Category Archives: Family Issues

Small Acts of Courage

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

December 26, 2005

It was last package under the tree…DVDs…the full first year of the hit television series 24.  The store clerk warned me.  “Once you begin,” he said, “you won’t be able to get away from the television.”  He was right.

The past 12 hours have been heart-stopping.  Jack’s family has been kidnapped.  Janet was hit by a car, saved by hospital emergency workers and then murdered.  Torn by conflicting advice from every corner, Palmer, presidential candidate of supreme integrity, has to choose between sending his son to prison or saving an enemy from murder.

This show has it all.  Intrigue, love, deception, honor, betrayal, sabotage and chaos.  But above all, it has courage.  Jack fighting to find his family, Kim pleading with her kidnappers to rescue Janet, Rick digging a grave for his friend while plotting escape from captors, and Teri offering to be the rapist’s victim in place of her own daughter.

Action is intense.  Finally, worn out from danger and tension, we manage to turn off the television just as Jack runs after Teri and Kim into the woods, chased by men firing automatic weapons.  Will CTU helicopters arrive in time?

Modern drama, amplified by special effects, has given courage a new persona.  Back when courage was young, in the old black and white westerns of the 50s, it never had to outlast the last bullet in the six-shooter.

Today, courage must be teamed with the ability to speed down the freeway firing back at your pursuers while decrypting the ransom note on a palm pilot before satellite signals set on a 60-second timer fire an ICBM from Antarctica to obliterate the sold-out World Series crowd at Houston Astros Ballpark precisely at the moment the President of the United States throws out the first pitch.

But that’s movie courage.  Real courage is more simple.

The world may indeed explode with one single blast of an ICBM.  For a disaster of that magnitude, we need action heroes like Jack and their type of courage.

However, the world is ever more likely to dissolve in the poison accumulated over decades of human indifference to eternal truths that have been discarded in order to pursue our own momentary desires.  We can turn the tide on such a disaster.  But it will also take courage.

It takes courage to return to truth.  Like the mythical sirens who sang to sailors, modern culture lures us with promises that we can have everything we want without a price.  By far, the easiest path laid out for us today is the road of sexual permissiveness that has led to unwed teen pregnancies, an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases, a breakdown in marriages and destruction of families.

Truths set aside, we have been persuaded that fidelity, honor, reverence, monogamy, and family no longer matter.  We must resist the easy path before us.  Only courage can help us restore the natural order of human life and dignity.

Declaring truth is an act of courage.  Sex for humans is more than the animal sex act that produces a litter of puppies.  In a world where promiscuity is excused as “natural” human conduct, we must have the courage to speak the truth.

Restoring truth in our homes is an act of courage.  Setting standards for our own behavior as adults, becoming role models for our children, may force us to give up our own bad habits first.  If we are to speak the truth, we must live it, too.

Upholding truth in our relationships is an act of courage.  Seeking counseling to restore a marriage is a gift to ourselves and to our children, a decision that will challenge us to be better people at the cost of our own personal accountability and sacrificial love.

Standing apart for truth is an act of courage.  Being the only parents who object to handing out free condoms at the local high school may set us up as targets for those who teach children that abstaining from sex is unrealistic and unnecessary.  We must be willing to stand for truth, even if we are standing alone.

The world is in danger.  The script for saving the world is already written in the eternal truths about human love.  But it’s not enough to know the truth.

We have the power to save the world…one simple courageous act at a time.  Real courage…in real life…is exercised in the simple decisions and actions each of us make during every ordinary day.

We may know the truth.  But, courage is required to live the truth.

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December 27, 2004 –  New Year’s Resolution:  Another Kind of Diet

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Failing the Treadmill Test

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

December 19, 2005

At prices ranging from $299 to $4000, treadmills are the number one exercise machine in America, with sales reaching 11.3 million in 2003.  No longer dedicated to simple walking-in-place exercise, treadmills are specially designed to suit every possible need.

For serious workouts, treadmills can be electronically programmed to simulate hilly terrain and adjust to a runner’s pace.  “On the gimmicky side,” Consumer Reports says, “a growing number of treadmills load the console with gadgets such as fans, a CD player, a cubbyhole for a TV remote, and backlighting on the display that for some may evoke a digital watch.”

The popularity of treadmills should be a good thing.  Based on a report in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA, 1996), treadmills provide the most efficient way to burn calories when compared to other popular exercise machines.   Researchers asked young adults to exercise on six different machines, including a cross-country skiing simulator, cycle ergometer, rowing ergometer and stair stepper.  They found that subjects who exercised at an RPE of 13 burned approximately 40 percent more calories per hour on the treadmill as compared to the cycle ergometer, the lowest ranked machine.

So…if the popularity of treadmills is a good thing, if they are the number one exercise machine, and if they are made to suit every person’s walking or running style…why are we flunking the treadmill?  Yes.  A new study just published in JAMA shows that a third of U.S. teens would flunk a treadmill test.

Dr. David Ludwig, director of the obesity program at Children’s Hospital in Boston, calls the study results, “very concerning.”  As reported by Lindsey Tanner, “Ludwig, who was not involved in the study, called treadmill tests a good measure of fitness.  He said the results show that ‘at a time in life when adolescents and young adults should be at peak levels of fitness, there’s in fact a very high prevalence…of very low fitness.’”

The JAMA article comes at the perfect time.  Christmas pies and cakes abound.  New Year’s resolutions are in the making.  Surrounded by temptation, we attempt to compose a list of good habits and set a new course for our future.

Yet, the path to good health is fraught with challenges.  Treadmills, cheap or expensive, are only one part of the total program.

How do we put our teens on a pathway to good health?  How do we help them pass the treadmill test?

A website, 4teenweightloss, dedicated to teens, weight control and fitness tackles this question.  Armed with statistics demonstrating the seriousness of the problem, it gives suggestions and encouragement in equal measure.

It’s no surprise that parents are at the top of the list for creating solutions for teens.  “Parents,” 4teenweightloss says, “play a big role in shaping children’s eating habits….Parents have an effect on children’s physical activity habits as well.”

Our expectations for our children and our lead as role models for our children are the key ingredients in diet and exercise plans for our children.  Are we surprised?

Consider other threats to the well-being of our children…tobacco, drugs, fast driving, violence…and consider the role of parents in shaping the behavior of our children.  There is only one risky behavior where we waffle in admitting our leading role…the sexual well-being of our children.

When it comes to risky sex, sex outside of a lifelong, faithful relationship…marriage…we continue to look around for an easy fix.  In the same way we hope a grapefruit diet will take off pounds or paying out big bucks for a treadmill will create muscle tone, we hope that baskets of condoms will be the magical solution to unwed pregnancy, disease, and broken hearts.

A new year approaches.  New hopes.  New dreams.  New goals.  Good health is within reach.

If we want our children to pass the treadmill test, it’s a lot harder…and a lot easier…than paying $4000 for the latest and greatest machine.  It begins with us, parents.  Our dreams.  Our goals.  Our commitment.

May this year bring a renewed dedication to the well-being of our children.

Merry Christmas!

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Good-Health tips for teens:  http://www.4teenweightloss.com/weight-loss-resources.html

 February 14, 2005 – All the Condoms in the World

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The Best Christmas Present Under the Tree

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

December 12, 2005

In the 1940s, it was a Red Ryder BB gun…in the 1960s, a GI Joe.

In the 1980s, when my own children ran through the house, it was a Cabbage Patch Doll.  Over the past hundred years, several hundreds of toys have made the “most popular Christmas present” list:  Crayolas, Raggedy Ann dolls, View-master 3-D Viewer, Rubik’s cube, Mr. Potato Head, Beanie Babies, Razor Scooter and more.

Who remembers the must-have toy of 1996?  On a web site where comments (most of them) extol the virtues of this stuffed creature, one web writer tells about the “loons who went to the stores at the crack of dawn to fight the crowds to have a chance to buy a Tickle Me Elmo.”

A lot has changed in the past hundred years.  Only in America have toys taken on a new personality indicative of our wealth.  Mr. Potato Head, 8-1/2 inches tall and 8 inches wide, is now offered encrusted with gems and priced at $8,000.  If you want your Monopoly set in tooled leather, be prepared to fork over $5,840.

If money is absolutely no problem this year, parents can splurge on Microsoft’s new Xbox 350 costing around $300…or an original Teddy Bear available at Christie’s auction for $17,000 to $26,000….all the way up to a $300,000 3-D motion simulator from the “Rolls-Royce of toy stores” FAO Schwarz.

Advertised as a replacement for friends, you can buy your child Hammacher Schlemmer’s 7-foot, remote-controlled Robby the Robot…that is…if you have a spare $50,000.  Makes a parent long for a return to 1975 and the Pet Rock craze.  Like most fads, it never totally died.  There is even a web site titled, Pet Rock Sanitarium, where you might find a cheaper-than-cheap abandoned “pet” looking for a new home.

So…what’s hot this year?  You can bet merchandisers know.  Base on one survey, thirty-eight percent of U.S. teens would prefer cash for Christmas this year, followed by cell phones or portable electronics.  Other in-demand holiday gifts include clothing and a car, according to a survey of 700 U.S. teens conducted by Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

Engrossed as we are at this time of year in looking for all those special ways of bringing joy to our children, it seems fitting to look to the type of joy that lasts beyond Christmas.  That’s exactly what Otis and Elaine Dickerson of Duluth, Georgia, did over fifty years ago.

“On December 18, 1953, on the first birthday of their baby boy Eric,” writes Benin Dakar, “the young and determined African-American couple were married in the modest home of Otis’ mother in a working-class Baltimore neighborhood.”  Today in their 70s, the Dickersons talk about their commitment to marriage as a way of providing joy and security for their four children.

Dakar notes that their story is worth telling in an age when “fewer and fewer young black couples who find themselves in a ‘family way’ are following their lead to the altar.”  Indeed, statistics from the Brookings Institute show that 70 percent of black babies are born out of wedlock.

For the country at large, 24 million children (34 percent) live absent their biological father, and 40 percent of children living absent their father have never set foot in their father’s home.  The Dickersons wanted better for their children.

Their lifelong commitment to each other in marriage helped them through the rough waters that all married couples will face.  Dakar notes, “their partnership enabled them to succeed in the workplace, to become homeowners and to rear stable and productive children.”  We can learn from Otis and Elaine.  Their experience is confirmed through many important studies on the welfare of children.

In a report issued by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), important details outline the challenges facing single parent families.  “When an unwed couple has a child, the resulting family faces heightened vulnerability to a variety of economic and social problems affecting the couple, the parents as individuals, and the child.  In particular, there is a high risk they will be unsuccessful in forming a sustained and close family unit.  Because of these well documented risks and the consequences of nonmarital childbearing for parents and children, these families are now commonly called ‘fragile families.’”

This same report goes on to say, “research shows that children who grow p with married, biological parents have better outcomes than children raised in a different family structure.  On average, the former are more likely to be healthy, to complete high school, and to become economically self-sufficient adults; and in turn, they are less likely to be involved in drug and alcohol abuse or juvenile delinquency, or to be come teen parents.”

At Christmas, when we focus our eyes on what will bring joy to our children, the best present we can give is right within reach.  This is the perfect time to recommit to our marriages.  Married couples, attending marriage seminars, kissing under the mistletoe and holding hands in front of the hearth are building the perfect gift for their children, a secure home today and a vision for their children of what their own future could be.

The best Christmas present under the tree this year will cost the least.  But its value to our children is priceless.

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For a good dose of Christmas Cheer and fun information:

http://mymerrychristmas.com/2005/surveyteens2005.shtml

 

For the Most Popular Toys of the Past 100 Years:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10387831/

 

For the Most Expensive Toys of 2005:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10387451/from/RL.1/

 

For the full story of Otis and Elaine Dickerson:

Benin Dakar, “Drop in black marriages hurts families,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, December 12, 2005, A13.

 

For Report by Administration for Children and Families: “Helping Unwed Parents Build Strong And Healthy marriages: A Conceptual Framework For Interventions”

http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/strengthen/strengthfam/reports/conceptual_framework/framework_toc.html

See Archives for more past editorials.

Natural Child Birth

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

December 5, 2005

Setting out the Christmas decorations, a child in the manger, watched over by mother and father, honored by shepherds and wise men, welcomed with love…it gives rise to thoughts about the wonder of life.

Those of us in the boomer generation have lived through a time of great human experimentation.  It has focused on the foundational definition of life itself, with stunning implications for our children and grandchildren.  We stand on the brink of the brave new world we read about in high school English.  And we have a solemn duty.  We must bear witness to the changes we have made to a thread of life that will trail behind as we leave this earth.

Once upon a time, a man and a woman fell in love.  They committed to a lifetime together and gave birth to children.  As each baby grew in the womb, local wives tales served to predict whether the child was a boy or a girl.  In the end, couples went to the delivery room with one prayer, “Let our baby be healthy.”

Today, babies are ordered up according to specifications, like picking out a Beanie Baby off the shelf, ready-made.  The variations on designing babies is endless:

  • In 2002, the story broke about a lesbian couple, both of them deaf, who chose to create a deaf baby.  Their son Gauvin was the second deaf child fathered for them by a sperm donor with five generations of deafness in his family.
  • Recent debate has focused on whether technology should be used to eliminate congenital diseases or disabilities. Many disability and gay organizations have felt threatened by the concept of pursuing “perfect” children.
  • In Britain, the legal barriers preventing a couple from creating a designer baby to help save the life of an existing sick child were eliminated in 2001.  Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis on embryos not only promises a baby free of certain identifiable diseases, but also allows “embryo selection” to determine the sex of a baby.
  • Chinese demographers warn that the nation’s social fabric could unravel based on sex selection that eliminates girl babies.  Figures published in Chinese media reveal 116.86 boys are born for every 100 girls in China. Since the 1970s, when China instituted its strict birth control policy, couples have sought ways to guarantee a son.
  • Sex selection in India and China is achieved chiefly through ultrasound scans followed by the selective abortion of female fetuses. In the United States, the Genetics and IVF Institute in Fairfax, Virginia, is pioneering preconception sex selection by means of a system that segregates sperm that will produce girls from those that will produce boys.
  • In England, Jamie Whitaker was designed by and born to his parents for the purpose of providing a genetic match to four-year-old brother Charlie who suffers from leukemia. Called “test tube baby treatment”, Jamie’s father defends the process by saying he didn’t select his baby for insignificant reasons like color of eyes or sex.  The Whitaker’s doctor Mohammad Taranissi says he is aware of dozens of other couples who want to undergo this same procedure.
  • Faced with high rates of infertility and a declining number of infants available for adoption, infertility treatment has become big business in the United States.  “Success” at producing pregnancies has given rise to the “problem” of increasing multiple births.  Twin births have risen 52% and triplet and greater births have quadrupled since 1980.  Multiple births increased by nearly 400% for women in their 30s and by more than 1,000% for women in their 40s.
  • In 2004, researchers in South Korea created 30 cloned embryos that grew to about 100 cells in size – further than any verified experiment so far. This meant they were able to harvest embryonic stem cells from one of the embryos. Internationally, scientists expressed concern that maverick scientists learning from this experiment will soon attempt to clone a baby. For the South Korean experiments, scientists used 242 eggs donated from 16 healthy women.
  • In 2005, the key South Korean doctor admitted to paying these women for “egg retrieval” in violation of ethical assurances the eggs had been donated.  Bioethicists warn of the dangers such payments pose for coercing poor women into risky medical procedures.
  • Insurance companies are coming closer to dictating gene profiling of unborn babies.  Many anticipate a day when insurance carriers will enforce abortion on parents with a “choose or lose” policy that refuses medical coverage for babies born with problems diagnosed in the womb.

With so much recent attention on creating babies, we must remember this is all taking place at the same time we are aborting over 1.2 million babies each year in the United States.  The reason?  No room at the inn…we can’t find a way to make a place for these babies in our lives.

Two thousand years have passed since the birth of the baby in the manger.  In the past forty years we have prided ourselves on modern progress.  We are busy manufacturing a world to leave our children, where babies are products of human design that can be destroyed like all products when they fail to meet manufacturer specifications.

It seems particularly important this year to look up at the sky and wonder at the majesty of babies created by the great Creator.  If we are dissatisfied with His grand design, how can we feel any greater satisfaction at our own handiwork?

Perhaps we would be better off accepting all babies that arrive at the doorstep, giving praise for their blessing to our lives, opening the door, and making one more bed in the inn.

August 1, 2005 – Signs of Life

January 17, 2005 – The Pregnant Elephant in the Room

June 25, 2004 – Unplanned Joy

See Archives for more past editorials.

Long After the Turkey Is Gone

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

November 28, 2005

The turkey carcass is in the pot…with onion, hominy and hot sauce.  Soup is on the way.

This year, around the table, we were five generations, from 2 to 82.  Twin toddlers climbed into and out of every lap in the room, not counting the times they were carried around by cousins and tripped over by kitchen cooks.

Stirring the soup, I reflect on the last eighty years, a time our two-year-olds will have to read about in their freshman history books.  It’s easy to mark the cultural changes in the lives of people around the dinner table.

Half of the family arrived by plane this year.  Years ago, when my own grandmother came for Thanksgiving, I remember waiting for her at one of the only four gates at the sole Phoenix terminal.

Back then, workers pushed a rolling staircase up to the airplane, the plane door opened, and travelers climbed down the stairs, exposed to the weather—rain, shine, or sleet—and across the asphalt runway into the terminal.  I would stand on my tiptoes, watching for Grandma’s fancy hat with the pheasant feather.  Like everyone who flew in the 60’s, she dressed to kill in her Sunday best.

Only forty years later, we have four terminals and countless gates at Sky Harbor International Airport.  Travelers now step out of the 747 directly into the comfort-controlled terminal.  And seasoned travelers long ago gave up their Sunday best in favor of comfortable jeans and running shoes.  Forget fancy hats with feathers.

A Thanksgiving feast had to have been unimaginably special to my grandmother who remembered her small town canning food in the school basketball gym during the Great Depression.  If you wanted stuffing in the 30s, you made it by scratch, with dried bread carefully saved over the previous month.  No prepackaged stuffing mix or heat and serve dinner rolls.  Worse yet, no stores were open for the cook who forgot to buy cranberry sauce.

Back then, after dinner, Grandma told us how they would entertain each other in the parlor.  As a kid, she did a great Bug Dance, her mom played the piano, and everyone in the family took turns reading stories out loud.

Today we huddle around the large, flat screen, surround-sound television for Thanksgiving football.  If you blink, we have instant replay…from four different camera angles.  And for viewers who need a “trip down the hall,” Tivo will let them back up to any Hail Mary pass reception they missed while gone.

How can any child today ever truly understand the magic of a clunky black and white television console first introduced in the 50s and the four national stations that went dark after 9:00 p.m.?  Tic tack toe has given way to Game Boy.  Pencils are mechanical.  Running shoes now come with lights, buzzers and wheels.  And fancy hats with feathers are crushed in the corner of a dirty thrift store…or rented out by costume stores.

From 2 to 82, at Thanksgiving this year, we evidence the cultural changes already accomplished.   And we guess at coming changes we will never live to see.  What will our country be like when the twin toddlers turn grey and squint to focus through 2.25 reading glasses?

Will stores deliver pre-cooked turkeys ordered online from cell phones?  Will viewers interact with football teams through wall mural televisions?  Will running shoes with wheels be jet powered?

More to the point, what will the crowd around the table look like in another 80 years?  Will brothers pass the gravy to their clones?  Will everyone be 5 foot eight inches tall, thanks to gene selection…an essential way to match the competition in job interviews where physical appearance is more important than resume experience?  Will children with harelips even exist, when elimination of “imperfect” babies is mandated by insurance companies who set medical protocols to keep costs down?

And at the center of it all, what will our families look like?  This current generation of toddlers now is growing up predominately in homes without fathers.  In four more generations of unwed teen pregnancy, will people even be able to imagine a time long ago when mothers and fathers were married for a lifetime and babies were bounced on the knees of Grams and Gramps at their fiftieth wedding anniversary?

This year’s turkey is gone.  It’s in the pot.  And there’s a lot to think about as I stir the soup.

September 3, 2004 – We’re Not in Kansas Anymore

May 14, 2004 – Order in the Courtroom!

 

See Archives for more past editorials.