Tag Archives: education

Let Them Eat Cake

January 21, 2015 D.A. Adams Leave a comment

I have no doubt that successful entrepreneurs have worked hard to get their businesses afloat and sustainable. I have worked in many different industries on many different levels and have witnessed firsthand just how hard many owners and executives work. There is no doubt that hands-on entrepreneurs put in long hours and suffer incredible levels of stress. I harbor no ill will for anyone who rolls up their sleeves, puts in the hard work, and reaps rewards for their efforts. Hard work and effort should always be rewarded.

However, where I bristle and when the fighting side of me comes out is when someone of means insists their hard work and effort is superior to others just because they have made more money from it. First and foremost, no one does anything alone. Unless you personally built the building, paved all the roads you use, grew or mined all your resources, and invented every piece of technology you utilize, you received help along the way. Unless you were a trust fund baby who decided to gamble your own wealth, somewhere along the way a bank extended you credit. Unless you personally handle each and every step of your day-to-day operations, somewhere along the way employees have helped you achieve success. Those employees who help you succeed, from the janitorial staff all the way to your second in command, deserve to be able to afford the basic necessities of life, have the opportunity to send their children to vocational school or college, and be able to save for retirement. And they shouldn’t have to hold down second and third jobs to do it, either.

I’ve never known financial success personally, but I’ve worked hard all my life, often juggling those two and three jobs just to stay afloat. As an educator, I typically put in 12, 14, even 16 hour days during the school year, and then usually held down some kind of side job during off times from teaching. I’ve witnessed firsthand good, honest, hardworking people clock out from one 8 or 9 hour shift and hustle to their other job for another 8 or 9 hour shift. I personally once worked about a year and half, 12 hours a day, without one single day off except Christmas. In graduate school, we often put in 16 hour days, 7 days a week. We all work hard, and American workers are among the most productive in the world, even today. Yet our wages have stagnated for 30+ years while inflation has skyrocketed. The myth of hard work equating to success is just that: a myth.

If I live another million years, I will never comprehend the utter disdain some people of means hold for working people. I will never grasp how it’s okay for an executive to make $10,000/hr but unreasonable for workers to earn just a living wage. I’ll never understand how it’s good business sense for CEOs to outsource labor to foreign countries, but class warfare when a working person speaks out for rights. My mind cannot fathom the levels of contempt and pure hatred some people have for those “beneath” them. If you measure your self worth in financial terms, you truly dwell in a poverty stricken existence, no matter how much wealth you accrue.

General Posts

I Dream of a Day

January 19, 2015 D.A. Adams 2 Comments

As we remember Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his messages of civil disobedience and social justice, I thought I would share my dreams for the world and my nation.

I dream of a day when there is real economic opportunity for all, a day when all positive contributions to society are valued and rewarded. When the day finally arrives that physical labor is seen as more than disposable, we will begin to enjoy real freedoms for all. When the ability to teach others becomes as valuable as throwing a football, we will begin heal the fragmentation of our society. When knowledge and sacrifice are once again revered instead of ridiculed and avoided, we will once again innovate the world. When basic humanity trumps financial greed, we will have a society that seeks justice.

I dream of a day when people listen twice as much as they talk, and nations stop fighting over petty grudges and insignificant differences. When the peaceful, civilized people of the world hold sway over the warmongers, we will begin to know real, lasting peace. When the wants of ordinary citizens – to raise their families and have safety and nourishment – become more important than the greed of a few, the world will begin to move away from the threats of annihilation. When cooperation is given equal footing as competition, as both are necessary for human prosperity, we will begin to solve most of our problems.

I dream of a day when people live as much by principles as by self-interest, a day when people remember that their communities are as valuable as their own homes. When people refuse to accept a child going hungry or the mentally ill sleeping on the street, we will reclaim honor. When the day comes that we protect the weakest and most vulnerable among us, our world will brighten into something worth protecting, something worth defending. When we begin to see each other as brothers and sisters, we can begin pushing back against the darker impulses of our species, and maybe, just maybe, if people do not feel the suffocation of desperation, some of those darker impulses will fade on their own.

I dream of a day when people are free to love whomever they love and express themselves in whatever manner they see fit, without judgment or condemnation. When that day comes, we will learn real freedom. If people can ever let go of their deeply entrenched hate and simply accept others as they are, not as one might wish they were, we can begin to communicate with each other instead of at each other.

These are my simple dreams for this world.

General Posts

A Disneyland Dad’s Retort

December 29, 2014 D.A. Adams 5 Comments

The other day, I read an article on The Huffington Post that condemned divorced dads for becoming the “fun” parent. According to the author, an “Uncle Dad” or “Disneyland Dad” is a father who 1) is preoccupied with his own needs over those of his children, 2) does not adhere to the “rules” of the mother’s house, 3) focuses on fun over discipline, and 4) in general does not take parenting seriously. Now, before I get into my rebuttal, I would like to make a couple of points clear. I have tremendous respect for single moms who have to shoulder the entire burden alone. My sister spent many years as one of them, and as an educator, I saw hundreds of examples of these women. Their dedication to their children is dazzling. This post is in no way directed towards them. Also, in every conceivable way, I am for equal rights and stand with women on issues of equality. No one should confuse this post with those issues because my umbrage is directed at the condemnation that article leveled at fathers like myself.

For my purposes here, I’m going to focus on a generic custody scenario in which the mother has primary custody and the father has every other weekend and one weekday evening on alternating weeks. Also, for the purposes of this post, let’s completely set aside which parent first wanted the divorce because I only want to focus on the father’s perspective as it relates to being the non-custodial parent. Also for the purposes of this post, I am focusing only on fathers who do regularly have their children during the court approved time. We all know that there are plenty of men who are fathers only in biological terms, and those men do not deserve consideration here.

For starters, the author of that article condemns fathers who are late to pick up their children. She does acknowledge that one of the excuses is being “tied up at work” but goes on dismiss this reason as a form of self absorption. Typically, the non-custodial parent pays child support to the custodial parent, and I will be glad to tell you from firsthand, intimate experience how financially crippling child support can be. Fathers who are current on their obligation do so to their own detriment, and that burden can be quite taxing. It’s not that we don’t want to provide for our children, but rather the simple arithmetic that after child support, health insurance, and taxes, we are often left with roughly half of our gross income. Therefore, we gladly jump at any opportunity for overtime or bonus pay, not because we are “self-absorbed” but because we need the money. So yeah, maybe we do run a little late from time to time because we are finishing up an important project on Friday afternoon. And maybe also because we don’t want to drag work home on our weekends with the kids.

Speaking of self-absorption, that’s another condemnation the author makes, fathers who are preoccupied with their own needs. My ex-wife has accused me of this crap, most recently when I expressed resentment over not being able to afford desperately needed dental work. How dare I put my own needs ahead of my children’s? Never mind that work thing and how important a decent smile is for public image. I was the bad guy for thinking only of my own needs (I still haven’t been able to afford the dental work by the way). Never mind the thousands of little niceties I do without to keep that child support current. Never mind the oil changes I delay to pay for the tire patch, or the worn out shoes I keep wearing so I’m not late on the electric bill. No, I’m preoccupied with my own needs if I do anything good for myself or answer an important email while the kids are with me or text with my girlfriend during that time in an effort to keep that relationship nourished. There is an impossible standard set for the non-custodial parent, one that supposes our lives should exist in an extended limbo where we are available at all times for the whims of the custodial parent and our children. I’m sorry, but in the process of rebuilding our own lives, we have to carve out our own existence in those long periods of separation from our children. We are not on hold.

The author goes on to blame the non-custodial father if grades are not maintained because homework is not completed. Typically, during those alternating weekday evenings, the father gets two to three hours of actual time with the child. Is that when the child should be completing homework? Doesn’t that idea contradict the condemnation of the father for being “tied up at work”? If one is going to criticize fathers for not focusing solely on the children during every moment of their time together, doesn’t that same standard apply to the child paying attention to the father? As far as weekends go, do most children spend their Friday and Saturday nights at the mothers’ residences riveted on their studies? I worked in education for 16 years. I know firsthand that the vast majority of students, regardless of home life, will wait until the last possible minute to begin their homework. To shift this blame onto fathers for their 6-7 days of the month with the children is ludicrous.

Along those same lines, the author blames fathers for self-esteem issues the children develop. First and foremost, correlation does not equal causation. Just because the father might appear to be the “fun” parent (more on that in a moment) that does not mean that he is to blame for his children’s issues with self-image. The current paradigm of most school systems to create a false sense of confidence in children by lavishing them with positive reinforcement and avoiding negative at each step deserves as much blame for self-esteem issues as anything, but that’s a different discussion for a different day. Fathers get 6-7 days a month with their children. That means the mother has 22-24 days, depending on the month. In this time it’s not possible that mothers could be to blame for their children’s issues? Only the “Uncle Dad” is to blame? Seriously? That just seems like an easy pass for the parent who does spend more actual time influencing the children’s environment.

But you know what? That’s pretty much par for course with that article as it places zero blame on the mother for anything. Maybe the mother is “exhausted and worried” because she’s an overzealous control freak who wants to micromanage every second of her children’s lives. Maybe dad missed that parent teacher conference because mom never told him which night. Maybe the teenage children are disappointed with their father because the mother has spent ten years painting a picture of him as a worthless bum, and the teen hasn’t experienced enough of the real world yet to understand the sacrifices the father has had to make just to keep a roof over his head and gas in his car to get to work. Nope, according to this article, only the dad is to blame.

The last point I want to address is the notion of “Disneyland Dads” having no rules. I take quite a bit of personal offense to this one. For starters, no one has a right to tell me what rules I can or cannot set within my home. My rights as a father are that in my home, bed time is when I say, not when my ex-wife says. That’s part of being an ex. You lose the right to dictate what goes on in my house. I’ll use my discretion as what games or movies my children watch under my supervision. Mom doesn’t like it? Sorry. I don’t like having limited time with my kids, but that’s my reality. You don’t like the kids playing outdoors in the dirt? Tough. My kids will get to enjoy and experience nature. They are my children too, and in my home, on my time, we have two rules: 1) Be safe and 2) Be happy. When in doubt, consult rule #1. Mom doesn’t like that the kids have to readjust to her rules when they return to her home? Oh well. I don’t like missing birthdays and holidays and having things scheduled when I can’t be involved and missing out on countless firsts and onlys. Just because my rules don’t look like your rules that doesn’t mean I don’t love my children more than anything or don’t worry for their safety every moment they aren’t with me or am emotionally damaging them. It just means that I have my own way of handling things, and maybe mom can be a little more considerate of me if she wants me to be a little more considerate of her because, unlike the narrative that author tries to push, life is about give and take.

Are there crappy fathers out there? Of course. But there are also plenty of crappy mothers. To attempt to shift the blame completely onto one side is not only irresponsible, it also creates a divisive wedge that engenders resentment. By this author’s definition, I am a “Disneyland Dad” but I know too well that I have suffered and struggled and fought to remain a vibrant part of my sons’ lives. I’ve endured more hardships for the sake of my children than I would wish on anyone, and I would endure it all again as long as they are safe and happy. I will not allow anyone, regardless of their intentions, to disparage my role as a father just because it doesn’t coincide with their vision of what a dad should be. My rights as a person and as a parent are just as valid as anyone else’s, and if my children end up resenting me because I fell short of their needs, then I’ll live with those consequences. But I’ll be willing to bet that if you look a little farther out beyond just the teen years, you’ll find some adults who come to realize that the sorry old dads did a little more than they were ever credited with by resentful moms and family lawyers.