I love my kids, I just hate parenting
I try not to preach a lot, especially about parenting.
For one thing, I’m not qualified. For another, no one is. But sometimes something gets under my skin so deeply that I can’t let it go, and as my son’s third Halloween approaches – the first where he actively chose his own costume – I have to speak up.
Halloween has become an incredibly sexist holiday. TOWARDS BOYS.
I recently came across a blog post in which a mother of four (three boys, one girl) addresses The Teenage Girl and begs them to stop being skanks. I think we need to stop blaming girls. (Update: It looks like she’s since taken the post down. Shame. But I saved some excerpts below!)
That’s not quite how she says it, but that’s clearly what she means. Actually, what she means is something more like, “Boys can’t control themselves, so you have to stop tempting them.” Which sounds like something a Republican congressman would say.
Apparently, this point of view is reasonable to many people, judging by all the “likes” and “shares” and positive comments her post is getting. People agree with her loving message to today’s young females.
I wish I agreed, since it’s a convenient way to get out of some difficult parenting.
Children are mirrors.
When I concentrate really hard, I do this thing with my face where my features get scrunched up all tight. My wife blames this expression for my increasing wrinkles and constantly attempts to stop me from doing it (despite the fact that I can still pass for 18!) I see her point, and I’d love to stop creating crow’s feet. But it’s impossible; it’s genetic.
I’ve seen my father make the same face, for the same reasons, and now I’m waiting to see it on Detective Munch’s chubby little visage. He already looks a lot like me, and it’s so gratifying to see him take on some of my characteristics that I’m okay with adding the wrinkle-maker to that collection.
Unfortunately, it has yet to happen. But I have seen him reflect back aspects of myself that are not quite as amusing.
Yesterday, one of my blog entries – my Gender Neutral piece from December – was featured on the Huffington Post. Now that I’m a superstar, I kind wanted to burn all my bridges and let my enemies know how I really feel, until I realized that my enemies won’t even bother reading this. Then IRead more about Going National![…]
First things first: I’m not suggesting I want a divorce.
But if I were to get divorced from my beautiful, understanding, intelligent, pretty-much-perfect wife and want to marry someone new, I hope I’d be able to marry whomever I chose.
Depending on where I live, that might not be the case.