Archive for the 'family' Category

20
Jun

Winding Down – My Journey Towards Menopause

By Emilia Liz 0 Comments
Categories: family

About a year and a half ago I wrote an essay about having an only child. I said in it that although I was fairly certain I would not have any more biological children, I had decided against a tubal ligation in the small likelihood I chose to have another baby. Now nature seems to have made the choice for me.  I’m going through perimenopause, the phase of a woman’s life just before menopause.

While menopause is thought of as the complete cessation of menstruation, ironically one of the first signs of perimenopause is that a woman’s periods come more often.  My own menstrual cycle, for example, has gone from its previous monthly schedule to between 21 and 25 days. Eventually, though, menstruation becomes less frequent than usual and ultimately stops altogether.

When I realized that my consistently short cycles were not merely one-time aberrations and that I was indeed undergoing perimenopause, I had to take in the implications of that – beyond of course the temporarily increased spending on feminine hygiene products. The most important question was whether or not I would be able to have another child. My doctor told me flatly that if I really wanted to, I’d better start working on it now.  I still appear to be ovulating. However, at my age – I’m 41 and three-quarter years as I write this – the eggs I have left are less likely to be fertilized in the first place and, if they are, more likely to end in miscarriage. Even if I were successful in getting pregnant, there is also the higher risk of Down syndrome and other chromosomal abnormalities in the resulting fetus. I don’t relish the idea of being forced to choose between having an abortion on one hand and bearing a developmentally disabled child on the other.

There’s also the question of the dynamics with my existing child, now three years old.  She’s a fairly easy and even-tempered girl (she’s never given me a sleepless night, even as an infant), and we’ve sort of settled into a comfortable rhythm with both of our schedules. But another baby could throw this symbiosis completely off-balance, especially if he or she were not quite as adaptable as my daughter. And no matter how “good” she is, my little one is still after all a little one and I’m not sure I could handle two kids under a certain age at the same time. To paraphrase the Prophet Mohammed’s advice about taking another wife, if you fear you cannot deal justly with two or more, have only one.

So I’ve, again, concluded that I only want one child, at least for now.  I’m open to adopting later on when my daughter is older and less dependent on me.  But with the decision to forgo any further biological reproduction comes a certain sadness. It’s a visceral emotion, essentially, as I’m perfectly content with the child I have now and don’t possess any overwhelming urge to procreate at this point. Yet there’s a certain bittersweet feeling that I won’t ever experience pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding again, that I won’t have another genetic child whose looks and temperament and so on I can compare with my daughter’s and say, “That’s where he/she gets it from!”  This sadness quickly passes, though. Not only am I satisfied with my daughter, but I “have” a lot of other children – a bevy of nieces and nephews and now a great-niece (the daughter of one of my sister’s biracial sons and his wife).

I suppose the other thing I must confront in approaching “the change” is the fact that I’m getting older. I remember once when I was working in a hospital as a college student during the summer I had a 60-year-old patient tell me she felt sad on seeing the tampon dispenser in the hospital washroom because it reminded her of when she was young. I said most women my age would be pleased NOT to have a reason to use the dispenser.  Two decades later, I’m more understanding of her.  Over the years I’ve taken my menstrual cycle for granted: even if it could be a nuisance, it was just “there.” But as I know from my older sister, who’s undergoing her menopausal transition right now, and from friends who’ve already passed theirs, life goes on.  Not to mention that I’ll be spared from shelling out money for sanitary pads and another IUD!

22
May

The Artem Affair – Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and Russian Adoption Agencies

By Emilia Liz 0 Comments
Categories: family and Society

Last April people around the world learned of the sad plight of Justin Hansen/Artem Saveliev, the eight-year-old Russian boy sent back to his homeland alone on a plane by his American adoptive mother Torry Ann Hansen. Ms. Hansen, a registered nurse who had adopted Artem less than a year earlier from an orphanage in Russia’s Far East, wrote a letter to the orphanage saying that the child was violent and mentally unstable and that she “no longer wished to parent him.” She furthermore accused the orphanage staff of having misled her about Artem’s condition.

Much of the Saveliev/Hansen affair remains a mystery.  Torry Ann Hansen apparently home-schooled Artem and did not attend church or belong to any social clubs.  Though she said she consulted a psychiatrist about her son’s problems, she never actually took the boy to be examined directly. The only member of the Hansen camp speaking to the media is Torry Ann’s mother Nancy, who confirmed her daughter’s claims. The boy’s adoptive grandmother stated that he threatened to burn the family’s house down and attacked his aunt (Torry Ann’s sister) with a three-pound statue after she asked him to correct his math homework.  Meanwhile officials in Russia who met Artem on his return have denied witnessing any of the behaviour he supposedly exhibited in the United States. They even reported that he wept at the thought of leaving his family there behind.

The general public’s reaction to the story was for the most part one of shock and horror.  How could a woman who had pledged to be a mother to this boy abandon him so callously, sending him on an airplane unattended?  Even if he did have issues, Ms. Hansen should have sought help from a psychologist or from the social services in her area. And if that did not work, she might have arranged to have Artem placed in a foster home or with another adoptive family.

However, a few individuals, while not condoning Hansen’s actions, expressed sympathy for her. Many of these were adoptive parents of children from the former Soviet Union with problems similar to those allegedly shown by Artem/Justin: physically hurting family members, pets and schoolmates, lying, running away from home and so on.  In almost all cases, the children’s difficulties could be pinpointed to alcohol consumption during pregnancy on the part of their biological mothers.

Unfortunately, a high percentage of birth mothers of Russian adoptees have been found to be heavy drinkers. One Swedish report discovered that a third of such women were known – note the word “known” – to be alcoholics. It is therefore not surprising that other studies have demonstrated that children adopted from Russia run a higher risk of behavioural and emotional disturbances than those from other parts of the world, like China. Alcohol is after all an especially powerful teratogen (substance that causes birth defects). It can lead to difficulties in the offspring of alcoholic mothers such as attention deficit disorder, poor impulse control and unpredictability.  I know – my (domestically) adopted niece has fetal alcohol syndrome. As Artem was born to a nineteen-year-old alcoholic woman, he may very well have had the disorder himself.

As the aunt of an adopted niece and nephew and potential adoptive parent myself, I feel compelled to comment on the Artem/Justin case.  I first of all consider it unconscionable to put an eight-year-old on a plane unattended.  What strikes me too, though, is Torry Ann Hansen’s apparent naïveté. Did she really think that a young boy who had spent the first five years of his life with an alcoholic mother and another two in an orphanage would magically adapt to life in a foreign country with a new family?  It seems incredible that as a nurse Hansen would not suspect that Artem might have had behavioural issues stemming from his exposure to alcohol in utero.  The news reports said that Torry Ann Hansen was seeking to adopt another child, this time from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.  I hope she doesn’t; she should realize that adoption is not for her.

I might also ask myself what I would do in a situation like Torry Ann Hansen’s.  I can state with virtual certainty that I would never put a young child on a transoceanic flight by himself. But if, supposing for the sake of the argument that her allegations of her son being uncontrollably violent are true, would I have stuck with him through to the bitter end, enduring aggression on his part and danger not only to myself but to my other family members as well, and kept him in my care at all costs?  That I cannot say for sure. I would have in all probability attempted to get as much help as I could for him and myself, perhaps from social services, from a psychologist or psychiatrist or from a member of the clergy. But if all this failed to produce results, I just might have surrendered him to social services, with a guarantee that they place him either in another adoptive home or in a well-run residence for troubled children.

What I like to think, however, is that I would do my best never to find myself in a similar scenario as Ms. Hansen’s in the first place. To begin with, I would not adopt a child with a history of prenatal exposure to alcohol or other drugs. (Note: I would take in my niece if anything ever happened to my sister and her husband, but I wouldn’t deliberately seek out a child at increased risk for fetal alcohol syndrome.) And as it’s not always possible to know the background of an adopted child’s biological parents, I would in all likelihood eschew adopting from Russia, given the high rate of alcoholism among birth mothers there.

I wish the best for Artem/Justin in the future.  And hopefully Torry Ann Hansen will come out of this experience a little wiser as well.

Last April people around the world learned of the sad plight of Justin Hansen/Artem Saveliev, the eight-year-old Russian boy sent back to his homeland alone on a plane by his American adoptive mother Torry Ann Hansen. Ms. Hansen, a registered nurse who had adopted Artem less than a year earlier from an orphanage in Russia’s Far East, wrote a letter to the orphanage saying that the child was violent and mentally unstable and that she “no longer wished to parent him.” She furthermore accused the orphanage staff of having misled her about Artem’s condition.

Much of the Saveliev/Hansen affair remains a mystery. Torry Ann Hansen apparently home-schooled Artem and did not attend church or belong to any social clubs. Though she said she consulted a psychiatrist about her son’s problems, she never actually took the boy to be examined directly. The only member of the Hansen camp speaking to the media is Torry Ann’s mother Nancy, who confirmed her daughter’s claims. The boy’s adoptive grandmother stated that he threatened to burn the family’s house down and attacked his aunt (Torry Ann’s sister) with a three-pound statue after she asked him to correct his math homework. Meanwhile officials in Russia who met Artem on his return have denied witnessing any of the behaviour he supposedly exhibited in the United States. They even reported that he wept at the thought of leaving his family there behind.

The general public’s reaction to the story was for the most part one of shock and horror. How could a woman who had pledged to be a mother to this boy abandon him so callously, sending him on an airplane unattended? Even if he did have issues, Ms. Hansen should have sought help from a psychologist or from the social services in her area. And if that did not work, she might have arranged to have Artem placed in a foster home or with another adoptive family.

However, a few individuals, while not condoning Hansen’s actions, expressed sympathy for her. Many of these were adoptive parents of children from the former Soviet Union with problems similar to those allegedly shown by Artem/Justin: physically hurting family members, pets and schoolmates, lying, running away from home and so on. In almost all cases, the children’s difficulties could be pinpointed to alcohol consumption during pregnancy on the part of their biological mothers.

Unfortunately, a high percentage of birth mothers of Russian adoptees have been found to be heavy drinkers. One Swedish report discovered that a third of such women were known – note the word “known” – to be alcoholics. It is therefore not surprising that other studies have demonstrated that children adopted from Russia run a higher risk of behavioural and emotional disturbances than those from other parts of the world, like China. Alcohol is after all an especially powerful teratogen (substance that causes birth defects). It can lead to difficulties in the offspring of alcoholic mothers such as attention deficit disorder, poor impulse control and unpredictability. I know – my (domestically) adopted niece has fetal alcohol syndrome. As Artem was born to a nineteen-year-old alcoholic woman, he may very well have had the disorder himself.

As the aunt of an adopted niece and nephew and potential adoptive parent myself, I feel compelled to comment on the Artem/Justin case. I first of all consider it unconscionable to put an eight-year-old on a plane unattended. What strikes me too, though, is Torry Ann Hansen’s apparent naïveté. Did she really think that a young boy who had spent the first five years of his life with an alcoholic mother and another two in an orphanage would magically adapt to life in a foreign country with a new family? It seems incredible that as a nurse Hansen would not suspect that Artem might have had behavioural issues stemming from his exposure to alcohol in utero. The news reports said that Torry Ann Hansen was seeking to adopt another child, this time from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. I hope she doesn’t; she should realize that adoption is not for her.

I might also ask myself what I would do in a situation like Torry Ann Hansen’s. I can state with virtual certainty that I would never put a young child on a transoceanic flight by himself. But if, supposing for the sake of the argument that her allegations of her son being uncontrollably violent are true, would I have stuck with him through to the bitter end, enduring aggression on his part and danger not only to myself but to my other family members as well, and kept him in my care at all costs? That I cannot say for sure. I would have in all probability attempted to get as much help as I could for him and myself, perhaps from social services, from a psychologist or psychiatrist or from a member of the clergy. But if all this failed to produce results, I just might have surrendered him to social services, with a guarantee that they place him either in another adoptive home or in a well-run residence for troubled children.

What I like to think, however, is that I would do my best never to find myself in a similar scenario as Ms. Hansen’s in the first place. To begin with, I would not adopt a child with a history of prenatal exposure to alcohol or other drugs. (Note: I would take in my niece if anything ever happened to my sister and her husband, but I wouldn’t deliberately seek out a child at increased risk for fetal alcohol syndrome.) And as it’s not always possible to know the background of an adopted child’s biological parents, I would in all likelihood eschew adopting from Russia, given the high rate of alcoholism among birth mothers there.

I wish the best for Artem/Justin in the future. And hopefully Torry Ann Hansen will come out of this experience a little wiser as well.

20
Feb

Bambocciona Nation: The Triumph of the Big Baby

By Cynapse 4 Comments
Categories: Economics, family and Society

Macleans Magazine recently published an intriguing diatribe by Mark Steyn regarding the phenomenon of children living in their parents for increasingly long periods of time.

In Italy, a court has ordered, upon pain of having his assets seized, Giancarlo Casagrande of Bergamo to pay his daughter an allowance of 350 euros—approximately $525—every month. Signor Casagrande is 60. His daughter Marina is 32. She was supposed to have graduated with a degree in philosophy eight years ago but, though her classes ended way back at the beginning of the century, she’s still working on her thesis. So Signor Casagrande is obliged to pay up, either in perpetuity or until the completion of Marina’s thesis, whichever comes sooner. Her thesis is about the Holy Grail. Which it’s hard to see why Marina would have any use for, given that she’s already found a source of miraculous life-transforming powers in Papa’s chequebook.

Marina is what they call in Italy a “bambocciona,” which translates, roughly, as “big baby”—the term for the ever-growing number of young adults still living at home. Not their home—with a spouse and young kids and putting out the garbage and repainting the stairs and so forth—but at their parents’ home, in the same bedroom they’ve slept in since they were in diapers.

While there may not be a specific name in North America for kids who stay at home well past the age of 18 (which happens to be the start of college age and 2 years past the age at which a child can legally move out in some jurisdictions), Canadian culture has traditionally regarded such people as parasitic. Growing up in rural Ontario, one came across a small number of individuals who were in their 30′s and still sleeping in their childhood bedrooms. Society generally heaped scorn on such individuals, calling them lazy and unmotivated, and quite often they were correct. Many of the bamboccioni were involved with weed or harder substances, providing parents the opportunity to lecture their children about the dangers of drugs – after all, you don’t want to end up like ______ over there.

The North American bambocciona is also the butt of jokes, being ridiculed in television and movies as an unmotivated clown. New York rapper Thirstin Howell III parodied the plight of the long term dependent in the track “Still live with my Moms”

Trying to f*ck me while his mom’s home,
Free rent, light, gas and phone,
A momma’s boy even though my ass is grown,
Got the same bedroom, since third grade,
Still be living here when I’m eight hundred and eighty eight
…
I always say I’m moving out this year,
But it’ll be sooner if welfare finds out I live here,
Yo it’s cheap by my place,
I ain’t scared to open bills cuz non of them in my name,
Got kicked out, my mom said I could move back,
If I prove that I didn’t steal my sister’s food stamps

Much of the ridicule in North America can be seen as a function of at least two factors -

  • America and Canada and both historically “frontier” nations that value individuality and being self-made. This contrasts with more bambocciona-friendly nations like Italy and Japan, which have much older and patriarchal cultures.
  • As noted in Steyn’s article, housing and land are much cheaper in North America when compared to other developed regions. This is due in part to the vast amount of arable land in the United States and at least the southern part of Canada. Italy has approximately 1.7 times the population of Canada yet is contained in a land mass smaller than Newfoundland.

Where Independence Fails

However, the Canadian economy has transformed significantly over the past 30 years, resulting in conditions that may leave children who leave home before 30 at a serious disadvantage against their lingering counterparts. Firstly, a college degree is no longer a “nice to have” but the bare minimum required for anyone wanting to have a career. College and University are only partially subsidized in Canada, leaving students thousands of dollars in debt before their first career job. If the student doesn’t have the luxury of living at home, the debt could number in the tens of thousands.

But when school is over there is no excuse for the wee ones not the move out right? Not quite. The average house price in Canada was $332,000 as of September 2009 and rising steadily. Larger centers (where youth are more likely to congregate) paint an even bleaker picture:

Toronto: $407,000 (10.3% yearly increase)
Calgary: $395,000 (1.1% yearly increase)
Vancouver: $611,000 (14% yearly increase)

Back in the good ol days (ie before the 1990 recession) banks expected 10-20% down payment on a new home. Does the average youth have a spare $40,000-$60,000? Before you answer, consider that the median income in Canada was $63,600 as of 2006. Assuming that the median income continues to rise at the same rate as it has over the past 10 years, it can be assumed that the median income for 2009 (not yet available) will be around $66,800. Thus, the ratio of median housing price to median income is around 5 – considerably higher than years gone by (most middle class people I have spoken to quoted about 2-3 for their personal ratio during the 70′s and 80′s) and indicative that owning a home is getting more expensive even after correction for inflation.

Recently, the Canadian government, in an attempt to head off a housing bubble, tightened mortgage restrictions to make requirements even tougher for first time buyers. The new rules requiring buyers to be able to pay a five-year, fixed rate mortgage -regardless of the actual terms of the mortgage- will have the greatest effect on lower-income buyers. New graduates make up a sizable portion of this group and making a larger down-payment will once again be a primary concern.

Ultimately, it is easier to save for a down payment under mom’s roof than it is while renting (a practice ironically looked down upon as indicative of lack of financial responsibility). Thus, the bambocciona is in no danger of going extinct in Canada any time soon.

17
Feb

The End of an Era: Weaning My Daughter

By Emilia Liz 4 Comments
Categories: family

December 11 2009 marked an important date in my life: it was the day I stopped breastfeeding my two-year-old daughter Gabriella Michelle. I hadn’t deliberately planned to wean her on that very day. But I was unexpectedly put on an anti-seizure medication that the doctors told me was incompatible with breastfeeding. So I stopped nursing her right then and there.

It wasn’t much of an adjustment for Gabriella herself. She had been eating solid foods since the age of six months, and by the time I weaned her she was basically on a three-meal-a-day schedule. At that point I only nursed her before bedtimes and nap-times. She was using the breast more as a pacifier than a source of nourishment.

For me, though, the transition was more difficult. I must admit that in a way I felt “freer” once I had weaned her. No longer did I have to worry about wearing “lactation-friendly” (i.e. where I could easily expose a breast) nightgowns and pyjamas for the rare occasions she woke up at 1:00 a.m. demanding a midnight snack. The side effects of medicines that could pass through the milk, like aspirin and Tylenol, ceased to be a concern. Perhaps most importantly, a large weight seemed to have been lifted off my chest (pardon the pun!) at the thought that I need not be at her beck and call by providing milk for her whenever and wherever she wanted. While she had for the most part confined her “milk attacks” to just before she went to sleep, I still had to be on the alert for them in places like church, other people’s houses, and so on.

On a humorous note, I could now answer back to those people who had badgered me about never getting my daughter off the breast. A year earlier, for example, my brother asked me when I planned to stop nursing her. “I’m going to let her self-wean,” I replied confidently. “When she’s fourteen?” my brother remarked sarcastically. A (male) colleague teased me that in a few years I would be breastfeeding Gabriella through the schoolyard gate.

Yet with weaning came a certain sadness. I had enjoyed our breastfeeding relationship for over two and a half years. It hadn’t always been smooth sailing – I’d experienced everything from minor nuisances such as leaking milk (best remedy: breast pads) to potentially serious issues, like a foiled-at-the-last-minute bout of mastitis – but overall I hadn’t had any major problems. Breastfeeding, I believe, helped contribute to a special closeness with my little girl.

The sadness stemmed as well from the realization that I’ll in all probability never breastfeed again. My chances of having any more biological children are fairly remote, both for lack of interest and, at 41, of ability. And in the somewhat more likely scenario I adopted a child (as I’ve mentioned in other essays, adoptive mothers can breastfeed, though they usually have to supplement their milk with formula), I doubt I’d get a newborn, and the anti-seizure medication I’m taking would also present a barrier to nursing. So my breasts, like my reproductive organs, may be taking a well-deserved retirement.

Seeing my milk dwindle to almost nothing has also given rise to mixed feelings. Again, a certain sense of relief: once the milk supply completely dries up, I’ll be able to perform the breast self-examination my doctor has suggested I do regularly at my age. But the fact that my milk was once the sole source of food for my daughter and that it helped create such a close tie between us has triggered an instinctive urge in me to “hang on” to the few drops I still have.

But all in all, I must say that my memories of breastfeeding my daughter give me feelings not of nostalgia or sadness but happiness at the thought that I have crafted a wonderful relationship with her, a closeness that’s not going to go away just because I’m no longer nursing her.

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