Will opposite-sex civil unions spell the end of traditional marriage?

Will opposite-sex civil unions spell the end of traditional marriage? - While it’s true that marriage is in serious trouble in the United States, it’s not because of the gay and lesbian couples seeking to achieve it. If my own research telegraphs future marriage trends, the real peril may come from an increasing number of straight folks who have had their fill of traditional marriage. Instead of fretting about how gay couples are redefining marriage, maybe we should start talking about why straight couples are rejecting it.

At least that’s the conclusion I’m reaching in considering the fallout from Illinois’ first-in-the-nation experiment with civil unions for opposite-sex couples, which went into effect June 1 of last year. When asked during a long Skype interview why she and her partner, Justin Gates, chose to enter a civil union rather than marry, Leah Whitesel, who identifies as queer despite her current relationship, framed the question this way: “Gay marriage doesn’t seem like the right discussion to me. Because it should be: ‘What is this institution of marriage and does it still need to be defined the way it has been?’ ” For Whitesel and Gates, the answer is no.

Many of the other straight civil union pioneers have also said no to marriage—for themselves and as an institution. The evidence is in a report that the Cook County Clerk’s Office recently issued on the nation’s first opposite-sex couples who civilly united. It found dissatisfaction with the institution of marriage because of concerns with its historical assignment of roles, its connection to religion, and its unfairness to gay and lesbian couples. My own interviews with some of these same couples, who have rejected marriage and plunged into the shallower, murkier pool of the civil union, reflect a cohort prepared to take the wrecking ball to marriage itself.

Are straight couples destroying traditional marriage? Photograph by Andranik Makaryan/Hemera.

To be sure, the numbers of people entering opposite-sex civil unions in Illinois still represents a very small share of the total. As of Dec. 29, 2011, only 148 of the 1,993 civil union licenses had gone to opposite-sex couples. That’s not surprising, because—as is the case in the other states that have recognized civil unions—the Illinois measure was primarily intended to grant same-sex couples the benefits of marriage without the name. The law can’t achieve equality for them, so there’s very little about these clever creatures of compromise to attract opposite-sex couples. Civil unions aren’t recognized on the federal level, and hardly anyone understands what they are in the first place. For many same-sex couples, a civil-union law is much better than nothing. The expectation was that for opposite-sex couples, it would still be worse than the alternative. That’s why most states haven’t bothered extending the option to straight couples. And why it’s striking that some straight couples in Illinois have nevertheless opted in.

Those 148 couples might portend something big. The clerk’s office was able to survey one partner from more than half (46 of 87) of the opposite-sex couples who had civilly united as of Sept. 19. And their reasons for entering into civil unions rather than marriage should worry marriage traditionalists. For instance, by more than three-to-one, respondents cited “personal or religious convictions against marriage” as a reason for choosing the civil union. And when asked an open-ended question—“Why did you decide to obtain a civil union instead of getting married?” the most frequently proffered response fell into the political/ideological category. The report provides a few specifics behind that political objection to marriage, including statements of “solidarity with the gay community and/or support of equality, fairness, and inclusiveness.” Some respondents cited commitment/label issues, which included those who did not want a “husband” or a “wife,” or even the “marriage” label itself. And 9 percent of respondents cited religious issues. (Even though religion need not be a part of a marriage ceremony, for many the two are inextricably linked).

Almost half the respondents’ objections are loosely about their perceived objections to the institution of marriage. And only four of the 46 admitted choosing civil union status in order to preserve social security or other benefits from a previous spouse that would be lost through remarriage—but not through entering into a civil union, which isn’t federally recognized.

My own interviews were even more revealing. The couples who agreed to chat had clearly spent some time thinking about the meaning of marriage, and decided they wanted nothing to do with it. In most other ways they were fairly mainstream—even Whitesel, 32, the most politically radical of the group, isn’t exactly throwing fireballs. A non-practicing lawyer, she teaches high school civics. Gates, 30, is a computer guy and comes from what he described as a conservative religious background. The civil union status, he said, “keeps me from falling into any preconditioned behavior that I might have picked up. Calling [Leah] my partner, not my wife, helps me not to have any assumptions” or buy into traditional patterns.

Both supported the rights of gays and lesbians to marry, and their civil union was meant to express solidarity with their friends who can’t.

Toward the end of the conversation, Whitesel revealed that she’s pregnant. The same revelation came during my discussion with Alex Rifman, 32, and Jennifer Tweeton, 35. Rifman is an engineer with AT&T, who was born in Moscow and emigrated with his family to the U.S. at age 9. Tweeton, like Whitesel, has a law degree and works for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The couple is raising the 15-year-old son of Tweeton’s from an early marriage.

Their civil union ceremony, Tweeton said, “taught everyone there something” about the law, and the couple see themselves as involved in a teaching mission in other ways, too: “I feel like we don’t value the families that choose to be families without being married. The civil union was a way to honor that … a way to demonstrate to others” that these other family structures deserve respect, too. And Rifman, like Whitesel and Gates, thought that the civil union choice expressed solidarity with his gay and lesbian friends: “Until marriage is an option for everyone, it shouldn’t be an option for us.”

Pioneer status has its costs, though; costs familiar to many same-sex couples, who will see their own experiences reflected in the stories these couples tell. Tweeton said that her family, traditional Lutherans, didn’t see her union as “real”; they don’t treat it like a marriage. And no one’s yet mustered the courage to come out about the civil union to Tweeton’s grandmother, who’s 100 years old and “very conservative.” Even the clerk who processed their application tried to dissuade them, urging that they “should just get married,” and reminding them that “the license cost was the same.” She also insisted that Alex, as the male, be “Partner A,” even though nothing in the civil union license form contains any such requirement.

Jeff Moyers, 44, and Melissa Mizwa, 32, had a similar experience with the judge who performed the ceremony. (“Wait a minute. A civil union? This can’t be right.”) Jeff, who described himself as “the world’s worst wine salesman,” said he objected to what he perceived as the built-in religious aspect of marriage, but added, that “if push came to shove, solidarity with gays is the biggest reason” for his choosing civil union status.

Civil unions, once seen as a way station between nonrecognition of gay and lesbian relationships and full marriage equality, may turn out to be more interesting than their origin in compromise might have predicted. In the case of same-sex couples, civil unions end up underscoring the point that committed gay and lesbian relationships are less than straight ones. As the Massachusetts Supreme Court stated in a 2004 opinion, calling gay and lesbian unions civil unions rather than marriage is a “considered choice of language that reflects a demonstrable assigning of same-sex, largely homosexual, couples to second-class status.”

And now opposite-sex couples in Illinois (and soon Hawaii, where a similar law went into effect on Sunday) who choose civil union are furthering the project of marriage deconstruction. For now, their numbers will probably remain small. But their impact could be much greater, by expanding the already lively national conversation about what marriage really means and whether it’s something we need to be fighting to preserve. ( slate.com )

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Who does a child need more, mother or father?

Who does a child need more, mother or father? - The unanimous answer would be “both,” since the mother and the father have different influences on the child and both are essential to the overall emotional growth.

However, there are single women who do not wish to have a husband but wish to have children and are confident they can raise a child all by themselves. One of the popular methods of achieving this is the IVF or in vitro fertilization; wherein the ova (egg cells) are removed from the woman’s ovary and then fertilized with sperm, in a fluid. Once they are fertilized, the zygote (fertilized egg) is transferred to the woman’s uterus, and this establishes a pregnancy.

There are several sperm banks, where the sperm from volunteers is frozen and stored. There is no length of time that the sperm can be stored and people have even conceived from sperm frozen for more than 20 years.

This sperm supplied by the sperm banks is being increasingly used by women without a male partner and even by single or coupled lesbians. Until now, sperm banks had to abide by supportive parenting, before giving out the sperm, which means the sperm was not made available to most single women or lesbians.

The law makers were of the opinion that children without fathers are more likely to have behavioral problems, problems at school with drugs and drink.

However, in a recent landmark voting, MPs in UK voted that single women and lesbian couples be allowed to raise kids without dads. This vote was aimed at removing the requirement that fertility clinics need to consider a child’s need for a father. Although, the government was prepared for a defeat, it won the two votes with wide margins of 75 and 68.

This win is music to the ears of single women and lesbians who will be granted the right to raise kids by themselves. Sperm banks will no longer have to impose any restrictions on providing sperm to them, just because their children will not have a father or a male role model.

In case of lesbian couples, the new law will allow both partners to be recognized as parents when they conceive with the donor sperm or even when gay men use surrogacy. Currently, only the natural mother or father is considered a parent automatically when gay couples have fertility treatment.

This new law is not favored by all and many people believe it changes the whole concept of a traditional family setting. They say that it is like hammering a nail into the coffin of the traditional family and specifically the role of the father. Archbishop of York, John Sentamu said, “Is it not self-evident that the welfare and needs of a child are enhanced and met when there is a father present?”

The people who spoke on behalf of this law, said that this is not an issue in a country which, according to statistics, has almost three million children in single-parent heterosexual families and 91.2% of these families are headed by the mother. They also said that in reality, almost every lesbian couple who have children, work assiduously to ensure that there are male role models for their children, among the family members or good friends.

A poll was conducted last month, which revealed that while 32 percent of people were in favor of this proposal, 40 percent were against it. It is also interesting to note that this poll also shows that people aged 55 and over were strongly opposed while people in the age groups 18 to 34 were strongly in favor of reform. This should sum up the sentiments of people. ( dirjournal.com )

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How Angelina Jolie disciplines her kids

Angelina Jolie: How She'll Explain Her Wild Days to Her Kids - As a devoted humanitarian and UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, Angelina Jolie has made headlines traveling the world, bringing attention to global issues and providing aid to refugees, but she tells Anderson Cooper that her wild past that could be catching up with her soon.

“You were a little wilder when you were younger,” Anderson says to Angelina.

“I think we all thought that,” Angelina replied during an hour-long daytime exclusive interview.

During the intimate conversation, Jolie tells Anderson that she had concerns about being a mother. “I didn’t know even know if I’d ever be a mother, be a good mother... I was nervous.”

“You weren’t sure if you’d be a good mother?” asks Anderson.

“When I was younger I thought, oh god, I couldn't be somebody’s mother.”

Anderson asks the mother of six if she looks back on when she was younger and thinks to herself, “What was I doing?”

“I just know it’s going to come back at me very soon with my children.”

“Yeah, how will you explain when your kids are teenagers and you try to discipline them… and they’re like, ‘Uh... you used to wear blood around your neck.’”

Her response? “Yes I did.”

Anderson’s hour-long conversation with Angelina airs Monday, December 19, 2011. Jolie, who is joined by the cast of her new film “In the Land of Blood and Honey,” which she wrote and directed, discusses with Anderson why she was compelled to make a movie on such a heavy topic as the war in Bosnia. Angelina also explains how she balances her work life and humanitarian efforts with her home life and raising six kids.

“In the Land of Blood and Honey” is in select theaters beginning December 23rd, 2011. ( andersoncooper.com )

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How to help your kids with homework

You can help your child with homework without hovering or doing it for them

How to help your kids with homework -- The nagging, the battles, the lost papers -- do you dread school work as much as the kids do? Here's how to help them hit the books

Step 1: Ya gotta have a plan

Sit down with your kids and lay out expectations now, when the school year is starting, rather than waiting until problems arise. "Two or three goals is plenty, and you'll get better results if your child helps decide them," says Alexandra Mayzler, director of New York City-based Thinking Caps Tutoring and author of "Tutor in a Book: Better Grades as Easy as 1-2-3."

Ask: What were your child's stumbling blocks last year? Maybe homework time was running into bedtime, so agree on an earlier start time. Did your child resist reading? Work on ways to make it fun -- maybe set up a reading tent under your dining room table. Review your child's homework goals again in October, and perhaps once more in January, says Mayzler. Adjust your plan as you go, letting your child take as much ownership of the process as possible.

Step 2: Get in the groove

"All the research says the single best way to improve your child's homework performance -- and bring more peace to your home -- is to insist on a daily schedule or routine," says Ann Dolin, who is also the author of "Homework Made Simple: Tips, Tools, and Solutions for Stress-Free Homework." In some homes, that means doing it right after school; for others, it can mean waiting until after dinner if your child is the type who needs to expend some energy before he dives back into the books.

Dolin recommends giving all kids at least 30 minutes to have a snack and unwind, with one caveat: "That half-hour break really shouldn't involve anything with a screen -- television, e-mail, or video games -- or you may have trouble getting kids off," she adds.

Giving kids a half-hour break between after-school activities and homework is a smart idea, too. "Sports or after-school care isn't really a break. Kids need to let down a little at home before launching into homework," she says. If your child goes to a babysitter or aftercare program, make a deal that while he's there he'll work on one assignment -- something easy he can do even with distractions -- every day before he gets home so he has less work later.

The key is to be consistent about the routine. Take a few weeks before homework gets heavy to try different approaches and see what works best, then stick to it.

What about weekends? Everyone deserves a break on Fridays, of course. But pick a regular time during the weekend for homework. After some experimenting, D'nece Webster of Portland, Oregon, found that her son Alex, 7, is at his best on Sunday mornings. "He can finish in thirty minutes what might take him two hours on a weekend afternoon," says Webster.

Step 3: Know when to get your child extra help

If your kid is truly stuck on a homework assignment, don't make the common mistake of trying to reteach the information. Your goal is not to become your child's study buddy. Plus, your approach might be too different from the teacher's. "Imagine being a kid learning long division for the first time. You don't understand what your teacher is saying, and your parents teach you another method. When you get back to school, you're bound to be even more confused," says mom and former teacher Laura Laing of Baltimore.

Instead, send an e-mail or note to the teacher asking her to please explain the material to your child again. If your child is a fourth-grader or older, have him write the note or talk to the teacher. It's important that he learns how to speak up for himself. The teacher will likely have office hours earmarked for those who need help. Also ask her about specific websites (many school textbooks now have practice sites kids can use in conjunction with the material in the book) or check out an online tutoring site like growingstars.com or tutor.com, which also has apps for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch.

Step 4: Pick the right spot

Some kids do best with a desk set up in their bedroom so they can work independently; others want to be smack in the middle of the kitchen while you cook dinner. Mayzler recommends letting kids choose their preferred study spot. If your child focuses better lounging on a couch or the floor, "I say let them do it," she notes. Wherever your child does homework, keep it distraction-free -- no TV, video games, or loud siblings playing nearby. "It's ideal if you can set a quiet family work time, when younger kids color or do other 'homework-like' tasks and you do paperwork or reading of your own," Mayzler adds.

Step 5: Try not to be so freaking helpful!

Of course, it's okay -- and actually necessary -- to sit with 5- or 6-year-olds while they do homework. However, your goal should be to help less over time and move physically farther from where your child works. Laura Laing and her partner, Gina Foringer, make a point of staying out of the room where their daughter, Zoe, 11, does homework. That way, Zoe is encouraged to think through her work on her own before asking a parent for help. Even when Zoe asks a question, Laing often responds with more questions instead of answers. "I'll ask 'What do you think?' or 'How do you think you can come to the answer?'" says Laing. Zoe often works out her own solution by talking it through with her mom.

When it comes to proofing a homework assignment, less is definitely better. Check a few answers to ensure that your child understands what's she's doing, but don't go over the entire page. After all, your child's teacher needs an accurate measure of whether she really understands the work.

Step 6: Make 'em pay

Although you may feel guilty at first, it's smart to have a one-strike rule when it comes to forgetting homework. If your child leaves her assignment (or lunch, gym clothes, or other items, for that matter) at home and calls, begging you to bring it to school, bail her out, say, only once each grading period. For many kids, just one missed recess (or whatever the teacher's policy is for not turning in homework) usually improves their memory, says Cathy Vatterott, Ph.D., associate professor of education at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and author of "Rethinking Homework." But chronically disorganized kids may need more hand-holding. "Help your child figure out what part of his 'return homework' chain is broken," says Vatterott. "Does he routinely leave homework on the dining room table? Does he forget some assignments because they're in a different folder?" Create a "Homework Checklist" on the computer and post it near his usual study space.

Step 7: Push back on busywork

Vatterott and other educators are now advocating for changes in the way homework is assigned and used in the United States (requiring teachers to prove the usefulness of assignments, discouraging teachers from grading homework, and more). She encourages parents to do so, too. "Good homework helps kids cement what they've learned, but it isn't busywork, isn't given in extreme amounts, and definitely doesn't require parents to become substitute teachers at home," Vatterott says. A few caveats:

• Mom and Dad shouldn't do homework. If work comes home with "directions for parents," Vatterott suggests letting the teacher and possibly the principal know that you, unfortunately, aren't in class this year (some gentle humor helps!), so you won't be building a replica of a human cell or a California mission, or whatever is required. A project can be a fun way for parents and kids to bond, but if you feel like it's taking up too much of your time, it probably is.
• Watch for overload. If your third-grader is spending an hour and a half on just her math homework, for instance, that's way too much. "Keep track of her time for several days, then talk to the teacher," suggests Dolin. Sometimes teachers honestly underestimate how long an assignment will take. If your child routinely works long hours because she's struggling, also talk to the teacher. But if she seems to be slaving over homework because she's a perfectionist, you may need to discuss a reasonable amount of time to devote to an assignment and then clock her. (Parenting.com)

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Single Moms Are Crazy!

Single Moms Are Crazy! - Does everyone secretly think this? - When I was pregnant with my second child, I was aware that there were ways in which I was not prepared to take care of a baby on my own, but that awareness didn’t unduly influence or affect me. What I thought to myself was, “The universe will rearrange itself for this baby.”

I often hear people refer to other single mothers I know as “crazy,” and I assume that they refer to me that way, too. I have thought about this word, especially in relation to one single mother in particular who seems to me more sublimely functional and sane than anyone else I know. I began to realize that the quality people are referring to as crazy is actually what I would call “romantic.” They mean that she is not influenced by the practical news on the ground, is listening instead to another story that is in her head. She is drawn to things that are, according to the dictionary definition of romantic, “impractical in conception or plan” and is in thrall to the “heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized.”

This is a common thread in the single mothers I know: They go for vividness over contentment, intensity over security. One was embedded with the Army in Afghanistan when she was six months pregnant, another somehow floats with her toddler between Los Angeles, Paris, and wherever her French rail pass will take her. Others with more pedestrian professional lives simply decided to have a baby while their romantic lives remained complicated or turbulent or a work in progress. I can see why this is “crazy” in relation to conventional, settled life, but is it crazy? And, more importantly, is the term crazy one of our few acceptable ways of passing judgment on something different or unusual or uncommon in a culture that is technically not supposed to be passing those judgments?

Are single mothers biting off more than they can chew?

To be clear, I am writing here about myself and the handful of other single mothers I know, specifically women who conceived children in some sort of relationship that they are no longer in and had the baby: a tiny, arguably privileged subset of single mothers. (It’s worth noting, though, that nearly four in 10 babies in this country are currently born to single mothers, and a rapidly growing percentage of those mothers are adults.)

A few months ago I came across a Pew Poll showing that a large majority of Americans still view single motherhood as unacceptable and, in the colorful words of the poll, "bad for society."* Which somehow doesn’t surprise me. Caitlin Flanagan wrote in Time, “Few things hamper a child as much as not having a father in the home,” which is perhaps a little unsubtle for progressive New Yorkers, and yet many of them think and recycle polite, modified versions of this same idea.

Someone who was trying to persuade me not have the baby said that I should wait and have a “regular baby.” His exact words were, “You should wait and have a regular baby!” What he meant, of course, was that I should wait and have a baby in more regular circumstances. But I had already seen the feet of the baby on a sonogram, and while he was pacing through my living room making his point, I was thinking: This is a regular baby. His comment stayed with me, though. It evoked the word bastard: “something that is spurious, irregular, inferior or of questionable origin.”

Someone said, similarly, to a single friend of mine who was pregnant that she should wait and have a “real baby.” As if her baby were unreal, a figment of her imagination, as if she could wish him away.

Such small word choices, you might say. How could they possibly matter to any halfway healthy person? But it is in these choices, these casual remarks, these throwaway comments, these accidental bursts of honesty and flashes of discomfort that we create a cultural climate; it’s in the offhand that the judgments persist and reproduce themselves. It is here that one feels the resistance, the static, the pent up, irrational, residual, pervasive conservatism that we do not generally own up to. Hawthorne called it “the alchemy of quiet malice by which [we] concoct a subtle poison from ordinary trifles.”

A novelist I know is sitting on the bench in the park with his wife and two sons. He peers into the stroller at my 5-pound newborn, Leo, and says, “How did that happen?” He smiles radiantly: It’s a joke! But my 6-year-old, Violet, is standing next to me, and I feel her stiffen because she senses something in his tone, something not quite nice. I say, “The usual way,” but I have a feeling that if I were married, he would have said something more along the lines of “congratulations.”

It’s around this time that I begin to see that The Scarlet Letter is in fact a fresh, modern commentary. One might be under the impression that tolerant liberal New York bears no resemblance to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s windy Puritan New England town, but one would be wrong. Our judgments are more polite, more subtle, more psychologically nuanced; latter-day critics of the state are thinking, of course, of what is best for the child, what is the healthiest environment; they are not opposed to extramarital philandering per se, but there is still underlying everything the same unimaginative approach to family, the same impulse to judge, the same sexual conservatism, and herd mentality. The single mother traipsing down the subway steps in heels with her Maclaren in New York (as opposed to, say, Paris or Berlin) is not as many worlds away as you’d think from Hester Prynne.

One day one of my colleagues, noticing that I was pregnant with my second child, ducked into my office and said, “You really do whatever you want.” He meant it as some variety of compliment, and I took it as such, but I was beginning to get the sense that other people were looking at me and thinking the same thing; it seemed to some as if I were getting away with something, as if I were not paying the usual price, and if the usual price was take-out Thai food and a video with your husband on a Saturday night, then I was not, in fact, paying that price. James Baldwin once wrote, “He can face in your life only what he can face in his own.” And I imagine if you are feeling restless or thwarted in your marriage, if you have created an orderly warm home for your child at a certain slight cost to your own freedom or momentum, you might look at me or someone else like me and think that I am not making the usual sacrifices. (I may be making other sacrifices, but that is not part of this sort of calculation or judgment.)

Before I have the baby, one of my friends politely suggests that it may be “hubris” to think that I can make up for the fact that the baby’s father would not be in the house, and not even in the city most of the time. He tells me that I am too confident in my own powers. This worries me, sometimes late at night, because I wonder if it’s not true, and there are times during the baby’s first year when I wish the earth would stop spinning so that I can get off for a moment and rest. But maybe this is the good and useful kind of hubris.

The submerged premise here is that there is something greedy, selfish, narcissistic, or anti-social about having a baby on your own. But is there? It seems to me that if anything a baby born in these conditions is extra-wanted. The fact that having that baby is not necessarily the obvious or predictable or easy thing to do at this particular juncture in life makes it all the more of a deep and consuming commitment.

At lunch I mention to an editor that I am thinking of writing about single mothers and the subtle and not so subtle forms our moralism toward them takes. He says: “That’s a good idea. And I say that as a guy who looks at single women and thinks, ‘What’s wrong with her? How did she screw up?’ ”

In spite of our exquisite tolerance for and fascination with all kinds of alternative lifestyles, we have a wildly outdated but strangely pervasive idea that single motherhood is worse for children, somehow a compromise, a flawed venture, a grave psychological blow to be overcome, our enlightened modern version of shame. It malingers, this idea; it affects us still.

The power of this view is that it very easily gets inside your head, it resonates with every children’s book you have ever read about little bear families, with all the archaic visions of family that cohere in the furthest reaches of your imagination: It’s hard to free yourself.

I notice the tendency in myself is toward jokes, toward a kind of protective mockery. I find that I am very deliberately not apologizing for the baby by embracing the most ridiculous, tabloidy words for him like love child. I hear myself spinning a caricature of my semi-bohemian household when I run into someone at a party I haven’t seen in a while: “Yeah, two babies, two different dads. I somehow ended up with the family structure Pat Moynihan was complaining about.”

In fact, by now I have spent so long outside of conventional family life that sometimes when I spend an afternoon with married friends and their children, their way of life seems exotic. The best way I can describe this is the feeling of being in a foreign country where you notice the bread is good and the coffee excellent but you are not exactly thinking of giving it all up and living there.

The baby refers to his sister’s father, Harry, as “My Harry” as in, “My Harry is coming!” It seems to me the exuberant, unorthodox use of preposition kind of gets at the conjuring, the act of creation, the interesting magic trick at the center of the whole venture: His family will be what he makes it. He is 2, but he chooses his own people. He picks fatherish figures, including his own father. I notice people often find little ways of telling me that it’s not the same thing. And of course it’s not, but it seems a bit narrow minded or old fashioned or overly literal to think that love has to come from two parents, like water from hot and cold faucets.

But is it more stable or secure to grow up in a house with two parents? There is arguably an absence of what people like to call borders in my house. For instance the baby seems to have caught my insomnia. Before going to bed he howls like a wolf, then says, “I am a wolf,” then says: “Where is my bottle? Where is my mango? Where is my ketchup?” then very deliberately climbs out of his bed and walks through the halls saying, “I am lost, Mama, I am lost.” It occurs to me that in this unfiltered, unmediated environment I am passing everything along to him. In any event, that’s exactly how I feel at 2 in the morning—somewhere in the middle of “I am lost” and “Where is my mango? Where is my ketchup?”

I am prepared to believe that in a household with two adults, there is often a little more balance, a healthy dilution of affection, a diffused focus that makes everyone feel comfortable. One morning I overhear Violet saying to the baby: “You can’t marry anyone. You are going to live with me.” When I first separated from her father five years ago, she said, “Mommy, it’s like you and I are married.” And this would pretty accurately reflect the atmospherics of our house: a little too much love, you might tactfully say.

Quentin Bell once wrote about growing up with his single-ish mother, the painter Vanessa Bell: “We had to balance the comforts of being so well loved against the pain of being so fearfully adored.” And that seems like a fair assessment of what goes on in my house. (The grown son of one of the single mothers I know refers to this same thing as “the unparalleled intimacy.”) But if I am being honest I like the fearful adoration, the too-muchness of it, the intensity, the fierceness. I don’t actually believe “healthy” is better.

I also can’t help noticing that the people talking about a “healthy” environment are often the same people talking about “working” on their relationships. They are often the denizens of couples therapy and date nights in restaurants with hand-cured pancetta and organic local fennel. I have no doubt that they do create a healthy, balanced environment, but I like to think there are some rogue advantages to the unbalanced and unhealthy environment: to the other way of doing things.

Here someone is bound to say, “Studies have shown …” But as far as I am concerned the studies can continue to show whatever they feel like showing. There are things that can’t be measured and quantified in studies, and I imagine the multitudinous varieties of family peace are among them. Not to mention what these stern studies fail to measure: which is what happens when there is anger or conflict in the home, or unhappy or airless marriages, relationships wilting or faltering, subterranean tensions, what happens when everyone is bored.

One day at dinner, Violet is playing a game where she is listing impossible things. Like it’s impossible to talk when you are dead, when she suddenly comes out with, “It’s impossible to be normal.” The family member in attendance shoots me a look that eloquently points out that Violet might not think it was so impossible to be normal if instead of piles of books on the floor I had a little financial security, if I had a man around the house. If I stopped running around like I do, in other words.

It’s near dawn when I finish the Scarlet Letter and I had forgotten the ending. Hawthorne is careful to tell us that Pearl, wild, radiant, spritelike Pearl, grows up and leaves for Europe, where she flourishes; the suggestion is that she is perhaps a bit happier than the children of the drab Puritan town she has left behind.

It’s getting dark and I am stepping into a taxi, the parlor window is lit, the children at home in their pajamas, smelling of Johnson & Johnson, domestic peace descending, and I go off in the taxi to meet a man at a hotel bar. This will seem to many people like the wrong structure; they will tell me how unhealthy it is, how unsustainable, how unstable, and they may be right, but there I am speeding nonetheless over the bridge. There are other possible ways I could conduct my life, other forms and structures. But I remember hearing somewhere: “You have one life, if that.” And one sometimes feels like mentioning that to some of the more blinkered, respectable couples, to those purveyors of wholesome and healthy environments, to those who truly believe the child of a single mother is not whole or happy in his room playing with his dinosaurs: You have one life, if that. ( slate.com )

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Less lazy time recommended for kids

Less lazy time recommended for kids — Canadian kids are being urged to get their butts off the couch and their eyes off the screen in some newly released lifestyle guidelines.

The Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology on Tuesday unveiled its recommended limits on sedentary behaviour for youngsters between the ages of five and 17.

They're the first ever guidelines for sedentary behaviour issued in Canada, the group says.

But meeting the targets could be a challenge, given all the enticing recreational options — television, video games and Internet, to name a few — that are out there.

New guidelines encouraging kids to be active say children and youth should get no more than two hours of "screen time" a day

"Today, kids face much greater challenges when it comes to sedentary time than we did or our parents did," said Kelly Murumets, CEO of exercise-promotion group ParticipAction, which was involved in setting the new guidelines.

"For sure, society in general is much more sedentary than it was a generation ago. . . . We're more sedentary today than we were 10 years ago."

Being sedentary means allowing the body to be at rest for prolonged periods of time.

The new guidelines say children and youth should get no more than two hours of "screen time" a day, which includes TV, recreational use of a computer and non-active video games.

It does not include games that involve wide-ranging body movements, such as those played on the Wii and Kinect systems.

As well, the group recommends reducing the amount of time youngsters spend in cars, indoors or even sitting down for long periods uninterrupted.

"Is it necessary for us to take the van to soccer practice, or could we bike over?" society chairman Mark Tremblay said as an example of the thinking the guidelines are meant to provoke. "Billy's been sitting on the couch there for hours. I seem to recall hearing somewhere that that's bad for him."

Tremblay pointed out some of the risks that a lazy lifestyle brings, including the higher risk of cardiovascular problems. He said research has shown that more sedentary time can negatively affect children's academic performance and their self-esteem.

The new guidelines are just fine with Toronto's Sarah Connor, who has four children, between the ages of eight and 13. With her children heavily involved in sports such as tennis, hockey and skiing, she says she figures they're getting only an hour of screen time now — half the new recommended limit.

"I over-program my kids, because I love (sports)," Connor said. "They really just don't have the time (to be sedentary). Being honest, if they didn't do all the stuff they did, they'd probably be on the screen from 4 to 8 p.m. every day."

The sedentary guidelines follow the society's latest recommendations on activity released Jan. 24. They called for adults to participate in 2 1/2 hours of moderate-to-vigorous activity a week, and an hour a day for youths and children.

Data recently released by Statistics Canada showed that just 15 per cent of adults were meeting these guidelines, and seven per cent of youths. As well, young people were found to be spending an average 8.6 hours a day in a sedentary state, or about 62 per cent of their waking hours.

Tremblay said he hopes recommendations for adults can be offered in the near future.

In the meantime, he offered this advice for grown-ups: "Whatever you're doing now (in terms of sedentary behaviour) is probably excessive," meaning people of all ages should consider reducing the time they spend watching TV, surfing the Internet, riding in vehicles and other things that require little energy. ( Postmedia News )

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