Menopause and Duggar Mess

Last week, I told my symptoms — insomnia, a creepy-crawling feeling on my skin, waking up sweaty in the middle of the night, a period that’s been missing for three months — to a nurse/midwife. She concluded that it was menopause. I had been waiting for that news since 1972. If I hadn’t been tired and suffering from a cold, I would done cartwheels out of the clinic.

Ahh. . .the news every childfree woman wants to hear. The door is permanently closed to parenthood, and hopefully, there will be an end to annoying questions from others concerning having kids. It’s the pleasure of knowing that one day, worrying about birth control won’t be an issue. One day, I will no longer have to spend money on tampons and sanitary napkins. It’s all good.

Chelsea Handler made fun of the the Duggars on her show recently. Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar made the cover of People magazine, along with their 19th kid, who was born with complications. I never watch the reality TV show they have; there’s nothing fascinating about people who have hordes of kids. Plenty of people do. Why do some families deserve to get the face time on camera over others?

I signed up for a free People subscription, and sure enough, the first issue I received was the one with the Duggars on the cover. Medical experts are quoted saying they think the couple has too many kids, and the lack of emotional and financial resources available to give to so many children. Michelle Duggar had been diagnosed with preeclampsia (pregnancy-induced hypertension) before the latest kid was born prematurely. Michelle is 43 years old. If she and her husband insist to continue having more kids, because they believe all children are gifts of God, then she’s going to be in for some bad medical problems.

Doctors have stated for years that there are risks for women having kids after age 35, but a lot of people still don’t believe it. I learned that having more than four kids, regardless of how old the mother is, causes health problems. The older siblings, who often find themselves helping to care for younger siblings, suffer emotional problems. There is a reason why some women — myself included — who were put in the position of playing “second mama” while they were growing up, don’t have children. We’ve already done the motherhood thing. We don’t want to play mama again as adults.

I shook my head as I read the article. Jim Bob Duggar stated, “All of our children are thankful to be here.” Uh, they didn’t ask for or had a say so in being born, anymore than I or ol’ Jim Bob and Michelle did. I wonder if he really asked the kids how they felt, or did he just assume that.

What Is Seen

Want to be annoyed? Sometime ago, I wrote in a post about a book that pushed the “be fruitful and multiply” idea. It was written by a woman who is associated with the Quiverful movement, a group of people who don’t believe in birth control largely for religious reasons. One of the main supporters of this movement is a guy named Doug Philips. He has a web site for his organization, Vision Forum (www.VisionForum.com).

Vision Forum believes that men should run everything and women belong at home with hordes of kids. I got into an email debate with Philips a couple of years ago after I wrote to express my distaste of the “be fruitful and multiply” book which I ordered from them. One missive he sent back to me clearly showed he hadn’t read nor understood what I had written previously. He blabbed on about his mother having a child in her late 40s — I believe she was 47 at the time, which was really taking a chance. He basically said that it wasn’t too late for me to look into squirting out a rug rag. Wrong response, buddy.

Not long after our email exchange, I kept getting their pro-chauvinist, have-as-many-kids-as-possible propaganda in my mailbox. I called Vision Forum to have my name removed from their mailing list. The guy who answered the phone (of course it was a guy, because they don’t believe in women having jobs and careers) addressed me as “Miss”. “It’s Ms.”, I swiftly corrected him.

Vision Forum is not the only pro-breed and anti-feminist web site. There are many others including Ladies Against Feminism (www.ladiesagainstfeminism.com), but Vision Forum is one of the worst. I’m a Christian, but sites like those prove that all Christians don’t think.

The Okey-Doke

The most annoying teenager in church asked if he could stay for today’s annual business meeting. The former youth director and the pastor’s wife convinced him that it was a meeting for adults. “Hell, no, and go home,” I thought.

A committee has been formed to choose a new youth director. I should be on it, but then, I could see a lot of people getting pissed off at my opinions. Whoever takes over that post has to not be afraid to step to the kids and call them out on their nonsense. No standing by and allowing kids to disrupt the Sunday service, no putting up with kids’ drama during the youth group meeting. And please, stop relying on what was learned out of textbook in a vain attempt to relate to problem kids, especially if the director doesn’t look like and/or come from the same background as the kids.

That was a problem at the social service agency where I used to work. The majority of the mental health professionals were young, white, raised in two-parent families in small towns or suburbs. The majority of the kids in the residential center were African-American, products of single parent homes, out of the ‘hood. The mental health professionals mistakenly thought that what they learned in their psychology classes could be applied to every malcontent kid they served. They were wrong.

The lack of cultural understanding of the kids didn’t go unnoticed by the African-American mental health professionals. The general consensus was, “The other kid handlers can’t come to these kids with that okey-doke shit and think it’s going to work.” Many of the mental health professionals of color were raised like me — by parents who were not afraid to yell and scream at their kids and go upside their heads if necessary. They also understood that all kids have the talent of being manipulators and con artists when they want their way. Unfortunately, the higher ups in the agency continually made the mistake of thinking all kids are inherently good. When something serious went down — like a kid accusing (often falsely) a mental health professional of doing something inappropriate — the higher ups automatically sided with the kid.

Whoever decides to take on the job of dealing with the hardened and hard-headed kids who walk through the church door, needs to have an understanding. Most of the kids’ parents don’t care — they use the church as a babysitter when they want the little wonders out of their houses. Reaching the parents and getting them involved as partners in the ministry is going to be next to impossible. The kids have no home training, so unless they lay down rules from the outset, they will be dealing with discipline problems (and so will everyone else in the church). Most importantly, they need to learn something about life in the inner city — especially if they don’t come from there.