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I’ll bet you guys though that when I lost my job that I’d be blogging more often. Well, so did I. But instead I’ve been spending more time playing with my son, hanging out with the Holistic Moms and pursuing some of my hobbies, such as cooking, crafting, reading and spending time outdoors. Its been a very fulfilling lifestyle, and I wish it could last forever.
But, I know its not going to. As we speak, I’m applying for a seasonal night time job and applying to go back to college next semester to finish my bachelors in environmental science. Or I might change my major, considering that I don’t really intend to make a career out of anything I can major in at the Metropolitan State College of Denver.
I also really want to keep this blog active so I can share with the world what I’m doing now in my newer, better life. I am probably getting out of the Army in January and I’m moving on to bigger and better things. I am grateful for everything that the Army has given to me, but for this Soldier, it is time to move on.
I’m working very hard on a home made Christmas. I have to be even more strict about it this year because my income has dropped so dramatically. I’m also scouring Freecycle, and hopefully putting to good use what I learned last year in my first attempt at a Freecycle Christmas.
I’m trying to get more involved in community activities and I’m doing a lot of interviews for doula work. I expect to be certified within the next six months. I’m moving forward with my midwifery training, and feeling really good about the present.
I look forward to sharing all of this with you again!
This company and this state that just don’t have their priorities straight.
An Ohio woman was fired for taking unauthorized breaks for pumping breast milk. She sued, stating that the firing was sexual discrimination. Here’s a story on the matter.
While the Ohio supreme court ruled against her, it was a close call. One judge, Justice Paul E. Pfeifer, disagreed with the ruling, and wrote “The appellate court does not explain why Allen’s trips to the restroom outside scheduled break times were different from the restroom trips other employees made outside scheduled break times. There is no evidence in the record about any limit on the length of unscheduled restroom breaks and no evidence that employees had to seek permission from a supervisor to take an unscheduled restroom break. There is evidence only that unscheduled bathroom breaks were allowed and that LaNisa Allen was fired for taking them. What made her breaks different?”
I agree. A milk pumping break is no different than a bathroom break.
Here in Colorado, we have a law that requires any employer of more than two employees to provide reasonable break time for nursing mothers to pump breast milk, as well as a private place to do it that isn’t a bathroom stall. We have enacted this law because it is best for public health and workplace efficiency. Mothers who nurse their children miss less work because their children do not get sick as often. The mothers also get sick less often, they are less likely to suffer from post partum depression and some studies suggest that nursing reduces your chances of developing breast cancer. Children who are nursed, in addition to getting sick less often, are less likely to become obese, develop allergies, get cavaties, are less picky eaters (and therefore more likely to eat healthy as adults). Breastmilk is also cheaper than formula, which frees up mothers to spend money on more important things, such as better health care, healthier foods, better education for her child, etc.
Mothers who nurse and children who drink breast milk are healthier. This equals less work missed by the mother, less school missed by the child later in life, and less of a burden on our health care system. Both mother and child are able to be more productive members of society and more productive workers in the long run. Encouraging mothers to nurse creates better citizens and making it easier for them to continue nursing after going back to work makes their lives and jobs happier and easier, meaning they will be more productive.
It is in our nations best interest to encourage mothers to nurse and to do what it takes to make it easy for them. Apparently the State of Ohio and the company this woman worked for (Isotoner) were too short sighted to see that.
Many mother’s groups are calling for a boycott of Isotoner and I agree. I don’t buy their products anyhow, but I certainly never will now.
Here are my birthday wishes for today, my 26th birthday.
- I wish everyone in this country had access to top quality health care. Health care that includes as many holistic options as conventional ones.
- I wish single mothers got paid as much as married mothers. I wish mothers got paid as much as single women. And I wish all women got paid as much as men.
- I wish parents who abandoned their children would be held accountable for their actions, and that conservative talking heads would stop spouting cruelty about the parents who actually do stick around.
- I wish every consenting adult is able to make a legal commitment binding them in love to any other consenting adult.
- I wish the government would stop subsidizing junk food.
- I wish the whole world would go see Food Inc. and The Business of Being Born.
- I wish you would become a fan of Rock Your Birth Doula Services on Facebook.
- I wish all single moms, and especially all single pregnant women, would read Mari Gallion’s book, The Single Woman’s Guide to a Happy Pregnancy.
- I wish that President Obama would actually do something worth getting the Republicans this angry.
- I wish people would start voting for third parties.
- I wish world governments would take the 350 goals seriously.
- I wish Whole Foods hadn’t bought out Wild Oats, and Wild Oats hadn’t bought out Alfalfa’s.
- I wish Placebo hadn’t cancelled their American tour.
- I wish this country and culture would make ease of breast feeding for all women a top priority.
- I wish the United States had a maternity leave policy like Canada does. One year off at 60% of your pay, plus one optional year off, unpaid.
- I wish mothering were recognized as the full time job that it is.
- I wish men would stop lying about how tall they are.
- I wish companies built consumer goods to last, instead of to break, become obsolete, or go out of style within a year or two (or less!).
- I wish we’d get serious about alternative fuel and energy resources.
- I wish CAFOs would go away.
- I wish we would crack down on companies who hire illegal immigrants, instead of cracking down on the illegal immigrants individually. Companies who hire illegal immigrants usually do it so that they can commit grievous human rights violations without fear of penalty.
- I wish we focused more on Fair Trade and less on NAFTA.
- I wish all chemicals had to be tested for safety before they are put on the market in consumer goods.
- I wish drug companies weren’t allowed to advertise to the general public.
- I wish there were an ocean in Colorado, and also a place where avocados, bananas and citrus fruit would grow, then I would have no problem going to an entirely local diet.
- I wish I could speed read.
- I wish that I will be able to send Elijah to schools that don’t focus on standardized tests, especially not in Kindergarten. On that note, I wish every parent in America would read Crisis in the Kindergarten.
- I wish I was a size 10 again.
- I wish my mouse would stop doing the weird stuff its doing.
Now I’m going to go make some potato soup for my birthday meal. Yum.
Today marks the end of my first week of unemployment, or, as I prefer to think of it, my first week as a stay at home mom. Its different than I thought it would be. I really need to get into the swing of things.
I was going to go to the zoo with a friend of mine today, but I am just exhausted, I’m hoping we can reschedule for next Friday. I don’t know why I should be so tired, considering I’ve been home all week … except for all the running to meet potential doula clients and go to job fairs and get groceries and drop a disc off at Buckley I forgot to leave there and waiting on hold with unemployment for literally four hours. Ugh. I just want one day to do nothing. Is that so much to ask?
But I probably won’t do nothing. I’ll probably pick up around the house, maybe vacuum, maybe mop, maybe scrub a few toilets. And I really need to take my giant zucchinis and make some zucchini bread. And I’d like to peel Elijah away from the TV long enough to go for a walk to the bank, and I have laundry to do, and dinner to plan, and …
How did this stuff ever get done when I was working? Actually, judging by the size of the laundry pile I’ve been working through, it didn’t. And we didn’t eat many home cooked meals, and we rarely ate before 7 pm, because that’s how long it took us to get home from work and get the kitchen cleaned enough to cook in and then make dinner. Ugh.
So, although I already knew all this, I feel that this week has allowed me to really appreciate this article I found today, Parenting … a Radical, Political Act. I thought you guys might enjoy this.
Total Money Makeover is, hands down, the best personal finance book I’ve ever read.
To be fair, its the only personal finance book I’ve ever read.
I’m not good with money. Never have been. I’ve got substantial debt for a person who’s only ever owned two credit cards (one of them, I didn’t even understand I was applying for a credit card when I got it!). My credit score is on the lower end of so-so. For years I’ve been wanting to pay off my debt, but I just haven’t had the motivation to do the things necessary to do so.
Having a baby complicated the matter further. Single mothers aren’t known to be living in the lap of luxury. Nearly half my paycheck goes to child care. Throw diapers, food, clothes, and all the other little expenses that kids cost on there, and I don’t know how anyone who makes less than I do can afford to have children. I’m not paying for fancy stuff (except the diapers, I do buy Seventh Generation) either.
That’s why I think every single mom should read this book, especially if you don’t already have good financial habits. Dave takes you through everything you need to write up a budget, stick to it, save up an emergency fund, pay down debt, and then start investing. He advocates living entirely on cash. No financing anything ever again! I don’t know if I’m 100% behind that. Things like student loans can be a godsend, and I don’t think its the end of the world to get a mortgage to buy a home. But other than that, I’m totally with him. I will certainly never finance a car again!
Dave’s tone is a little harsh, but I find that motivating, personally. Since listening to his book, whenever I go to buy something I hear his voice in my head asking if I really need that. Would I rather have that, or a debt paid off? Would I rather have that, or be able to quit working full time one day because I have no bills to pay?
His tips are simple, practical, and within reach, I think, of every single mom out there. His faith obviously plays a big role in his life and comes through in his book, but if you take the Bible quotes the same way you would take a fable with a moral from some other culture, I think even atheists can get a lot out of this book.
I definitely recommend this one on audio, because he is a riot to listen to. The same material might be pretty boring on paper.
I just want to start this out by saying that I don’t think being a single parent means that your child is going to grow up to be a criminal. I think that the children of single parents, given that everything else in their lives is the same as children in dual parent households, are just as likely to become criminals as any other child.
I think we’ve all heard people (particularly people of certain political bents) talk about how being a child of a single mother is the #1 indicator of whether or not a child is going to grow up to be a criminal, or a drug addict, or another single parent, etc. On the surface, the statistics sort of lean that way, so I can see why people might come to that conclusion. But statistics are notoriously inaccurate, and can be made to say anything.
If we were to conduct a scientific study to determine whether or not those statistics do represent the truth, we would need to observe from conception to adulthood, a large number of children who were all EXACTLY the same (in economic status, education access, education level of the parents, the parenting style of their parents, work habits of the parents, number of siblings, number of aunts/uncles/grandparents/cousins, how far extended family is from them, type of community grown up in, dietary preferences, cultural histories, etc) in every way, except half of them would come from single parent homes, and half of them would come from dual parent homes. We would need to observe them from conception to adulthood to make sure all variables stay the same, and see how many of the children from each group became criminals. We would need them to be the same in every other way so we can isolate the status of their parent’s marriage as the only possible contributing factor towards whether or not these children become criminals (that’s called a control).
Obviously, this could never be done. You’d be hard pressed to find four kids who could fit this description, let alone the thousands it would take to get an accurate scientific conclusion. So to start with, we have to take any kind of interpretation of the statistics with a grain of salt. How many other factors could contribute to the children becoming criminals? There are no controls in those studies.
But lets for a minute, pretend they are true. Pretend in some magical universe we were actually able to scientifically prove that being the child of a single parent makes you more likely to grow up to be a criminal.
What in God’s name would make anyone think that this is the single mother’s fault?
These people go on and on about how important it is to have two parents. So why isn’t it the dead beat dad’s fault that the child grows up to be the criminal? Why are we placing blame on the one parent who actually sticks around and lives up to their responsibility? If both are so important, don’t both bear at least equal responsibility?
If dads are so important, then isn’t it their fault if the children grow up to be criminals in their absence? I mean, its at least as much their fault as it is the mothers, right? So why does all their blame fall on the single mother?
Single mothers are bad parents?
Dads who abandon their children bear no responsibility for any negative outcomes abandonment produces?
Now, there are lots of different kinds of single mothers. The Anne Coulters of this world seem to have it out for single mothers by choice. Women who, for a variety of reasons, choose to have children outside of marriage. Of course, only single mothers who willfully deny a father to their children are bad, right? The Anne Coulters of this world do not seem to take into account us mothers who did not want to be single mothers, but are doing the best we can to raise our children on our own, because the men who sired them refused to take responsibility. Single mothers NOT by choice far outnumber single mothers by choice, and we did not push our childrens’ fathers out, they abandoned us. They abandoned their children.
The Anne Coulters of the world over look the fact that the children of single mothers by choice are much less likely, according to the statistics, to grow up to be criminals. Single mothers by choice are more likely to be financially stable, well educated and healthy, they planned their pregnancies and had preparation opportunities that unplanned pregnancies don’t have, among a variety of other factors that very likely play a significant role in whether or not a child grows up to be a criminal.
So if the majority of single mothers who are “creating” the statistic that these people deplore are not single mothers because they want to be, but rather because the men they were with ran away and refused to take responsibility, isn’t it the dead-beat-dad’s fault that these children are growing up to be criminals (or whatever) and not the moms fault? Isn’t it the fault of the person who ran away? The person who created the single parent household?
Anne Coulter recently wrote a book with a chapter titled, “Victim of a Crime? Thank a single mother”. She is entitled to her unscientific review of the statistics, I suppose. But I don’t understand why she wouldn’t title the chapter “Victim of a Crime? Thank a dead-beat-dad”. Why is it the mother’s fault that these children grow up to be criminals? Why isn’t it the dad who ran away’s fault? What Anne is basically saying here is that an absent father does more good raising a child than a present mother does. That a mother alone is a danger to a child, and only the presence of a father can undo that danger. But the absence of a father is not a big deal, as long as the child isn’t left with a mother.
If this is the case, perhaps then the Anne Coulters of the world should support gay adoption. Surely two fathers are even better than a father and a mother! Of course, I suppose they would be REALLY against lesbian adoption. Two mothers must be even worse than one single mother!
Its just ridiculous. These people are just spiteful and sexist. I would have a lot more respect for their views (even though I disagree with them) if they would hold all parties equally responsible.
This society does not hold men responsible for parenting (as the “single moms are responsible for violent crime” hypothesis proves), and yet bemoans men’s lack of parental rights. I have said it a million times, rights exist only in conjunction with responsibility. When men have equal responsibility, they will get equal rights.
Theres a new president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and he is making post partum depression his main focus.
I suffered from a bit of PPD after Elijah was born. I didn’t find out the gender ahead of time, and I wasn’t prepared for how disappointed I was when I didn’t have a girl. The disappointment wasn’t really the bad part, it was the guilt. I felt so guilty that I could think, even for a second, that I would have rather had another baby. A little girl.
There were probably other factors that contributed to my sadness after he was born. Of course being a single mother is hard. And going back to work was very hard on me as well. Thank God for my supportive family, without them, things might have gotten very bad for me.
I saw a therapist for a while, and it helped. I also supplemented with essential fatty acids and 5HTP. Do you have any experience with PPD?
Yeah, I’m not on the list. Nor do I deserve to be, I don’t keep up with this blog enough. But I thought I’d share the list with you, because I think its a great one. I’ll be adding these blogs to my regular reading.
Who’s Who of Single Parents on the Web
Check it out!
