« Tui Ecovillage | HomePage | Escape »
03/01/2006
Abandoned Mothers
Under the general heading of 'It takes a village to raise a child' and from the ever-sane (populated mostly by women) continuum concept list comes the term 'abandoned mothers' to describe what I used to call a solo-mother.
A child should be raised by their entire tribe. A mother without a tribe must therefore be an abandoned mother.
Today I feel like an abandoned father as Karen is sick and I've been on-deck all day - proving once again that the nuclear family is only sometimes marginally better than solo-parenting. Clearly one difficult day doesn't mean I really know what it is like to solo-parent but it does mean that I'm no longer judgemental when I see parent's losing their rag with their kids. That would be hypocritical. How people do this all day, every day is beyond me. By rights our society should have completely imploded by now.
08:57 Posted in Modern Life Is Rubbish | Permalink
Comments
Especially if one or both parents are forced to spend long hours at a "job", I think that nuclear families can easily be considered "abandoned parents." What a waste it is to have our elder's locked up in nursing homes or 1000's of miles away, when there is usually nothing they love better than watching children play (and playing with them, telling stories, etc). It would also make it easier to cook dinner (my daughter gets frustrated because she can't see what you are doing way up there on top the counter, so she hangs onto my legs and cries, and cooking with one arm is difficult at best). The problem with building a new community is (I think you mentioned this) that most older people are really set in their ways and wouldn't consider it, so the younger people will probably have to fulfill many of the functions usually occupied by the elders. Still, even an imperfect community is better than this insane isolation.
Posted by: limukala | 03/01/2006
I think of the nuclear family situation as tag-team solo parenting.
Posted by: sara | 03/24/2006
Post a comment
Sorry Blogspirit insists on an email address before posting but doesn't seem to do anything with it. Try writing fake@fake.com if you want