Sunday, April 01, 2007

paying to parent

Some snippets from a Tennessee article:
"Teaching your kids to ride a bike, shuttling them to doctor appointments, reminding them to say "Yes, ma'am," helping with algebra homework and training them to be sensible shoppers.... services in the Nashville area that give you the choice of outsourcing traditional parental duties...

Having "experts" help raise our children is not unexpected in a world where we hire people to clean our house, plan our parties, organize our closets and deliver our groceries.
Today's world of specialists wrongly gives parents the impression that they aren't competent to teach their children certain things...
In some large cities, you can pay professionals to come into your home and coach your baby into better sleeping patterns, toilet train your toddler and pick the head lice off your little one's scalp.
One Brentwood concierge company, At Your Service, will fill in the gaps in your day-to-day routine by driving your children home from school or ferrying them to doctor's appointments in the middle of the day.
In many homes, homework time can be the most stressful time of day as parents find that a child's homework is too tough for them."
I guess that I experience a certain amount of naivete, but why bother having kids if you pay someone else to raise them? I organize my own closets, do my own grocery shopping (with 5 kids in tow), take them to doctor appointments, teach them manners, and potty train them, and I don't consider myself SuperMom. Actually, one is not quite true, Tim did potty train both of the girls in less than a week.
I do understand the idea of specialists wrestling control of children away from parents. It starts with baby books that chastize mothers for any non-perfect behavior such as indulging in cookies and chocolate during pregnancy. The impression given is subtle, if you don't do what they say then if something terrible happens it is all your fault. Now the tomes of parenting follow you through the infant years and up to school age kids and beyond. All these books dictate the "right way" to raise children, and all giving conflicting advice. Spank. Don't spank. Scheldule feedings. Don't scheldule. Use cribs. The family bed. Circumcise. Don't circumcise. Allowances. Chores. TV. No TV.
It is enough to make your head spin.
These days common sense has flown out the window and now parents don't trust themselves to make even the smallest decision without input from these "experts". No wonder parents feel trapped in the public school system, they have been brainwashed into thinking that learning is too difficult except in the professional's hands.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That's scary, but not unexpected really. Parents in America hate being parents. They feed them powder in a bottle so they can oass them off on someone else to feed, stick them in a cage in another room and leave them to cry, strap them in a bucket with wheels to push them around without having to touch them, then dumpt them off into schools so be rid of them all week. So why wouldn't they also hire someone else to come do the little things too?

Parents parenting their children? Why its practically unheard of!