Her parents have both returned back to the workforce, so I've been hired to go into the family home, and look after Molly four days a week.

She's cute, it has to be said. Like, super cute. Especially the way she wriggles her feet when she's feeding and coos when she's happy.

But it's also damn hard work. The challenges aren't at all what I was expecting. The things you don't think of, like - what do you do with the baby when you need to use the bathroom?

Apparently Molly's sweetness doesn't melt every heart however.

‘Single Mum' Experience #1.
Recently Molly was crying incessantly from teething pain so we went for an hour-long walk to the shops and back. She ended up asleep and I ended up hungry so I went into a bakery. The woman at the counter stopped smiling at the sight of me and all but refused to serve me. I don't know whether it was the pram in her spacious shop (trust me, there was well enough room cos I analysed all the Bishopdale shops for that particular feature before deciding which one to enter) or the fact I looked like a veeeery young solo mother (apparently I still look 16) but either way the shop assistant, an older woman, pursed her lips and tossed my paper bag containing the apple turnover to me.

So I was slightly anxious about how the (mostly retired) people would react to having a rather loud baby at a serene weekday mass.

‘Single Mum' Experience #2.
I staggered into Saint Teresa's balancing Molly and Molly's bag, thumped down onto a pew and belatedly noticed adoration was going on before mass began. I pulled out some Tiny Teddies for Molly to munch on to keep her quiet; she squealed with joy at the sight of the packet. Continue reading

• Jessica Claire in Restless Press

Jessica studied Music Performance at the University of Canterbury and works as both a model and photographer.

The Pope said this in his general audience at St Peter's Square on February 11, during which he continued a series of reflections on the various roles in the family.

A society that "views children above all as a worry, a burden, a risk, is a depressed society", Francis said.

Citing European countries where the fertility rate is especially low, the Pope said "they are depressed societies because they don't want children".

"They don't have children. The birth rate doesn't even reach one per cent.

"Why?" the pontiff asked. "Every one of us, think and respond."

He praised the 1968 encyclical of Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, which reiterated the ban against artificial contraception while enjoining Catholics to practice "responsible parenthood" by spacing out births as necessary.

Francis added, however, that "to have more children cannot automatically become an irresponsible choice".

"Not to have children is a selfish choice," he said.

"Life rejuvenates and acquires energy when it multiplies: It is enriched, not impoverished!"

Last month, during an in-flight press conference on his way back from the Philippines, Francis also spoke about responsible parenthood.

"God gives you methods to be responsible," Francis said then.

"Some think that - excuse the word - that in order to be good Catholics we have to be like rabbits. No."

During his February 11 audience, the Pope recounted an occasion when he had asked his own mother which of he and his four siblings was her favourite.

Francis said that she compared her five children to her five fingers.

"All are my children, but all are different like the fingers on a hand," the Pope recalled his mother saying.

"It is like this, the family. The children are different, but all children."

The Pope also spoke of the difficulty many children face today, when he said it looks more difficult for many of them to "imagine their future".

Children, he said, "must not have fear of the need to construct a new world".

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• USA Today
• Image: Catholic News Service

But it wasn't just that kind of invisible. It was that no one was in the least bit interested in the fact that I had a baby. In a way, this was a good thing. Families are a private affair, and I was free to have one. And yet, it was this freedom, I felt, which also made me invisible. I was free to raise my child as I saw fit. The flip side was that no one cared. They cared about my academic work. But they didn't care about this work.

And yet, I thought that they should care. Not in a busy-body, ‘I'm going to call the social worker if I'm concerned about your parenting' sort of way, but in a ‘Thank you for raising a future citizen' sort of way. I had always been interested in politics, but now being a mother with a baby seemed about as far away from politics as I could get. I couldn't help feeling, though, that in some way, raising her was a political activity. It was political in the sense that what I did in my home - how I treated her, and the values I taught her - would have an impact upon her. And she, in turn, would one day have an impact on those around her in wider society.

Is parenting a political activity? Continue reading

Source

• Holly Hamiliton-Bleakley in Mercatornet

Holly Hamilton-Bleakley, mother of six children, has an M.Phil and a PhD in Intellectual History and Political Thought from the University of Cambridge (England), as well as a BA in Economics from Wellesley College. She has published many academic articles on the history of moral philosophy.

The priest said he couldn't answer that.

More than 20 years later Shawn Reynolds still remembers the anguish on the couple's faces. "He didn't say anything about Christ's love," Reynolds says.

Those were the days of "tears and fears," says Mary Ellen Lopata, co-founder of the support group Fortunate Families.

"Now parents are reacting with fire and ire. Things have changed dramatically. The church has lost so much in not welcoming our gay and lesbian children. They have left the church in droves because they are not welcomed. They can stay if they're silent, suppressing a big part of who they are. Now the church is starting to lose their parents as well."

Her husband, Casey Lopata, says that the role families play is crucial, and that while gay and lesbian Catholics are often dismissed, their parents are not.

"Gay and lesbian children are growing up in our parishes," he says.

"We need to be conscious of that. Are they good or not? Parents have a lot to say."

Deb Word, a board member of Fortunate Families and a foster mom with a gay and lesbian youth program in Memphis, Tennessee, says that her role as a Catholic is to remind her friends and her church that God loves these kids, always.

"We have to start by acknowledging that there are GLBT kids in the pews, and that God loves them," she says. " 'God loves you, but . . .' is different from 'God loves you.' " Continue reading

Image: Wikimedia Commons