Exiting Gaza

“After decades of failed international engagement in Gaza, we owe it this time to the Palestinians, Israelis and Egyptians—and to ourselves—to get this right.” (Yair Lapid, speech to Israeli Knesset, October 16, 2023, as reported in “A Positive Exit Strategy From Gaza,” The Jerusalem Strategic Tribune, by Robert Silverman, October 2023.)

In his speech, Mr. Lapid outlines steps for achieving a real victory. “The real victory comes not from defeating our enemy but from achieving a better place for Israel and our Palestinian neighbors.”

Further, “Instead of taking the easy way out of town by dumping Gaza on some set of beguiling expatriates, the multinational governance team should be prepared to work with the local Gazans to build governance capacity—over the course of years.”

Mr. Lapid calls for withdrawing the Israeli Defense Forces as soon as possible. They would be replaced by a multinational force “with two separate missions . . . under a single head.”

One mission would be a multinational force “to maintain order and begin training a new Gazan police force . . .”

The other mission would be “a multinational civilian governance to help the Gazans rebuild economically and begin the process of governing themselves politically.”

Israeli-Palestinian issues became a tangled web due to the interests of numerous groups, nations, and historic events over centuries.

Mr. Lapid’s suggestions would seem a fair start toward a practical solution.

Timeout

Israel/Palestine; Republicans/Democrats; labor/management; Russia/Ukraine—and so on.

Perhaps it’s time to sit back and breathe deeply. Time to stow the rhetoric. Time to watch an eclipse and marvel at our solar system and our universe. Time to take a walk with family/friends. Time to read a book for fun.

Obviously, solving problems requires engaging with them, but sometimes we become so involved that we think the universe can’t succeed without us.

Best to understand that we’re part of the process, not the whole answer. We have choices as to how we engage. Perhaps we can develop a bit of modesty—we’re all of value but none of us has a perfect solution.

Best to listen before we spout off. We might ask divine guidance once in a while, perhaps even for the gift of loving our enemies.

Missing the Holy Land

I worked for much of my U.S. Foreign Service career in north Africa and the Middle East. However, I was never able to visit Israel, even though many places in that country are memorable reminders of my Christian heritage.

At that time, visiting Israel from a Muslim-majority country was difficult. It would have meant making a special trip to one of the few countries allowing me to receive the visa I needed. I never got around to doing that. So, I regret to say, I never visited or “walked where Jesus walked.”

The Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on innocent civilians, striking unexpectedly in recent days, have shocked us by their cruelty. Israel’s tourism may suffer, but that, no doubt, is far less a priority for Israel than deciding on their response to the attacks.

We wait as responses work themselves out. Of course we expect responses, as we expected the United States to respond to the attacks of September 11, 2001. Only the terrorists and their supporters would deny Israel the right to respond, but what kind of response? How can Israel fight terrorists without harming civilians, including innocent children? Without stoking more calls for hatred?

Thomas L. Friedman, an opinion columnist for The New York Times suggests that a sometimes overlooked partner for Israel in dealing with Palestinians is the Palestinian Authority, a more moderate group. (“Israel Has Never Needed to Be Smarter Than in This Moment,” New York Times, October 10, 2023)

The Palestinian Authority is autocratic and appears at a low ebb in popularity with Palestinians. Nevertheless, in such a time of hatred and suffering, any possible breakthrough should be explored.

Response is vital, but we must work for a just response. Hatred is such an easy choice, but it only fuels more hatred.

Letting the Other Side Win

Many years ago, when one of my sons played on a church baseball team, I remember a heated confrontation between players at one of the games. I don’t remember the exact play which started the argument, but the young boys, all presumably church goers, fell into a heated debate about the call. Fortunately, the leaders were able to tamp down the hostility before blows were exchanged.

Unfortunately, Americans today in the political realm too often appear in need of adult supervision. Granted the stakes are high. Abortion, election results, sexual identity, and other issues have bitterly divided us. Surely, no one can deny either the importance of the issues or the major impact of political decisions on them.

What should be questioned is our hostility, even seeming hatred, toward those who disagree with us. How can we find paths that allow disagreement, but without hatred, even on matters we consider of utmost importance, even dealing with human life?

How should we choose to fight when we lose a political round? Even when we are sure our cause is not only right but morally right?

The only acceptable path, it seems to me, is to allow the winners to win, then become members of “the loyal opposition.” To correct political directions we believe to be wrong, we have the freedom to organize peaceful campaigns, present our arguments through newspapers and social media, and talk to our friends and neighbors.

No matter how absolutely sure we are of our beliefs, no one, in fact, including us, is infallible. Surely the height of arrogance is to assume that we are.

Healing Before Leading

I worked at a U.S. consulate in a Middle Eastern country many years ago during a government shutdown over congressional budget disputes. It was hard to explain the shutdown to the people in that country, those we were trying to interest in a democratic form of government. They may have wondered why they should accept a kind of government that couldn’t even keep its government functioning.

The country is even more divided today. Yet, we persist in trying to overcome those with whom we disagree by following a “take no prisoner” kind of approach. If we don’t win, we’ll make it impossible for the winners to govern.

Democracy, however, requires that the losing side let the winning side govern, as it was elected to do. We don’t come up with ways to impede the government when we’re on the losing side. We write and speak our criticisms, but we don’t shut down government functions.

Americans have generally prided themselves on sportsmanship—the referee makes a call, and we expect the losing side to acquiesce. For the game to go on, the players must follow the rules, even accepting penalties when the referee so calls them.

It helps if we recognize that no human or human movement is without error. We may think those on the opposite side of an issue, with whom we strongly disagree, are wrong. If they win, however, we accept it and govern as “the loyal opposition,” with emphasis on loyal. We don’t act like children in a temper tantrum because they must share a toy.

Western Christians in a Post-Christian West

The road to Christ’s kingdom on earth is a decidedly bumpy one, including detours.

Looking back over history, we see a pattern: When Christianity appears on the cusp of spiritual world conquest, some failure snatches away the victory. Christ’s followers must regroup.

Perhaps most Christians in the first few centuries after Christ thought of the world where they spread the religion of Jesus as mostly or primarily the Roman world into which Jesus came. As then, Christians again and again have had to jettison their small world view for a larger one. This revelation often seems to happen during times of threat to Christianity.

The civil government of Rome collapsed, and Christian missionaries discovered, in the ruins of that world, the larger European world. That world continued its influence for many centuries. The world for Christians was mostly Europe and nearby areas: the Near East and North Africa.

When that world was shaken with stunning victories by tribes out of Arabia, the idea of a Christian world was put on hold while Europeans fought for survival.

However, during those dark times, Christianity continued to quietly spread—to the Anglo-Saxon world and Ireland and into the far north of Europe.

When Europeans defeated their enemies and began to claim power, the church, which had comforted and sustained its people during the dark times, was tempted toward power instead of seeking the way Jesus had walked. Even as Europeans began centuries of world conquest, Christians had to make choices. Some people calling themselves Christians too often sought domination rather than service. Horrible wars, surely an abomination to the spirit of Jesus, have left aftereffects in the repudiation of a Christianity by some who saw its adherents as seeking physical conquest, not spiritual.

Yet, despite the difficulties, some Europeans broke through the nationalistic wall and spread the religion of Jesus to the non-European world, just as their ancestors had spread it to the non-Roman world.

American Christians may have to choose between a religion which worships a nation and the one begun by Jesus for the entire world.

Saturday Night Live Politics

Lately, the American political scene resembles the old Saturday Night Live TV show at its best, before Covid and Hollywood actor strikes. In a kind of comedy of errors, political groups sling accusations at each other, sometimes so absurd as to be comical. They form cabals, making it almost impossible even to appoint routine government officials.

Meanwhile, our tax system continues to favor the rich, allowing political clout to be based more on political donations than on what voters want.

In addition, state voting districts too often favor gerrymandered divisions having little resemblance to actual population distribution.

Our foundational documents are showing their age, beset with modern problems undreamed of in the 18th century.

Even if our foundational documents were all updated, however, issues like abortion and gender identity would not be easily solved. The problem is not with any one issue. The problem is the absolute certainty that tempts us, we fallible humans. We do not listen to our opponents or oppose them with arguments, or God forbid, talk responsibly together. We prefer to demonize each other.

Perhaps it would help if we realized our human imperfections and noted that our founding documents, indeed, were written by imperfect humans. Yet, the country’s founders also made them difficult to change. We can hope that one day we may come together in a more conciliatory age and update our constitution.

At the present time, however, we may simply have to muddle along—in other words, work within the imperfections of our founding documents. What is a greater impediment to our political functioning is our refusal to recognize that no political group or human being has all the answers. It would help if we humbly recognized the possibility that the other side could be right or, at the least, have ideas worth considering.

Taking valuable time by throwing up unnecessary roadblocks to ordinary government duties is not just maddening but possibly deadly to the country’s influence and even survival.

Stopping Politics at the Water’s Edge

Senator Arthur Vandenberg, from Michigan, is credited with using the phrase: “Politics stops at the water’s edge.” Though a Republican, he supported President Harry Truman’s anticommunist foreign policy. America could practice effective world leadership only if partisan domestic politics did not spill over into the country’s foreign policy decisions.

Though a mob attacking the U.S. capitol on January 10, 2021, did not directly attack U.S. foreign policy, it certainly weakened respect for the country’s ability to lead in world affairs. If our own ability to peacefully elect and inaugurate a president is in jeopardy, why should we presume world leadership?

Our government is based on peaceful changes to power, not mob violence. Those who lose must let the winners take office, even if the differences that divide us include life changing issues like abortion, sexual orientation, and school curriculums.

Such respect for the other side on an issue does not restrict peaceful involvement in groups favoring change. The ability to criticize via print and internet also is a protected right. (This right does not include lying or false accusations.) In addition, local elections provide opportunities for newer political directions.

America loves a winner. Yet, in past history, those who lost elections sometimes, by patient perseverance, ended up as later winners. Sometimes, of course, past ideas were changed by new discoveries or directions in thought.

We are all subject to human error. Allow past error to be changed by peaceful means. As long as we can look forward to the next free election, we can and should accept our losses.

Choose Your Influence

An article recently highlighted young career couples and their decisions on having children. In many cases, if they decided to take the parenthood leap, they opted for one child only.

Taking time to raise a child may cut into a career. It may mean less money in retirement. It may mean less influence and less time to succeed.

Yet only a few people influence for generations: a few political and/or military leaders, certainly a few religious leaders, a few creative geniuses. Most of us will die and be forgotten in a short while, including our career accomplishments.

We should pick our influences carefully. Careers influence. So do children.

Parenthood should be a choice. All choices bring risks, and parents can be deeply disappointed in how a son or daughter turns out. Sometimes children die, leaving behind a different kind of heartache.

Still, even a baby can soften the views of those around them, can be an object of love that leads a parent and others toward better choices, to think long term. And children who live and become successful adults influence beyond the lives of their parents and usually their parents’ careers as well.

Bread for My Neighbor

“Bread for myself is a material question: bread for my neighbor is a spiritual question.” (Nicolas Berdyaev; The Fate of Man in the Modern World,; translated by Donald A. Lowrie (London: SCM Press, 1935)

We all have certain material needs in common, such as water, food, and basic shelter. In most industrial nations, these basic necessities could be provided for all, whether the economic system is a form of capitalism or socialism or a combination.

The economic system is not a barrier to meeting basic needs of a people. The barrier is an unconditional acceptance of accumulating wealth without a corresponding concern for the left out.

Who are the left out? Any child who does not have adequate food and shelter and access to basic education. Also: those struggling with conditions not of their own making: the handicapped, those affected by natural disasters, and those who lose jobs because of changes in technology.

The Old Testament championed a “year of jubilee.” Those with the ability to earn wealth were not condemned, but every so often, they were asked to return their excess accumulation back to the original families.

Wealth is not a sin. Unrestrained wealth may be.

A Little Humility

David Brooks, a New York Times columnist, generally liberal, asks: “What if anti-Trumpers are the bad guys?” (Published in The Seattle Times, August 6, 2023)

Obviously, as he says, he mostly identifies with the anti-Trumpers and those who fight discrimination. However, he cautions that the anti-Trumpers tend to have benefitted from privileges denied to many of those who champion Trump.

Brooks writes: “This story begins in the 1960’s, when high school grads had to go off to fight in Vietnam, but the children of the educated class got college deferments.” He mentions continuing class shifters, like school bussing into working class neighborhoods of Boston but not into more upscale communities.

As Brooks points out, the system of meritocracy favors those whose parents can afford to send them to the best schools, who tend to marry those from the same social strata, and who tend to find well-paying professional jobs. They tend to fill “leadership positions in almost every vocation.”

The causes they support tend to be, for example, liberal immigration policies, which may impact the working classes but seldom the upper classes. “Free trade makes the products we buy cheaper, and our jobs are unlikely to be moved to China,” writes Brooks.

The more educated in society upended social norms, like those supporting marriage before pregnancy. Yet, “Members of our class still overwhelmingly married and then had children within wedlock. People without our resources, unsupported by social norms, were less able to do do that.” Thus, out of wedlock births most often happen to those with less resources.

Brooks concludes, not with supporting Trump’s policies, but suggesting that those who oppose them “stop behaving in ways that make Trumpism inevitable.”

Taxing the Second Million

Earning the first million dollars of income is the hard part, we are told, but the second million is comparatively easy. A financial advisor could line out this truism, as well as the time required, depending on the investments. Nevertheless, I’m fairly certain that investing most of your million (even after saving out a little for conspicuous consumption) would net you another million within a reasonable time frame. I’d bet it would certainly be sooner than earning the first million.

What are the reasons for wanting a second million? And should we not place a higher tax on that second million?

One reason for earning money far beyond our basic needs could be a desire to improve and/or grow a company. Another might include growing wealth in order to give much of it to charitable causes. Others: comfort in old age; passing to children; buying the things we lacked growing up; or simply a desire to own as many things as possible.

We make our own judgements of right and wrong ways to use wealth. Along with these judgements is the question of what is the proper taxation of that wealth. How do we in the United States decide this issue?

I wonder why, with all the wealth in this country, we not only experience tax deficits but also poverty, especially child poverty. Yes, I know, the drug epidemic has certainly fueled some of it. However, plenty of low wage earners work hard, stay off drugs, and still have problems meeting basic needs.

Some of it happens because men don’t support the children they father. Some of this can be tied to the breakup of a common belief that a man and a woman should be committed in marriage before they have children.

Nevertheless, the children should not suffer inadequate food and housing because of what their parents did or didn’t do.

Yes, we should establish safeguards and checks against welfare going to the wrong people. However, every child in this wealthy country should have basic needs met. That includes proper schooling as well as food and a safe place to grow up.

If this requires more taxation, I believe the taxes could be raised on our wealthier citizens without any injustice to them.

The Psalms of the Old Testament were written thousands of years ago. Yet, the call for justice to “the poor and oppressed” is often stressed in its pages. For any of us who value justice, the care of the poor and needy is a minimum requirement for a just society.

Children of Slaves and Slave Owners

In a small town in Georgia, a white mother of three found that her white ancestors had enslaved the ancestors of a black couple, close friends of hers. She was understandably upset. (The story is told in “Living Reconciliation” (Christianity Today, July/August 2023.)

The black husband, a minister, spoke a prayer over his white friend, asking God to break the chain of generational racism. The three led efforts at racial reconciliation in the community.

Years later, a local historian’s genealogical research indicated that the two families were related by blood. An ancestor of the white woman was one of the black slaves. The black woman who had descended from the wronged slave called her white friend to ensure her that it didn’t change the love she had for her.

I was reminded of my own finding years ago that one of my ancestors had owned at least one slave. Whether my ancestor further abused the slave and fathered a child is not recorded. I hope not, but, regardless, I’m not proud of my ancestor’s choice to own a slave.

That ancestor later died in a federal prison camp of pneumonia. He had fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War and was captured. His death was attributed to illness caused by poor health care. Apparently, rations for the southern prisoners were cut in protest against the substandard treatment of federal prisoners in southern internment camps.

So much evil, including hatred and a horrible war, grew out of that early choice to own human beings as slaves. What recompense can we offer for that great sin, present from the beginning of America?

White Americans can begin with repentance and a refusal to those who would lull us by telling us “it was a long time ago” and “we need to move on.” The results remain with us today in a legacy of segregation, not seriously contested until the latter part of the twentieth century.

American school children need to know their history, all of it, warts and all. The purpose is not to induce a guilt complex. Our children are not guilty of the sins of past Americans. Indeed, some are the children of recently arrived immigrants. The purpose is to understand how easy is the temptation to do terrible wrong for a spur of the moment “benefit.” We have paid for the cheap labor of slaves many times over.

The Neighborhood

They gathered—my parents and our neighbors. On hot summer evenings, the neighbors would walk over and chat with my mother and father while they all relaxed on the open porch. As a small child, I sat on a step and listened to them sharing bits and pieces of lives. They joked a lot and told stories.

In the winter, they still stopped by. We moved inside to the living room. Our house, built just before the Great Depression of the thirties, had no “den,” just a small living room. Again, my parents and the neighbors crowded around a small coffee table and shared and laughed a lot. I don’t recall any kind of formal organization. Neighbors simply stopped by.

I don’t claim a particular righteousness for that time. After all, our society knew plenty of ills, like racism. Nevertheless, we’ve lost things, too, like that simple neighborhood sharing.

New inventions worked to change us from those earlier times, and some of them gave us new insights. We relaxed before the television and watched different kinds of shows. We learned more about other countries, including wars in far off places. For the first time, we watched political conventions choose candidates for public office.

Eventually we bought portable phones that allowed us access from anywhere to home and friends. We could use the phones to ask for help when we needed it. They also allowed us to connect with friends, even when on public transport or when driving in our cars. People began to carry them everywhere all the time, sometimes constantly consulting them.

Despite the sometimes goodness of those older days of my childhood, though, I wouldn’t want a return to them. I don’t deny that we could profit from more face to face sharing, and from more putting down of our cell phones, and from more reading of newspapers. However, we’ve also profited from the changes. We’ve discovered cures for diseases, built safer airplanes and highways, and enjoyed more accurate weather forecasting. We are more aware of society’s failures that we need to address.

What we lack are the old neighborhoods. We would profit from better arrangements of our housing to encourage a return to neighborhood sharing. What could that involve? Perhaps housing clusters rather than large suburban plots–neighborhoods that we can walk through and where we greet our neighbors.

Especially after the isolation of Covid, we might consider lessons from the neighborliness I knew as a child.

How to End a War

Writing about Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Margaret MacMillan, an Oxford professor, compares it to the beginning of World War I: “In 1914 and 2022 alike, those who assumed war wasn’t possible were wrong.” (“How Wars Don’t End,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2023)

Russian leader Vladimir Putin, she points out, had made clear his belief that Ukraine was historically a part of Russia. He apparently assumed he could easily conquer it and incorporate it into Russia. Similarly, leaders of Europe in 1914 assumed “war was a reasonable option” and began taking sides when Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist.

European leaders at the time assumed that any war would be short. Few envisioned the years long slog in muddy trenches and the slaughter of thousands of young men.

Europe, of course, had fought wars for centuries. Indeed, World War I was sometimes seen as merely another war to settle scores left by the German victory over France in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71.

Wounded pride also played its part in Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Putin was a Russian intelligence officer in East Germany and witnessed the Soviet Union’s loss there, as the Cold War receded and Germany reunited as a democracy. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is, in a sense, an as yet unfinished part of the Cold War.

When Ukraine’s war with Russia ends, as it eventually will, MacMillan suggests using the ending of World War II as a better example to follow than that of World War I. “In the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. Marshall Plan helped rebuild the countries of western Europe into flourishing economies and, equally important, stable democracies. . . . Even former enemies can be transformed into close partners.”

It seems the idea is not to defeat enemies but turn them into partners.

Since Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford

In 1976 Jimmy Carter and incumbent Vice President Gerald Ford vied with each other for the U.S. presidency. That may have marked the highest level of decency for a U.S. presidential campaign since then. Both candidates appeared decent men who respected not only the electoral process but each other. Carter narrowly defeated Ford for a one-term presidency.

Since then, we appear to have descended lower and lower into hatred and falsehood. No doubt the internet and easy access to rumors, with less fact checking, have played a part.

Whatever the reason, arrogance sets the tone. Our side has all the answers; the other side is not only wrong but a villain. We don’t just disagree with each other—too often we appear to despise each other. The fate of the world is dependent, apparently, on whether we win.

Somehow, we seem to have lost a valuable sense of humility.

Certainly, we have our standards of what is the better political direction for the country. So does out neighbor. It may be different from ours. The problem is not different viewpoints. That is inevitable given the world we live in.

What often seems to be ignored is that all human viewpoints are imperfect, including our own.

Fourth of July in an American Embassy

When I worked in U.S. embassies and consulates overseas, the Fourth of July was not a relaxing holiday for us. Embassies have national days, like Bastille Day on July 14 for the French, or a royal birthday for the British. The embassies and consulates usually celebrate their national days by inviting guests for some sort of feasting and perhaps entertainment.

Typically, we staged a formal gathering the night of the Fourth. The staff, American and national employees, worked on preparations—lists of the invited, the invitations themselves, security, parking, menu, program, and so on. Our guest list included former enemies, now staunch allies. I doubt any U.S. official mentioned to the British ambassador anything about 1776 or talked to the German ambassador about Hitler.

Invitations went out to other foreign embassies, as well as the host country’s high ranking politicians. We tried to include as many American citizens as possible who lived in the country. Obviously including everyone is easy in a country with few Americans, but not possible, say, in London or Paris.

American and national employees met guests, guided them to meet the ambassador or senior official at the entry, then guided them to tables or to the refreshment center. Then we mingled and talked with the guests. Drilled into the head of every new diplomat from orientation on is that embassy entertainment is for the guests, not the staff.

After an evening of meeting, greeting, and conversing, the introverts among us went home exhausted, hoping to be in the States on vacation for our next 4th of July.

A Republic If You Can Keep It

“Well, is it a republic?” was the question a bystander supposedly asked Benjamin Franklin after the Constitutional Convention in 1787. What form of government had been decided by these meetings, the person wanted to know, now that the colonies had gained independence from Great Britain?

Franklin is reported to have replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

It wasn’t a sure thing for those few colonies mostly on the Atlantic seaboard, wilderness throughout much of the interior. After all, only white men who tended to be well-off could even vote. It wasn’t exactly a country with a sterling history, either—much of the land was taken from native Americans. And it would be almost a century, following a bloody civil war, before slaves were emancipated, and a century or so more until real progress was made in giving all Americans, regardless of color, anything approaching equality.

Any group of people will have differences. No one agrees totally with another person. The problem is not so much the differences. It’s that too many of us assume that some of us can actually know what perfect truth is. Yet, as history from early civilization to today’s current events show us: no one of us knows absolute truth.

Many of our current differences are deep—what we should or should not teach in our schools, who can be married, who can terminate a pregnancy. The issues cannot be solved by tossing a coin. We must debate, decide, and accept that we will lose some of the time.

Figuring out reasonable solutions—not “right” solutions—will be a continuing, messy process. Some will lose and believe the loss was incalculable. Some of the time it may be. No person or country will get it right all the time. For the system to work, we have to recognize the impossibility of human perfection.

We have to learn to live peaceably and reasonably in an imperfect society. We should have the freedom to peaceably challenge the current package—indeed, we should have that freedom because it’s always going to need more tinkering. However, we do not have the right to hate or to demean someone because we think they are dead wrong. Sometimes they will be—but sometimes we will be, too.

Humility? A recognition of the imperfection of every one of us? We could start there.

The Parenting Dilemma

A survey finds that the more formal education a mother has, the more likely she is to opt out of the work force, or to work part time. This finding seems intuitive. Women with more education are more likely to marry better educated men. Their husbands are likely to have higher salaries and can support wives who don’t wish, at least at certain times in their lives, to work in a full-time career, or perhaps some prefer non-salaried work for a charitable group.

These women, however, have a greater choice of careers, if they want one, and of better paying ones. Their salaries would more likely pay for top notch child care. Why do some of them opt out?

Would more mothers of small children prefer to spend increased time with them if they could afford to do so?

We fear a return to the days when women were relegated to suburbia and made to feel guilty if they wanted to follow careers. Yet, if a mother wants to spend time with a child in the child’s early years, isn’t this worthwhile work?

Studies have shown the value of mothering in early childhood. What policies, both corporate and government, might encourage this kind of work for any mother who desires it?

But even here we are missing the truer picture. What about fathers who want more time with their children? Maybe a lessening of career as end all and be all for them, too, would allow them more time to father.

Perhaps in our emphasis on mothering, we’re in danger of losing the bigger need for parenting. Judging by our lowering birthrates, we certainly appear in need of this essential skill.

Ann Gaylia O'Barr

Culture and World Events from a Christian Perspective