2 Comments

SoConBaby
December 13th, 2012 | 1:20 pm

Good topic and decent article. My wife and I fit the category and I had a few comments.

As traditional Catholics, ecological breastfeeding has been about the only reliable means of spacing our children. And it just makes sense. Modern people ask us if we are getting enough sleep when we have a new baby, a question we find foreign and stupid. Of course we get enough sleep, my wife rolls over, puts her breast in the baby’s mouth, and the baby goes back to sleep. As far as “the act” goes with a co-sleeping kid, we wouldn’t do it when the younger kids are awake in the other room, either. With a co-sleeping kid, or preferably in a toddler bed nearby, we just have to be a little quieter.

As conservatives, homeschooling really makes sense. We can’t afford private schools, and they seem in many ways worse than public schools. Parochial schools nowadays are Catholic in name only, almost sure-fire ways of raising kids who will reject the Catholic faith. And public schools are basically Bolshevic indoctrination camps. Since early education, pre-K etc, have poor science to support their efficacy, they can only exist to indoctrinate children into the collective mentality. So outside of homeschooling, the choice is between a neo-Jim-Crow form of social classism in private schools and a Kibutz-like indoctrination from the Union/Socialist/Tenured/Elitist public school system. Not much of a choice, really.

I think conservatives/Republicans are in a major process of redefinition, and your article raises several issues important to the debate. But as far as a “trend” goes, I can only wish, but I feel the current seems to be going in the opposite direction. Does that make me a Salmon?

Peter Lawler
December 14th, 2012 | 9:46 am

So SCB–The practice I was referring to is not having the baby in the bed conveniently located near the breasts. Lots of mainstream parents do that; we did that. It is having several or more kids iof various ages routinely sleeping in a single big bed with the parents. Even on the Waltons they say good night from their separate beds. I generally agree with what you say etc.