They say that having a baby will change your life forever, and after having four of them I have to agree. As a parent you find that you’re living a life you never imagined before it actually happens. Handling poop, for instance. That was something I didn’t expect, even though I was fairly certain that babies didn’t hold it in for 18 years. It had to go somewhere. I just didn’t realize how hands-on it was going to be.

Another change you can count on as a new parent is that within weeks after the new arrival, all of your old friends disintegrate and are reformed into a brand new circle of friends. Who all have kids. It’s the Unspoken Rule of Parenthood: breeders and non-breeders can’t be in the same room together without bloodshed and explosions. Like mixing ammonia and chlorine bleach.
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Once upon a time, in the world where men wore dark blue suits and white shirts with skinny ties and women wore housedresses and aprons and pillbox hats, it was easy. If you had a vagina and you didn’t marry while getting your liberal arts degree, you worked as a secretary or teacher or nurse until somebody did marry you, at which time you quit your job to spend your days vacuuming in heels, pearls and pedal pushers, telling the kids to go play in their rooms, and waiting for your blue-suited man to come home and ask what’s for dinner.

That was awesome.

(No wonder they all drank martinis.)

Now, things are so complicated. Sigh. Choices! We have choices! And besides vaginas, we have paychecks! Which are sometimes bigger than our husband’s! (our husband’s what, ba dum bum…)(that’s what he said)
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I was appalled to read the story of Zachary Christie, the Newark, Delaware first-grader who was suspended last week for bringing his Cub Scout spork-type utensil to school so he could use it to eat his lunch.

A six-year old Cub Scout, who frequently wears a shirt and tie to school because it’s a way to express his excitement about being there, is now suspended and sentenced to reform school for 45 days while his mom scrambles to provide a homeschooling alternative. All because he was excited over his new combination fork-knife-spoon and wanted to use it at school.

Zero-tolerance weapons policies have been established in schools all over the U.S., set in place to protect kids in large part as backlash from the Columbine and Virginia Tech shootings. Guns don’t belong in schools, and I think we can all agree on this.
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…and boy are my arms tired!

Oops, wrong punch line. Actually, I am wishing there was a punch line, or at least that I could punch somebody (not really, but sort of) because my kids didn’t watch President Obama’s speech yesterday. They attend public school in a blue-state county where five years ago I saw way more Kerry-Edwards signs than I saw Bush-Cheney signs, and where the vote last November was predominantly pro-Obama, so I assumed they watched. Nope, neither kid who speaks knew anything about it. Huh. A non-issue.

Frankly, it only became an issue for me because over the weekend I heard what an issue this speech was for many parents all over the country. I don’t think it was particularly appropriate that the President, any President, speak to my child at his school via a television screen, but hey, this sort of thing doesn’t happen every day. The message was innocuous: stay in school, study hard, life is kind of tough but you’ll be okay. What’s wrong with that?
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This may not come as a surprise, but apparently my kid’s dad is a Neanderthal. Ba dum bum. Questionable personal habits aside, I’m talking about parenting style. His approach to our kids closely resembles a good deal of what Psychology Today calls “Playful Parenting,” the style used by hunter-gatherer societies. He has few rules for them, doesn’t tell them it’s time to go to bed, lets them do pretty much whatever they want whenever they want.

This drove me crazy.

I had my own ideas of parenting that involved nurturing, nutrition, protection from unsuitable things, and constant attention. Helicopter parent? *Cough* That may have been me (I prefer to say “Attachment Parent,” but whatever). I spent 24 hours a day with them; he spent, well, less. Way less.

We fought about this constantly. He wasn’t doing enough. He was too lackadaisical, didn’t pay attention. The kids could get hurt.

He didn’t do things My Way. The Right Way.

Sound familiar?
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Ooh. Just reading that title, “What kind of mother could give up her kids?” has an emotional sting, doesn’t it? It gets you right here — in the heart, in the gut. After all, whyever are we mothers, anyway?

There’s a provocative article in this month’s Marie-Claire that’s been making the internet rounds this past week. Yesterday it made the New York Times. I’m fascinated by the gamut of response to these pieces, often thoughtful, but just as often the response of what clearly hit a nerve. Motherhood is being threatened.

[insert bias here: a year and a month ago I moved 3000 miles away from my children. They now live full-time with their father after two years of joint custody and ten years of stay-at-home motherhood. You can read more about my journey over at Literary Mama.]
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As a kid, I loved summer vacation. Who wouldn’t? No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks, don’t let the school doors hit you on the way out. Summer vacation was great.

Then I became a parent. Suddenly as a working parent I’m juggling summer day care, extra costs of all-day care versus after-school care, kids with nothing to do all day, me trying to come up with new! fun! activities! and I’m hating summer vacation. Hate. Hate. Hate. Even later as a stay-at-home mom I hated it. The days stretched on forever to a chorus of “What are we doing today, Mama?” as if someone had suddenly appointed me Entertainment Director and I’d be expected to wander the Lido Deck with my perky Julie McCoy clipboard and hat. No thanks. I’ll go back to hating summer vacation.

Let’s get rid of it.

Summer vacation is bad for kids anyway.
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Despite having spent 12 years of my life with an airline pilot and traveling all over the world, I can count the number of my first-class flights on just two fingers. One. Two. That’s right, as a member of the traveling class of airline employees and families of airline employees we had to show comportment and respect to the passengers paying full price (that’s you), which meant No Kids in First Class. And because I always had anywhere between one and three kids with me, I sat in back in steerage. With the kids. And with everyone else’s kids. Your kids, my kids, conspiring to drive other passengers crazy.

Just for fun, let’s talk a moment about Things Kids Do On Planes:
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Fast forward 10 years to the hypothetical future. New U.S. law proclaims a limit on childbearing: one baby per couple. So what’s your reaction?

• No biggie. I had my brood already. This doesn’t affect me.
• Fine. Those third-world people have too many babies as it is. Hold on. You mean ME?
• Where do they get off telling me what I can do with my body? If I want TEN kids that’s nobody’s business but mine and my uterus’s.
• Thank GOODNESS, and about time, too!

Umbra over at Grist started the gristmill of insightful commentary about the environmental wisdom of limiting procreation to one child per couple. There’s a lot to be said for the idea.
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When I was a kid everyone walked to school. Everyone. If we didn’t walk, we biked. Even in kindergarten. Of course, this was the time Way Back When Before Things Were Safe, when we rode seatbeltless piled into the backs of station wagons and we all owned cap guns and we always had scabbed knees from learning to roller skate and we walked alone to the candy store every week with our Saturday allowance in hand and as toddlers we sported coffee table cornered bruises on our foreheads.

So what happened?

I’d like to think we can pinpoint one event, one moment in our collective social history that forever transformed kids from the independent little beings they used to be
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