Documentation Obsession

So, I have been applying for a subsidy to help pay for Ramona’s preschool and childcare. I just need to get the paperwork together and I have been accepted. I knew I was going to have to come up with a bunch of documents that would inevitably be MIA, and I did.

I couldn’t find the birth certificate, though I can find her certificate of birth from the hospital, her little footprints, pictures of me giving birth, her social security card and passport (all of which will probably go missing next time I try to find those for some bureaucratic reason). I couldn’t find the form the Dept. of Child Support sent me when they closed our case. The lease that I was holding in my hand a week ago has vanished and I have to get my doctor to fill out a well child form and give vaccination dates. If we don’t vaccinate, I have to have the doctor say that we don’t vaccinate on the form (they can’t just take my word for it even though I am the one who told my doctor when she had her vaccinations, as the doctor is somewhat new to us). AND, I have to take a form into my employer asking if they will fill out a form saying that I work for them and write in the hours that I work! What, a pay stub isn’t sufficient anymore? I feel like a teenager on probation! How incredibly patronizing! All for a little help with paying for childcare?

The common idea is that these programs are here to help those of us who are finding ourselves mired into financial poverty for whatever reason. From what I have noticed they are here to strip us of our dignity and to help us keep our heads just above the water while acclimating folks to a paternal relationship with the government. Welfare programs are used to keep the poor folks with just enough (or not quite enough if you live in California where everything costs more)… otherwise the rich would have a class war on their hands. We often forget how common working class rebellions have been in the past. The Elite (you know, that top 1% that controls over 70% of the wealth in the US), have learned that uprisings are a lot more expensive than welfare and taxes. The large middle-class acts as a buffer between the rich and the poor, and if you couple that with myths such as “the American Dream,” “It’s All the Immigrants Fault” and “Anyone Can Make it with Hard Work,” the poor seem to be confused just enough to not do too much of anything. The poor are either ashamed or angry…am I getting off track?

Anyhow, since I live in a society obsessed with documentation, my mind has flown off the handle. So I realized on Monday that I probably don’t have any of the things I need to get my subsidy and I will be spending some time searching and calling and ordering forms.

After searching the whole house over several times, I call the child support office to please send me a document saying my case is closed. They say I could probably come and pick it up on Friday (the day I was gonna meet with my government subsidy case-worker), IF they can generate it by then. I tell my caseworker that we should wait until I have all the documentation before we meet, so lets cancel our Friday appointment until I do. The Child Support “case-closed” letter comes in the mail on Thursday. Not what they said, but why complain when things work out for the better. So I call my worker and tell the answering machine that we should meet on Friday after-all. A few minutes later when I am looking for the lease that I know I just had the other day, I find the original child-custody form. Less than two hours after it comes in the mail, I find it on ACCIDENT! , After that I go to my employer for the employment verification, then my case-worker calls and says she’s too busy and our meeting ends up getting set back a full week because I wont be available next week when she is.

So I sit down to check out the paperwork packet she sent to get filled out. There is a doctor physical exam paper to fill out. I haven’t figured out why they need it. They only give subsidies to healthy children?…so now I have to ask the doctor to fill out two physical exam forms, one for preschool and one for subsidy. Then there is this paper to fill out that asks me when Ramona sleeps, how long she sleeps, what her personality is like, when and how often she poops, what my family calls urine and so forth. Am I the only one who finds it nerve-wracking that I am asked to write all this personal stuff down to give to someone I don’t know to do god-knows what with? Talk about paternal! Forget Big Brother, more like Big Daddy!
I guess the government is like our dad. Our tough love dad. Sometimes little revealing declarations by judges and the such make their way into the media which most people ignore because they want pretend we are independent and free. In the case of our children, one judge noted during a case with homeschoolers, that a main reason that children are required to go to school is so that somebody (a government worker) needs to keep an eye on the children to make sure that we aren’t harming them. Another judge admitted that it was to make sure children become patriotic, law-abiding citizens (meaning: not rock the boat). When I was in my credentialing program we learned that teachers (again government employees) are required to act “in loco parentis” or “instead of the parent.” “In loco parentis” refers to the legal responsibility of a person or organization to take on the functions and responsibilities of a parent as long as it is not considered a violation of their civil liberties. While you would want one caring for your child to care for them as their own (as long as they are good parents), we are talking about the government and its employees. The government has entered into every aspect of our lives only on it’s own terms and the saturation will reach a critical mass soon enough.

Once upon a time we counted on our communities. Those don’t really exist and as well hand over more and more responsibility to a centralized government, out communities become weaker and weaker. Now we pay the police and the pentagon (whether we want to or not) for some illusion of so-called security. Communities used to be the places we lived, worked, and educated ourselves and each other. We got to know each other and we kept our eyes out for each other. Now we work for “some other guy” and/or a bunch of shareholders in some other (post) community and send our kids to an institution for most of their waking lives to be educated and socialized.

Wow, it’s getting late. I could go on and on about the woes of dealing with government bureaucracy, but it really did feel alienating and I really did feel a little ashamed explaining the “work verification” to my employer. The organization treats me like an ungrateful wench for questioning all their excessive demands and I still can’t find my lease.

“Why stress about preschool?” Or “Preschool for Homeschoolers”

I don’t want to ever send my daughter to school. But it’s not that simple. For one, I lean towards the unschooling philosophy, where the child is in control of his or her own learning. If the child decides to go to school, my stopping her would not be letting her have control of her own learning. Ramona likes the idea of school, mostly because she likes people, lots and lots of people.

Preschool is different from regular school anyway. My mother convinced me to give preschool a try last year, and Ramona was always begging for more time with more kids. I gave it a try, but there were issues that bugged both Ramona and I, which I won’t go into in this blog other than much of it stemmed from age segregation and gender segregation issues. She does however want to go to preschool again. She has a daycare, which she loves to death, but there are only a handful of kids there half of which are infants or new walkers. She wants a larger group of kids closer to her age.

Because of our bad feeling around the issues we had at her school last year Preschool, we decided to look into the Parent Participation school. Ramona really liked it, and after talking about it for a day or so, flip flopping back and forth, we chose the new school. I thought I would be like “Great, I am glad she made her decision.” But instead I got nervous and scared. Her decision actually involves me very much. Parent participation meant I would be working in the school as well! My life isn’t only about Ramona. I have so many things going on. Am I ready to make this commitment for up to two years?

I assume this school would be a great opportunity to really be a part of Ramona’s education, and the children really do lead in this school. It would also be an opportunity for me to get some experience working in cooperative schooling situations with other parents. As a single parent with a super social daughter, the only way I could conceive of homeschooling is within a homeschooling cooperative.

On the other hand, my idea of a cooperative was not under the umbrella of the public school system. The new school is run through the Adult School and we are expected to attend parenting classes twice a month and to be on a committee. This school requires 3 days attendance, and then 4 days next year while the other school only requires 2 days and then three next year. What if I don’t like the school? What if I get a job that conflicts (not that I am looking for a 9-5 M-F job)? I don’t want to switch around schools. And if we decide we liked the old school better and went back, I would have lost my coop position (for reduced tuition) there. I need my own time, as I am taking new strides in my life, working to forge my own path…do I want to learn about child development? Isn’t my parenting style intuitive and empathic, rather then learned from the “experts.” Ahhhhhhhh! What to do.

Then I get a call from the 4Cs, the organization that offers childcare subsidies. They tell me I qualify, but that they couldn’t pay for childcare while I was working in the classroom because I would not be working for money. Well that settles it, back to the old School. But then I get a letter from the Parent Participation school talking about how much the parents add to the class, with songs, and scientific presentations…and I am confused and stressed AGAIN.

In all this I start to feel trivial and fanatical for thinking and stressing so much about preschools. It is just preschool, isn’t it? My amazing, active, successful friends don’t sit and obsess about preschools, they worry about more important things like the concentration camp called Palestine, or racist laws in Arizona, or assassinations and disappearances of Mayan resisters in Chiapas, or their art, or their jobs…

But preschools are important. The lives of our children are important. The experiences of the first years of their lives affect them for a lifetime. They dominate their unconscious minds and dictate how they relate to the world.  Social change comes from within people.  Schools are more important than the job I am looking into right now. Schools are important…Or the absence of them…they affect us our entire lives…Jeez I wish Ramona didn’t want to go.

Truth is Ramona will be going to good school that she likes.  It is walking distance. Kids love it. No worksheets or anything like that.  Lots of choice for the kids.  And she is in the afternoon class, where there is less age segregation.  But, I miss out on the cooperative experience. Maybe some day I will have another chance, a cooperative experience that is organic and evolves from community members that want something new and different for their kids, that isn’t part of this big centralized government with all its rules, regulations, bureaucracy, taxes and “proof.”

Women's equality means working fo The Man

...the man...you know...the guys who somehow squeeze more and more wealth from the poor and resources from the earth every year.

I have become appalled at the level of devaluation of mothering in this country, especially as I am a feminist, and I have seen how the types of feminism that have become mainstream have worked to exasperate this devaluation.  Women’s equality has been linked to women's ability to sidestep responsibilities of care of family and home.  Unfortunately men have not stepped in enough and home and family have suffered.   Our children have been institutionalized more and more.  Schools have stepped in to provide more after school care and activities (which is great considering the alternatives we have, i.e. nothing), and many “liberated” mothers have hired other mothers (cheap labor) to leave their own children behind to care for thier's in one of the lowest paying industries in our country (an eye opener as to our American Values).   Somehow, in our value system it is better to leave your children and care for another’s children, because you are making money, stimulating the economy and money is the signpost of success and equality not the sarcasm).  The dominant feminist mantra presents the solution always being “more childcare.”   Success is measured by how well women are able to fill the positions that men dominate, while what once was women’s work (now the “care industry”) have remained degraded, a place for the poor and the immigrants to work or the site of a woman’s “second shift.”  Not working and “just” staying home to care for your children is so un-feminist these days, you can never be successful or equal doing that!

You could be the best preschool teacher in the world, but the Wall Street tycoon will be the one considered successful.  He will be the one with his name in the papers.  I suppose it is easier to get women into “men’s jobs” than it is to try to make a society value “care” while the media screams at us that the only way we can survive is to make more profits for the rich capitalists. When future historians look back into our time, they will note that we value people for their ability to wield power, use scientific logic and their ability to make money (power).

During a recent debate with a friend about culture and whether other cultures do fine without us (of course my take was that they would do much better without the Western Ideology and economic systems imposed upon them) my friend made a comment about ancient cultures only valuing women for their ability to reproduce.   I did think that this was a bit erroneous, as women’s work in agriculture has been so indispensable to so many cultures and civilizations for the majority of human existence. Throughout history and prehistory, women have often been the primary agricultural workers.  Also, men have often been valued and respected in their strength, or in their material wealth.  People tend to need to be respected for something. 

The truth is that our own, western culture has been one of the most brutal to women.  Our culture has stripped women of their power and worth over the last 1000 years or so (I guess it depends where you come from), through things such as witch hunts, legalization of rape, propaganda, violence and outlawing natural medicine, midwifery, birth control, etc.  When it was decided that child birth and childrearing was just a natural function and that nature was vulgar and something to be feared and exploited for our benefit, woman, as the child rearing gender, had her fall from grace. She has only recently, over the last hundred or two years been climbing her way back.

Women bear children and their bodies supply nourishment, which lead to women being the ones with the children at their feet.  This created a sort of division of labor but NOT the devaluation of reproductive labor.  That is a contemporary idea that we often project into the past.  In fact, women were once actually worshipped for their child bearing and rearing abilities.

Once upon a time, God was a woman, she worked outside the home as her children played and worked all around her.

When we refer to other cultures or ancient cultures valuing women for their ability to bear children, we have to realize that we are looking through a decidedly Western lens that does not value reproductive work.  In the hierarchy of power and the discourse of equality, reproductive work and care (of elders or children) are squarely at the bottom.   I have done a lot of learning in Chiapas, Mexico and reading about the cultures from the area.  In Mayan culture, equality is (or was, this part of Mayan culture has been highly eroded) about respecting difference.  There is (or again, "was") a tradition of Complimentaridad; male and female work are different and complimentary.  One is not valued over the other.   The western hierarchy of values places money at the top, so one who is not making money is not considered as successful as one who does.   When the Americas were colonized, western culture began to seep in as the West destroyed and exploited indigenous peoples and became the dominant culture.  Even after independence, the Americas are controlled by the Globalized Western Capitalist Economy.   This has forced indigenous Maya out of the villages and into the money economy.  This lead to western ideas about gender and public and private spaces to be transported back into the villages.  "Women’s work" became, as it is here, considered inferior and less valuable.  This is one instance.  It has been well documented that the introduction of our culture into others, even if they did have some inequality to begin with, has changed women’s positions for the worse in almost every instance.  As equality in our culture improves, we point at other cultures and say, “Look at the guys, they are so far behind the times with women’s rights…oh the hypocrisy! 

And in the end, we still like to blame our mother's for all our problems.

I wonder, in what kind of world should be want to be equal in?

To be continued…

to read the paper I wrote on Indigenous Feminism in Chiapas, check out this link: http://www.mujereslibres.org/Articles/indigenousfeminism.htm

The March for Human Rights

Yesterday was the first time Ramona and I had gone protesting since she was an infant.  I am actually not much of a protester these days.  However, the protest yesterday was the first one I really felt compelled to join in quite a while.  It was a march for Human Rights, organized in response to the Arizona law SB 1070 that encourages and advances racial profiling and racism.

I am so proud of my little girl.  She was so present at the protest, she danced with the Aztec Dancers.  She has never walked so far.  She was so inspired by the energy and the people at the protest, she didn’t complain one time during the three hour ordeal.  She walked (and ran, as her little legs were no match for the rate of the march) at least a mile, and carried the sign the rest of the over three mile march as I carried her.  She was completely absorbed in what was going on and asking all sorts of questions which I answered as best I could in terms I hoped she could understand.  It was sort of easy to explain the reasons for people coming and the reasons for the protest, but difficult to explain to her why there are borders in the first place and how the people got so poor.

Later, when we got home, my friend Christina came over to stay the night and I beamed with pride as I heard Ramona explain to our friend what had transpired earlier in the evening.   She really personalized her retelling of the story, by talking about the woman  (she loves) who runs her daycare, who emigrated from Mexico.  “People like Maria come here and make their homes and then others say, you can’t be here go away, and they say, ‘No this is my home!’”  She continued to chant today  “Aqui Estamos, y no nos vamos.”  I think Ramona knows more about immigration than any three year old I know (who isn't an immigrant, of course).  It also helps that she has spent some many months in Mexico.

These are the kinds of experiences that shape children, these are the places that children learn.  In society, in the street, through rich interactions with life…not locked in an institution 6-7 hours a day, five days a week.  Learning about the world by experiencing it, not being told about it from inside four walls.  Learning how to act by experimentation, not by authority and the culture of the carrot and the stick.



Ramona is at 1:30 in this video