This Classical Life

Some of my favorite articles lately:

Freda Rosenfeld is The Breast Whisperer.

God said be fruitful and multiply and Yitta certainly did.

Where the Bar Ought to Be is an opinion piece about education, and how excellent, passionate teachers make the difference.

I love that my alma mater is the center of this story in the new york times about male-female ratios on the college campus.

Making College “Relevant” When students see college as mere vocational training, the liberal arts die.

Did Christianity Cause the Crash? Hanna Rosin continues her tradition of boundary pushing with this article on the prosperity gospel and the recession for the Atlantic.

Home is a Tiny Plastic Bunk How the recession has affected some in Toyko.

Indie Sweethearts Pitching Products A discussion of some of the random people pitching random things in commercials. Like Ellen Page representing Cisco and those ubiquitous Luke Wilson ads for AT&T.

No U.S. Combat-Related Deaths in Iraq in December Good news is good news, even if troops are scaling back.

Links that have caught my eye this week:

+ Our friend Jon Black sent us an awesome early Christmas present of some Christmas music he created with other friends. He said we could share with our friends, too, so I am going to highly recommend you download this. I have enjoyed it immensely.

+ USA Today ran a piece about multi-site churches in their weekend edition. I liked seeing the contrast between Tim Keller, who has held out against video messages, and the rest of the movement.

+ How children best learn to read is a well researched and hotly debated topic. How they acquire basic math skills is not so much. I enjoyed this story in the New York Times about current neuroscience research regarding math.

+ The 2000-2009 Photoshop of Horrors Hall of Shame. As a parent of two young girls, these sorts of things make me livid.

+ Noughtyisms: some words coined this decade collected by the Guardian. The list is more than a little cheeky and may not be appropriate for young readers. One of my favorites: nom de womb.

Last week a mother lost her son. As a parent it always saddens me to hear when another parent has to bury a child. It’s one of the most classic examples of how things are not the way they are supposed to be.

This story has turned into a controversy. The controversy has mostly centered on whether or not it is appropriate to tweet about an emergency in the midst of it. If your community is online, it makes perfect sense to me. But that wasn’t the aspect of the story that most moved me to address it.

This child’s death was an accident and a tragedy. I would never say otherwise. However, I think parents should take pause to hear that his mother tweeted five or six times in the eight minutes proceeding the 911 call (about everyday matters) while also caring for her backyard chickens. Are we neglecting our kids to get a quick rush from a well-turned tweet or check up on someone we don’t really care about on facebook? How are we showing our children they matter more to us than our keyboards and smartphones?

Let’s not forget that the relationships that take the hardest work are the ones that bring us the most joy and fulfillment over the long haul.

Wish I were on Franklin Street celebrating tonight. Congratulations, Tar Heels! And congratulations to Reba, who won the TCL annual pool, and continued the girls’ winning streak.

Moms all over the internet are chattering about Hanna Rosin’s Atlantic article “The Case Against Breastfeeding” and after a few days of thinking it over, here’s some of my musings.

.1. The most significant problem to me isn’t breastfeeding itself, but the mommy culture of competition and venomous judgment. Taking good things (breastfeeding, organic food, natural toys, whatever) and making them a barometer for deciding who is and who isn’t a good mother turns the good things toxic. What we need most is to be for one another, and encourage one another. Parenting is full of choices, and we don’t all have to make the same ones. Even if we agree something is an ideal, we all fall short of the ideal in many ways, and we have to extend grace to one another and ourselves.

.2. The scientific argument that Rosin makes wasn’t that compelling to me as I followed her rabbit trails. So, breastfeeding doesn’t prevent childhood obesity. That wasn’t my primary reason for breastfeeding anyway. The study she cites of the sibling pairs is much more nuanced than she makes it out to be. As breastfeeding is the natural choice (”human milk for human babies”) isn’t the burden of proof on formula and not breastmilk?

.3. Breastfeeding for many women is difficult, especially in the early weeks. My first month with Kate was full of stress and tears. But once we got over that hump, it was a wonderful experience. Perhaps the struggle at the onset is so that new moms stop and rest and take care of themselves, we’ll never know, but it helped me to appreciate the gift of breastfeeding and not to take it for granted. Nursing did forge an amazing bond between the children and me. In all my busy-ness and bustle, I appreciated the reminder to stop and enjoy my baby, and breastfeeding was a regular way to do that. It was a sacrifice at times, but so are many parts of parenting, it comes with the territory. Maybe I have a hard time identifying with Rosin because nursing itself was never ever an overwhelming burden to me, nor did it feel like just another duty. Perhaps it’s those endorphins, but breastfeeding calmed and centered me and now that it’s over, I miss it.

.4. I do appreciate her thoughts on part-time breastfeeding. A lot of breastfeeding advocates are very afraid of supplementing with formula, as we have all known mothers for whom supplementing was a slippery slope of diminished milk supply. But we have also all known mothers for whom supplementation works just fine! As mothers’ milk production varies widely, what works for one, may not for another. Thus part-time breastfeeding might not be the “best practice” in the sense that for those with tenuous supply issues it might be harmful, but it’s certainly not a bad idea in and of itself.

.5. If breastfeeding itself after a good college try is causing a mother to be extremely stressed out and not enjoy her child, I would be the first to say to lay down the idol and pick up the bottle. It’s not worth that. All things being equal (without extenuating health problems, etc.) I found breastfeeding to be much simpler and less time consuming than all the steps necessary to make a bottle and feed the baby that way. So I was flummoxed by her arguments about breastfeeding not being free, as a mothers’ time is worth a lot, etc.

.6. Is breastfeeding really to blame for employers not being supportive of working moms pumping? Let’s place the blame squarely where it belongs, with the government, employers and society’s views of breastfeeding in general.

The public was scared about the lead found in cheap, imported toys. So, Congress nearly unanimously passed a law, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) with lots of new regulations to keep American children safe. Result of said law? Every manufacturer of children’s clothing and toys has to subject every batch to a third party for very expensive testing. Goodbye handmade toys. Goodbye anything for kids on Etsy. What is supposed to keep our kids safe will push the best toys out of the market completely. And baby slings? We’ll be back to only having a handful of mass produced choices. Some people have even dubbed the day it goes into effect “National Bankruptcy Day” because of the vast numbers of small businesses which will have to close their doors.

You can help. Go here for more information. Write your senators and congressman. Tell everyone you know. We have until February to save handmade for our kids!

I loved this article about Amish migration and population growth. I am a religious studies nerd, though. It’s interesting to think about the growth of religious movements like the Amish, LDS and even Islam as their views of children and contraception allow them to grow at a faster rate. As evangelicalism in general promotes couples waiting longer and having less children, conforming to national trends, we are loosing ground. Lest we forget, there is a middle ground between the societal status quo and being quiverfull.

Student Body President Eve Carson was murdered in what seems to be a random act of violence off campus, in Chapel Hill.

I’ve been thinking all afternoon about what to write, but all I can say is that I am praying for her family as well as students, faculty, staff, and those in campus ministry in this difficult time.

This article in the Atlantic is alarming, and likely very prophetic.

The babywearing group I helped to found was featured on the local news this week. You can watch here.