Well howdy there web surfers. I am too lazy to compose an essay today, so I will merely include some comments I made to the blog of Penelope Trunk. She has strong views on parenting, and finds research for her readers.
Because blogging… matters
Sean Crawford says:
June 3, 2025 at 11:04 pm
I don’t know anything about parenting research, but I remember my mother, a housewife with six children, was so haggard that I wouldn’t bring home notices from elementary school because I figured she was already stressed enough. My sister, to avoid the same haggardness, had a job where every penny went to day care: like working for free.
This year I read a slim advice book by a grandmother. In chapter one she passes on some advice she was given:
…Let your children know you are delighted to have them… Not something my poor mother could do, but something I try to do with my disabled clients. (where I only work eight hour shifts)
Reply
Penelope says:
June 4, 2025 at 1:55 pm
I love this comment. There are two things that really resonate for me. The first is that when parents look like they’re overwhelmed kids perceive the parents cannot care for themselves so kids start caring for parents. I see this in my own life. And I hate to admit it, but i see when my kids do it with me.
Also, the part about delight. I wish this were the standard for good parenting. Did you kids feel like they delighted you each day just by being themselves. I think about what makes people have kids.
Penelope has a past, that she has revealed to readers down the years, to help them and to teach business concepts. By “a past” I mean things such as wondering why people bother to live, as to her the easy default is dying. I thought I would tell her what I knew, in the spirit of helping her specifically, as she has helped others.
Sean Crawford
says:
June 27, 2025 at 3:08 pm
Say, I went through the stages as regards missing having a relationship with my parents as a child.
When Buffy the vampire slayer was cynical about having a life that matters, instead of telling her “don’t suicide” a guy told her the thing is “you have to live, just live.” It’s on the album for the musical episode.
The research about being happier when kids are gone is not from maturity or getting tougher, I don’t think, but from stressors being gone.
“Gone” meant my parents were happier when the kids were grown because not only were the kids gone, but the yard work was gone because they downsized to an apartment. Gone was extra room cleaning.
Dad retired so preparing his clothes and lunches were gone: no more ironing shirts and stretching socks on sock shaped steel hangers. No more shift work in their lives.
(I never buy clothes that need ironing, my steamer is gathering dust)
When I visited I never heard them screaming at each other. Not like in the growing years. And if they never screamed at me, and seldom criticized when I visited, it wasn’t because I was a better person, or that “they were faking it,” so I wouldn’t walk away, but rather because they were genuinely less stressed. So they were easier to be around. In due course, after I got over some anger-estrangement, I would visit every day when I was in town on holiday.
I guess, Penelope, life will be better as you are letting go and having boundaries for your kid’s lives.
God bless my Puritan/Jewish ancestors, but lately, as a metaphor,
I’ve been telling myself that I’m entitled to a glass of red wine without saying it matters for my cancer health, or mental health, or to recharge so I can work the next day, or because I’m “s’posed to have a life so I can be a non-fascist better citizen,” or to build wine-knowledge for the future, for any other excuse that the wine matters. Here and now, sometimes, I just want to live.
At the end of a game, an athlete brought his infant into the middle of the field, and although his team mates were warning him to cradle the infant’s head, he didn’t. Also the volume of the noise has been shown by research to be bad for infant’s ears, but the sports world (accidental pun) won’t listen. Would sports fans listen to Penelope, or instead attack the messenger?
Sean Crawford
says:
June 23, 2025 at 6:47 pm
I can imagine some troll shaming you.
My answer: Back in the 1960’s, based on a childhood Readers Digest article I read then, we knew it would be decades, not years, before society caught up to Europe in condemning drunk driving. Nevertheless, it was appropriate to tell the truth, even if people said our standards were too high, too premature, too idealistic or whatever.
Right now is the time to be caring about our baby’s heads and hearing.
A famous NHL goalie, Ken Dryden, wrote about how bank tellers would never let him line up with the public, that they thought that because he was better at hockey he was also (blank)-er. I remember “kinder” was one of the attributes. Nonsense, of course.
It’s fun to idolize athletic stars, but only if we keep our common sense gears running in the back of our minds
Reply
Penelope says:
June 24, 2025 at 1:09 am
Sean, your comment is it’s own blog post — really. You cover so much ground so succintly. The idea that people must be better at everything because they’re good at one thing is a plague in our culture right now. I mean, the idea that people good at earning money will be good at governing is it’s the path to oligarchy or fascism. or both.
Here it was the Karen Reed Scandal, where the justice system and the police CONSPIRED to fabricate evidence to convict an innocent person to keep a constable out of jail.
Sean Crawford
says:
June 12, 2025 at 9:41 pm
Thank you for your reporting. I too am angry.
Cases like this are why Canadians are resisting Washington’s pressure to become the 51st state. Forget that noise.
This insulting pressure, even before tariffs hit, and before the reported border horrors, is why Canadians were booing during the US anthem at hockey games, and first began reducing their tourism to the US.
(Meanwhile, at the state level, trying to distant themselves from the feds, the states are offering hotel and travel discounts to Canadians, but it’s not working)
Reply
Penelope says:
June 12, 2025 at 10:25 pm
Bribing Canadians to come to the US: pathetic. I bet tourism is down across the board – not just Canada.
Again she was helping readers by bringing her past to bear on present topic of a celebrity assaulting his partner. Penelope too had been in an abusive relationship. Innocent people don’t realize why a victim doesn’t leave, and don’t believe them, saying the victim must be imagining it or lying. … When Penelope was in a support group for people at ground zero, her therapist said her past was worse than 9/11.
Sean Crawford
says:
May 24, 2025 at 1:04 pm
I believe everything you say in this post. Including about your personal life, which I am sorry about.
Sad but true what you say about the system.
After a drunk driver destroyed my friend’s job, because of her injuries, without facing consequences, except when the driver missed a court date, a policeman told her, “We don’t have a justice system, we have a financial system.”
Reply
Penelope says:
May 25, 2025 at 6:44 pm
Oh my gosh. I see that with my son’s court case against Uber. Even though no one is denying it’s the Uber driver’s fault, it’s hard to peg financial damages when a kid does not work. It’s just such a messed up system.
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Sean Crawford
August
2025
