Growing up in the 50‘s and 60‘s I remember hearing about Thomas Malthus and the Population Bomb and that overpopulation would cause mass starvation. Margaret Sanger thought the wrong people were having too many children. My first crosss country plane ride left me puzzled as I observed vast stretches of empty countryside.

Jonathon Last in his bestseller, “What to Expect When No One’s Expecting”, explains that what threatens America’s welfare is underpopulation rather than overpopulation. Our grandchildren won’t be able to collect their Social Security checks because there won’t be enough workers to support them. Our generous immigration policy doesn’t help much, because within one generation, immigrant birth rates decline sharply as well.

“At the heart of the West’s fertility crisis and America’s One-Child Policy,” quotes Last, “Modernity has turned us into a deeply unserious people. Yet it’s encouraging to note that while our fertility problem is more dire than it has ever been, neither the predicament itself, nor its root causes, are new. Having children is difficult but important work and the main threat to fertility comes from a worldview that places the self at the center. Children are seen as a burden rather than as a source of joy.”

The Population Bomb never exploded. It was all bunk, and European countries are fading away even faster than the US. Italy and Greece are ‘museums’, and Japan already sells more adult diapers than infant diapers.

A sensational Time Magazine article by Jennifer Senior a few year ago called “All Joy and No Fun” describes her life as a parent. A comment about the article quipped, “Well, she has it half right!” Being a parent really is hard work and expensive, no one can deny.

An August 12 Time magazine article featured “The Childfree Life, When having it all means not having children” on it’s cover. The article points out that one in 8 high income women expect to remain childless. Women put off work because of work, education, or the lack of a good mate.

 Last and his wife moved out of Old Town DC before having their second child “because we believed that family life was more important. And if you believe in anything seriously enough–God, America, the liberal order, heck, even secular humanism–then eventually babies must follow.”

After exploring failed efforts in France, Spain, Singapore, Japan, and other countries, the author comes up with some simple but radical and practical ideas:

1. Better roads. Parents are more likely to have more children if they can live in the suburbs in a home with a grassy yard, impossible to afford in the major hubs where the jobs are, like LA, Silicon Valley, New York or DC.

2. Telecommuting. Telecommuting has the capacity to return us to a world where the extended family is a part of daily life and returning the home to the center of economic activity in America. The advent of a three generation household, or at least living in the same neighborhood, and having grandparents care for children and children being close by seniors as they age, would make child-rearing more doable. Industrialized Day Care Centers and Retirement homes is a 30 year historical abbertion, according to Last.

3. College. Changing he college system by allowing a nationalized standardized testing. College costs have risen 1000% . While goods and services have decreased in cost, and increased in value, college has increased 1000% while the quality has gone down. NPR reported this week that in Ivy League colleges, dorms and meals cost even more than the tuition! Young people hold off on marriage and bearing children to finish

college, then they have huge debts to pay off, so marriage and childrearing wait. The more education a woman has the lower number of children she generally has.

4. Immigration. A lesson from Japan and France is that every Industrialized country needs immigration to prop up its fettility. Because of Europe’s “policy choices made by adherents of a truly radical faith: multiculturalism” they are now realizing that they have made a terrible mistake, and it is now publically acknowledged. Europe as we know it will fade away in the next few generations, “replaced by a semi-hostile Islamic ummah.” Only the name will remain the same. However in America we have done a good job of integrating immigrants.

5. Social Security: Last has an interesting idea of exempting parents who raise more than two chidren from Social Security since they are raising the future workers who will be supprting the rest of us.

I highly recommend this new book which explains a complicted problem clearly. It’s provocative, deep, and presents heavy thoughts without selling doom. It will make you laugh, cry and think.
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In our family, we started reading to our children from the time they were babies. It created strong bonds, sped them towards academic excellence, accelerated their speech and communications skills, logical thinking, and increased concentration and discipline.  NPR recently reported that high school student’s reading levels are stuck in 5th and 6th grade levels and older students are not tackling more difficult material. Reading to children is by far the best way to help children be successful in school and in life.

Why do some books stay popular for generations? George McDonald, the 19th Century Scottish storyteller, said that the best children’s books are the ones where parents are looking over their kids shoulders.

When your toddler  is at the stage when they want the same book read 12 times a day, it had better be fun for you to read!

Here are a few of our all time family favorites that met that test.

PAT THE BUNNY

This classic book is so interactive that neither babies nor their parents ever tire of touching the bunny, feeling Daddy’s beard or trying on Mommy’s ring.

GOODNIGHT MOON
This classic book delights every child and they never tire of it’s sparse words at the end of the day. It becomes their cue that it’s bedtime and they settle down and easily slip into sleep and parents enjoy it just as much as the babies.

WHERE IS BABY’S BELLY BUTTON?

This is newer than the books I enjoyed with my own children, but my grandchildren love it.

Babies and toddlers don’t realize that things exist when they’re hidden, so they are surprised every time you uncover a hidden belly button or toes.

THE VERY HUNGRY CATEPILLAR

After finding a huge green hornworm as big as my finger, eating our pepper plants last Spring, I brought him in a jar to show my two year old grandaughter. We made a green catterpillar and  fruits and vegetables out of playdoh and re-enacted the story.

GREEN EGGS AND HAM

The wonderful Dr Seuss rhymes and outrageous stories and pictures is one most parents were raised on and continue to enchant toddlers today.

CORDUROY

The lonely teddy bear that had to live in a department store until a young girl was able to save up her allowance and bring him home is endearing to parents and children alike and makes children feel loved and cared for.

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

Maurice Sendak died just last year and he left a wonderful legacy of his love for children with this book. We read this book over and over as our children were growing up and they love the wildness of it and that it was all peaceful by the time bedtime came.

THE SNOWY DAY

Great for reading this summer-Kids get out of school for a day of frolicking in the snow. Another Caldecott Award winning treasure.

CARS, TRUCKS AND THINGS THAT GO.

All of Richard Scarey’ books are favorites. Children enjoy the detailed pictures with so many interesting things going on.

THE SNOWY DAY

Great for reading this summer-Kids get out of school for a day of frolicking in the snow. Another Caldecott Award winning treasure.

THE LITTLE HOUSE

This wonderful book is by the same author, Virginia Lee Burton,  and shows how a lovely farm  home becomes encircled by the big city. The granddaughter finds it and rescues it and moves it out to the country. The detailed pictures show the seasons changing as well and the countryside, families growing up. Another award-winning book.

Our family spent many hours reading books together, and now they are buying these favorites for their children. All five of them have loved reading and are lifetime learners.

Beth

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As a young girl, I played guerilla warfare with my five brothers in the arroyos and vacant lots of our Tucson neighborhood. A playmate and I were enamored with detailed toy horses and even pretended that we were horses, practicing different ‘gaits’ in the desert barefoot, so we could harden our ‘hooves’.

My girls, raised in the 80’s, played with dolls till they were nine years old. Our Fisher Price doctor kit was used continually, with simple homemade costumes and willing patients. The back yard was turned into a primitive village for a few weeks, a complete girl’s house plus one for the boys, including kitchens and bathrooms. The boys got in trouble when they took part of that too literally.

All this because I read widely to them every night, and was too busy working half days from my home office to meddle much.

They constructed a large houseboat out of spools and planks I had scrounged after taking a boat ride on Lake Powell.

Their favorite was a club created in our attic after we had an attic ladder installed. They added carpet scraps, signs, rules, and spent winter days up there in full colonial costume.

How much should children play?

All this because I read widely to them every night, and was too busy working half days from my home office to meddle much.

As you watch your children play, what toys do you find that have less bells and whistles and encourage creative play? I’d love to hear from you since I have three new grandchildren two and under!

If it’s trueasresearcherstell us that imaginative play allows children to make their own rules and practice self-control, what can parents do to augment the benefits of truly creative play?

What we do know is that children entering school now will be retiring in 2065. We can barely recall how life was like 5 years ago, much less five years from now.

Indoors and outdoors, children need large blocks of time for playaccording toJill Englebright Fox, Ph.DResearchers Christie and Wardle (1992), found that large blocks of time of 30-60 minutes are needed to develop mature and complex play, giving the benefits of problem solving, determination, compromise, planning, and collaboration.

I’ve been conducting my own private survey among Moms, asking: “What toys do children really play with a lot?” Train sets? Well, yes maybe, but usually not the way they were intended.

Read ideas from Vikki Valentine in her NPR article The Best Kind of Play for Kids.

It wasn’t until 1955, according to Howard Chudacoff, a professor at Brown University, that almost overnight, children’s play switched from activities, to things—the toys themselves.

Does commercialization of children’s play actually shrink children’s imagination, as Chudacoff claimsin his 2008 book?

Of course safety is an issue now. Kids can’t go roaming through the neighborhood as when I was a kid. As preschoolers, ages 4 and 5, my brother and I were sent to the grocery store to pick up bread for lunch.

Flower soup and flower tea Alison Gopniksays that children are little scientists, and those who are better at pretending are better at thinking of different possibilities. Pretend play is under attack right now because of the onslaught of media and busyness. But pretend play is a crucial part of what makes us so smart. Don’t fear a bit of boredom initially. They will soon come up with ideas. Maybe your goal is to be raising the next Bill Gates.
Beth Weise

David Derbyshire chronicles how children have lost the right to roam in four generations. When George Thomas was eight he was allowed to walk six miles to his favorite fishing haunt without an adult, but his eight year old grandson Edwards is allowed no more than 300 yards from home. You can see the diminishing map here.

As a boy raised in the south, my husband left home as soon as he woke up in the summer, and was off to the swimming/fishing hole till dark.

How can we best prepare them for the real world? it seems like from the first day of Kindergarten or even preschool, we’re getting them primed for that college entrance exam.

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