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Ms. Coyote, your mother sounds like she was the kind of Christian friends I have admired, in my life, Amish and Seventh day Adventists. They seemed to be teaching me what they believed in by using their lives as examples.
My late father in law, Mac Harrington lived the same way. He could sometimes be difficult and forceful. But he too too…
Ms. Coyote, your mother sounds like she was the kind of Christian friends I have admired, in my life, Amish and Seventh day Adventists. They seemed to be teaching me what they believed in by using their lives as examples.
My late father in law, Mac Harrington lived the same way. He could sometimes be difficult and forceful. But he too took into his farmhouse wandering poor people during the Great Depression. He gave them food, shelter from brutal Michigan winters, minimal pay, and the dignity of useful work, plus a good recommendation when they left. These people were Native American, Hispanic, Black, White or a combination of ethnicities. Mac didn't choose. Mac didn't care. One of those wanderers, a native Ojibway, George Le Galt, stayed for the rest of his life. My wife and I called him Uncle Georgie.
Mac was an Atheist.
The Great Depression was an extraordinary test of the character of America, and it seems many passed! In San Francisco, my grandfather was a "high steel" man with work on the Golden Gate Bridge. He left crab traps out to pick up after work, but also had a cow, a goat, and chickens on a mini-farm at the crest of "Diamond Heights" next door to Twin Peaks. My mother told me how they helped neighbors and strays, and darn if there wasn't a mysterious "Uncle ------?" who lived with them after being injured working on the Bridge!
Thank you, Gerald, for your thoughtful reply. While under the influence of Southern Baptism, my mother could be physically abusive and emotionally cruel. She had been taught that children are evil and need to be whipped into godliness, though SHE was never whipped, by her own admission. There were many complicated factors involved and it has taken a lifetime for me to end my anger and find compassion, which is all I feel now. She had a hard, frightening life with little support. The scars remain, but the anger and blaming do not. But the anger I will always feel towards the Southern Baptist hierarchy is deep and righteous.
Ms. Coyote, Child rearing is a difficult process indeed. I have an old friend who once told me her son was "willful" and she was having a hard time "breaking his will." I was flabbergasted. Needless to say, as soon as her son graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in civil engineering [ he was always a smart, imaginative kid] he moved 2000 miles away to Denver and they rarely see each other. She suggested to him that she would like to buy a second home in Denver so she could be closer to him. He shot that down immediately. She is concerned because he has no wife and no children, only girl friends.
My friend is a deeply religious Christian. In every way she is a good and honest, kind-hearted person, a talented social worker. Her religion insists that the will of Man must be subordinated to the will of her Christian god.
As an Atheist, it never occurred to me that my childrens' will should be broken. I never raised my hand to them. Never tried to push them into anything. I always hoped the example of the lives of their mother and I would suffice. I think it worked. My daughter, a married mother and practicing attorney, lives four blocks from me. My son a medical researcher lives five miles away with his occasional beautiful lady friend and his large, handsome dog. I am lucky. I made out fine. So have my kids.
You are a good dad! No child needs to be hit. I remember a phone call when my mother insisted I "break my daughter's will" after she acted out some childhood issue (non-violent and harmed only herself.) I was so aghast I just held the receiver to my ear, unable to respond. Everything came into sharp focus at that moment. The one thing fundamentalists and people in prison have in common is that, in the vast majority of cases, both were whipped as children.
My kids have lived near me the whole of their lives. My daughter just accepted a position to grow within her company that does require relocation. She's a great mom, but her 16-year old son doesn't want to move. So he's living with me for now. It's no big deal to us; we're a clan, not an isolated nuclear family.
Ms. Coyote, all the Anthropological evidence seems to indicate that the extended family is more beneficial to children than the isolated nuclear family. It sounds as though you have spontaneous, gut level understanding of this truth.