Messages By: cyncritter

Instead of sitting back in our chairs, shaking our heads in dismay, we have to consider HOW our children morphed from (mostly good kids with) a few bad apples in the mid-20th Century ... to a few hundred thousand bad apples in the first decade of the 21st Century. It's SO SIMPLE, most people can't see it because all of you are looking for complex reasons. The Family Unit unravelled.

The mothers went to work. They wanted to have careers to fullfill themselves, AND (quite selfishly) have children to prove they were still feminine!

It's like mixing vinegar and oil.

Divorce became less stigmatized and more attainable, women stopped waiting for the perfect mates and began envitro vertilization to have and raise children with $$$ instead of TLC and being in the home.

Unlike during the 1940s, when fathers had to go to war and mothers were left NO CHOICE but to go to work to support the family in his absence, the more liberated women wanted the best of both worlds. With two incomes, Moms & Dads could pay someone ELSE to raise the children (until they were old enough to become latch-key kids and finish raising themselves) and Moms & Dads could BOTH feel fulfilled.

Well, how's that working for you?

I thought when women like myself were given the freedom to make choices, we would all behave more responsibly. Those of us who DIDN'T want to be housewives and baby factories would choose careers, and those who were inspired to have children would stay home and take care of them.

And with the right to abortion upon demand, there would be fewer unwanted and abused children being raised on Welfare cared for by the County & State; fewer disabled children because they could be aborted prior to being born and becoming burdens on parents and society; and, I thought having access to choices would allow us to figure out who we really are ... a lot sooner than the Trial & Error policies imposed by the older family traditions and the churches bias against womens' independence.

But no ... the Churches stepped in and started saying abortion is MURDER! (Hey, I thought the Soul never dies?!? So, if it's freed from an UNWANTED vessel or a defective vessel, to be recycled into a WANTED and/or BETTER FORMED vessel, what's the big deal?!?)

So the stigma of getting pregnant - even from a rape - wasn't enough to liberate women into becoming all we can be. Husbands still want control, Churches still want control, the families still want control... and when you add all the new pollutants, the stress from having to work twice as hard so the kids can all go to college - whether they're college material or not - things have regressed instead of getting better for everyone. (And... manual labor CANNOT be OUT-SOURCED!!)

Where is it written in STONE that an adult has to have a college education to build houses or repair plumbing and do electrical work to make a good living? Manual labor is not something to be ashamed of; rather, it's a honed SKILL that some can master and others cannot.

Where is it written in stone that unless your household is a clone of all the others on the block (new cars every 3 years, the best of everything all the time, soccer/dance/gymnastics/skating for the kids is a must to have a well-rounded child) you are a failure?

We are now a World of 6.5 BILLION people, and more than 2/3 of us are unhappy. We are breeding children who are unloved and unhappy.

More is NOT better, folks. Why have all this wealth if it cannot provide the things that give us REAL happiness -- creeks and woods and wildlife to stimulate the imaginations of the children we're bringing into this world, and parents who sit down and play with them - parents who insist that the family has meals TOGETHER at least once a day, and vacations where everyone explores a different part of this wonderful world together?

No wonder there are angry children all over the U.S., violence amongst them, and dissatisfaction instead of feelings of love and unity!

In other countries we call them Jihadists; here they are just a natural regression of our own environment that continuously gets SICKER every day because we've lost sight of the true responsibility of parenting -- being there when we're needed, and providing a clean environment for all of us to grow up and grow old in.

If we don't set a good example, stop chasing our own tails, knuckling under to advertisers whose job it is to SELL PRODUCTS we don't really need, and being led around by false "Family Values" spouters and Churches who care more about their coffers than their flocks, how can we expect anything different? We're reaping what we've been sowing, and it's coming back to bite us in the ass, BIG TIME.

Either honor your contract, or get out! To badger your husband into allowing you to have a baby against his will is WRONG! If you want a child that badly, give this man his freedom to NOT be a father, and go find someone who wants to be a daddy to your tick-tock child. Vows are supposed to be forever... the wedding vows as well as agreed upon contracts made when you both felt the same way. If he ultimately gives in and you have a child with him, he will be saddled with support of the child if he doesn't have a change of heart, and that's totally unfair - to the child AND to him. He should not have to give in to your demands because you're feeling old and insecure. And if you really feel the only thing that will bring you happiness is to have a baby of your own, then relieve this man of any unwanted guilt and obligation. Let him go and go on to be whomever you think you have become, and do what you believe is necessary for you.

Learning to express ourselves without explicatives seems now to be a "lost art." Parents use the foulest of language in front of small children AND strangers without a second thought. And the wearing of T-shirts, hats, etc. upon which explicatives are pre-printed are just as offensive to me. Swearing at children or others over cell phones during the middle of a meal in a restaurant or in the heat of a basketball game with people sitting around you is also something that should be taboo.

Now, I am now above uttering swear words under some conditions... But there is a time and a place for such outbursts to happen, and it should be rare--not just a part of a normal sentence. We have lost the art of good manners, and it's time for us to begin to re-evaluate how we want to be seen by the world.

If a person wants a change to make her/himself look different, it really is up to that person--not for another to judge. It's not going to change the DNA one iota. The person will ALWAYS be the original, no matter how an outward physical appearance may be altered.

Perhaps a better line of thought would be to have counseling so the person who wants to change her/his appearance understands why she/he thinks the change is necessary for happiness with one's self.

I find it difficult to believe that a state wherein the already CPS governed children, many of whom are still awaiting good foster care, and those whose foster care parents leave a lot to be desired, can even begin to take on a case of this magnitude. What's going to happen if these children are NOT permitted to return to their mothers in this unlawful existence... and many are placed in foster homes wherein they are sexually abused and mistreated by the families CPS has picked? What THEN??! Two wrong hardly make a right...

So why not tell the mothers IF they want their children back, they have to live with a selected family?

These children are being selfish. All their lives their father worked hard to provide for them and see to their every need. The very LEAST they can do to return all the love and devotion he gave them as a father figure is to accept him the way he has always accepted them--their quirks, their youthful indescretions--and love him no matter what.

It's not like gender changes aren't mainstream now. Thousands of people have made this change. It's time we all stop being selfish in what WE want, and start realizing that life doesn't revolve around each one of us... it just revolves, and we need to accept change when it happens. Why throw away a loving parent just because we have to look at them differently, and call him by MOM instead of DAD? The heart is still the same, and so is the love for the family.

Time to grow up.

These tugs-of-war only hurt people, and can also damage the child at the center.

If he wants to raise a child, why doesn't he find a woman, settle down, get married, and have one together? This kind of custody battle can drag on for a long, long time, keeping everyone in limbo, including the baby. The baby needs to be the FIRST in consideration. If the family with whom the baby is placed is a good family, then that should be enough to make everyone happy.

Emotions affect babies. When everything is in chaos around the child's custody, if affects all the signals that child is getting from her would-be parents. This is not an It's-mine-and-I-have-a-right-to-have-you situation. This should be about what's the very best for the child.

Dating a younger man has its advantages. I did it myself, many times, when I was in my thirties and 40s. I wasn't looking for "forever" and neither were any of them. But we had lots of fun together--dancing, picnics, movies, in depth conversations about life. I found them stimulating, and they kept me thinking young.

Ultimately I settled down with an older gentleman, but I wouldn't trade any of those dates with younger men. None of us were "using" each other--we were just looking for happy times, and that's what we shared.

In my opinion, making a natural growing plant illegal just makes it more appealing, and marketable for a large profit. Pretty soon, if we don't address the REAL, underlying problems, we will be outlawing every herb, spice, plant, tree... and people will still be finding ways to get high with all the pharmaceuticals that most likely are always going to be prevalent.

The underlying problems today with our society, seem to me to be that no matter how much people acquire in material things, and no matter how much money they make and save and invest, most families are not satisfied or happy.

We seem to have lost the ability to make jokes and laugh; rarely does an entire family sit together around the dining table for at least one meal a day, talking about what's going on in their lives; computers and cell phones, as amazing and wonderful as they are, have become society's ways of forming and maintaining relationships, instead of really interacting on a face-to-face basis.

Obviously, I have a computer and a cell phone. I have had them for more than 15 years. I began noticing that the computer was slowly eating away at my time for doing other things, so I consciously stopped allowing it to consume time I could be using to go out with friends, cook full meals, read books and magazines, work in the yard, and etc. Now I keep the sound turned off when I'm not using it, because I don't WANT to know every time a new e-mail comes in; that's what started 'hooking' me, in the first place!

After I realized computer addiction was going to be a bigger problem if I didn't exercise self-discipline, I didn't make the same mistake with the cell phone. I have it with me for emergencies when I'm out, but it's always off and in the drawer when I'm home. If someone wants to reach me, they either call the land line, or they send an e-mail and I'll get around to answering the e-mail the next time I sit down at the computer.

I'm happier, I find, when I'm not tied to these technological wonders that have, for far too many people, become a virtual world in which we all can be anonymous and fabricate how and who we are. Honesty with one's self and with others is a skill that's being lost, because of these modern day conveniences.

And the stress of always trying to have the newest and best of everything, along with driving ourselves crazy, trying to afford and get the children to all the extra-curricular activities, while trying to maintain a gentile household wherein people actually find joy in being with each other, is another reason society is turning to ways to alter our realities.

So, until we learn to slow down, communicate with each other again, face-to-face, and stop creating the stressful situations that are causing parents and children alike to want to "escape," we won't be happy. It sets a poor example for the kids, when the parents rely on prescription drugs or alcohol to keep them going at a helter-skelter pace; so once we stop and deal with the underlying problems, there will always be another natural plant to ban because we're only treating the symptoms, not the cause.

All things in moderation... that's the best advice anyone can give and take.