All My Children

There is a battle raging today for the bodies and souls of America’s teenagers, and like it or not, our children are on the front line. Venereal diseases, unwanted pregnancies, guilt, loss of self-esteem, and breakdown in relationships are just some of the results of premarital sexual involvement.

My desire for you as a parent is that you never hear the following statements; or, if you do, that you might know what to do when you hear them.

If only I had waited. I see now how uncluttered my life would have been, how my mind would have been free from this burden that besets me even years later.

If you want to know what it is really like, get two pieces of paper and glue part of one to the other. After it has dried, pull them apart. What you have in your hand is a vivid picture of two people after a premarital sexual relationship—both torn, both leaving a part of themselves with the other. Continue Reading »

Girls are as subject as boys to all kinds of frustrations, very much including sibling rivalry and anger at their parents, and so it would serve them equally well to be able to discharge their anger through symbolic play, as with toy guns. Furthermore it would prevent their feeling frustrated because an important type of symbolic play available to boys is not available to them. By playing with guns they too would get things out of their system. They would realize that boys are not advantaged in comparison to girls in this respect. Continue Reading »

There are many contributions that only parents can make to their child’s play. For example, no teacher, and certainly no age-mate, can be as deeply and personally involved in play that seems to relate to the child’s future as are his parents. Play is anchored in the present, but it also takes up and tries to solve problems of the past, and it is often future-directed as well. Continue Reading »

Despite everything that has been said, it is obvious that parents cannot always have direct empathy with their child’s play experience. But certainly it can help parents to become aware of the different needs, anticipations, and desires a child brings to his play, as long as the parent realizes and accepts the fact that divergences between parent and child do exist. And the greater the parent’s emotional involvement in play, the more beneficial it is to the child, and to the relation with each other. Continue Reading »

If you have an interfaith marriage, what religion should you offer to your child? You have several weighty choices, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.

You can choose one religion or the other, from the husband’s or the wife’s background, and make that the religion of your new family. For example, a committed Catholic father and a nominal Protestant mother might elect to bring up their child as a Catholic. The main advantage of this child-rearing strategy is that the child is raised in a single religious environment, as most youngsters are. Whether they are sent to religious school or not, children have a better chance to embrace religion if they concentrate on one coherent set of beliefs and practices. For the parent whose religion is not observed, the fundamental task is to keep an eye out for any possible resentment or guilt. Each parent must be entirely comfortable with the family’s choice of religion. Continue Reading »

An uncomfortable problem for you as an idealistic young person, especially in the early teens, is the sharp contrast between the physical side of sex and the romantic, tender, spiritual side. By the time you are in your late teens or early twenties, these two aspects will tend to fuse together (sooner in one individual, later in another), giving strength and meaning to each other. But at first they are so opposite that they seem to battle against each other. Continue Reading »

While we are talking about the experimental, physical kind of sexual affair which fairly often goes on to intercourse nowadays, without any real love, I want to speak of illegitimate pregnancy. Many people assume, now that there are `the pill’ and other efficient forms of contraception, that unwanted pregnancies don’t occur. This is not so. In fact illegitimate pregnancies have tripled in the United States in the past twenty years. You wonder why it happens. In one type of case the boy and girl say it was because ‘one thing led to another’, without the young couple’s ever having planned it that way or taken any precautions. They may firmly decide that it was all a mistake, that they won’t let themselves do it again and so won’t have the need for any contraceptive. Yet they may succumb repeatedly. Such people are quite immature. Those with a sense of responsibility manage to control their feelings. Or if they make the very serious decision to carry on an affair, they carefully take the precautions. Continue Reading »

At first, my wife refused point-blank, but the children were so persistent, she finally agreed on a compromise. “OK,” she said, “I’m not promising anything, but we’ll just pop into the local pet shop and have a look.”

Silly girl.

When I got home that evening I was greeted by two ecstatic daughters, a hamster called Hamlet, a blue and white budgie called Timmy — and a look from my wife that warned me to keep quiet and say nothing. Continue Reading »

They say a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. I doubt if our eightyear-old daughter Kendall would agree with that particular piece of traditional wisdom.

This is because, when it comes to the care and feeding — and keeping — of pet cage birds, our middle daughter is about as successful as her mother used to be when she was a child.

You may recall previous accounts of my wife’s youthful experiences with pets: most notably cage birds and fish. She had dozens of them at varying stages of her childhood. And all of them went the same way — slain in their millions by my wife. Not through malice, I hasten to add, but simply through too much kindess, too much handling and far too much food. At one stage, my wife’s kill-rate of aquarium fish was so great she was supporting the country’s fishing industry all by herself. Continue Reading »

Most normal families look forward to Sundays as the traditional day of rest and/or recreation. Not my family.

This, of course, is perfectly natural. Face it: we are not what you would call a normal family.

For us, Sunday is just another working day; the day my wife the estate agent has to go out to work while I, fresh from a week of feet-on-the-office desk refuge from domestic strife, must revert once more to my role as a full-time househusband responsible for the care, feeding, control, cleaning, rescue and entertainment of an ever-increasing menagerie of diverse domestic life-forms. To wit … Continue Reading »