Dads are from Mars and Moms from Venus

A child is supposed to have a father and a mother figure. So sayeth the new Ex-co of AWARE and hence all their mambo-jambo about homosexuality and all that jazz. I agree that kids need a father and a mother because they can offer different things. That said, it doesn't mean that a father-mother combination is always best. If the dad-mom combi are at each other's throats all the time and are abusive or negligent, it doesn't trump a stable single-parent. But when the dad-mom combination does work, it's great for many reasons.


One reason I discovered had to do with our fears and concerns.


I, the mother worry about practical, real things. I worry about their health and their safety. I fear both the real and imaginary things that could hurt my children. Germs, Swine flu, sexual predators. And thanks to the great imagination I have, I have the ability to work myself up into a real tizzy about who and what might harm them.


Packrat is different. He acknowledges that the things I worry about are real but he's realistic about them. He knows they are dangerous, he knows they might happen but he also knows that all we can do is try our best to protect them and the rest of it, we have to pray and trust God because the only way we can FULLY prevent any of my nightmares from coming true is to keep them in a bubble and that's just ridiculous. He worries, however, about their development. About what kind of people they will become. About how they might become mean, selfish individuals if we don't bring them up right. He worries that they are put in an environment where they are taught to be bigots. To pick on the weaker among them. He worries that they grow bad souls. And that, we won't see till properly formed. It is for this very reason why the AWARE thing incenses him. His fear is that come new ex-co, the kids might in some way, be subliminally taught to judge those who are different and ridicule those who are different. And that to him, and also to me, is unacceptable.


And I respect that about Packrat. And think it is a good thing that he worries about those things. He puts into perspective the things I worry about. They are real worries but in some ways more easily preventable than the intangible things he worries about for them. And also that he sees the larger perspective. I see the kids all the time. I am responsible and involved in their daily activities and hence my concerns are more immediate. He has the benefit of seeing what is more important in the longer term. It is a good balance. It would be ridiculous and bubble forming if both he and I worried only about their health and safety. It would cause them to grow up to be very shallow, myopic individuals. Many of whom, we see in society. If we only worried about their ideals and the type of people they became, we'd might as well have joined a hippie, free-love commune.


I like it this way even though it makes us sometimes argue about which is more important. In my book, both are. In different ways. And in this way, I'm thankful that we are a two-parent family because then, each of us can focus on one aspect and hopefully our kids grow up right.