Recently in Parenting Category

It took the obstinate and abstinent Sarah Palin, "natch," to puncture the thick prophylactic of MJ media coverage. She and her spokesperson, Meg Stapleton, managed to characterize her resignation as a heroic act.

Palin lamented that the biggest problem facing our nation is apathy, and with that, she announced that she'd walk away from the final 18 months of a four-year term. Stapleton put a nice spin on that, saying that Palin can't make change within the current political system, so she's looking for other, unspecified ways to make change.

So the woman who said she'd bring change to America now complains that she can't change Alaska because people don't play nice. But what would a maverick do...?

Palin at her presser used a basketball analogy, saying that a point guard must break a full-court press by racing down court and then finding someone else to hand the ball off to. Stapleton, speaking later to an incredulous Anderson Cooper, repeated the analogy. When he failed to get it, Stapleton responded with a marvelous, booming and condescending laugh, arguing something about how Palin "passed the ball off, and said I'm going around it, and we all have the same common hoop, but I'm going around the block." Huh?

I guess what bugs me is the old issue we've dealt with around here too many times: Media "bias." Palin and Stapleton engaged in the most disingenuous game today, clumsily attempting to frame her resignation as a profile in courage and wisdom. The only people who will buy any of it are the diehard partisans. And those are the same persons who lament how any push-back from an Anderson Cooper represents reprehensible and insufferable ideology. For such persons, all nature will look like a conspiracy against them.

I'm pro-choice, and that means a woman should have the choice to have no babies, or to have 14 babies if her body is up to it.

And that's the choice that Nadya Suleman, the Whittier mother of six who recently gave birth to octuplets, made when she found that all her fertilized embryos were viable. Apparently, her belief was that terminating them was killing them, and it was her right to make that choice.

Yet, people who know nothing about this woman have been weighing in on her character based on a few questionable facts, and concluding she's some sort of horrible person because she wants to raise a bunch of babies. Some have even suggested that she be prevented from having babies because of her mental state. Wow! Does anyone really want to start down the slippery slope of regulating who gets to reproduce?

No one should force a woman to make a choice about having or not having babies. That's what being pro-choice is all about. Besides, my grandfather came from a family of 22 kids, and he turned out ok.

So please, leave Nadya alone. She's got enough to worry about with eight preemies. And if you can't leave her alone, then at least send her a pack of Pampers.

What parent has not prayed to change places with a sick, or even a dying, child? What child has not wept at the pain of an aging parent? As my wife, the Fair Helenekela, rehabs from her knee replacement and I put her through her painful paces, I would change places in a heartbeat. It is far easier for me to hurt than to cause her tears.

In the military, a soldier will throw himself (and now herself) on a grenade without conscious thought and certainly adverse to personal interest. A mother bird or human mother will lure danger away from the nest and interpose her body between the threat and her off spring. Deep in the genetic code is the drive to protect the future and care for our offspring.

Since the beginning of recorded time we have danced, sung, painted, pleaded, fought, lied and died for love. It is fundamental to what makes us human beings.

I’m obviously not simply talking about sex and mating—all the other life forms higher than amoebas mate. Indeed, “birds do it; bees do it; even educated fleas do it.” But love is more, much more, than the male drive to inseminate and the female drive to select good genes for babies and a good provider for the family unit.

Human love is far more than lust, recreation or even re-creation. It is empathy, sympathy, sacrifice and generosity.

The Greeks had three words for love so that we wouldn’t confuse affection, lust and devotion: Eros, Phil and Agape. Eros is romantic love. Phil is attraction and devotion (Philosophy being love/devotion to wisdom). Agape is usually understood as the acceptance of the other—flaws, faults, warts and all. The classic example is God’s love for flawed humanity. These three words are connected by, well, connection. They all connect us to the world and to others. They connect our hearts to a special kind of generosity.

Parents, animal and human, will take enormous risks for love—sometimes from instinct and sometimes despite some seemingly strong instincts. Human beings have the possibility of choosing against instinct. We can, if we put our minds to it, come to believe our children are not the most precious and important things in the world. We can try to maximize our own pleasure and not understand the selfless generosity that is built in to our genetic code.

Love, as Agape and not simply Eros, is based on the instinct in animals and insight in humans that we are not the single most important entities in all the universe. This is a liberating epiphany.

As babies, we are only our needs and demands—feed me, hold me, change me, love me. As adolescents, we begin to have a compassionate sense of others and how two are so much more than one plus one. As mature adults and parents or grandparents, we begin to get—consciously or unconsciously—that the needs, desires, happiness and survival of others may be even more important than our own. While other animals may act on this by instinct alone, we are free to choose or ignore these better angels of our genetic inheritance.

Someone once defined civilization as the stifling of our basic animal drives for the sake of civil society. This is in my view 100% half true. The other half is that civilization sometimes stifles the genes of generosity by celebrating our individuality as if it were an unambiguous virtue.

Where romantic love meets devotional love is in the bonding that makes us sense our best selves. I think we often love the people who help us feel about ourselves the way we want to feel, the people who can show us, reveal to us, goodness and generosity that surprises and fulfills us, who can open up our hearts beyond the lonely skin-sack of self and connect us to each other, the world and the future beyond ourselves.

When we squirrel away for the future care of the family, instead of the immediate gratification of that giant flat screen TV (which I still lust for, but don’t need), when we give to our children, the children of the world, a religious group, political party, or scholarship fund—we feel good. We remind ourselves that our short time here in the sunlight has meaning, power and effects beyond its visible manifestation.

We love in order to know that we are not alone and to be connected, physically and spiritually, with each other and the future. Love liberates us from selfishness and opens our hearts to frightening vulnerability as well as to exciting and courageous growth. It sets our hearts dancing.

At first I found this story encouraging:

"In a survey of 1,010 mothers with daughters ages 4 to 9 that was released last month by Synovate, a market-research firm, 85 percent of moms said they are 'tired of the sexpot dolls and characters' in stores."

That means those Skankz -- sorry, "Bratz" -- dolls, the little plastic floozies that not only teach young girls how to look like a ho, but also inform that being a "brat" is something to which they ought to aspire. It boggles the mind that in a country where we are paranoid about trace amounts of lead in our children's toys, we think nothing of handing them playthings that poison the mind and soul, and kill childhood innocence.

Common sense ought to tell us that if you don't want your daughter to dress or behave like a skank, you might not want to indulge her in an entire product line that glorifies the wonders of skankdom. Even the American Psychological Association has singled out Bratz as troublesome, saying, "It (is) worrisome when dolls designed specifically for 4- to 8-year-olds are associated with an objectified adult sexuality."

So it was heartening that some 85 percent of mothers said they frown on such dolls -- but heartening for only a moment.

Because if the overwhelming majority of moms disapprove of Skankz dolls, how could the toys possibly rake in $2 billion a year? How could they be challenging Barbie (who, impossible bodily dimensions aside, seems positively wholesome by comparison) for top-doll status nationwide?

Well, first you need to know that this poll was commissioned by AG Properties -- makers of Strawberry Shortcake, Care Bears, Holly Hobbie and other more modest product lines. This is like a poll from Coca-Cola showing that no one likes Pepsi -- which is to say, one of dubious value.

But beyond the likely bias in the polling, there are two other explanations that account for the gap between what parents say about skanky girls' toys and clothing and what they actually purchase.

The first is advertising. Bratz has a website, a movie, commercials, cartoons -- countless ways to make dolls irresistible to little girls. Peer pressure is a factor, too, with girls wanting the dolls because their friends have them. It's hard for parents to have to say "no" when they're up against an industry and a culture that tell their children to expect to hear "yes."

And the second is parenting. If this poll is at all an accurate reflection of reality, there are many parents out there buying their children these toys against their own better judgment. Perhaps they're just succumbing to the relentless demands from kids who have been exposed to all the ads and hoopla. But if you're letting your kids decide what you buy, you're not being a parent. This is where moms and dads need to be strong -- and turning off the TV and its noxious stream of ads would be a good first step.

It's not easy -- I'm a dad of three myself. But I can't imagine giving one of these insidious little dollies to my precious, 4-year-old daughter. She deserves better. All children do.