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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 17, 1995)
Commentary Friday, February 17,1995 Page 5 Parenting is a masochist’s job My husband and I are masoch ists. For the past three years, we have paid a woman $50 a month to torture us. We get a lot of pain for the buck — 20 minutes a day, five days a week. Our pseudo-dominatrix is a piano teacher. The punishment is delivered through her pupil — our son. The nightly ritual goes some thing like this: “Justin, have you practiced yet?” (Obviously a rhetorical question; die kid would eat a broccoli-and tofu sandwich on whole wheat bread with alfalfa sprouts before he would ever consider stroking the ivories without being told.) “No.” “Justin, you must practice before 8 o’clock.” “No. I’m not going to practice.” Finally, after several minutes of volleyed pleas and rejections culminating in a threat of imminent withdraw of television privileges, he consents to play. These machinations are simply foreplay. The real torment begins when Justin sits down at the piano bench — his own personal rack. Torture chamber. Gallows. Cruci fix. “I hate the piano. “I hate it soooo much. “Why? Why do you make me do this? You know I hate it.” (I guess we must be sadists as well.) He plays for several minutes — excruciating agony. He bangs the keys, tosses scale books on the floor. “I’ll do anything, ANYTHING, Cindy Lange-Kublck if you let me stop taking lessons.” He cries and rests his head on middle C. After the longest 20 minutes of the day, 18 of which have been spent vilifying his parents, Beethoven, Bach and musical instruments in general, practice is over. Until tomorrow. My husband, Mark, and I fall, spent and exhausted, into bed. We’re doing it — we tell ourselves — for his own good. It’s our JOB. Most parents are by nature masochistic fools. I guess I’m not being entirely fair. I’m sure there are flocks of decent, mature, altruistic parents out there who would never dream of cramming piano lessons down their child’s throats. You know the type. Their child simply adores practicing — piano, violin, shorthand. Their little ones love work and are innately self motivated and disciplined. These are parents who never begged their child to practice the piano, who never pleaded with their offspring to take a shower, or brush their teeth, or at the very least to scrape the bacteria off of their molars with a fingernail. Are we the only parents out there whose children do not understand the concept of clean underwear? Or the rationale behind using shampoo when you wash your hair? Is Justin the only kid in town whose greatest pleasure in life is a can of Mountain Dew and a bag of Nacho Cheesier Doritos? Does he not realize that we make him change his underwear, brush his teeth and play the piano because we love him and we want him to be able to go out into the cold cruel world with skills that go beyond picking fuzz off wool blankets while watching “Saved By The Ra119” No. He does not. We do these evil things, according to the wise and-all-knowing 12-year-old, because his parents are cruel and heartless. In all likelihood the kid is right — these failings are our fault. I probably had too many nega tive thoughts while he was in utero. And Mark is to blame for Justin’s rejection of the piano. He’s played far too many renditions of Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsody.” And he washes his hair every day —what soon-to-be teen-age boy wants to mimic his father? And maybe it’s simply because we truly are masochists. After all, we let Justin’s little sister take up the recorder this year. But we have learned our lesson. (Have you listened to anyone play the recorder lately?) We’re not making her practice. Lange-Kubic k is a senior news-editorial and sociology major and a Daily Nebraskan columnist Bedroom noses hold secrets wiutvii wp, VVV1 JUIIVi I want you to forget everything you’ve ever learned about dating. Forget everything your mother ever told you about love, and don’t trust your intuition. If you’re like me, it’s never gotten you anywhere. I’m about to tell you about a book that could potentially change your life. The book is called “The Naked Face — The Essential Guide to Reading Faces” by Lailan Young. And excuse me if I sound like a late-night infomercial or a used-car salesman, but my recent literary find will make you look differently at everyone you’ve ever known and everyone you’ll ever meet. I bet you didn’t know that that bump on your lover’s nose could indicate lack of sexual stamina. And you thought it was just broken (and I mean his nose!). I bet you also didn’t know that, the shape of someone’s nostrils can indicate whether a person is outgoing, insensitive, weak-willed or likely to bear grudges. And you thought they were just handy places to stick your finger. But wait, there’s more. What you thought were just wrinkles around someone’s mouth actually are clues to whether a person lacks willpower or whether they’re motivated. And the way a person squints can tell you if they’re intellectual, spiteful, irrational or i - Heather Lampe easily depressed. Right now you’re probably thinking, “This columnist is a real weirdo. She’s probably a frequent caller to Dionne Warwick’s psychic hot line.” No, I’m not a blind believer. But wouldn’t it be great if you really could find out characteristic traits by reading someone’s face? We’d all have to wear bags over our heads to hide our secrets. That whole Muslim veil thing could become very hip. Dating would be completely different. There might be love at first sight, but that first sight would be a really important one, and a picture really could say a thousand words. “I’m sorry Herman, but we aren’t going to be able to continue this relationship. I never realized your top lip is bigger than your bottom lip, and you know what that means.” According to Lailan Young, a big upper lip indicates a person’s iixennooa to cneai ana participate in extramarital affairs. But on the other hand, if Young is right, your face could also attract a lot of people. If a person’s chin is fleshy and circular, they supposedly have a healthy sex drive. People with flat cheeks and mouth comers that point upwards are supposedly very honest. People who have lips of equal size are said to give and receive love in equal amounts. The list goes on and on. “Bertha, I just noticed that your philtrum (the vertical groove under your nose) is really wide. Do you want to go out tonight?” What Bertha may not know is that her wide philtrum is supposed to mean she has a keen sex drive and a great sexual appetite. Like I said, if Young is right, we’re all going to be wearing Hinky Dinky bags over our heads. Men will be growing beards and mus taches, and women will be fre quenting plastic surgeons. Unfortunately, I’ve had to come to grips with the fact that this column will bear my picture next to it, so you’re all going to know my dirty little secrets. Hey, sickos, quit looking at my philtrum!! Lampe Is a Junior news-editorial and En glish major and a Dally Nebraskan colum nist Quality child care beats orphanages When the talk of the times turned to orphanages for non orphans, I confess that a small, cartoon-like light bulb went on over my head. Here was an idea with great potential. If we were going to take the children of poor mothers and raise them in group homes or centers, why not start modestly and cheaply? Why not start with part-time orphanages? Why not keep them open during working hours? We could call it day care. After all, the folks who favor 24-hour care would certainly favor eight- or 10-hour care. Anyone who likes Boys Town would like Preschool Towns. I know, I know, they might see through my ploy. It will be hard to get a child-care subcon tract into the Contract With America. For reasons that escape me, child care is considered a tired old liberal idea, while orphanages are a bright new conservative idea. Maybe it’s a difference of day and night. Today, at the ideological core of this debate are the families, struggling and juggling with work and kids, who have come to the conclusion that if they can do it, so can welfare mothers. More to the point, if they HAVE to do it, so should welfare mothers. Into this emotional and heated debate now comes a new and critical study of the quality of child care. A team of psycholo gists and economists from four universities — Yale, UCLA, the Universities of Denver and North Carolina — examined 400 child care centers and tested children in four states. They came to the depressing but not surprising conclusion that the vast majority of children in these centers were getting care that was “mediocre in quality, sufficiently poor to interfere with children’s emotional and intellectual development.” Only one in seven centers provided both the security and stimulation that was worthy of a high rating. The youngest of the children fare the worst. About 40 percent of infant and toddler rooms were rated poor, and as Yale’s Sharon Lynn Kagan says, “When I say poor, I mean poor — broken glass on the playground, un changed diapers.” In fact, the better centers didn’t cost the parents more. The extra money came to the centers from sources like block grants, private funds, corporations. The difference in the price tag of mediocre and good care was as Ellen Goodman little as 10 percent. But when they had the dollars and had to live up to state standards, centers used die money in ways that matter — in the quality, quantity and constancy of staff. Perhaps the most startling finding in the study is about parents, the buyers in the child care market. While the research ers said most care was mediocre or poor, 90 percent of tfte parents said their child care was good. The parents’ views may be a form of myopia brought on by guilt. How could I leave my kid at a place I didn’t think was good? Or it could be inexperi ence. How many parents have seen the kind of centers that are the norm in France or Japan? But any way you look at it, this is a case of low consumer expectations. And a market that meets them. For too long, child care has been tangled up in arguments about women’s roles rather than children’s lives. Middle-class mothers felt that any criticism of day care was really criticism of them. Lower-income and, especially, single mothers were forced to be grateful for any child care at all. Now we may have a wave of AFDC mothers searching for places in an underfinanced system threatened even further by cuts in block grants. In this environment, researcher Kagan says that parents have to become much savvier and more demand ing consumers. Those who care about kid stuff have to be savvier citizens. The question isn’t just who will take care of kids, but how they’ll be taken care of. Have you heard the promises from the orphanage fans? They insist that these won’t be Dickensian warehouses, but warm, nurturing, high-quality, group settings few children. Well, OK. Let’s give them a try. How about dawn to dusk? Monday to Friday. © 1995 The Boston Globe Newspaper Company TVitowiNg out the first ball of the’95 season. Mike Luckovich ■ \ ■
