Weekly Reflection

Weekly Reflection #1
Over the last two weeks I have been thinking about the different challenges and rewards faced by parents today versus what I or my parents faced while raising children. I was initially excited to read Hewlett and West’s (1998) book about the challenges families face. Unfortunately it created more questions for me than answers. I felt that the authors focused too much time discussing the ways they were raised. Their upbringing is important but I felt it was too much and formatted in a disjointed fashion. Their discussions did help me reflect on how my upbringing was different from theirs. Most of my time at Antioch has been spent on trying to understand how my childhood experiences, gender, culture, etc., have influenced the way I live in the world. Antioch has also stressed that therapists should process their past experiences sufficiently

“[N]either the right nor the left of our political culture values the work that parents do” (Hewlett, 1998, p. 32). For many years I was raising two children by myself and could barely make ends meet. It was a very defeating experience. One of my biggest regrets in life is that I had to work long hours and missed the majority of my children’s early years. “Sagging wages, mounting insecurity, and lengthening work weeks make up the vanguard of the war against parents” (Hewlett 1998, p. 33). The lack of adequate salary kept me from being able to save money to move home to Washington after my divorce. My parents and siblings still lived in Washington and, by not being able to return, I remained separated from the family resources that could have helped me and my children. In fact, I couldn’t even afford to come home when most of my grandparents passed away. I still occasionally experience twinges of sorrow for the time I lost with my