Zatera Ul

I read a lot of natural childbirth-midwifery-attachment parenting blogs, because I see a lot of good in those philosophies. I forget sometimes, though, that most of the people that are into that stuff are far to the left politically. (I joke to myself that I’m so far to the right that I came around the back on these issues.) I’ve been surprised a few times lately to visit these blogs and be met by political speech that is, frankly, meant to be offensive to conservatives like me. The worldview that they exhibit then is so foreign that I can only think “What planet are YOU from??!”

In another case, I was lurking on a attachment parenting forum with a thread about accepting public assistance (while staying at home) and not feeling guilty about it. I learned a couple of weeks ago that we probably qualify for WIC and some state medical assistance. The income and asset limits are pretty high when you’ve got one child and another on the way, and we easily meet them on one income even though MFH has a good job, decent health insurance, and just got a nice raise. I went back and forth with myself for a while about whether to apply for at least WIC, as a way of getting some of our tax dollars back, but in the end I decided not to, because we just don’t really need it and I WOULD feel guilty if I accepted it. The thread on the forum had a lot of people saying, “Yeah, I get assistance and I get mad when people think that I shouldn’t have any ‘luxuries’ like cable TV.” I suppose they’re partly right in that I don’t know anyone’s situation well enough to judge whether they “deserve” assistance or not, but I also noticed an undercurrent of E-N-T-I-T-L-E-M-E-N-T running through the thread. I would rather live without cable (which we do) and have the government that much less involved in my life.

Anyway, I received plenty of “welfare for smart people” (support via scholarships, government research grants, and contracts) up through my most recent job, and it’s been nice to step away from the trough for a while.