1. What does your title have to do with your comment? You failed to make that clear.
2. Having worked in education, I'm well aware of the prejudices, presuppositions, and agenda people - and especially principles - bring with them. Even if they "work with it every day."
3. I know we live in the 21st century -- and the 21st century is deeply flawed. No, I don't want to return to time before penicillin and the Salk vaccine, but I strongly believe that in our mad 20th century rush to "modernity" we (if you'll pardon the use of the expression here) threw a lot of babies out with bathwater. The change in the *definition* of childhood in the Western world in the 20th century and especially in America post World War II is well-documented. And I don't think the change is necessarily for the better.
4. The understanding that most people died at 50 in the past is a flawed paradigm. But that's a rant for another place.
5. I'm well aware motherhood isn't a "job", but it is undisputably equated as such. "Don't have a baby; you can't go to college." As if it were an either or proposition. It came up on the ABC coverage of this story this morning.
Yes, I know I'm bringing my own experience in here (since my mother took infant-me to university lectures in a basket that sat at her feet), and not everyone is emotionally, mentally or organizationally equiped to do that. Even so, this societal expectation that *everyone* must go to college/university is in itself detrimental. Our society faces HUGE student debt right now. I have one myself. It shouldn't be forced (even by implication) on everyone.
Re: You're aging these mothers by two years
2. Having worked in education, I'm well aware of the prejudices, presuppositions, and agenda people - and especially principles - bring with them. Even if they "work with it every day."
3. I know we live in the 21st century -- and the 21st century is deeply flawed. No, I don't want to return to time before penicillin and the Salk vaccine, but I strongly believe that in our mad 20th century rush to "modernity" we (if you'll pardon the use of the expression here) threw a lot of babies out with bathwater. The change in the *definition* of childhood in the Western world in the 20th century and especially in America post World War II is well-documented. And I don't think the change is necessarily for the better.
4. The understanding that most people died at 50 in the past is a flawed paradigm. But that's a rant for another place.
5. I'm well aware motherhood isn't a "job", but it is undisputably equated as such. "Don't have a baby; you can't go to college." As if it were an either or proposition. It came up on the ABC coverage of this story this morning.
Yes, I know I'm bringing my own experience in here (since my mother took infant-me to university lectures in a basket that sat at her feet), and not everyone is emotionally, mentally or organizationally equiped to do that. Even so, this societal expectation that *everyone* must go to college/university is in itself detrimental. Our society faces HUGE student debt right now. I have one myself. It shouldn't be forced (even by implication) on everyone.