Pendragons Princess

“Bullwinkle, do you know what an A-bomb is?”

“Sure, a bomb is what some people call our show.”

The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show was anything but a bomb in the early 1960’s when this cartoon was popular on television. Created by Jay Ward and Bill Scott, the cartoon centered on a number of comic situations between the now famous squirrel and moose as well as other visiting characters to the show. Boris Badenov, Natasha Fatale, Mr. Peabody and Sherman were the show’s other guests. But did you know that at least two of the voice actors on the cartoon were childfree?

June Foray, the voice of Rocky Natasha, and Nell Fenwick, was married to Hobart Donavan, a television screenwriter until his death in 1976. June, howver, is still with us, pushing 91 years of age. June hardly needs any introduction to those who grew up in the 1960’s watching cartoons considering her highly prolific career as a voice over actress. She is in fact childfree but has owned fur children during her life and it makes sense, too - who would be able to maximize their talents the way June did and be mother to a bunch of kids at the same time. Having long admired June, I feel she is worthy of mention here for her childfree status.

Walter Tetley, the voice of Sherman, the boy owned by the dog Mr. Peabody, was another childfree actor. Sadly, Walter died in 1975 at the age of sixty but he will be remembered for Sherman as well as Andy Panda in the Walter Lantz cartoons.

These two actors show that even if one is childfree, it is still possible to be actively involved in children’s entertainment.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/family/08/27/gifted.kids/index.html?

imw=Y&iref=mpstoryemail

Is Your Kid Really Gifted? Probably Not.

By Paula Spencer

Wow, clearly she’s a genius!

Or, um, maybe not.

“Gifted” has become one of the most tossed-about words in the parenting lexicon.
Unfortunately — sorry, but let’s get this out of the way right up front — it’s also one of the most misused.

The vast majority of children are not gifted. Only 2 to 5 percent of kids fit the bill, by various estimates. Of those, only one in 100 is considered highly gifted. Prodigies (those wunderkinds who read at 2 and go to college at 10) are rarer still — like one to two in a million. And despite the boom in infant-stimulation techniques, educational DVDs, learning toys, and enrichment classes, those numbers haven’t been increasing. You can’t build giftedness; it’s mostly built in.

Still, it’s hard to resist scrutinizing your child for signs of greatness. (Those “signs” in the first paragraph, by the way? Not one guarantees an intellectual giant.) The growing fascination with giftedness is part natural impulse to see our offspring as special, part wanting to be sure a child’s needs are met and maybe a bit of hoping for a competitive edge in the increasingly cutthroat school-admission process — or bragging rights.

“There are no average kids anymore,” noted Devra Renner, a clinical social worker and coauthor of “Mommy Guilt.” “The word ‘good’ is like the new ‘bad.’ Why settle for even ’smart’ when you could instead call your child ‘gifted’?”

True giftedness may be as rare as Einsteins and Mozarts, but the good news is that there’s loads you can do to help your child reach her full potential. Even better: Whether young children are truly advanced or happily average (where they have lots of company), in the early years they need pretty much the same things. To raise a happy, emotionally healthy kid, follow these five steps to success:

1. Forget about the “g” word

There’s plenty of wishful thinking about giftedness because there’s no standard definition of it. Broadly speaking, a gifted child has special abilities in a particular area. The five main ones outlined in a popular 1993 U.S. Department of Education report are intellectual, academic, creative, artistic and leadership, none of which is normally associated with the performance of babies and toddlers.

” ‘Gifted’ is often misunderstood,” said Julia Roberts, director of the Center for Gifted Studies at Western Kentucky University. “People don’t always recognize a gift because they’re expecting a prodigy.” And parents whose kids are “highly capable” or “advanced” in one area or another may not feel satisfied until somebody official labels it “gifted.”

Many parents of kids under 5 look to IQ tests for a number that will “prove” their child’s ability. In truth, IQ testing doesn’t tell you much before the school years and even then is generally considered unreliable. Why? Because “giftedness” is typically concentrated in one area and doesn’t refer to overall intelligence, the focus of an IQ test. (If you’re going to use it for academic placement — as many schools do, among numerous other factors — testing between ages 4 and 9 is optimal.)

2. Start with the basics

In the first three years of life, all children need to feel a sense of security and attachment. Being held, being loved and having one’s basic needs met are all critical for future learning.
The growing brain next needs stimulation in order to change and develop. One thing it loves: novelty. Every time your baby is exposed to new toys, words, sounds, textures, tastes, smells, faces and places, she’s learning. You don’t have to work overtime to make this happen; everything in everyday life is new to a baby.

By late infancy and toddlerhood, some kids do dart way ahead on milestone charts, and some don’t. Whether your kid does or doesn’t, experts say, all babies, toddlers and preschoolers will thrive as long as they are:

• Provided a predictable life with a reasonably ordered environment.
• Held and touched often.
• Talked to (or sung to) often.
• Read to frequently.
• Exposed to interesting experiences.
• Given many opportunities to learn through play.

3. Play’s the thing

What even chart-busting toddlers and preschoolers don’t need are special “gifted” programs or learning tools such as flash cards, educational DVDs or brain-building computer games. There’s no evidence that this “edu-tainment” does anything to boost children’s intellectual ability.

Most educators believe that kids don’t benefit from academically oriented preschools, either. Far more important is having opportunities to explore without constraint — and teachers and parents who know how to keep learning fun.

“When it’s fun and playful, that’s when it gets into your head,” said Robin Schader, Ph.D., parent resource advisor for the National Association for Gifted Children. Neuroscience research confirms that pleasure is what makes our brains want to repeat and remember an activity, and it’s that kind of natural repetition that fuels learning.

This helps explain why play is everything to young children. It’s how they learn, experiment, tinker, express creativity, work through feelings, practice socialization, develop language and math skills, and see the world in new ways. Pre-schools should mainly be play schools, centered on this kind of discovery learning and the teaching of basic social skills. Many parents want their kids to start kindergarten being able to read Dr. Seuss, write their names and count to 100.

But a kid who can do all that is actually going to have a harder time than his peers in school if he can’t also sit still and listen, take turns, share and follow directions. Those are the real skills teachers expect kindergartners to have.

4. Tune in to your kid

If, for example, your child is very verbal, “you can make your language a little more complex, use more adjectives,” said Nancy Robinson, Ph.D., a professor emeritus of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. “Expand a little on where the child is.”

That’s what Jackie Brezinski of Apple Valley, Minnesota, did. She credits talking to 21-month-old Seth and reading to him from infancy for his big vocabulary. “I talk a lot. I tell him what we’re doing, what we’re eating, where we’re going,” she said. Now he wants to “read” the books to her.

Building on ability is known as “scaffolding.” It means presenting experiences that are challenging but not overwhelming and doing it in a positive, supportive way to help the child reach the next level, higher than she could on her own, explains Schader.

For example, if your child asks about a stop sign, you can describe the sign and explain its meaning. Point out the letters S-T-O-P. Later, you can point out an “S” on a store name and then ask if she can find some more.

Another idea for a curious, verbal child: Make Question Books. Scatter three or four notebooks around the house. If your child asks a question you either don’t know the answer to or are too busy to answer, say, “Let’s write it down.” Later, you can explore the question together: find a book, go online, visit the library or a museum. Parenting.com: The magic of play

Enrichment doesn’t have to cost money. There’s learning in practically everything you do with a young child.

5. Be a guide, not a coach

Ultimately, the relationship between a child and his parents and teachers shapes his attitude toward learning. Aim to be a gentle guide, not a high-pressure coach.

“Rather than ask, ‘Is this kid counting better than others?’ ask, ‘Am I supporting what’s interesting and exciting to my child?’ ” said Alison Steier, Ph.D., director of clinical training at the Arizona Institute for Early Childhood Development.

Cecilia Jerkatis says her son Kyle, 3, keeps her on her toes as she looks for stimulating activities for him. Yet at the same time that the mom in Albuquerque, New Mexico, wonders whether her clever, verbal boy is gifted, she also wonders whether the label matters. “I think we’re here to support their development, whatever their interests are,” she said.

Just don’t think you have to drive yourself (or your kid) crazy signing him up for teams and classes to find activities he loves. Simply exposing him to different experiences will spark things that “click.” Build on his interests. If he likes dinosaurs, find books and movies about them, or visit a museum. You don’t need to sit down and “teach” anything.

Above all, don’t overfocus on cognitive abilities. “You also want your child to be resilient, empathetic, and creative,” Schader said.

And you both want to enjoy his childhood. “I do forget Kyle is 3,” Jerkatis said. “Then once in a while, he gets a little whiny, and I remember.”

So relax. The best gift your child can have is the gift of time with you. Reading, singing, playing, dancing, catching fireflies — it’s all good. The rest is gravy.
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“My child is gifted, even though he was diagnosed with a learning disability,” are words I often hear from people who have children. Little do they know this is a contradiction in terms. A child cannot at the same time be truly gifted and learning disabled. Yes, true giftedness is built-in but the learning process helps to steer a gifted child in the proper direction towards more challenging academic work. Parents who think their four year old can read, write, and do basic math think their child is gifted, but this is not true. It’s natural that one’s child is special to the parent but the label of gifted here definitely gets misused. It simply does not mean that “My child must be gifted and therefore has more value than other children.” That’s not how it works in the real world, and for childfree persons, well, there is no such special child - the closest that comes to one is a niece or nephew, if there is one.

I will have to agree with parental support of a child’s natural interests and abilities as that is a vital nurturing part of a child’s overall development.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/27706917/?GT1=43001

Survey: Unprotected sex common among teens

On average, girls lose virginity at 15; some are having sex at school

By Laura T. Coffey

TODAYShow.com contributor

Nov. 14, 2008

Parents, brace yourselves: The survey results are in, and you may not like what they reveal about girls and sex.

More than 10,000 teenage girls and young women took part in an anonymous survey over the summer on TyraShow.com, the Web site of “The Tyra Banks Show.” Survey questions focused on sexuality, sexually transmitted diseases and teen pregnancy, as well as drinking, drugs and violence among females. Here are some findings from the survey:

On average, girls are losing their virginity at 15 years of age.

14 percent of teens who are having sex say they’re doing it at school.

52 percent of survey respondents say they do not use protection when having sex.

One in three says she fears having a sexually transmitted disease.

24 percent of teens with STDs say they still have unprotected sex.

One in five girls says she wants to be a teen mom.

About 50 percent acknowledge that they’ve hit someone.

One out of three teens has tried drugs.

“What surprised me most on the survey is that the girls were so honest, and I think the reason why they were so honest is because the survey was anonymous,” retired model and daytime TV host Tyra Banks told TODAY co-anchor Matt Lauer on Friday. But when some of girls surveyed came onto her show and described their sexual activities, “I was shocked again,” she added. “I don’t think they were trying to be sensational. I really do believe that they were telling the truth.”

Open talk about diseases, pregnancies

On “The Tyra Banks Show” airing Friday, eight girls ranging in age from 14 to 17 discuss the survey findings and share their own personal experiences. Seven of the eight say they are sexually active; of those seven, just one says she uses protection when having sex.

“A lot of the guys, if I didn’t have unprotected sex with them, they would get mad at me and I still wanted that closeness with them,” one girl says during the show. “I was afraid if I didn’t do what they wanted, they wouldn’t be my friend.”
The same girl talks about how she tested positive for chlamydia twice and also contracted genital herpes.

“I’m ashamed that I have it, but it’s something I want other people to be aware of,” she says.

Another girl, a 17-year-old mother of a 7-month-old boy, says she lost her virginity on a school lunch break and deliberately planned her pregnancy by monitoring her menstrual cycle.

“I had helped teach a sex-ed class to a class of freshmen my sophomore year,” she explains. “We taught how … there’s a week [in] the month you are more likely to get pregnant than any other time of the month. I had calculated that out and I decided on two days I was most likely to get pregnant.”

Girls on the show also talk about experimenting with the drugs salvia and Ecstasy and getting into violent fights with other girls.

‘Adolescents need help’

Dr. Elizabeth Schroeder, executive director of Answer, a teen sex education program based at Rutgers University, said the survey results sound plausible and are consistent with other research on teen sexuality.

“This so clearly points to the need for comprehensive sexual education for kids,” Schroeder said. “An adolescent … is supposed to be making poor decisions. Developmentally this is the way they’re supposed to be behaving. They need help ….

“Parents need help talking with their kids about sexuality, and schools need to be talking to kids about sexuality.”

Banks told Lauer that this kind of communication simply isn’t happening for many teens.

“They are not talking to their parents; they’re embarrassed to talk to their parents,” Banks said. “And more than them being embarrassed to talk to their parents, their parents are embarrassed to talk to them. So they’re finding all [about] sex education with their friends, with their peers.

“I asked one of the girls, ‘Where are you doing it?’ ” Banks added. “She said, ‘In the bathroom, and the janitor caught us.’ ”

But Schroeder said it’s important to keep the issue of teens actually having sex at school in perspective. “If 14 percent of teens are having sex in school, that means 86 percent are not having sex in school,” she says. “People have to hear the statistics and hear that it’s not everybody.”

Banks also told TODAY that girls appear to be more sexually active than ever before. A 16-year-old girl interviewed on “The Tyra Banks Show” says she had sex for the first time at 13. Since then, she has had nine sex partners and has contracted sexually transmitted diseases, including genital herpes.

“When they told me I was crying really bad … because it was something I have to live with for the rest of my life,” the girl says during the episode.

The girl also says she’s never addressed the issue with the boy who gave her herpes.

“I never confronted him about it,” she says. “I’ve always been scared.”

“It hurts me, because my mission in life is to raise the self-esteem of young girls,” Banks told Lauer on TODAY. “But I didn’t know that it was that low.”

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This news does not really surprise me, since our media does a rather excellent job at sexualizing and objectifying females (who are good for little else but making babies according to them, of course.) What does amaze me is that these girls are actually allowing guys to tell them what to do:

““A lot of the guys, if I didn’t have unprotected sex with them, they would get mad at me and I still wanted that closeness with them,” one girl says during the show. “I was afraid if I didn’t do what they wanted, they wouldn’t be my friend.””

First of all, “friends” do not have sex with each other, period. Sex is reserved for mature persons in permanent relationships that are exclusive, with both persons being intimate lovers. Sex is not a toy that you play with one day then throw it out in the trash the next day but obviously that is how teenagers treat sex.

Another quote:

““I asked one of the girls, ‘Where are you doing it?’ ” Banks added. “She said, ‘In the bathroom, and the janitor caught us.’ ””

In the bathroom. I wonder which one, the girl’s room, or the boy’s room, or are public schools now hosting unisex bathrooms? Your tax dollars hard at work, folks. Kids doing this on school property should just be expelled, never mind suspended. These are the teen girls who will wind up pregnant, on a lifetime supply of welfare checks, and be looked at very differently by the rest of society for their unethical behaviors.

One last quote worth commenting on:

“”Banks also told TODAY that girls appear to be more sexually active than ever before. A 16-year-old girl interviewed on “The Tyra Banks Show” says she had sex for the first time at 13. Since then, she has had nine sex partners and has contracted sexually transmitted diseases, including genital herpes.
The girl also says she’s never addressed the issue with the boy who gave her herpes.

“I never confronted him about it,” she says. “I’ve always been scared.””

Nine sex partners and contracted an STD. What a banner of achievement! I feel very sorry for this girl, with her life being destroyed at the age of sixteen. I have heard of being royally screwed up (no pun intended) but she has major problems. She wasn’t scared to have sex with the guy who gave her herpes but she’s scared to confront him about it.

This is what I mean about women being socialized into male dependency, thus relegating them to second class citizens. NO man can give a female self-esteem; that is something she has to work on herself. It sounds to me like she would have been better off with a real extra-curricular activity such as ballet, music lessons, or even sports. Teenaged boys are simply too immature to understand real love, as are teenaged girls; all they understand is hormones, confusion, and identity problems. Teenaged girls with healthy self-esteem won’t even be thinking about guys because they know that esteem is not something that can be given to another person. I doubt that sex education will solve all of the problems teens have with sexual behavior. I’d rather my tax dollars go for classes that teach girls to develop healthy self-esteem rather than classes that teach them how to sleep with boys and make babies. Because in the end, society picks up the tab for the sexual behaviors of these kids.

http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Hollingworth/children.htm

SOCIAL DEVICES FOR IMPELLING WOMEN TO BEAR AND REAR CHILDREN
Leta S. Hollingworth (1916)
Bellevue Hospital, New York City
First published in American Journal of Sociology, 22, 19-29.

Excerpt:

But once the young are brought into the world they still must be reared, if society’s ends are to be served, and here again the need for and exercise of social control may be seen. Since the period of helpless infancy is very prolonged in the human species, and since the care of infants is an onerous and exacting labor, it would be natural for all persons not biologically attached to infants to use all possible devices for fastening the whole burden of infant-tending upon those who are so attached. We should expect this to happen, and we shall see,’ in fact, that there has been consistent social effort to establish as a norm the woman whose vocational proclivities are completely and “naturally” satisfied by child-bearing and child-rearing, with the related domestic activities.

There is, to be sure, a strong and fervid insistence on the “maternal instinct,” which is popularly supposed to characterize all women equally, and to furnish them with an all-consuming desire for parenthood, regardless of the personal pain, sacrifice, and disadvantage involved. In the absence of all verifiable data, however, it is only common-sense to guard against accepting as a fact of human nature a doctrine which we might well expect to find in use as a means of social control.

Since we possess no scientific data at all on this phase of human psychology, the most reasonable assumption is that if it were possible to obtain a quantitative measurement of maternal instinct, we should find this trait distributed among women, just as we have found all other traits distributed which have yielded to quantitative measurement. It is most reasonable to assume that we should obtain a curve of distribution, varying from an extreme where individuals have a zero or negative interest in caring for infants, through a mode where there is a moderate amount of impulse to such duties, to an extreme where the only vocational or personal interest lies in maternal activities.

The facts, shorn of sentiment, then, are: (1) The bearing and rearing of children is necessary for tribal or national existence and ,aggrandizement. (2) The bearing and rearing of children is painful, dangerous to life, and involves long years of exacting labor and [p. 21] self-sacrifice. (3) There is no verifiable evidence to show that a maternal instinct exists in women of such all-consuming strength and fervor as to impel them voluntarily to seek the pain, danger, and exacting labor involved in maintaining a high birth rate.

We should expect, therefore, that those in control of society would invent and employ devices for impelling women to maintain a birth rate sufficient to insure enough increase in the population to offset the wastage of war and disease. It is the purpose of this paper to cite specific illustrations to show just how the various social institutions have been brought to bear on women to this end. Ross has classified the means which society takes and has taken to secure order, and insure that individuals will act in such a way as to promote the interests of the group, as those interests are conceived by those who form “the radiant points of social control.” These means, according to the analysis of Ross, are public opinion, law, belief, social suggestion, education, custom, social religion, personal ideals (the type), art, personality, ‘enlightenment, illusion, and social valuation. Let us see how some of these means have been applied in the control of women.

Personal ideals (the type). — The first means of control to which I wish to call attention in the present connection is that which Ross calls “personal ideals.” It is pointed out that “a developed society presents itself as a system of unlike individuals, strenuously pursuing their personal ends.” Now, for each person there is a “certain zone of requirement,” and since “altruism is quite incompetent to hold each unswervingly to the particular activities and forbearances belonging to his place in the social system,” the development of such allegiance must be –
effected by means of types or patterns, which society induces its members to adopt as their guiding ideals….. To this end are elaborated various patterns of conduct and of character, which may be termed social types. These types may become in the course of time personal ideals, each for that category of persons for which it is intended.

For women, obviously enough, the first and most primitive “zone of requirement” is and has been to produce and rear families large enough to admit of national warfare being carried on, and of colonization. [p. 22]

Excerpt:

There is one further class of devices for controlling women that does not seem to fit any of the categories mentioned by Ross. I refer to threats of evil consequence to those who refrain from child-bearing. This class of social devices I shall call “bugaboos.” [p. 28] Medical men have done much to help population (and at the same time to increase obstetrical practice!) by inventing bugaboos. For example, it is frequently stated by medical men, and is quite generally believed by women, that if first child-birth is delayed until the age of thirty years the pains and dangers of the process will be very gravely increased, and that therefore women will find it advantageous to begin bearing children early in life. It is added that the younger the woman begins to bear the less suffering will be experienced. One looks in vain, however, for any objective evidence that such is the case. The statements appear to be founded on no array of facts whatever, and until they are so founded they lie under the suspicion of being merely devices for social control.

One also reads that women who bear children live longer on the average than those who do not, which is taken to mean that child-bearing has a favorable influence on longevity. It may well be that women who bear many children live longer than those who do not, but the only implication probably is that those women who could not endure the strain of repeated births died young, and thus naturally did not have many children. The facts may indeed be as above stated, and yet child-bearing may be distinctly prejudicial to longevity.

A third bugaboo is that if a child is reared alone, without brothers and sisters, he will grow up selfish, egoistic, and an undesirable citizen. Figures are, however, so far lacking to show the disastrous consequences of being an only child.

From these brief instances it seems very clear that “the social guardians” have not really believed that maternal instinct is alone a sufficient guaranty of population.

They have made use of all possible social devices to insure not only child-bearing, but child-rearing. Belief, law, public opinion, illusion, education, art, and bugaboos have all been used to re-enforce maternal instinct. We shall never know just bow much maternal instinct alone will do for population until all the forces and influences exemplified above have become inoperative. As soon as women become fully conscious of the fact that they have been and are controlled by these devices the latter will become useless, and we shall get a truer measure of maternal feeling. [p. 29]

One who learns why society is urging him into the straight and narrow way will resist its pressure. One who sees clearly how he is controlled will thenceforth be emancipated. To betray the secrets of ascendancy is to forearm the individual in his struggle with society.

The time is coming, and is indeed almost at hand, when all the most intelligent women of the community, who are the most desirable child-bearers, will become conscious of the methods of social control. The type of normality will be questioned; the laws will be repealed and changed; enlightenment will prevail; belief will be seen to rest upon dogmas; illusion will fade away and give place to clearness of view; the bugaboos will lose their power to frighten. How will “the social guardians” induce women to bear a surplus population when all these cheap, effective methods no longer work?

The natural desire for children may, and probably will, always guarantee a stationary population, even if child-bearing should become a voluntary matter. But if a surplus population is desired for national aggrandizement, it would seem that there will remain but one effective social device whereby this can be secured, namely, adequate compensation, either in money or in fame. If it were possible to become rich or famous by bearing numerous fine children, many a woman would no doubt be eager to bring up eight or ten, though if acting at the dictation of maternal instinct only, she would have brought up but one or two. When the cheap devices no longer work, we shall expect expensive devices to replace them, if the same result is still desired by the governors of society.

If these matters could be clearly raised to consciousness, so that this aspect of human life could be managed rationally, instead of irrationally as at present, the social gain would be enormous — assuming always that the increased happiness and usefulness of women would, in general, be regarded as social gain.

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The entire paper is very well written and quite accurate: women who are better educated are more aware of methods used by society to hold them down and are not afraid to question the validity of these controls. It wasn’t that long ago when a woman who never married or had children were considered to be social “outcasts” because they lived differently and considered a “threat” to the social order. Naturally, women outside of the status quo were not treated well by other women who followed social expectations of them. Most of this has to do with our upbringing, though - how girls are raised, versus how boys are raised. Women in the nineteenth century were considered second-class citizens, just as African-Americans were. Girls simply followed the role model their mother and grandmother served as, while boys grew up to be first class citizens. Was it really that long ago when females were held to these social expectations?

Actually, it wasn’t. It seems even closer in time that such expectations were held. I remember my first full-time job at a fabric store, working for a female boss, who was married, with three adult kids: two sons, one daughter. Two employees, one other woman besides myself, were unmarried and favorite targets of the boss to the point where I eventually left the job. The year? 1992. Even though my boss was in her fifties, she had the upbringing that women were baby machines first and foremost. Being only in my early twenties and trying to save money to leave my family’s home, I thought it bizarre when a recent employee was getting married and the boss said about it, “It’s about time.” What a thing to say about an employee! What in hell does her marital status have to do with her performance on the job? But that’s the mentality of 1992 in the United States of America, land of the free white men, oppresser to white and minority females. Being a member of three different minority groups myself (female gender, religion [non-Christian], and economic status [not wealthy]) I know what it’s like to be on the receiving end, even though I refused to be intimidated by people like this female manager who considered women good for nothing but marriage and babies. The shocking flipside is, my present boss, a different workplace altogether, is a male, he gives me no grief whatsoever about not having kids, and he’s conservative, Republican, and Christian. Oh, plus he has a teenaged daughter. So why the discrepancy?

Again, the majority of social expectations come from role models. American society is just twisted enough to not consider men as role models for females, not as a gender issue, but as a non-gender issue. Fathers are more apt to support their daughter’s ambitions, whereas the mother wants to stick the daughter into the same mold she was immersed into. I mean, just how many fathers out there force their daughters to wear girdles? Next to none. But I still remember my mother wanting me to wear one even though I was skinny and young (aged 20). All of these boil down to social role models, or in plainer terms, “I, as a woman, fulfilled society’s expectations of me, now you have to do the same,” a mother may say of her daughter. Yes, it seems childish to practice such force upon the younger generation. But back to my opening paragraph where it says educated women question this socialization, it is this questioning that ultimately provides freedom for women. If a woman is well educated but fails to question the socialization of females in modern society, that education is worthless if she reverts back to the socialization pitfall. Why bother going to college? (They go to meet a husband, haha. Don’t worry, mommy and daddy paid $200,000 in tuition just for that purpose.) Going through the motions of life without engaging any real independent thinking at all is hardly fulfilling; all it does is perpetuate the cycle. Those who are not afraid to break away from the social mold are those who set future social standards of real freedom in society.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-476669/Angels-savages–children.html

Angels or savages - who would have children?

A new book is causing a storm of controversy by labelling children as annoying and pointless - a charge made all the more inflammatory by the fact that its author is a mother. Entitled No Kid: 40 Reasons Not To Have Children, Corinne Maier’s book has sparked fury in France, where it was published.

Here, Corinne argues her “no kid” case while another mum, Ursula Hirschkorn, stands firm for parenthood.

Corinne Maier, 43, a writer, who lives with her boyfriend Yves, 45, a psychiatrist, daughter Laure, 13, and son Cyrille, 10, in Brussels, argues her case.

Children are just too much work. They just aren’t worth the hassle. Parents today are put under so much pressure to bring up perfect children, but what’s the point?

They are just walking problems to which you constantly have to find solutions.

The world is in the grip of baby mania, with celebrities flaunting their pregnant bellies in magazines, live births on TV and everyone demanding the right to have a baby at any cost.

To be a la mode, the must-have accessory is a baby.

If you can’t make your own, then a whole business has sprung up to service your needs and now as long as you’ve got the cash, you can buy IVF, eggs, sperm or even children.

Anyone who dares to be different and suggest that being child-free is the better option is vilified as immature or selfish.

It’s a brave woman who will stand up for her right not to have children.
Let’s start at the beginning with my first reason for being anti-children: labour is torture.

Even with anaesthetic it’s the worst pain you’ll ever feel. Anyone who tells you it will be a beautiful experience is lying. It’s more like that scene from the film Alien, where the monster bursts from an astronaut’s stomach.

Then there’s breastfeeding. Everyone tells you breast is best, but no one tells you it hurts like hell. If you opt out and bottle-feed you’re made to feel guilty for “going against nature”.

Get over these early hurdles and you hit the big one: how to keep your child amused and happy.

This will fast become one of your most hated jobs. The moment you give birth you can forget leisurely lie-ins, last-minute trips or a spontaneous roll in the hay with your partner.

Instead, your weekends revolve around being woken at the crack of dawn to traipse around the zoo or watch minimum wage actors cavort in cartoon costumes at Disneyland; sitting through stupid kids’ films and eating in “child friendly” restaurants. In my opinion this alone is reason enough not to have a child.

But perhaps the weekends aren’t so bad when you look at the monotony that is the life of a working mother.

Your career is on hold in a dull job, because it’s the only way you can get out of work on time to pick up your children from school or take a day off when they get sick.

I stayed for years in a job that bored me - as an economist - just so I could get out early to pick my children up.

I worked all day, and then came home to shopping, cooking, cleaning and hours of homework, and all so my kids could treat me like a maid. It was so boring.

Being a working mum is like being in prison, but there’s no time off for good behaviour and no electronic tags you can wear for a brief trip back to the freedom you’ve given up for your offspring.

I found the hardest thing to give up when I had my children was my personal freedom.

There is no time left to be you any more. If I hadn’t had them, I would have spent my money travelling the world. I could enjoy my money, rather than being stuck at home waking them up every day in time for school.

Once you have children, there is no space for spontaneity any more. We tried to go to an art exhibition last weekend which we’d been looking forward to for ages, but we had to take the kids along and they hate art.

They whined so much that we gave up and left without seeing anything.

If you thought your friends would help you get through parenthood, then you’ve got another thing coming. When your friends have children, conversation shrinks to how “Oscar’s using the potty now” or “Alice slept the whole night”.

Nothing is more mind-numbingly boring than “mummy talk”.

Make no mistake, bringing up children is war, and you’re on the losing side.
Every time you plan a little escape they will undermine you. Just as you are off to bed with your partner, they’ll throw up; the one night you book a babysitter they’ll come down with a fever; on your birthday they’ll throw a tantrum as you’re stepping out of the door - you just can’t win.

Perhaps this is why children are such effective passion killers. Take my advice, if you want to stay together, avoid baby-making.

What hope is there of a fulfilling sex life when a woman is forced to turn into a fat, deformed animal decked out in sack-like dresses?

Far from the beautiful images on the front of magazines, the ugly reality usually means a long cold spell between the sheets.

Even once the baby is born, nights punctuated by feeds and a crying baby leave you so exhausted that any thawing in that department is a long way off.

As you bid adieu to your sex life, your relationship is quick to follow. You go from being a couple to being Mummy and Daddy.

Your job as a parent comes first, and the romance in your lives is replaced by DIY and dusting.

Now, my boyfriend Yves and I are parents first and a couple second. Our relationship hasn’t been the same since we had children and I miss the romance.

Of course, millions of parents will read this and get all defensive and think that it’s all worth it because those angels of theirs are sweethearts. But they’re not: they’re little savages.

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I give Corrine a lot of credit for coming clean about what it is like to raise children: she openly challeneges the stereotypes that “Children are blessings from God”, “Children make your life fulfilled”, and similar comments. Even though she has two kids of her own, having put them ahead of her boyfriend Yves, it is a big sacrifice she made for her kids. Incidences like this may very well explain why men in a relationship start seeking for love elsewhere from another woman: because the wife/girlfriend is too busy taking care of children, and she has next to no time to give the man in her life any care or attention.

The book sounds good in itself, and according to Amazon.com, it will be released in paperback format in March 2009, translated into English from French. Corinne hits the nail on the head in referring to our modern world as being in the middle of “baby mania” and calling the babies the latest must-have “accessory.” Maybe celebrities need such an accessory but regular working folks like myself do not. Even though Corrine is a childed person, she deserves credit for her honesty in what it is like to raise children.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20081112/hl_hsn/usteensbrimmingwithselfesteem

U.S. Teens Brimming With Self-Esteem

By E.J. Mundell
Wed Nov 12, 5:02 pm ET

WEDNESDAY, Nov. 12 (HealthDay News) — Today’s American high school students are far likelier than those in the 1970s to believe they’ll make outstanding spouses, parents and workers, new research shows.

They’re also much more likely to claim they are “A” students with high IQs — even though other research shows that today’s students do less homework than their counterparts did in the 1970s.

The findings, published in the November issue of Psychological Science, support the idea that the “self-esteem” movement popular among today’s parents and teachers may have gone too far, the study’s co-author said.

“What this shows is that confidence has crossed over into overconfidence,” said Jean Twenge, an associate professor of psychology at San Diego State University.

She believes that decades of relentless, uncritical boosterism by parents and school systems may be producing a generation of kids with expectations that are out of sync with the challenges of the real world.

“High school students’ responses have crossed over into a really unrealistic realm, with three-fourths of them expecting performance that’s effectively in the top 20 percent,” Twenge said.

For the study, she and co-researcher W. Keith Campbell, of the University of Georgia, pored over data from the Monitoring the Future study, a large national survey of thousands of U.S. high school students conducted periodically over the past three decades.

The researchers compared the answers kids gave in 1975 and 2006 to 13 questions centered on students’ “self-views.” These questions solicited students’ opinions on such things as how smart they thought they were, or how likely they were to be successful as adults.

“When we look at the responses of the students in the ’70s, they are certainly confident that they are going to perform well, but their responses are more modest, a little more realistic” than teens in 2006, Twenge said.

For example, in 1975, less than 37 percent of teens thought they’d be “very good” spouses, compared to more than 56 percent of those surveyed in 2006. Likewise, the number of students who thought they’d become “very good” parents rose from less than 36 percent in 1975 to more than 54 percent in 2006. And almost two-thirds of teens in 2006 thought they’d be exemplary workers, compared to about half of those polled in 1975.

As for self-reported academic achievement, twice as many students in 2006 than in 1976 said they earned an “A” average in high school — 15.6 percent vs. 7.7 percent, the report found.

Compared to their counterparts from the ’70s, today’s youth also tended to rate themselves as more intelligent and were more likely to say they were “completely satisfied” with themselves.

There was one exception — measures of “self-competency” (i.e., agreeing with statements such as, “I am able to do things as well as most other people”) did not rise between 1976 and 2006. According to Twenge, that may mean that young people continue to feel great self-worth even as they remain unsure of their competence in specific tasks.

Twenge stressed that youthful confidence isn’t necessarily bad. “Young people have always had some degree of starry-eyed optimism, and that’s probably a good thing,” she said. “And setting goals for yourself is a good thing. It’s just when those goals are wildly unrealistic, then that can cause trouble for everyone.”

For example, young people entering the workforce may score well in job interviews if they exude self-confidence, she said, but that can quickly sour if a new employer doesn’t provide them with the perks or promotions they feel they deserve. “They don’t set the right goals for themselves, because they are overconfident — and that’s when it blows up in their face,” Twenge said.

The blame for all this may lie with well-intentioned adults, she suggested.

“These kids didn’t raise themselves, they got these ideas from somewhere,” Twenge said. With Mom and Dad handing out endless praise, kids today readily believe they are somehow superior, she said. And teachers aren’t blameless, either: According to Twenge, research shows that high school teachers now give out an “A” grade more easily than their counterparts did in the 1970s, even though today’s high school students report doing less homework than students from that era.

Not everyone interpreted the new findings in the same way, however. Jennifer Crocker is a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan and a longtime researcher in self-esteem. She said that by selecting data from 1975 and 2006, Twenge and Campbell have only presented two moments in time and have not shown evidence of any decades-long trend.

And based on available academic data, today’s young Americans might be right to be more self-confident, Crocker argued.

“The fact is that we are all getting smarter — IQ is going up quite dramatically over this same period of time,” Crocker noted. “Students may believe that they are getting trained better than they used to, that they are learning skills that they didn’t use to have. So, maybe their predictions aren’t unreasonable.”

But Twenge, who is the author of a book on young people’s self-views called Generation Me, isn’t convinced. In fact, she believes that today’s parents may be sending another crop of young Americans down the same path.

“I have a 2-year-old daughter,” she said. “I see the parenting of kids around her age, and I haven’t seen this changing. Look around — about a fourth of the clothing available to her says ‘Little Princess’ on it.”

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What did they expect would happen, when parents bestow unearned praise upon their kids? Of course their children have inflated egos. “Kids with expectations that are out of sync with the challenges of the real world” is an understatement - these kids will not know how to handle the word “No” at all since their parents have refused to say no to their little darlings for anything. The scary part is, these kids will be tomorrow’s leaders of our nation - self-centered, whiny ”adults” who will be unable to think of anyone but themselves. Yes, this is bad parenting and yes, the parents of these kids should feel guilty. “Princess” my foot. Right now the only quote that comes to mind is the one spoken by the abdicated British king, Edward VIII:

“The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children.”

That quote is from 1957, not 2008, but it is definitely a statement of the then future American culture: today. The only thing we will wind up with is overconfident future adults who will think they are immune to anything.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081113/ap_on_re_us/safe_haven

Nebraska parents rush to leave kids before law changes

By Nate Jenkins, Associated Press Writer

Thu Nov 13, 2008

LINCOLN, Neb. – The mother was running out of more than patience when she abandoned her 18-year-old daughter at a hospital over the weekend under Nebraska’s safe-haven law. She was also running out of time: She knew that state lawmakers would soon meet in a special session to amend the ill-fated law so that it would apply to newborns only.

“Where am I going to get help if they change the law?” said the mother, who lives in Lincoln and asked to not be identified by name to protect her adopted child.

To the state’s surprise and embarrassment, more than half of the 31 children legally abandoned under the safe-haven law since it took effect in mid-July have been teenagers.

But state officials may have inadvertently made things worse with their hesitant response to the problem: The number of drop-offs has almost tripled to about three a week since Gov. Dave Heineman announced on Oct. 29 that lawmakers would rewrite the law.

With legislators set to convene on Friday, weary parents like the Lincoln mother have been racing to drop off their children while they still can.

On Thursday, authorities searched for two teens — a boy and girl, ages 14 and 17 — who fled an Omaha hospital as their mother tried to abandon them. The mother was trying to take them from the car to the emergency room when they took off.

Child welfare experts said the late deluge of drop-offs was probably inevitable. After all, they said, some date had to be picked to begin changing the law.

But some of them said lawmakers and the governor missed chances to change the law early because they underestimated the number of desperate families looking for help. Heineman called the special session only after a spate of five drop-offs in eight days.

Reluctance to pull senators away from their jobs and election campaigns, along with the estimated $70,000 to $80,000 cost of a special session, were among the reasons Heineman’s office cited in holding off on calling a special session sooner.

“I think there was a fair amount of denial on the part of legislators that it would snowball,” said Karen Authier, executive director of the Nebraska Children’s Home Society.

The safe-haven law was intended to save “Dumpster babies” by allowing desperate young mothers to abandon their newborns at a hospital without fear of prosecution. But lawmakers could not agree on an age limit, and the law as passed uses only the word “child.”

All states have safe-haven laws, but in every state but Nebraska, the law applies to infants only.

Authier said her group and others had warned senators after the law passed early this year that there could be problems, but the lawmakers did not believe it.

“It wasn’t like talking to a stone wall,” Authier said. “It was just that people who aren’t in the business of dealing with families, they aren’t aware how desperate some of these families are.”

Sure enough, 18 teenagers — five 17-year-olds, two 16-year-olds, six 15-year-olds, two 14-year-olds, three 13-year-olds — have been abandoned, along with eight children who were 11 or 12. Five of the children dropped off have been from out of state.

The Lincoln mother who dropped off her 18-year-old daughter said she was repeatedly turned down when she sought help from police, state social services authorities and the girl’s school. The woman said her daughter had been diagnosed with a mental illness when she was 12 and had deep psychological scars from childhood abuse and from being left alone with her dead biological mother for a week.

The woman said she felt she had no choice but to leave her daughter at the hospital after a recent flurry of assault, stealing, sleeping around and cutting school.

“I thought she would get help” through the safe-haven law, the mother said.

However, state authorities refused to take the young woman into custody, saying Nebraska law regarding juveniles does not let authorities take in anyone older than 17. The woman left with her daughter.

Fourteen children in all have been left at three hospitals operated by Alegent Health in the Omaha area.

“These are largely families at a point of incredible desperation,” said Wayne Sensor, chief executive of Alegent Health. “They aren’t bad parents or bad kids. They simply don’t know what services are available out there.”

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Seeing that so many parents are desperate to leave their child elsewhere, Nebraska citizens are rushing to beat the deadline of January 2009 when their state’s Safe Haven Law will be changed to be only for infants, not oversized “children.” This lastest abandonment was of an adopted child (an act of desperation?) the mother did not seem to know how to handle. Again, abandonment is not the solution here. Not surprisingly, the majority of these abandonments have been of teenagers, not unwanted infants.

This desertion of big “children” is very significant because it brings me back to the time when I was growing up and wanted a kitten. Mom and Dad might say to me, “No you cannot have a kitten because they grow up to be cats.” Seeing that one too many Americans are ignorant to realize the same exact thing happens when they squeeze out a snowflake from seventh heaven.

Babies.

They Grow Up to Be Teenagers.

What a message to send to them. Maybe, just maybe, it would work.

Well I dug out another goody from my files, this time, from the National Catholic Reporter, dated August 29, 1997, eleven years ago. Some excerpts from this very long commentary by Jesuit priest Robert F. Drinan:

Organizations that see to slow or control the growth of world population have never received much attention from Catholics. Resistance, even hostility, have long marked the attitude of Catholics toward groups like Zero Population Growth.

The unspoken premise behind the Catholic view has been that as a human being it is better to be than not to be, and that God in his loving providence creates every person for good if imponderable reasons.

Meanwhile, population growth continues at a startling rate. In 1966 Earth’s total population was 3.4 billion. In 1996 it was 5.7 billion. That’s an increase of 2.3 billion in just 30 years.

In September 1994 the world focused on population at the UN’s nine day International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt. The Catholic press reported at some length on that event but mostly about the views on abortion raised by Catholic delegates. There was little attention in the Catholic community given to the awesome problems that are inevitable if the human family continues to grow by 70 million each year.

Education of women is one of the most important [ways to decrease population growth]. Women who can read can obtain accurate information about maternal and child health. They can discover that breast-feeding can often be a natural contraceptive.

[William G.] Hollingsworth urges [women to have] access to contraceptive information. Even though it is well known that lack of contraceptive information is one of the causes of some 52 million abortions each year worldwide, many Catholics have traditional or moral misgivings about artificial contraceptives.

The lack of [overpopulation] interest [by Catholics] is surprising, given decades of official Catholic teaching urging parents to be responsible about the number of children they bring into the world.

The issues are morally complex. There are no simple answers. But it is clear that in the year 2010 there will be at least one billion more persons in the world than in 1997. People of faith and the entire human family must undertake heroic efforts to prepare an existence for these children that is worthy of human beings.

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Drinan’s figures are accurate: in 1997, the world’s population was 6 billion. In 2008, right now we are at 6.7 billion: that’s an addition of 7 billion people in only eleven year’s time. So, yes, if birth trends continue this way, we will definitely be at 7 billion, if not slightly more (7.2 billion at the most) by 2010 – two years away from today.

The Roman Catholic church has always been opposed to artificial contraception – the rhythm method is recommended but even that is not a guaranteed form of birth control. According to the commentary, birth growth has dropped slightly in third world countries as of 1997 but not a whole lot. Catholic teaching aside, it would be more accurate to say this church favors the “imponderable reasons” for one thing only: to increase the numbers of the Roman Catholic Church. Once more people are born into poverty, the church can send its workers to aid and convert the poor, much in the way Mother Theresa did.

Like Hollingsworth said, education for women is the primary key for birth control – access to information, birth control methods, and much more. Poverty has for too long been the mascot of the Roman Catholic Church – encourage a problem, then send a ‘hero’ from the church to help alleviate the problem. Sexual attitudes by this church has probably caused more personal struggles and issues than anything else. What comes of the married couple who are finished having 2 ½ kids and cannot have sex anymore because their church forbids it if contraception is used? Can love and intimacy disappear? It usually does, thus exacerbating the relationship between the married Catholic couple. After all, sex used for pleasure is regarded as Original Sin, something that is only to be used for procreating and nothing else. Then if a baby is somehow conceived while it’s being pleasurable, it’s guilt trip time – not for the parents, but for the child they made. How sad is that? The parents would be better off using contraception and not telling anyone in their church about it. The problem here is the amount of control the Roman Catholic church exerts over its members as well as non-members. It is not unusual for someone to say that if he or she cannot do or have something per his or her religious teachings, then no one else can, either. Admittedly, it is childishness at its finest but then again members of such a church are indeed considered to be “Children of the Church.” There is no independent thinking allowed in this area known as birth control. Those who are open about using birth control usually wind up doing penance. Perhaps it is better to not tell anyone birth control is being used, if one is a Roman Catholic. No one else needs to know. It’s better to have a clear conscience and use birth control rather than instill the tragic results of guilt feelings into the potential offspring, who didn’t ask to be born.

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/07/11/1115_costof_kids/index_01.htm?campaign_id=yahoo

The Total Cost of Kids
By Sabrina Siddiqui

From adoption to auto insurance, health care to housing, raising children can cost parents more than $700,000 per child from birth through the age of 21. Take a look at the breakdown of the individual costs—and where you could save money.
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Seven hundred grand. Just a year ago it was $300,000 per child, up to the age of 18. I’ll be lucky if I ever make $700,000 in my lifetime and if I do, it’ll pay for the college tuition bills on two degrees and a home.

Continue:

Adoption
Total cost: $22,500 (average cost of adopting a child)*

Based on a survey by The Adoption Guide, the average cost of adoption is between $20,000 and $25,000 (before federal tax credit and employee adoption benefits) and continues to rise. Of course the figure depends on whether the adoption agency you choose is private or public (the latter always costs less). The majority of failed adoptions cost less than $5,000. Seventy-five percent of overseas adoptions are also costlier — over $20,000, whereas domestic newborn adoptions cost less than $20,000.

*Assuming a one time cost
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$20,000. is a lot to adopt just one child. Needless to say, one must be made of money just to adopt a child but if they can afford it, God bless them.

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Auto Insurance
Total cost: $11,190 (age 16 - 21; does not include discounts for Good Grades Policy)*

Those teen years will always cost you more, not only for the newfound interest in clothes, style, and technology, but also for auto insurance once your kids learn to drive. Rates are always higher for teenage drivers, because as a group they pose a higher risk of accidents than experienced drivers. The Insurance Information Institute says that adding a teenager to your insurance policy can mean a 50% or even a 100% increase in your insurance premium. To lower these costs, urge your kids to do well in school. Some insurance companies offer a Good Student Discount to students with a grade point average of B or higher.

*Unless otherwise noted, all costs are computed from birth through 21.
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Here, this is an exception, as many families, including the one I came from, had the teen pay for the insurance (the teen of course had to have a job). On the other hand, nowhere is it engraven in stone that a parent HAS to buy a car and HAS to pay for the teen’s insurance. Having a car and license are simply legal privileges that can indeed be revoked by law but maybe more importantly, as soon as a teen turns sixteen, does not have to be immediately fulfilled. Many teens have waited until they are older to get a license and a car. So I’d scratch the cost of $11,190 since this is purely optional on the parent’s part.

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Car
Total cost: $230,178 (includes average cost of buying a larger car and 21 years of gas)

Hauling around kids and the many things that accompany them requires a bigger car. In other words, having kids means trading the two-seater for a minivan. In addition to the $25,000-plus it takes to purchase a minivan, the AAA estimates that gasoline will set you back $8,639 annually. Some bigger families will choose an SUV, which can consume an average $9,997 in gas each year and cost about $44,000.
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This is inaccurate. Parents with two kids can get by on a Nissan Altima sedan (room in the backseat for both and the trunk is rather roomy for their supplies), which is a fairly economical car, mileage is approximately 20 in the city, 35 on the highway. Minivans as a must-need for kids is nonsense proposed by the Soccer Moms of America, whose sponsor is Sarah Palin.

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Childcare
Total cost: $47,300

Most moms like to return to work after having children, and both parents hope that they can return to some kind of social life. But babysitters, nannies, and day care don’t come cheap. The USDA says they can cost about $4,300 a year until the age of 11. While the day care may stop when a child reaches 11, a baby-sitting charge may persist unless there is an older sibling around to take over.

*Until age of 11.
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Childcare is a choice. It’s great if there is an older sibling to look after the kids, but what about another family member in the area? Granted, the stay-at-home-mom movement is popular once again but I’m sure that other women with kids want them out of their hair for awhile, especially if they have to work.

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Clothing
Total cost: $14,683

Parents spend close to $600 a year dressing a child. The number only gets bigger when kids hit those fashion-conscience teen years and no longer allow Mom and Dad to attire them in OshKosh pants and sweaters with a big bunny on the front. The USDA lists ages 12 to 14 as peak years for clothing expenditure, but don’t forget what parents spend on events such as parties and proms in the high school years that follow.

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Fashion-conscious teen years. The years when it is more important to dress up like the social hit of the year rather than get straight A’s. Wow. Their priorities may be messed up, but the consolation here is that for those parents whose kids attend private or parochial school, those uniforms are much, much cheaper than the miniature Bijan suits the othes have to buy for their kids.

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College
Total cost over four years
Public College: $51,184
Private College: $121,468

Tuition and fees constitute about two-thirds of a student’s total budget at a private institution, according to a release on Trends in College Pricing in 2007 by Web site CollegeBoard. While the average private college charges $32,307 for tuition, room, and board (5.9% higher than just a year earlier), total anticipated fees at the most sought-after ivy leagues are known to be well above $45,000. In-state public fees are also grew by 5.9% with an average of $13,589 for tuition, room, and board, while out-of-state total charges are $24,044. Applying for financial aid is highly encouraged, especially given the cost of laptops, iPods, and other gadgets that seem to go hand-in-hand with college (see Technology).
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Here we have another option: parents can offer to help pay a percentage of college tuition for their kids, even if it is only 1/100 the cost, but it is better ethics to teach the child to earn their way through college. Good grades are not Christmas presents that one finds under the student link to the website of the college the person is attending. Myself, I had the privilege to attend both a private college (a women’s college in New England) as well as a state university (UA) so I have experience in this area. I can suggest that if the parent’s child did very well in high school grade-wise and gets accepted to the college of his or her choice, to apply for grants and scholarships first, then resort to federal loans. Grants and scholarships do not need to be paid back. Loans need to be paid back, with interest.

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Education*
Total cost: $44,465

One in ten children now attends private school, and tuition and fees are not so far behind higher education. A modest tuition at a parochial school is about $6,000 annually. However many of the top private schools can cost as much as $10,000 — to more than $40,000 a year for boarding school. Even public school fees are relatively high at an average of $1,330 per year for extra-curricular activities, teacher gifts, field trips, and lost textbooks.

*Through high school. Does not include costs for private schooling, which could cost more than $300,000 depending on the schools.
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A private education from grammar school through high school can indeed be costly. I attended a parochial high school as well, where the yearly tuition was $3000. Keeping the above costs in mind, it’s easy to see why many parents opt for homeschooling, which not only does provide better education but is much cheaper (average cost per year to homeschool one child: $300. to $500.)

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Fertility
Total cost: $17,500

Most insurance companies do not cover the process of in vitro fertilization, even though the national average cost is said to be $15,000. Many couples spend up to $20,000 on the process, drugs, and genetic testing. Couples should look for insurance plans that cover infertility or at least some of the charges associated with IVF.

*Average cost of in vitro fertilization, drugs and genetic testing.
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A waste of money, maybe the couple should save that money for adoption instead.

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Food
Total cost: $48,342

Feeding your child will cost you at least $1,900 annually, according to a report by the U.S. Agriculture Dept. For the average family of four, double it. Food also becomes more expensive as children get older, and their love of chicken nuggets and mac-and-cheese is replaced with a taste for chicken Parmesan and fettuccine Alfredo. The report shows that parents spend about $1,000 extra on food by the time their children are 15 to 17 years old as opposed to when they were zero to five.
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This depends a lot on what the family diet consists of. Eliminate the $3.99 package of cookies, $3.99 bag of Lay’s potato chips, $2.99 soda with various other junk foods, the food bill could be cut down a lot. Opt out of the cheese-and-pasta routine for the kids, replace them with fresh veggies and a small cutlet, which is healthier and actually cheaper, believe it or not.

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Health Care
Total cost: $20,353

The younger years are full of health-care expenditures, everything from check-ups to vaccinations, from fillings to braces. Despite the existence of both medical and dental insurance, parents still seem to shell out at least $800 a year on expenses for which their kids are not covered. These often include brand-name prescription drugs, some medical supplies, and any health insurance premiums that are not paid by an employer or other organization.
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I’m trying to figure out why this entry has a photo of a young lady with braces smiling. Braces are optional and don’t really fall under health care, but whatever. As for the young kids getting sick, that’s inevitable, since they are around other kids who are grimy, germy, and carrying any number of diseases from the common cold to dengue. Real health care for kids is indeed expensive, and even more expensive for parents who tote the runny-nosed kid to the emergency room.

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Travel
Total cost: $45,440

When taking your kids on that all-important trip to Disney World, there are a number of cost variables to take into account: the number of people in your group, whether you stay in a resort or a hotel, where you eat, and the time of year you visit. Any way you go about it, Mickey Mouse will cost you at least a hefty $500 a day for a family of four. This includes accommodation, food, and tickets, but does not factor-in visits to neighboring attractions such as Universal Studios or Sea World.
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Travel, of course, does not have to extravagant every year and even a trip to Disney World does not have to cost an arm and a leg. There are economical packages when it comes to hotels, and kids can have as much fun without having to buy everything they see at the park.

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Technology
Total cost: $16,855*

Apple shareholders may be thrilled with the stock’s performance, but parents could resent the Cupertino (Calif.) company for vacuuming up so much of their money. The average teen demands an iPod for his birthday and requests a MacBook when going off to college. And when you consider kids as young as 10 are asking for a cell phone, you have enough reason to hate living in the new millennium. Laptops average $800 to $2,600 (with those popular MacBooks averaging $1,200), while $199 is the median iPod charge. Cell phones represent an ongoing $66 per month, but for the younger lot, family-share plans of $100 per month for the whole household are recommended. Desktops are also more reasonable for home use, ranging from $500 to $900.

*Assumes purchase of one family desktop computer, one laptop when child hits college age, one iPod and cell phone service from age 12 - 21
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Here is another option. While computers are necessary for school assignments, the cost of the laptop in a Mac or PC can be affordable (a Dell Inspiron is about $700.) and comes with the software already installed, whether it is Microsoft Office or the ever-popular OpenOffice, which is totally free of any cost (Yeay for Sun Microsystems!) As with the college tuition, parents can offer to pay a percentage of the computer. When it comes to that cell phone, however, the child will have to foot the bill, and here, limits would have to be placed: no phone in school, only for use if the kid is at an after school activity. Same thing with the iPod - the kid will have to pay for it if he or she wants one.

Continue:

Toys
Total cost: $39,182

Children need their toys—at all ages. Beginning with the stuffed animals and Fisher Price play sets and later advancing to video games and sports equipment, the USDA estimates about $1,265 a year is spent on entertainment. Perhaps the USDA should attend a modern-day birthday party — nowadays the average video game costs at least $39.99, while the video game console itself is worth well over $400.
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Let’s set aside the topic of unproductive video games for a moment and take a look at educational toys for young kids. These, along with traditional toys such as Legos (a toy no child should ever be without) or Lincoln Logs, are much better for children as they do stimulate creative and academic growth which is vital to the early development of a child. The cheapest educational toy: a big box of crayons and a huge stack of drawing paper. My favorite site: http://www.educationaltoysplanet.com/. Video games as sold nowadays are unproductive for kids as well as expensive, not to mention violent. Options: Tetris, electronic checkers, chess, and backgammon. Board games are great, too and timeless.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081108/ap_on_re_us/child_charged

Ariz. boy, 8, accused of killing 2, including dad

By FELICIA FONSECA,

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. – An 8-year-old boy is charged with murder in the shooting of his father and another man in a rural community in eastern Arizona, authorities said Friday.

The boy was charged with two counts of premeditated murder in the death of his father, 29-year-old Vincent Romero, and 39-year-old Timothy Romans, St. Johns Police Chief Roy Melnick said.

Police arrived at the home within minutes of the shooting Wednesday, Melnick said. They found one victim just outside the front door and the other dead in an upstairs room.

The boy, who prosecutors say had never been in trouble before, initially denied involvement in the shooting but later confessed, Melnick said.

Police have not said what they think the boy’s motive was.

Defense attorney Benjamin Brewer argued Friday that police overreached in questioning the boy without representation from a parent or attorney and did not advise him of his rights.

“They became very accusing early on in the interview,” Brewer said. “Two officers with guns at their side, it’s very scary for anybody, for sure an 8-year-old kid.”

A judge determined at a hearing Friday that there was probable cause to believe the boy committed the killings. He is being held at the Apache County juvenile detention center.

St. Johns is a community of about 4,000 people about 170 miles northeast of Phoenix.
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While very little in the media shocks me anymore, this double-murder supposedly by an eight year old boy is indeed horrific. Just how did this child get hold of a gun that was obviously loaded? Where was the mother at the time of the shootings? There is definitely more to this story than meets the eye and it most likely boils down to our desensitized society to violence in the media.