There, I said it.

Some sort of blasphemy here in the United States, I’m sure.

I’m not a fan of either college or professional football, and never have been.  I grew up in an area that did not in any way revolve around football the way many towns do, so perhaps geography plays a large part.

I don’t care so much about adult football players, they are of course adults, and can choose to do what they wish.  It’s all the young football players out there, getting repetitive brain injuries that really get my goat.

I cannot understand for the life of me why parents willingly sign their children up for this violent sport.  And the banners around town can say “touch” football all they want, everybody knows they still tackle each other.  Indeed, are encouraged to tackle each other.

I will never forget in kindergarten when a classmate of my son’s was absent for almost a week.  When he came back to school, I asked his mom if he was OK.  She told me a harrowing tale of how he sustained a neck injury in football practice (he was 5!) that could have led to him being paralyzed if he hadn’t received immediate medical attention.  And yet, he still was back to playing as soon as the doctor signed him off!

I understand that in any sport, there are physical risks that come with the territory.  But in football, it just seems like you are asking to be injured, and it’s abnormal if you have never been.

My husband played football all through high school, and he has absolutely forbidden our son to play football until he is at least of high school age.  Which pretty much means he won’t ever be on a football team, because most people don’t just walk onto the football field without ever playing and make the team.

I’m totally fine with that.

It is difficult to believe in this age of attachment parenting that ideas such as this were once popular:

Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit in your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say goodnight. Shake hands with them in the morning.

…

When you are tempted to pet your child remember that mother love is a dangerous instrument. An instrument which may inflict a never-healing wound, a wound which may make infancy unhappy, adolescence a nightmare, an instrument which may wreck your adult son or daughter’s vocational future and their chances for marital happiness.

Shake hands with them in the morning! That is classic!

My son would come into the bed when he woke up in the morning and snuggle with me/us until we kicked him out. I never saw that as unnatural for a second.

Now that quote up there? Totally unnatural.

And of course, written by a man.

via Sociological Images

via Buzzfeed

So 43% of you are just fine with the Unbaby.me app that removes all bubbeh pics from your Facebook feed.  26% are like, whatever, 17% say if you dislike babies that much, just unfriend the person already, and 13% of you are not even on Facebook.

Today’s question is regarding the recent change in policy to male infant circumcision.  It seems that a peer-reviewed study has shown that the benefits of circumcision outweigh the risks, and the AAP is stopping just short of recommending routine infant circumcision.

As some of you may have read, the annual cost of child care in some states exceeds that of tuition for a four year degree.

Let’s think about that for a second.

I am all for paying childcare workers a fair and living wage, as well as treating their positions with respect.  But is the high cost of a full-time daycare truly reflective of a highly trained staff and a safe, stimulating setting, or  is it a business just trying to take advantage of a situation where both parents feel they need/want to work?

When I became pregnant with the Munchkin, my husband and I sat down and discussed what I was going to do with myself once our son was born.  My husband was all for me continuing to work, as he likes having money.  I too, like having money, but I pointed out to him that the cost of childcare would negate much of my earnings (although not all) but the net gain we would make from my salary wasn’t worth it to me.

This was a point of contention for a while, with him pointing out that we could hire some aging grandmother off the street who would come in for cheap.  Well, that might have been true, but I still felt that my son was best off with me as his caregiver, period.

So, as in many of our disagreements, I came out the winner.

If good, reliable childcare that didn’t break the bank in my area was obtainable, I might have considered staying at work, or at least scaling back to half or part time.

But it wasn’t.

And so here I sit, stay at home mother to a 4th grader and a toddler with speech and developmental delays.

Yeah, not looking good for a return to the workforce any time soon.

Is childcare in your area reasonable, or a big ripoff?  And how did it influence your decision to stay/not stay at home?

77% of you reacted favorably to Harrod’s attempt at a more gender-neutral toy area.  13% said it was easier to shop when there was a clear demarcation between girl and boy toys, and 4% of you didn’t think it was a good idea.  I am all for a bit more neutrality when it comes to the toy section.  Girl things don’t all have to be pink and purple and boy things don’t all have to be blue and green.  I purposely bought my daughter a bunch of “boy” colored toys because all that pink grates on my nerves.  I actually kind of hate pink.

Now I want to now what you think about one of the newest Facebook apps, Unbaby.Me.

90% of you do not agree with the rather heavy-handed tactics planned by New York City to promote breastfeeding to new moms.  While I think we can all agree that it would be ideal if everybody could breastfeed, the harsh reality is that no, not every single mother can breastfeed.   Whether it be due to health conditions, failure to latch properly, failure to produce enough milk, or simply having to go back to work, breastfeeding is difficult for many.  To assume all mothers should breastfeed exclusively is to not live in reality.

Today I’m sort of excited about this.

88% of you were not affected by the Aurora shooting in making your movie-going decisions.  Although from the comments, it just might be because you don’t really attend the movies a lot as a general rule.  8% said you were reluctant to attend a movie, and it made 4% of you hesitant to send your older kids.  I have to say that my  husband and I saw The Dark Knight Rises last Wednesday and I was definitely keeping a closer eye than normal on my fellow audience members.  Side note: babysitting is expensive!

Today I am all about the kerfuffle in New York over a supposedly well-meaning health initiative that treats bottles of baby formula like prescription medicine.

A good friend of my son’s is in a Boy Scout troop (well, Cub Scout webelo, to be exact) and my son has been bugging me to allow him to join the Cub Scouts.  He wouldn’t be in the same troop as his friend, but he’s willing to give it a go.

And then they had to come out with this.

I fully realize the Boy Scouts is a private group and can dictate membership as they see fit, but it is very discouraging to see that they promote an official agenda that is discriminatory.  Although I did read somewhere that the Boy Scouts do receive money from the Department of Defense, so perhaps they aren’t as totally private as they would like to say they are.

So as a parent what do you do?

Do you try to locate a local troop that may not heartily embrace the “official” BSA party line?  I have heard that in my area, many of the troops march to the beat of their own drummers, so to speak.

Do you try to work and change from within?

Or on principle, do you refuse to join an organization that holds beliefs counter to your own?

I’m very interested in what you all have to say.

Growing up, it was customary in my family to kiss and hug our relatives goodbye.

I do remember being told a few times to hug a relative I didn’t feel like hugging at the time, but it was mostly due to my being upset with them for some now-forgotten (and most likely idiotic) reason.

We do instruct our son to hug and kiss his close relatives goodbye, but only those that he knows very well.

What can I say, it’s a tradition in our families.

My daughter is too young to “force” to give hugs, and she often doesn’t want to.  Because she is a capricious toddler, the offended party laughs if off, along with everyone else.

But this article on CNN.com has made me think about the whole hugging relatives thing in an entirely new way, especially for my daughter.

In making my children hug their close relatives, am I really teaching them that their body is not their own?  That their body is something for other people’s pleasure and not theirs?

I’d always considered it an issue of respect to elders and a sign of how close our family is, but maybe I am completely wrong about the whole thing.

What do you think?