Six days to go before the day. Christmas which I perennially misspell as Christams.
Our heating has been belting along, bless its tiny boots.
My mother's heating went off at 10:00 o'clock last night. She put the electric heater on, and surrounded herself with hot water bottles. Surprisingly, she slept and this morning she rang me.
She's lucky we live within a two minute walk. Elderly, bent over, unable to hear or understand a lot of what she hears, my mother is now tiny and very frail. She was young during the years of World War II, recalls it all with horror, says it should never happen again, deplores the fact that many, many regions of the world are torn apart by war in these modern days.
My mother is a survivor. She is a heroine: she and other young women chopped tree after tree down during the years 1942 to 1946 to send them to be made into pit props, telegraph poles, ladders, newsprint, and other such necessary items. Timber Corps women were part of the Women's Land Army.
"By July 1943 there were 87,000 Land Girls and they were joining at the rate of 4,000 a month. Despite this, in 1944 the government, led by Ernest Bevin, declared that Land Girls would be excluded from post-war education and training schemes. This led to protests and strikes, and Lady Denman resigned. However, Her Majesty the Queen made the people aware of her support for the WLA and eventually the government was forced to compromise. A Land Army Benevolent Fund was promised £150,000 and resettlement grants of £150 were agreed, but Land Girls received no medals for their services. The much prized uniform was taken back. One was only allowed to keep greatcoats and shoes, but only if the greatcoat was dyed blue· "
My mother loved her greatcoat. She said it had style and suited her. You would think they could've given those young women their coats as a small thank you, wouldn't you?
In 2000, for the first time since the World War II ended, the Land Army women were invited to the cenotaph to remember their fallen friends, brothers, fathers, uncles, cousins and sweethearts.
They were honoured in 2008 by the Labour government issuing a badge for the Land Army and Timber Corps girls. Gordon Brown said:
"We have been slow to thank you. We could have done this years ago but I'm pleased that we can do it now. We owe you a huge debt of gratitude."
Scotland went one better, erecting a life-size bronze statue of a Timber Corps girl in the forest near Aberfoyle in 2007.
I was pleased to be able write an article for Ancestors magazine about my mother's experiences in the Timber Corps. In the inimitable way that some mothers have, she read it and commented: "Well, that was better than I expected."
Here and now, for my little mother, for all the women who undertook heavy manual labour, left their families, lived in huts, trudged through snow, laughed at adversity and saved thousands of tons of space in British ships for food and necessary supplies, I dedicate this blog entry.
To you wonderful women - God bless you, wherever you are.
Showing posts with label mothers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mothers. Show all posts
Sunday, 19 December 2010
Saturday, 23 January 2010
Who owns a child?
I know that there are all kinds of political committees, and cloak and dagger doings going on in the world of Westminster with various people looking forward to dining on the bones of home educators. I know, but I thought I'd leave it to other people to discuss the circus of lies, spin, counterfeit claims and sheer stupidity and chat about something else.
The something else is a question: who owns a child?
I suppose it's a bit rich starting the thoughts off with a bald statement like that; however, I woke up thinking that it is the nub of the matter.
Who should direct the child?
Who is responsible for the child?
This is a bit like a Biology lesson. Children are the result of an egg in a human female and a sperm from a human male meeting and joining. At least, the genetic components called the chromosomes - mainly the bodily blueprints - meet and bingo! a human embryo starts to grow some little time later. If all goes well, nine or ten months later, a human infant emerges from it's mother's body and there is another individual in the world.
So, it seems quite pertinent to me to ask could there be an infant without a father or, in some cases, a donator of sperm. Astonishingly, there could. There is probably nothing stopping us in the scientific line from removing the bare and basic packet of genetic information from one egg and injecting it into another. The resulting child would be female (since the sperm carrying the Y or male-making chromosome would not be involved) and the baby girl would have all the genetic blueprints she might ever need to live and grow successfully.
Unfortunately, that line of thinking appears to rule out men. Men, basically, are unnecessary. Their sperm are stripped down and carry virtually nothing beyond a pack of blueprints. Some men, of course, prefer to stick around to help raise their children, but very many do not and they are expendable. So many children are living in one parent families where they have no father that they know, no resident father or an absent and sometimes unmourned male parent.
This is not to trivialise men's importance in their children's lives at all. I believe that men can contribute greatly to their children. It is a mere speculation upon who should be the ultimate arbiter of the fate of a child.
We're left with the woman who is the bed and nourisher of the developing human being. Blood from the mother swishes around next to the baby's blood both removing toxins and delivering oxygen and other nutrients. The woman maintains the child. We cannot grow an infant in an embryonium in a lab. For there to be a new baby in the world a human female must secrete it in her uterus, nurture it beneath her heart and birth it in due course.
Women are vital in the lives of children.
Now we have the state...
In some outlying cases a mother may not be able to care for her child, and the state should, in that case, failing any other relative ready, willing and able to take over, step in to assume the maternal role.
The state, whatever the denizens of the state think, is not responsible for conceiving, nurturing, maintaining and growing a human being in its first stages of life. The state is irrelevant to the support system that a mother develops for the benefit of her offspring.
The mother - the woman who holds an embryo and then a foetus inside herself - is the true right and absolute judge of what is good for and that will maintain and elevate her child.
Mothers are the very force of creation.
They are the goddesses of production and fecund power.
They are the growth of the human race and the source of its power.
You cannot replace a mother with a state official. You cannot get rid of mothers in the headlong race to zombify children.
A woman who bears and raises a child is the right person to interpret and realise the needs and wants of that child. She is the child's representative and guardian. She is the 'owner' of the seed of her body.
No matter what the state may think or say.
The something else is a question: who owns a child?
I suppose it's a bit rich starting the thoughts off with a bald statement like that; however, I woke up thinking that it is the nub of the matter.
Who should direct the child?
Who is responsible for the child?
This is a bit like a Biology lesson. Children are the result of an egg in a human female and a sperm from a human male meeting and joining. At least, the genetic components called the chromosomes - mainly the bodily blueprints - meet and bingo! a human embryo starts to grow some little time later. If all goes well, nine or ten months later, a human infant emerges from it's mother's body and there is another individual in the world.
So, it seems quite pertinent to me to ask could there be an infant without a father or, in some cases, a donator of sperm. Astonishingly, there could. There is probably nothing stopping us in the scientific line from removing the bare and basic packet of genetic information from one egg and injecting it into another. The resulting child would be female (since the sperm carrying the Y or male-making chromosome would not be involved) and the baby girl would have all the genetic blueprints she might ever need to live and grow successfully.
Unfortunately, that line of thinking appears to rule out men. Men, basically, are unnecessary. Their sperm are stripped down and carry virtually nothing beyond a pack of blueprints. Some men, of course, prefer to stick around to help raise their children, but very many do not and they are expendable. So many children are living in one parent families where they have no father that they know, no resident father or an absent and sometimes unmourned male parent.
This is not to trivialise men's importance in their children's lives at all. I believe that men can contribute greatly to their children. It is a mere speculation upon who should be the ultimate arbiter of the fate of a child.
We're left with the woman who is the bed and nourisher of the developing human being. Blood from the mother swishes around next to the baby's blood both removing toxins and delivering oxygen and other nutrients. The woman maintains the child. We cannot grow an infant in an embryonium in a lab. For there to be a new baby in the world a human female must secrete it in her uterus, nurture it beneath her heart and birth it in due course.
Women are vital in the lives of children.
Now we have the state...
In some outlying cases a mother may not be able to care for her child, and the state should, in that case, failing any other relative ready, willing and able to take over, step in to assume the maternal role.
The state, whatever the denizens of the state think, is not responsible for conceiving, nurturing, maintaining and growing a human being in its first stages of life. The state is irrelevant to the support system that a mother develops for the benefit of her offspring.
The mother - the woman who holds an embryo and then a foetus inside herself - is the true right and absolute judge of what is good for and that will maintain and elevate her child.
Mothers are the very force of creation.
They are the goddesses of production and fecund power.
They are the growth of the human race and the source of its power.
You cannot replace a mother with a state official. You cannot get rid of mothers in the headlong race to zombify children.
A woman who bears and raises a child is the right person to interpret and realise the needs and wants of that child. She is the child's representative and guardian. She is the 'owner' of the seed of her body.
No matter what the state may think or say.
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