[extropy-chat] Bloke No; Baby Yes

[Emlyn]

On 26/09/05, Olga Bourlin <fauxever at sprynet.com> wrote:
> From: "Emlyn" <emlynoregan at gmail.com>
> >> And even not such wealthy people - e.g., I was reared by amahs (one in>>
> >> Nanking when I was very young, and one in Taiwan when I was older), and>>
> >> still passionately loved my mother and was loved by her even though
> >> I've>> never known her to bake ONE cookie for me - or any cookies, ever,
> >> come to
> >> think of it. :-]
>
> > Some of us are bad at cooking :-) I'm sure she spent some kind of time>
> > with you though. It's hard to attach to someone who is never there.
>
> Oh, I wasn't complaining about the cookies - that was a kind of facetious
> remark on my part (I was thinking of the flack about Hillary Clinton who
> said she never had time to make cookies or some such thing during Clinton's
> first presidential election).  And I didn't mean to give the impression that
> my mother was not there when I was young -  actually, she was there 24/7
> (until I was in school, at which time she took on a paying job).  The amah
> was an "extra" hand ... who lived with us.
>
> > Bad parenting with money seems to be summed up by these people:
>
> http://alphamom.com/
>
> I took a fast overall look - didn't delve too deeply - but didn't see
> anything wrong.  I was armed only with a paperback copy of "Dr. Spock" when
> I went into the whole childrearing experience - and I would have loved to
> have had Google and the internet and email lists and all that is available
> to women now.
>
> Olga
>

Oops, I had a bit of a look at the site, and it seems innocuous
enough. I read an article about the founder (in an Oz magazine on dead
trees only I'm afraid) which was incredibly scathing about her and the
alphamoms in general. Her philosophy (and the philosophy of Alphamom,
at least to begin with) seemed to be that parenting is essentially a
management discipline. She has a son, but luckily she can afford a
nanny, a night nurse, and somebody else (I forget... housekeeper I
think) all working long hours. Apparently she works one hundred hours
per week on Alphamom. Her hubby, her son's Dad, works similar hours
doing whatever he does.

I just can't figure out where the parenting is in all of that.

--
Emlyn

http://emlynoregan.com   * blogs * music * software *