Teen mothers have taken to a Facebook page called “I Hate Teen Moms” to fight back against comments they are “sluts” and a “burden on society.”
“I’m not struggling at all because I do my responsibility & I also work hard for it still able to have time for my child more than 8 hours a day. I receive no help at all from anyone,” a woman identifying herself as a 17-year-old teen mother wrote.
The “I Hate Teen Moms” page, which has garnered more than 26,000 “likes,” includes rants and name-calling that the administrator insists are simply “satire and dark humor” that is not violating Facebook’s terms of service or breaking any laws.
I came across an interesting article in the New York Times , which is quite interesting and relevant for the young to-day.
I am posting the Excerpts with my comments .
Life is changing constantly and our plans for future, which includes career ,marriages and children, assumes only the quantitative aspect of Life.
One can not go by the experiences of others as the experiences of an individual in Life and his/her reaction is unique and these can not be predicted beforehand.
As the assumptions here are hypothetical so are the results.
So when a situation arises in Life, to deal with qualitatively and emotionally,’thinking’ is not a solution.
Feeling and the way we take and manage our feelings , they are important.
A mature approach to Life, which includes career and children, would be to take things as they come and take decisions at that point of time.
A ‘thinking life’ will be miserable..
“Last week, Jennifer Romaniuk wrote the Motherlode with a passionate parental quandary. “I voluntarily walked away from a promising career,” she e-mailed. “I had no idea how long it would take to claw my way back.” The decision to stay home seemed like the right one when she made it. Spending more time with her children would be fun; ending the race between work and child care for her two kids would make life feel less daunting for her and for her fast-tracked husband.
¶But when the child-care pressures began to ease, Ms. Romaniuk was a different person in a different employment market, overqualified for the entry level but not experienced enough for senior positions, and facing businesses (in her case, law firms) who aren’t taking many chances on employees any more. Re-entry hasn’t just been hard, it has been making her regret the choice she made almost a decade ago.
¶It’s one peril of all the conversation that surrounds the choices parents make when their children are young (primarily mothers, but fathers as well): when we emerge, we may feel less like one person in the midst of a transition than like some sort of cautionary tale, or icon of the ways policy and culture undermine women and parents. It’s hard to view ourselves with compassion when judgments are more common than understanding. Parents moving in and out of the job search right now aren’t the only ones in transition. The ways we see work and gender and balance are shifting as well. The result is a world in which it’s nearly impossible not to find some way to regret our choices while at the same time being forced to contemplate how “lucky” we were to have the ability to make the choice.
It’s later — when the grumpy, hungry children are older, when the baby is walking herself to school, when the wild immediacy of life has calmed — that the full impact of the change intrudes itself. Even people who loathed their former jobs, or who left the business world planning an eventual shift to art or writing or entrepreneurship, or who are more than happy in an at-home role, can find themselves blindsided. When the baby is tiny, or the children are all under 5, or the special needs demand constant advocacy, we don’t have to find our place in the world — our place has got an iron grip around our knees. It’s only when that grip loosens that the onus is back on us.
¶And that’s the tough part. How many books have been written to ease us through transitions and change? How many poems and songs and odes and Web sites dedicated to figuring out who we are in the world? Oodles. One transitive moment is not the time to look back and assess — it’s anything but.
¶So my advice to Jennifer echoes the words of lynninny, AW, and CC Mom: try to take the long view (or maybe, for the moment, don’t take any view at all). It’s not just that “what’s done is done,” but that the way you really feel about your years and choices is colored by your current discouragement.
Grandmas are moms with lots of frosting. ~Author Unknown
What a bargain grandchildren are! I give them my loose change,
and they give me a million dollars’ worth of pleasure. ~Gene Perret
Grandmothers are just ‘antique’ little girls. ~Author Unknown
Perfect love sometimes does not come until the first grandchild.
~ Welsh Proverb
Crying Infant.
A grandmother is a babysitter who watches the kids instead
of the television.. ~Author Unknown
Never have children, only grandchildren. ~Gore Vidal
Becoming a grandmother is wonderful. One moment you’re just
a mother. The next you are all-wise and prehistoric. ~Pam Brown
Grandchildren don’t stay young forever, which is good because Grandfathers have only so many horsy rides in them. ~Gene Perret
When grandparents enter the door, discipline flies out the window.
~Ogden Nash
Grandma always made you feel she had been waiting to see just
you all day and now the day was complete. ~ Marcy DeMaree
Pensive Child
Grandmas hold our tiny hands for just a little while, but our
hearts forever. ~Author Unknown
If I had known how wonderful it would be to have grandchildren,
I’d have had them first. ~Lois Wyse
My grandkids believe I’m the oldest thing in the world. And after
two or three hours with them, I believe it, too. ~Gene Perret
If becoming a grandmother was only a matter of choice, I should
advise every one of you straight away to become one. There is
no fun for old people like it! ~Hannah Whithall Smith
It’s such a grand thing to be a mother of a mother – that’s why the
world calls her grandmother. ~Author Unknown
Thinking Child.
Grandchildren are God‘s way of compensating us for growing
old. ~Mary H. Waldrip
You do not really understand something unless you can explain
it to your grandmother. ~Proverb
An hour with your grandchildren can make you feel young again.
Anything longer than that, and you start to age quickly. ~Gene Perret
Baby with Friends?
The best baby-sitters, of course, are the baby’s grandparents. You
feel completely comfortable entrusting your baby to them for long
periods, which is why most grandparents flee to Florida . ~Dave Barry
I wish I had the energy that my grandchildren have – if only for
self-defense. ~Gene Perret
Grandmother-grandchild relationships are simple. Grandmas
are short on criticism and long on love. ~Author Unknown
Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do
Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of
little children. ~Alex Haley
Grandmother – a wonderful mother with lots of
practice. ~Author Unknown
A grandparent is old on the outside but young on
the inside. ~Author Unknown
One of the most powerful handclasps is that of a new
grandbaby around the finger of a grandfather. ~Joy Hargrove
It’s amazing how grandparents seem so young once you
become one. ~Author Unknown
If your baby is ‘beautiful and perfect, never cries or fusses,
sleeps on schedule and burps on demand, an angel all the
time,’ you’re the grandma. ~Teresa Bloomingdale
Grandparents are similar to a piece of string – handy to have
around and easily wrapped around the fingers of their
grandchildren. ~Author Unknown
The Biography The Lives of S Aurobindo sparked off a controversy on the Life of Sri Aurobindo,Freedom Fighter,Yogi.Poet ,Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature for his ‘Gitanjali‘ and a Great Mystic, by Peter Heehs.
Peter Heehs was himself a follower of Sri Aurobindo and a Member of Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry,India, since 1971.
There are passages quoted from the Book that suggest sexual intimacy between Sri Aurobindo, and Mirra Alfassa, The Mother who is also a Spiritualist .
The passages referred to suggest that Sri Aurobindo had illicit relationship with The Mother ,he is a terrorist and was also mad.
Peter Heehs has clarified that he has taken two years to research the Book and the said portions of the Book are being quoted out of context.
The Book is not even available for Sale in India!
To those who criticise the Book.
1. The Book is not even available in India nor can you read it in full in Google Books.
How does one object to a Book that is not available and without reading it in full?
(those who raised the issue are from India)
2.While attempting to unravel a multi faceted personality as Sri Aurobindo,some facts might come to light that were unknown hitherto. They have to be checked for veracity and if found to be true is to be accepted.
Let us assume what Peter Heehs has stated in the Book is true.
It does not change our respect and reverence for Sri Aurobindo.
He was a Freedom Fighter for us, the Indians; but for the British he was a terrorist,it all depends on which side of the fence you are.
He had’ sexual relations with The Mother’
So what?
Does that change his Philosophy,his stature as a Poet or his thoughts or his Great work on Mysticism and Tantric Sastra as explained by him in his book ‘Savitri’?
Yogis like Sri Aurobindo can not be equated with us ordinary mortals.
‘The one who is mad and who wears the Moon on His Head’
And Lord Siva himself is believed to have suggested this first line to Sundarar!
Sri Abirami Bhattar, in his Abirami Andhadhi, a great work on Goddess Abirami,Thirukkadayuyr( it should be spelled as Thirukkadavoor) states,
“‘விரும்பித் தொழும் அடியார் விழி மல்கி நீர் மல்கி .மெய் புளகம்
அரும்பித் ததும்பிய ஆனந்தமாகி ,அறிவிழந்து
சுரும்பிர்க் களித்து,மொழி தடுமாறி முன் சொன்ன எல்லாம்
தரும் பித்தர் ஆவர் என்றால் அபிராமி சமயம் நன்றே “
Abirami Andadhi 94
Abirami! Those worship you with passion,Tears swell in the eyes,body shudders,they are lost in Bliss,discrimination fails,more happy
than a drunk,Speech falters,all these contribute to one being mad!
Even so Worshipping You is the Best’
Such is the Bliss of Yogins.
Sri Aurobindo is one of the most respected freedom fighters from Bengal and also a poet, philosopher, and yogi. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We are not qualified to comment.
‘Since his death in 1950, Sri Aurobindo Ghose has been known primarily as a yogi and a philosopher of spiritual evolution who was nominated for the Nobel Prize in peace and literature. But the years Aurobindo spent in yogic retirement were preceded by nearly four decades of rich public and intellectual work. Biographers usually focus solely on Aurobindo’s life as a politician or sage, but he was also a scholar, a revolutionary, a poet, a philosopher, a social and cultural theorist, and the inspiration for an experiment in communal living.
Peter Heehs, one of the founders of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives, is the first to relate all the aspects of Aurobindo’s life in its entirety. Consulting rare primary sources, Heehs describes the leader’s role in the freedom movement and in the framing of modern Indian spirituality. He examines the thinker’s literary, cultural, and sociological writings and the Sanskrit, Bengali, English, and French literature that influenced them, and he finds the foundations of Aurobindo’s yoga practice in his diaries and unpublished letters. Heehs’s biography is a sensitive, honest portrait of a life that also provides surprising insights into twentieth-century Indian history.’
The latest biography by Peter Heehs, himself an ashram member since 1971 and one of those persons who painstakingly organised the Aurobindo archives there, was objectively commended by another noted historian Ramachandra Guha, as a product of “lifetime scholarship”. It had the added authenticity for “Heehs knows the documentary evidence on and around Sri Aurobindo’s life, better than anyone else,” wrote Guha hailing it.
“I wrote the book from 2002 to 2006 and it took two years to get the book accepted (for publishing),” Heehs told Deccan Herald in an extensive interview in Pondicherry, a few days before the Home Ministry extended his visa by a year from April 15 that set at naught several uncertainties for now.
But shortly after the book came hot from the Columbia University Press in August-September 2008, Heehs found the satisfaction from his long years of labour in presenting Aurobindo’s many-sided life “to a very serious audience” to be so short-lived as a “small coterie” of people connected to the ashram soon began a relentless campaign against Heehs, dubbing it “blasphemous”.
Apparently, some passages in the book–one allegedly suggesting a romantic ring to the Aurobindo-Mother relationship, and some discussions of an “element of lunacy” that ran in Aurobindo’s family–triggered a full-scale tirade against the biography even before it could be published in India.”
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