There’s nothing more ugly than the culture of having children for the sake of having them. Too many people ask “do you want kids?” but not enough ask “are you ready for the emotional, physical, and financial sacrifices you will have to make to raise children?” It’s so ugly to me that people treat kids like a commodity, like a dress or a pair of earrings they just throw on. How dare you? That’s not a new car you can get bored of or discard in a few years, that is a person, and particularly a person who will absolutely be dependent on you for emotional support, financial support, discipline, and leadership; someone who you will have power of virtually every portion of their lives until they’re ready to be adults, who you will impact in irreversible ways, who will look to you for the rest of YOUR life and theirs for explanations about life and how they turned out to be who they are, for better or for worse. If you say you “want kids” but you’re “not sure if you could handle” them needing time and attention, costing you money, or you’re “not sure you can handle” if they turn out gay, or disabled, or transgender, or any other myriad of things that don’t really make your child any less of a person but which an ugly society can have ugly views on, etc. then you don’t deserve to have children. If you “want children” but haven’t thought about literally having to be there for them for virtually everything they will go through and ask of you, you’re not adult enough to have them.
And what’s so insidious about many of these same people is that they are the ones making their children feel guilty that they fed them, housed them, and basically didn’t let them die, as if this is some meritorious act, as if parents aren’t supposed to raise their children and not kill and starve them, as if they are some type of martyr that deserves praise for doing the bare minimum.
Here’s a thought, maybe people’s growing irreverence for 9/11 is because it was a long time ago and younger generations weren’t as affected by it, or maybe they are so sick of the way it has been basically commercialised by politicians and used as a device to justify incalculable pain and they are tired of it being cynically trotted out every year and told to never forget while every year they are also told to all but ignore mass shootings and US humanitarian crimes.
And like, I dunno, maybe it isn’t about disrespecting those who died but refusing, for any number of reasons, to be a part of the governmental hallmark industry that has built up around it.
I take students to see the 9/11 memorial all the time. More and more of the students I get were either so young or not even born yet.
And every time, I ask them, what do you think? What are you feeling? And many of them are hesitant to respond so I’ll prompt, “Was it sad? Was it boring?” And as soon as they know I’m not gonna judge them for it, 100% of the time, they respond, “I feel bad that I don’t feel as moved by it as you. You cried when you told us about it and I get that it was such a horrible day and so many people died, but I can’t really think of what life was like before or just after that time.”
That really struck me the first time I heard it because these kids really don’t remember a time when things were so carefree and relatively quiet. Little to no security screenings. Almost zero school shootings. Kids stayed outside by themselves until the street lamps came on.
Because they grew up in a post-9/11 society, all they’ve ever known is mass violence and distrust of everything. Kids expect a plane to crash into a building, a truck bomb to go off at a big event, a student shooting up a school. And they’ve just got to deal with it and keep moving on or they won’t survive.
The
Trump administration is unable to account for the whereabouts of nearly
1,500 migrant children who illegally entered the United States alone
this year and were placed with sponsors after leaving federal shelters,
according to congressional findings released on Tuesday.
The
inability to track the whereabouts of migrant children after they have
been released to sponsors has raised concerns that they could end up
with human traffickers or be used as laborers by people posing as
relatives.
Currently, the
Department of Health and Human Services calls sponsors to check on the
children 30 days after they are placed. It also says that it is not
legally responsible for the children after they’re placed.
The
findings were accompanied by legislation introduced on Tuesday by
Republican and Democrat senators to clarify the department’s
responsibility for ensuring the safety of migrant children.
The
legislation would require HHS to run background checks on sponsors and
notify state governments before placing a child with a sponsor. HHS
would also have to make sure that sponsors care for the children
properly and appear at their immigration hearings. Interestingly, it
would also increase the number of immigration judges.
Edit: The article mentions there are records of migrant children being forced to work on an egg farm in Marion, Ohio. In June 2016, Aroldo Castillo-Serrano was sentenced to 15 years in prison for trafficking children to work on his farm.
He falsely promised them good jobs and a chance to go to school, then
had them work 12 hours a day, 6-7 days a week on his farm for as little as $20 per week. They had to live in dilapidated trailers on the farm, sometimes with no heat or running water.
This is human trafficking by a government. This is human rights violation.
Figured that out when the videos came out of little girls being smuggled, hooded, into private cars at 1am.
We are going to have a geberation.of children who are going to come back and bite you in the ass an as adults will not let any history book any conservative need channel or any narrowminded person forget what America has done. Don’t fucking forget it .
when i was 12 i babysat this girl for a few years and she would come to me and show me her art, drag me by my wrists and point at the pieces she’d made during the week. and she’d be like “do the voice” and i’d put on a sports-announcer olympics-style voice and be like “such form! this level of coloring! why i haven’t seen such perfection in crayola in a long time. and what is this? why jeff, now this is a true risk… it seems she’s made … a monochrome pink canvas…. i haven’t seen this attempted since winter 1932… and i gotta say, jeff, it’s absolutely splendid” and she’d fall back giggling. at the end of every night she’d check with me: “did you really like it?” and i’d say yes and talk about something i noticed and tucked her in.
she was just accepted into 3 major art schools. she wrote me a letter. inside was a picture from when she was younger. monochrome pink.
“thank you,” it said, “to somebody who saw the best in me.”
Eating dinner with a friend and her very sleepy two year old, I give the kid her plate of veggies and say ‘okay it’s hot so we’ll have to blow it,’ kid blows on her dinner then absently says ‘happy birthday’ to her broccoli
This is the cutest little kid content and I’m here for it
my sister-in-law, who has no kids and does not spend time around children ever, decided she wanted to take my kids on an “outing” yesterday. (she sees them like 4 times a year usually). she took them to some weird historical u.s. military fort museum thing, it’s like a big compound with like 15 buildings enclosed by a fence. anyway my 5-yr-old saw one of those red metal fire alarm boxes on the wall and asked his aunt “what does that say?”
now the correct answer to this question, in my opinion, would be “that is a fire alarm. we only touch fire alarms if there is a fire. if there is a fire, you would pull the handle and it would make a very loud noise so that other people know to get out of the building.”
according to several reliable sources, my sister-in-law’s answer to the question was, “it says ‘pull.’”
so anyway that’s how they managed to evacuate all 15 buildings at the museum and why this is probably their last “outing” for a while.
It’s an adorable story about a little “narwhal,” living with a narwhal family under the sea, but take a closer look.
Over the following pages, Kelp struggles to fit in. Kelp is different in so many ways; nothing ever feels fully right. Eventually, by pure chance, Kelp happens to get blown off by a stray ocean current and winds up on the ocean surface, where a remarkable discovery is made.
Um. Wow.
And despite their nervousness…
Hurray! And then the question:
I’m dead. This book killed me. So much perfectness was never to be survived. Kelp, I love you.
(And you, too.)
And yes, I realize that it could just be a lovely story about a narwhal, not a metaphor for anything bigger, but isn’t that the beauty of all the best sorts of books?
wupacing 