Category Archives: Family Issues

All Things Being Equal

March 15, 2013

America is a country founded on equality.  It is an idea formalized in our Declaration of Independence:

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Yet, the modern understanding of equality is threatening to undo us, as we become more and more fractured in our attempts to make certain that we all get an equal slice of the American Dream.  Bluntly put, equality today means that I can have what you have, no holds barred.  You have it, and I want it.  I deserve it because we are both equal.

Equality is at the heart of the battle between the sexes.  And most recently, equality has been argued at the Supreme Court as the premise for redefining marriage to provide for equality.  Equality?  How so?

Ask any child what equal means.  PieAt the age of three, he knows what to look for….my slice of the pie is just as big as your slice.  And kids have a very simple way to enforce the rules of equality.  You slice the pie.  I get first choice.

Sadly, many adults have never graduated from this simple definition of equality.  They wildly bandy the term “equality” around, as if all of life is one big cherry pie to be shared.

Children grow in their sophistication.  9871057-pizza-slice-with-everythingSharing a pizza is so much more complicated than cherry pie.  Even when the slices are perfectly cut from the center of the pizza into identical slices, there are so many ways to go wrong in getting your equal share.

  • How many slices of pepperoni are on each piece?
  • Which slice has the most cheese?
  • Does cheese matter to me?
  • If I give you my cheese, what will you give me in return?
  • If my brother is twice as tall, does he get twice as many slices?
  • What if I missed breakfast?  Can I have more than my extra tall brother?

Pie ChartWhat does equality mean?  Quite literally, it depends on how you slice it.  Some may object to reducing the arguments for same-sex marriage to a pizza party challenge.  But there is more to the comparison than meets the eye.

Cherry Pie – we all have relationships that could compare to sharing a pie.  For instance, there is the line at the box office.  Every person in line is equal as my competitor.  Our equal chance to buy tickets to the concert is governed by who got in line first.  If tickets are few and the line is long, they may restrict each purchase to six tickets.  And still, at the end of the day, they will run out of tickets and there will be the haves and the have-nots.  Some will have $300 to pay for a ticket sold online.  Many will not be able to ante up the extra money and will have to read about the concert in the papers or hope for a YouTube upload.  Every person in line is equal as my competitor.  But at the end of the day…some have…and some have not.  As my mother used to tell me, life is not fair.  I will not get everything I want.

Pizza – we all long for the relationships that are special orders, people who are essential to our life in personal and unique ways.  Every pizza is specially designed to appeal to the one who will eat it.  If we are lucky, we may have many such special order relationships.  Common understanding is that we will be able to count these relationships on one hand.  If I am lucky to have five special people that I can relate deeply to, what is the likelihood that each of these relationships is equal to all of the others?  There is the parent who is my best friend.  My spouse is committed to the fulfillment of my personal dreams.  My child protects me in a new and expanding world with challenges that I need help to deal with.  My friend of 40 years knows the history of my failings…and he loves me in spite of them.  Each relationship is special, but none of them are equal to each other.

Fiftieth Wedding Anniversary CakeHow can we reduce marriage to a simple piece of cherry pie?  That is at the heart of the premise presented to the Supreme Court justices…that equality will solve our differences.

All things being equal…there is never a day when all things are equal.  The best we can do is discern the differences and ask what those differences mean to us.

Marriage?  Special order…made especially for whom?  This is what we need to ask.

**************************************

April 23, 2004:  m…m…Married?

May 14, 2004:  Order in the Courtroom!

 

Economics of Family

February 15, 2013

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

It’s anybody’s guess…where the economy is headed.  And lots of people are guessing.

With Obama duly sworn in for another four years, we are headed into uncharted waters.  Tuned to the daily news reports, we try to gauge our economic plight with familiar terms:  taxes, spending, deficit, sequestration, budget, interest rates, short sales and austerity measures.

But one thing is missing from the discussion of America’s economy…the economics of family.  And it is no small thing.

We have come to treat the financial and the social parts of our lives as two completely different and isolated realms.  In politics, people are known to say, “Economically, I am a conservative, but socially, I am a liberal.”  At election time, we hem and haw, trying to decide whether to vote for economic issues or for social issues.  We couldn’t be more wrong.

At the very time when we pray for economic recovery, America seems ready to abandon its commitment to traditional marriage between a man and a woman.  Economically, our failure to support traditional marriage is also a financial decision.

Marriage is not just about a wedding cake, a piece of paper and insurance benefits.  It is the foundation of society, the supporting structure for building families and caring for children.  While we try to guess whether the GDP will go up or down next month, we do not have to guess about the consequences of deconstructing traditional marriage.

The Brookings Institute has extensively studied the phenomenon of out-of-wedlock births in America:

Since 1970, out-of-wedlock birth rates have soared. In 1965, 24 percent of black infants and 3.1 percent of white infants were born to single mothers. By 1990 the rates had risen to 64 percent for black infants, 18 percent for whites. Every year about one million more children are born into fatherless families. If we have learned any policy lesson well over the past 25 years, it is that for children living in single-parent homes, the odds of living in poverty are great. The policy implications of the increase in out-of-wedlock births are staggering.

Sadly, as we continue to keep count of the number of children living in single-parent homes, we do not seem to have the stomach for considering our personal and cultural failures that have brought us to this point.  We want a strong economy.  We just don’t want to fix the economy at the personal level.

We have reduced marriage to the trivial.  We declare it as unnecessary for fathers and mothers, men and women.  Conversely, we declare it to be the “a right” for those in same-sex relationships.

Our ambivalence about marriage is quite apparent in the educational programs being used to teach the next generation of Americans.  Teens are taught that they can have sex “when they are ready.”  We encourage their readiness for sex by supplying baskets of condoms and pills.  Now, judges have secured Plan B drugs for children of any age “if they have an accident.”  And if Plan B should fail, our government will assist our children in getting an abortion.

We are totally fixated on how to NOT have families.  Nowhere in any of our educational plan for teens do we teach them about constructing families…about the positive link between sex, marriage, and children.  This is not just a sexual issue.  And it is not a religious dogma.

It is economics!  It is basic Economics 101.  Marriage between men and women is an issue that should matter to government because it is the strongest foundation for our economic system.

If we want to revive our economy, we must open a national dialogue that truly respects traditional cropped-Family-Sunset-Beach.jpgmarriage as a valuable institution worthy of our support.  This dialogue must be more than media-friendly sound bites demanding same-sex marriage.  The same-sex debate has completely derailed our understanding of marriage.

If we want economic recovery, we must start by restoring the economics of family.  And these economics are grounded in the security of healthy marriages between men and women.

Small Town America

April 11, 2008

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

Small Town America, home to Tom and Huck, was always home to me, even as I grew up in “the city.”  I couldn’t wait for summer to arrive when my parents would send me “back home” to Grandma in Tennessee.

Surrounded by strangers, I was instantly embraced by aunts, uncles and cousins…and all their friends.  Before we arrived on Sunday, the Baptist preacher knew more than my name.  And when I missed church one week with an upset stomach, he made a personal visit that same afternoon just to let me know I had been missed.

Life was safe.  Eyes followed me wherever I went, a circle of protection that allowed us kids freedom to walk and ride bikes across the town, back and forth, in all directions.  Sweet red slicing tomatoes, fireflies, honeysuckle, goats and calves, watermelon at family picnics…I loved it all.  But most of all I loved the people, the people who loved me back.

Thirty years later, nothing had changed when my husband and I were able to spend four months in Tennessee, introducing our two children to Small Town America.  Standing at the high school counter, enrolling them in the fall semester, the principal walked out to meet us for the first time…calling us by name and asking us how we were adjusting to life away from Phoenix, the big city.  He already knew we were renting a mobile home from Ruby and spending time with my Uncle Jimmie.  He invited us by anytime, directing us to his farm just past the turnoff to our own home.  Any niece of Mr. James was family, not just to him, but to the grocery clerk, the post mistress and the hair dresser.

In Small Town America, you are known for who you are.  Pure and simple.  Handshake deals still exist for people who have seen character proven over the years.

If you want to get back to basics, there is no better place than in a small town.  Down to earth graces are the foundation of reputations.  Parking a Jag at the grocery store will certainly draw attention, but it won’t compensate for rudeness, for arrogance or for meanness.

The “law of the farm” is still the rule of small towns.  Even when lottery tickets hang on the fridge promising future riches, small town people still treasure friends and family.  Hard work matters.  Keeping your word, sitting at the bedside of the ill, a warm casserole, an invitation to church…these are the riches of small town life that can’t be purchased or won.

Pretense is impossible.  Hypocrisy is hard to disguise in a small town.  Your church life, your work life, your family life are woven into an indivisible whole, a summation of your values and character that precede you into a room and are left behind when you depart.

It all comes together in a small town where people save family fortunes to send their precious first-borns off to college and a “better life” in the big cities.  Moms and dads will brag about the accomplishments of their distant children, and friends will share their pride.  But the child is finally measured not by the degree earned at Harvard, but by the humility of knowing her roots, of her ability to remain grounded in the truths learned back home where a diploma is just a piece of paper.

Obama has revealed a serious lack of judgment.  Truly, provincial isolation is no less possible in ivory towers, in the power complex of Congress, or in the hallowed Harvard halls where Obama has spent his adult life.  Surrounding oneself with sameness, a big town dinner table crowd can convince an up-and-coming Senator that partial-birth-abortion is a sophisticated humane response to pregnancy.  As such, he certainly will be joined in his derision of pro-life people as hicks who “don’t get it” because of their boorish religious fanaticism.

One suspects that Obama is not unaware of how to sing the politically correct praise of small town people.  It is easy to picture him standing presidentially in front of the grain co-op shaking hands with the locals, telling them they are the “people who make America what it is.”

But Obama has now been caught in the games that are no longer possible in Big Town America, hiding with our double lives in mass anonymity.  Saying one thing to friends, but on the other side of the tracks, singing a different tune, he has revealed his contempt for the very things that make Small Town America great.

From the one side of his mouth, Obama is certainly quite capable of throwing a compliment to the small town crowd.  But what comes out of the other side of his mouth should concern us all.

The character of a man is revealed when both sides speak a single truth.  More than that, the highest and best character, when it is revealed, is grounded in the values that make Small Town America great.

Unplugged

February 25, 2008

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

The quiet darkness is almost perfect.  Dim light helps me guide my pen across the yellow page while the faint tick-tock of a clock two rooms away marks the passing moments of silence.  At 4:30 a.m., the city still sleeps, and I can hide in the darkness.

I breathe in the silence.  Time fills the space between my words as I write.  Ink lays down the mental wanderings of the early morning uninterrupted by the more familiar clicks of the keyboard.

I savor the dark morning, wanting to hold it still, a quiet reminder of God’s creation uninterrupted by my schedule in a daytimer, unplugged from modern invention.

This pause in life is a remnant of Christmas past, my last gift from under the tree. Come away with me, the Babe in the manger invited.  And I nodded.  Yes.

Moving closer to the manger, tucking the edge of the Babe’s blanket into the straw, the room is warmed by the breath of humans and animals sharing the morning’s miracle.  The only lights outside burn in the sky, flickers above the clouds, giving faint outline to the hint of a town, of people, of landscape…a gift of peace.

There is only one way for me to enter this peace.  I must unplug.

So many layers of Christmas celebration have been added to God’s gift.  Shopping.  Christmas cards, with the annual family letter enclosed, a tree wrapped in strings of lights, gingerbread houses, Mary and Joseph on the front yard, plugged into a timer to go on & off with the up and down of the sun.

Each holiday tradition is a modern celebration of the Babe in the manger.  But this year, I needed more of less.

Finally, at the base of the Christmas tree, wrapping up the season, putting decorations back into their box, I began to unplug.  I set boundaries on the office in the next room.  Whatever I am able to accomplish in eight hours each day will be enough.  Unfinished business will have to sit unfinished…until tomorrow.

The computer, the television…both unplugged.  Daily duties and distractions are quieted.  But unplugging is revealed as a moment-by-moment process that unfolds with each new task of the day.  Like pulling petals from a daisy…do I, don’t I…each action begins with a choice that is now important.

Do I?  Yes, I must complete my trip to D.C., an airline ticket purchased last month ties me to duty.  But walking through the airport, do I or don’t I forgo the moving sidewalk?  Choosing my path on solid ground, a string of people slides by on each side of me.  I arrive at the gate two minutes behind them, the price of unplugging, a minor two minute delay that on its own is not worthy of notice.  But unplugging is like that.

Each modern moment challenges me for its space in my life.  The political season, the Super Bowl, the church Bible study, a trip to visit children, taxes to pay, birthdays to celebrate…unplugging is microscopic surgery where every blood vessel must be carefully chosen and, if cut, cauterized.

Two months after boxing up the front lawn’s nativity, I mark my successes in these quiet morning hours, scratching my pen across the page while the city sleeps.  This is the first writing I have done since the Babe invited me into the manger.  And it is more than symbolic that I have chosen a yellow tablet over the laptop in my office, plugged in.

Unplugged, creating space in life, making each action defend its significance, there are no perfect choices.  Do I…don’t I…type my scribbles, two months late, into the first 2008 column for my website?  If I don’t, another worthy writer will fill the void.  If I do, I will use precious minutes – either gift or sacrifice or indulgence – a writer’s continual struggle to identify the importance of what we do in the manger next to the Babe who needs us still, long after the Christmas boxes are back in the garage.

It began two months ago, a decision to unplug from distractions and enter the miracle.  Do I…don’t I…on…or off…a question, a choice, unsettled and unending.

The early morning quiet still blankets me, the pen starts and stops, a choice with each word…do I…don’t I?

 

Say It Isn’t So

October 29, 2007

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

As members of the human race, we look to our capacity for language to elevate our communication skills above all other members of the animal kingdom.  Civilizations are separated by archaeologists based on their languages and their ability to create sophisticated writing systems for recording the spoken word.

Creating words to say what we mean has inspired the thesaurus, where subtle connotations can dictate the use of one particular synonym to mean exactly what one wants to say.  Every fifth grade teacher has struggled to expand the vocabulary of budding writers.  How many times does a student use “pretty” in her story when “gorgeous, comely, lovely, ravishing, sightly or elegant” would paint a better picture?

Costume designers and actors can create ten different people who are “rude” based on the author’s choice of words.  He may be rude…but is he audacious, bold, brazen, cheeky, forward, impertinent, insolent, disdainful, nervy or sassy?

The sophistication of our language points to the premium we place on communication.  Whenever a relationship is deteriorating, the first place we look to is the couple’s ability to effectively communicate.  Almost seven million…six million nine hundred and fifty thousand, to be exact…links are reported by Google search engines looking for “improving communication in relationships.”

With so much emphasis on improving communication, it defies human intelligence to understand the logic behind the decision of the California legislature to retract language back to caveman status.  This month Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed SB 777 into law.  When it takes effect it will prohibit any instruction or school-sponsored activity that would promote discrimination against gender. That means terms like “mom and dad” and “husband and wife” cannot be used in California textbooks because they suggest that heterosexuality is the norm.

“Suggest”…to hint, to imply…that heterosexuality is the norm…this is a bad thing?  If we are not to consider the particularity of our sex, then why does every form we fill out have two boxes for us to check…male…female.  One imagines “neutral” forms of the future where we instead will check either…human…or…other.

This restriction of communication comes at a particularly interesting time in human civilization.  More and more boxes have been added to the forms we fill out, an attempt to fully communicate whether we are Caucasian, Hispanic, African-American, Pacific Islander, American Indian, Eskimo, Asian…or for lack of specific descriptors for our origins…Other.

This attention to diversity is required even for second graders and is a headache for every teacher who must help thirty seven-year-olds to properly record their ethnicity in less than an hour.  Librarians are guided by diversity to ensure that their choice of books includes stories for every ethnicity and representing cultures worldwide.

Now, suddenly and legally, under the terms of SB 777, diversity has become a bad thing.  No longer can children be exposed to women and men who are moms and dads inside of marriages where they committed to one another as husbands and wives.  And why?

Because this form of diversity is offensive to people who have chosen not to express their heterosexuality in traditional ways…people who describe themselves as homosexual, gay, lesbian and transgendered.  Depending on your choice of words, this conundrum is either puzzling, confusing, challenging, mysterious or problematic.

Even as we keep giving people more and more ways to describe themselves, we are taking away the ability of children to describe their moms and dads.  We are asking children to ignore the fact that their moms and dads are husbands and wives.

Do we think that by legislating language that children will fail to pick up on the heterosexual realities of the world they live in?  Do we think that requiring children to describe the adults in their homes as parent, parent or parent, will keep them from noticing their parents are of different sexes and wear wedding rings?

What has happened to the premium we place on honoring diversity?  Honoring different ways of living?  Honoring cultural values…even if they are the values of the very culture we live in?

With so many words to say what we mean, to describe the variety of life around us, what in the world has led us to make laws removing words from the dictionary for the very purpose of not saying what we know is true?  Dear Governor Arnold, if you can find the proper words…say it isn’t so.