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!

Check it out!

Laughable as it might seem to intelligent people, there are actually some people out there who believe that a child is better off in a home with two parents than they are in a home with a single parent, even if one of the parents in the dual parent household is abusing the children.

A new study out proves this idea wrong (as if it needed proving in the first place).  This study suggests not only do the children of stable, single parents perform just as well as the children of stable, married parents, but children in a stable, single parent home tend to do better than in homes with unhappy marriages,  homes that go through a divorce, or even homes that go through a marriage (as if a single mother were to get married).  Things staying the same – stable – seems to be the key for raising emotionally and physically healthy kids.

The authors of this study go so far as to say that single parents may want to consider staying single for the welfare of their kids, as changing things by moving in with someone or getting married may cause instability that could harm your child’s emotional well being.

They also call out flaws in previous studies that suggest that dual parent homes are somehow better than single parent homes.

This study flies in the face of people who believe single parent homes are responsible for increased crime in this country, but don’t expect any of those people to change their views based on this study.  Personally, I think it is damn near impossible to ensure complete stability for your kids, whether you are married or single, but I do agree with the authors warning not to move in with someone or marry them unless you are sure it is going to last.  It is better for your kids that you are single and happy than if you are in a miserable marriage.

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.

The CDC is talking about making routine circumcision a recommended procedure for all newborn males in this country to prevent the spread of HIV, based on some studies done in Africa that seemed to conclude that circumcision may reduce the chances of contracting HIV in heterosexual males through sex.

The studies were done in Africa, where most men are un circumcised. Volunteers came in to participate in the studies, and men were given the choice whether or not they wanted to be circed, rather than randomly assigning, which makes the studies biased right there.

The studies were also flawed in that the study groups were too small to get an accurate conclusion and there were no controls, basically setting the study up to support the hypothesis. That is not science.

How does circumcision prevent the spread of HIV? That is a question that these studies have failed to answer because they have not been conducted scientifically. For all we know, the spread of HIV in these studies could have easily been less in circumcised men because the circumcised men were more hesitant to show their unusual looking penis, and therefore had less promiscuous sex. In fact, a look at these studies makes that seem very likely indeed. Until I can be given an explination as to how circumcision prevents the spread of HIV, I can’t believe these studies. They just don’t make sense.

Furthermore, even the CDC is quite clear on the fact that circumcision would have very little effect on AIDS rates here IF (and its a big if) the conclusions of these African studies are correct. Most AIDS transmissions in this country take place between gay males and drug users, these studies say nothing about circumcision protecting from transmission in these cases.

Even if we can conclude that these studies are correct, the alleged effectiveness rate of circumcision in preventing HIV is still WAY below the effectiveness of condoms, and leagues below limiting sexual parters. I see very little justification for making a recommendation for a surgical procedure that carries a long list of risks when there are more effective, cheaper, and less dangerous preventative measures out there.

We need more scientificly based studies to confirm this alleged link between circumcision and reduced HIV rates. Remember, only 15% (most of whom are Muslims) of the world’s male population is circumcised, so clearly there are large pockets of uncircumcised populations (say, Europe) where AIDS is not as big of a problem as it is here, where some 75% of men are circumcised. Those are some large numbers that suggest these studies may not be accurate enough to start suggesting routine circumcision.

I think its seriously flawed to start telling people that being circumcised is going to protect them from HIV. It has about the same effectiveness rate as the pull out method does in preventing the spread of HIV. I’d hate to see the country take this as an excuse to no longer use condoms. Circumcised men contract and pass on HIV every day!

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.

One day there was no internet at work, so there was nothing much for the people in our office to do.  Somehow, the topic of vegetarianism came up, and I said to one of the Sergeants in our office that I understood the draw of vegetarianism.

“What is it?” He asked, skeptical.

“Its healthier, it has a lower carbon footprint, its cheaper,” I replied, but he cut me off.

“Lower carbon foot print?” he scoffed.

“Yeah,” I replied, preparing myself to explain to him why it was better for the environment than meat eating.  But that wasn’t where his next line of questions were leading.

“So, do you have a problem with motorcycles?” he asked.

I was a little confused by the question.  “No.  Why would I?”

“Because motorcycles are the most polluting vehicles on the road,” he said, explaining that motorcycles do not have the same efficiency standards as cars, and adding some things about the motorcycle engine I did not understand.  I was a little surprised, I had always assumed motorcycles had less emissions than cars, because their fuel efficiency is so much better than cars (I’m still going to have to look up his claim, because I want to know this fact for sure), but I still didn’t understand what that would have to do with the carbon footprint of a vegetarian lifestyle.

I questioned him further.  He gave me a slew of ideas.  That giving up meat made no difference if people are still doing things like riding motorcycles.  That lots of things, like motorcycles, should be more important to people than their food (I corrected him on that one, the livestock industry puts more greenhouse gasses into our environment than motorcycles do, it puts more into the atmosphere than all vehicles do!).  That one person wouldn’t make a difference just by changing their diet.  What it all came down to was this; going vegetarian isn’t going to fix everything, it may not even be the biggest impact you can make, so why bother?

I tried comparing it to going on a diet.  When you go on a diet, you evaluate the foods you eat and decide where you can and where you want to make changes.  You may be able to give up drinking sodas with each meal, but you can’t give up your morning coffee.  Maybe you’re willing to go exercise every morning in order to have a few hundred more calories to eat each day.

He said that was just jumping on the “green” bandwagon and doing as little as possible to be trendy.

So then I explained to him that people who give up meat because of environmental reasons usually do lots of other things to be environmentally friendly too.  At that point, I think he was done with the conversation.

I wish I could have gotten across to him that people can’t be expected to do everything, and the environmental movement doesn’t expect that of people either.  Everyone’s got different lifestyles and different needs as a result.  It would be unreasonable to expect a person in an apartment in the heart of a city to be able to grow most of their own food.  It is unreasonable to expect someone with an hour long commute and a kid to drop off at daycare, like me, to take the bus to work in a city with so-so public transportation.  It is unreasonable to expect a single mother living off of minimum wage and WIC to buy everything organic.  The environmentalist movement doesn’t expect it all from us.  It gives us a series of suggestions, and hopes that we’ll do the things that work best for us, as many of them as we can.

Environmentalism understands that people are not black and white, and doesn’t expect that we should be able to do it all or do nothing at all.  Perhaps what keeps people like the Sergeant in my office from considering the environmental movement is the impression he has that environmentalism requires everything from us.  It does not.

Now of course I understand that as a culture, we’re going to have to make some drastic changes pretty quickly here, but we’re never going to get the people like the Sergeant in my office to make a big leap if they can’t even understand the little leaps.  I’m all about showing people options.  Eating meat, for this guy, is something he could never, ever give up.  Okay, fine, what else can he do?  Well, he could start by eating locally sourced meat.  Meat that wasn’t shipped here from across the country.  That would lower his carbon foot print quite a bit.  He could switch to only organic, free range and grass fed meats.  Not only would that lower the carbon footprint of his diet, but it would mean he’d be eating healthier, tastier meat as well.  Maybe he can’t find local meat, and can’t afford organic meat, maybe then he should just try to eat less meat.  Maybe to one meat free meal a day, or one meat free day a week.  There are lots of options for lowering the carbon footprint of your meat consumption, and no one’s saying he has to be perfect all the time.

Even if he finds none of this fits his needs, that doesn’t mean he can’t do other things to lower his impact.  Its not like if his diet isn’t perfect, he can’t use CFLs, or drive a fuel efficient vehicle.

People aren’t black and white, and the environmentalism movement isn’t all or nothing.  The more people doing little things, the bigger the impact becomes.

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.