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A couple of weeks ago, I posted a diary called BOOK LEARNING in the Electronic Age http://www.dailykos.com/... which was mainly about L. R. Knost’s philosophy of "Gentle Parenting." At that time, I had only read some quotes and online material she had written. Since then, I’ve read her book, Two Thousand Kisses a Day: Gentle Parenting Through the Ages and Stages.
While I’ve continued to find much of her philosophy makes excellent sense, her ideas for its practical application seem best suited to families where there's a husband who's the bread-winner while the wife stays home and raises the children — a 1950s model of family life which hasn’t been the norm in America for some time.
This model is sometimes touted as “the way things have always been,” but it's mostly a by-product of the 19th Century Industrial Revolution, when masses of people moved from rural lives into cities. Most work was divided by gender on farms and in small towns, but there was communal work families did together. Living in the city, the men seldom saw their families during daylight — they went off to work 12 to 14 hours a day, six days a week.
Many families today need more than one income to support children and have a home, so moms earning paychecks are more common than stay-at-home moms. Only 29 percent of mothers with children younger than 18 — about 10.4 million women — stayed at home in 2012.
So 71% of American mothers with children under 18 are going out to work. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, out of about 12 million single parent families in 2014, more than 80% were headed by single mothers.
Knost makes us think about how we can change our communication with others to get better results when she gives us ideas like this: Turn your “no’s” into “yes’s”! – In any home, like in any civilized society, boundaries are necessary for everyone’s safety and comfort. With gentle parenting, setting limits focuses on connection and empathetic communication rather than control and punitive consequences…..Instead of “No, you can’t have ice cream until after dinner,” try “I know you love ice cream. I do too! We’re getting ready to eat right now, but what flavor would you like after dinner?” This invites cooperation instead of triggering opposition, another hallmark of gentle parenting.
But even here, she presumes that mom has a freezer, and can afford to buy more than one flavor of ice cream at a time. For low-income families, these "basics" may be out-of-reach luxuries.
L. R. Knost: [A new mother] gets her precious baby home and settles in for her twelve week ‘babymoon’ before she has to return to work because that’s all the time her work allows.
Claire Suddath for Bloomberg Business: The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) grants up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave every year, but it applies only to full-time workers at companies with 50 or more employees. About half of all working Americans are covered by FMLA. The other half—freelancers, contract workers, entrepreneurs, people who work at small businesses—are on their own. Paid leave is even rarer: Only 12 percent of American workers have access to it in the U.S., according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (note: momsrising says it's now 13%.)
Even if a woman is covered by FMLA, how many families can afford to lose 12 weeks of her pay, especially if it's their only income?
Another cornerstone of Knost’s Gentle Parenting is “Babywearing,” which makes a lot of sense to me – Jane Goodall made the case in the 1960s when she “wore” her son while continuing her work with chimpanzees in Tanzania. But most companies don’t provide any childcare facilities, or allow employees to bring their babies to work.
It is certainly not L. R. Knost's fault that our society is so far behind other industrialized nations in meeting the real needs of families, women and children, but she too often seems to be living in a "Happy Days" bubble.
In Chapter 15, "Bucket List for a Happy Childhood," her Christian bias really shows. Out of 200 "ways to pack our children's precious and all-too-brief moments of childhood with happiness," eight deal with religion. "Tell them about God," is the only one that isn't explicitly and solely Christian. The other seven are about attending Easter services or a Passion play, making Christmas cards or paper chains for the Christmas tree, having a birthday party for Jesus before opening Christmas presents, and sending blessing bags to our troops (the first thing I saw under "blessing bags" on Google was "15 things you can send a soldier for Christmas.") For homeschooled kids, does that mean growing up with no knowledge of any religion other than the faith of their parents?
Two Thousand Kisses a Day is only 105 pages long, including two pages of References, so it’s a beginner's guide to the Gentle Parenting philosophy. Almost half the book is about infant care. As a homeschooler, Knost says nothing about helping a child (or a parent!) adjust to Preschool or Kindergarten, or to starting Elementary School. Since she and her children spend so much time together, there’s little “separation anxiety.”
The Red Hat
by Rachel Hadas
It started before Christmas. Now our son
officially walks to school alone.
Semi-alone, it’s accurate to say:
I or his father track on the way.
He walks up on the east side of West End,
we walk on the west side. Glances can extend
(and do) across the street; not eye contact.
Already ties are feelings and not fact.
Straus Park is where these parallel paths part;
he goes alone from there. The watcher’s heart
stretches, elastic in its love and fear,
toward him as we see him disappear,
striding briskly. Where two weeks ago,
holding a hand, he’d dawdle, dreamy, slow,
he now is hustled forward by the pull
of something far more powerful than school.
The mornings we turn back to are no more
than forty minutes longer than before,
but they feel vastly different-flimsy, strange,
wavering in the eddies of this change,
empty, unanchored, perilously light
since the red hat vanished from our sight.
So for me, what's most valuable about "Gentle Parenting" remains these thoughts which inspired my first post:
“It's not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world. It's our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless.”
“Some say they get lost in books, but I find myself, again and again, in the pages of a good book. Humanly speaking, there is no greater teacher, no greater therapist, no greater healer of the soul, than a well-stocked library.”
“Fairy tales in childhood are stepping stones throughout life, leading the way through trouble and trial. The value of fairy tales lies not in a brief literary escape from reality, but in the gift of hope that goodness truly is more powerful than evil and that even the darkest reality can lead to a Happily Ever After. Do not take that gift of hope lightly. It has the power to conquer despair in the midst of sorrow, to light the darkness in the valleys of life, to whisper “One more time” in the face of failure. Hope is what gives life to dreams, making the fairy tale the reality.”
“Humans were created to be relational beings. We may outgrow our dependency, but we never outgrow the need for community, interaction, appreciation, reassurance, and support.”
“When you're lying in bed at night and regrets from the day come to steal your sleep...
"I should have"
"If only I'd"
"I wish I'd"
...grab one of them and turn it into an "I will" and sleep peacefully knowing tomorrow will be a better day.”
“No matter the problem, kindness is always the right response.”
For these ideas,
I’m very glad to have “met” L. R. Knost,
even though I want to poke holes in her bubble!
FMLA - Maternity Leave
http://www.bloomberg.com/...
Jane Goodall
http://www.biography.com/...
Mothers working outside the home
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Single mother statistics
https://singlemotherguide.com/...
The Red Hat, poem by Rachel Hadas, from Halfway Down the Hall
Wesleyan University Press, published by University Press of New England
©1998 by Rachel Hadas – ISBN: 978-0-98195-2251-1 (Pbk)
https://books.google.com/...