Heroes
Wait, Banksy Doesn't Believe In Global Warming?
I'm loving this Banksy graffiti protest that's designed to drown itself.
03.16.12
More and more families are trying to scrape by — by trying to do it all
There are times in parenting where you just feel kind of useless.
You can't carry the baby, take a late-night breastfeeding shift, or absorb any of the pain and discomfort of childbirth.
Sometimes the best you can do is to try to take care of your partner.
That's what brought user u/DietyBeta to the AskParents subreddit with a well-meaning question.
He says that when he gets home from work, he takes over all parenting and homemaking duties.
But yeesh! That's still... a lot to handle. No wonder his wife is stressed out.
A few folks chimed in to pat the OP on the back. After all, it's great to see a dad who realizes how much is falling on mom's shoulders and actively looking for ways to lighten the load!
Some helpful suggestions rolled in, like taking over meal prep and making her easy lunches to heat up, hiring cleaners, or paying someone to walk the dogs.
Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash
But then even more people came in to the comments asking the same question over and over: If mom is working, why isn't the 1-year-old in daycare?
u/young-mommy wrote: "Is the one year old in daycare? If not, I would start there. Working from home with a child gets harder and harder as they enter toddlerhood"
u/min2themax said: "It’s nice of you to be asking how to help her but she really is getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop here. It sounds like she is literally always working or parenting. Sometimes both at the same time. Walking the dogs and making her lunches and prepping meals and doing laundry is all well and good but this is not at all sustainable."
u/alternative-box3260 said: "Have the one year old in daycare. I was in a similar situation and it’s impossible. I was able to breath after that, not before."
And u/sillychihuahua26 wrote: "She’s caring for your 1.year old while working? That’s a horrible plan. You guys need childcare like yesterday."
Childcare in the United States isn't nearly accessible or affordable enough for most families. Period.
ChildCare Aware found that that average cost of childcare in 2022 was $10,853 per year, or roughly 10% of a median family income (in 2024, it's likely even more than that — yet the actual workers at childcare centers are somehow severely underpaid).
But even that eye-popping number is conservative. Anyone who lives anywhere close to a city (or in California or New York) knows the number will be way higher. It's just not feasible for most families to put their child, let alone multiple children, in full-time care while they're young.
And yet! The percentage of households with two parents working full-time has been rising for decades. Life is more expensive than ever, and the extra income from two working parents really helps, even if it's offset by those child care costs.
Photo by Keren Fedida on Unsplash
Now we don't know whether the OP's family can afford childcare for their 1-year-old or not, although in a later update to the post he wrote:
"As far as daycare, she doesn't want to because she feels like she would be missing out on the time"
So even if you can afford childcare, there's the still the crushing guilt of shipping your child off to be raised by strangers to deal with! Classic.
(Take one guess who shoulders most of the daycare guilt — dads or moms?)
The work-from-home revolution has been a Godsend for parents in certain ways — flexibility, balance, less commuting time — but its also saddled many of them with double duty.
'Hey how about you work full-time because we need the money AND keep an eye on the kids, since you're home anyway!'
But it doesn't work like that, and trying to do both is crushing modern parents.
In fact, the Surgeon General of the United States just put out an official advisory based on the plummeting mental state of today's parents.
We know parents are having a hard time and that it's getting picked up in the national conversation. But hearing about a mom working full-time with a 1-year-old on her hip while pregnant, and a dad stuck working out of the house who's at a total loss for how to make things better really paints a pretty bleak picture.
No one should have to work full-time and parent full-time, at the same time.
A fridge full of microwavable lunches and a fleet of dog walkers isn't going to make it any better until things start changing from the very top.
When the economy crashed in 2008, it was because of shady financial practices like predatory lending and speculative investing, which is basically gambling, only the entire economy was at stake.
I spoke with Alex Alsup, who works with a Detroit-based tech company that's mapping the city's foreclosed homes to help city officials see the bigger picture and find solutions. He also runs the Tumblr GooBingDetroit, where he uses Google Street View's time machine to document the transformation of Detroit's neighborhoods over the last few years.
It's astonishing to see how quickly so many homes went from seemingly delightful to wholly unlivable.
Not only does the situation defy logic, but it's like a brass-knuckled face punch to the people the city is supposed to be looking out for. Alsup explains:
"You had houses — tens of thousands of them — that were worth only $20,000 or so, yet owed $4,000 a year in taxes, for which very few city services were delivered (e.g. police, fire, roads, schools). Who would pay that?"
Indeed.
And like a real hurricane, homeowners aren't the ones to blame. They're even calling for what is essentially a federal disaster response.
Here are the three strategies they want to see in action — and they can work for basically anywhere in the country that's struggling with a housing crisis.
They want the city to end foreclosures and evictions from owner-occupied homes. Many people aren't just losing their homes — they've lost jobs, pensions, and services because of budget cuts. Putting them on the street is like a kick in the teeth when they're down.
Those are called underwater mortgages. Banks caused this mess, and governments ignored it. It's only fair that people's mortgages be adjusted based the current value of their home.
Selling to banks and investors only encourages what led to the financial crisis in the first place. Wouldn't it make more sense to sell to people who are going to live in them and have a genuine interest in rebuilding the community?
Click play below for a silent cruise down a once lovely residential block in Detroit.
This article originally appeared on 12.15.14
He went from struggling to stylish.
Julian Worsham gets a new cart.
Six-year-old Julian Worsham of Beaverton, Oregon is like a lot of other first-graders: he loves Super Mario and Taekwondo. But he has achondroplasia, the most common form of dwarfism, and goes to a school that wasn't built for kids his height.
"He's born into a world that just, in some ways, is not built for him," Julian's father, Brett, told WHAS11.
His mother did a walk-through before his first day at school to make sure he wouldn't run into any problems because of his height but forgot to check the cafeteria. [We] "noticed that where the food was, was right at his head," Heather told the Beaverton School District. Then, to make things more of a struggle, he had to carry his tray outside to the lunch benches.
The school made him a makeshift cart out of an upside-down milk crate on wheels to help him transport his lunch from the cafeteria to the benches.
"When I saw it I thought, 'Wow,'" said Enedelia Mottram, who's served lunch for the school district for 18 years. "I just wanted to help Julian, because I mean his head barely reaches the lunch line. He can't see anything."
Julian's first cart wasn't cutting the mustard.
That night, she talked to her husband, James, a metalworker, to see if he could come up with something better. He got his team together at Wright Manufacturing in Portland to create a new cart that allowed Julian to transport his lunch tray and see over the counter.
James told the Beaverton School District that he wanted to make something that Julian would be "proud to push around."
James and his team put together a badass cart with adjustable, handlebar grips just like a motorcycle that has a stool inside so he can reach the countertop. It is adorned with flames and a personalized license plate that says, "JULIAN."
Julian's parents were blown away by the care and creativity that was put into creating his cart.
"They took the time to get those license plates with his name, which is just like, they just really put a lot of heart into it. So when I saw it, the first thing I saw was actually a picture of James and his team who made the cart and I cried. It's just such a sweet thing," Heather said.
Julian loves the license plate and the flames and is now able to grab his lunch and get out to the benches in style.
"He's independent now," said Mottram. "Before, a staff member [would] have to be there to help him," she said.
Heather hopes that the story will inspire others to reach out and help other people in need.
"There's just wonderful people in this world that, you know, they have their eyes open. They're seeing needs that need to be met and they're meeting them. So I hope that other kids can get their needs met through this," she said.
This article originally appeared on 11.3.21
"I was just doing my job man. I was just doing my job and actually came across somebody who needed help."
At 1:30 am on a Monday morning in February, an AMBER Alert went out in southern Louisiana about a missing 10-year-old girl from New Iberia. It was believed she had been kidnapped and driven away in a 2012 silver Nissan Altima.
The sanitation workers thought it was suspicious that a silver sedan was parked alone in a field in St. Martin Parish.
"Something told me, like just look, I said what is that car doing in that field like that? What the car doing? Guess what, that's the dude with the little girl," Merrick said in a Facebook Live video. "That's God."
To prevent the possible kidnapper from escaping, they parked the large sanitation truck the wrong way on the highway to "Make sure they couldn't get out," Merrick said. Then, they called 911.
When police arrived they arrested Michael R. Sereal, the man whose car was mentioned in the AMBER Alert. The police were also able to safely recover the girl who appeared unharmed. She was later taken to the hospital to be evaluated by medical personnel.
The Iberia Parish Sheriff's Department's online sex offender registry has a Michael Roy Sereal but authorities wouldn't confirm it's the same man.
The young girls' family got in touch with the two men who saved her and have shown amazing gratitude. "I'm just so happy and blessed that I have actually seen the car and we actually responded like we were supposed to respond," Merrick told KHOU.
Merrick hopes that his actions will inspire others to be proactive as well.
via Office of the Louisiana Attorney general
The two men were applauded by the St. John Parish's Sheriff, who offered to buy them lunch.
"I was just doing my job man. I was just doing my job and actually came across somebody who needed help," Merrick said. "Got me tearing up."
The AMBER Alert system was created in 1996 after nine-year-old Amber Hagerman was abducted and murdered while riding her bike in Texas. Since its inception, nearly seven in 10 AMBER alert cases have resulted in children being successfully reunited with their parents.
In 17% of the cases, the child's recovery is a direct result of the alert.
As of December 2020, 1,029 children rescued specifically because of the system.
This article originally appeared on 02.09.21
Maybe they're actually as superior as they think they are.
Cats are far more badass than we give them credit for.
Cats have a reputation for being aloof and standoffish, like they're better than everyone and simply can't be bothered. Those of us who have cats know they're not always like that … but yes, they're sometimes like that. They can be sweet and affectionate, but they want affection on their terms, they want to eat and play and sleep on their own clock, and we puny, inferior humans have little say in the matter.
There's a reason why we have obedience schools for dogs and not for cats. Maine coon or Bengal, Savannah or Siamese, ragdoll or sphynx, domestic cats of all breeds are largely untrainable little punks who lure us into loving them by blessing us with the honor of stroking their fur and hearing them purr.
But perhaps we assume too much when we think cats are full of themselves for no good reason. Maybe they are actually somewhat justified in their snootiness. Maybe they really, truly are superior to pretty much every other creature on Earth and that's why they act like it.
Think about it. They're beautiful and graceful, but also quick and powerful. They groom constantly so they're almost always clean and their fur even smells good. They can fall from ridiculous heights, land on their feet and walk away unscathed. They're wicked good ambush hunters. They can walk completely silently, like ninjas, then pull out the razor blades on their feet at will and do serious damage in an instant.
All of that makes them impressive specimens, but ironically it's their total hubris that makes them truly superior. When they feel like it (because cats only do things they feel like doing) they will take on anyone and anything. Big, small, dangerous, fierce—doesn't matter. That unbridled confidence—earned or not—combined with their physique and skill makes them the badasses of the animal world.
Want proof? Here ya go:
The snakes, man. I can't get over the snakes.
Cats really are better than us and every other living thing, basically. And even if they aren't, they believe they are, which counts just as much. They're either the ultimate creatures or the ultimate conmen. Either way, you just don't mess with them.
This article originally appeared on 08.17.22