Day care may prevent certain children from establishing a healthy relationship with their parents, a new study suggests.

The results show the more time fussy, irritable infants spend in day care, the less likely they are to develop a so-called secure attachment with their mothers. A secure attachment means babies are at ease exploring their surroundings, but can still seek comfort from their mom when they need to—they are not clingy or aloof. Read the rest of this entry »

Narcissism, Disintegration, Suicidality & the Fall of the West: Part IV: “… our culture routinely overstimulates our children, which is a factor in such disparate problems as hyperactivity, precocious sexual behavior, and the sexualization of relationships … “

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Writhe Safely This is what they wanted, evident, by age eight, the people perpetrating on me attack my body, and it hurts but I can ignore that since what they’re after is my mind, my soul, my freedom, pleasure, my sense of ease and security, my pride, my delight. I’ll tell you how I knew this: My actions had no impact on them. Their treatment of me was inner directed, random, their demands of me non-specific or inconsistent, they didn’t want me to do anything better, didn’t want me to be good, to improve, to behave … It wasn’t about that. I’m still learning, it wasn’t about me. Their only goal was the complete breaking down of personality. They needed me to think and feel and become something else, something ugly, corrosive and corrupt, a mirror. They wanted to watch this version of me take form, they wanted to be the ones who caused the transformation and wanted to be known by me as the ones who caused it. Read the rest of this entry »

Replying to Saturday’s rich harvest of Comments: bmo, clearly you do not live in Berkeley or the San Franscisco Bay Area anywhere, where a phrase like “corporate-generated reality” would draw nothing but a yawn or a pang of nostalgia. No, it’s hard going, being a crackpot nowadays. And remember, I teethed on C. Wright Mills; this conversation is old. Come to California (said in the mellifuous tones of whomever, years ago, said, Come to Jamaica.) (Was it Geoffrey Holder?) (See, the corporation lives like a little yammering spider in my head too.) Read the rest of this entry »

The corporation now animates us from within our very selves …

Within our very selves.

Sadder. truer words. Damn it. Joe Bageant tells you just how and why you are Only A Pawn In Their Game. Should you like to know. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, first place, any church camp for teens run by an overweight person who goes by her first name, that stinks to high hell of psychological problems we don’t even want to think about. Do we.

Of course she wears glasses. And curly hair most all cut off. Can’t you take nothin for granted?

So these kids, their hormones are buzzin and pretty soon she’s got them yappin like dogs, weeping for Christ and George W. Bush, who almost overlap, both bein’ in the Pantheon, you see. Pastor Becky’s got her eye on a spot for herself, but it don’t do to move too fast. How many souls do you s’pose you have to save before you can sit up there with Christ?

When Pastor Becky thinks about very large numbers, she has to take a extra Ativan. Doctor says so. And the headaches from the yappin’ you just would not believe. Sometimes Pastor Becky lets herself be weak and dwell upon her years behind the cosmetics counter, where is was so damn quiet and the most she had to puzzle over was mascara, brush or wand. Oh here, she sometimes thought, take the wand you old bag and go home—but seldom, because she wasn’t being tested for the Lord, in those days.

Not like this. For one thing, sex. Pastor Becky is certain that at least eight of her campers are humpin’ like bunnies and she wishes to heck she had hired more Juniors for Jesus. Zip! Zip! Zip! She couldn’t very well unzip every sleeping bag herself now could she. Not and get a good night’s sleep. Besides which, it made Pastor Becky remember highschool—and what she wanted more than anything else, right now, was to forget her past, forget there is even such a thing as the future, and most of all forget she was stuck for life in that body, and wouldn’t ever be Pure Spirit.

Does the Spirit appreciate Ativan? She chomped another one down …

Yes, these children are dead.
Yes, Iraq. Yes, common scene.

Yes, Rumsfeld should be strung up ….

What else can one say. Words dissolve … a swirl of leaves, caught by a gust, spirals up and over our heads, into a sky so bright it hurts.

And I am so sorry.

{ fin }

Santorum said he’s heard from ‘many’ women who tell him that it’s ‘easier,’ more ‘professionally gratifying’ and ‘more socially affirming’ to work outside the home than it is to take care of their own children. “Think about that for a moment,” Santorum writes. “Here, we can thank the influence of radical feminism, one of the core philosophies of the village elders.”

So. What you are saying, Senator Santorum, is that older women like myself, involved at the modest beginnings of Women’s Lib, um, planted a concept in the minds of younger women (are ya with me so far?) that (perhaps a little chip, behind their ear?) now causes them to experience an “ease” and “personal gratification” … which they don’t really feel?

Golly. I command millions.

You flamin’ frigtard. Make no sense whatsoever, just throw blame at wall, see what sticks. You know what that accomplishes, don’t you. A witless accusation reveals the accuser to be … witless. Say, wait a minute. Could it be, Senator, that you are what we used to call Part Of The Problem, oink oink?

And, let’s see, being a mother at home gets no respect. Which would mean, some portion of society looks down upon or ignores the value of a contribution beyond measure. Whooo could that portion be?

Staying home, taking care of small children, can be monstrously difficult, draining, boring. Lord knows.

But what I’ve heard from women is, having a job frees them not from kids and home—it frees them from having to take a single ounce of crap from Mr. Breadwinner and Sole Controller. Who (it is to laugh) “shares” his earnings with the unspoken (or, under the tiniest duress, way spoken) expectation that, in return for this largesse, he will be flattered, pleased, and generally taken care of.

And on his terms, fuck mental, spiritual or psychological health. You do know what I mean. The god of Male Ego is an angry, Old Testament god, and I am here to say, sleep with him at your peril.

I was once married to a guy like that. Did I ever fail to make him “happy!” I realized later, hey! There’s a whole profession that could have pleased him all along! But, see, he wanted it to look voluntary; he wanted it to look like love.

link: salon politics