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Rastro
Citizen
Username: Rastro
Post Number: 3085
Registered: 5-2004
| | Posted on Friday, May 12, 2006 - 9:54 am: | 
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Yes, SLK, there's nothing like calling for executing people for having children to stir up the "hate speech" crowd. I'm glad you agree with his philosophy.
And I'm curious if anyone can put some numbers to companies that have been "cripplied" by maternity and family leave.
This thread is about infant mortality. If CM has something to add to that discussion, great. But nothing he has said is even remotely more than someone either trolling or venting their misobynistic rantings. |
Cerebrus Maximus
Citizen
Username: Xtralargebrain
Post Number: 54
Registered: 4-2006
| | Posted on Friday, May 12, 2006 - 10:02 am: |
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Mem, I agree that the country is controlled by mainly white men and that in fact does create an unfair challenge for women. That control absolutely needs to be reversed. I am with you on that 100%. But there are too many inconsistencies in the rights that women advocate and those inconsistencies erode credibility and THAT is my point. And then to have to listen to the people in this thread deflect responsibility by going on about "the system"!
Equally frustrating is that women are too PC to speak out on cultural matters that impact their rights. The Muslim community for example routinely oppresses women and have the notion that by performing certain deeds on earth, they will earn the right to penetrate 79 virgins. Dont you think this is sick and primitive? Yet you choose not to challenge those people because its not politically correct to criticize or raise awareness of that cultural element. Womans rights groups are silent on the matter. Isn't there something wrong with that? What message does that send ?
Sorry to be so inflammatory but I'm trying to call your attention to some campaign strategies that women need to re-think. Whether you want to believe this or not I am on their side. |
Rastro
Citizen
Username: Rastro
Post Number: 3087
Registered: 5-2004
| | Posted on Friday, May 12, 2006 - 10:08 am: |
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"Women's rights groups are silent on this"?
Are you out of your mind? What planet do you live on? |
las
Citizen
Username: Las
Post Number: 1724
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Friday, May 12, 2006 - 10:16 am: |
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CM, when you're not generalizing you sound much more intelligent. You might have more credibility by expressing some of your assertions in the form of a question, for when you state "women are too PC" or the like, you're basing it on your perception, not a tangible fact to which others can relate.
And the system excuse you despise is most certainly a part of the problem and the solution. No change can take place in a vaccum - everything is related and it is impossible to reach one population for one single issue without contemplating all the factors that created the situation in the first place. |
Cerebrus Maximus
Citizen
Username: Xtralargebrain
Post Number: 55
Registered: 4-2006
| | Posted on Friday, May 12, 2006 - 10:22 am: |
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LAS,
I might take you up on your first suggestion in some future postings (If I can control myself).. It is a fair point. |
Pippi
Supporter
Username: Pippi
Post Number: 2196
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Friday, May 12, 2006 - 10:33 am: |
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can everyone please STOP feeding the troll????? |
sportsnut
Citizen
Username: Sportsnut
Post Number: 2413
Registered: 10-2001
| | Posted on Friday, May 12, 2006 - 10:57 am: |
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Why is this really surprising to people? Afterall we are a nation of extremes. We have the highest rate of obesity and the lowest rate of physical fitness. It's the mentality that I will do what I damn well please, to hell with the consequences. I think we let people off the hook to easily (not to say that we do a great job of educating people) but come on - its the same reason I have very little sympathy for people who smoke - and that goes for teenagers too. You know the risks but the consequences of your actions are not enforced so why not go ahead and do what you want. |
las
Citizen
Username: Las
Post Number: 1725
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Friday, May 12, 2006 - 11:19 am: |
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But Sportsnut, not everyone knows the risks and consquences of their sexual behavior. It's not always taught in school and there's not always a mom and dad (or combination thereof) at home who can teach sex ed. And in some cultures (read: LeBlanc's Random Family) being a teenager with a baby is a pretty cool thing. I've said it before: spend some time with the boarder babies and you really gain an understanding that not everyone knows the things you do, and you gain an persepctive that having a baby in high school or on drugs or on welfare is about a lot more than a sex ed class. |
Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 14234
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Friday, May 12, 2006 - 11:21 am: |
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Is it really true that not all school districts teach the risks of sexual behavior? My daughters have heard it so much in school they could teach the course from memory.
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las
Citizen
Username: Las
Post Number: 1726
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Friday, May 12, 2006 - 11:39 am: |
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In some schools teachers bring in bread and peanut butter for their hungry students. We are rich. Very rich in many ways. |
CLK
Supporter
Username: Clkelley
Post Number: 2289
Registered: 6-2002
| | Posted on Friday, May 12, 2006 - 11:56 am: |
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The woman who shared a hospital room with me after I gave birth was 20 years old, and had just had her third baby. She claims that she did not know that she was pregnant. She was rushed to the hospital for "something else" (I guessed drug overdose, but maybe that's not fair) and they discovered that she was in labor.
This was not a fat woman - she must have "shown," and certainly she missed her period for 9 months. How could she not know? She'd been pregnant before. But she didn't know. I really believe her - she had no idea.
It was a very bad situation - her partner was in a gang (he talked about it, so this isn't just guesswork) but had high hopes of making it big in hip-hop music. He was actually endearingly fresh and naive in many ways. Not different emotionally from the young college students I teach - he just happened to be a violent criminal.
The whole family came from such a different place than me that I can't presume to understand or even guess at anything about their lives.
And I've often wondered how their little girl is doing now. It always struck me as such a contrast - here I was, 35, with a Ph.D., having my first (and as it turned out, only) child, had the very best pre-natal care available in the world, husband a college professor, we'd just made an offer on our first house in this nice idyllic New Jersey suburb with lots of trees, flowers, good schools, etc ..... and the other woman was 20, 3 kids already, had had no pre-natal care whatsoever, hadn't finished high school, unmarried and partnered with a criminal, lived in the worst part of Cleveland, very urban, very little vegetation.
How could our two daughters, born into this world as equally vulnerable tiny little girls, possibly fare equally in this world? They couldn't of course. When they grow up, what is their experience of motherhood likely to be? How will they handle it differently? How will their lives prior to bearing children affect the way they deal with pregnancy and childbirth? (assuming of course that they become mothers)
I have to assume that the young woman in the other bed had a very different life from me. I have to assume that there was a reason why she didn't know what was going on in her body. I have to assume that as a nation, there is something we can do. People do need to take responsibility for their actions - but we need to take responsibility to make sure that people have the tools to make responsible choices. We do a terrible job of that, and it needs to change. |
davel
Citizen
Username: Davel
Post Number: 144
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Friday, May 12, 2006 - 12:09 pm: |
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Great post CLK! |
Pippi
Supporter
Username: Pippi
Post Number: 2198
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Friday, May 12, 2006 - 12:23 pm: |
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CLK - thanks for sharing that. I think your experience really illustrates that something does need to be done to ensure that everyone has access to education and social services available in the US.
I'd like to think we, as a nation, can do better for ALL our citizens
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Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 14239
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Friday, May 12, 2006 - 12:26 pm: |
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Yes, I think I'll be pondering your story for a long time. She didn't know she was in labor or even pregnant! Did you ask her if she knew how women get pregnant?
I'd have to guess she didn't finish school. I am sure just about every school's curriculum explains how women get pregnant. So it's not that the curriculum is lacking. It's that some people don't get through school adequately.
I think preventing unwanted pregnancies may be the best investment we can make in society.
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las
Citizen
Username: Las
Post Number: 1727
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Friday, May 12, 2006 - 12:32 pm: |
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When I was 18 years old my father hired a 20 year old woman (with her 6 month old daughter) to live with us in exchange for taking care of my mother and use of a car. About six months into it there was no doubt this very tall, very skinny woman was pregnant. She kept saying she wasn't pregnant, why would she want another baby?
Meanwhile, her baby-turned toddler had bow legs, but she wouldn't heed the doctor's advice to get her fitted for braces because she didn't want her kid walking around with braces on her legs. I couldn't fathom why she pierced the baby's ears and made her wear all those gold bracelets. I kept thinking the mother should use that money to take herself to the dentist. But those were my values, not hers. (Of course, I know that now.)
She soon found out she was pregnant, she got the car as a parting gift, and like CLK, I wonder what happened to this woman who came from a world so far from my own. |
CLK
Supporter
Username: Clkelley
Post Number: 2290
Registered: 6-2002
| | Posted on Friday, May 12, 2006 - 1:55 pm: |
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The woman I shared a room with had not finished high school. I don't know when she dropped out. I don't remember drilling her on where babies come from - I was pretty sick myself (she was too - we were in the same room together almost a week). I was also so shocked when she said she hadn't known she was pregnant that I just dropped the subject.
She was also far more articulate than I would have expected (snobbery on my part, of course). AND she adored her children. Of course. |
mjh
Supporter
Username: Mjh
Post Number: 521
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Friday, May 12, 2006 - 2:12 pm: |
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I can share a lot of stories from my clinical work for 10 years with women with HIV in NYC.
One that was most touching to me was that of a 17 year old girl who was HIV-infected (and had herpes and condyloma) about the age of 4 from sexual abuse. She spent the rest of her childhood in foster care---------the first foster family was great, but lasted less than 3 years because the foster mother became very ill herself. The next home was not so great. In fact, the parent was really bad at giving her medicine, so that she was frequently more ill than she needed to be. She spent weeks out of every year in the hospital.
She fell "in love" at 16. She wanted nothing more desperately than this: a "normal" family and her own baby to love forever. Her longing was so strong it still brings tears to my eyes to remember her eloquent expressions of need. Hard enough to help adults understand the rigors of parenting.......virtually impossible to tell a teenager who is desperate to play house and love somebody.
She went about things methodically and responsibly (at least in her mind). She finished high school. He got a job. He knew her HIV status, received counseling about HIV, and they (mostly) practiced safer sex. She tested for ovulation and they had unprotected sex at the time of ovulation, and she became pregnant. She studied everything she could about reducing the risk of HIV to the infantShe advocated for the best treatment to prevent HIV transmission to the baby (at that time) and took care of herself very well. Came to every appointment, took every prescription, demanded a C-section to reduce the risk to baby.
She had a beautiful, healthy HIV-negative son. She loved him and was so happy. She held him for hours at a time........read to him, sang to him, etc.
By the time he was a toddler, she was too sick to care for him full time. BF was getting restless: a toddler, a job, and a partner too sick to care about sex. It all went downhill from there.
She died, BF got scared and ran, baby went to foster care. I wonder how he'll do when he's grown up? |
las
Citizen
Username: Las
Post Number: 1729
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Friday, May 12, 2006 - 4:20 pm: |
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Wow, mjh - she sounds like a really great person to have known. Lucky you. |
Chris Prenovost
Citizen
Username: Chris_prenovost
Post Number: 925
Registered: 7-2003
| | Posted on Friday, May 12, 2006 - 4:29 pm: |
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CLK, LAS, MJH - Wonderful stories. It is great to put human faces on this otherwise clinical topic.
Now, I think I will go back into my corner and thank God I have what I have. . . |
las
Citizen
Username: Las
Post Number: 1731
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, May 13, 2006 - 10:47 am: |
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Chris, I've been thinking about your last post since yesterday. I'm not attacking you, and I admire you are able to appreciate all you have, but your post got me thinking. Issues such as infant mortality in the US are not about caring individuals who are compassionate enough to recognize others don't have as much as they do. (Again, not directed at you, this is a general rant.)
This is about our society as a whole. This is about disregard of people who have become the underlings of our nation. This is about recognizing that we (M/SO) are indeed a homogenous culture comprised of people who can't fathom that not all students eat breakfast before heading to school; who can't comprehend why a woman would use drugs while pregnant; how a woman can have unprotected sex without knowing the rammifications.
Change is not about implementing a new law. Policymakers (generally comprised of people who are not those being represented by said policies) write the rules based on their personal understanding of an issue or on the wants of their constituency (who are likely not the same as the people we are discussing herein); not from the perspective of a female heroin addict who gives birth to an addicted baby and visits that struggling kid in the NICU every few weeks and wakes him from his stinky, sweaty sleep (a sleep that took hours to induce), so that she can put new baby clothes on him, because that's what a good mom does. The rules do not take into account all that brought her to this place, be it her sexual abuse, foster care, phsyical abuse, lack of education. Our policies expect her to know having unprotected sex while on heroin isn't the best choice she could make, but the policies don't contemplate that's she does not know otherwise.
Anyone who believes that simply because an item is in the curriculum means it is being taught needs to visit a school outside of this community where a foster child has been placed in his third new school of the year and has no school records, special services or advocate and is sitting in that class not learning, while the teacher is distracted making peanut butter sandwiches and maintain order in a class where a student needs to be classified but there is no way for the IEP process to begin without parental involvement. By the time this class reaches the sixth grade I'll bet working on their reading skills takes precedent over proper use of a condom.
Anyone who believes there is no reason for a parent not to spend time reading with their child each day needs to meet a single mom holding down two or three jobs and has no option but to leave her children unattended from 3 pm until bedtime each day, and feeds them crappy chips and cola because those are the cheapest items in the store where a measly pay check is cashed for an exhoribant fee.
People on this Board make judgments about others all the time: this person talks too loud on their cell; that person is an inconsiderate driver, that person cut the line, etc. These are based on our own values, and in the scheme of a day, it would be nice if everyone were as polite as we'd like them to be. But when we are talking about public policy, step outside of our microchosm of perfection and realize rules we write have to have relevance to the life someone else has led.
As for the woman my father hired to care for my mom when I was 18, things I know now that didn't know then: I was white, upper middle class; she was black, from a town I wouldn't even drive near. In her culture gold jewelry was more important than good teeth; in my world you got braces when your teeth grew in. Waiting on line for her WIC stamps was a social occassion - she was only twenty after all, taking care of her kid and my mom, she needed a break. In my culture you didn't get pregnant and you finished high school. And while she had use of a car plus $150 cash each week as pay for taking care of my mom, I was attending college with a part time job in the student union. We did not start out in the same place, there's just no way to expect the same policies and bodies of knowledge would apply to us both.
As this time I don't think the issue of US infant mortality is as much a health care issue as it is one of education.
Come and get me. |
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