Feminism and unschooling and more…
Here is an article that was shared with me recently…
Feminism is a funny thing…
For some it may mean that women need to be completely independent, need to work, not have kids and not go into any other role than the independent womyn figure that would never trust a man if her life depended on it…
For some it means juggling both worlds of kids and family and then working out of the home to be “equal” to men.
And for some… being at home, raising kids in the way that is the best ways… not the mainstream ways…. is an act of feminism… However, I think that a lot of self proclaimed feminists see this as being impossible, but it isn’t…
The way I see it is that for a while, feminism was about equality in status as human beings. The right to vote, the right to speak, the right to work with equal pay, not one more important than the other…
Equal… but… not the same…
However… sometime, somewhere, it seemed to change…
I remember when I was in university and hanging out in some feminist circles and feminism was no longer about equality, it was about men-bashing… it was about surpassing men, it was about taking over… Instead of being equal, it has become about leaving the role of woman and motherhood behind and looking at it as something to be ashamed of…
However, my choice of staying at home, raising my children, making my own choices about the way I birth is part of the way that I express who I am as a woman…
So, taking back my womanhood, taking back my body in birth by UCing, taking back my role as mother and nurturing and raising my children in the ways that feel right naturally and not because of a stigma, breastfeeding, co-sleeping and now unschooling, all in the while of being an equal partner within my relationship with my husband and partner in life is the way I express my feminism…
Men have in most part shaped the society that we live in, they in many ways formed the ways that society in general raises children…
Men were the physicians that wanted women to birth in unnatural positions so that they could “see better”, not caring at all that the birth on the back position makes it harder on women to birth and can put babies at risk…
Men were the ones that have made breasts sexual and that have put stigmas on breastfeeding and were the physicians that perpetuated the myths that formula was not dangerous and that often was better than breastfeeding even though they could not be further from the truth…
And it goes on and on… Men have made many mistakes, and it is up to us to change things, however, correcting those mistakes by taking on the same family roles as the men in the past is not the way to go and in my opinion is doing a disservice to the children…
So going back to that article and unschooling, well… I don’t agree with all of it but I think that some good points were brought up in the article and in the comments… unschooling and feminism don’t only come together in the ways that the author is describing, it is about more.
It is about teaching our own children, it is about letting them make their own choices for what is right for them and recognizing that they too are equals in our society, it is about recognizing that the school systems that have been set up clearly do not work for all children and there are serious flaws and that it is part of the role I choose of motherhood to give my children the best chances they have to be happy in life…
simon, the cat, and the rat…
So Xavier is starting to read more words… the “at” words are easy for him now so I have been writing down a few things using those words and a few others that he knows and he has been reading them… what I really like about it is that this is really boosting his confidence and he is feeling really proud of himself and when that happens he want to do more…
So while Xavier was eating lunch I wrote something for him…
and omg… he laughed….
he laughed so much after he read it, and he couldn’t stop laughing for the longest time and wanted to read it again and again…
“Simon sat on the cat. The cat had a rat. The cat hit Simon with the rat.”
then I realized that it was the first time that I made my child laugh by writing something…
this is fun…
pulp and paper…
Yesterday we left early in the morning to go to a pulp and paper museum in Trois-Rivieres, a city about half way between Montreal and Quebec city…
Having to wake Xavier and coax him out of bed reminded me how much I am happy to not have to do that on a regular basis…
We got there at just before 10am and not long after we started the day… We were the only people there so the kids were able to run around and talk and we didn’t feel like the group was bothering anyone… so the first thing was a small “play” with a guy that talked about being a lumberjack and how life was for them a couple hundred years ago…
Then we learned how they make Paper, why there was pulp and paper mills in that location and how the machines used to work and still work in paper production…
After that was the really fun part… learning how to make paper and then actually making it!
First soak and rip up pieces of paper (recyled)
then blend with water….
Then strain on a frame with screen… then press… take screen off… decorate and then iron to start drying and let it dry afterwards… here are Colin’s and Xavier’s… and we are sure to make more here at home….
Lunch and another activity or two later and we were on the way back home and all three boys fell asleep in the car… It was really interesting and I think that when the kids are older I would love to go back and see it again so that they understand more of what they were hearing…
eclipse…
What an amazing view that was last night…
We spent quite a while during the day talking about the eclipse so by the time night started to fall Xavier was getting excited… Before going downstairs to play King’s Quest he saw the beginning and went in and out of the house until he fell asleep… We told him that if he fell asleep we would wake him up when it was the full eclipse and we did just that not long after he had fallen asleep…
I spent quite a while outside trying to take pics.. I don’t have any special lenses nor an amazing camera but I am pretty happy with what I got anyways….
I was amazing though… and I hope that Xavier remembers it for a long time…
(with Saturn on the left)
