From: pentangl@spdcc.com (Scott Moir)
Newsgroups: alt.polyamory,soc.singles,alt.pagan,misc.kids
Subject: Re: raising children
Date: 18 Nov 92 15:21:52 GMT
Organization: S.P. Dyer Computer Consulting, Cambridge MA

In article <1992Nov17.231317.809@sequent.com> petel@sequent.com (Pete Lancashire) writes:
>>] Ask yourself, would you like to
>>] have been raised in a single-parent family or a multiple parent
>>] family?

>"If all are 'loving', for me as many as I can get", is what I would
>have wanted. But for me, just ONE caring parent would have been OK,
>my parents just did not wan't me around.

This brings up a good point. Not only do all involved parents (meaning
 N parents, where N is >= 1) need to be loving, but they must -desire-
to be parents in order to be good ones. If you don't want to do something,
how much effort are you going to put in to it? I'm not going to get into
what 'should' be done, I'm just looking at all the families that live in 
the same depressed area that I do. How much good is it going to do for a
kid to have a two parent family when the dad is a alcoholic who beats the
kid(s) and wife, or drifts in and out of the family like a spectre?

How many of you were -taught- how to parent? How many of you who have kids
were ready for the job when you got it? I know that when my kids arrived on 
the scene I had very little idea what I was doing. Here I was 18 with a wife
and a kid and I knew what -images- society put forth about what parents and
husbands should be like, but no idea how to actually fit that role and still 
be me, and not some actor. The inability to fit those expected roles really
messed me up personally and mentally, and put me through a real wringer.

A lot is expected of people when you expect them to automatically know what
they are doing when we fail to teach some pretty basic skills. Not just
cooking and cleaning, but what a realtionship is, what a husband-wife relation
should be like. (Not the images, but what to really look for) That relationship
will be the basis for the rest of the family. It will reflect on how you deal
with your kids, and it will reflect your general state of mind. (Alcohol is
a rough demon to shake, and from what I see around me, it is an all too
common one.)

The Poly people that I know seem to realize that you make your own family
structure, it isn't dictated to you. In all honesty, the best thing for the
kids is caring, and it doesn't really matter who gives it.

We put all this emphasis on 'good parenting' as an expectation, but there is
no training but the on the job type. A lot of people arent ready for it. I
originally started this posting thinking that I had something 'directional'
to say, but as I think about it, I'm not really sure how to fix what is
broken.

The one thing I do know, however, is that it should not matter how many
parents there are, but they had better all want to be there, and they had
better all be willing to give for the kids involved. Those kids are just
adults waiting to happen. One day they will come back to you as an adult
and look you in the eye and judge you based on how you treated them, on
what you taught them.

Scott

-- 
Scott Moir  /  Satyr on IRC    ______ # "There's really only one requirement 
pentangl@Ursa-Major.spdcc.com  \ \/ / #  for a Prophet, and you've got it."
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These are my opinions, not SPDCC's    # "A mouth." - 'God' to J.R.'BoB' Dobbs