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upset at nanny -- vent



 
 
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  #91  
Old February 11th 04, 08:53 PM
Tine Andersen
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default upset at nanny -- vent

"Nina" skrev i en meddelelse
...

"Dawn Lawson" wrote in message
news:FQrWb.462164$JQ1.333434@pd7tw1no...


Nina wrote:

"Tine Andersen" wrote Being quite
frank: I would probably look down at someone who chose to let

her DH support her and stay at home. I would consider it lazy, I

think.

You're supposed to provide for yourself. I myself would hate to

stay

at

home - I need the satisfaction my job gives me. I'm an acceptable

mother,

but I'm not born to be a MOTHER, if you KWIM.


You dont consider the tasks of maintaining a home and family o be
work? I find it
ironic when people approve of working as a daycare worker outside

the
home for pay
but consider it laziness when the same job is performed in ones

home.
Being a:
daycare worker
cook
housekeeper
are work when paid professsions, but laziness when same functions

are
provided at home.


and imo, this is why NAmerican daycare is poorer than what Tine is

used
to. We have to be as sensitive to the differences in culture as

Tine
has been, if we are to continue asking her to spell out those
differences. She was ASKED what NAmericans do that she finds

unusual
and shocking.

Dawn

My goodness, you tend to be testy.
Where was i insensitive? I was disucssing in depth with her her
perceptions
and asking her further questions to get a better idea of her
perspective.
I cant see how thats insensitive.
Dialogue.


It's OK with me - I love these exchanges of ideas and ways of living. And I
accept that not everyone recognize my descriptions as mere descriptions and
not statements of a better way of living.

Tine, Denmark


  #92  
Old February 11th 04, 08:58 PM
Dawn Lawson
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default upset at nanny -- vent



Marie wrote:

On Wed, 11 Feb 2004 15:24:38 GMT, Dawn Lawson
wrote:

Marie wrote:
I know LOTS of people who have spotless houses, hot meals, and enjoyable
children because they stay at home.



Hot meals, I have. Enjoyable children, *I* think so! I guess I do too
much with the kids to spend too much time doing other things. (I
homeschool and the kids are the main part of my life)


You made quite a sweeping statement that no one with similar commitments
has a spotless house. I've been pondering this, as I know literally
dozens of families that do, AND they do things like make most of their
own clothing, food (bread, canning, butchering, etc) AND are very
involved in community and such. I'm finding it very interesting to try
to pinpoint the difference between these families (where i'm guessing
the average number of kids is 4 or 5) and families I am reading about
here where there's *one* child and a SAH parent, and the household so
frazzled it seems ok to walk past animal waste because it's too
difficult to manage to clean it up. (Ok that's not said commonly, but
at least two people have posted just that)

I'm curious because I find the first group to be a calm, warm, loving
group, with welcoming homes, and a commitment to quality workmanship. I
find the second group to be frazzled and harried and generally
struggling to keep one disaster or another at bay. There's clearly some
fundamental difference between the SAHM and the communities in both
groups.




Again, these same moms I know sew, knit, do woodwork, maintain enormous
gardens to feed the families etc.



I want a garden, I just need to figure out where to have one where the
cows(not mine) won't eat it through the fences, but there will still
be room for the kids to play.


Double fence the garden area, with about a six foot gap if you can, the
kids can play around in the gap, the cows can't get near the garden.
And garden in raised beds, and the kids can play in the garden too.
(plus you get more yeild for the area gardened)



I suspect from what I have been told by people coming here or hearing
what my plans are for the day that I am further to the camp of spotless
house and such than not.
I dont' see why you can't do all these things if you wanted, when you're
a SAHM.



I guess if I wanted to do it I could, I just feel there are more
important things to spend my time on. Hmm, I do play piano, do my
online stuff and read as hobbies, and I go out every other weekend
with a friend so I guess there are my "me" times. Except my hobbies
are usually done with a baby on me!


I'm not even talking about "me" time. I'm talking about doing all the
things people say you have to stop doing when there are kids, because
there isn't time in the day.

So. Now I'm curious. Again. ;-)

WHAT are the more important things that you spend your time on?

I wonder if I *don't* do them, or if I do them *as well* as all the
other things I do, ditto for the first group I mentioned...

Dawn

  #93  
Old February 11th 04, 08:59 PM
Nina
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Default Cultural differences (was: upset at nanny -- vent)


"Circe" wrote in message
news:sZsWb.39183$QJ3.10241@fed1read04...
Clisby wrote:
Circe wrote:
Nina wrote:
"Tine Andersen" wrote in message
k...

"Nina" skrev i en meddelelse
...

It's not 'negro' in Danish - it's 'neger'. But it's the same
word.

The english translation of "neger' would be "black" not

"negro"
as "negro" is basically
a euphemism for black. So calling black people "neger" is the
equivalent of calling them "black" here,
not "negro". Neger probably sounds like ******, which is a Bad
Word.

You are right - I checked my vocabulary - it's 'black'. Was

negro
a bad word 35 years ago?

No, negro was then standard usage. It changes.

Er, 35 years ago, I was 4 years old. I'm reasonably sure that
Negro was in disfavor by then. I believe "colored" was actually
the favored term by that time.


I think you have it backward - at least, for where I grew up, in
S.C. and Mississippi. "Colored" had been around for a long

time -
that's the term my parents (now in their 70s) had used all their

lives.
The NAACP is almost 100 years old, after all. I'm pretty sure

"Negro"
was more a '40s and '50s successor to "colored" - when I was

growing
up, the word "Negro" came with the implication the person saying

it
wasn't Southern.

That's interesting. I'd have guessed that in California (where I

grew up),
the term in favor by the late '60s or early '70s would have been

neither
colored nor Negro, but black. Certainly, when I was 8 (1972 or

thereabouts),
I had a neighbor friend who was black and we said she was "black",

not
Negro, not colored. (Of course, there were some kids in the

neighborhood who
called me a deregatory term I'll leave to your imagination as well.)


Black power, "Im black and Im proud" had a lot to do with the change
in terms
I believe this was in the late 60's early 70's. It was a pretty hip
young radical thing to do, to be
Black.


I was thinking, however, that colored was considered a less

offensive term
than Negro first, since blacks themselves used the term (as in the

NAACP).
I'll admit, my regionalism may be showing!


Black people (using a modifier as a noun is offensive, since "black"
is not a noun in English)
use the term negro.

, Negro was *always* a word with negative implications
because it was coined and used at a time when black people were
considered so inferior in the US that it was okay to enslave

them.
For obvious reasons, most people in the US now want to dissociate
themselves from that term and all its baggage.


I'm not sure I'd say "Negro" was coined - it just means black.


I disagree for the simple reason that Negro is *never* used to

define the
color of objects in English. It just isn't. The *only* use of the

word is to
describe people. That makes it a word with implications that the

word
"white"--and by extension "black"--don't have.

Negro is a noun, black isnt. So a person can be a black person or a
negro, but not a negro person or a black.



Certainly, in slave-holding times, the term for blacks was Negro (or

a much
ruder variation thereof). IMO, that means it was, by definition, not

a
value-neutral word.

It was neutral and over time it fell out of favor as did "coloreds".
You imply that by definition, any term used to refer to black people
in those days
would not be neutral. Thats absurd. Negro was a perfectly legit and
preferable term
as opposed to darky, coon, ****** , nigra.


And
I disagree that it always had negative connotations - at least not
in the way I think you mean. When I was a child, my parents

would
consider a person calling himself/herself a "Negro" to be an

outsider,
almost a radical - like someone leading a voting rights drive, for

example.
To them, it was a negative term - I doubt that it was to the

people who
used it to refer to themselves. (I'm sure Malcolm X considered it

a
negative term, but that's another story.)

That's very interesting. I really had no idea. Perhaps this was a

bit like
the gay movement appropriating the word "queer", however?


No Queer began as a negative word that was appropriated.
Negro never had negative connotations. FWIW, black people
often use the term "negro" amongst themselves jokingly.
Some white people didnt like the term because it was
"uppity" and formal, as if the nigras were putting on airs by
demanding to be called
Negroes.


e, Tine, we've got cultural differences even *within* the US!
--
Be well, Barbara
(Julian [6], Aurora [4], and Vernon's [23 mos.] mom)

This week's special at the English Language Butcher Shop:
Financing for "5" years -- car dealership sign

Mommy: I call you "baby" because I love you.
Julian (age 4): Oh! All right, Mommy baby.

All opinions expressed in this post are well-reasoned and

insightful.
Needless to say, they are not those of my Internet Service Provider,

its
other subscribers or lackeys. Anyone who says otherwise is itchin'

for a
fight. -- with apologies to Michael Feldman




  #94  
Old February 11th 04, 08:59 PM
Dawn Lawson
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default upset at nanny -- vent



Tine Andersen wrote:

"Nina" skrev i en meddelelse
...




Where was i insensitive? I was disucssing in depth with her her
perceptions
and asking her further questions to get a better idea of her
perspective.
I cant see how thats insensitive.
Dialogue.



It's OK with me - I love these exchanges of ideas and ways of living. And I
accept that not everyone recognize my descriptions as mere descriptions and
not statements of a better way of living.


Again, Tine, you've been more clear in your second (?) language then I
have in my first.....your last sentence is EXACTLY what I was trying to
say. ;-)

Dawn

  #95  
Old February 11th 04, 09:07 PM
Marie
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default upset at nanny -- vent

On 11 Feb 2004 11:42:22 -0800, (Michelle Spina) wrote:
This is *clearly* very person dependent, then. I was thinking as I was
reading this "you have no idea what it's like to be a working mother!"
When exactly do you think the house *gets* cleaned? I'd love to have
the picture you painted - clean house in the morning, come home to
same clean house. Hmmm - when would I manage that? Mornings are busy
getting parents ready for work, and kids ready for their day. The day
is filled with work. Come home, play with kids, make dinner, play more
with kids, put kids to bed. Now it's 8:30 - 9:00pm. Some cleaning can
be done, but nothing too noisy, because, well, the kids are sleeping.
And, we've been going since 6:30am - cleaning is NOT at the top of my
list at that point. So, dirty house remains dirty. Repeat 5x. Weekends
are a blur of errands and cleaning that should have been done during
the week. Hardly the nirvana painted above.

But then you said that you have done both, so I'm somewhat baffled, as
I've also done both. When I was home full-time, my house was MUCH
cleaner, shopping was always done (never the panic of "oh crud, what
on EARTH are we going to eat tonight?!?"), laundry was regularly done,
AND I had time to myself (short snips, to be sure, but still time). To
me, there is NO comparison to the stress level, and amount of work
total that is done when you compare SAH vs WOH. Not even *close*. I
don't even understand how you can logically think otherwise, actually.
I mean, in terms of household chores, they are a constant, regardless
of work-status. When you are home full time, you have all day, every
day, to schedule them in, in short bits (so you don't have to do a
massive, multi-hour clean job - lots of 15 minute jobs scattered
through the week). Engaging the children in these tasks is easy, and
fun. This isn't hard to manage (or perhaps I should say it wasn't hard
to manage in my experience). If you work full-time, you have ALL of
those tasks to do, but substantially less time to do them in. How
could that be easier? Cripes, we even have a nanny. I honestly have NO
idea how people do it when they have the get the kids ready for
daycare in the mornings on top of it all.

Most of my friends are SAH's, and they do lots of extra activties -
tennis, sewing, knitting, scrapbooking, book clubs, etc. And in none
of these situations are the kids ignored or are suffering. My son used
to LOVE to help me clean. It was a fun activity that we did together,
and I think it was good for him to learn how to do such things.


When I woh, I only had one child (a baby in fact) and was single. So
maybe it was easier for me than if I were married and had more
children. (I'm sure it was) I look back on that and my apartment was
soooo clean and neat. Then came dh and two more children.
So I will say that in MY experience of woh and sah, woh was easier as
far as housekeeping. I apologize, I wasn't comparing equal family
compositions. I also feel overwhelmed much of the time with my
youngest daughter's personality and needs so I snapped out a little.
I still do the OMG what will I fix for dinner? bit now and then ;o) I
am *not* able to clean somedays, depending on what else is going on at
home. With the three kids here we are always doing something. Normally
cleaning is done when the baby goes to bed at night.
Marie
  #96  
Old February 11th 04, 09:20 PM
Marie
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default upset at nanny -- vent

On Wed, 11 Feb 2004 19:58:17 GMT, Dawn Lawson
wrote:



Marie wrote:
Hot meals, I have. Enjoyable children, *I* think so! I guess I do too
much with the kids to spend too much time doing other things. (I
homeschool and the kids are the main part of my life)


Ok, here I was talking about hobbies, all the extra things being
talked about like sewing and woodworking.

You made quite a sweeping statement that no one with similar commitments
has a spotless house. I've been pondering this, as I know literally
dozens of families that do, AND they do things like make most of their
own clothing, food (bread, canning, butchering, etc) AND are very
involved in community and such. I'm finding it very interesting to try
to pinpoint the difference between these families (where i'm guessing
the average number of kids is 4 or 5) and families I am reading about
here where there's *one* child and a SAH parent, and the household so
frazzled it seems ok to walk past animal waste because it's too
difficult to manage to clean it up. (Ok that's not said commonly, but
at least two people have posted just that)


Ok I can't imagine walking past animal waste! I don't remember anyone
saying that, I will have to look on google for that one.

I'm curious because I find the first group to be a calm, warm, loving
group, with welcoming homes, and a commitment to quality workmanship. I
find the second group to be frazzled and harried and generally
struggling to keep one disaster or another at bay. There's clearly some
fundamental difference between the SAHM and the communities in both
groups.


Double fence the garden area, with about a six foot gap if you can, the
kids can play around in the gap, the cows can't get near the garden.
And garden in raised beds, and the kids can play in the garden too.
(plus you get more yeild for the area gardened)


Our landlord at the time will not let us do anything to the fencing or
yard. (I can't even pull up the ugly buggy bushes beside the house)

I'm not even talking about "me" time. I'm talking about doing all the
things people say you have to stop doing when there are kids, because
there isn't time in the day.
So. Now I'm curious. Again. ;-)


I have been talking about "me" time, hobbies. That's what I thought
you were talking about. What do people say should be stopped because
of having kids? Housework? Hobbies?

WHAT are the more important things that you spend your time on?
I wonder if I *don't* do them, or if I do them *as well* as all the
other things I do, ditto for the first group I mentioned...


I teach the kids, I do work with them, we do do some housework
together, and for now my toddler is taking up the biggest part of my
time. I cook one or two meals a day, I go out in the yard and play
with the kids. Just, most of my time is spent on and with the kids. I
try to give each child some time alone with me.
Marie

  #97  
Old February 11th 04, 09:29 PM
Tine Andersen
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Cultural differences (was: upset at nanny -- vent)


"Nina" skrev i en meddelelse
...

e, Tine, we've got cultural differences even *within* the US!


Yup - but I'm learning as I'm reading.

I spent some years in NYC ('60 to '64) as a very small child - I was late to
talk so I learnt English in day care and Danish at home. I'm sure an
appropriate word was negro where I lived. I remember being threatened by a
young Afro-American/colored/black/brown/negro/KWIM? boy: I'm gonna sue you!
I believe I had stolen his shovel in the sandbox. He was five and I was
four.

Tine, since age of six Denmark


  #98  
Old February 11th 04, 09:37 PM
Tine Andersen
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default upset at nanny -- vent


"Marie" skrev i en meddelelse
home. With the three kids here we are always doing something. Normally
cleaning is done when the baby goes to bed at night.


If I clean I do it on weekends - mostly I just don't. No-one has become ill
yet. I do the 'wet' cleaning (bathroom/kitchen) - DH does the 'dry'
(broom/vacuum) . I wash our clothes and DH does the folding and putting
away. I do the plumming, DH does the electricity. I cook thursday-sunday -
DH monday-wednesday.

So today I'm just sitting here while he can take care of the kitchen -
yummy.

Tine, Denmark


  #99  
Old February 11th 04, 09:39 PM
Clisby
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Cultural differences (was: upset at nanny -- vent)



Circe wrote:
Clisby wrote:

Circe wrote:

Nina wrote:

"Tine Andersen" wrote in message
ne.dk...


"Nina" skrev i en meddelelse
...


It's not 'negro' in Danish - it's 'neger'. But it's the same
word.


The english translation of "neger' would be "black" not "negro"
as "negro" is basically
a euphemism for black. So calling black people "neger" is the
equivalent of calling them "black" here,
not "negro". Neger probably sounds like ******, which is a Bad
Word.

You are right - I checked my vocabulary - it's 'black'. Was negro
a bad word 35 years ago?

No, negro was then standard usage. It changes.


Er, 35 years ago, I was 4 years old. I'm reasonably sure that
Negro was in disfavor by then. I believe "colored" was actually
the favored term by that time.


I think you have it backward - at least, for where I grew up, in
S.C. and Mississippi. "Colored" had been around for a long time -
that's the term my parents (now in their 70s) had used all their lives.
The NAACP is almost 100 years old, after all. I'm pretty sure "Negro"
was more a '40s and '50s successor to "colored" - when I was growing
up, the word "Negro" came with the implication the person saying it
wasn't Southern.


That's interesting. I'd have guessed that in California (where I grew up),
the term in favor by the late '60s or early '70s would have been neither
colored nor Negro, but black. Certainly, when I was 8 (1972 or thereabouts),
I had a neighbor friend who was black and we said she was "black", not
Negro, not colored.


I started college in 1971, and I agree - I think it was about then that
the term "black" was becoming common. I was speaking more of my
childhood, in the late '50s and early '60s.

By the way, when I said the above, I didn't mean southern blacks didn't
use the term Negro - Martin Luther King Jr. did, just to give one
example. But I grew up with the impression that a white person who said
"Negro" (not getting into "nigra" or "******" here), was deliberately
making a statement that he/she was treating blacks with dignity.


(Of course, there were some kids in the neighborhood who
called me a deregatory term I'll leave to your imagination as well.)

I was thinking, however, that colored was considered a less offensive term
than Negro first, since blacks themselves used the term (as in the NAACP).
I'll admit, my regionalism may be showing!


Well, the United Negro College Fund and the National Council of Negro
Women both came along after the NAACP.

That said, Negro was *always* a word with negative implications
because it was coined and used at a time when black people were
considered so inferior in the US that it was okay to enslave them.
For obvious reasons, most people in the US now want to dissociate
themselves from that term and all its baggage.


I'm not sure I'd say "Negro" was coined - it just means black.



I disagree for the simple reason that Negro is *never* used to define the
color of objects in English. It just isn't. The *only* use of the word is to
describe people. That makes it a word with implications that the word
"white"--and by extension "black"--don't have.

Certainly, in slave-holding times, the term for blacks was Negro (or a much
ruder variation thereof). IMO, that means it was, by definition, not a
value-neutral word.


And
I disagree that it always had negative connotations - at least not
in the way I think you mean. When I was a child, my parents would
consider a person calling himself/herself a "Negro" to be an outsider,
almost a radical - like someone leading a voting rights drive, for


example.

To them, it was a negative term - I doubt that it was to the people who
used it to refer to themselves. (I'm sure Malcolm X considered it a
negative term, but that's another story.)


That's very interesting. I really had no idea. Perhaps this was a bit like
the gay movement appropriating the word "queer", however?

See, Tine, we've got cultural differences even *within* the US!


  #100  
Old February 11th 04, 09:53 PM
Dawn Lawson
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default upset at nanny -- vent



Marie wrote:

On Wed, 11 Feb 2004 19:58:17 GMT, Dawn Lawson
wrote:



Marie wrote:

Hot meals, I have. Enjoyable children, *I* think so! I guess I do too
much with the kids to spend too much time doing other things. (I
homeschool and the kids are the main part of my life)



Ok, here I was talking about hobbies, all the extra things being
talked about like sewing and woodworking.


Is sewing a hobby if you are clothing your family? I suppose.
Woodworking if you are using the income from it to buy groceries? I
suppose.
some people view gardens as a hobby. For me they are a source of
quality food, and NOT a hobby.
Maybe that's why these things aren't valued as contributing to family
life, because they are seen as taking away time with the family? Which
seems strange to me, because they are practical, useful, (geez, Tine?
What AM I trying to say? ;-) skills and don't detract from any of the
families I know that do them all. In fact they strengthen the families
and I don't hear the same 'issues" coming from them as I do from the
average person in my "second group of families"

I'm not even talking about "me" time. I'm talking about doing all the
things people say you have to stop doing when there are kids, because
there isn't time in the day.
So. Now I'm curious. Again. ;-)



I have been talking about "me" time, hobbies. That's what I thought
you were talking about. What do people say should be stopped because
of having kids? Housework? Hobbies?


Everything but the basics, it sounds like. Anytime other things are
mentioned like having a clean house, or a garden or baking or such, they
are sort of brushed off as "not as important as what I chose to do
instead".


WHAT are the more important things that you spend your time on?
I wonder if I *don't* do them, or if I do them *as well* as all the
other things I do, ditto for the first group I mentioned...



I teach the kids, I do work with them, we do do some housework
together, and for now my toddler is taking up the biggest part of my
time. I cook one or two meals a day, I go out in the yard and play
with the kids. Just, most of my time is spent on and with the kids. I
try to give each child some time alone with me.


Ok, sure. But the first group I was describing do ALL these things,
cook three meals every day and all the rest. I don't see why they can
do more and to the majority of posters here it seems impossible or
somehow self-indulgent to do. I'm honestly wondering what the
fundamental difference is. Perhaps I will call and talk to a few of the
people I'm closest to in the first group of families and pose these
questions to them, too. For the "other" side of the coin, and how they
manage to do all that they do and still remain calm and organised and
attentive to their children, etc.

Dawn

 




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