Rich and Strange Aeons

(2018) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/27/opinion/sunday/motherhood-in-the-age-of-fear.html

"In a country that provides no subsidized child care and no mandatory family leave, no assurance of flexibility in the workplace for parents, no universal preschool and minimal safety nets for vulnerable families, making it a crime to offer children independence in effect makes it a crime to be poor."

"One such mother I spoke with was charged with felony child endangerment when she left her napping 4-year-old daughter in the car for a few minutes with the windows open while she ran into a store. During her arrest, she remembers the officer saying, “Stay-at-home mom’s too busy shopping to take care of her kid? Does your husband know how you take care of your child while he’s out earning the big bucks?""

"We’re contemptuous of “lazy” poor mothers. We’re contemptuous of “distracted” working mothers. We’re contemptuous of “selfish” rich mothers. We’re contemptuous of mothers"

" When participants were told a father had left his child for a few minutes to run into work, they estimated the level of risk to the child as about equal to when he left because of circumstances beyond his control. ... I love the way this finding makes plain something we all know but aren’t supposed to say: A father who is distracted by his interests and obligations in the adult world is being, well, a father; a mother who does the same is failing her children."

A Japanese friend responded to the video in the last post:
09:27 < mika> zdamien: oh that's otsukai
09:27 < mika> it's common
09:27 < mika> the first otsukai is a big deal

And I later found this blog post on hajimete no otsukai: https://tuliplane.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/courage-of-children/

In the first comment, " On visits to my hometown in the U.S., just sending them over a couple of aisles at the grocery store to get something would bring the wrath of my mother (grandma) down on me"

and

"One evening hubby and I were out for an anniversary dinner. The girls were home (Japanese grandparents lived downstairs so we weren’t negligent!) and I think the older three were in 6th grade at the time. Imagine our surprise when we came home to a little platter of cheese, crackers and two ice-cold beers as our little anniversary gift! When asked where they got the beer they replied, “we went to buy it next door at the convenience store, of course!”"

---

Then a followup post inspired by this article on Swiss pre-schoolers with saws

"Saws. The kind you buy at the hardware store to cut wood. That's what the play-group teacher dumped on the ground for 3- and 4-year-old kids to play with. Knowing that doing this, in the U.S., would result in the teacher being, at minimum, fired and most likely charged with child endangerment, I had visions of emergency room trips and severed limbs dancing through my mind.

But this happened not in the U.S. but in Switzerland, where they believe children are capable of handling saws at age 3 and where kindergarten teachers counsel parents to let their 4- and 5-year-olds walk to school alone. "Children have pride when they can walk by themselves," the head of the Münchenstein, Switzerland, Kindergartens said last week at a parents meeting, reminding those in attendance that after the first few weeks of school children should be walking with friends, not mom."

"Every Friday, whether rain, shine, snow, or heat, he goes into the forest for four hours with 10 other children. In addition to playing with saws and files, they roast their own hot dogs over an open fire. If a child drops a hot dog, the teacher picks it up, brushes the dirt off, and hands it back.

The school year ends next week, and so far the only injury has been one two millimeter long cut received from a pocket knife."

---

Meanwhile, in the land of the free, or at least Tennessee, letting your 8 year old play unsupervised in the park is a Class D felony. http://www.wcyb.com/Mom-Speaks-Out-About-Neglect-Charges/15240294

My childhood is apparently now illegal in the US.

* Is overparenting peaking?
* For all the helicopter parenting, sex talks tend to be too little, too late.
* Outrage over teaching masturbation in Spain; article mentions what other sex-ed programs do. Makes the USA sound stuck in the Dark Ages.

* The anti-statism obsession in America
* Cake vs. screamers: increasing marginal utility of 'reliever' goods and the persistence of poverty.

* Obama aims to shrink the war on terror from "terrorism" to "Al-Qaeda", on the grounds that only A-Q is targetting us, plus movements like Hamas and Hezbollah and even the Taliban have nationalistic roots in the people, and can't simply be stomped.
* Palin's fake bus tour, call for the US to dedicate itself to God, and flirtation with the Birthers
* Manual for GOP obstructionism.


*composting toilets progress.
* Christmas defined
* Blood plasma from border Mexicans. US is one of the only countries to allow paying for blood and plasma, and a massive exporter of plasma since other countries don't collect enough. I smell a causal connection, there...

* Ada Lovelace: the Origin
* Evolution of Nintendo controllers