What Do Parents Wish For?

That is to say are they looking forward to the future or gazing fondly at the past?

8. Parents are more likely to long for an earlier time in their lives: Fact

One of the poll question that asks people whether if they could, would they rather go back in time or forward into the future. Parents are 12.5% more likely to choose going back in time. Non-parents are 30% more likely to say they’d rather go into the future. This could be interpreted a couple ways: Perhaps parents wish they could go back to their early 20s or high school. Or maybe they wish they could go back to an earlier era altogether, when family life seemed more idyllic.

My mother, God rest her soul, led a, to say the least, challenging life from her youngest days on. But late in life she confided to me that what she longed for the most was those days when her house was full of her children.



I was amazed since I remember those days as being stressed for her–to the point that I wondered how she kept her sanity. Fast forward to the present: what is my fondest memory? My little girls excitedly rushing to open the front door to greet me coming home from work: "Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!" You can't buy that with any amount of money.



So for my money, that is what parents are thinking about: the days when their children were driving them crazy while at the same time making precious memories:

Non-parents have “better” lives according to worldly measures:

…except for one thing: they aren’t as happy as people with kids.  File under “the last shall be first” and other gospel paradoxes.

Read the whole thing.

(Via Catholic and Enjoying It!.)

Gay Parents Are Just Like Other Parents?

Is there some room to express doubt about that?

Life on GLAAD’s Blacklist | LifeSiteNews.com:

America doesn't know that this is part of same-sex parenting, because Americans have been blocked from hearing from me, Dawn Stefanowicz, Jean-Dominique Bunel, "Janna," Manuel Half, Rivka Edelman, and the blogger known as "the Bigot" -- just some of the many people I've come to know over the last year and a half, who have the human stories to dispel the myth that all is well with "gay families." This scares the crap out of people at GLAAD. It scares the crap out of them that I'm a professor and fluent enough in the way research works to know that the "consensus" on same-sex parenting is a fraud. It scares the crap out of them that I have a scholarly record in African-American Studies and queer readings of Thoreau and Whitman, so they can't write me off as a wacko, unwashed homophobe.

Read the whole thing.

(Via LifeSiteNews.)

The Two Iron Laws of HIstory

according to Mark Shea are:

1. What could it hurt?

followed by,

2. How were we supposed to know?

And so I give you the contemporary mantra: "Gays are people just like us and should have the right to marry and raise children just like us."

But Nature is only mocked at someone's expense. So we're entering phase two of the Gay Marriage debate already. And the children are the ones to suffer.

I Don't Believe in Santa Claus

It's hard to say when it began. Perhaps my nanny taking me (three years old or so) to a store with a large bearded man in a garish red suit. I cried and cried and would not sit on his lap. Perhaps it was later when I had reached the age of maturity (twelve or thirteen) and announced to my sister (six or so) that Santa Claus was a lie. Dad was not happy

As a moralistic parent (thirty plus) I determined never to tell my children lies. So while I never said "There is no Santa Claus", I refused to promote his cult.

Saint Nicholas, on the other hand, we enthusiastically promoted. We hung stockings on the Fireplace mantle on the eve of his feast (Dec. 6). And the first year, just to make the point, Daddy (me) received sticks in his stocking for being a bad boy. You should have seen how big their eyes were.

On Nicholmas morning their presents from the sainted bishop would be found. The gift giving at Christmas was by way of exchange only. They had the advantage on their schoolmates of getting presents early, but otherwise felt left out of the Santa Claus festivities. As young adults they're still not entirely reconciled to Dad's philosophy of Christmas and child-rearing. Oh well.

Santa’s Dead:

Perhaps it was my innocent sheltered and naive nature, but I found the Santa myth quite appealing as a youngster. So appealing, in fact, that I clung it to it long after others my age had discovered that it was no coincidence that Santa Claus and Dad had the same favorite cookies, or that Santa’s handwriting bore a striking resemblance to Mom’s.

Read the whole thing.

(Via In the Agora.)