Archives for March 2010

When women gather in New York to talk about women. Reminds me to mention a tremendous film I recently saw–U.N. Me. 

That’s all I’ll say about that for now.

I used to take large rocks out to our backyard and pound them with a hammer to see what was inside. When my parents found out they made me put on safety goggles but the exploration continued. Good times.

This article talks about letting your kids live a little:

The book’s title is “deliberately provocative,” Tulley says, and it’s meant as both a guidebook for fretful parents who want to loosen up and a “call to action for over-protected children,” with instructions on safe ways to experiment with dangerous things. “We create a false impression in our minds that children are in peril all the time and everywhere, when in fact, according to the most recent studies, this is the safest time in history for children,” he says. “There couldn’t be a better time to be running around outside playing.”

I agree, however, I have to ask–with two parents working, who takes care of the kid when the garden gate gets slammed in your eye? (This because you are chasing someone in tag, who rightly thinks, aha, I’ll slow her down by slamming the gate behind me…Yes, this also happened to me. Hello major black eye.)

So I agree and disagree–it is a safe age, and our kids could run around outside but empty neighbourhoods with no one home aren’t super conducive to that. Kids may well be coddled these days but they also don’t raise themselves and many neighbourhoods are empty after school. That doesn’t feel safe to me.

________________________

Brigitte adds: I was chatting with someone last night who was saying how difficult it was for kids to find friends to play with outside, since everyone was at some kind of supervised and organized activity, not just outside like we used to be way back in the dark ages (aka the pre-1995 era). I refrained from asking him what connection, if any, he saw between that phenomenon and the fact that most adults, including him and his wife, work outside the home so much.

A poignant piece about the risks of having children in Uganda by the founder of Save the Mothers, one Jean Chamberlain. Then there’s this in the Hill Times (subscriber access only) suggesting the Liberals will push Harper to include abortion in his maternal health mandate for the G8.

At bottom, I think Canadians know that maternal health involves what Chamberlain describes and that including abortion is deeply political and actually irrelevant when women are bleeding to death after delivery.

More soon, by the way, on my discussions with World Vision vis-a-vis maternal health and abortion… Stay tuned.