Whoa... Tuckmac's an arsehole.

Okay... This is both an apology to parents everywhere, and hopefully a bit of a clarification of what I 'meant' to say, rather than the paranoid and delusional rantings that came across in my last post.

First... I have to stop generalising. I tend to do that a bit too much, and even the TITLE of my last post was, well... Really wrong.

Parents... In general... Are marvellous and self-sacrificing people. You take a little piece of you, and your loved ones and turn it into a miracle. You then do everything in your power to raise and nurture this little being into well-rounded and happy little humans. To the parents that do this... (my Mother, My mother-in-law, several co-workers, etc...) I humbly give you thanks. And also, here it is again... Ask for your forgiveness of my hasty words.

Now, I will be honest, and say that I don't understand how you can do that.

I think a big reason I am so freaky about children, is that I know that I was an 'oopsie' child. My whole life, and the life of many children I know are 'oopsies'. The parents didn't lovingly get together and make a baby on purpose... No... They had one heck of a fun night, and found out a month later that they were going to be parents.

This is different than many. I know a few parents that deliberately chose to have children, and quite often, say... 90% of the time, those children turn out to be great. But those parents are ALSO the type that limit television usage, watch what their children are doing on the internet, and frankly are 'involved' in their children's lives.

(I'm hoping those parents that fit that persuasion of child-rearing see themselves in this, and also that they know that I know that that's what they do. 'Cause I do.)

Now us 'oopsie' children aren't as lucky. About 20% of us turn out okay, 'cause the parents who weren't PLANNING on being parents do the same things that the 'planned parents' do. T.V. is curtailed, internet is controlled, spend time with their kids... Etc...

I say US 'cause my Mum was pretty intense about my upbringing, and thus I'm not running about shooting at people. Anyhoo...

The parents who are a 'very' small proportion of parents out there are a specific sub-group of both Yuppie parents who never see their kids because work comes before family, and very poor parents who can't watch their kids, 'cause they work too much to feed 'em.

(VERY small part of those groups, 'cause just 'cause you're poor in my Mum's case or Yuppie in some of my cousin's case, doesn't mean you can't be a tremendous parent. It's just harder.)

Like My Lady said in her comment (In the last post, please read the comments, or this groveling will make very little sense): My Nanny State point, was the particular rant that I began upon. I hate that society (and this isn't just parents) but society as a whole seems to be embarked on a state-sponsored crèche, where society and schools do the work which the parents USED to do. And it isn't just kids, either... It's society trying to curtail what their OWN CULTURE is creating in response to the culture. Why is there more violence on T.V.? Because there's so much violence in the real world, frankly. This gets played out in various genres, and places... Art, Theatre, Movies, Videogames, et al... The fact is, our culture is sick. A sick culture turns out more sickness. I DO believe that participating in culture is a personal choice. If one doesn't want to see violence, or let their children see violence... Turn off the telly. This is really what my previous rant was supposed to be about, but...

I didn't get that point across personally, 'cause other things got in my way. And frankly, the reason I don't piss people off TOO much, is 'cause I usually sit down to write a blog, whilst being in a good 'writing' sort of mood. I wasn't. And that was a bad idea. In the past week, I had had five different parents ask me 'what was taking so long, and why don't you have kids with your wife yet' and I let that get under my skin unconsciously, and frankly... I think a tonne of my wrong-headed rant was due to that societal pressure. I shouldn't have let that creep into my OTHER rant. This isn't an excuse, by the way... It's just what happened. I'm still wrong.

I ask for every parent that read my post, and became rightfully angry at me, to please forgive my hasty and unordered and just plain WRONG rant.

Thank you.

-- Tuckmac