Organic-Ally

I was just trying to sit down and it went. Went where? What went? Gone walkabout. My back. I heard a sound that resembled something being crunched, "crrrck," and I could not stand up. Then the memory was only of pain. I must not fall down, I must not fall down, I said to myself. If I fell here and lose consciousness, no one would find me for another, hmm, ten hours. Managed to get to the computer to send a couple of messages, then thought that lying down would help. It helped only insofar as Radio Four sent me to sleep and I forgot the pain for a while. Then I managed to have a phone conversation with husband. Until that point my fear was how do I get my son home from school? Do I call the school and ask them to ask another parent to send him home? Do I request a staff member to make sure he got across the road safely? Then what happens when he gets home? Could I get to the door to open it? What a relief it was that husband said he would come home to pick the son up. Meanwhil...

When we take our kid out, we make sure he behaves himself. I remember my sister-in-law saying of her children (now grown up), "Rather they behave badly at home than they behave badly in public." Us Chinese have this notion called jiajiao (literally "education by/in your family" which can be translated roughly as "parenting" or as I prefer "family honour"). So if a child behaves badly, a grandparent is likely to mutter, "Don't do that. No jiajiao ." Those words alone were often enough to stop most young children from misbehaving. So when we go out with son to an event we make sure he is polite. We also help him with his food when he was much younger, and wipe up any spills, etc. to ensure that we do not trouble the hosts too much. Last Friday was a very emotional day for me. I was in tears a lot in the morning. I was finding it hard to get over how our neighbours' eldest son had died so suddenly, and it was his funeral. This dea...

Son's school sports day today. We had the best weather and son was amazingly positive today. Two mothers came up to congratulate me on his achievement in gaining the Chief Scout's Silver Award (mentioned by the Headmaster in the school bulletin last week). Somehow we got round to talking about my making him tidy up from a very young age. This is really the 'luxury' of a stay-at-home mother. (One mum expressed how because she always had an au pair , her son never had a chance to do this.) I had the choice of tidying up for him and get it over and done with in two minutes, or making my son learn how to do it, even if it took 20 minutes. I opted for the latter. When life got a bit messy I used to say, "Let's see if you could put five toys back in the box." He would then count five toys into the box. "OK, I think we need to put another seven in." Sometimes it was nine, ten, or whatever number of toys. Sometimes it was five green colour toys (eg five...

Don't like the term 'housewife'. Married to a man, not a house, so why 'housewife'? In Singapore the preferred term was 'homemaker' for a while. But all the potential homemakers migrated to the corporations and the home had to be made (maid?) by FDWs (Foreign Domestic Workers). In 2004 I undertook research on 'stay-at-home mothers' or SAHMs in Singapore (thanks to a grant from the British Academy). The results of this research have yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal ... because I am still a SAHM. This term has gained popularity in Singapore (since then? maybe it wasn't anything to do with me, who knows?). An interesting finding was most of these SAHMs did not do much 'housework'. They stayed at home, but they still had FDWs to cook and clean for them. So while they might do the food shopping (called 'marketing' in the 'wet markets'), SAHMs often only supervised others in homemaking. The whole objective of being...

We have not changed our family name, but 'potter' is a good alternative. We spent the Easter Term break doing what potters do, pottering, or should that be what potterers do, in which case the headline should read "Here comes the Potterers". We've never had the guts to get away at Easter. Husband had been a regular at A&E for three or four Easter weekends in a row. Last year we managed to stay away. This year we kept clear. Thank God! But husband did manage to get away for two whole weeks from work (yay!) and we pottered. Caught up with son's godmother. Pottered. Had son's mate over for a sleepover. Pottered. Took them to the Imperial War Museum. Pottered. Went to Kew Gardens. Pottered. Went to Stratford on Avon. Pottered. Now we're back! But life won't return to 'normal' till Thursday when son returns to school. Point is: there is so much to do in this great big country. So sometimes a bit miffed by the working parents at school who co...

It's the long-ish Easter break and of course there was no time to blog. But I do know that lots of working mothers have taken advantage of the long Easter weekend to go away with the family. Those who have not been able to take time off, well, their children have been organized to go to Easter camps. Me? I had son about, "Please may I play PSP?" every five minutes or so. He knows the answer is "no, unless ...." but he still tries. Then I have orders to fill, new exciting products to be launched (hopefully), etc. But that is another story. Recent news reports started me thinking -- again -- about the 'to stay or not to stay at home' question. First, an economist EQ in Singapore tried to analyze the cost of mothers staying at home. I found most of his arguments as holey as fishnet tights. But they wouldn't publish my response to his "essay". Then Leslie Bennetts in The Times noted that should a mother decide to stay at home and then face the...

Oliver James calls for an effort to "raise the status of the parental role" because presently "being a stay-at-home mother has a lower one than that of streetsweeper". OJ is right in that stay-at-home mothers (SAHMs) have a very low status and possibly even lower self-esteem. And, following from previous post , this is part of the reason middle-class familes are disintegrating. His 'affluenza virus' theory applies most to this class of people, I think. Middle-class families are falling apart because the desire for material goods means that couples often lock themselves into a financial bind which requires both of them to work full-time. A stay-at-home parent (even part-time) is no more an option. Or couples believe that they are so well-trained and well-educated that it will be a real pity should either leave their profession or career (but less so 'job') to concentrate on child-rearing. So childcare is farmed out as much as is possible. Children gr...

First there was Jamie Oliver (JO) telling us about what to feed our children -- good on him -- and now Oliver James (OJ) tells us what my husband and I have believed in for a long time: children should be looked after by their own parents. OJ coined the term "affluenza virus" which causes victims to place "a high value on money, possessions, appearances (physical and social) and fame" (see Times article here ). He puts this down to the legacy of both Thatcherism and "Blatcherism" (never heard that one before, does he really deserve an 'ism'?) Is there anything new in what OJ is saying? Listen to the writer in Ecclesiastes: there is nothing new under the sun. Or to borrow another cliche: the writing's on the wall. It would seem logical -- to me as a social scientist any way -- that excessive consumerism (that was what we used to call it) would lead inevitably to the type of symptoms now so obvious and making OJ's thesis so credible. Back in...

Noticed this report in The Times today and couldn't help but feel -- only initially -- a little smug Basically, what it's saying is that a child is better off -- in terms of developmental tests -- if its mum had stayed at home instead of palming it off to a nursery or other carer. Such children manifest less aggression, for example. I have mixed feelings about this. I stayed at home to look after my child. He was a a few weeks old when I trotted off to a post-doctoral fellowship interview. While on the train I realised that I could not leave my baby to take up an academic post. When the phone call came later that evening to say, sorry, you were very good, but someone else was better, i felt a tremendous sense of relief that i didn't have to choose between son and a job. That was five years ago. Now that son is in school, I am beginning to wonder if I did make the right choice. What the researchers do not indicate in this piece of research is whether the birth order of the ...