Marianne's Musings

I was standing in Rajalakshmi’s home in Visakhapatnam, India. She had just finished showing us each of the three rooms in her house and we had ended in the kitchen. In a moment of unrestrained curiosity I asked her, “How many children do you have?” In her broken English and in the accent that I love and miss she replied simply,   “For me no children.”   For some reason her words struck me deeply. “For me no children,” continued to run through my mind. A Westerner laden with modern family attitudes could have easily interpreted her answer to mean, “As for myself, I didn’t want children.” But I can tell you with certainty that that was not what she was saying. She meant, “For me, there were no children. For me, there are no children. No children came, for me.” From the look in her eyes I could feel that this was not something that was planned. I felt certain that she and her husband must have dealt with infertility. It would not have been proper in her culture to e...

I am not a parent. But I have some ideas about parenting. And studies. And words from men called of God to receive revelation for His church.  I remember hearing in a various classes at BYU about how harmful it can be to “hover” over your children. I’ve heard horror stories of moms flying to BYU weekly to do their children’s laundry, or making calls to their professors regularly, or just not letting their children grow up and be on their own.  Parents “have the complex task of adjusting their demands and disciplinary methods flexibly to the developing capacities of the child so as to encourage social responsibility without discouraging independence and individuality ” (Baumrind, 1978, p. 249). Young adults should be ready to subsist independent of you when the appropriate time arrives. They should be able to have: Psychological autonomy Emotional autonomy Financial autonomy Spiritual autonomy These all come at different times, but it is important t...