Tag Archives: children

April 12, 2013 · 8:17 pm

Annie, the Smiling Evangelist

She’s fearless. She’s charismatic. She’s radiant.

A modern evangelist, Annie basks in Christ’s love and shares it with a simple, winsome touch. A heart overflowing with love is a powerful testimony, I’ve learned.  “We love because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:19). Annie’s love spills over, mysteriously opening hearts long shut to God’s mercy and love.

You’ve got to meet her—so I’ll tell you more about her in a second.

First, a confession. Annie’s love humbles me. It’s so natural, immediate, and unselfish that it stops me dead in my tracks. She’s the perfect foil for my easy self-absorption and carefully calibrated giving, because Annie is never calculating. She reaches out, gives, and loves, without measure.

Meet Annie: she’s almost two, with feathery blond hair, the most beautiful blue eyes, and a smile that lights the sky. She knows sign language and loves music. The cherished youngest of ten children, Annie gives hugs all day long. She also has Down Syndrome.

Jim and Annie April 6 2013Ok, she’s cute. But an evangelist?

Yes. From the start, her very existence witnessed to the goodness of all life. When a routine sonogram showed “problems” in utero, the obstetricians sent Annie’s mom for a more precise sonogram in another building. Radiology was on the ground floor. When a sonogram confirms a Down Syndrome diagnosis, a mother need only ride the elevator a few floors up for an abortion.

So convenient. That’s the way it is now. Women don’t want babies like Annie, so they abort them.

Except that Annie’s mom would never consider it. This was her daughter, after all, no matter what.

A few weeks ago, the New York Times published a reaction to new North Dakota legislation, which outlaws abortions sought because of fetal abnormalities (including Down Syndrome). The writer, Alison Piepmeier, a feminist, gender studies professor at the College of Charleston and the mother of a Down Syndrome child, faults the legislation. In her view, women should be allowed to have abortions “for whatever reason they choose.”

Piepmeier’s research on “reproductive decision-making” found that a woman carrying a Down Syndrome baby typically viewed “the fetus” as a child already, sometimes with a name. Piepmeier defends the decisions of women who aborted their Down Syndrome children, noting that those decisions were “incredibly painful.” (Agonizing over a decision seems to confer moral legitimacy, as least in the New York Times.)

The women in Piepmeier’s study denied that they chose abortion because “they wanted a ‘perfect child.’” Their decisions were justified, in Piepmeier’s view, “because they recognized that the world is a difficult place for people with intellectual disabilities.” One mother called her decision “the protective choice” for her baby.

The reigning philosophy seems to be better dead than disabled.

In an unpublished letter to the Times, Annie’s mom, also a professor, rejected Piepmeier’s justifications. “My own experience is that Alison Piepmeier’s pro-choice position is very much an outlier – most parents of Down Syndrome children whom I have met view the eugenic abortion of Down Syndrome children as tragic and shameful.”

Annie’s mom also observed that many women who choose abortion because of a Down Syndrome diagnosis do so out of fear and misinformation. Medical doctors don’t do much to allay those fears—partly because they see mostly gloom and doom statistics. According to the National Down Syndrome Congress, “many obstetricians are inadequately prepared to explain a diagnosis of trisomy 21, often using overtly negative language or out-of-date information.” The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), for example, targets Down Syndrome (trisomy 21) for routine screening (with termination likely), devaluing the lives of Down Syndrome people and discouraging parents from welcoming them into the family.

What’s to be done?

One of the first press reports after Pope Francis’s election recalled that, as Argentina’s archbishop, he admonished his fellow bishops for their timid, reluctant witness to the Gospel. He said, “Jesus teaches us another way: Go out. Go out and share your testimony, go out and interact with your brothers, go out and share, go out and ask. Become the word in body as well as spirit.”

That’s Annie–the word in body as well as in spirit.

Annie evangelizes wherever she goes, always on-message. Six months ago, she captivated a room full of med students who had gathered to hear how Annie’s mom “coped” with the “burdens” of her Down Syndrome child. After all, Annie’s medical trail was significant, her individuality buried under a litany of diagnoses. To their surprise, these students met a delightful little girl with a “match me” smile.  They learned of her fiercely protective father and retinue of devoted siblings, all of whom delight in teaching, cuddling, feeding, diapering, and—best of all—playing with her. They listened to Annie’s feisty mom and heard, in her infectious laugh and passionate voice, great hope for her daughter’s future. Surely some of these doctors embraced the “good news” about children like Annie.

That’s one of the things Annie does best—spread the good news. Last weekend, she charmed two hundred people at an elegant dinner. Though a guest, she provided delightful, spontaneous entertainment, dancing with her cousins and brothers. Day by day, she stirs the hearts of ordinary people in chance encounters—in the produce aisle at the grocery store, at the snack bar during a local basketball game, and in smiles exchanged during Mass.

She’s cute, not scary. She’s lovable and loving. And she has that mysterious power to stir love in the souls of others, sometimes even in spite of themselves.

She’s “Annie,” not a dreaded Down Syndrome kid. Her life has value, and she’ll wrap you in love if you give her a chance.

Annie with sibsCROPPED

 

 

 

 

 

That’s our Annie…the smiling evangelist.

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February 6, 2011 · 3:47 am

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, Abortion, and the Ravenous Nature of Evil

“Snip.”

That’s what I do to loose threads.  Or to a strand of hair that gets in my way.

It’s also what Dr. Kermit Gosnell did to babies, according to news reports.

Snip, dead.

I don’t know about you, but “snip” seems to me like a pretty mild word to describe actions that warrant murder charges…and that doesn’t sit well with me.

But euphemisms aren’t the only thing that troubles me about the spin on this case–and it’s a horrible case, for sure. Dr. Kermit Gosnell, a Philadelphia abortionist for over 30 years, was charged in January 2011 with eight counts of first degree murder: one count for the reckless death of an immigrant woman, 19 weeks pregnant, who was unmonitored and over-sedated during an abortion; and seven counts for the brutal killings of second trimester babies who were born alive during abortions. The grand jury report also details Gosnell’s routinely callous and dangerous treatment of his clients; it found evidence too that hundreds of babies older than the 24 week statutory limit were born alive, only to be killed by Gosnell and his employees.

In the weeks since Gosnell’s arraignment, pro-choice voices have argued around the case, grasping for a narrative that fits their worldview. Some pro-choice blogs paint Gosnell as a greedy, solo opportunist, a criminal “outlier” running a substandard clinic. Making wads of money by “chopping up poor women” who sought late-term abortions, Gosnell deserved prosecution, they say, but solely because he harmed women, “not the fact that he did abortions.”

One bad guy. One bad clinic.  That’s all.

But the “lone ranger” narrative is a hard sell to a public recoiling from the horror of murderous late-term abortions.

So one pro-choice columnist, William Saletan (Slate.com), has challenged pro-choice advocates with this question: “Is it OK to abort a viable fetus?”

Their answers reveal an extremism the abortion lobby has long sought to hide.

Four out of six pro-choice leaders answered with an unqualified “yes.” Viability doesn’t matter. Only unrestricted legal abortion would prevent women from feeling desperate–and desperation created Gosnell’s market niche. Their mantra: “trust women” to make the right decision. The ultimate moral value: autonomy.

One abortion provider, Ann Furedi, the head of Britain’s leading abortion service, admits up front that the baby is human from the moment of conception. She argues cogently that arbitrary age or viability restrictions make no sense.

“[A]re we really so shallow, so fickle, as to let our view on moral worth be determined by appearance? …Even if at five weeks we can only see an embryonic pole, we know that it is human. The heart that can be seen beating on an ultrasound scan at six weeks is as much a human heart as the one that beats five months later….from the time of conception, as soon as embryonic cells begin to divide, an entity with the potential to become a person is created…unless its development is interrupted or fails, it will be born as a child….is there anything qualitatively different about a fetus at, say, 28 weeks that gives it a morally different status to a fetus at 18 weeks or even eight weeks?”

It’s a startling admission—but ice-cold in its conclusion: though human, the baby is not a “person” and not entitled to any protections. In Furedi’s absolutist view, any solution a woman chooses—even death for a near-full-term baby—is a “moral” solution.

For now, pro-choice have rallied around the cause of ‘easy access’ to early abortion and emergency contraception as the way to avoid more cases in the Gosnell mold of late-term brutality.

It’s an untenable solution, given the humanity of the unborn child.

But it’s also a solution doomed to fail on its own terms: evil, given a foothold, only advances, never retreats.

And perhaps that’s one good that might emerge from Gosnell’s killings: a renewed sense, in our own hearts and souls, of the ravenous power of evil.

If we dismiss Gosnell as an aberration, one bad apple in a barrel of good abortionists, how do we explain the cascade of ordinary people tumbling out of this story who looked away when they saw his atrocities? Who stood next to him, helping, as he “snipped” babies’ spines? Or worse, followed his lead and committed the same despicable acts themselves?

But if we understand the mayhem in Kermit Gosnell’s clinic as a case study in the power of evil unleashed, we can make sense out of his own moral degeneration—the progressive cruelty towards women seeking abortions, the abortions on bigger, older babies, and the uninhibited killing of live-born infants as “standard procedure.”

In Philadelphia, evil arrived when Gosnell’s abortion clinic first opened for business, years before the second trimester killings began. As each baby arrived, nestled in its mother’s womb, and left—dead—bagged as medical waste, Gosnell’s heart hardened. Under legal cover, his conscience died a slow death too.  In fact, at his arraignment, he professed bewilderment that he was being charged in the babies’ deaths.

It’s not surprising, in one sense. A heart that embraces killing innocent human beings up to 24 weeks won’t flinch at killing at 25 weeks. And the flimsy legislative partition of viability has little hope of containing the evil unloosed by the doctor’s lethal, but legal, first trimester work.

Like poison gas, evil seeps under arbitrary barriers, gradually sickening those who remain in its presence, numbing their hearts and sedating their consciences. It corrupts the souls of those who tarry long in its presence—even ordinary people who perhaps mean well initially.

And that’s exactly what happened in this case. Gosnell’s employees watched, accepted, and embraced the evil–a marriage finally consummated as scissors pierced soft newborn skin. The grand jury report noted that, “Over the years, there were hundreds of ‘snippings’…all the employees of the Women’s Medical Society knew. Everyone there acted as if it wasn’t murder at all.”

And what about us? We read numbers (24, 28 weeks), scientific terms (viable fetus), and euphemisms for killing (“snipping”).  We get used to them. They lessen our urgency and blunt our response to evil.  A few days pass, the story fades, and unemployment and tight budgets move to the fore.

I’m not one who favors gruesome pictures of aborted babies as a tool for public debate or evangelism—their indiscriminate use often causes more harm than good and lacks compassion towards women who’ve had abortions. But those of us who pray, work, and sacrifice for the sake of the unborn and their mothers sometimes need a visual reminder of what’s at stake.

Consider taking a look at the grand jury report in Dr. Gosnell’s case, downloadable here. It’s over 200 pages—but words can’t express what happened there.  Spend two minutes with the photos, however, and you’ll forget numbers and remember faces. And you’ll know why we’re fighting this battle.

And “snipping” will forever have a whole new meaning.

© 2011 Mary Rice Hasson

 

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January 20, 2011 · 11:54 am

Why Tiger Mother is Wrong (And Her Critics Are Too)

Amy Chua, the now infamous “Tiger Mother,“ delivered her parenting manifesto last week in a Wall Street Journal article headlined “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior.”  The article, excerpted from her book, “The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” outraged American moms.

Circling about, sometimes snarling, American mommy-cats pounced on the Tiger’s arguments, shredding them with sharpened claws. Bewildered and a bit scratched up, Chua has been in defensive mode ever since, appealing for parents to see her book as a “personal memoir about her own struggles with child-rearing” not as “judgment on anybody else.” Chua’s daughter even came to her beleaguered mother’s defense, publishing a warm letter thanking her mom for parenting her, Tiger style.

One thing’s for sure.  Chua’s book has sparked an American conversation about children, their parents, and the elusive notion of  “success.”

What have we learned?

First, that we are utterly confused, as a society, about what “good parenting” means.

And second, following from the first, we don’t really know what defines “success.” What do we really want for our children?

The Tiger Method

For Amy Chua, her children’s success is all about high academic and musical achievement. Her “Tiger” method produces nothing less than perfection, in classroom and concert hall.

What ignited the firestorm surrounding Chua’s book is her thesis: she asserts that, unlike “Western” mothers, “Chinese” mothers produce successful kids—perfect students and musical prodigies—because their parents expect perfection and force the habits that produce it.  She scorns the permissive parenting model where children make their own decisions and quit when things get tough (like when they need to practice or study more).

In fact, Chua sneers at how Americans’ preoccupation with a child’s “self-esteem” prevents parents from correcting the child or insisting on better results. In contrast, the Chinese “solution to substandard performance,” is “to excoriate, punish, and shame the child. The Chinese parent believes that their child will be strong enough to take the shaming and to improve from it.”

Chua also argues that parents must firmly control their child’s upbringing: require hours of music practice and rote drills, limit leisure and friendships, and reject interest-driven extracurriculars to ensure more time for music or studies.

The bottom line: rules and more rules, work and more work, breed success. In the end, the thinking goes, Chinese children will be forever grateful to their parents.

The Western Pushback

What do Western parents want? Happy kids. Kids who feel good about themselves and who achieve their full potential.  It’s a model that has its own problems.

Not surprisingly, Chua’s critics reject her methods as brutal and off-base. Business executives deride her approach, saying its emphasis on individual achievement and solitary pursuit of perfection stunts leadership abilities and fails to instill teamwork. The Tiger Method, they argue, also stifles initiative, independence, and creativity–qualities highly valued by Americans. As workers, then, her children’s potential may be limited.

Chua’s socio-economic assumptions drew fire as well. Parents note the costs of lessons and tutoring—options unaffordable for many families. Similarly, the time commitment is an impossible luxury for single parents or parents of large families.

Back in the mommy world, Chua earns scathing criticism for the harsh rebukes and insults she hurled at her daughters. She rejected their gifts–homemade birthday cards—because they represented less than the girls’ best efforts. Appalled, her critics wonder how can Chua’s daughters possibly feel good about themselves?

The Tiger mindset also minimizes legitimate human needs—like friendship. Chua adamantly refuses to let her girls have playdates and sleepovers. Fatigue and frustration are simply obstacles on the way to perfection, whether that’s a perfect test score or a flawless performance. The Western mind worries, however, that she’s creating robots.

Finally, on the lighter side, Chua’s demand for three hours of music practice brought laughs from one mom I know, who shook her head knowingly, “Chinese kids clearly don’t play the trumpet. Mine do. Three hours? I’d go mad.”

Flawed Assumptions

Is the measure of successful parenting whether our child achieves her full potential? If so, then both Chua and her critics have something to teach us.

Western parents often fail to set high expectations. Or they may deliver a steady diet of unearned praise and instant gratification, undercutting the child’s ability to persevere through tedious or difficult work. And parents who abdicate their authority create underachieving kids. Chua is right on those points.

At the same time, my heart cringes at Chua’s reported harshness. Berating and belittling injure relationships. Encouragement spurs achievement more powerfully than criticism does, in my book.  So too do good friends. And allowing a child to follow her interests may ignite her strongest passion yet, leading to her greatest achievements. On these issues, the critics are right and Chua is wrong.

But the real flaw in Chua’s manifesto–and in her critics’ responses–is how they define parenting success. Achievement is great, but it’s not the end game. It’s an inadequate measure of human success or flourishing.

I remember a few years back when an Olympic swimmer graced the front of my Wheaties box.  The back of the box listed interview questions and her responses.

One stood out:

Q: “Who’s your hero?”

A: “I am.”

Here was a champion swimmer who had pushed herself to reach her full potential, winning an Olympic medal in the process. Admirable, certainly. But she could think of no greater hero in her life, in history, than herself?

In my book, her arrogant self-absorption represented a huge parenting failure, no matter how great her Olympic achievement. Great achievement, without an underlying vision for character development and deeper human purpose, can be the product of narcissistic drives, greed, or self-absorption.  And there’s nothing good about that.

The Ultimate Goal

Missing from Chua’s work—and the comments of her critics—is any sense of a fuller purpose to human life.  The measure of our parenting success is not what our child does or achieves, but what kind of person he or she becomes. It’s more about “being” and less about “doing.”

So what should successful parents strive to do?

  • Raise a child who is determined to be a good, moral human being
  • Teach the child right from wrong, grounding her in the rules that limit and govern human behavior
  • Teach her the virtues (Habits of doing good.)
  • Help him forge strong relationships, built on love, service, and respect
  • Help him orient his talents, decisions, and achievements towards others (“the common good”) rather than selfish goals.
  • Model love, humility, forgiveness, and respect for all.

Amy, a word of advice from a fellow mom….We’re all far from perfect but love makes all things new again. You’ve loved your girls fiercely. Perhaps this is the season to love gently.

© 2011  Mary Rice Hasson

 

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January 12, 2011 · 12:48 am

Egg Donors and The Human Cost of IVF

“Melissa” is a college student, blonde, bright, and beautiful. A high achiever with a soft spot for other people’s troubles, she heads back to her Ivy League campus this week. First stop: the financial aid office to sign loan documents to secure this pricey education and coveted degree.

She’s exactly the type of young woman targeted by egg donor agencies, desperate couples, and fertility clinics. They want her eggs. Badly. And they know how to find her.

Using Craigslist.com, flyers posted in coffee shops and fitness centers, and ads in university newspapers, egg “recruiters” find young women to meet the exploding demand for human eggs. Roughly one in seven couples now suffers from infertility. Delayed childbearing and rampant sexually transmitted infections mean that many would-be moms have eggs too old or organs too damaged to support conception. So donor eggs are a hot commodity. (Indeed, many fertility clinics report more success with donor-egg IVF than IVF using a woman’s own eggs.)

The scientific clamor for embryonic stem cell research also drives the demand for more eggs. New York, for example, allows payments for donor eggs intended for stem cell research. Ethicists worry that payments for research-bound eggs may induce women whose eggs won’t pass muster at fertility clinics to donate eggs without fully realizing the risks involved.

Egg donation carries serious risks, no matter whether the eggs end up in a research scientist’s lab or an infertility clinic’s freezer.

Eggsploitation, a powerful, disturbing documentary, tells the heart-wrenching stories of egg donors who suffered devastating consequences, including lost fertility, serious disability, and near death.  This award-winning film sends a critical warning to young women thinking about donating their eggs: Don’t.

The film triggered my own search of infertility-related websites to analyze the messages aimed at prospective donors–young women like Melissa. Rife with competing interests, this results-driven industry offers few protections for the person most vulnerable to exploitation—the young woman who sells her eggs.

“It’s Not About Money. Really.”

The fertility industry targets young women with an altruistic narrative: The “fulfillment from helping an infertile couple achieve the dream of having a baby is priceless.”  Recruiters flatter their donors, telling them they are indispensable (“women [can’t] realize their dreams of having a family…without you, the egg donor”) and validate their worth with an $8,000 check. Others “guilt” women into donating, telling them they represent an infertile couple’s last hope (“Without egg donors like you, couples… struggling to start a family would have little hope”).

Egg donation is portrayed as “one of the most powerful and rewarding decisions a woman can make.”

It’s a convenient myth. Coating the raw financial deal with the emotional gloss of altruism helps both would-be parents and egg donors feel better about the process—and themselves.

Lift the veil of altruism, however, and reality looks very different. If women weren’t paid, very few would donate eggs.  Countries that forbid or limit payment to egg donors can’t find enough donors to meet the demand. Women themselves admit that money matters: less than a third of donors claim their only motive was altruistic (e.g. to give infertile couples a baby). Nearly 60% say money motivated their decision, at least in part (18.8% say money was their only motive). Surely many egg donors are sincere and compassionate, but the industry would shrivel up without cash incentives to keep the pipeline flowing with donor eggs.

 

Exploitation

Paying healthy young women to undergo a medical procedure with significant risks and no personal benefit exploits them—especially when the sums paid are large and the risks poorly studied and ill communicated.  And that’s the case with egg donation.

Donors are typically students, like Melissa, or women with entry-level jobs. Dangle $8000-$10,000, per monthly cycle, in front of a cash-strapped college student or a barista struggling to live in an expensive city and you’ve got donors. It’s an effective incentive. (One agency even promises $50,000 to $100,000 to egg donors who meet stringent, personalized search criteria.) Students discover that they can easily cover tuition of $50,000 by becoming a repeat donor. The unofficial limit is six cycles, but money entices some women to exceed that limit.

The Risks

No one really knows how egg donation affects a young woman’s future health and fertility. Small studies and scattered donor reports suggest links between fertility drugs and cancer, infertility, and other health problems. In the U.S, no one tracks complications or long-term health risks for egg donors. Most egg donors are anonymous (no registry) and receive no follow-up care once the donation cycle ends.

Industry players also routinely minimize the known risks. One of the few studies of past donors found that 20% did not recall being informed of any risks. Although 12.5% of past donors reported experiencing ovarian hyper-stimulation (a serious, potentially fatal, complication), donor agencies and fertility centers downplay the risk as “rare,” or present in “1-2% of patients,” or as a “5% chance in any cycle.” And prospective donors who wonder whether egg donation might affect their future fertility are flatly misled: “Donating eggs will not harm your future fertility.”

The industry has a collective self-interest in not researching the long-term risks of egg donation, lest they scare women from donating just as demand skyrockets.

The Human Cost

The fertility industry exploits women by soft-pedaling the potential risks of egg donation while offering quick payoffs. But more appalling is the silence surrounding the human costs of IVF itself.

Donor agencies and fertility clinics erect deliberate smokescreens, obscuring what egg donors see of the baby-making process. They promote a mental image of the “results,” captured in happy photos of cherubic babies and ecstatic parents.

But this rosy picture of smiling babies and happy endings is one of the cruelest deceptions in egg donor recruitment. Agencies and fertility centers never give prospective donors a realistic picture of the human costs accompanying egg retrieval, fertilization, cultivation, storage, and implantation; at best they describe the processes in euphemisms, downplaying the loss of life.

What’s at stake is not whether the donor’s pain and effort are worth it, given the human cost; the real question is whether egg donors even see the moral implications of the process they set in motion.

Consider:

  • Some of the lives created from donor eggs are deliberately thrown away after fertilization–graded and disposed of as subpar.
  • Implanted safely, an embryo may be “selectively reduced” (aborted) to avoid multiple births;
  • Implanted, an embryo may die in utero (up to 20% of successful clinical pregnancies eventually miscarry);
  • Frozen, extra embryos may languish for years in steel receptacles, labeled by number and expiration date;
  • Frozen, then finally invited to join the family, embryos may perish in the thawing process;
  • Frozen, forgotten, or rejected by the intended recipients, remaining embryos are destroyed;
  • Finally, years later, the resulting children may long desperately but hopelessly to know their biological mom, the egg donor;
  • And, the CDC warns, IVF children are two to four times more likely to suffer birth defects.

At each stage in this ‘manufacturing’ process, the human embryo is no less a person than the egg donor herself. The Church insists that embryos be treated with the same dignity and respect owed to the doctor wielding the pipette, the egg donor herself, or the would-be-mother anxiously hoping the embryo transfer “takes.”

But each stage of the in vitro fertilization process–which claims to give the gift of life–is potentially murderous; each juncture requires decisions likely to end in the deliberate destruction of human embryos, made in God’s image. The egg donor’s “gift” sets in motion a death-dealing process, masquerading as “the gift of life.”

The fertility industry doesn’t want young women like Melissa to see the reality behind the feel-good image. Donors are primed, eager to believe that their eggs likely gave another woman “the happiness of … a baby.”

I have to wonder…would Melissa’s peers donate their eggs so willingly if they realized the cherished baby is but the lone survivor atop a tragic pyramid of dead siblings?

© 2011 Mary Rice Hasson

For more on IVF see this post:  Selfish Parents: Embryos on Ice

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October 2, 2010 · 5:48 am

Kids: A Failing Grade on Morals?

Many of today’s kids seem to be flunking the daily moral tests of life.

James, a teacher-friend of mine, lamented recently how “morally challenged” his high school students seem to be. “They don’t think twice about lying or slamming someone’s reputation. Cheating on tests is no big deal. They only worry if they’ll get caught.”

Recent headlines and the latest studies paint a dismal picture of cheating, bullying, sexual experimentation, on-line exhibitionism and “cyber-stalking.” College students show declining levels of empathy—a quality viewed as the foundation of ethical behavior. And the problems start early. A quick snapshot of the playground culture captures younger children who bully their way to the top of the slide or push past a crying child to reach the swings first, classic examples of self-absorption and lack of compassion.

What—or who—is to blame?

Fingers point to a variety of big cultural problems:  hyper-sexualized media, fragmented families, declining religiosity, and rampant materialism.

But new research from Notre Dame Professor Darcia Narvaez suggests that current parenting practices are the more likely culprit. The “moral sense” of children—now and in times past–hinges on whether they learn empathy and concern for others, particularly in the early years of life.  ““Our work shows that the roots of moral functioning form early in life, in infancy, and depend on the affective quality of family and community support.” And the problem, according to her research, is that today’s child-rearing practices make that increasingly difficult. The result: “The quality of our cultural moral fiber is diminishing.”

The specific problems with childrearing today might be summed up by what’s missing: time together, physical closeness, and adult responsiveness. In particular, Narvaez contrasts the “emotionally suboptimal day care facilities with little individualized, responsive care” to the optimal situation that keeps children close  to mom, encourages parental responsiveness to infant needs, and offers parents and children strong support from extended family and the community.

She cites a specific set of “ancestral” practices that cultivate strong family bonds—and consequently support moral development, particularly compassion and concern for others.  These include:

  • Plenty of positive touch (cuddling, carrying, etc.)
  • Parental responsiveness to the child’s needs.
  • Extended breastfeeding (2-5 years)
  • Natural child-birth (which provides a hormonal boost aiding newborn care)
  • Lots of unstructured playtime, with children of varied ages.
  • The presence of additional adults (typically dads and grandmothers) to love, care for, and guide the child. Mom is not alone.

I don’t think anyone would argue that we should—even if we could–replicate the exact family practices of long ago. But the insights from Dr. Narvaez’ research make sense, from a parent’s perspective.

It’s much easier to discipline a child and pass on a moral framework within the context of a warm, caring parent-child relationship.

As a practical matter, kids who feel loved and well-cared for tend to listen better and want to please their parents—making discipline easier and encouraging them to internalize their parents’ morals.  Kids naturally imitate what they see over time, so the time spent together and the quality of the relationship with the parent are important: a child who experiences the self-giving love of a parent sees a daily model of other-centeredness, and the parent’s responsiveness teaches a child to recognize others’ needs and alleviate their sufferings, instilling compassion.

The bottom line: moral formation does seem to “stick” better when it’s given in the context of a good relationship and supported by others, both in the family and the community at large. But a warm parent-child relationship, or strong “attachment,” takes time, togetherness, tenderness, and teaching—all of which seem to be frequent casualties of our fast-paced, multi-tasking, dual-income lifestyles.

Dr. Narvaez’ research is both a comfort and a warning.  She says, “Kids who don’t get the emotional nurturing they need in early life tend to be more self-centered. They don’t have available the compassion-related emotions to the same degree as kids who were raised by warm, responsive families.” Her words offer comfort for those who sacrifice much in order to give their children love and a good moral foundation.  But they also warn that if our society fails to support families with children, the moral fabric of our culture will surely unravel.

© 2010 Mary Rice Hasson

This article first appeared at FamilyEdge on MercatorNet.com

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August 14, 2010 · 3:08 am

I Love Children: Singing the Countercultural Blues

Say the word “counterculture” and we conjure up past memories of hippies and tie-dyed shirts or present images of rappers and such. Last week brought a different kind of countercultural moment.

We spent the last evening of our Hilton Head, S.C., vacation right where we always do—under the spreading branches of the Liberty Oak in Harbor Town, next to the water. Singer Gregg Russell, whose happy songs and silly jokes have entertained parents, grandparents, and children for over 30 years in the Sea Pines Resort, delivers the right mix of fun for a family audience.

Our youngest, now 9, is too old to sit on stage or wave his hand frantically, hoping to be chosen to sing for the crowd, but still we go.  It’s family tradition.

One of our best memories is the year we almost missed the show, arriving near the end after a late dinner. Jimmy, then 8, had raced ahead of us on a secret mission of his own. Bent low, he squeezed through the crowd, past dozens of khaki shorts and sundresses, and wormed his way onto a corner of the stage.  We spotted him just as Gregg drawled, “Time for one last song. Who’s goin’ home tomorrow?”  Jim’s hand shot up and Gregg pulled him to center stage.

“You look like you wanna sing. Now, what’s your name?”

“Jimmy, and I want to sing The Star Spangled Banner.”

“The Star Spangled Banner?” (Laugh) “A lot of us grownups have trouble with that one. But, ok, let’s do it.”

Facing the crowd, Jimmy grew serious. He closed his eyes and began, “Ohh-ho say can you see,” A pause, then he belted it, “BAH the DAWNZ early light.” Jim sang our national anthem with the drama of a celebrity soloist at a major league ballpark. Silent at first, some in the crowd wiped away tears. Others smiled, whispered, and chuckled at his patriotic intensity. And halfway through, Gregg and the crowd joined in and ended with rousing applause.  I forgot the video camera that night but will never forget that performance.

Fast-forward thirteen years and Gregg Russell is still singing, voice a tad gravelly, white shorts and Hawaiian shirt still bright. He tells the audience how proud he is of all his kids, especially his older son serving overseas in the military. Our national-anthem-singer, Jimmy, is 21 and he too will be headed to the Army as a second lieutenant, come spring. It’s a great night to relish this vacation ritual as he and his siblings joke around in the back of the crowd.

So what could possibly be countercultural in a setting like this?

A song–and its message. Gregg Russell launched into one of his favorite sing-alongs, “Thank God for Kids!” by the Oak Ridge Boys. The song riveted my attention and stirred my emotions, quite unexpectedly.

Why? Because it unabashedly expressed a sentiment that fewer and fewer adults seem to hold anymore–children are a wonderful blessing…and we love them! Undeserved gifts from God, our children are ours to cherish and love without counting the cost.  

In an audience full of children, their parents, and grandparents, the song captured a shared experience and heartfelt emotion—gratitude for the gift of children and the privilege of being a parent. It was simply awesome to hear so many voices shouting out, “Thank God for kids!”

Gregg’s message felt new and fresh precisely because our culture has drifted so far from it.  Pundits, entertainers, and social scientists “count the cost” of having children quite literally every day.  Kids drain our money, time, and resources, and sap our happiness as well, they say.  And the media amplifies that message.

Stories emphasize the burdens and magnify the lifetime costs of having children.  Typical is the USDA estimate that parents will spend $286,050 to raise a child, not including college. Daunting numbers. Intimidating, really. But they’re pointless stats, irrelevant to actual decision-making. It’s like toting up the lifetime costs of a mortgage and deciding you can’t afford to live anywhere, because your bank account only has today’s payment in it.  Nobody asks for all the money up front when we have a child.  We raise children like we do everything else: day-by-day.

More to the point, the intangible value of loving a child, and receiving love in return, is lost in the weeds of cost-benefit analysis. Love isn’t meant to be hoarded or saved up for a later withdrawal. And our capacity for love certainly can’t be measured by our bank balance.

Applying a cost-benefit analysis to children descends into self-centered calculations in other ways too. We focus myopically on how much time and work children require of us. Time magazine reports a surge in only children; only children show the highest ambition and educational achievement because there’s no “dilution of resources” towards siblings. As my husband, an only child, likes to point out, there’s also no one to play with on lonely afternoons, no one to commiserate with as a teen, and no one to help care for your aging parents. And for that you get a ten-point bonus on the SAT?  So what.

But it gets worse. Married couples are startlingly less likely than ever before to include any children in their vision of marital happiness. Only 41% of adults view children as an important part of marriage. (By comparison, 93% rank fidelity as important to their marital happiness and 62% rank shared chores as important.)

The child-negative messages have traction: children are increasingly absent from our common adult experience. Nearly one in five women (20%) now reaches mid-life without having had a child. Less than half of all American households (46%) have children under 18 at home; even fewer (under 25%) are married couples with children.  And now a new breed of environmental cheerleaders urges adults to choose a permanent “childfree” life to maximize adult freedom and minimize injury to the planet. It’s GINK’s they are (green inclinations, no kids), and proud of it.

My countercultural moment celebrating the gift of children was well-timed: this fall we’ll have more kids out of the house than in it.  I’m acutely aware of the value of every moment we have with them—and the eternal worth of each one of those seven lives.

So, I thank God for my kids! (And I hope you’ll do the same for yours.)

But I worry about a world where loving children—and celebrating them as a gift–is undeniably countercultural.

© 2010 Mary Rice Hasson

Read more of my blogs at Catholic News Agency’s new Catholic Womanhood pages.

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July 15, 2010 · 11:23 pm

The Abortionist-Mother: Cognitive Dissonance on Abortion

When an abortion provider who is, herself, 18 weeks pregnant, performs an abortion on a patient’s 18-week old child (or fetus), The New York Times calls it “moral complexity.”

I call it cognitive dissonance.

You know, that “uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously…when a person perceives a logical inconsistency in their beliefs, when one idea implies the opposite of another. “

You decide.

From “The New Abortion Providers,” by Emily Bazelon, in the July 18, 2010 New York Times Sunday Magazine:

“Lisa Harris wrote an academic article about performing an 18-week abortion while she was 18 weeks pregnant. Harris described grasping the fetus’s leg with her forceps, feeling a kick in her own uterus and starting to cry. ‘It was an overwhelming feeling — a brutally visceral response — heartfelt and unmediated by my training or my feminist pro-choice politics,’ she wrote. ‘It was one of the more raw moments in my life.’”

Two babies the same age.

They might have played together.

But she spared her own and killed the other.

Mother.  Abortionist.

(c) 2010 Mary Rice Hasson

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July 8, 2010 · 10:07 pm

Selfish Parents: Embryos on Ice and Utilitarian IVF

Meet Gillian St. Lawrence, a new breed of IVF mother: fertile utilitarian.

She’s blonde, 30, married for nine years to a nice guy named Paul, and she heads a real estate investment firm in tony Georgetown, Washington, D.C.

Unlike other women who pursue in vitro fertilization, Gillian is blessed with fertility, inconveniently so.  Writing in The Washington Post, Gillian recounts how she and Paul want to be parents. Maybe.  Someday.

But definitely not now, at 30 and 32.

A child might disrupt their carefully laid plans, which include career, money, and planning to be perfect parents: “My husband wants to be able to coach little league, and we both want very reduced work hours so we never have to look at day care or a nanny…[We] just want to give a future child every bit of our time that we can without dealing with financial stress…” (Um, you forgot to mention winning the lottery, and sailing the globe without a care in the world. Wake up, Gillian, and shake the dreamy visions from your eyes.)

Sadly, unrealistic expectations are the least of her problems.

Gillian anticipates another 10 or 15 years before they will have enough time and money to make room in their lives for a child. That perfect timing, however, has one flaw: infertility increases with age and, as Gillian explains, they risk “higher miscarriage and genetic disorder rates… in babies conceived from parents older than 35.” (Translation: We’ve got exacting standards: an imperfect baby won’t pass muster.)

So what’s a young, naturally fertile couple to do? Change their plans and embrace reality? Buy a minivan instead of a Lexus, eat burgers not shrimp, stay home, and hey, here’s an idea…go make passionate love and thrill each other with the awe and mystery of creating a new life together?

Nah, too pedestrian. Gillian crafted an innovative solution, now complete with explanatory website (is a consulting business far behind?) and carefully totaled expenses and records of 15-minute office visits. She and Paul spent a year and roughly $20,000 to “create embryos, freeze them and, essentially, donate them to our future selves“ through in vitro fertilization, as “insurance against future infertility.” Gillian calls it “Preservation IVF.” (Pardon my skepticism…but for a couple cramped for time and money, that’s a rather pricey solution, compared to a good bottle of wine and a romantic night together.)

Their IVF purchase, which their website bills as “Freedom From Our Fertility Clocks,” buys them the ability to “pursue our goals without giving up the chance to be parents.”

Having their babies and freezing them too.

Let’s be clear.  Gillian and Paul are parents already. They created five little embryos and put them on ice for the next 10-15 years, until Gillian is “ready.” (Imagine the convenience: Freeze-dried children, ready when you’re ready. Defrost, implant, and presto, instant children.)  It kind of reminds me of the compulsive shopper who buys five pairs of winter boots in summertime so she can put them on the shelf for later, “just in case” they fit her fashion whims later on.

Only we’re not talking about shoes here.  We’re talking about real people.  Children, however tiny.

I’ll let more knowledgeable voices address the morality of in vitro fertilization, whether to remedy infertility or preserve “all options,” as in Gillian’s case.

But as a parent, I find Gillian’s story appalling. In spite her meticulous plans and growing bank account, she’s running a catastrophic deficit in the three “must haves”  of good parenting.

First, love. In her pages of analytical discussion about wanting a child and the painstaking research to find the “best” way to make one, she never mentions the word “love.” Not even once. She betrays no awareness of the spousal love factor –that when a husband and wife love deeply, their love yearns to create, to expand and express itself in the creation of another person who becomes a unique reflection of their union.

In this, Gillian’s probably not alone. Scientists predict more couples will join her in severing love from baby-making as they pursue a highly desirable commodity–the perfect child.  A recent report on technological advances in IVF says that, within ten years, some couples will forego the natural context of lovemaking because the quality control features of IVF technology will eclipse the results of natural conception.

IVF, and selective embryo destruction, may eventually yield a better product, (i.e. child), than loving conception, but at what cost to our humanity? At what cost to love?

Fast forward to the future, and Gillian’s love void becomes even more tragic.  She seems tone deaf to a child’s deepest needs—for love, unconditional, unlimited love, regardless of parents’ naturally finite supply of time and money.  In addition, Gillian gives no hint that she anticipates the joy of love, which delights in another’s growth, fulfillment, and flourishing. I suspect she will be too busy measuring her personal return on their joint parenting investment.

Which brings me to the second essential of good parenting: sacrifice. Gillian, being a mom is not all about you.  Good parents, like good spouses, put the needs of others first. They want what is good for the other and will sacrifice their own desires—even their own needs (sleep comes to mind)—in order to provide that.

Parenthood teaches us that life does not revolve around our wants. Rich fulfillment grows when we sacrifice and give to our loved ones. It’s a hard lesson, learned reluctantly, and requiring daily practice.  For the next ten or fifteen years, however, Gillian will ingrain the habit of putting herself first as she elevates her personal goals—career ambition, wealth, fitness, fun–over the children she’s already created and who languish, frozen, waiting for their mother’s heart to thaw.

Her careful planning betrays a stingy disposition, measuring out servings of attention and money according to her own selfish inclinations rather than others’ needs. Pity the poor child who arrives needing more attention, sacrifice, and effort than Gillian and Paul plan to give. After decades spent hoarding the best of their time, energy, focus, and money for themselves, Gillian and Paul will be poorly positioned to learn generosity and true self-giving in the face of a child’s unpredictable and inconvenient needs.

The third vital factor that’s missing is this: a good parent welcomes each child as a gift, a person with an inherent value and dignity, regardless of usefulness, talents, eventual achievements, convenience, or lovability.

Utilitarianism lurks beneath the surface as Gillian discusses her expectations of parenthood. Embryos—children—are a means to an end, helping to secure an idealized vision of parenthood for the real stars of the show: the parents. They will enjoy plenty of time, money, and energy, and a perfect child who will eventually achieve great things and send reflected glory their way, with little or no parental sacrifice required.

But Gillian’s utilitiarian mindset really breaks out into the open when a reader asks her what she intends to do with any “leftover” embryos who are not implanted in her womb. Although they created five children, Gillian and Paul intend single embryo transfer sometime after age 40, meaning they’ll try one at a time. In typical IVF, remaining embryos are destroyed when their expiration date arrives. Not so for Gillian.

Those leftover children can still benefit her: “Statistically, with five embryos, we may only be able to achieve one or two successful pregnancies so it is likely we will use them all. If not, we plan to save them because with advanced technology, 20 or 30 years from now one of us could get a bad disease and those embryos could save one of our lives because of the DNA being from us.”

Using your own children for spare parts. Cold-hearted. Chilling.

But fitting, I suppose, for a utilitarian mama who puts her kids on ice.

(c) 2010 Mary Rice Hasson

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June 25, 2010 · 4:11 pm

Kids, Condoms, and the Provincetown School Board: Arrogance on Display

Parents, you’re irrelevant—at least in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

The school board there voted this month to give condoms–free for the asking and of course we won’t tell your parents—to elementary school students, regardless of age. That’s right, no age limit. We’re talking grade school here. Even a six-year-old could wander into the nurse’s office, ask for and receive condoms, and the new policy PROHIBITS the school personnel from telling parents what’s going on.

Why on earth would the school board approve such a policy?

Arrogance.  They know better than parents what’s good for kids. And what’s good for kids, in their view, is facilitating “safer” sex—never mind the pesky data that shows teen sex—let alone sex for 12 and unders–is rife with harm and exploitation. More on that in a minute.

Beth Singer, the school superintendent, defends the decision saying, “In Provincetown it’s the correct policy in order to protect kids.”  She goes on, justifying the decision with a fatalistic shrug: “We know that sexual experimentation is not limited to an age, so how does one put an age on it?”

Under the policy, that omniscient public servant—the school nurse—gets to decide what’s best for your child.  No matter if she barely knows his or her name or with whom the child anticipates having sex. (An older teen?  An adult?) If a child requests a condom, she offers “counseling” and provides birth control.  Unlike the parents, the nurse can even refuse the child’s request for a condom, depending on her judgment.  Parents don’t even get a courtesy call.

Part of the problem with the condom-pushing crowd, and sex educators in general, is that they all suffer from a feigned agnosticism when it comes to sex.  They can’t presume to say whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing for a child (or a teen) to have sex.  “Counseling” takes the Planned Parenthood approach that tells kids, “We believe you’re the only one who can decide what’s right for you.”  So when teens—or little kids—have sex, it’s just a “fact” that school boards deal with by doling out discrete little packages.  They are dead wrong on this.

Consider this data from the Kaiser Family Foundation: the younger a child begins sexual activity, the greater the age difference between partners is likely to be. (Can we say “child sexual abuse” or exploitation?).  At least a third of teens report feeling pressured to do unwanted sexual acts—common sense tells us that the 12 and under set is even more vulnerable to pressure and manipulation. In spite of widespread condom awareness and use, STDs are rampant among teens: adolescents are more physiologically vulnerable to sexually transmitted infection than are adults. And little kids? It’s gut-churning to think of their immature bodies playing host to grown-up diseases.  They can’t possibly even understand the long-term implications for their fertility or sexual and mental health. (Sexually active teens are more likely to suffer from substance abuse problems, increased depression, and suicide.)

And the best a Provincetown school nurse has got to offer is a packaged panacea?  A condom that does little to protect from physical harm and nothing to protect from emotional or psychological wounds? Parents need to insist not only on the right to guide their children in sexual matters but also on a school policy that teaches the truth.  Schools must stop pretending that they “can’t say” whether adolescent (or child) sexual activity is a good thing or a bad thing.  The “you decide what’s best” message to kids, when it comes to sexuality, is an utter failure.  Providing condoms—and shutting parents out of the conversation—ensures only that children will suffer more harm, not less.

Arrogance is expensive. And in Provincetown, unfortunately, it’s children who will pay the price.

(c) 2010  Mary Rice Hasson

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June 11, 2010 · 11:11 am

Shopping for Perspective: Lessons Learned from Ordinary Folk

A full cartHave you ever gone to the grocery store and wandered the aisles, nagged by the feeling that there’s something you need…but you just don’t know what? Two days ago, that was me. By trip’s end, though, I took away more than a cartful of groceries.

I found something I didn’t even know I needed.

Once a week, or when thrift outweighs convenience, I shop at a discount grocery store.   It’s not the cleanest, they don’t carry all my favorite brands, the produce is hit or miss, and it’s an extra ten-minute drive.  But you can’t beat the prices on the staples, especially milk, eggs, bread, peanut butter, and bananas. (That’s important because my strapping, hollow-legged son is home from college and my 15-year-old rivals him in size. The two of them put away a gallon of milk, six eggs, a dozen bananas, and countless peanut butter sandwiches by lunch.)

On this day, I was a reluctant shopper. Begrudging the time spent (don’t we always prefer the work we’re not doing to the task at hand?), my mind was cycling down a pessimistic path.  Work, money, schools, this kid, that kid. All my worries hopped on for the ride. Negativity and discouragement filled my thoughts faster than the groceries filled my basket.

Just past the produce, in front of the doughnuts, I saw them: a mom with five kids, ages 12 down to about 3, I guessed.  As a mom of seven, I tend to notice other moms with a passel of kids, especially lively, energetic kids. (Someone once told me that women relate in “same-same” mode, meaning we connect with other women by discovering what we share in common.  “Me too. The same with me,” creates an instant bond.) Normally I would smile as I passed by and say something encouraging. Not this time, I’m embarrassed to say.

Their presence broke through my gloom only long enough for me to note three things: there were a lot of them (kids, that is), they seemed happy enough, and their clothes looked worn and many seasons old, suggesting money was tight. I hoped they’d get their doughnuts.

As one of ten kids growing up on a professor’s small salary during the inflationary Carter years, I remember gratefully my mom’s willingness to splurge for occasional treats.  A doughnut or pack of gum was a treat, even if divided ten ways.  In fact, we older ones grew up assuming that every stick of gum ought to be split in two and shared. Didn’t everyone do that? Five sticks to a pack back then…of course we’d share. Buy two packs of gum? Extravagant!

Maneuvering through the aisles, I glimpsed the mom and her kids a few more times.  In the pasta aisle, the kids bunched around mom as she gestured over the options. What’ll it be tonight?  Spaghetti? Rotini? I marveled that the kids didn’t seem to be the bickering sort.  Restless kids and endless aisles make for trouble where I come from.

I felt a pang of guilt.  Usually, as part of my small, personal prayer mission, I pray silently for people as I notice them in the grocery store.  I pray for their unknown burdens, their inner struggles, and (for moms of little kids) for patience and peace as they shop.  Weighed down by my own problems on this day, I hadn’t done that.

But awareness–plus guilt—does motivate.  I prayed for them then, in that moment, asking God’s blessing on them and for patience and kindness to fill the mother’s heart. Then I moved on.

Bread, bagels, done. My inner storm was beginning to blow over as I headed for the checkout.  Almost outa here.  By the time my order was half checked through, another woman lined up behind me, and the mom and kids wheeled into the third spot in our checkout lane.  (That’s another drawback of the discount grocery. Never enough checkers.)

As the checkout lady scanned, I glanced behind me.  The five kids were still happy, older ones hovering over young ones as they waited to unload their cart. The mom of five included me in her smile as she chatted with the woman between us.

Only then did I notice her funny head covering. From afar, I thought she wore a bandanna.  Up close, I realized she wore one of those soft wraps that cancer patients use to cover their scalps after their hair falls out.

Its significance instantly zapped my own magnified worries down to size.  Car repairs, paperwork, tuition payments…they were nothing compared to whatever this woman was facing. The woman behind me asked the mom of five a question, which I couldn’t hear. But her reply was clear.

“I had brain surgery last month…But the hair’s starting to grow back in already.”  She lifted a corner of the head wrap and, sure enough, light brown stubble was visible on a scalp recently shaved.

This woman’s reality delivered a strong dose of perspective, a new perspective in fact.  As moms of many, we were “same-same.” As moms facing personal challenges, we were not even close. The ordinary stress of taking five young kids to the grocery store would tax most of us. Money seemed to be a problem and she needed brain surgery on top of that. But she seemed peaceful…even grateful.

It was an unexpected word that came to mind. Grateful? Why would she be grateful?  The burdens she must be carrying…

I didn’t know the half of it.  A moment later, the conversation continued–brief words about her treatment, recovery, and concern for her kids. And then, she spoke softly.

“But I’m just glad to be alive, you know?  My sister was killed last month. A car accident. Her daughter was in the car with her and she’s still not better.  Never missed a day of school and now been out for a month. But my sister, she was killed.”  She shook her head, smiled a half-smile, and said again, softly but firmly. “I’m just glad to be alive.”

Perspective.

She was alive—and glad for that.

Undoubtedly this mom had struggled at first with the news of her own illness, her worries over caring for the kids and paying for her treatment. But the tragic loss of her sister reframed her own losses.  It gave her the gift of perspective, and the resilience that follows from that.

And she, in turn, gave me that same gift: a new perspective.

Shelving my own (now miniscule) worries, I wanted to talk with her, to ask a million questions, to know more about her story.  What sustained her? Did she have faith? Support from a husband or family or church? How will she help her children see their own difficulties and losses from the same grateful perspective?

But there was no time for that.

“Ma’am?  Ma’am? Slide your card, please.”

Time to pay.  (What is the price of “fresh perspective,” anyway?)

Awkward now, because I was rushed, I sensed I owed something to this mom.  I wanted to do something for her and her children, to acknowledge the sudden clarity she brought to my own troubles.  And to say “thanks” for the gift she did not even know she had given.

But as I paused to find words, the moment was gone.  In two seconds flat, the checker rushed me through–a funny time to be speedy–and pushed my cart towards the door.  The noise and commotion precluded further conversation.

I could only catch her eye as I left, smile, and pray fervently for her and her children.

I came shopping for food that day, but left with much more. The difficulties that weighed on my spirit when I entered that store are still very real.

But so is the gratitude borne of perspective.

(c) 2010 Mary Rice Hasson

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