Cousteau’s Daughter

Posted on 09/23/2008 by Jane Devin

I feel like I should give some disclaimer to this piece, some explanation of why, not only because the topic is tough, but also because it’s become a cliche. Writers, film makers, and students alike have been steered away from the topic of child abuse — it’s been done, the subject is stale, and every story that could be told has been told.

Yet, when I wrote the first version of Cousteau’s Daughter as a teenager, I didn’t care about any of these things. I was just a girl who had been sent to California with an ex-babysitter and her husband, who spent the summer molesting and threatening me. That experience was followed by being raped by a seventeen year old boy and a nineteen year old man. There was no one I felt I could turn to, so I went where it had become natural for me to go — to the world of words, where I could spill my secrets, cleanse my spirit, and maybe make some sense of a world that, to me, was frightening and unpredictable.

I have since eclipsed the experiences of my childhood, but have found that the responses to my writing about it range from sympathy to disgust. There are those who, in their compassion, wish to offer some comfort to the child from long ago, or the woman who carries the memories. Others find something revolting in the telling of the story, believing it signifies a propensity for being stuck in the past, an inability to “get over it”, or even the making of “excuses” for this or that failure as an adult. A few have even preached the gospel of forgiveness to me, as if I had the obligation to heal by way of acceptance, or by viewing my experiences as some sort of sideways, God-given blessing.

I appreciate the compassion given the child, but at the same time wish people to know that for the woman, the pain from events that happened almost thirty years ago is distant. I hesitate to use the word “healed” because I’m not sure what it means in this context. I don’t know who I might have been or how I may have felt had I not gone through this particular pain as a child. No experience, much less one that is traumatic, gets to sit outside the tapestry of one’s life, where all things fuse together to create character and personality. My way of “getting over it” has always been to tell the stories, my own and and those of other children — even in times of resistance. As for forgiveness, I have none for those who would lay a violent hand upon children, no matter what their backstory may be. There is no abuse I would ever consider a blessing, no matter what poetic justice might follow.

All that said, Cousteau’s Daughter is still an important piece to me, not because it’s personally cathartic any longer, but because it was written so close to the events. It is a child’s story, written by a child who, even in pain and turmoil, loved poetry and words, the oceanic world of Jacques Cousteau, and Lucky Charms cereal.

Some of the phrasing was cleaned up as I got older, but not much. All the elements, including the length, have remained intact. The length, as well as the subject matter, prevented this piece from being published in literary magazines, but I always wondered if it wouldn’t work better as a visual piece. A while ago, I put out the call for a videographer on this site, and Elaine Charbonneau stepped up to make it happen. I thank her for her patience, her care, and the hours she gave to this project. My friend, artist and photographer Linda Woods, saw my vision even better than I did, and provided photographs to tell the tale. The only thing lacking was a professional narrator, but I thank my local radio station, KQSP-AM, for allowing me to use their studio.

Stop it Now! is an organization which has done much to bring attention to the issue of child abuse, and I am happy to dedicate this video to them, as well as to all of those who have had to grow up too soon. The child in me also holds onto some scant hope that someone who is thinking of molesting might watch this, and seek help before they act. The sexual invasion of a child is not just a physical act, but one that causes long-term emotional devastation.

Does it matter? Is one more tale of child abuse even relevant? I don’t know. I only know that the story of Cousteau’s Daughter has long been in my heart to tell — and now it’s been told.

If it’s relevant to you, or others you may know, please share it. And please do visit the Stop it Now! website to learn more about what you can do to help prevent child abuse.

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Shapeshifters, Sexy Ghosts, and Other Mysterious Blobs

Posted on 07/27/2008 by Jane Devin

I recently had cause to remember The Year that Blew My Mind. It wasn’t mind-blowing in a good way – the oyster of the world didn’t open up and reveal any grand pearls of wisdom – instead, my gray matter was challenged to find reason for the unreasonable, and causes for the inexcusable. The resulting implosion left my mind scattered across a parallel universe, in which people made no sense, and reality could shape-shift like Play-Doh. In that world, people could mold their own blobs of facts and opinions without any regard for the actual truth or evidence of a thing. They could believe that Elvis is still alive, the Holocaust never happened, and that George W. Bush was a great President.

One of the blobs I recall came from a philosophy class, in the form of a particularly stubborn student who sought support for his shapeshifting opinion. “Reality is all just what we believe,” he said. “If I didn’t believe this Pepsi can existed, then it wouldn’t exist.” No matter how others argued that the Pepsi can was a material fact that existed independently of his thoughts – that it would exist with or without his belief in it – the student persisted in a type of egotistical thinking that left him in charge not only of objects in his own path, but that gave him the God-like ability to change matter into non-matter.

Outside of that class, I had never run across people who were prone to believe that a Pepsi can – or any objective fact – couldn’t really exist without their permission. They may have had differentiating opinions and beliefs, but they were based on some part of reality, even if cherry-picked to meet a personal need, belief, or preference.

For instance, I once had a neighbor who was enthralled with Tammy Faye Baker. For reasons that escaped me, he just adored the heavily made-up Queen of PTL and religious scandal. When I brought up issues like 24K gold bathrooms, “seeds of faith”, and vulnerable, workaday investors, he didn’t deny the facts – he simply hand-picked which ones were more important to him. She was funny, and charismatic, and he thought she had paid enough for her crimes. He chose beliefs that best met his personal concept.

And we all do that to some extent, particularly for people we love or admire, or even hate. We often magnify either the good or the bad, until the good is shined to a heroic luster, or the bad is blown up to villainous infamy. Reams of poetry are written for new lovers, who are coddled in the glow of novelty, while scathing diatribes are written about former lovers, who became stale, hurtful, or disappointing in some way.

In the world of shape-shifting reality though, Tammy Faye Baker might be Mother Theresa in same-sex drag. Maybe those tears she shed were really the sweat of Jesus and his twelve drag afficionados.

Lovers, past or present, may be wiped from existence with the stroke of a new memory. Maybe that drunken one night stand didn’t really happen. Maybe people just woke up naked together because they were recreating Rodan’s The Kiss for artistic reasons when they were suddenly felled by the sleeping disease African trypanosomiasis. Maybe, too, the lover in question wasn’t really a human being, but a sex-starved ghost like the one who visited Anna Nicole.

After living through The Year that Blew My Mind, I gathered up my gray matter to ask a singular question about the shapeshifters: Why? The singular answer that came back to me was Motive.

As complex creatures, we are connected to each other not only by DNA, but by story, opinion, and belief. We lack no opportunities to hand-pick facts and beliefs that best fit our individual paradigms. We can overlook bad traits in those we love because their love makes us feel great, and feeling great is more important than finding fault. When the bloom falls off the rose, and love lessens, then the bad thing we once ignored suddenly overwhelms everything else. The wet towels left on the floor become a symbol of disrespect – the forgotten anniversary becomes evidence that he or she never cared in the first place. Opportunities to connect or disconnect abound, and are most often reasonable, even if often exaggerated. Wet towels and forgotten anniversaries are annoying, and can be symptomatic of a larger problem.

The question in the shape-shifting world, though, is why people seek to change material fact or create whole new matter altogether. The answers are as varied as the motives.

Recently, I heard a story about two friends who had a private conversation. One of those friends then went and shared that conversation with another friend. That friend then made their conversation public, and a joke was taken wildly out of context and used as ammunition against friends #1 and #2. People formed strong opinions based on misunderstood third-hand evidence, but no one – not a single person – thought to question the motives of friend #3, whose actions had a rolling stone effect of harm and damages. There’s little doubt that she knew it would, as the resulting fallout proved, yet the major role she played in creating strife went unchecked. Motive? To create drama and gain attention. Mission accomplished.

Closer to home, The Bastard continues to make up rules as he goes along, leaving devastation and despair in his wake. His motive is to feel more powerful, and to exert what power he does have in ways that buoys his flagging ego. Mission accomplished.

Bush, Cheney, and Company continue to reorder matter and facts in their Invisible Pepsi Can world, where an “axis of evil” exists against the backdrop of the All-Mighty, All-Good, All-Powerful capitalist structure of America. WMD’s exist, then they don’t. Soldiers die, but it’s not all that sad if they hide the coffins from public view. It’s not about the oil, but then it is – oil companies who haven’t been in Iraq for 36 years now have no-bid contracts. The mission is really, finally accomplished.

Those of us who believe in objective truth can’t let ourselves be undone by those who believe that the world spins on an shape-shifting, make-believe axis. The truth of both fact and matter will eventually bear out, no matter how many people choose to create blobs of something else.

The shapeshifters are frustrating (and even frightening when they hold power), but by examining their motives – by asking just that one question – we can better understand the world they live in and avoid getting caught up in their crazy-making blobs.

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Poison not Just in the Neglect, but in the Cliches

Posted on 03/10/2008 by Jane Devin

Poverty is Poison was the headline of a February 18th editorial in the New York Times. Every time I read something like this – old news passed off as a new discovery – I want to scream a little bit. Massive amounts of research, some of it quite famously cruel and spectacular, has been done on child development. That “children growing up in poor families. . . .experience unhealthy levels of stress hormones which impair their neural development” is not a new finding, nor is it surprising. These same stress hormones are found in children from abusive or neglectful homes, and it has been far beyond proven that children who are not nurtured in infancy, if they survive at all, will experience a host of problems, from social attachment disorder to learning disabilities.

What is surprising is that we, as a society, continue to expect and demand a cure through self-determination. That we negate the factual science of neural development in favor of blaming, shaming, or shunning the affected, believing that moral weakness or poor character, rather than any significant physical or cognitive deficit, is responsible for those who fail to rise to the social challenges of our competitive society.

I’d like to find your inner child and kick its little ass.

“Get over it,” pop star Don Henley once sang. “Complain about the present and blame it on the past, I’d like to find your inner child and kick its little ass”. Henley’s popular song, which seemed to show equal disdain for real victims as well as those faking it in exchange for a car crash payday, reflected the attitudes of many Americans at the 1990′s height of child abuse stories. Unfortunately, there was a window of time when it became somewhat hip to come out as an abused child – and celebrities, whether jumping on the popular bandwagon, or sincerely trying to help, only caused a serious issue to be taken less seriously. People started to recoil, not from the horrors of child abuse, but from yet another sad tale of alcoholism, rape, or rage – especially those told by people living a privileged existence far removed from the hardscrabble lives of the working and middle classes.

The backlash against abuse victims was swift, hard, and long lasting. English professors across America added “child abuse” to their list of cliched topics. More and more writers were steered away from the topic by threats of non-publication. When books were published, such as “A Child Called It” or “The Glass Castle”, the endings were happily-ever-after.

The old but persuasive bromides of positivity were shined up for a new generation who were spoon fed the concept of self-esteem without the struggles and accomplishments that naturally lead to a sense of self-worth. I remember arguing with my daughter’s second grade teacher about this when Elisabeth came home one day and told me spelling didn’t matter. I was sure she misunderstood the teacher, but no. Mrs Greene informed me that correcting a child’s spelling could “stunt” their creativity and lead to lowered self-esteem. My argument that self-esteem would be a natural byproduct of mastering the task of spelling fell on stubbornly deaf ears – as did my argument that creativity isn’t so fragile that it’s destroyed under structure.

That new generation is now grown up, and they seem all too willing to carry the torch for the crumbling and blind school of self-determination, regardless of scientific discoveries, old or new. Poverty is character, and character is destiny. Trauma is gotten over by self-help books and positive self-talk. Neural pathways, receptors and hormones are nothing that an hour with Joel Osteen or Dr. Phil can’t fix. Think it and be it. Get real. Or, as Oprah – who was once of the foremost advocates for the misunderstood underclass before taking the Cosmo girl road of peddling everything from diets to beauty secrets – might suggest, discover your spirit. Live your best life.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with feel-good philosophies, positive thinking, or living one’s life with passion. The wrong enters when these things are held out by the dominant society as a cure to problems that are far deeper, more serious, and more poisonous than everyday problems.

Not feeling great about the way one looks in a bathing suit is in no way equivalent to actually being (as opposed to merely feeling like) a social outcast.

I feel like a fraud. I’ve never fit in anywhere…

“I feel like a fraud,” says *Kari, who spent her first six years of life with a neglectful mother before being sent to live with her elderly grandmother. “I’ve never fit in anywhere … and my thoughts just don’t seem to work the way other people’s do.” Kari, now 46, spent most of her adult years trying to climb the ladder as a graphic artist in the corporate world.

“No one ever told me I didn’t have talent,” she says, “I did, and was probably even above-average in that area, but I just wasn’t well liked. I wasn’t liked when I was myself, and I wasn’t liked any better when I followed the advice of all those self-help, how-to-heal, or how to make friends books. I knew there was something different about me – something that made other people uncomfortable – but I never found what it was. I kept trying out all sorts of different approaches, but it was like I had some invisible mark of a social pariah. My work was valued, but I couldn’t get promoted. There were convenient acquaintances, but no real friendships.

“I went to therapists. I meditated. I read every book I could find on healing and being social, and I trained myself to carefully consider every response and every action. . .

“The weirdest thing has always been the way people respond to me. For some reason, my words were always taken far more personally than if they came from someone else. For instance, if one of my colleagues casually complained, it was no big deal. If I did the same thing, even using almost the same exact words, it was an Oh my God event – people would be shocked, or instantly label me a chronic complainer.

“It’s that kind of over-sensitivity. . .to me as a person, and to my words. . . that made me afraid to speak out at all. I was labeled weird, no matter how normal I thought I was, or how like them I tried to act. I became quieter over the years, and my own sensitivity around other people became so heightened it was almost paralyzing.”

After seven jobs in 19 years, Kari quit. She subsisted on unemployment and savings for two years, while struggling with intense depression and thoughts of suicide. One therapist suggested Kari might have a mild form of Asperger’s Syndrome, a diagnosis that left her with little comfort. “Even if I agreed with that, which I really don’t seeing that I don’t have many of the symptoms, it really doesn’t change anything,” she says.

Eventually, Kari went to work as an $8/hr. checker in a small grocery store, which pays her extra on the side to create signage. It wasn’t the life Kari planned, but she’s not alone.

There are profound and visible differences between a “wild child” like +Genie, who was discovered at age 13, after having been isolated from infancy in a dark room in her parents’ home, and David Pelzer, whose childhood abuse and isolation was chronicled in the book “A Child Called It.” Genie never recovered, while Pelzer went on to become a successful journalist and author. Their experiences, the extent of abuse suffered, their brains, and exposures to other people, were quite different even though there are several parallels that can be drawn.

What is less obvious, and almost invisible in society, are those who were significantly poisoned in childhood – those who were permanently affected by the crossed wires, mixed-up hormones, and neural changes caused by poverty, neglect, and abuse. Most often, those affected are physically indistinguishable from those who were reared in relatively normal and healthy homes.

The emotional and social differences, not seen by the naked eye, may range from mild to severe, with Kari’s case being somewhere in the moderate middle.

There’s no “get over it” cure, and no amount of shame or blame placed on victims can reorganize or “fix” the brain that was damaged in infancy or childhood. The best that survivors can do is to be aware of the differences and develop the patience, personal strength, and comprehensive understanding necessary to deal with being something of an outcast – with being, perhaps, “of this world, but not necessarily in it.”

For society, the question should not be about a cure that doesn’t exist, but a two-fold one of awareness and prevention. Rather than throwing the science (and its subjects) away in favor of the quick, convenient, and empirical “bootstrap” approach – which seeks to make everything from financial achievement to social success mere matters of character and effort – society might instead seek to understand the deeper, more realistic reasons why some former victims of poverty and abuse fail to thrive.

Understanding that, we might put more stock in prevention and make the end of poverty and child abuse in America a real and urgent priority, rather than shuffling both off to the easy-to-forget realm of stale news and tired cliches.

*Real name not disclosed.
+Genie was the psuedonym given to Susan Wiley by researchers. She now lives in an undisclosed group home in Southern California.

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A Radical Notion: Children Come First, Period.

Posted on 02/07/2008 by Jane Devin

She had a felony arrest for child neglect last July, but the Department of Childrens Services was not monitoring Latasha Morris, or checking up on her children. In between December 2007 and January 2008, Morris was arrested four times. On February 6th, Morris, a chronic alcoholic and drug user, passed out on top of her 2 year old son, Sheldon Bartley. The toddler died.

It does not appear that Morris was without people who tried to help. Sheldon’s paternal grandparents often cared for the children, and were making plans to get Latasha into rehab, where she might receive treatment for her decade-long battle with alcoholism.

In the meanwhile, six year old Estajah and two year old Sheldon were left unchecked and in their mother’s care, with disastrous consequences.

My January 29th article on adoption garnered a lot of response, including some disturbing mail from an anti-adoption group which seems to be made up of a handful of birth mothers who resent their decisions. They rail at a society which, they say, does not do enough to financially support them. They rail at adoptive parents, claiming they are thieves. They rail at adoption agencies, claiming that they are a corrupt, money-making industry. They take a few stories from unhappy adoptees, and twist them into propaganda to buoy their anti-adoption creed.

It’s difficult to read their tales, because no matter how matter how vague their actual stories are, or how many gaps of logic are apparent in those stories, the facts of these women’s lives — and their regrets — are drenched in pain.

One wrote to me and said that my plea to young mothers to consider adoption would not be heard by those who would do harm to their own children, but only by those whose love was so encompassing that they would give their children up before subjecting them to any harm at all.

She’s very likely right. The majority of birth mothers that I have spoken to are women who love deeply, and whose thoughts were centered on what was best for their child. They chose adoption not because it was easier for them, but because it was gut-wrenching to consider raising the child they loved in anything less than good circumstances. To me, the love and care they expressed through adoption is heroic. Often, they placed themselves in the line of fire from others who questioned their decision – they struggled with their internal emotions and the perceptions of the outside world for nine months – and in the end, chose to put their children first.

There really should be another Mother’s Day just for them. One in which the whole of society acknowledges the unconditional, selfless, agape love of women who placed their faith and hopes in adoption in order to give their child the best possible parents, circumstances, and opportunities.

Not heroic was the note I received from a mother who is outraged that her children were “stolen” by the foster care system due to abuse perpetrated by the mother’s boyfriend. “Not my fault” was the tone of the letter, and “they had no right” was the message. Her children, her choices. She didn’t believe society should have any say in how her children were raised, but she did believe that none of this would have happened if society had supported her. If school was free, maybe she’d have gone, and gotten a better job so she wouldn’t have to live with others. If there was free daycare, maybe she wouldn’t have had the boyfriend babysit.

I don’t know what she expected from me, but she was writing to the wrong person.

I know a few things about pain. I know what it is like to be a child born at the wrong time, to parents who had their own personal problems. My body still carries the memories of their problems – their narcissism, impatience, and rage. At 45 years old, I still flinch when someone moves their hand too quickly or too closely to me. I startle easily, and always have to have my back to a wall in a crowd so that people cannot surprise me from behind. In personal relationships, I have a reflexive tendency to just slip away whenever a confrontation is impending. I go away easily. Arguments frighten me – I always fear they’ll end in disaster.

I know, too, the feeling of standing outside of life’s gate, with no clear way in, and no invitation. To be the girl who feels no sense of place in the innocent, carefree world of others. To be the one with the dark house, the bad teeth, and the worn hand-me-downs, who can only pretend a sense of normal, while dreaming, always dreaming, of being somebody-somewhere else.

And I know passion. I know that at some point memories became a protective instinct, dreams became missions, and that my perspective from outside the gate had a value, if only for those who had not yet seen beyond the iron slats of their own similar experiences.

No one wants to think they’ll be a bad parent. My parents, I know, like so many others, leaned on the bromide of “we did our best” as both excuse and salve. The truth is they did not. The truth is that they both had affairs, and decided to bring a child into the world that was the result of their lack of control, and their lack of love or respect for each other. Instead of being born with a blank slate, I was born into turmoil, shame, and bitter feelings. My coloring was a sign of guilt, and my character was questioned even as an infant. I was too quiet, not like her other daughters, but when I cried it was all wrong, it grated on her nerves. I read too early. I was too athletic. I was too dreamy, too willful, too different, and too much.

As an adult, I once asked my mother why she did not give me up. In a rare moment of honesty, she told me she tried to abort me several times, but it didn’t work. She thought about giving me up then, but it was too complicated. She was married, and people would ask questions.

Embarrassing questions, it seems, were harder for my mother than raising an unwanted child for sixteen years. Instead of temporary feelings of guilt, my mother chose – not just for her, but for me as well – years of despair and hurt.

I survived. Too many children do not even have that opportunity. Many others will go through life feeling disconnected, lost, or alienated. Some will wrongly mistake rage for strength, and seek to become stronger than those who hurt them. Some will even end up with emotional and mental damages that are beyond repair.

The point I made in Dangerous Choices is, I think, clear to those who would hear its message. Children must come first, period. Children are not chattel, and they should not be considered the property of unfortunate birth parents who cannot, will not, or should not care for them. Childhood is a short-lived experience, a limited window of opportunity, and children should not have to suspend their needs, waiting on parents whose histories have already shown a propensity for neglect, abuse, and danger.

The foster care system needs a radical overhaul, and a new mission statement: Children Come First. Period.

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There Is No Shame in Surrender

Posted on 01/29/2008 by Jane Devin

Please listen.

There is no shame in understanding that it’s too much, or in recognizing your limitations.

There is no shame in giving your child up for adoption.

Please don’t let shame be your weakness, or let it decide your child’s fate. Those eyes that surround you, whether at school, at work, or at the family table, cannot see into your future. They are not the ones who have to be emotionally, financially, and physically responsible for a child.

They will not be there for the all-night crying jags, the teething pains, or the earaches. They will not be the ones responsible for bottles, diapers, doctor visits, or daycare. That will be you, and chances are, only you.

There is no shame in knowing that you are not ready. Maybe you are too young. Maybe your temperament does not yet have the patience necessary to parent. Maybe your financial situation is unstable with no promise of a quick or easy recovery. Maybe there are dreams you’ve yet to fulfill that you would regret forgoing if you stopped to raise a child. Maybe this is just the wrong time, or you’re with the wrong partner.

You, and more importantly, your child, do not have to be the victims of circumstance. You can, instead, gather your courage and strength, face your own truths and reality, and with no small amount of pride, you can surrender.

You can surrender knowing that no matter how other people in your life question your decision, or how they may judge you, you have made a decision based on the the purest,and most unselfish kind of love. You, through adoption, have given your child the ultimate gift — a secure home with people who are excited about being parents — who will love your child and provide him or her with stability and every opportunity for happiness.

Maybe you didn’t have that kind of happiness growing up. Maybe you imagine that all that love you have stored up inside will make up for everything else.

Please know — and this is a hard, hard truth — it doesn’t.

Love cannot buy you the time it takes to care for a child. It cannot provide a paycheck that will cover your expenses. At three in the morning, when your child is crying, love does not buy you patience. At three in the afternoon, when you’re bone tired, it won’t buy you a much needed rest. When you want to go out at night — when you need to have some fun — love will not buy you a babysitter.

Love is not a cure for desperation. A child’s love, as defenseless and unconditional as it is, will not fix the broken pieces of a life. Having a child is not a cure for sadness, loneliness, or depression.

No matter how many others in your life are excited about your pregnancy — no matter how many declarations of love, baby showers and well-wishes there are while you are pregnant — eventually you will be left alone with a helpless infant. One who is totally dependent on you 24 hours a day. One who will be dependent on you for many years, not just for love, but for every single thing in their existence.

If you are not ready for that, if you are not prepared, there’s no shame in surrender.

There’s no shame in surrender when they are newly born, or even when they are months old.

There is no shame in picking up the phone and saying –

I need help. I thought I could do this, but it’s too much. I can’t.

Somewhere, there are loving, patient, ready arms waiting to hold that child. Somewhere in your heart is the courage to surrender what you created so that he or she can have the best life possible.

There is no shame in surrender. Only in hanging on past the point of reason. Beyond the point of love.

(For further information, please see first comment).

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America: Dumbed Down, Fattened Up, Porned Out & Pissed Off

Posted on 01/01/2008 by Jane Devin

Sure, it could be blamed on television or movies. It could also be about fast food, preservatives, and hormone-laden chickens. Maybe it’s violent rap music or video games. Overworked, stressed out adults. Over-scheduled or latchkey kids. The end of stickball and street hockey. Not enough vegetables and too many cans of Coca-Cola.It could be any of those things, or. . .it could that my theory is true, and America is suffering from a collective, nearly all-inclusive depression. Of course, one of the hallmarks of depression is that people who suffer it don’t believe they have it – they invent other reasons for feeling lousy, or are so used to feeling lousy that it almost feels good.

However, an analysis of clinical depression symptoms with the current state of America looks something like this.

Symptoms:

1. Changes in weight. An increased or decreased appetite. Weight gain or weight loss.
2. Impaired thinking and/or concentration. Trouble making decisions.
3. Sleep disturbances. Problems falling asleep or problems waking.
4. Heightened feelings of agitation. Easily annoyed. Irritability, restlessness.
5. Fatigue or sluggishness. Weariness. A lack of physical energy.
6. Depressed mood, with feelings of apathy, helplessness, and hopelessness.
7. Loss of interest in sex, changes in sexual functioning.

America:

1. Growing steadily obese. 64.5% of us are overweight. 1-5% are anorexic or bulimic.
2. America now ranks 20th in the world for education. We are becoming dumber.
3. Sales of sleep-aids like Ambien have skyrocketed. Starbucks has heavily expanded.
4. Road rage. School shootings. We have become more temperamental.
5. Despite a plethora of health clubs, we’re exercising less and eating more fast food.
6. A high voter turnout in America is 54%. 66% of us call in sick when we’re not.
7. Since 1998, Viagra has been one of the most popular drugs in America.

I think a scientific case might be made for my theory of a collective American meltdown in the last decade, but the empirical evidence by itself is overwhelming.

Stolen Childhoods

In 2001, I was at a grocery store when I saw a sweet grandmotherly woman bend over a stroller to coo at an infant and congratulate the mother. The mother quickly jerked the stroller away and said, “I am teaching him NOT to talk to strangers!”. The child was about six months old. Teaching kids the danger of strangers is appropriate, but making them paranoid, fearful, and anxious is not.

The protection of society’s children is warped. Those who most need protection do not get it, and the public is left with harrowing stories of child abuse and murder. Meanwhile, there are far too many over-coddled children whose parents forgo discipline in favor of a “my child can do no wrong” attitude. When their children act out at school, parents are quick to blame the teachers. While teachers aren’t infallible, it does not help that classroom time is often dominated by children with behavior problems. Teachers cite defensive parents and discipline as two of their major struggles.

At the same time, many public schools have eliminated recess, and any chance for children to expend excess energy, in order to fit more learning into the schedule. Children are being saddled with more and more homework, further cutting into a child’s play time. The average backpack of an elementary school child weighs 13.8 pounds. A 2004 study found that over 64% of middle school children report pain from carrying heavy backpacks.

There has been a 500% increase in the number of ADD/ADHD drugs prescribed to children since 1991. An article published by Education World states, “According to the Congressional Testimony of Terrance Woodworth, a deputy director of the Drug Enforcement Administration, the number of prescriptions written for methylphenidate has increased by a factor of five since 1991. About 80 percent of the 11 million prescriptions doctors write for that medication each year treat childhood ADHD, he said. In addition, production of Adderall and Dexedrine, also used to treat ADHD, has risen 2,000 percent in nine years.”

Is it really any wonder that America’s children are becoming overweight couch potatoes who are less interested in learning and more interested in the latest video game release? We have stolen childhood away from them at every turn. We need to give it back to them, complete with free time, family time, the outdoors, and discipline.

All the Rage . . . and the Apathy

Rape is the fastest growing crime in the world, with America still in the lead. The statistics are simply staggering, but perhaps none more so than this — only 2% of perpetrators are convicted. Pedophilia is a rising crime that has actually gained proponents in the academic sector.

While people should be enraged by that, and the often light sentences handed out to rapists and child molesters when they are convicted, many choose to expend their energies elsewhere — like on the highway. In 1999, a prominent Twin Cities anesthesiologist beat up a 68 year old female driver for going too slowly. The case was shocking at the time, but road rage has since become more common. Violence and deaths caused by road rage have risen steadily.

According to Wikipedia, in the 90′s, “gangsta rap” hit the mainstream, and by the early 2000′s, rap music became one of the bestselling music genres in America. Bustin’ caps, shooting your ass, bitches, pimps and ho’s were introduced into the American lexicon, and embraced by a newly ghettoized culture of youth and young adults. A 1996-1997 study found that illicit drugs were mentioned in 63% of rap songs, compared to 10% in other genres. Defenders of rap music claim that the lyrics are fueled by reality — if the reality did not exist, then neither would the violent, misogynistic lyrics. While that may have some grain of truth, the vast popularity of rap music does not match up with the reality of most American lives, black or white, which are not dominated by shootings, crack cocaine, pimps and whores.

That such things became popularized, and that psuedo-gangs have hit the suburbs, might be attributed less to the reality of American lives than to the feelings of hopelessness, frustration, and rage many Americans, particularly young people, seem to feel. Of course, there are plenty of people who also feel apathetic — they are either numb to the world outside of themselves, or disbelieve that anything they might do would have an impact. They keep to themselves, away from the polls, and apathetically go along with the dumbing down they get from corporate-sponsored television and newspapers, while they read fewer and fewer books.

Sex: Just Not That Sexy Anymore

Pornography continues to sell, and is becoming more mainstream. Estimates of porn sales in America range from a conservative estimate of $4 billion dollars up to $15 billion. In any event, the porn business has boomed since 1970, when revenue was estimated at a relatively paltry $5-10 million.

We can now order porn into our living rooms with a subscription to cable or an internet connection. Americans no longer have to sneak out to dark theaters to get their fill of naked, copulating others. There’s freedom in that — and some socio-cultural changes that don’t seem to be going away any time soon.

American women, taking their cue from porn stars, have started shaving or waxing their nether regions to baldness or near baldness. The trend has taken personal grooming into spas and salons, where for $30-$100 women can get themselves trimmed to bikini perfection, shape their pubic hair into a thin stripe, or go all-out and get the front to back, totally bald Brazilian.

“I wouldn’t date a woman who didn’t shave down there,” said one blog commenter, “too gross.” Preferable, it seems, is a woman’s return to labial prepubescence.

While all cosmetic surgery is on the rise, labiaplasty — a particularly painful operation which involves the cutting and restructuring of labial tissues to form a “youthful” appearance — has gone from being a secret of porn stars into the mainstream of female consciousness. Vaginal rejuvenation, a procedure that actually may have some medical merit for women who have prolapsed vaginas, has become a a fashion trend, with many women seeking the surgery only to appease the fantasies of their porn-fed boyfriends and husbands. From Women’s e-News:

Ileana Vasquez is a 29 year-old Southern California housewife with four children. She read about vaginal rejuvenation after she saw an ad in a magazine. Her marriage was in trouble and she noted that her husband wasn’t happy with her sexually.

“One time he had a few beers and told me that because I had all our kids and was looser now he didn’t want me as a woman anymore,” Vasquez said. “He did say he was sorry later on but I knew he was telling the truth.”

Vasquez had the surgery and she noted her marriage is back on track and her sex life is good again. “He’s become my sweetheart again,” she said. “He bought me a house and he wants me all the time.”

Anal sex, which was once reported by Kinsey to be engaged in by 9% of the heterosexual population, is now a growing trend. The CDC has reported that 38.2% of straight men and 32.6% of women now engage in backdoor play. The sales of anal “toys” have increased dramatically in the last decade.

So have porn, waxed parts, and Greek-style lovemaking made America any sexier? Not really. An estimated 25% of American adults, a third of women and a fifth of men, have no interest in sex. Up to 33% of our adult population has gone one year or longer without a sexual partner. Viagra sales have continued to rise since Pfizer introduced the drug in 1998.

Fewer people, it seems, feel adequate anymore. Their bodies and parts don’t match the sexualized images porn has brought them, and they turn towards surgery and drugs to “save” them. Where the Kama Sutra of decades past brought eroticism and imagination to millions of bedrooms, today’s porn is selling Americans on picture-perfect vaginas, silicone enhanced breasts, enormous phalluses, and taking it up the ass.

For millions of Americans, sex just isn’t that sexy anymore.

(to be continued).

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