[heartwood]

I read Alice Walker's account of letting her 14 y.o. daughter sleep with her boyfriend in their house and then taking her for the inevitable abortion, a prideful, and paranoid account. Later I read of Rebecca's becoming a pro-abortion activist in her twenties.

Thank God she has found some healing and sense of what we were made for - even if she still has a way to go.

[vpintheak]

How sad.

[AnAmericanMother]

Why in the world don't they marry, if "Glen" is such a good father?

Like you say, she's got a ways to go. Poor kid.

[livius]

Very sad.

[GourmetDan]

Henry Makow regularly writes about the destructiveness of feminism at SaveTheMales.com.

[GOP Poet]

Wow. Thank God for this blessing of a child--her clarity, her truth, her lesson. My heart went out to her reading this and to many in my generation and on as this is the story of many of us--some never able to have children for many of the reasons she mentions in her personal essay. Many left with the bones of previous abortions and the emptiness of never being able to have them too late. Many left with too much loneliness and self indulgent mothers, talking about what a weight the child was to them in the name of 'honesty and friendship dictated by feminism'.

This stance--taken not only by Alice Walker but many more of her mindset--has caused more than devastation, it has wiped out a huge possible population that never got a chance at a first breath and huge populations of women and men that were brainwashed to think they were free when just the opposite was true. They were and are instead locked in mental, spiritual, and emotional cages by the brainwashing of small gods that think they are the true one.

This child grown to an adult has shared a truth that is a great gift. I hope many get the chance to read it. May God continue to bless her and her family.

[Think free or die]

My own mother was certainly never as strident in her feminism as Alice Walker, but her views made for a tough childhood for me. I think she was trying to be helpful once, when she told me that academic studies had shown that women with one child somehow managed to juggle their careers and family responsibilities, while those with two children were just "ruined". As a second child, I was hardly thrilled with her report. I spent a lot of time alone as a child. Mom tended to ignore me or plop me in front of a record player with opera records while she stayed busy elsewhere. I don't have any recollection of her ever reading a book to me or playing a game. As soon as my older brother was in school, she went back to school herself and left me with a succession of neighbors during the day.

While I'm sure my mother's remote style didn't do me much good, I'm grateful that I was nurtured enough to have children myself. Our two sons are the joy of my life, and indeed, have brought Mom plenty of happiness in her old age as well.

Good for Rebecca Walker; she's obviously travelled a great distance, and it's good to see her write about it.

[yellow rubber ducky]

Rebecca wrote of her mother teaching her that children were a burden, a millstone around a womans neck.

How sad that she grew up no doubt thinking that she herself was a burden, a disaster that ruined her mothers life. (She never said that that’s what she felt, only that she was hurt when she read her mothers writing.) That is child abuse, plain and simple.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

There are a number of people out there who I call “poison parents”. They exist for several reasons, but mostly because they project that which is bad in their lives on their children.

1) The child is a taker. I can no longer have fun, have a good job, travel, get married, go to school, etc., because of the child. They ruined my marriage.

2) The child will be what I couldn’t. These are the typical stage parents, willing to drive their children into a nervous breakdown to achieve the greatness the parent never did. They know if their kids work hard enough, they’ll make a million and give it to their parents out of gratitude or something.

3) I’m worthless and rotten, so I will either inflict that on my child, or I will abandon them so I won’t.

4) The experimenters. Let’s see if my 4 year old kid likes marijuana and whiskey. They’ll be 5 soon, that’s old enough for sex.

5) The pure sadists, physical, emotional and intellectual. They live to hurt the child in any way they can. They will give them a pet until the child bonds with it, then kill it. The beat the child, the demean the child, and they fill the kid’s head with endless messages of despair.

One word of advice to the author.

Give up on the idea of her ever being a good grandmother, because she won’t, and could harm your child as well. She will go to her grave filled with envy, bile and loneliness, because that is the life she has made for herself. It is what she expects, and wants.

Instead, find a surrogate grandmother who dearly loves children from the bottom of her heart, and is in pain because she no longer has children around her she can love. Such people bring forth love like the Sun brings forth light.

Doing so will bring joy to two lives.