Broken

[mamagotcha]

In the "duh" department: Cesareans can harm lung growth

But this won't affect THAT many moms... only 30.1% of US women will have c-sections.

And obviously the "Just Say No" abstinence campaign of the current administration is working beautifully. Right up there with those Purity Pledges (88% of the Pledged Pure had sex before marriage; increased oral/anal activity; pledges waited an average of 18 months more than unpledged kids to engage in sexual behavior).

And when Mom has to go back to work, at least she can use artifical hands to cuddle her baby. This product makes me sick to my stomach!

On the home front, the same right-wing Xian fanatics that launched a grand jury attack on magazines and dildos have started the same process to harass Planned Parenthood.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, between the 1950s and the mid-1990s, the overall death rate for children in the US declined... yet during that same period, the violent death rates more than tripled: "...the United States has the highest rates of childhood homicide, suicide, and firearm-related death among industrialized countries."

Parents represent the greatest risk of violent death to US children: "Among children under age 5 years in the United States who were murdered in the last quarter of the 20th century, 61% were killed by their own parents: 30% were killed by their mothers, and 31% by their fathers."

Missouri and Kansas rate fifth and sixth worst among the 50 states regarding child well-being. More children are abused, beaten, starved, raped and murdered here than in most other states (only Connecticut, Arizona, Nebraska and DC did worse).

That's why I wanted to work on that parenting magazine. I wanted to support families who choose to conscientiously birth and raise their children in a way that gives them a secure and safe start to their lives. I think that we're too scared of treading on tender sensibilities and hurting peoples' feelings when, instead of being all PC, we should be outraged that it's OK in our national culture to do so much damage to our kids. Worse than OK... it's encouraged, and if you go against the prevailing attitude, you're considered an oddity.

There is something badly broken here in America. Living in the Midwest has only brought it into sharper focus for me. I only hope that I can contribute to the healing, or at the very least, slowing down the rate of injury.

I think this is one of the biggest reasons I cannot tolerate living here much longer.

Comments

[cheshire23.livejournal.com]

I doubt that anyone who could be reading this would be among the disadvantaged families I'm wondering about.

Perhaps not, but they might be the children of such families. They might have, at one point, been lumped in the same bucket with the "disadvantaged families" because they received Medicaid and because one of the couple was diagnosed with a mental illness. They might have a baby with "failure to thrive" (and all that implies) written in the medical records, and gone through the continual anxiety of being guilty until proven innocent by virtue of the baby actually having a physical medical condition after all. (They might wonder, deep down, if the only reason they weren't seen with even more suspicion was that they were Caucasian and married to each other,or on the other hand seen with more suspicion because they voluntarily lived in a "black" neighborhood.) They might have a family member who died young that they suspect but cannot prove WAS a shaken baby (due to the combined symptoms of blindness, severe mental retardation, and inability to walk - this was my husband's twin sister).

If you make it about "those disadvantaged families", I venture to say that you might want to consider your stereotyping and the potential of class (or even racial and religious) bias. I'm reminded of a particularly nasty social worker I went to see when I had just finished graduate school with honors, had a job offer in hand, and couldn't afford security and first month's rent on an apartment. She informed me that I shouldn't search the Internet for apartments because "the Internet is for intelligent people!" (In other words, intelligent = rich, or at least not in financial crisis.) She also wanted to know what physical disability prevented my husband from working to earn the money for the move, when he had just gotten out of the psych ER for the second time that year due to suicidal ideation. Apparently psychiatric disabilities aren't valid in her world.

I do think that there is too much fear surrounding childbirth, but I also think, at a societal level, that there is too much fear surrounding parenting at all, and that is affecting people's birth choices. I think that most people see two options - have an unintended or semi-intended baby before you turn 20, or wait until you are at least 25 (probably 30-33), "established", married, "successful" dual-career or one person making LOTS of money so the other can stay home, in a house, no other debt, blahblahblah...and if you can't do that you can't parent successfully. I think it is a matter of the consumer culture playing havoc with reasonable expectations.

[genderfur.livejournal.com]

I see some of your points, but in this comment you move from discussing children of disadvantaged families to discussing the families themselves without making the distinction clear. It muddies your argument, which is a good one.

(This is what I mean: "They" start out being "children of such families" and seamlessly transition to being the parents of those families:
Perhaps not, but they might be the children of such families. They might have, at one point, been lumped in the same bucket with the "disadvantaged families" because they received Medicaid and because one of the couple was diagnosed with a mental illness. )

[cheshire23.livejournal.com]

Isn't being "among" the families being "among" them, regardless of one's position in them, though? *shrug* That's the problem I had with the statement to begin with.

[genderfur.livejournal.com]

Your facts are true enough, but the writing is not clear, and that gets in the way. This isn't taking any issue with what you say, just giving you some writing-advice to help with clarity. I do this for a living you see (write stuff, and edit other peoples' stuff), and I find that clear writing helps lead to clear thinking.

One change would make a large difference. In your post, you say "They might have" and the last actual noun used was the babies in question. Pronouns always refer back to the last noun used, you see. But if you change "They" to "Those families", all become very clear.

Here, this is what I mean:
Perhaps not, but they might be the children of such families. Those families might have, at one point, been lumped in ...

Do you see what I mean? It makes it clearer who's under discussion - which is really the parents of the children, for the rest of your comment.