UK Neighbors Engaged In Illegal Babysitting

Here's a story I wasn't expecting to see: West Michigan's bias against babysitting was preposterous enough, but it seems positively libertarian when compared to the rules babysitters have to follow in the UK.

Whether it's because statist busybodies who have so little faith in themselves project their own inadequacies onto the rest of their nation, or whether they believe themselves possessing the rare wisdom to form laws that result in "perfect" societies, the end result is the same: ignoring the possibility of genuinely good neighbors, and winding up with nonsense like "illegal" babysitting:

The government has ordered a review of the case of two police officers who were told they had to stop looking after each others' children or face prosecution.
Detective Constable Leanne Shepherd, from Milton Keynes, was warned by Ofsted [Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills] that she could be prosecuted if she did not end the "illegal" reciprocal arrangement with her friend, DC Lucy Jarrett.
The women, both 32, have taken turns looking after each other's daughters twice a week for the last two and a half years while they worked a ten-hour shift at Aylesbury police station in Buckinghamshire.
... New legislation means that people who baby-sit for more than two hours at a time or on more than 14 days a year should be registered and follow childminder rules, including undertaking first aid training and following the so-called "nappy curriculum" for under-fives.
According to the education watchdog, the rules apply in cases where parents receive a "reward" for the child care – which can include money or simply free baby-sitting in return. Ofsted is now in discussions with the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) about the interpretation of the word "reward".
...
DC Shepherd said she had received a surprise visit from an Ofsted inspector who said she had received reports that an illegal childminding business was being run. Despite explaining that the arrangement was between two friends who were helping each other out, DC Shepherd was told that she was breaking the law and had to stop immediately. "I was stunned, completely devastated. I spent the whole day crying because I couldn't see how I could continue working," she told the Mail on Sunday.

"No One Told Me Having Fun Is Not As Fun As I Thought"

So many of the important lessons about life seem only to be learned after we experience the path we shouldn't be taking. Two steps forward into the mist and one step back; a leap of faith followed by an honest measurement of where we've landed. All too often it's not so much a step as it is a pratfall that lands us in a mud puddle of dis-illusionment and humiliation. I know I've had my share lately...

Covered in the mud of our mistakes, caked in regrets; that's when the real learning begins, doesn't it. We wipe away our false beliefs and see things as they should have been, occasionally marveling at how backwards our old vision has been revealed to be.

As I clear up my latest personal glob of mud, I deeply sympathize with Zoe Lewis' confession of her own humbling revelations about the path she's been traveling. It's not easy to admit we've made a mistake, but that's the best way for good to come from self-inflicted tragedy:

A playwright who embraced the feminism espoused by her mother and flaunted by Madonna now feels betrayed

I never thought I would be saying this, but being a free woman isn't all it's cracked up to be. ...My mother was a hippy who kept a pile of (dusty) books by Germaine Greer and Erica Jong by her bed (like every good feminist, she didn't see why she should do all the cleaning). She imbued me with the great values of choice, equality and sexual liberation. ...

Now, nearly 37, those same values leave me feeling cold. I want love and children but they are nowhere to be seen. ...I was led to believe that women could “have it all” and, more to the point, that we wanted it all. To that end I have spent 20 years ruthlessly pursuing my dreams - to be a successful playwright. I have sacrificed all my womanly duties and laid it all at the altar of a career. And was it worth it? The answer has to be a resounding no.
...
I argue that women's libbers of the Sixties and Seventies put careerism at the forefront, trampling the traditional role of women underneath their Doc Martens. I wish a more balanced view of womanhood had been available to me. I wish that being a housewife or a mother wasn't such a toxic idea to middle-class liberals of yesteryear.

Increasing numbers of my feminist friends are giving up their careers for love and children and baking. I wish I'd had kids ten years ago, when time was on my side, but the problem is not so much time as mentality. I made a conscious decision not to have serious relationships because I thought I had all the time in the world. Many of my friends did the same. It's about understanding what is important in life, and from what I see and feel, loving relationships and children bring more happiness than work ever can.
...
Had I this understanding of my psyche ten years ago I would have demoted my writing (and hedonism) and pursued a relationship with vigour. There were plenty of men and even a marriage offer, but I wouldn't give up my dreams.

I talked to the girls who were the subject of my play Paradise Syndrome in 1999... Nicki P, 35 and single, works in the music industry and adds: “It was all a game back then. Now I am panicking. No one told me that having fun is not as fun as I thought.”

... Not all women want children but I challenge any woman to say she doesn't want loving relationships. I wish I'd had the advice that I am giving to my 21-year-old sister: if you find a great guy, don't be afraid to settle down and have kids because there isn't anything to miss out on that you can't do later (apart from having kids).

Japanese parenting goes to the dogs

"Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry."
__Gloria Steinem

This story is set in Japan, but it has a familiar echo for Canada, and the west in general, as well:

In her spare time, 46-year-old Japanese eye surgeon Toshiko Horikoshi can be seen pushing a pram around elegant department stores as she shops for designer clothes.
Stop to coo over the pram, however, and you won't be greeted by a baby's smile. You'll face two small snouts.

Ginger, a teacup poodle, and Tinkerbell, a Chihuahua-Pomeranian mix, accompany Horikoshi everywhere she goes. ..."He's mummy's boy," Horikoshi says, pointing to Ginger, who wears a frilly little T-shirt. "They're like babies."

For Horikoshi, sharing her life with dogs instead of babies is an active choice. She divorced her husband who had asked her to follow Japanese tradition and become a stay-at-home mum; she wanted to pursue her career. Her current partner has to accept that her dogs and her work are at the centre of her life.
... Her friends share her choice. "My friends - married, one poodle, no child. Married, two Chihuahuas, no child. Married, one Chihuahua, no child," she counts off her fingers.
... "I don't want a family, I want to continue to work hard. I don't need help, I don't need a husband. I have a lot of free time, I can do everything by myself," said Horikoshi, who has her own practice and performs 15 eye operations in an afternoon, leaving most mornings free.

"But sometimes I feel lonely, and now when I come back to my apartment, I can see two dogs."
...

Living for material things is an entirely natural choice; we see them piling up around us, and being tangible things we feel our benefit from them through the expediency of a simple touch. Empty rooms with empty shelves call out to be filled with "stuff", for the more "stuff" we possess then the more we must be, our personal greatness reflected in our personal treasure. That's natural.
Living for a career is also a natural choice; our job can become our life, if we work at something we like doing. Unlike generations past, it's not unreasonable to imagine ourselves with the great good fortune to follow a career of our own choosing, rather than being stuck doing something just for the sake of being employed. If it has become more possible than ever before to pursue the careers of our dreams, what could be more natural than to focus on that career? It's like never having to stop playing. Getting to do what we wish to do: what victory could be sweeter, what objective could be more natural?

Living a life so that we can have children, however, seems to be a very un-natural choice; why choose to give up all that material stuff? Why risk losing the job of our preference, the career path of our dreams? Why take a less-fulfilling job simply because it would let your working schedule conform to the needs of one's children, or shoulder the burden of a begrudged job, one not to our liking, in order to allow a spouse to spend more time with the children? What's natural about sacrificing present luxury... what is it to be sacrifed for?

If children jeapardize the wealth of the wealthy, if they inconvenience the leisure of the leisurely, where is the natural inclination to have kids? It seems as if the incentive must be un-natural, super-natural; that is, springing from outside of nature.... spiritual, not material. There is everything to lose, in a material sense: less time and less money for personal "stuff".

Yet this story from Japan suggests to me that it must still be human nature to have a side pre-occupied with things other than the material. The woman who has everything, from a submissive husband to a fulfilling career, with satisfactory amounts of leisure time, still wants something more... She's "lonely" for it... We might go to great lengths to hide this side of ourselves, and our wealth and our leisure help us as never before to avoid facing it; but still we cannot shake the natural responsibility to live for more than just oneself. We cannot outrun the sense of obligation that haunts us in the dark of night, in the fleeting moments when we look at ourselves in the mirror and see an incomplete person reflected back at us. All this can be as palpable and as material as the fancy clothes and the shiny cars and the condo with the great view that we accumulate to fill the hole. It just requires a certain amount of honesty, and courage, to accept its existence.

Putting a dog in baby clothes; isn't this what little kids do when they play at being adults? These pets aren't much more than elaborate versions of the dolls children play with in their infancy. Such games used to serve a purpose: to teach long-term thinking, to help us, as children naturally attuned into only living for the present, to imagine the existence of the future, not just of ourselves, but our Family. That true growth involves a certain amount of giving, and not just getting. When one's life involves only the material, when it revolves around only things, then giving of oneself, especially the unselfish love that parenting demands, then this becomes a duty harder than any job. The end result of such giving is an achievement so long-term, so far-off in the distance, that it takes the strongest faith to see. And the story of our time is that the source of that faith does not seem to be found in the material mansions we build for ourselves.

When people can't do something, when they can't achieve an objective, it is natural to belittle it, to attempt to refute its importance, in order to save face, and avoid the humiliation of defeat. Our present generation, who like to think ourselves so advanced, so modern, so "successful", we are afraid of the most natural task in the world: to grow up. Because such a chore would test our ability to achieve the most natural objective in the world: to raise children who would become capable of being good parents in their turn.
Keeping the cycle progressing: what other "job" matters more..?

"If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do matters very much."
__Jacqueline Kennedy