’One must unfortunately note that Europe seems to be going down the road which could lead it to take its leave from history.’ – Pope Benedict XVI, warning that Europe appears to be losing faith in its own future, calling some Europeans’ desire to have fewer children “dangerous individualism”. [Source: TIME, April 9, 2007]
It was refreshing indeed to read Eleanor's blog this morning. It was like a breath of fresh air! It brought some sanity into a world that is increasingly looking insane!
I am so tired of mothers trying to reinvent the wheel. Let's face it: so many women don't really want to be proper mothers anymore. They choose, instead, a career path; and if they have children at all, they have one as an afterthought and, as in the case of Faye Turney, abandon that one baby for others to raise. This, of course, is the height of selfishness! Women like Faye put their own needs and fulfilment above the needs of their babies. This is so wrong!
The fact of the matter is that babies cannot bring themselves up. They need nurturing, they need love and affection, and they need to be educated in the home (informal education), as well as in school.
Small wonder that we have so many young people going off the rails these days! They aren’t raised properly. They aren't given a proper start in life.
Faye, in a short interview on the BBC website, said that she had always wanted to be in the Navy from the age of ten. Really! Many boys and girls have fantasies about what they want to be when they grow up. Many boys at the age of ten wish to become astronauts. Only the fortunate few ever eventually manage to achieve their aims!
When we mature, we realise that life doesn't always offer us what we have always wanted for ourselves. So we have to adapt our lives to answer the needs of the day. This is called maturation and responsibility.
When a woman becomes a mother, she should put the child's needs above her own. This is normal and healthy. It is abnormal and unhealthy to put one's own needs above the needs of the child.
One cannot help but feel a little sympathy for Faye in the circumstances in which she now finds herself; but it has to be said that she would have been aware of the dangers she might place herself in before going out to sea with the Navy. One therefore has to feel far more sorry for her baby than for her. It is the baby who is the real victim in all of this, not Faye. One can only wonder about the emptiness that her child must be feeling, having to live its life with an absent mother.
Faye can say as much as she likes about being able to give the baby more material things when it grows up because she does what she does; but to say that is to miss the point completely. Children need love and warmth far more than they need material goods, as nice as it is to have those things.
Mothers can kid themselves as much as they like, but the fact remains that there is no substitute for a stable home, especially one where the mother is present. Anyone who has been fortunate enough to be able to remember coming home from school to mother after a hard day at school will understand exactly what I mean. There is no substitute for a proper, stable home, a home with a mother and a father.
©Mark Alexander
7 comments:
I notice that this topic seems to be too hot to handle!
Rustresistance:
First of all, I should like to congratulate you on having the courage even to touch this subject. As you can see, only the few do have that courage!
This subject is a difficult one in more ways than one. It is also a very complicated one.
You say that many women cannot afford to stay at home and look after the children. That's true. But who brought all this about? Women fought long and hard for the privilege of going out to work on an equal footing. In many cases, it is a dubious privilege, since only the relatively few can have high-powered, well-paid careers. Many, many women end up in dead-end jobs, on low pay.
By fighting for this 'right', they have boxed themselves into a corner, because so often these days, they are mortgaged up to the hilt. Whereas yesteryear it was the man's salary/wage which would have been taken into account when calculating mortgages, these days they take the woman's salary/wage into account also. There is no doubt that this phenomenon has driven up house prices, and it has locked women into the workplace, if only to keep on paying the mortgage.
Add to this the government's unwillingness to give tax concessions for married men keeping their wives at home to look after their offspring, and we can see why it is so difficult for women to get out of the bind they find themselves in.
Many years ago, keeping one's wife at home to look after the kids was not the privilege only of the rich, many ordinary folk were able to do this, too. But in those days, people weren't as materialistic as they are today. They satisfied themselves with far less. They didn't expect several foreign holidays a year, and two or three cars in the drive. Their priorities were quite different.
I am certainly not knocking mothers who go out to work where there is a need for them to do so, as in your mother's case back then. But the case of Faye is a rather different one, as I see it. First of all, she absents herself from her family for long spells. In my view, this is not fair on the baby. She said she always wanted, from the age of ten, to go into the Navy. That would be all well and good were she not to be a mother. But she is; and as all babies would, her baby needs her to be close by.
There is the other aspect to look at here, too. She is putting herself in harm's way. What if she lost her life? Then what? That baby would be left without a mother at all! What a tragedy that would be.
But there is another aspect of working mothers that bothers me, and it is one which only the few talk about. It is this: The birth rate in the UK and Western Europe, especially among the indigenous population, is alarmingly low. We are not having enough babies to sustain our culture. It is one reason why Tone has been so keen to let in all those immigrants, most of whom ar Muslim, and most of whom will go on and change the political landscape in the years to come.
Working mothers cannot have many children. Indeed, often times, they end up having a token baby only, and even taht baby only late in life when there is scarcely any time left to have any more. This is not going to solve the demographic problem.
Then there is the divorce rate to think about. In my opinion, it is no coincidence that the divorce courts are full. What kind of a married life can couples have when they spend so much time apart? And even when they both work closer to home, they often end up being like ships passing in the night, affording each other very little company.
There would, of course, be much more to say on this thorniest of subjects; but this will suffice for the moment.
Rustresistence:
Our State should have been prepared to compensate mothers for keeping our population proportionate.
That smacks of communism to me! Why talk of compensation? Having children should be compensation in itself! In many ways, it can be argued that the childless are the poor ones.
In my view, it is the business of the state to make it possible for people to have children, and inside of wedlock, too! This can be done, as it always used to be done, by giving tax breaks for married couples, and allowances for each child. This is surely where our successive governments have gone wrong. They abandoned a tried and tested method of keeping the population up.
Pay couples enough to raise a family of more traditional proportions.
From what you say, you want the government to pay people a kind of salary for having kids. I don't think that's right. That would turn children into commodities. Having a 'salary' for having children would turn the whole business of childbirth into an economic exercise. Now that would clearly be wrong. One should have children out of love, not pecuniary gain.
This whole thing started to unravel with the advent of women's liberation, I am sorry to say. Despite all the arguments for equality in the workplace, etc, it has now become too expensive for many women to stay at home and give birth. In economic terms, the opportunity cost of having children is too high.
As a result of all this, as a society, we are doing ourselves in. And however unpalatable this sounds, it's actually a fact.
Add to this the decline in Christian values, and the waning influence of the Church; and then add to that the growth in selfishness and materialism, and we have the right old mess we find oursleves in!
Rustresistance:
Thank you for your comment. Actually, you have made many valid points here; and I think that anyone with an ounce of common sense would agree with most of the points you raised.
I take your point about what I suggested smacking of Communism, what I was attempting to say is that, when it was realised, a long time ago, that indigenous British population was falling, then economic efforts to encourage more childbirth could have prevented the need for what we are experiencing right now, and for many years.
Exactly! Why have successive governments allowed this situation to develop as far as it has? The old saying, a stitch in time saves nine, is as valid today as it ever was.
A situation where governments have deliberately opened the door to all comers regardless of the social cost, and in the face of public opinion.
Another excellent point! And this is what I ask: Where is the so-called democracy in all of this? Were we ever asked if we wanted to give our once great country away to foreigners?
Politicians of all sides seemed to be more concerned in having cheap labour from abroad, than they were in encouraging families from within the country.
Yes, and it was all short-termism.
It is a fact that families are expensive, and poorly paid families needed more help to keep up the old birth rates of three children per household.
I agree with you here, too.
The cost has been the breakup of the family and the loss of respect for our elders, and the live now pay later society that wee have to live with.
Yes, and also the break-up of the family unit can be blamed, at least in part, on working mothers. Take, for instance, the example of people visiting other people's homes. How many people visit others much today? Only the few, I believe. Years ago, when women stayed at home, there would be someone at home to welcome others. There would usually be something home-baked to offer the guests too.
Today, if you pay a visit to someone's home during the day, there's nobody at home to answer the door. And in the evening, when people are at home, they are too exhausted after their day's labours to want to entertain others.
This all makes for a much colder society, and a far less caring one, too. I am old enough to remember different times, better times.
Instead of forward thinking social support, we have a system which favours the recent immigrants with their larger families, I suggest a walk down some high-streets to observe the effect we have created and which existed in some places back in the late 1970's.
I know; it's sad, isn't it?
Whole school-playgrounds with hardly a white face. Is that proportional? Is that preferable to a balanced mix of people?
Hardly proportional, is it? You're right! So right!
Whole high streets, were the original businesses have been replaced by ethnic jewelery shops, ethnic fast food outlets,ethnic mobile phone shops, you name it.
Yes, the pattern seems to repeat itself in all small towns these days.
This is all so simplistic of course.
Not so simplistic, actually.
I am seen no doubt as an out and out racist by the Liberal tossers that think it is oh so wonderful to have all that choice, and how everyone is just the same.
You are not racist simply for expressing these views. You are, I believe, rather a realist.
Well everyone is not the same.
They certainly aren't. And wouldn't it be a grey world were they to be so?
When the English tailor shop is replaced by a halal chicken joint, when the English green-grocer is replaced by an ethnic foodstore, when the pet-shop is replaced by a grimy mini-cab office, is this an improvement? Well thats a matter of opinion, try living with it though.
Yes, I can remember the time when there were taylors' shops in many small towns. My own town actually had two high-class, Saville-Row-trained tailers no less! A lady's gown shop, no less. Numerous grocers and greengrocers, several bakeries, a confectioners, sweet shops, and much else besides. Then came the travel agents. But now, as you say, it's all fast-food, halal "chicken-joints", ethnic restaurants, curry houses, fish and chip shops, and mobile phone shops, too.
When you walk down a street where as a child there was a flow of faces that were recognisable as being of at least similar outlook to oneself, with a few differet faces for balanced measure, and now you walk down the same street and are confronted by a sea of faces that are alien, that at best ignore you, at worse scowl in your direction as if you were a stranger in your own land, then, I say you have problems.
I remember a time when just popping down the road to buy a loaf of bread would take forever, simply because one knew so many people, and everyone would stop and have a chat, and ask after one's family. Now, as you say, people are like strangers. Instead of saying 'hello', 'good morning', 'good afternoon', or 'good evening' to people, they avert their gaze. To get a smile out of a Muslim is like trying to get blood out of a stone!
You have the demographic problems we all see. Soon enough it will not be every other high street, but every high street and every village.
I claimm I am not racist, but pragmatist.
That's what it is: pragmatism.
If we had encouraged our own birth rate when it was needed then we would not see society fragmenting and imploding today.
Quite right!
There is still a chance for Britain to dig istself out of the mess. It will not be without pain.
Because what should have been done was not done, anything we do today is bound to be painful.
That is scandalous social engineering, THAT is Communism. In fact, is uncontrolled Capitalism the volte face of Communism?
Yes, in many ways that's true.
Either system would seem preferable to one that believes that religious scholars can run a country successfully.
Heaven forbid that we should ever get to be run by a method of government that believes that it is the non-existant Allah's will!
Family matters have become demographic matters, traditionalism is losing the battle, stronger measures will need to be sought by future governments.
Yes, but who is going to have the strength to pass the laws necessary to correct this most dreadful of situations?
Oh well, I've walked into the tigers den with this one.
No you haven't. You just spoken some common sense!
Right On, Mark!
Rustresistance:
Mark, I thank you for your critique of my little notes.
You're more than welcome, my friend.
Times have changed, but there are still many good things left to cherish.
Just about! :-)
In some ways Prince Charles' cranky retrospective ideas about farming and food production are very laudable.
I agree. But it's his ideas on Islam which trouble me.
There is a mood that hankers for the good things of the past.
That has probably been so since the beginning of time, I think.
I do believe there is a time coming when the tide will turn.
We must hope that the tide will eventually turn. But there are few signs of that happening anytime soon.
USIP:
I'm glad you agree with me.
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