Cold Hard Cash

Just for being in our family the children get approximately $1 per year of age (after reaching 5 years old) each month. It gets divided into fourths and divvied out weekly. For example, one child is 9 years old. I take 9, divide it by 4 and come up with 2.25 a week. I could have used a more accurate monthly-allowance formula: age * 12 / 52. That would, however, come up to $2.076923 for the same 9-year-old. I don't mind the extra 18 cents a week to nicely round up the allowance payments into quarters. And having all those quarters turns out to be important as you'll see.

Why don't we give them a dollar per age per week like the "average" American family? Well... we don't want to give them too much because learning to save and plan for specific "goal" purchases while developing the behavior to fight off impulse purchases work best on smaller allowances. If they could get away with buying impulse items and still get their "goal" item in a short period of time it wouldn't have the same effect.

Here's the "catch":

1. Necessities come from Mom and Dad. Splurges come from your allowance. They were good about not asking for extras before, but now they are ready to learn to ask themselves the value of what they want to purchase.

2. 20% is put in a savings account. 10% is donated and 70% is for whatever the child decides. We help the child learn about saving up their 70% for the toys they want.

3. Chores that aren't finished by a given deadline go up to the lowest bidder who has already finished all his/her chores. The person who was supposed to perform the duty must pay the lowest bidder. For example, if child A doesn't want to wash the dishes, children B, C and D offer their bids to do it. Child A then has to pay the lowest bidder their asking price. It's capped according to the chore and immediate need.

We first tried giving them all the money up front at the beginning of the month. All the excitement fizzled out by the end of the first week.

That's why we divided their age by fourths, then hand out that amount each week (they make a little more money that way, but I don't care as long as they learn good lessons with it).

They can occasionally get paid bonuses for chores that Mom or Dad forgo, provided they have already done their chores. This further motivates them to be done so they have that availability.

Using this method they learn about saving, spending, earning, preparedness, frugality and charity. So far it's working well. We adapted the idea from Jim Fay's Love and Logic.

The Gender Gap, aka Where's My Sex?

Last February, Family Life posted an article about why women need sex in their marriage. Many responses from women are either chiming in with a pity party or degrading men. These are typical responses from people who don't take responsibility for their actions. When a child misbehaves he or she either tries to divert the conversation to how they were hurt (sometimes as if it were a good excuse for their misbehavior) or they point the finger to someone else.

Somewhere between junior high and college I was given the strong impression that women don't like or want sex. Thinking back, this advice seemed to always come from the lips of very liberal women who despised having any man open the door for them. If women don't like or want sex, why isn't there a movement of women towards celibacy instead of towards lesbianism? Women have been manipulated into a mass exodus from their natural character into rebellion, mutiny and abomination masked in political "rights" to express a hatred towards God and men. Through women "liberation", America has mutated from the moral and Christian principality it was founded upon into a dark shroud of blood-lust mafias, infant holocaust, racist eugenics, Godless schools, sexual disease, diminished parental rights and large Orwellian socialist government. This is not an attack against women. It is an affront to the feminist movement.

Votes for prohibition, which brought about our history's worst criminals and the need for the FBI, was largely in the hands of women. Without the FBI we wouldn't have had McCarthyism go to the extents that it had. Prohibition is the only constitutional amendment that was repealed through another amendment. No other federal law can claim such anarchy to our society.

In Roe vs. Wade, it was a woman who, having consensual unprotected sex, decided she didn't want to live with the consequences of her actions (having to care for a baby). With the help of two female attorneys who exploited the 9th Amendment, she made a legendary case that has caused the death of millions of innocent children who have no choice in the matter ("pro-choice", indeed!).

The woman who founded Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, held a world view stewing with socialism, racism and Nazism so strong that it formed a belief in supportive of eugenics (euthanasia). She originally designed the organization to control the population of lower class and minority citizens - in her own racist words she degraded blacks as being "just a step higher than the chimpanzee" and stated that "the lower down in the scale of human development we go the less sexual control we find." In other words, the abortions and contraceptives provided by Planned Parenthood were originally intended to reduce the population of those driven by lust and ignorance since it was thought that both lust and ignorance were inherited traits passed down from generation to generation. The black community held quite a few uproars about this woman, and rightfully so. She was calling for a silent self-genocide of their population.

Madalyn Murray O'Hair is singularly given the reputation of stopping prayer in schools. When she filed a case against the school board of Baltimore, the local court judge, J. Gilbert Pendergast, mentioned "It is abundantly clear that the petitioners' real objective is to drive every concept of religion out of the public school system."

Katherine McCormick was a devout fan of Margaret Sanger and felt that women - particularly hookers (again, we're talking about lower-class) - should have control over birth control. This meant taking the condom out of the picture since that was traditionally taken care of by the man. Katherine used the excuse of her husband's schizophrenia, claiming it was an inheritable disease, to donate a large amount of money to the research that founded the birth control pill. Because of the birth control pill, a large concern of sexual impurity - the responsibility of having a child - was taken out of the picture. Control and power without responsibility always results in abuse and neglect. In this case the abuse is widespread sexual promiscuity and the neglect is the condom. The result is a continual rise in AIDs and other STDs.

In more recent times, Charlene Nguon is an out-of-the-closet lesbian who sued her school because the principle "violated" her privacy by telling her parents she was expelled for inappropriate sexual behavior (fondling another girl on campus). She claims her parent's didn't have a right to know and her principle didn't have a right to tell them. At home she hid her sexual alignment while at school she uninhibitedly expressed it. Although she lost the case, it was a landmark moment that used the government to pit against the parents.

Most states don't require parental consent for an abortion and those few that still do are close enough to the states that don't require them that it almost becomes a mute point. Hillary Clinton's "It Takes A Village" campaign still goes on, though it's been quite widely rejected. Nobody can take better care of a child than his or her own parent because no other human will love that child more. Do you think the government will love a child as well as the parent? Ask Sally Lieber. Her "never spank a child" campaign and stripped parental rights agenda is leading towards a society of unruly children who grow up to be criminals. The whole "it takes a village" campaign wasn't about people stepping up to take care of other children who aren't their own, it was about big government.

I'm not saying that these women acted out alone, nor am I saying that all immorality comes from women. I'm merely pointing out what advances to moral decline the feminist movement has generated during the past 90 years.

Women decided over a century ago to be "equal" to men. It started under the guise of voting rights. It was a large political campaign pushed largely by feminists who would be better called female supremacists since they believed women to be largely more capable than men. Before that time, voting issues were often discussed amongst women and to their husbands. Husbands held the weighty responsibility to make political decisions that would be best for his family. When women gained their voting rights they stripped men of that responsibility and the culture started moving towards an ever more feminist slant.

It wasn't voting women that ruined American morality or family values. It was the feminist spirit behind it. What many people don't know about the history of "liberation" and "suffrage" is that its core feminist goal was not the 19th Amendment, and not even equality with men, but superiority and dominance above men. Some of that superiority is realized today. For example, it's the woman's legal "choice," not the man's, to abort a child. This upsets the authoritative nature that God placed in society - specifically in the family. God intended for men to be the head of the household. The dad and husband is accountable for the family's well being; even in cases where he doesn't marry the women he impregnates, the government holds him financially responsible. When men are stripped of that authority, they are also stripped of the means - and more importantly, the motivation or desire - to uphold that responsibility, which creates a society of dead-beat and estranged dads.

A conductor of an orchestra can't bring forth any music unless everyone in the orchestra agrees to follow the conductor's lead. That's how the very meaning of "orchestration" came about. When a family isn't orchestrated it becomes chaotic. A chaotic family is not a Godly one. Womankind figuratively yanked the baton from the husband figure when she demanded a right to vote - it wasn't equality, it was rebellion. That was the first step of the feminist movement.

The next step was mutiny, though it's difficult to call it "mutiny" since in the end men became lazy and pretty much just handed over their role to women. Men like William Marston didn't help. He preached a psychology that handing authority over to women demonstrated a higher evolution of society (he lived with two women simultaneously - his wife and his secretary - if you need a moral reference). Men definitely had their hand in the bowl this entire time by promoting, allowing or exploiting the immoral changes to society and the degrading of their own roles. I'm just tired of liberal women arguing with me about how only good has come from "suffrage" and hearing how chauvinistic they think I am. As the Bible commands men to take care of women as the "weaker vessel", it's obvious to any man that you don't carry around a weaker vessel unless there is special value to it - meaning that men should treat women kindly and take care of them like a treasure. Women who wish to be equal with men deserve to be given hardships that were traditionally reserved for men, such as being put on the draft board and stuck fighting a war... such as having to work to provide for a houseful of children; not being able to spend more than a few hours a week with them... such as not being treated with the chivalry or manners due to a lady. That's what women asked for when they signed up to be seperated from their husbands in that fateful 19th amendment. I think men saw the opportunity to find a political excuse to bow out of this sacrificial role and voted for it out of selfishness or constant nagging from a contemptuous wife!

I've been told by very old and scholarly gentleman that this constant sin of women pushing towards individuality away from relationships is the cardinal sin that separates marriages. He specifically pointed a finger at the 19th amendment, stating that it marked the beginning of the destruction. I don't have anything against women voting, but I do have plenty against feminism and I firmly believe that feminism has continually plotted to destroy families; at its core, feminism considers motherhood as the height of enslavement.

There's an old Jewish legend that isn't written in the Torah or the Bible. The legend of Lilith. According to the legend, God made a woman for Adam who was completely separate from him - no rib needed. At first this woman wanted to be completely equal in the marriage on all terms... then she decided she wanted to dominate mankind. In the paradise of Eden there would be no need to have someone provide for you or protect you. The only sign of dominance would then be specific to the act of sex. Lilith demanded to be on top. Adam insisted that it was his role. God was dismayed over the ordeal and banished Lilith to the wilderness where she still lives to this day as a demon who accepts scapegoats (as she considers herself one). God then took one of Adam's ribs to create the next woman who was then not separate from Adam by every nature. Because she was taken from Adam she looked to Adam for some level of guidance and authority. I won't go into whether or not this story is valid in this post, but want to point out that this issue is thought to be as old as time itself. If there's any truth to this story then it marks the first act of sin even before eating the forbidden fruit.

Eve went away from Adam's and God's protection and instruction when she wandered off to the forbidden tree. Ever since then, women have had to fight sinful urges to be more like men in physique (such as wearing short hair and masculine clothing), sexual dominance (such as in pornography and in marriage - like Lilith), and authority (as in taking control over the household and gaining dominant roles in politics).

This movement of women becoming like men has degendered society. Men have lost their role as men. As a society led by feminist undertones presses onward by stripping God out of schools, forcing equality (such as the school-lego-socialist-scandal of 2007 (video)) and pushing a "please yourself" mentality, it was only a matter of a generation - the children of the baby boomers, and many baby boomers themselves - before marriages, once thought of as a sanctified covenant, would crumble around us.

Both genders are players in this problem. Women have chosen to be like men - to strip away those aspects that made men distinct. Men have chosen to be passive and take the easier path. In the same way that the many skills which used to be handed down from one generation to the next somehow became lost in the 1970's, the character of a Man was lost as well.

I believe God placed a natural desire in men to fight the good fight, which includes the right to win the fair maiden. Men want to dominate and become king over their family. Whether they are a harsh tyrant of a ruler or a loving Christ-like figure is a matter of their character and their relationship with God. In a society where this role doesn't exist as a reality, it leaves men with only fantasy to toy with. I think deep down, every woman can only truthfully admit that she wants to be rescued by a knight in shining armor or saved from the clutches of despair by a handsome prince. These natural desires of man to protect and provide for women, and for women to desire being protected and provided for are stemmed from our spiritual needs. When society plants itself against the very laws of nature it only has allusion to look forward to.

In short, harlequin romance novels and soap operas are to women what pornography and video gaming are to men. They are both symptoms and causes of failing roles in marriages. They build up fanciful and unspoken expectations. Women can't get the real thing anymore because they killed it, so they put themselves in stories where men value women above all costs and watch soaps wishing to live out certain roles. Men can't be the real thing anymore because they allowed it to die, so they role play in hours upon hours of video games or watch another beautiful woman submit to him in pictures. This causes men and women to separate spiritually, socially and sexually within their marriages. Eventually, if not addressed, it ends with physical and marital separation as well.

I suggest re-learning our roles as scripture points out. Play out these roles both fancifully and seriously in our marriages. For example, dress up as a couple for a Renaissance festival as a damsel in distress and a valiant knight. Go camping and have the man fish and prepare his catch for the woman to cook. Define "manly" and "womanly" household chores. Have the man pull back the chair at the dinner table and open the door for the woman. Learn chivalry and manners as a history lesson - the reason for some of these customs gives insight to the heart and place of the manly role back in the mid to late 1800's.

On stage not all parts are equal. In politics not every one plays president. God created tiers of authority and responsibilities to each role. Why have people stripped these natural boundaries from family and marriage? Put them back where they belong.

Twenty touches

Each night my children and I spend anywhere between fifteen minutes and two hours together. Most of that time is spent reading before bedtime, but that time is also used to reconnect.

Many years ago, my wife and I attended a Gary Smalley seminar where he briefly mentioned the importance of touch. It's something we all need to live. So I thought to myself that if I don't supply my children with enough positive words and touches each day then there may come a time in their teen years that they look for that need elsewhere and end up experimenting with touch in ways that isn't allowed outside of marriage.

So I asked my kids, "Do you get enough loving touches throughout the day: pats on the head, pats on the back, hugs, kisses... stuff like that?" They all answered "no". So I wondered - how much do they need? Then came the question. "How many times do you feel you would need to know you are loved?" The eldest child only thought briefly before saying her answer: "Twenty times!".

That's quite a bit of touching to take place over the two to three hours I have available for them during the week days. With the size of my family, if everyone got 20 touches a day that would add up to 100 touches a day - not including our dog.

If that were spread throughout a three-hour-twenty-minute period it comes out to touching someone every 2 minutes.

I only remember getting a meaningful touch about once every other week growing up, which was still more than most of the kids I knew. I'll bet our society has even pulled back to the point that children are only given a meaningful touch once a month, and that's reserved for when the child initiates the hug.

One last thought - giving my children that access to my personal space makes me a tangible figure for them. I become more real and more accessible in ways beyond the physical. Hopefully they'll learn that and come to their real accessible Dad during the more trying years ahead.

Time

Maybe by getting older and having kids, time has become more valuable. I didn't think much of it as a kid, hence the often yelled "We're Waiting On You!" phrase that I heard growing up.

But as I was sifting through some well kept day planner pages from 2001 and 2002 I realized something. For two years I worked an average of 60 hours a week. Seeing that and realizing how little that got me in my career, and how much time I didn't get with my family, I just shake my head in disgust.

How could I have been such an idiot? Not that I don't mind working extra hours, but when you have an additional 900+ hours of work (above the regular work hours) in just one year alone ... sheesh.

What could I have done with those 900 hours? Write more songs? Be a better dad? Be a better husband? What good did it do me to plug in 14 hour days on a regular basis? To add more injury to myself, I didn't use up all my vacation time for that time ... haven't used my vacation time appropriately for years. As a result, I feel tired most of the time. My kids aren't as close to me as I'd like and my marriage isn't as strong as it should be. Neither is my walk with God.

I'm grateful that I took the time to record those hours. I quickly forget how long I've been pushing myself so hard and how worthless it all is. No rewards all around.

Looking at this, the question is - how do I change? What can I do to make the future better? Hours have already been cut back at work thanks to a change in position. I have to admit that I was upset at first, but it's nice to be working a normal 40-45 hour week. I have to admit that I've contemplated a major uproot and taking my family to Italy or Spain where I hear of 30 hour work weeks, mid-day siestas and higher family values. Well - no Spain for us, at least not for now. But I need to make the time with my family precious. Not precious as in it's so rare, but precious as in it's so common they feel my absence when I'm not there.