My Child --the question of ownership in childhood

Had a little rant, talking to a friend yesterday. What is it about the embarrassingly-poorly-written Secret Life of an American Teenager that brings this out in me?

The storyline involves a 'bad girl' who gets pregnant who, in the ever-so-delicate language the US networks use to avoid alienating a single sponsor (or inflaming a single protester), 'isn't going to keep it.' Her father, a bit of a rowdy himself, suddenly turns all conservative and is determined not to 'let her.' Because she is, as he says, 'my child.'


Dad's argument is solely, 'you are MY child...' with additional invective and raised voice.


Oooh, that makes me cringe. Not the least because the whole time this cryptic conversation is ongoing, they could have been talking about a broken toy or an old chair.


It reminds me a little of an ancient Electric Company piece, where an animated girl walks around her house picking things up saying 'this is my...'

While our children are certainly our responsibility, they are absolutely not our possessions. 


There is some confusion there, the difference between our responsibilities and our possessions. Partly, probably, because historically --legally-- our children were, once, our possessions, chattel, just as were wives. We were at liberty to sell them, and even to kill them. Those days, at least in the Western world, are gone. 

In fact, just to clarify, no one belongs to anyone except himself. Or herself. We don't even have proper language to convey this self-ownership. And, sadly, we don't have another pronoun that indicates 'my association to' distinct from 'my ownership of'... which also muddles the issue.


My friend pointed out the distressing knowledge that while we can't control our kids, until they are of legal age, we are financially responsible for whatever they do. Strangely, this has not been the case in Canada until 2011, when a precedent-setting case made its way through BC Supreme Court. I am not alone in being flabbergasted by the fact that this has not always been the case. 

BC Surpreme Court

However, this case also does not confer ownership --a great reason for parents to learn, somewhere between their kids' birth and 14 years of age, to influence them in an effective and positive manner... not to exert control.


But back to the cringe-worthy part of that tv show: our children are individual human beings, quite separate from ourselves. They are not 'ours' the way our houseplants, pets or feet are. 

They are their own selves.... 

...that is, they belong to themselves, not us. 

Children come as their own people, and remain their own people. I suspect it might be helpful in living a respect-filled family life to remember that we are not controlling or owning them, but stewarding their individual, whole human selves, unto their adulthood. 


We do not possess, we chaperone. 

Do You Think it Costs $180k to Raise a Child? Being Frugal

As a long-time stay-at-home mom, one of the discussions I love having is about how 'it's not possible to own real estate on one income' and how 'it's no longer possible for one parent to stay home with kids in today's economic reality.'


Uh-hunh.


Funny, how people told me the same thing the year (1989) my oldest was born...


I've read in various places those ridiculous estimates of How Much It Costs to Raise a Child to 18 ($180,000 was one I saw one), and after I shake my head in amazement, I'm curious about the fundamentals that have been used to determined that.

Is it based on a certain number of brand new pairs of pants per child per year? I'm pretty sure that for us, the total number of brand new pants per child up to the age of about 15 was 15. Maybe 20. It's amazing the thriving business second-hand and thrift stores do, in spite of everyone apparently having to buy brand new clothes all the time. Would you rather buy lightly worn $6 Gap pants for a 12yo who is in the process of outgrowing them or unworn ones she'll grow out of just as fast, for $60? That factor of ten adds up fast... faster than a 50% off sale can fix it.


Is it based on convenience, precooked, packaged foods as a large part of the grocery budget? One of the things that people who have never stayed home for 2 decades raising kids don't know is that when you're home most of the day, it's possible to

• bake bread (for about 61 cents a loaf, even with 12 grains, whole wheat and fancy sea salt)
• cook beans from dry ($2.90/kg dry or $1.69 for a half pound can, plus you control the added salt)
• make muffins (that don't have the texture or sugar-load of cupcakes, for less than $1 a batch, instead of a dollar or more each), every day if you want to because it takes 20 whole minutes
• make stew from scratch using the cheapest vegetables there are: tough meats,
  
  yams, onions, potatoes, carrots, etc.
• roast whole chickens right in your own kitchen without needing to speed home from the store to avoid killing everyone with cooling rotisserie birds, still controlling the amount of salt added
• make chicken stock from scratch without the salt (oh, man, the salt!), fat, sugar (not kidding), or whatever 'hydrolyzed vegetable protein' is --made for free from bones and scraps that would just be tossed
• can or freeze anything that appears in abundance, free or low-cost, like a 4' box of 'picked too many' apples from a friend that became applesauce with no additional ingredients, the free blackberries that grow like weeds all over town, a box of nectarines that accidentally got frozen at the store and sold for $2 for 22 pounds and a bumper crop of cherries once: $10 for 25 pounds
• grow a vegetable garden for the cost of seeds and watering, giving a parent something to do outside while supervising the kids who want to be out there anyhow

So, do feel free to choose between 2 hard cooked eggs in a cute little egg-carton shaped bubble package for $2.10 or eggs that you can use for anything, including hard cooking, at home in under an hour for $2.40/dozen. 

An angel food cake only takes an hour, with the addition of about nine cents of other ingredients. Whip a cup of heavy cream with a tablespoon of real vanilla extract and serve the cake with whatever fresh berries or canned fruit you like... 


Let Someone Else Pay for New

With LetGo, Kajiji, Craigslist, Used[CityName] and Freecycle, there is almost nothing but food that anyone must buy new, and even then I see listings for 'come and get it' freezer emptying, orchard-picking, over-abundant garden leftovers and even 'made a whole bunch and no one will eat it' canning, as well as 'unused' 'totally new' 'in original packaging' and 'unopened' advertising all kinds of things.


What Time Allows

While I'm home I can do all kinds of other things I'd have to hire someone else to do instead: from lawn care to laundry, home improvements and repair to mending and removing stains from clothes instead of replacing them.


Maybe More Realistic Numbers...

I figure our kids were more like $2-3000/year for the first one and probably 50-85% of that for the second (because, among other things, there is no reason to buy more kid-sized plastic dishes once the set is in the house), over and above what we would have had to buy to live, just the two of us. I do know that, 2 years later, we certainly aren't floating in an extra ten grand a year, since our eldest move out.


What is On Their List?

So, what's the other $7-8000/year paying for? A car each every year? Six years of full-time post-secondary education (hey! You can't count that in the first 18 years, they don't go until 18, and what if they never go?)

I suspect that bureaucrats sit down with catalogs and layette lists and itemize absolutely everything that a baby could possible 'need' in the first 19 years of life supposing it never received a single gift or hand-me-down and every second-hand store in the world went up in flames. This list includes new furniture however often it outgrows the old stuff, a bedroom of its very own, a new car that seats enough people every time a new one arrives, and multiplies of things like 'vacations' and 'holiday shopping' based on the hilarious idea that having a third or fourth or sixth kid creates another $10k in income to fling around every year.


Normal people in the real world, on the other hand, have another baby and get to make the same amount of money spread among more people, trimming or eliminating some of the casual, unnecessary spending to do so. Which is why people with 16 kids don't usually make $160,000 a year over and above their 'real' budget... 

... and some of them still buy their own houses, even on a single income.