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NJ Election Advisor's avatar

American men have become pussified.

Hard work and fresh air needed.

Scouting, gritty parents and chores will go a long way to wean these kids from screens and immaturity.

Thanks for another prosaic gem, Mark.

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ceecee's avatar

I was just thinking along the same lines for the past few days. We've lost the manliness of the men in our Country and in the world. It is considered wrong now to be strong as men b/c that may offend somebody somewhere. I'm hoping I taught my kids better. My second son wanted a moped but we told him he needed to find a job so he could buy one himself. We wouldn't buy it for him. So, he went out and he found himself a job on a horseradish root farm. This work is dirty, hard, and hot even in the Swedish "summers". He perservered though and was able to buy himself the moped that he wanted (that made our lives easier, actually, but he needed to learn to earn something on his own).

That job of his led to another job that the other 2 oldest helped out with on another horseradish root farm. I still have pics I took of them coming home looking like they'd been underground all day! This job led to my two youngest (girls) getting a job on a vegetable farm planting potatoes, harvesting carrots and onions and other veggies and then washing prepping and packaging them. My youngest, especially, did NOT like the job. I told her that was fine but she wasn't allowed to leave it till she found another. She never did find another and now, one of the youngest workers there since she started when she was 14, she has one of the highest salaries for the teens that work there and she is trusted by the boss to take care of things when he isn't around. Amazingly, this sense of responsibility and higher pay has made her like the job a little more each year.

My kids knew from day one that we, as parents, weren't going to be giving them anything that they could buy for themselves with a little elbow grease and hard work. They all knew from the beginning that I started my first job when I was in kindergarten. I delivered newspapers in my neighborhood and at 5 years old I had to collect the quarter for those papers every month. That was my pay. If I didn't collect it, I didn't get paid. By the time I was in high school, I was paying for everything for myself besides room and board. I told them and continue to tell them, the crap jobs help to teach you what you don't want to do the rest of your life. Use that to inspire you to be better at whatever it is you do want to do or what you need to do to be able to do what you do want to do and you will go far in life and you won't end up flipping burgers for a living...

I hope we as a country find our way soon though or it won't matter that my kids are hard workers b/c there won't be a country for them to be working for left worth working for...

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