Parenting

I've been in the midst of a discussion regarding parenting and gender roles. I'm no expert but here's my two cents.

It seems to me that we have spent the last couple decades railing against something that never existed. The only place that the Leave It to Beaver world ever existed was on Television. There was never a time when only the women did the work in the home. It has always been a family job, maybe more so in the past when families were one wage earner places and kids pitched in to help.

The past few decades it seems like every time a woman does something domestic, feminists are ready to pounce and denounce the backward step for women. Women are not supposed to work in the home, they are supposed to have a career. By the way, men are supposed to have a career too. Raising children gets left out. Children get in the way of careers for men and women and we end up with kids growing up without parents because society does not value parenthood.

When are we going to wake up and realize that our kids are being shortchanged in this argument over something that never existed except in the TV world.

The other statement I hear that drives me nuts is the statement that women "shortchange" themselves by quitting work to raise a family and lose income later in life. The women that do this are portrayed as losers. Not one person talks about how families are richer when a parent stays home. Not one person talks about the loss of parenting when both parents are working outside the home. Single parent families have it even tougher.

Our society is not willing to honestly look in the mirror and see what we are doing to children. We leave them out and treat them as annoyances rather than the responsibility they are to us.

I Passed my test

I passed my state test for volunteer firefighting today (12/9/06). Now I can be more involved in accident and fireground activities, including SCBA use. I'm pumped and excited to get more involved.

Tough day

Got called to a vehicle accident today. The dispatcher said the driver was trapped in the car. By the time I got there with the crew in the heavy rescue, it was obvious the driver wasn't just trapped, he was also dead. My first clue was the fact that the vehicle was hooked to a tow truck and the tow truck driver was working to unwrap the car from the tree with the driver still in it. If the guy had been alive, we would have cut the car open just as it sat.

It's not fun to work on a situation like this. It's down right ugly and reminds me of the fragility of life. This guy was cruising down the road one second and the next he was dead, his car wrapped around a tree. It was not icy but we have had heavy rain here for the last couple days and the ground was already saturated. It appeared the driver tried to go through a puddle at 60 mph or so and hydroplaned, lost control and flipped over and over until stopped by the tree.

Slow down and be careful.