| I know that may seem strange, but I knew
when I started this whole thing that there would be some firebreathing.
Five months to prepare mentally for it to hit and it finally did. I got
my first negative, jabbing and purposely pointed slam in a comment on Facebook tonight. Break out the champagne… we’ve started a movement! The first eight of the Facebook videos all got posted tonight and I asked everyone on my wall to comment on You Had Sex and a Baby Came Out. That’s when this came in: (The guy who commented is someone I know from a few years ago as you may notice from my post to him). Me: I’d love for every male in America to watch this video and share it with ten other males! Please spread this one around and give me your comments on it. Him: Definitely not something I’d spread around for a few reasons, but here are my thoughts on it per your request for comments. It sounds to me like this was written by someone who had never had kids or did it for the wrong reasons. Sure, there are some people who have kids by accident or do it because they think it’s the thing to do, but I’d be highly surprised if it were anywhere even close to a majority like this piece seems to imply (whether or not it was the writer’s intent). Perhaps it would be the right sort of thing for people who feel like they’re being pressured to have kids, but don’t really want to, to show to the people who are pressuring, though the production quality, especially the out of tune vocals in parts, detract from that. There are some genuinely funny parts. But getting back to the message, I also think that many people, even who weren’t truly sure they wanted kids at first, be it being on the borderline or even farther away from that, find there is a huge amount of fulfillment in raising a child. No, I don’t mean showing a child off as a status symbol or having it dressed to match your Gucci purse or anything like that. I mean giving the kind of unconditional love a parent is called on to give his or her child, especially in the early days where the child can’t do anything on its own, and where a bond starts to be formed. This piece seems to me to be insulting to all those who either have kids for the right reasons and even who get into it by accident or for the right reasons, but who then come around to being a good, loving parent once it’s time to walk the walk. There is probably an audience for this stuff somewhere, but it’s likely a niche audience of some sort, and hopefully the people in that audience aren’t having kids. Me: Thanks for the comment. That out-of-tune note was Garage Band, not me (after two hours of trying to fix the note that had been fine when I sang it, I gave up!) For a free job on a $19 usb mic, that was as good as it was going to get! I don’t know if you read the blog or not, but through 13 years of working with over a thousand kids and close to that many parents, my statistics are far more accurate than most people would like to admit. Again, those statistics aren’t on FB, but they are on the blog, and there’s a large body of documented study to back up what I’m saying. I know you love YOUR kids, and since I know you I can vouch for that you are the minority I’m talking about. Very few people actually give the kind of unconditional love you mention. They talk about it, but they don’t live it. I’ve called the cops enough times to report beatings and abuse cases to know this. “…but I’d be highly surprised if it were anywhere even close to a majority like this piece seems to imply (whether or not it was the writer’s intent).” I know you wish it were this way, but it’s not. Your experience is with your kids. I worked with over 1000, and I assure you, MOST are not like you. I wish they were. Every school teacher I’ve ever met agrees with me in private and is afraid to say it in public for fear of the attacks on their job. I wish every household was like yours, but I promise you, you are the minority. I’m out to change that. And again, thanks for commenting, since I did ask! Him: Actually, my experience is from far more than just my kids. While it isn’t any large scale study, it is from a fairly wide breadth of real life experience, including the many friends my kids have had and the many people I grew up alongside, where I often got to meet and know both parents and children because of my parents’ involvement with other parents (e.g. in Cub Scouts, Little League, PTA, Music Parents, etc.). After his last response, I left it at that. It seemed appropriate to let it be, since he proved most every point I have been blogging about, singing about, and everything in every video that’s posted! In everything I publish about statistics, I point out the “five to ten percent who want their kids, and the fifteen percent who didn’t but eventually were glad they had the kids.” Since I know him, I can verify that he’s in that portion of the population. I also clearly cover a critical aspect of this that we healers deal with all the time, which is that “the ten percent that wants their kids come from family lines where all the kids are wanted.” This is a very common phenomenon that is also discussed in the videos about “The Heart Wound” and how that is passed through family lines and often is the driver behind people having kids they don’t want. “The Unspoken Truth” blog post (as well as “The Idiot at the Barbeque”) both address the fact that people who don’t want their kids, especially the parents who mistreat their kids, will fake it in public and be on good behavior to get the approval of the other adults. When I look at the last paragraph of his comment, all it does is further prove that point. Because he came from a family where the kids were wanted, he is close to his parents and he wants his kids, he is not someone who would recognize: 1) parents who don’t want their kids 2) the typical signs of children being abused by a parent 3) the typical inauthentic behaviors of the parents who are trying to hide that they didn’t want the kids I’ve been to his house and worked extensively in the area where he lives. He is sadly mistaken in his assumptions about things like the little league (since the one in his area is one of the teams I observed for the ADD study) and the way that folks in his area operate. The overwhelming majority of the kids in his area are “mommy’s having a baby experience” and “should” kids. He’s a nice guy and a very kind person, but it blows my mind how naïve he is about the reality of what’s going on around him. He also mentions that he’s insulted. He is officially the first person who’s insulted! Every other person who has watched the video and reported back to me has loved it, thought it was right on target. Not only were they NOT insulted, but they got exactly WHO it’s aimed at without needing to have it explained! How can he not get this? The blog hasn’t mentioned this yet, but two of the first people to see it are mothers who wanted their kids and they got it immediately. They laughed out loud and had other people watch it who also loved it and were not offended. So he clearly doesn’t get something and is not understanding the much larger social problem I’m pointing out. Part of why I chose to aim the song at men (even though it’s about women) is that most men are under the assumption that all women want children. (You should hear the response I got when I brought up this point in my mostly male football watching group. OY!) Men are extremely threatened by the topic a lot of the time. It’s what they’ve been taught, but it’s not what’s true. This notion is so deeply rooted in the American male psyche that when women point out to the men that it’s not true, a lot of the men have a really hard time believing it because it threatens every notion of what they hold as their definition of reality. It is such a deeply held “truth” that most of them don’t even notice they believe it until it’s pointed out for them that it’s not true. I really want men to get this, especially the guys who are in the fog of belief about it. The sooner it gets REAL for the male population that the majority of women don’t truly want children, the sooner the whole problem stops! I understand that it may be a shock for them at first, but there is also no man that I’ve ever had this conversation with who didn’t, within the space of about ninety seconds, start to see that truth and fully get it for themselves. Although some have been left reeling a bit, they did truly get it without doubt. Every one of them. So the movement has officially begun…. |