I joined the Planned Parenthood club that met a few times a week after school in Junior High. It was amazingly informative and fun. We had a few teenage moms come talk to us with their kids and the experience and knowledge they passed to us is, IMHO, way more valuable then pretending to feed a plastic baby. I wonder if those programs still exist or if they were a sad casualty of funding cuts.
@Eleanor Ramilly: I wonder if those programs still exist or if they were a sad casualty of funding cuts.
That club sounds so much more effective than having a baby computer game for a week, but I would be shocked if fundies hadn't long since protested the existence of a club that admits teenagers actually have sex.
@QuicheLorraine: It was wonderful to have an open, safe place to talk about sex and have important questions answered. We went on field trips to different talks, too. Once there was a meeting of all the clubs at a dinner hall and we all made construction paper diagrams of the female reproductive system with our moms/guardians.
I think I wore out my maternal instincts by playing with dolls too much as a kid. When I outgrew the dolls, I also outgrew my desire to ever change another diaper.
only problem, how many of the girls will get attached to the baby and want a real one? then again, if they know the responsibility involved and still want a real one, what's the problem... i suppose. i'm not a breeder personally, but i didn't want a dog until i had to take care of one and now i'm a dog nut!
Anybody think these things work? I don't. The only way to be involved in this fake baby thing at my high school was to take a "home making" class. Which means boys are pretty much exempt. Funny how that works.
We got a raw egg that we had to carry around for a week. If it cracked, you failed. You had to check it in with the health teacher every morning and had to carry it all day. If the teacher saw you in the hallway and you couldn't show her your egg, your grade went down ten points. Thing was a pain in the ass!
@Jello Mix: My high school had a class where you cared for afake baby as an elective. I was thrilled that it was not required for all because even at the age of 15 I knew that I was not the maternal type. Kudos to all Jezemoms, but having a child is just not for me. I would have been livid for being assigned a fake baby. And I probably would have left it in my locker for the week.
@sympathyforthedevil: You couldn't; the teacher cracked all the eggs at the end of the project. If yours was boiled, you failed. Each egg also had a sticker on it that could not be removed, so you couldn't swap your broken egg for a fresh one. They had thought that stuff out!
@Jello Mix: Not only did we have the marked egg, but they taped the stinking thing to a bag of flour. So it wasn't just an egg, it was an egg plus a pound. Not a huge amount of weight, but enough to be irritating.
I was glad I'd already dealt with it when I moved, and I saw the kids that had the robo-babies. They cry at random times, including wee hours of night, and you had a key you had to put into the back, turn, and hold til the crying stopped. There was a recorder inside that would show when crying occurred, for how long, and how long it took from the start of crying to when the key was put in and turned. It also tattled on dropped babies, temperature, improper carrying, all sorts of fun-ness.
@SqueakyGasket: We had flour sack babies too! It was serious business...in addition to the egg they had weights inside so they weighed anywhere from 5-11 lbs and we carried them for a MONTH.
It was a long-standing program and the whole town was in on it. If you weren't carrying your flour sack baby properly in the store all the moms would look at you scoldingly and somehow it would get back through the coffe-klatsch circuit to one of your teachers. If you left the baby with a "sitter" you had to pay them and get a note, upperclassmen were eager to tattle if they saw a baby unattended and the hospital next door to our school had set protocols for dealing with flour sack baby emergencies (yes, under certain circumstances you had to go to the ER and sit there for hours to get a doctor's note that your baby was ok).
Those flour sack babies got better care from their communities than most real babies in minority communities...but don't even get me started on that...bottom line, it's a great program.
ALL mums get pissed off and here are a few reasons:
1. A lot of dads are great at Public Parenting. So whenever you have guests, they're the first to say "Let me clear the table darling" and "No - I'll put the baby to bed" and your guests are practically orgasming at how fantastic your husband is. What they don't know is when it's just you, him and babies, husband is watching telly, picking his nose and ignoring the fact the kids are starving and smell like a pigsty.
2. The stuff that mums do isn't (again) Public Stuff. A guy will say "Look - I put that shelf up" or "I cooked dinner" (never mind that the kitchen looked like the Seige of Stalingrad afterwards - that's just him being 'creative') But you remembering the Kids PE kit or their dental appointments - well you don't get kudos for that because it's not tangible - it's just this never ending series of thankless tasks. And never mind kudos, half the time you don't even get a thankyou.
3. You've done a full days work, remembered the dry cleaning, cleaned up the kitchen from breakfast and bathed the kids. He cooks dinner and leaves a right mess. You say, "I'll put the kids to bed. Will you clean up?" "But I cooked" he whines.
I guess I'm pretty different from everyone on here talking about parenting...I always wanted kids until my mom got pregnant at 50. I'm 18 and the little one is 7 mos., so I have a HUGE share in helping to raise her.
I nanny all day. I was there during 3 AM feedings. I love to play and cuddle and kiss her chubby cheeks. I even think changing diapers is kind of fun. She is the joy of my life, I couldn't imagine what life would be like without her...but now I don't want kids of my own.
I know the responsibility and the selflessness having kids takes, and I'm not sure I'll have that. For now, I'm content with the tiny dancer, and since I KNOW what it would be like to have a child, I don't have to wonder "What if..." or think that I want kids just because my clock is ticking too loud for me to hear anything else.
And people wonder why the woman files for divorce 70% of the time.
Seriously.
I've never wanted children and this is simply one of the fifty eleven reasons why. I don't want life to be a constant struggle of negotiations at home. Negotiating with the little munchkin to get him/her to do what I say, negotiating with the hubby and constantly "nagging" (that's how most men see this type of communication) him to take on more parental responsibility...sorry I don't want a home life that resembles any of that.
I suggest putting every task that has to be done into iCal or Outlook and asking the spouse if they have any preference over which *half* they will do.
This task would take about the same amount of time that one would spend ranting over the phone to an outside party.
Why use the old model of slow burn and sulk, with all of its dire and real health risks, when logic and technology (things men love) are waiting to bail you out.
05/26/09
05/26/09
That club sounds so much more effective than having a baby computer game for a week, but I would be shocked if fundies hadn't long since protested the existence of a club that admits teenagers actually have sex.
05/26/09
05/26/09
05/26/09
05/26/09
05/26/09
05/26/09
05/26/09
05/26/09
05/26/09
05/26/09
05/26/09
05/26/09
05/26/09
05/26/09
05/26/09
05/26/09
I was glad I'd already dealt with it when I moved, and I saw the kids that had the robo-babies. They cry at random times, including wee hours of night, and you had a key you had to put into the back, turn, and hold til the crying stopped. There was a recorder inside that would show when crying occurred, for how long, and how long it took from the start of crying to when the key was put in and turned. It also tattled on dropped babies, temperature, improper carrying, all sorts of fun-ness.
05/26/09
It was a long-standing program and the whole town was in on it. If you weren't carrying your flour sack baby properly in the store all the moms would look at you scoldingly and somehow it would get back through the coffe-klatsch circuit to one of your teachers. If you left the baby with a "sitter" you had to pay them and get a note, upperclassmen were eager to tattle if they saw a baby unattended and the hospital next door to our school had set protocols for dealing with flour sack baby emergencies (yes, under certain circumstances you had to go to the ER and sit there for hours to get a doctor's note that your baby was ok).
Those flour sack babies got better care from their communities than most real babies in minority communities...but don't even get me started on that...bottom line, it's a great program.
05/26/09
05/26/09
05/26/09
05/26/09
05/26/09
05/26/09
05/26/09
05/26/09
02/03/09
1. A lot of dads are great at Public Parenting. So whenever you have guests, they're the first to say "Let me clear the table darling" and "No - I'll put the baby to bed" and your guests are practically orgasming at how fantastic your husband is. What they don't know is when it's just you, him and babies, husband is watching telly, picking his nose and ignoring the fact the kids are starving and smell like a pigsty.
2. The stuff that mums do isn't (again) Public Stuff. A guy will say "Look - I put that shelf up" or "I cooked dinner" (never mind that the kitchen looked like the Seige of Stalingrad afterwards - that's just him being 'creative') But you remembering the Kids PE kit or their dental appointments - well you don't get kudos for that because it's not tangible - it's just this never ending series of thankless tasks. And never mind kudos, half the time you don't even get a thankyou.
3. You've done a full days work, remembered the dry cleaning, cleaned up the kitchen from breakfast and bathed the kids. He cooks dinner and leaves a right mess. You say, "I'll put the kids to bed. Will you clean up?" "But I cooked" he whines.
And you wonder why we're so angry??????
02/02/09
I nanny all day. I was there during 3 AM feedings. I love to play and cuddle and kiss her chubby cheeks. I even think changing diapers is kind of fun. She is the joy of my life, I couldn't imagine what life would be like without her...but now I don't want kids of my own.
I know the responsibility and the selflessness having kids takes, and I'm not sure I'll have that. For now, I'm content with the tiny dancer, and since I KNOW what it would be like to have a child, I don't have to wonder "What if..." or think that I want kids just because my clock is ticking too loud for me to hear anything else.
02/02/09
02/01/09
Seriously.
I've never wanted children and this is simply one of the fifty eleven reasons why. I don't want life to be a constant struggle of negotiations at home. Negotiating with the little munchkin to get him/her to do what I say, negotiating with the hubby and constantly "nagging" (that's how most men see this type of communication) him to take on more parental responsibility...sorry I don't want a home life that resembles any of that.
Constant struggles, no thank you.
01/31/09
I suggest putting every task that has to be done into iCal or Outlook and asking the spouse if they have any preference over which *half* they will do.
This task would take about the same amount of time that one would spend ranting over the phone to an outside party.
Why use the old model of slow burn and sulk, with all of its dire and real health risks, when logic and technology (things men love) are waiting to bail you out.
02/01/09