The Sometimes Reluctant Mother

So I have been really struggling with my new status of SAHM (stay at home mom). This is the end of B's second week back at work, and while it was much better than the misery of last week, I still did not take a lot of joy in the care of my charge. I have been feeling rather desperate to get back to work, that is, a job. Then last night I had a rather jarring conversation that made me realize what a privilege it is not to HAVE to work. A friend's situation (see previous post) basically made me realize how good I have it. Despite the fact that I don't rejoice at changing diapers and warming bottles and going for hours with no adult conversation (I am an extrovert), I have the privilege (?!?) of being able to take care of my own baby. I don't HAVE TO turn her over to someone else. This is probably not a newsflash to anyone else but me. It reminded me that there is NO feeling worse than feeling like you have no choices, and I have choices. I should be grateful for that.

Houston, We Have a Problem...

There is something seriously wrong when mothers are forced to leave their babies at daycare to go to work, and the job they will be doing requires less skill (and is way less important to the heath of our society) than taking care of a baby. Leaving your baby to do something productive I can understand- there are days it appeals to me- You are going to school to better yourself, you are a doctor or a teacher or a nurse and your job helps people and contributes good things to society, or maybe you are even a lowly government worker, but you believe that you make a difference in the functioning of society by trying to bring integrity and intelligence to government (that would be me)-- I can understand choosing to put your kid in daycare to work these jobs, especially if you need the money. But for a job like fry cook or dog walker, which have little societal value (This is my blog, so I get to have that opinion and publish it) I cannot understand WHY that is acceptable just so we can check off a box on a form that so-and-so has fulfilled their welfare-to-work requirement. And lets not get started discussing how it is actually costing the government MORE to pay the for the daycare AND the welfare benefits than it would cost to just pay the welfare benefits and let the woman take care of her own baby! Mr. Obama, can we fix this?

Why I like Barack:

These are some paragraphs from the “Faith” chapter of Obama's book, __The Audacity of Hope__. I think his argument it is the best answer to the question: "How can you be a Christian and a Moral Liberal at the same time?" This is a question I have never been able to explain to my own satisfaction despite my convictions that abortion must remain legal so that women are not forced to seek them in back alleys and that gay "marriage"/ civil unions are not an abomination before God; they are a way to extend health insurance benefits and next-of-kin privileges to important people in the lives of gay people. Anyway, this is the answer I wish I had given when having this discussion in the past.

"Surely, secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering the public square; Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr.-- indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history-- not only were motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue their causes. To say that men and women should not inject their ‘personal morality’ into public policy debates is a practical absurdity; our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

"What our deliberative, pluralistic democracy does demand is that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific values. It requires that their proposals must be subject to argument and amenable to reason. If I am opposed to abortion for religious reasons and seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or invoke God’s will and expect that argument to carry the day. If I want others to listen to me, then I must explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths including those of no faith at all.

"At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise. It insists on the impossible. If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live up to God’s edicts, regardless of the consequences. To base one’s life on such uncompromising commitments may be sublime; to base our policy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing. ...God does not reveal Himself or his angels to all of us in a single moment. [We do not all hear and see the same things, true as those things may be.] So the best we can do is to act in accordance with those things that are possible for all of us to know, understanding that a part of what we know to be true-- as individuals or as communities of faith-- will be true for us alone.

Visceral Reminders

Coffee flowers: I like espresso with steamed milk in the AM. Beniy draws a flower in it because I like it. It is a viseral reminder that he loves me.







Crying baby: My baby cries A LOT some days and it really grates on me. I find it hard to act loving to a screaming, squirming blob. It is a visceral reminder that I have no patience and an overblown sense of entitlement not to be screamed at, even by someone who has no other way to communicate.