Picket Fence Post

Item #1: Controversy Over H1N1 Vaccine Availability

After posting on Facebook the news that this week one of my kids was diagnosed with H1N1 (swine flu), many folks lamented the fact that they’ve been vigorously trying to obtain vaccines for their children but can’t. People are, in a word, pissed.

First of all, the president last week declared that the United States is in a state of emergency when it comes to the swine flu as the media have been hyping the death stats from H1N1 with scary stories of healthy pregnant women and children being fatally stricken with the disease — like the constant, ominus, beating of a drum — and making it seem as though the plague is awaiting us on our front stoops.

Secondly, there’s been an unforeseen production shortage of H1N1 vaccines, vaccines for which the Centers for Disease Control is urging parents of young children and pregnant women to obtain. And, in the midst of this federal-government-declared emergency, there’s currently not enough of the vaccine to go around right now.

Third, another unseemly factor was thrown into the mix this week: The government has been releasing dosages of the hard-to-find H1N1 vaccine to various groups including corporations, a practice they typically utilize to distribute the seasonal flu vaccines every year. However when people read the news that Wall Street banking and trading companies like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are obtaining doses of H1N1 vaccines (for which the companies had previously ordered from health officials) while other groups like pediatricians and ob/gyns don’t have enough to meet the needs of their high-risk patients, folks get irritated, to put it mildly.

Seeing NBC’s Today Show report below, which says that New York’s Goldman Sachs got as many doses of H1N1 vaccine as an entire hospital (200), you can see how this issue is quickly spiraling into the haves vs the have-nots, or, as the Today Show put it, Wall Street vs Main Street, yet again:

Item #2: Dads Are Important

While this news story falls into the, “Well, yeah, of course, you idiot” category, I found some of the points made in the New York Times’ piece, “Fathers Gain Respect From Experts (And Mothers)” — about how having dads around is important to children — are worth mentioning. The story said that institutionally, dads feel excluded from places where parents and children gather because the physical environment and the practices utilized by staff in such locations are geared toward children and mothers, sending clear signals that taking care of the kiddos is for mothers, not fathers.

“The walls in family resource centers are pink, there are women’s magazines in the waiting room, the mother’s name is on the files, and the home visitor asks for the mother if the father answers the door,” a University of California Berkeley psychology professor told the Times. “It’s like fathers are not there.”

This happens all the time in schools as well when there’s an assumption that the volunteers for school-related tasks will be women, hence the phrase “room mothers.” (I’ve yet to hear anyone invoke the phrase “room fathers.”) One time The Spouse volunteered to be a chaperone for one of our kids’ field trips and, after the chaperones had been selected, a note was sent home saying that I had been among those chosen volunteers to go on the trip, when it was The Spouse’s name that had been submitted.

Additionally, the Times story pointed out that, in order to allow children to benefit from their relationships with their fathers, mothers need to back off and stop micromanaging everything. The paper paraphrased a child psychologist as saying, “Fathers tend to do things different . . . but not in ways that are worse for their children. Fathers do not mother, they father.”

Item #3: Parents Should Back Off Kids’ Homework

Speaking of backing off, syndicated columnist Betsy Hart asserted in a new essay that she doesn’t think it’s necessary for parents to micromanage their children’s homework assignments and drill the children to prepare them for tests, especially in the younger grades. The mother of four believes that her children should learn how to manage their schoolwork, and, when they fail to do so, learn from the consequences fo their failure. An excerpt:

“I worry that if a parent is stressing about [his or her child's] tests and advanced placement in the third grade, these might be the same parents who are literally checking in on a child’s tests and assignments in college on a regular basis. Or even going to job interviews with a grown child after he gets his degree.

But once again the older I get, the more wisdom it turns out my mother had. When it comes to what we do for our kids, she would say, so often less is more.”