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Category Archives: Childhood

Welcome to Barack Obama Elementary, Comrades

 
DALE F. writes: 
The other day, a friend sent me a link to a piece by Will Hutton, a writer for the UK Guardian, contemplating mostly with satisfaction the civilizational accomplishments of his (and my) “baby boom” generation. 
This morning I saw this article:
The first school in the D.C. area named after the current president opens Monday [...]

Is TV all Bad for Kids?

 
ANNIE writes in response to the post The Cheapest Babysitter in Town:
Do you think that any TV at all is bad for a two-year-old? I am really wondering what your personal opinion is. I was in agony when my little boy started watching TV around the time he turned one! I wanted to fight my husband on [...]

The Cheapest Babysitter in Town

 
Children between the ages of 2 and 5 spend more than four hours a day watching TV and playing video games, according to a New York Times article on the latest surveys by Nielsen. This is the highest figure ever.
Electronic entertainment is the cheapest and easiest way to entertain young children. As neighborhod life declines, families grow smaller, and [...]

Disorder Claims the Nation’s Children

 
You’ve heard of ADD, ADHD, OCD and the like, and you’ve perhaps seen the children lined up at school infirmaries for their chemical supplements. Now, word is just in from The Onion of a new psycho-neurological condition afflicting the nation’s youth. This should have been discovered ages ago. Millions have gone untreated.

The Egalitarian Family and Spoiled Children

 
Paul Velde writes:
In your piece on men and housework, you remark apropos of another subject altogether, “The average woman wants control over her domestic realm and she doesn’t like the way men… manage the children.” Perhaps the operative word here is “average,” but nonetheless could you find time to expand on this point? In my [...]

Therapists Abandon Children’s Interests

 
The California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (CAMFT) devoted a special issue of its bimonthly journal The Therapist to same-sex marriage last spring. It included articles both for and against homosexual unions. After receiving a barrage of complaints from homosexual activists and their supporters, the organization, which represents 30,000 therapists, removed the opposing pieces last month. It then apologized to its members and, in [...]

Playing House

Children forge their dreams in play. All children, except those who have been deadened in some way, have powerful imaginations. What’s so interesting is that they often dream of things, such as war, mundane domestic tasks or rudimentary construction, that adults come to view with disdain or boredom.
Despite feminist orthodoxy, girls still continue to play [...]

A March Against Children

 
 
 
 
The demonstration by homosexual activists and their supporters this weekend in Washington was one more visible and angry protest against the interests and rights of children.
 
The protesters are seeking legalization of  same-sex marriage throughout America. They romanticize their cause. We are at war agaimst hatred of homosexuals, they claim. Widespread hatred of homosexuals does not exist in America. They are [...]

A Walk in a Patriarchal Neighborhood

It was a late summer afternoon and the shady front yards were in flower with hostas, ligularia and coneflowers. Red Impatiens and begonias bloomed in pots. The smell of cooking potatoes drifted from several houses and a mother in a dress was absorbed with sweeping the sidewalk in front of her door. 

There were children everywhere, as if this was a reservation for [...]

The Parental Serf

 
The feudal slave who produced grain for his lord, the Communist proletariat beholden to Uncle Joe, and the medieval peasant who paid cash for the forgiveness of sins were no less free than today’s parental serf.
The parental serf does not work for his family and his independence. He works for a higher master: his children’s educations. He starts paying college tuition when his children [...]

Excellence in Parenthood

 
Here is a partial list of the virtues children need to learn in order to flourish as adults. Once acquired, these virtues tend to last, or at least to make a lasting impression. But, they may take many years to acquire:

    Truthfulness

    Neatness

    Obedience
    Self-control
    Courtesy
    Respect for elders
    Loyalty
    Thrift 
    Modesty
    Trustworthiness
    Courage
    Friendliness
    A sense [...]

The Happiest Mothers

 
In the previous discussion about homeschooling, I mentioned that homeschooling mothers are the happiest mothers in America. Why might this be true? Parenthood is not just economics and emotions. It’s more than just providing a home and security. It’s about passing on what you love to others and thus ensuring its survival. The highest purpose of education, as Aristotle said, is [...]

Plutarch and the Manly Man

 
Plutarch, the Roman historian, was once the standard fare of any well-bred boy’s education. He was forced on boys for hundreds of years because he instilled important moral lessons in his biographies of figures such as Pompey, Alexander and Julius Caesar. But, it was more than that. Boys liked Plutarch. Here is history filled with conquest, intrigue [...]

Rename Father’s Day

 
How do you celebrate a national holiday for fathers with a guy who shows up a couple of times a week to play video games and sleep with your mother? He’s just a guy. Father’s Day isn’t for guys.
The whole weirdness of fathers is getting weirder. It’s like living in a town where half of the houses [...]

The Vital Child

Money is not the ultimate status symbol in our world. Energy is.
When someone asks what you do for a living, they are often wondering not how much money you make, but how dynamic you are.
Civilization in the advanced stages of nihilism exhibits this worship of energy. This is one of the profound insights of Father [...]