t see them, I still would like to give, and have been prevented from doing so. Even though they’re almost grown, they were not full-grown when the sudden breakoff of that relatinoship (by a felony act called “child-stealing,”) was a radical disruption to what I was doing with my life which was called imparting good things to my kids. I do not think that I was inbred — in fact I was a practicing music professional in my communities, and as networked and integrated into other people’s and community institutions as most people are (if not more so, being self-employed). I most certainly had an independent soul, personality, and preferences — something I had to fight for during marriage (where this wasn’t welcome), and rebuild after it. I had close and long-term personal friendships, also.
But the primary one was with my children, because they were not yet grown up. They were not in college. And some crucial life struggles and issues were still in process. So, that’s what my life was centered around. This was part role model part provision, part demonstrating, by providing, that they were worth sacrificing for, but that a mother was not to be “used.”
A major part of this struggle (in our case) had been to assert a simple right to leave abuse, and as such, that this did not entail suddenly entering a childlike incompetence (in fact it was the opposite) and inability to make decisions, or face a challenge. . . . . An assumption was made that my daughters were a BURDEN that needed to be relieved, and dumped in a school, so I could get about my REAL life, which was not (as I had been at the time), a profession, but actually making sure I found a 9-3 job, (or a 9-5 job with daycare) and left the real education to the real experts. . . . Well, that was nonsense. The insult was that, I should view children as a burden to be dropped off. I found the attitude odd. And it was coming from people who did not themselves have kids. I have since come to the conclusion (or opinion, really), that these people, like I was at one time, were relationship-starved, despite all the art, all the literature, all the work, and all the adult friends they maintained. I think they were bored and lacked purpose in life. And I had the misfortune to come near their radar screen with children in hand. The assumption was that I could not POSSIBLY walk and chew gum, or work and have kids, and what was worse, HOMESCHOOL them too? This was based on an incredible ignorance of almost all the above topics.
And I was forced back onto the welfare state, needlessly, and told to be thankful. I’ll tell you how I feel about this. I HATE it because I know how it happened, needlessly. It’s abusive, it’s insane, and it communicates a pervasive distrust of me as a person, and bottom line assumption is of incompetence. Oddly enough, the factors driving me to this point also made the same assumptions.
I HATE having choice being so taken away from me, but whether to take a handout, or not, resulting in an unnatural relationship. I HATE the insanity that a government would come in and because of Food Stamps be forbidden to buy vitamins, toilet paper, or cat food, lest I might really be buying cigarettes or booze. I can go and buy candy and sweets or potato chips, til I get diabetic with the same money, so why not a little choice? the real reason is the need to have something to measure. At the same time, they do not take kindly to being measured themselves, lest they come up a little short.
Back to this topic:
Noncustodial mothers, and I know many, do not understand why there is such a national drive to disgrace us and scapegoat us individually, and collectively. Individually, we have some pretty good ideas why this happens, but nationally, I’m here to tell you, this thing ‘mother’ is important, along with “father.” Any version of “fatherhood” that cannot pronounce the word “mother” alongside it is a bastardized version of the real thing, a caricature. Good grief. We are cruel enough already, why add to this?
The word “nurse” in the last reference doesn’t mean the one in a white uniform with a crisp cap (and hypodermic in hand), but the mother (“her own children.”) It’s a noun used only once in the Greek NT, “trophos” (transliterated), but the verb it comes from “trepho”, means is “
A primary verb (properly, threpho; but perhaps strengthened from the base of trope through the idea of convolution); properly, to stiffen, i.e. Fatten (by implication, to cherish (with food, etc.), pamper, rear) — bring up, feed, nourish.
Here’s one more:
Matthew 23:37 (ERV)
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killeth the prophets, and stoneth them that are sent unto her! how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!
The image of Jesus as a mother hen is not, I admit, the most common one, but the gathering and healing/helping, soothing, stopping the fighting activity (see context) obviously was not..
These verses referring to this common activity: nursing, cherishing, being gentle, imparting, caring, not forgetting, wanting a person (to have a child be WANTED is a big deal!), gathering the kids together and settling the squabbles, before they kill each other ! is not in the competitive context and as opposed to females we find it today “Dads are Nurturers Too!” but was simply part of a natural part of being a complete human being.
These are from the psalms of David, who was a major figure in the Bible, Old Testament and new, whose exploit with giant-slaying (“David and Goliath”) as well as with women (“David and Bathsheba”) as well as his progeny (Jesus Christ is sometimes known as the “Son of David” although there were many generations between the two recorded) and he was able to overcome having to flee, and live in caves and dens, but then fulfil his destiny to become a king. Isaiah (the second quote) was also a key player, and Paul — who takes a lot of grief in some circles, in case you didn’t know — over the supposed, “woman shut up in church!” thing –and is heavily relied on for this same reason by a lot of churches that never see MY face any more — in practice, well, I just don’t seem him acting terribly dismissive of women in the book.
Another major figure in the Bible is Moses. His story is, during a time of oppression and state-mandated male infanticide to get rid of the potentially upstart slave population’s potential men (and rebels), the midwives were instructed to kill the males. They didn’t. Moses was hid by his parents, and as it goes, they sent him down the river where Pharoah’s daughter (wanting a son!) picked him up, and raised him as her own. Well, I guess she had a figure and a schedule to maintain, and a wet nurse was hired, which ended up being Moses’ true mother. That worked out neatly, and I will bet that sometime during those months or years in which she got to nurse her own son, she also talked to him, and let him know who he was, and his heritage. 40, 80 years later, he is a national hero, confronting his own (surrogate) father and leading millions out of slavery.
These major players in Bible history: in approximate order: God, Moses, Isaiah, David, Jesus, and Paul (most of whom have been portrayed in statue and paintings by artists also — in fact, I think Michelangelo did at least David, God, and Moses) — all freely referred to the characteristics of nursing, cherishing, caring and in short, the supportive bonding relationship as a human need.
I would quote from a different sacred script, but this happens to be the one I know best. Please feel free to comment, if you wish, and if you’ve got some additional (relevant) quotes, I”ll incorporate them into the post.
Nursing was taken for granted as part of human life, and verbs and adjectives were associated with both nursing, and the word mother.
How did these people do such great, history-changing things without expert analysis of WHY breast was best?
Can we say nursing is a good deal for both mother, child, and the rest of us? Yes, it’s not always possible or advisable, but i DO wonder what we’re in such a rush to get rid of it for (pre-, pre-, pre-school in the US) and then, from afar, examine, pronounce and compare it with something else (is there something else superior?) as if it were a foreign thing?
Let’s compare the language used to describe some of this one more time:
Psalm 13913 For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.
14 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.
A soul that knows he has a place in this world and was KNOWN. Assurance, reverence, awe, and praise. This psalmist went on, being the youngest and often treated dismissively by brothers, and father, to defend and protect his sheep (he could nurture), to slay his giant, to also do music (the psalms), to survive being a fugitive from jealousy, and to go on to be king. When a prophet came to anoint the future king, the littlest one was ignored, not being thought worth a mention. Older, bigger, better smarter? ones were paraded in front of the prophet, but finally (as it goes) this one was brought out, and anointed officially, prophesied over, and then (apparently) the troubles and jealousy began. Oh well. Who would have predicted that? The best of predictions and analyses go wrong sometimes.
Was he himself breastfed? Did he have parenting time? Was he, as a shepherd, familiar with the life process of conception, child(lamb)birth, protection of young, leading, feeding, and staving off dangers from the flock?
Another thing, incidentally, he was famous for was humility — when caught in some serious wrongdoing (adultery, and deceitfully getting another man killed so he could have the wife) and confronted, he admitted it. This is called repentance, and was commended.
It’s all in the attitude.
Now, for contrast, a phrase from Study #43 on why, seeking to better perfect human growth patterns and predict, and, and, and . . . .
These findings have important implications for how children grow, and show the value of time use data in exploring pathways to development for infants and young children. The possibility that cognitive advantages for breastfed children may arise from their distinct patterns of time use and social contexts during the breastfeeding phase is an important area for future research using survey data such as from LSAC.
.These data are then used to investigate the central issue explored in this paper: are the days of breastfed and non-breastfed infants spent differently, to the extent that differences in how breastfed infants spend their time could explain their more positive developmental outcomes?
The analysis shows that infants who were still breastfed spent significantly longer in the day being held or cuddled (32 minutes more) and being read, talked or sung to (27 minutes more), after taking into account other child and parental characteristics. There was a small positive effect of breastfeeding on spending time crying or upset. Breastfed infants were more likely to have been reported to have spent some time crawling, climbing or swinging arms/legs, and some time colouring, drawing and looking at books or puzzles. Breastfed children, on the other hand, spent significantly less time sleeping (40 minutes less), other eating, drinking or being fed (54 minutes less) and watching television (9 minutes less).
Breastfed infants spent longer with their mother (57 minutes more) than infants who were not breastfed, including more time alone with their mother (45 minutes more). Breastfed children also spent somewhat more time with their father (15 minutes more), although this was related to time that the mother and father were together, as breastfeeding was not associated with a difference in the amount of time the child spent with the father alone.
(It’s a RELATIONSHIP THING, I told you!) I wish our countries (respectively) would get OUT of the business of designing (measuring, comparing producing, evaluating and predicting, etc.) families. I really do. OR, alternately, worshipping them as a national ideal. I think this can backfire, too.
As a word of explanation, I am not writing to discredit the authors, or the study. Their credits are below. My point was in the larger context of, my own wonder and awe not at, well, being fearfully and wonderfully made, but at the whole industry of studying human behavior with a view to predicting, developing, understanding, justifying, and possibly controlling it. This is actually a positive contribution to the understanding that MOTHERING is important. Not SMOTHERING.
In my readings about the history of some of the larger social institutions dedicated to studying children and families, it came up that one cause of this was the tremendous amount of orphans caused by war, specifically World Wars I and II. It was both a problem and a ready source of oobservation of what happens to kids without families.
Along these lines, and based on my experiences (and associations, readings, etc.) I am personally very disturbed by the nationalized, so-called “public education” system. Over the long haul — and my life is five decades long, plus some — I was an academic success in a public school, but some of the values problems, and the absence in this context, of solid human connections with more than a few teachers, of discussions about the meaning and purposes of life was absent Though smart, smart was not appreciated in our high school, in fact it was social detriment. Though smart as a kid, I was also picked on as a kid, and my main memory of elementary school was this. I’m not complaining, I’m thinking here. It never occurred to me to tell my mother (or father) about the bullying, which went on a long time; I was very young, and the entire schoolyard was involved at playtimes. I still remember. I had everything handed to me, excelled here and there, and came to life around high school because of music, and I know this was because of the communal experience of doing something worthwhile other than sitting in a classroom, bored, and waiting for the bell.
As to bonding with one’s children, there is a bond. I can’t help thinking about Michael Jackson’s 3 children, basically kids for hire, given up AT BIRTH (I don’t think any one of them got a single sip from their mothe’s breast, and the 3rd, he related, he took away right away, placenta and all, as soon as the cord was snipped. The stunned reporter, well, was stunned. Putting this together with Michael’s stories of his threatening domineering father (they practiced with him sitting by with a belt) and when relating it, Michael put his hand over his mouth. His features were mocked, blaming it on the Mom. Fantastic wealth, fame, and musical success, yet this person, I looked at him on TV, had tried to turn himself into Peter Pan, he did not want to grow up. What did he have for his mother — a woman who was as chastised as the Dad? His own children didn’t know mother, at all, and ALL of them are going to go now either to abusive grandparents (let’s hope that’s changed), or a mother who gave them up at birth and viewed them (the first 2) as a “present” for Michael. They might be fought over, they probably won’t be hurting for food (one never knows) but what would be their place in the world? And what identity?
I am also looking at all the GRIEF in my own home, and life — first the bastardized version of “fatherhood” and “headship” that I lived with in marriage, which entailed also being domineered and, when necessary to make a point, assaulted, in the name of this ideal– and then, after I left that, the closest handy male who himself ALSO had not become a father, or raised a family, tried to catch up on lost time, with the assistance of his wife, and united with husband to remove the children from my care on the basis that i CERTAINLY couldn’t run a life without a man’s direction. The real basis, I believe was their need as people, despite all success, to have a meaningful relationship with young people they were related to. It just so happened they were short two, and mine were on the radar, and basically, that was that.
I don’t mean to give a hard time to people who can’t or don’t keep children with them longer. It can work out.
I do believe, though, that when it comes to national policy, it would be suicide to practice the disappearing Mom act. It’s the beginning of life, and it sets a standard. Leave those children alone! And let them bond with their Moms. Support that standard, and many other things will do better — it might make for better mothers, too, if we allow them space and time to do it. NOW, I have got to say, I think that the educational system exists in relationship to the job system. They are intertwined.
And i think sooner or later when we look at educational failures, and human behavioral failures (which domestic violence, and associated things ARE), we have too look at conceptual failures to acknowledge some basic human truths. And one of those is that MOST of us don’t like being treated like cogs in a machine, or parts in an assembly line. MOST of us would like some decent relationship with a sane human being that knows us, appreciates us, thinks POSITIVELY of us (which many school programs, alas, do not), and does not have an ulterior motive – job stability, money, sex, power, fame, prestige — etc. in there competing with why we are being raised as we are.
Human beings need a raison d’etre, a purpose in life, too. A friend of mine likes to say, all we need is:
- Someone to love
- Work to do.
One way to be able to love someone else is to have some self-respect (skills mastery, accomplishment, service, function in a community) oneself. A sense that one is unique, not just a point on a bell-curve. Let’s have a little motherhood in here, it’s a great start to other endeavors. That nursing baby NEEDS Mom, and to be held. That Mother/baby situation NEEDS Dad to protect it, and enable this situation. If, however, Dad has become inappropriate because of violence, or absent by choice, or incarceration, then they need a little space to grow up. Neither of them needs to be around violence or poverty and no child certainly should be treated as a piece of property — which is EXACTLY how too many institutions are indeed treating them, no matter what the sign on the doors.
How complex is that? In this regard, I think many institutions have got it wrong in trying to give people what they might rather earn or learn themselves.
Sorry to be so long-winded today.
Here are the women who did the study; it’d be great to read the entire thing (link up top):
About the authors
Jennifer Baxter is a Research Fellow at the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS), where she works largely on employment issues as they relate to families with children. Since starting at AIFS, Jennifer has made a significant contribution to a number of important reports, including the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA) Social Policy Research Paper No. 30, Mothers and Fathers with Young Children: Paid Employment, Caring and Wellbeing (Baxter, Gray, Alexander, Strazdins, & Bittman, 2007) and AIFS’ submission to the Productivity Commission Parental Leave Inquiry (2008). She has also contributed several Family Matters articles and had work published in other journals. Her research interests include maternal employment following childbearing, child care use, job characteristics and work-family spillover, breastfeeding, children’s time use and parental time with children. She has made extensive use of data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) to explore these areas of research.
Jennifer was awarded a PhD in the Demography and Sociology Program of the ANU in 2005. Her work experience includes more than fifteen years in the public sector, having worked in a number of statistical and research positions in government departments.
Julie Smith is a Research Fellow at the Australian Centre for Economic Research on Health at the Australian National University (ANU). She has published over 20 articles on public finance and health policy issues in peer-reviewed journals across several disciplines. She has authored two books on taxation (Taxing Popularity and Gambling Taxation in Australia), and received an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral (APD) Fellowship and Discovery Project funding for her research on the economics of mothers’ milk. She conducted a significant national survey of new mothers’ time use in 2006-07. Her research interests include: economic aspects of breastfeeding; the time use of new mothers <www.acerh.edu.au/programs/Time_Use_Survey.php>; non-market economic production and the care economy; taxation, tax expenditures and public finance policy; economics of the non-profit sector; tobacco control; and health financing. Julie was previously a senior economist in the Australian and New Zealand treasuries, and a Visiting Fellow in the Economics Program at the ANU Research School of Social Sciences. She was awarded a PhD in Economics (ANU) in 2003.
Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, & History 
The Golden State’s Gold Rush, 1998-2009, Healing Families, Promoting Responsible Fatherhood
with one comment
FYI: In re budget crisis……
For your viewing pleasure and information.
http://www.taggs.hhs.gov/AdvancedSearchResults.cfm
This unbelievably patronizing budget, focused on healthy marriages, head starts, responsible fatherhood, parenting classes, and forcing adults who separated — often for the woman’s, or the man’s own safety and sanity — to stay joined at the hip (through “access/visitation grants — more on this below), and thereafter trying to manage “high-conflict relationships” — through the court system – is (collectively) the truly most IRresponsible father(land) I have yet met.
Most irresponsible fathers will affect a family line, and those individuals who come into contact with members of that family line, through work or otherwise. This, however, respresents an unbelievably presumptuous and dishonest treatment of the portion of the American public that, by maintaining taxpaying employement or employEES, including many who populate and staff its institutions, pays its bills.
At some point it is simply responsible to admit that a relationship has failed, and separate. ESPECIALLY in cases involving battering, domestic violence, or other forms of abuse. Or even, say, ongoing promiscuity — or refusal to participate in supporting the household — on the part of one or both partners. Generally speaking it’s one more than another. One person has been “used.” This is a horrible example for any children involved, and a real drain on the community, which often has to make up the gap. But the principle of cutting one’s losses can come to the rescue, and stop the process before another family is dead, or homeless, or traumatized out of social functionality.
When it comes to hazardous JOBS, if there is an alternative, a person is allowed to of his or her own free will, QUIT.
I admit that some people take relationships casually, and perhaps when these people are identified, their LOCAL communities should address the issue. But good grief — to try to force this on an entire NATION, and bill the entire nation (those who pay taxes) to fund the concept that there should be a chicken in every pot (yet we have vegetarians), and a biologically related FATHER in every child’s life, no matter whether this is good for the kid, or the mother or not — that’s budget suicide, and sometimes suicide for him, and death for the Moms too, or children. This is the story the headlines are telling us. Some people don’t handle stress and relationships well, and are better off kept away from the person they hate to the point of having committed crimes against their partner. Rather than face their personal demons, they externalize, blame (“demonize”) someone else, and then attack and attempt to destroy them, and people associated with them.
I am sorry to say this, but this at times includes the children. When a situation has become dangerous to a parent, then to suddenly proclaim “Kids need their Dads no matter what!” is social insanity. And, presently, policy.
Why not when it comes to hazardous marriages? WHY?? oh WHY??? is the Federal Government encouraging the States encouraging the Courts (with help from “faith-based” organizations and “Community Action Organizations” and other nonprofits of dubious parentage) to rake divorcing families over the coals in order to recreate a United States in which EVERY child has a Dad in his or her life, and EVERY mother has either a MAN in her life (if he’s alive), OR the Government telling her how to raise her children and educate her children (and by virtue of this, her lifestyle? To be permanently punished for a poor choice of spouse or partner, when one has otherwise behaved in an upright and responsible citizenhood fashion, is abusive, and a sign Federal Government In Loco Parentis having totally forgotten its own origins: “of, by for the people” and “consent of the governed.” It has lost its mind — or, has NOT lost its mind, and is of a mind to leech a living off its own people by creating a constant source of conflict, between the courts, promoting this “fatherhood” thing (alongside most fundamentalist religions) and the nationwide school curriculum saying “It’s Elementary” (etc.) that some families have two parents of the same sex, and anyone who disagrees is committing a hate crime.
It seems to me that in both institutions – courts, and schools — a habitual undermining of basic civil rights, as well as promotion of a certain “religion” (in one place, the nuclear family, in the other, the dismantling of the traditional nuclear family [if indeed this ever existed], both practically and as to teaching), and at the other end — as people come of age to procreate, which appears to be a more engaging activity than the studies in many public schools — as if an afterthought, now that some of these parents are on welfare, this same government then wants to now teach them how to be parents, especially Dads. Moms are taught by default how to make babies for government studies and programs; the fodder for Ph.D. “Child Development Scholars” and other therapists.
OK, now that that’s out of my system, how this relates to
the “Gold Rush” in the “Golden State,”. . . .
I’ve posted below, for only ONE state, and only TWO “Categories of Federal Domestic Assistance” (“CFDA”), and from only ONE major U.S. Exeuctive Branch Department, “Health and Human Services.” These are (some of) the many types of grants given for redesigning the U.S. family. Apparently the also significant U.S. Dept. of Education didn’t do a good enough job the first time through (either that, or it’s them “foreigners” (meaning, any group whose feet hit these shores en masse after your particular ethnic group did, except Native Americans…). We need to constantly make and remake the family til we get it right one of these days.
Again, this is only SOME of where your funding for the local public schools, homeless assistance, or law enforcement, or other social services went. It went in large part into social engineering programs.
OH, by the way, these programs are also compromising due process in the courts ~~even in the family courts which exist primarily to compromise evidence for conciliation to start with!~~ so they are affecting civil and legal rights under the U.S. Constitution. That we let this happen is probably a factor of the educational system (and NOT accidental over the decades….), which teaches us neither, really, how government NOR the economy actually operate. Nor is it real good at uncensored history, especially the history of its own self (dating to a little while after the Civil War, and before women got the vote).
So, this time, I searched:
I usually cannot get the chart to confine itself to the margins of this post — it goes off into the “blogroll” area and becomes unreadable.
It’s better to view the original site; to this end, welcome to a research tool. Don’t you want to know WHY some fathers are committing homicide/suicide in desparation over the economy, or (overentitled?) outrage at being ousted, or because they have been publically humiliated in some fashion their psyches could not or would not handle. Why a decade after this started, can’t we keep up with the family fatalities before the next generation of irresponsible (because, and ONLY because, according to this viewpoint, they were) fatherless Dads is born?
(Present CEO of the nation that styles itself as leader of the ostensibly Free World excepted).
NOTE: Mothers are used to being put down, humiliated, forced to beg, and treated like second class citizens for so long, we are not typically going off the deep end over loss of social status by murdering our kids, our spouses, or if they’re not available, someone else associated with them will do. Women as a whole or men as a whole are not culprits. We come in different colors, income levels, temperaments, and psyches. ON THE OTHER HAND, given this, a governmental attempt to define us, our relationships, and our children, is going to be resisted. It’s a recipe for ongoing conflict, and economic drain. I suggest ALL U.S. Citizens take a serious look at this. Here’s ONE underestimated tool.
In almost seven years in the system, I didn’t find ONE entity apart from this site, point me to this federal department. One humble but FULL website did. http://www.nafcj.net. The site didn’t get my attention (no gov’t grants helped its design, or press), but what it said did.
MOST organizations that say “prevention of violence” in them or “stop abuse” or “battered women” or even “family court reform” or something similar, don’t even mention this TAGGS site or point us to investigate its activities. Father’s groups naturally wouldn’t, or they could no longer claim that concerns about certain social epidemics just “emerged.” They did nothing of the sort — they were urged, publicized, promoted, and proclaimed, from Top Down, in typical government style. I have now gotten to the point of finding out UP FRONT before I deal with any nonprofit or “let us help you” group, who is funding them. You should too. Ignorance ain’t bliss. And it’s got to be a sin (faith-community or no faith-community) to fail to inform women in trauma filing protective orders about all the cooks in the kitchen.
SO . . . ..
ARE YOU A U.S. CITIZEN OR RESIDENT? THEN
THIS PAGE IS YOUR FRIEND — PLEASE GET ACQUAINTED
IT IS A RHETORIC RADAR. IT IS A DOGMA DETECTOR.
IT IS A GULLIBILITY REDUCER**
EDUCATE THYSELF!
http://taggs.hhs.gov
**
For example, when Glenn Sacks, Jeffrey Leving, Esq. Sen. Evan Bayh, or President Obama — or any noble-sounding nonprofit (or government agency) such as “American Coalition for Fathers and Children“ [Doesn’t THAT sound worthy, and united and concerned about, well, FAMILIES??] — writes, blogs, or receives high-profile press coverage stating that we need MORE money to stop the woefully underfunded fatherhood movement (as if this was a new crisis the U.S. (i.e., taxes) hadn’t already poured millions into, without addressing, for example, how the US being the world’s largest jailer MIGHT relate to why SOME kids are fatherless) you will realize when they are simply lying.
Or, whether they are actually quoting each other and playing Good Cop, Bad Cop {{pretending to fight with each other and be more separate in intent than they actually are}} to confuse the viewers (see ACFC link above). Broad allegations and statements are made without links or cites, such as this, (date, 2007):
FACT: The duty of any COURT system [[HINT: JUDICIAL branch, not LEGISLATIVE — remember this??]] is to protect the existing laws, not re-write them. To determine and allocate consequences for people who violate laws, especially intentionally and repeatedly.
To make sure that due process happens and evidence is considered as to whether the EXISTING laws have been (a) observed or (b) violated. There are also RULES for many courts, to aid in the process.
FACT: The primary characteristic of the “family law SYSTEM” is the prominent use of outside the courtroom decision making. Even the Acronym of this organization “ACFC” is modeled after another organization “AFCC” which title means “Association of Family and Conciliation Courts,” an international organization of dubious tax-compliance history until someone caught them operating out of the Los Angeles County Courthouse without a separate EIN (IRS Tax) # — i.e., until they got caught in an audit — and drenched with psychologists, mediators, & custody evaluators holding international!! conferences, with judges and attorneys (conflict of interest there, anyone?) publishing, promoting, and proclaiming all kinds of theories (and making alliances) that the average low-income litigant is naively unaware of, not invited to, and not encouraged to know about. All of this is patronizingly, ostensibly, for the greater good, or the country, the families, and I suppose apple pie, too. As such, these experts don’t trouble to tell ignorant litigants about their alliances, or how much profit is made from the conferences, books, trainings, and publications.
IRONICALLY, IN 1992, per this source, the courts are drenched with:
Or, whether (possibly) having used one of themselves for a specific purpose, they then turn and backstab the same person. Kind of like a high-conflict, divorcing bitter spouse might.
Now you, too (I ALREADY DID), can have a catharsis (SHOCK) of understanding of WHY there is “Disorder in the Courts” and certain systems appear broken, when they aren’t really. They are doing exactly what they were designed to do — create a cash flow and ongoing transfer of wealth from the taxpaying public into the hands of the “experts” and away from two working parents (whether cohabiting, married, or not) to children, their offspring.
Here’s the “TAGGS” site.
Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System
(You didn’t expect to pass Big Brother 101 without learning a few acronyms, did you?)
NOTE: To actually find out what those transactions were used for will take a little more legwork, locally.
A search of all states resulted in nearly 1,500 results, which I doubt wordpress could handle the pageload.
I find the pattern below (try this link for a better view — OR, select the CFDA #s 93597 & 93086 ONLY, for California, and with the column titles you see below (scroll to bottom of the Advanced Search page to select) and it should come out the same).
Before you actually LOOK at this, consider yet another Fatherhood “whine,” dating to (originally) 06/30/2007 — after Father’s Day THAT year…):
WHERE ARE THE LINKS TO THOSE ALLEGATIONS?
This is from:
Mike McCormick is the Executive Director of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children.
Glenn Sacks’ columns on men’s and fathers’ issues have appeared in dozens of America’s largest newspapers. Glenn can be reached via his website or via email at Glenn@GlennSacks.com.
Telephone: 800-978-3237
@@@
Results 1 to 81 of 81 matches.
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Does the word “Demonstration” raise an eyebrow for you? Are you curious what a “Demonstration Priority Area” is, and whether your residing (if so) in one either aided or compromised due process in your particular family law case (if such be), or exercise of your civic duty of fatherhood (if such be).
I wonder why a subset (Program Office OCSE) of a subset (OPDIV “ACF” — and ALL of these grants were ACF grants) of a subset (HHS) of the Executive Branch of the United States Government (Legislative, Executive, Judicial)– which the “OCSE” (Office of Child Support Enforcement) indeed IS — it IS in the Executive Branch of the US Government — is doing distributin cl
I wonder whether this information is posted at courthouses, or child support offices, like an “under Construction” would be at other sites? I didn’t realize til, well, recently, that the last X years I spent in the family law system were part of someone else’s Demonstration Grant. This is what we get for minding our own business, and failing to secure enough excess time in our daily schedules to ALSO mind the business of our elected representative governments, both Federal and State.
We farmed out government to the government have ended up (our children, basically, and incomes) becoming someone else’s family farm.
Suggestion:
If fewer categories (column titles) are chosen, a search will produce interactive recipient names, or grant #s, and this will tell more about
the individual activities. And gets pretty interesting . . . . .
. . . Dang it, I just slipped into bureaucratic passive and Impassive; the language is like a pheronome, or like stale air, if you hang around it too long, you begin exhaling in the same manner: categories are chosen (I didn’t act), searches (not my choices) produced, just like a domestic dispute “arose” between two individuals, during a, er, ACF-facilitated “ACCESS” exchange between parents.
I find it interesting that the “OCSE” is administering these grants designed to help noncustodial parents get more time with their children.
OCSE is the “Office of Child Support Enforcement.” I thought it wasn’t about the money, but about the best interests of the children, who need both parents in constant contact with them. For example, nonpayment of child support is NOT a basis for withholding visitation of a child from the noncustodial parent. Women are certainly told that loud and clear when pursuing child support arrears.
Unfortunately, some parents can’t be trusted alone with their children. For example, some kids get killed or stolen on overnight visitations which are not supervised. On the other hands, some unsupervised parents (mostly Moms) also supposedly cause severe emotional distress to their children by actually following through when child abuse or other violence is reported, causing more “high conflict’ between the parties. Which is “bad.” “Bad” protective parent: Here, let us order some parenting classes for you….A common, but costly solution appears to be switching the custody to the other parent, and forcing the reporting parent to pay to see her offspring.
But one way to withhold visitation from a designated parent is if she (most likely) cannot afford to pay to see her own children in a supervised visitation situation that arose AFTER something else (such as child abuse, or other domestic violence-related issues) has been reported or investigated. I know mothers who cannot afford to see their children, after a custody switch. It does not seem to work both directions AFTER a custody switch (possibly enabled by some of these grants’ services). Where’s the “healthy families” in that scenario?
If these whole movements (Healthy Marriage, or Responsible Fatherhood & Access Visitation, meaning, it supposedly takes a Village to raise a Child and BOTH Parents (especially Dads) to also do this, which the taxpayers should then fund) are about the CHILDREN and our SOCIETY, then somehow it seems a little odd that the agency entrusted to do this is the CHILD SUPPORT branch, not another one.
The fact, and that history of the matter is that it went kind of like this, as to finances:
1. OOPS! Welfare roles are too high! (Personal Work and Responsibility welfare reform)
2. Let’s go Collect Child Support — get those paternity tests and those deadbeat Dads.
3. OOPS! A lot of them are in jail, and others just don’t want to pay, they’ve moved on in life? What can be done?
4. Enter “Access Visitation” grants, in hope that more time with kids will result in more child support collected. It’s all for the kids, after all. If they get more time with the children, we will (artificially) “flex” the amount of child support actually due.
4B. And the multiple assorted professionals all along the way, all of who are also of course in it for the kids and not the money.
5. Who picks up the tab, in the long run, and what is it? When custody switches are involved, then a parent who historically had been struggling or learning to manage a life (including a work life) around the children will then restructure the life differently, while the parent who just GOT the child will either restructure his (or her) work, or delegate the care of the child to someone else.
6. Did I mention Head Start yet?
By the way, a lot of the funding below is what i call “Designer Families,” i.e., the US Government is actually studying US families (at the expense of the same families) to determine what they DO look like, to run some tests (see “DEMONSTRATION PROJECTS” below) and then report back (not to the consumer — to the experts, of course) on what the tests showed, and then expand the scope of the practice. This, FYI, is business (perhaps not YOUR employer, but government) business as usual. Something you don’t learn in grade school, or often in high school, unless your parent was a Senator or a Sociologist.
Well, two can play that game. Who wants to come out and play?
Want some answers?
Want to have some fun analyzing the analysts?
Let’s do it.
At least it would make some more interesting dinner conversation (assuming you still have dinner), or at a commuter bus stop (assuming you still have a job) than the latest office politics, or doom and gloom. You can say, “Did you know that I now spend one-quarter (one-tenth, etc. — adjust according to your payscale) of my work day, which keeps me away from spending quality time with my kids, earning money for the government to spend getting other people who won’t or can’t pay child support to spend more time with their kids, in hopes that they will? Or to keep them married when otherwise they’d divorce? Or just leave?”
Or you could say, “Where do you think the HIGHEST grant for reducing abuse, poverty, drug use, and other social ills (i.e., promoting healthy marriages) went to in our state?
They’ll probably name Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Richmond, Sacramento (or other urban area known for its homicide rates, or radical agenda).
And then you can surprise them with your inside knowledge:
HEY! IF I SAY I EXPECT TO SEE SOMETHING, CAN I GET A FEDERAL GRANT, TOO?
I WILL MAKE UP A NICE NAME, AND USE BIG WORDS, STARTING SMALL WITH A DEMONSTRATION PROGRAM, AND THEN EXPANDING NATIONWIDE. SEE BELOW FOR A TYPICAL PATTERN. . .
Now I’m curious. Let’s see where they are on the $11.9 million…. In 2006 I was definitely on the wrong side of the politically correct agenda, obviously, in that I was trying to get UNMarried, complete a safe separation begun years earlier…. and retain housing . . . . (Searched on “Principal Investigator,” pulled up an unrelated “Stoica”). Well, maybe not a relative…) (the name “Stoica” I picked out arbitrarily — well, actually because of the size of the grant — from the larger chart below).
The next RESPONSIBLE CITIZEN behavior then might be to ask, for example, what a particular grant recipient is doing with some of the funds, either on line, or hey, give them a call! Say, “Hey! $50,000 is more than I make per year, and a good part of this is being garnished to pay child support already. Can you tell me what your group did last year with YOUR $50,000 — and who’s on the payroll? I’d like to see a line item listing, or a few cancelled checks perhaps. I mean, I work hard (yes, I’m sure you do), and I’d just like to know where my taxes are going. Thanks! Send the printout to _________________).” (And then install a security camera….)
Note: In the example above (where I picked one of the larger grants in the big chart, and searched on Principal Investigator)
In the next post (or so), I will, possibly, show how well all this Healing Families and getting Dads responsible has reduced Violence Against women SO much (in the same time period) that we really don’t need (?) VAWA to keep funding shelters, and other things to help them stay alive, or in one piece. The momentum of the emerging (still???) Fatherhood movement and Responsibility Movement and Shared Parenting Movement, has really worked, and we now have significantly less separation violence, fewer family wipeouts, and children in the care of the other parent, with help in care of possibly a new girlfriend, or boyfriend, are faring better. Like the 7 year old boy who was just taken off life support in Massachusetts, after his Dad came back into his life, possibly under one of these programs (although I didn’t investigate further on that one, I admit), after only 8 weeks summertime fun with his father.
In the matter of Designer Families by Federal Fiat, I think we do need to take a closer look. How’s your state doing?
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Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up
July 6, 2009 at 1:01 PM
Posted in Cast, Script, Characters, Scenery, Stage Directions, Context of Custody Switch, Designer Families, Domestic Violence vs Family Law, Funding Fathers - literally, in Studies, Mandatory Mediation, Organizations, Foundations, Associations NGO Hybrids, Vocabulary Lessons
Tagged with custody, fatherhood, men's rights, parental kidnapping, retaliation for reporting, social commentary, Studying Humans, U.S. Govt $$ hard @ work.., women's rights