Lift Up Your Hearts!

I've already written (here and here), about some of the dangers of epidural anesthesia during childbirth.  Today's reports bring still more bad news to those who see epidurals as an important part of the birthing process: an apparent link between fentanyl (a component of the anesthesia) and subsequent problems with breastfeeding.

Wild at Heart, by John Eldredge (Thomas Nelson, Nashville, Tennessee, 2001)
Captivating, by John and Stasi Eldredge (Thomas Nelson, Nashville, Tennessee, 2005)

When a good friend lent me Wild at Heart, it took a long time for me to steel myself to read it, for I expected it to make me angry. I've had more than my fill of books, especially from Christian authors, telling men to be authoritative and women to wear makeup and Saran Wrap.

After the first few pages, I was sure I was right, and I was going to hate the book. But I kept reading—something I'm not sure was true of many of those who wrote the negative reviews I read—and became convinced it's a worthwhile book. Oh, there's plenty I found exasperating, a lot I disagree with, and much that's expressed poorly, but Eldredge is asking important questions and has a few good answers. Although it deals with much more than just the church, the book is worth reading if only because it dares reveal church as a place where, all too often, the men are bored and the women are tired—and offers a remedy. Captivating attempts to do for women what Wild at Heart does for men. It is not as good, but still valuable.

(I wonder why it is almost all of my reviews these days seem to boil down to, "This book has some good things to say even though it requires a lot of work to get past the way in which they are presented.")

If you're expecting a summary of the books, you'll be disappointed. I dislike summarizing books, even if I have time. Not only am I no good at it, but I believe that if a book is worth reading, it can't be effectively distilled; you must read it for yourself to get the truth it has to offer. "What's the bottom line?" is an inappropriate question for a good book. Herewith, then, not a review—because the library is sending me dunning notices; I am engrossed in a serious battle with Windows and Palm for the soul of my computer; and choir practice starts in two hours—but several random quotations (italicized) and points of commentary. [Correction: choir practice started and ended; the night passed into day; and I'm still not done. Could it really have taken longer to write a more formal review than just these bits and pieces? Well, yes, it could and would have.]

 

• Corporate policies and procedures are designed with one aim: to harness a man to the plow and make him produce. But the soul refuses to be harnessed…. The soul longs for passion, for freedom, for life…. A man needs to feel the rhythms of the earth; he needs to have in hand something real—the tiller of a boat, a set of reins, the roughness of rope, or simply a shovel. The chief strength of Wild at Heart is its realization that modern society is trapping, taming, and enslaving us. The first sentence of this quotation could be said as much of the school as of the corporation, and it is applicable to women and girls as well as to men and boys. Although the author doesn't quote Wordsworth, I'm sure he would also say, "The world is too much with us; late and soon / Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers." The chief weakness of the book is its portrayal of both the problems and the solutions as special to the male sex. It is possible that men have been more afflicted than women, but that's no excuse for denying women both the recognition and the remedies. Eldredge has some wonderful suggestions for raising our sons; I'm saddened that some will read his book and not realize they are equally valid—and important—for our daughters.

• If the Eldredges would use words like "some" and "many" instead of "all," their pronouncements would be much more believable. Anyone who tells me that all girls love to wear "twirly" skirts and to preen in front of a mirror, and all women delight in painting their toenails and in wearing jewelry, immediately loses credibility because I know it's not true.

• I've noticed that so often our word to boys is don't. Don't climb on that, don't break anything, don't be so aggressive, don't be so noisy. But God's design—which he placed in boys as the picture of himself—is a resounding yes. Be fierce, be wild, be passionate. So true!—and at least as true of girls. Children, male and female, wither under a constant "no" and an artificial taming of their nature. Denied reasonable opportunities to take risks, test their strength, and satisfy their need for adventure, they will either weaken and retreat or seek their adventures in unreasonable, more dangerous ways.

• The Eldredges rightly emphasis the importance of fathers in the lives of both boys and girls, and pins on them the responsibility for delivering both the affirmations that lead us to true personhood and—sadly, more often—the wounds that cripple us.

• [Forgiveness] is not saying, "It didn't matter"; it is not saying, "I probably deserved part of it anyway." Forgiveness says, "It was wrong, it mattered, and I release you."

• Much of the criticism I've seen of Wild at Heart is similar to my original fears, decrying any attempt to return us to a society of chest-beating men and passive, women valued only for their appearance. A cursory reading of the book might support that fear, but Eldredge is clearly not saying that, even if it sounds like it in isolated passages. There is plenty of support here for men as musicians as well as mountain climbers, and for women with careers both within the home and without. There is much about his definitions of masculine and feminine I question, but I also concede the possibility that there is more to what he's getting at than my prejudices currently allow me to respond to.

• We are faking our way through life, sure we will be found out. Violence is a coverup for fear, so is hardworking achievement, so is passivity.

• When the Bible tells us that Christ came to "redeem mankind" it offers a whole lot more than forgiveness. To simply forgive a broken man is like telling someone running a marathon, "It's okay that you've broken your leg. I won't hold that against you. Now finish the race."

• The Big Lie in the church today is that you're nothing more than "a sinner saved by grace." You are a lot more than that. You are a new creation in Christ.

• [Eldredge quoting someone he does not name] Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

• Anyone who quotes George MacDonald and G. K. Chesterton wins major points in my book. I can't wait to read more of the Chesterton essay from which Eldredge extracted this homage to a homemaker's job: To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whitely within a certain area, providing toys, boots, cakes and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute.

• I think one reason I found Captivating weaker than Wild at Heart is that the Eldredges have three boys and no girls. They seem to understand boys a lot better than they do girls, though perhaps I feel that way because our children were girls and not boys. Another weakness in both books is that John and Stasi each grew up in fairly dysfunctional families, which helps them identify more with brokenness and healing, but leaves me wondering what they truly know of healthy life situations.

• [Eve] is the crescendo, the final, astonishing work of God. Woman. In one last flourish creation comes to a finish not with Adam, but with Eve. She is the Master's finishing touch.

• Eve is God's relational specialist given to the world to keep relationship a priority…. [B]ecause of the Trinity, relationship is the most important thing in the universe.

• Wild at Heart's descriptions of who men are, what they've lost, and how they might regain it reminds me very much of The Compleat Mother magazine, which comes from a totally different perspective. Yet its analysis of how modern attitudes toward pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding have stolen from women our birthright, our strength, and our heart is similar to Eldredge's view of society's emasculation of men. Although the authors touch briefly on the uniqueness of a woman's role in giving life, literally and metaphorically, I find their cursory treatment of the subject to be a glaring omission, a gaping hole in their philosophy. The maternal force that wells up in even tiny girls is far more significant and important than swirling skirts and painting toenails!

• This complaint is probably of little consequence to most, though I found it a significant impediment to understanding the books: in both the authors frequently make their points through references to movies and popular songs, which meant they were largely lost on me. What am I to make of a passage like this: "Think of Fran in Strictly Ballroom, or Tulah in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Remember Lottie in Enchanted April, Adrian in Rocky, or Danielle in Ever After." I can only respond, "Huh?" I have heard of Rocky, and even watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding, though it didn't help any because I have no memory of who Tulah was. More exasperating, however, are references to movies I know, because then it's clear that the analogies given are based solely on cinematic characters. When Eldredge talks about William Wallace, he's speaking of the character portrayed by Mel Gibson in the movie Braveheart, not the real, historical Scottish hero on whom the movie is loosely based. Examples from The Lord of the Rings reference scenes and dialogue that never appeared in the book, and which for all I know are quite contrary to J.R.R. Tolkien's intent. I'm not against fiction, which is the best medium for conveying some truths, and I certainly can be inspired by movies. But both the analogies and the frequent use of them in these books shout to me that the authors and I live in vastly different worlds, which leads me to wonder how applicable their conclusions can be to my life.

• We are in the late stages of the long and vicious war against the human heart…. I am not hawking fear at all; I am speaking honestly about the nature of what is unfolding around us…against us. And until we call the situation what it is, we will not know what to do about it. In fact, this is where many people feel abandoned or betrayed by God. They thought becoming a Christian would somehow end their troubles, or at least reduce them considerably. No one ever told them they were being moved to the front lines, and they seem genuinely shocked at the fact that they've been shot at.

• If you wanted to learn how to heal the blind and you thought that following Christ around and watching how he did it would make things clear, you'd wind up pretty frustrated. He never does it the same way twice. He spits on one guy; for another, he spits on the ground and makes mud and puts that on his eyes. To a third he simply speaks, a fourth he touches, and a fifth he kicks out a demon. There are no formulas with God.

The bottom line (not of the books, but of my reactions): Wild at Heart, and to a lesser extent Captivating, are much better books than a cursory glance could lead one to believe. There is error here, and much confusion, but there are also truths and ideas and revelations that we cannot afford to ignore.

I'm cleaning out old computer files, and came upon this article by Paula Rothermal of the University of Durham. Unfortunately, I no longer have any idea where I acquired this comparison of home- and school-educated children in the UK.

For reasons of copyright, the above link goes only to an abstract of the paper, but I'm posting a few interesting quotes that I believe fall into the "fair use" category.

School is not compulsory in the United Kingdom, contrary to some official notices....In the UK it is not necessary either to register as a home-educator or to ask anyone’s permission.

Parents of the home-educated children in this age group tended to have planned for home-education from birth, or at least from very early on; thus the parents had generally given more attention to their children’s early learning than they might perhaps have done had they known that the children would soon be starting school. The parents were thus not awaiting the ‘big day’ when school began and responsibility for their children’s education would be delegated to an external institution. Unlike the situation for schoolchildren, for the home-educated cohort, there was no right or wrong time to learn and it may well be that the most efficient way in which to gain skills and knowledge for life, would be to permit children to acquire information at their own pace.

As the children commonly spent their time with either one parent or the other, parental influence appears to have been an important contributing factor in the children’s exceptionally high…scores. In the same way that [other studies] found that the effect on children of a good teacher was enduring, so the home-educated children’s continued high scores may have been the result of the strong bond with their parents. Just as…teachers responded better to children whose company they most enjoyed, it would seem that the parents were those who had the most invested in their children’s development; this pattern created the cycle of positive attribution.

All the children scored good marks, whatever their background and family structure…. [T]he home educated children from the lower socio-economic groups scored significantly higher than those with professional parents. The most obvious reason for their doing well, and one that is supported by evidence from other sources, is that home-educated children are, at least amongst their own ranks, free from the stigma of being poor, simply because they are not learning in an environment where affluence and labelling are an issue.

[S]tarting school at a later age may well have no detrimental effect upon learning skills. The results from the present study suggested that a delayed school start date may have very positive effects.

 

The findings lent support to the idea that parental input was not just a useful support tool, but that indeed, it could substitute for professional assistance.

 

The findings in the present research, underpinned as they are by previous research, provide support for the value of informal settings in children’s education and inherently questions the ‘accepted’ wisdom that children need school to learn.

[I]nterviews with home-educating families show that while for many home educators, raising a family on the equivalent of one income is a burden, the families valued the freedom to live according to their own ideals and relished the flexibility to, ‘do what we want, when we want.’ It seems that happiness, a feature of home-education…may well extend to raising the children’s levels of learning.

Research focusing on older home-educated children suggests that the findings reported here of high attainment continue through Key Stages 1 and 2 [UK educational terms, roughly ages 5-7 and 7-11]. However, in view of the overall indication that home-educated children are learning on an entirely different trajectory from schoolchildren it is perhaps unhelpful to think of these children in terms of Key Stages. Expectations and outcomes for these children may have little in common with those anticipated from schoolchildren. Indeed, while the phrase ‘home-education’ suggests an education taking place in the home as opposed to the school, this is incorrect. Home-education is best described as an individually tailored education (ITE) whereby the children work from a home base but often spend a large amount of their time away from the home itself, instead attending group get-togethers and activities, visiting parks, museums, friends’ houses, libraries and ‘after school’ groups. In general this is an education gained through ‘living and doing.’

And the conclusion:

 

Insofar as the PIPS Reception data was concerned, the home-educated four and five-year-olds demonstrated high levels of ability and good social skills. The children appeared to benefit from an education that was flexible and tailored to their individual needs and interests. Another important factor was the attention given to them by their families. In particular, parental input and interest was high. Learning appeared to be on a gentle incline from birth, a process that appears to have suited the children very well.

I should be happy that the New York Times is highlighting the importance of breastfeeding. But this article on the difficulties faced by nursing mothers in lower-income jobs is disturbing in ways the author did not intend.

Poor women, and their children, suffer because their employers are not as sympathetic to their need to pump milk for their babies as are the employers of professional women. Thus they are less likely to breastfeed their children, and when they do it is not for as long a time, in yet another case of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

All too true. But the idealized portrait of the corporate "lactation room" supplied with pumps, telephones, Internet connections, CD players and reading material neglects a major component of the advantages of breastfeeding. Yes, the milk itself is perfectly designed for human beings and superior in countless ways to the best possible artificial formula. However, just as the formula-makers try to isolate and imitate what they consider to be the important components of human milk, the proponents of workplace lactation are focusing nearsightedly on one part of the breastfeeding relationship—the milk—and ignoring or minimizing the human factors. Nursing is a relationship, a two-person job, an intimate interaction between mother and child. Milk that is mechanically pumped, far away from the sight, sound, smell, and touch of the baby; refrigerated, stored, and dispensed in plastic bottles by someone who is not the baby's mother—this cannot come close to providing the benefits of an on-demand, skin-to-skin, eye-to-eye mother/child connection.

It may be the best that can be done in difficult circumstances, and it's certainly better than the same non-interaction using commercial formula. But it's time to stop pretending such substitutes are anything more than second best. One mother is quoted in the article as saying, of pumping milk for her son, "There is a lot of satisfaction in knowing I am doing right by him." She's doing better than she could be, and perhaps the best she can—that's not for me to judge. But she's not doing what's best for her son, and she shouldn't be beguiled into thinking she is.

Inexpensive prints of famous art works are a boon and a blessing, opening a world of beauty to many who could never see, let alone own, the originals. But no one pretends that a photo of the Mona Lisa is da Vinci's masterpiece, and someone who attempts to pass an imitation off as the real thing is normally considered a criminal.

Okay, the latest airport security problem is not in the least bit funny. But sometimes you have to see the humorous side to stay sane, especially when you have loved ones planning to fly in the next few days.

All liquids and gels are presently banned from carry-on luggage at U. S. Airports. Exceptions are being made for certain medications and for pre-mixed baby formula, which will be allowed after inspection. After getting the word, parents at the Orlando International Airport (and no doubt elsewere) were frantically preparing bottles of formula and hoping they wouldn't spoil on the trip, since they couldn't bring bottled water on board.

How nice to have your baby's food with you at all times, handy, pre-mixed, with no fear of spoilage, and in a form that can't be consigned to checked baggage.

It was nice of the Transportation Security Administration to reassure us on that last point, however (emphasis mine).

Exception: Baby formula, breast milk, or juice if a baby or small child is traveling; prescription medicine with a name that matches the passenger’s ticket; and insulin and essential other non-prescription medicines

I'm guessing they're referring to expressed breast milk in a bottle...but still...it makes one think....

Serendipity. Searching for one thing and finding another. And another. The Internet is a beachcomber's delight. While researching my Johari Window post, I found information on Duen Hsi Yen's commentary, which led me to his article on education, which in turn took me to another of his sites, which was chosen in May of 1999 as the Natural Child Project's Parenting Site of the Month. Investigating the Natural Child Project site led in turn to this month's honored parenting resource, Parents for Barefoot Children.

(This is beginning to sound like something from A Fly Went By: "The fly ran away in fear of the frog, who ran from the cat, who ran from the dog. The dog ran away in fear of the pig, who ran from the cow, she was so big!")

I don't know when I first rediscovered what every child knows about the joys of barefoot living. I do remember the first time I thought consciously of what shoes can do to feet besides protect them. In one of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, the dectective concludes that a footprint belongs to a native of a primitive culture, because the shape of the foot and the toeprints revealed a foot that had never been confined to a shoe.

That impressed me, but I never really questioned my footwear until I developed an affliction of the skin of my feet. No doctor ever came up with a definitive diagnosis, though that did not stop them from suggesting various medications, which either worked or didn't according to some random factor I never discerned. What unequivocally did work I discovered myself: shedding my shoes. If I kept my feet unshod whenever I could, they obliged me by enduring occasional imprisonment with good grace.

Since then I've been happy to remove my shoes when entering a home, and I've noticed in recent years many people are discovering that shoes left at the door don't bring dirt into the house. In this we are only a few thousand years behind the entire country of Japan.

Naturally an organization calling itself Parents for Barefoot Children (PFBC) intrigued me. So, too, did the Society for Barefoot Living, which (no surprise) I found through a link from the PFBC site. The latter takes barefooting a lot further than I thought possible. Along the way I learned several new things, from the many health benefits of walking sans shoes to the surprising legality of driving barefoot.

Although I am in sympathy with both organizations, especially when it comes to children's feet, two issues concern me that I have not seen addressed. The more trivial (though still important) one is that if one goes barefoot everywere, one has nothing to take off that will leave the dirt at the door of the house. Perhaps we should reinstate the Biblical custom of footwashing for guests!

What bothers me most is the chemical soup to which we would expose our feet by walking barefoot most of the time. The barefooting advocates address the issues of dirt, bacteria, and parasites, but what I worry about is what is laid down on our roads, sidewalks, business floors, and even public parks by automobile exhaust and tires, chemical spills, cleansers and polishing materials, herbicides, insecticides, and the other fallout from a modern industrial society. Everything from heavy metals to toxic organic compounds lies in wait to be absorbed through innocent skin, a special worry in the case of children. I don't want this to be a problem; I hope research will reveal an escape clause that will assure me it isn't harmful. But the issue needs to be addressed, not ignored.

The joys of free and unfettered childhood feet should not be yet another casualty of modern times!

Let me make clear up front that I'm glad our grandchildren are on schedule for most of the currently-recommended childhood vaccinations. I can be pleased with that because their parents have taken the time to research the issues, and decide which vaccines they think are worth the risk, and which are not, and are willing to pay the extra costs—in money and time—to spread the vaccinations out rather than subject their children to the assault on the immune system caused by receiving many vaccines on the same day. Moreover, the children are breastfed, which helps their immune systems deal with the vaccines.

Vaccines have prevented much suffering and death, and they do work; witness the frightening polio outbreaks in Africa when immunication efforts were hindered by Muslim clerics skeptical of both the vaccines and the good will of the vaccinators. But they are far from risk-free, and the government and the medical community are doing parents a disservice by pushing vaccinations as if they were entirely safe and absolutely essential for their children's health.

"Informed consent" does not mean handing your patient a long form, full of legal and medical terms, to sign on the day of vaccination, along with another sheet describing possible side effects. It means addressing the issue far in advance, with both pros and cons, admitting controversy and uncertainty, and pointing the parents to sources of further information.

Parents, too, have the responsibility of seeking out information on their own, to be better prepared to discuss the issue with their physicians. My doctor may have forgotten more about medicine than I'll ever know, but no doctor knows everything, and the best ones are always open to new information, carefully and respectfully presented.

Above all, avoid jumping on bandwagons. Don't vaccinate just because your doctor expects you to, and don't avoid vaccination just because that's what your friends are doing. Just as there are risks to vaccinating, and actions we can take to mitigate those risks, there are also risks to not vaccinating, and precautions that can help protect the unvaccinated child. One helpful, and reasonably balanced, resource is Aviva Jill Romm's Vaccinations: A Thoughtful Parent's Guide: How to Make Safe, Sensible Decisions about the Risks, Benefits, and Alternatives.

One of the hazards of being unvaccinated is catching a "childhood disease" later in life, when the body is often less able to handle it. One example made the news today, in this WebMD report on an outbreak of measles in 2005, the largest in the United States in a decade. A 17-year-old girl caught the disease in Romania and passed it to members of her church when she returned. Thirty-two of the 34 who caught the disease had never been vaccinated.

The story fails its readers by not reporting how the measles sufferers fared. Do the parents regret their decision not to vaccinate? I had measles as a child, and it was a relatively minor affair, easier for me than chicken pox, which itched like crazy. There can be serious complications, however; were there any in this epidemic, or was it relatively mild? That's important information.

Because 20 of the cases were homeschooled children, Amy Parker of the Centers for Disease Control stresses the importance of promoting immunization among homeschoolers. If she means educating people about the risks and benefits of vaccination, I'm all for it. But buried in the article is this chilling statement:

Proof of measles vaccination is required for children entering school, but West Virginia is the only state in the U.S. with a similar requirement for homeschooled kids.

This should frighten every homeschooler in the country. Requiring immunizations for admission to public schools is understandable, as long as certain exemptions are allowed, because of problems inherent in the confining of large populations to small spaces for long periods of time. But what is the concern that causes the West Virginia government to want to impose immunization on homeschoolers as well? If it's the fear that a homeschooler taking a public school class might pass a disease on to fellow students, how can that occur if the rest of the students have been vaccinated?

It appears the source is actually worse than that, and should frighten everyone, not just homeschoolers. There are those in the West Virginia government (and elsewhere!) who believe the primary responsibilities and rights when it comes to raising children belong not to the parents, but to the state. If the state decides universal vaccination is desirable, parents should have no choice but to go along.

The Internet is a wonderful tool for finding information; it is less useful when it comes to updates to that information. In 2004 the West Virginia legislature attempted to pass a bill expanding the immuization requirements and exacting severe penalties for noncompliance. Whether the bill succeeded or not I was unable to determine. If it did, it was apparently weakened, because the requriements I found through the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources mandate fewer vaccines and impose smaller penalties. Nonetheless, it's chilling enough. State Code 16-3-4 deals with "compulsory immunization of school children" but apparently they mean all children of "school age," not just children in the public schools.

Any parent or guardian who refuses to permit his or her child to be immunized against diphtheria, polio, rubeola, rubella, tetanus and whooping cough, who cannot give satisfactory proof that the child or person has been immunized against diphtheria, polio, rubeola, rubella, tetanus and whooping cough previously, or a certificate from a reputable physician showing that immunization for any or all is impossible or improper, or sufficient reason why any or all immunizations should not be done, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and except as herein otherwise provided, shall, upon conviction, be punished by a fine of not less than ten nor more than fifty dollars for each offense.

Unlike every other state except Mississippi, West Virginia makes no provision for religious or philosophical exemptions to its immunization laws.

UPDATE:  Please see the first comment, below.

I mentioned in the last post that I am cleaning the kitchen. (You can tell how easy this project is by how many blog posts I've written today. Writing is my favorite form of break.) So...I just threw out some spices with expiration dates in the early 1980's. Yes, I tasted them, and no, they weren't worth keeping. We hauled those spice jars from New York to Florida, from Florida to Massachusetts, from Massachusetts back to Florida again...but enough is enough!

I hear it's officially TV-Turnoff Week. Those who know me know I'm more likely to respond negatively to social pressure like that. Still, I'm not about to turn on the television just to be different.

But if TV is a regular part of your life, do yourself a huge favor and turn it off. Start with a week, but don't stop there. What would you give for an extra four hours in your day? More than 20 more hours in your week? Even if you are one of the very rare folks who watches only half an hour a day, think about what you could do in that time. With just half an hour each day you could learn to play a musical instrument, learn a foreign language, read many books, keep in touch with far away friends and family, create your own weblog, spend time in serious, concentrated prayer, get some much-needed sleep, learn to juggle, create a garden, get in shape...and accomplish at least one if not many of those things you say you'd love to do, "but I don't have time." Go for it! You have nothing to lose but your chains.

Here are some more interesting links:

The TV-Turnoff Network

Excerpts from Marie Winn's The Plug-In Drug

Ruben Bolling's fabulous comic, Flowers for Trinitron.

A friend sent me a copy of Louise Story's New York Times article describing the new generation of bright, college-educated women who are chosing shortened, delayed, or part-time careers so they can give their best to their families. A quick Internet check tells me this story has already been blogged and overblogged, so I won't spend much time on it. (The article ran exactly one month ago—my friend is one of the rare breed who still cuts articles from the paper and mails them, and I am not as prompt as I should be at getting to my reading material.) Nonetheless, I can't resist a couple of comments.

Some people appear to "get it," including Shirley M. Tilghman, the president of Princeton University, who said "The goal of a Princeton education is to prepare young men and women to take up positions of leadership in the 21st century. Of course, the word 'leadership' conjures up images of presidents and C.E.O.'s, but I want to stress that my idea of a leader is much broader than that," and "There is nothing inconsistent with being a leader and a stay-at-home parent. Some women (and a handful of men) whom I have known who have done this have had a powerful impact on their communities."

So do the unnamed university officials who "said that success meant different things to different people and that universities were trying to broaden students' minds, not simply prepare them for jobs."

But some people, however well-educated, are still clueless, such as Peter Salovey, the dean of Yale College, who bemoaned, "What does concern me is that so few students seem to be able to think outside the box; so few students seem to be able to imagine a life for themselves that isn't constructed along traditional gender roles."

This generation has faced overwhelming pressure, promotion, and downright propaganda against the idea that making a home and caring for a family is an important, valuable, and respectable career goal. No matter what it may look like to the older generation, even the smallest move towards home is radical thinking for today's college students. What consititutes "outside the box" depends very much on which box you are in, and what color chains you are wearing.

I once read that a child should learn "at the rate determined by her own happy hunger." (I believe the quotation is from John Ciardi, but I haven’t been able to confirm that.) It is delightful to observe Jonathan’s voracious appetite.

He loves books, and rhapsodizes, "Library! Lots of books!" He asks frequently to be read to, usually specifying the book he wants. This week his first choice is usually, “Hop on Pop, Cat!” (The Cat in the Hat, don’t ask me how it picked up the “Hop on Pop” part) and sometimes “Wocket Pocket” (There’s a Wocket in My Pocket). Elephant’s Birthday (new from Great-Grandma Landeen) and A Fly Went By are other favorites.

He is equally enthusiastic about his “bits.” (See this post and others from Daley Ponderings.) Basically, they are large, discrete, unambiguous pictures of almost anything under the sun, from flowers to art works to mathematical quantities. He has a large collection of physical bits (on 11x11 or 8.5x11 card stock, laminated), and we had some new ones for him to see on this visit. We also have a large number on computer CD’s (“Picture Dictionaries” in which the pictures are shown along with the names of the objects, in English or any of four other languages.

At home, when and how Jonathan sees his bits is somewhat more disciplined, though he still has a lot of freedom to express and indulge his happy hunger. But at Grandma and Dad-o’s house (with Mommy’s permission), just as in the pool, we let Jonathan “drive” with the bits. We show him the cards as often as he wants, several times in a row if he asks. And with the Picture Dictionaries he is allowed to choose the subject (there’s a menu of 15 on each disk) and see whatever he wants, as many times as he wants. He even navigates the mouse (with a fair amount of help) and does the clicking.

He has definite preferences for subject matter, and one of his favorites is Dots (number quantities) in Japanese! He is not (yet) interested in any other language besides English and Japanese, but asks repeatedly for the Japanese Dots. Last night he asked for other subjects in Japanese, which he had resisted the day before. Although he has seen the Sports Equipment only a few times in English, and Vehicles not much more often, he vocalized “baseball bat” and “road roller” in English after seeing them in Japanese. I don’t know what that means; I just thought it was interesting. He asks for some subjects by category (“Dots”) and others by the name of one element of the category (“crab-it” for Sea Creatures, “double bass” for one set of Musical Instruments, “trumpet” for another).

Score one more for mothers. When you sang to your baby, rocking and bouncing him, or danced with him around the room, others may have said you were being silly. You may have thought you were just trying to keep your baby from crying. But what you were really doing was giving him his first music lessons. A Canadian study has shown that being moved to music helps babies learn rhythm. Just watching you dance is not good enough, by the way; the baby must dance, too.

When Terri Schiavo dies, there's going to be cheering, and I don't understand why. I know there will be cries of exultation because of the commentary I've heard, and the rude jesting, even from as mainstream a production as National Public Radio's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Perhaps people make light of tragedy in self-defense; I know my family was able to find humor even as our father lay dying. There was, however, an enormous difference: our humor was suffused with an undeniable love for the man and a determination to do all we could for him.

Why are we laughing now, and why will we cheer? Terri is someone's daughter. I will not say she is someone's wife, because I don't think Michael Schiavo will be sad to see his wife die. Perhaps he still loves Terri, although his living with another woman, with whom he has two children, tends to provoke doubt. I assume he accepted losing her years ago, and has no more grief left to give at her death. But Terri's parents still love their daughter dearly, and why would anyone exult in another's grief? Perhaps the hard-hearted would say the body Terri's parents treat so tenderly is not really their daughter, and when she dies they will lose nothing they haven't already lost. Even so—when a family's house burns to the ground, and they lose the treasured, irreplaceable pictures of their children, do we cheer? Don't we mourn with them? Is Terri worth less than a photograph?

Some, no doubt, will just be happy the prolonged battle is over, but they will be wrong. All three branches of government have been invited into a personal, private, agonizing medical decision—not to mention the Fourth Estate in all its glory, and voyeristic lay people all over the world. This camel's nose will not easily be shoved out of our tent. For that we should grieve, if nothing else.

News reports are trumpeting findings which, if true, show that our society has fallen even lower than I had thought. A study of almost 1000 Texan women found that they ranked watching television high on the list of activities that give pleasure, while taking care of children was low—almost as low as doing housework.

Although the researchers claim that the results probably apply more broadly, I believe that the population they studied greatly affected the results: all of the women had jobs outside the home. Thus their childrearing activities had to be fit into their "spare time," not a situation conducive to choosing the effort of working with children over a mindless collapse in front of the TV.

I'm grateful that I know many people for whom making a home and raising a family are among the highest pleasures of life. They are the hope of the world and the strength of the future.

A study of German babies showed a higher risk of food allergies and diarrhea for those born by Caesarean section. The healthy, full-term babies were all exclusively breastfed for the first four months, during which time no such effect was seen. However, blood samples taken at 12 months showed that C-section babies were twice as likely as vaginally-delivered babies to have allergies to five common food allergens, including eggs, cow's milk, and soy protein. They were also 46% more likely to suffer from diarrhea during the first year.

These findings are consistent with previous research which demonstrated the importance of intestinal bacteria in the development of a healthy immune system. Babies who experience a normal delivery pick up vaginal, intestinal, and perianal microbes from their mothers. The risk to babies born by C-section includes not only deprivation of normal microbes, but also exposure to the unnatural microbial ecosystem peculiar to a hospital environment.