Hi, Dan--

Pay people an income, with retirement bennies -- to have children??

No: to raise them. We pay other people to raise our children now, and poor children, who need the most care, get the worst. The wealthy have farmed their children out for centuries. Why not call it what it is: productive work. And why not treat it that way?

‘Boys’ on the whole, will not, just as ‘girls’ on the whole will live a life of perpetual pregnancy, abuse and poverty. I believe there is a matter of maturity toward one’s life-choices and responsibilities at work here.

Two points: 1) The majority of the stay-at-home parents, even in the mature two-parent families, have been women. Does this mean that all those males who followed the conventional path are "boys"? 2) Battery has a horrible effect on one's ability to make mature choices. Try figuring out what mature is when you've only seen it once or twice.

I know you're kind and generous. I suspect your family, the one that raised you, is the same. Children learn what they live. Try to imagine what it's like to be raised being told that you're stupid and worthless, and that everything bad that happens to you is your fault. People who achieve in spite of that kind of conditioning should get a medal, but they'd never accept it because they wouldn't want people to know. Because there will always be a little voice that says all the garbage is true.

This happens a lot. A lot. I just spent part of my afternoon listening to a 13-year-old girl talk. Just listening. And it wasn't her parents who were telling her she was fat and stupid and ugly, but they weren't around to listen. They were at work, because listening to a 13-year-old girl try to salvage her sense of self-worth doesn't pay the rent.

Doesn't anybody understand this? In a world that equates value with price tag, we get what we pay for.

Yeah, I'm back with the kids. I belong there, even though they made me assistant director.

Several years ago I read a column in Booklist in which a library director told the story of his encounter with kiddie lit. He was looking forward to a book about the Cold War by a political science expert, and asked his staff to snag it for him when it came in. (A perk of library work. We call it "book review". ;) )

One Friday afternoon he discovered two identically titled books in his in-box. One was the long-awaited scholarly history, a tome some 300+ pages long. The other was a 150-page study by a journeyman author aimed at high school underclassmen. He took them both home.

He found the adult book stultifying. After spending 75 pages in the 1940s, he set it aside for the Young Adult title, just for a little rest. The YA book read almost like a novel, full of danger and suspense, every bit as accurate as the scholarly work, but with copious relaxing white space, bigger print (which is easier on the middle-aged eyes), and, wonder of wonders, lots of pictures.

He says he has never scoffed at juvie or YA lit since.

I see you understand this too. :)

Best--
Mary Anne