The State
which five generations ago
was only too happy
to officially sign dads off from their parental responsibilities
and assign them to duties on the mass production line
or be considered dead beats
and who now sues those same dads
who bust their butts on the line
for over a hundred years
while building up the industrial strength of the nation
for being dead beat dads anyway
and jails them for their “unnatural” indifference
towards their offspring
=D>
I’ve never seen that done before, Magnet Man:
A run-on sentence that’s also a sentence fragment.
Great job.
=D>
oh, apparently that’s not a run-on sentence, it’s just a sentence fragment. my mistake.
if you’d like to state the point of your post more clearly, i’m all ears.
Humpty,
Please note that you are border-lining trolling here.
As a side note, I don’t believe that a run-on sentence, by definition, could EVER dually qualify as a sentence fragment.
right, it’s just a sentence fragment.
on a non-trolling note, your point is unclear magnet man.
Hemingway always said
its impossible to write without artifice
he tried to keep it simple
no more two syllables per word
and no more than seven words
before a full stop
my problem
is where to place the comma
and the only peaceful solution
is to leave them out
all together
for it matters not if I am understood
or not
nobody has a memory
that lasts
more than a day
anyway
i see, that attitude would explain a lot
On another forum
it seems readers were able to grasp the point
here is an example response
Under present economic circumstances
such cynicism is understandable
but of course
underlying the OP about taking dad out of the house
lies the Iron Age march of graduated evolutionary development
At the end of the late Bronze Age
when population pressures in Europe made farm division un-economical
and oral-based communication unwieldy
the Iron Age began with the introduction of script-based instruction
Unmarried young men were sent by their families
to Catholic missions as novice monks
where they learned the structure of grammar
thereby initiating the scientific education of the human intellect
leading to the national schooling systems we have today
at the same time
married brothers without farm division rights
and no interest in academics
formalized their natural creative abilities at arts and crafts
largely under the patronage of the Catholic Church
home-spun masonry and smithy guilds were initiated
into which dads formally inducted their own sons
As the Iron Age drew to an end
the evolutionary imperative of population pressures
again dictated mass changes of social and spiritual consciousness
home-spun family guilds were incorporated via the Industrial Revolution
and all but the farm dads were pulled out of the home
mom was left alone at home to rear the infants
and then pack them off to the state classroom
to be indoctrinated to read and write state prescribed textbooks
before they could even learn to think for themselves
So early economics took dad out of the house, and morally and socially sanctified it, in order to support and maintain that economic system. Then things changed, and mum was given the opportunity to leave the house - meaning Dad needs/must be put partially back in the house to cover the deficit in care, and everyone gets paid less for doing twice as much work.
And women were sold this, just like they were sold cigarettes, by making work and career seem like an expression of personal freedom, when really, it is the reverse.
Governments laugh, families cry.
Governments through each of our Ages of development
were created by the exigencies of the economic climate of the Time
and instituted by the will of the collective national family
During each New Age
as expanding population pressures keep impacting
and natural resources keep dwindling
mass adjustments to changing economic conditions
forced us to institute incrementally complex forms of mass management
It is clear to many that the current economic climate
is under-going massive changes
due to the same old population vs environmental evolutionary imperatives
all of us
rich and poor alike
are caught in the same boat
and have to adapt to a New and more responsible Age of planet management
it is up to each parent to recognize the need to reorient their children’s future
realize that nation building and corporate exploitation has had its field day
and institute a new global order that best addresses our collective future
right now each of us needs to seriously think things out for ourselves
and put forward original proposals on how to do that
what worries me
is that our collective problem is a chicken and egg situation
All current parents have been indoctrinated from birth
to obey prescribed orders
we bow before the interpretations of professional teachers
we have forgotten how to think and move independently
without an order from a “higher up” to do so
In this indoctrinated manner
the mass surrenders its collective will
to the few similarly indoctrinated few
who graduate enough to be able to decide to control it
and reap the bulk of its rewards privately
but not adult enough to accept any blame
and not educated to be original enough
to see ahead and devise new methods to deal with mass change
so
until and unless some really huge global catastrophe over-takes us
and shakes us out of the artificially indoctrinated mode of childish obedience
that we have been educated into for the past five generations
the whole mass of humanity will continue marching like lemmings
to a dying Age’s drum beat
and flounder in the chaos of our own destruction
I beg your pardon, but most of us outside the West, have missed out on the progress of the past five generations that you describe. So while the West may march on as you describe, we, non-Westerners don’t have to. We can surely learn some lessons from your progress 
I’d like to restate this from a working mom’s perspective, if I may.
So early economics took dad out of the house, and morally and socially sanctified it, in order to support and maintain that economic system. In accordance with the times, Dad’s work out of the house was always deemed more important, more valuable, than Mom’s work in the home. Then things changed, and mum was given the opportunity to leave the houseEventually many Moms and Dads got tired of women’s contributions to society being seen as lesser, so they worked to change things to give both women and men other alternatives. - meaning Dad needs/must be put partially back in the house to cover the deficit in care, and everyone gets paid less for doing twice as much work, but ideally responsibility for raising a family would be shared in a more equitable manner, assuming both parents were willing to do their part.
And women were sold this, just like they were sold cigarettes, by making work and career seem like an expression of personal freedom, when really, it is the reverse.The ultimate goal of this movement being that Moms would benefit by having the option to expand their horizons in the working world, Dads would benefit by bonding more closely with their children, and children would benefit from happier, more fulfilled parents. IF both parents were willing to be accountable, and supported each other in that goal.
Sometimes the goal is met, and sometimes not. Just like sometimes the Ozzie and Harriet lifestyle was successful, and sometimes not.
If you’re gonna blame women entering the workforce as the root cause of all of Western society’s ills, then maybe Mom’s contributions in the home should’ve been given a little more credence in the first place…?
I was getting ready to write a spirited response to Tab’s post, but then scrolled on down to see that you took care of it quite nicely, Anita. It’s the usual case of the male perspective being the default from which the female’s (and the family’s) condition must be assessed.
Yeah, okay, knew I’d get flak for that one, I was tired and just couldn’t be bothered to dress it up in PC-speak.
And this just gives you carté blanche now huh…? Justify some nukes like the Jews and their ever-renewable Holocaust woes.
We’re sorry, we’re sorry, we’re sorry, we’re sorry, we’re sorry, we’re sorry, we’re sorry, we’re sorry, we’re sorry, we’re sorry, we’re sorry, we’re sorry, we’re sorry, we’re sorry, we’re sorry, we’re sorry, we’re sorry, we’re sorry, we’re sorry, we’re sorry, we’re sorry.
How many Goddamn times…? I didn’t trap you in the home, anymore than the current generation of Germans ran the deathcamps. How long…? When does the sell-by date for past infractions come…? And don’t wave the middle-east or whatever backwater craphole where women still get the shitty end of the stick in my face because I’m talking strictly Amurka and Europe/Tr here. Okay…? The bits of the world we have experience of, the bits where we live.
The rest of the world. Bad. Women should get all the support they need to have happy and dignified lives. But that does not equal: They must all work just like men. The choice soon evapourates and becomes must. Have to. No other way. I know why, I could tell you, but I told you already before, and you know it anyway.
Did they really…? In England it was the wartime economy, women in the factories and a lack of men afterward. Then it was the pill. These things swung it for women. Not some happy disney-fied Mom and Dad hand in hand fight for emancipation tap-dancing all the way deal.
And alternatives…? What alternatives…? What’s the alternative to work…? It was like “Hey ladies, you know that stuff men do yeah…? So anyway, you could like do that too if you want.” ie. “Tired of white…? Try some black.”
Yeah. Propaganda swallowed hook, line and sinker. Funny when we drive a car, either you drive, or I drive. Never “Well you do the steering, and I’ll do the brakes okay.” Because afterall, ideally the responisbility for getting from A to B should be shared. Rubbish. One should work, and work full balls-out, or vagina-out, depending - and the other should dedicate themselves to the kids and all things home.
Specialization, we’ve been doing it for a gazillion years.
As it is, I’m tired from work, and the kids suffer. My wife works harder than I do, she’s tired, and the kids suffer. Our house is dirtier than it should be, we eat whatever is in the fridge, we spend more money, because we both have to look presentable at work, and get there and back, and eat lunch, drink tea. Pay a stranger to wipe our kids butts.
Redundancy at work, lack at home. And everyone is like this now. I don’t know anyone who isn’t working. Babysitters are all over the place, as are kindergartens. Grandparent’s who’ve already raised one bunch of kids are doing it all over again.
Oh bullshit. Really. Total. People have always been unhappy, people have always been unfulfilled. Do you think women are happier now…? Do you think men were happy then…? Expand their horizons. What, were they automatically provincial half-wits just because they didn’t have to get onto a bus everyday to go the ten miles to the factory production line…? Do they give away free encyclopaedias at the gates of the meat-packing plant and hand-out free holidays to breath-takingly culturally important locations in the staff-canteen…? Look around. The majority is worse off. No-one can afford a house anymore. One salary is not enough to live on, women have no choice but to work.
No alternative.
Blame. Sorry - where did I blame anyone…? Where did I say “Yeah - Women fucked everything up…?” I didn’t, because I was careful not to. Women were sold on careers as being “good” or whatever. And in accepting that, women also accepted the male bullshit doctrine that being a housewife, or househusband was lesser. You know this, because you’ve said the same. So has ingenium I think. Rather than say - “No thank you very much we already have a job. It’s called running a home. Recognize that, you fucking man, oh and btw. If I wanna get one of those jobs outside the home, then I’m gonna do that to. K…?” But no, society just clunked on, and now anyone staying at home, male/female/other, cleaning the underpants of the nation gets daubed as a second-class citizen for not having a high-powered job and a six-pack. Credence my ass. Women gave it just as little credence as men in the end. As ingenium says:
There must be a third way. Which I think is what MM is trying to encourage us to find. Rather than just re-hash old sores. I mean hey, I’m game. I can do this all day. I’m angry. I’m pissed whenever I compare my childhood to my own children’s. I know the rise of the working-woman meme is not entirely to blame, but it’s a factor. Just like I’ll happily, for my forefathers, carve a slice of blame-pie and swallow it down whole.
There is reason for this
The nation had to build a national industry
together with a world-class modern national infrastructure
In order to engender both an inventive mind-set and entrepreneurial business spirit
farmers had to be trained to think like industrial businessmen
and begin to mass manufacture
both mass transport and the appliances in the home
making travel and mom’s homework less tedious
That initial era of nation building
made the bread-winning survival needs supplied by the men
more expediently valuable than that of women
But this gender distinction was not always imbalanced
men have only been the major bread-winners
for less than 1% of human evolution
throughout all 99,000 generations of the Stone Age
when woman and children gathered wild vegetables, fruits and insects
and the men hunted game
the major portion of daily food was supplied by the women
more often than not the men came home empty handed
Mother Nature made sure the women and children never did
In that infant era of human consciousness
MA was our Goddess
it was only comparatively recently
(less than a 1000 generations ago)
when men and women left the fruits of Eden
to till the soil
and were forced to compete with the lions
that he warrior lion-fighter
became a Father God
Not really
with modern appliances
and the kids dumped in daycare and state schools
woman’s leisure time improved dramatically
then
as the Industrial revolution spawned ever more complex legal requirements
the white collar business service sector expanded
vacancies for office staff and the extra money
attracted an army of female secretariats
mom in the office
created an unexpected negative side effect during the industrial revolution
unaccompanied women in the market place
working among strange men
triggered off the old primate mating instinct
the cultured sanctity of the marriage was ignored
creating a devastating family value crisis
Never in the entire history of human development
have we experienced the unprecedented divorce rate of today
this break up of ancient family values
on a such a mass scale
unless halted and reversed
could well spell the end of the human specie
men cannot replace women in the home
nor can women replace the men
both presences are vital all day, every day
throughout a child’s developmental years up to puberty
Gee, is this new response what you’d consider PC-speak?
Who’s looking for an apology? You offered your blatantly biased, hugely over-generalized opinion, I was simply trying to balance the scales by adding a little more context. There are many real, valid reasons why “mum left the house,” none of which you provided or addressed. Instead, you conveniently skipped that part, preferring to imply that it was a gift to mum, at the expense of poor Dad, who now had to pick up some of the slack around the house.
Oh I won’t, and don’t you put words in my mouth so that you can have something weak to argue against.
Oh right, all those activists were just flag-waving bystanders. Where did I claim that it was some sort of a happily ever after skip down easy street??
I’ll tell you what alternatives – women could actually, oh, I don’t know, maybe go to college, med school even, and become doctors, lawyers, professors, yes, they could actually pursue some of their own dreams. Do those sound like worthy alternatives to you?
Wrong – you don’t parent one person at a time, each having only one role at a time, that’s ridiculous. It’s a fluid partnership, through and through. [Well, unless you’re talking about a deadbeat dad.] Mom had better be able to fill in for Dad from time to time, and vice versa. And why shouldn’t they be able to?
Flexibility, adaptability; we’ve been doing that for even longer.
Again, who said it was a cure-all? Not me. You know, your deliberate over-simplification might make for some strong, eye-catching statements, that is until one remembers that the world’s problems are a lot more complicated and can’t be boiled down into neat little soundbites.
And yet the sentiment still came through. Funny.
Women were “sold on”? Women “accepted the male bullshit”? For God’s sake stop being so fucking patronizing and give us a little credit for a change. Did we have to be “sold on” the idea that we might want MORE than housework? That - gasp - some of us aren’t at all cut out to be good stay-at-home moms? Was it “male bullshit” to think that we could raise a family AND find a challenge outside of that? Because it IS doable. Oh it’s hard work, but it’s sure as hell not impossible.
I’ve never said that two working parents is the ideal, yep, it has a lot of downsides, it has some huge and for some insurmountable challenges. On the other hand, it also has some benefits for Mom - but I know how easy it is to overlook that aspect.
All I’m hearing is “Wah wah wah, women should’ve stayed home and just TOLD us they were providing a valuable service, that would’ve changed everything. But no, somehow they got it into their silly little heads that having the opportunity to have a fulfilling career of their own was a good thing. Those foolish women, they’ve ruined everything.”
Yeah, I’m kinda pissed too; bring it on. But you know what, I really don’t care all that much about your self-serving, martyr-esque “blame pie,” so don’t gorge yourself on my account.
No Anita. I’m posting to you, therefore, I won’t insult you by palming you off with some concilliatory saccharine BS. I’ll say what I think instead.
Imply. Nah, you inferred. The only thing I implied was that the women’s movement, or whatever you wanna call it, were sold something. The rest was just fact and grammar. Was given. Passive voice. It was demanded, it was given.
I wrote two fucking sentences, keeping to the Dad/Mom theme of the OP title. And I get jumped all over. Ooh look at the man, daring to generalize. Who’s looking for an apology…? Anyone who plays the goddamn victim card, when the time of being a victim has passed. You work I presume. Yes…? Have done, or have had the right to do so your entire life. Yes…? My wife works, harder than I do, and I pick up the ‘slack’, because I can, because I like to, because I’m good at it. And still I get the card.
The slack. There you go again huh - demeaning the job of caring. Just slack. That’s what women were doing…? Picking up the slack, doing the small stuff. What are you implying…? Or am I inferring…? And ‘poor’ Dad, why poor…? Poor for having to help look after his children…? How does that make him poor…? I didn’t say he was poor, so why did you…? What are you implying…? That housework and caring for children is somehow demeaning…? What a huge and over-generalized opinion.
Yeah. Mom and Dad got together, and worked to change things. Maybe Mommy and Daddy should get together again, and fix Afghanistan. And no, you didn’t mention activists, with or without flags. I was in short pants anyway. Or maybe just a sperm. That’s the point. I ain’t the enemy. And again, unless you’re older than you look, you ain’t the victim. So why are we fighting…? Again.
No. A doctor is a job. A lawyer is a job. Professor is a job. Looking after children and keeping a household running is a job. A job is a job. These are the dreams society dreams for us, not we them. Jobs are for money. Money is for stuff. Stuff is for putting in your stomach and giving to the people you care about. Anything else is just ego-crutchery. “Moi…? I’m a DOCTOR btw.” “Really…? Gosh.” “Yes, I’m considerably better than most everybody.”
Fluid. Partnership. Filling in. There is such a creature as a deadbeat Mom too yesnomaybe…? Yeah. What you said. Anyway.
Nice comeback. Evolution seeks optimal solutions. Flexibility and adaptation is a means to that end. Don’t tell me that your heart does part-time work as a lung.
Sure, but no-one ever does remember until it’s too late, and the die is cast. Tell me Anita, did you have the realistic option of not working…? Or your husband…?
No, you just pulled that one out of your hat, because we’ve been conditioned to presume that whenever a man says anything even remotely derogatory concerning the working woman, he’s obviously a chauvenistic pig who needs a kick up the ass with the silken boot of feminist diatribe. I mean shit, that’s what they do on the telly, so it must be right.
All you’re hearing is what you want to hear. What women should have done was to not buy into the situation they were handed. They should have gone on strike. Society ain’t takin’ what we do seriously. Any other workforce would have walked out. Instead of burning their bras and fucking hippies they should have walked out of their homes and left the men to cope on a massive scale. The Mother’s Union - do you have that in America…? In England they bake cakes and have jumble sales. I wish that back in the day it had been a real union. A general strike, a month, no, a week, and the nation would never have been the same again.
But they didn’t. They all went to school and became doctors and lawyers. Because Doctors and Lawyers are better than housewives, better than househusbands. Still. I suppose when the kids get ill, or get picked up by the cops, they could actually visit their parents.
is my dead beat dad still alive?
My line of work allows me to see every conceivable form of man/woman partnership - and every conceivable way those partnerships can be screwed up. MM only made one mistake. He started with the males, when in reality, the deadbeat is a deadbeat, male or female. Granted, society defines the roles men and women can/must play without regard to the individuals involved, only looking at the aggregate social goals. Like it or not, social roles are rank-ordered in terms of value to the community. That this conflicts with shared family responsibilities is quite beyond the point. I agree that industrialization has worked it’s damage on family, but I am less sure that there was any happy happy time for families. Yes to Tab’s point that mom and dad were at one point, capable of dividing up responsibilities and working together to both survive and raise the progeny, but even pre-industrial society had “man’s work”, and “women"s work” and a man’s labor was considered more valuable. This is still the pattern in much of the world. Is it fair? No. Waaa…
The mistake is to focus on the unfairness and assign blame to one sex or the other. That both sexes have bought into the greater/lesser role bullshit is the issue. What’s wrong with the woman going out and making the living while the male stays at the house doing the house things? Nothing. Except the social definitions disallow that. Is it possible for an individual male or female to choose/accept the social roles without blaming the other sex for any shortcomings?
MM,
The social blame game is to be expected and has nothing to do with the sex of any individual or group of individuals. An individual confronted with the single parent scenario must be both mother and father and is blamed for being doubly inadequate, failing to be the perfect role model of either. If there is to be complaint, it is that our societies, in presenting “alternatives” now set the family table where both male and female are “deadbeats”. Still any individual can rise above the societal definitions and be real parents. I know three people in this discussion, each with their unique family situations, who not only work their jobs, but are truly hands-on parents. So screw the social definitions. Real people struggling to be real parents persevere.
You know, I got to right about here when I figured there probably wasn’t any reason to go further. Seriously, mocking? That’s a new one.
I guess we could continue round and round, ratcheting up the sarcasm until it was off the charts, but what’s the point? We both know it won’t change anything.