The At Home Parent vs. The World Do-Gooder Parent

[Arminius]

Lindbergh traveled the world attempting to save endangered species and natural habitats. He concurrently left his wife at home alone and seldom seen his children.

Ted Williams single mother worked relentlessly for the Salvation Army. Ted and his brother were home alone most of the time as children.

So does anyone think that the do-gooder is the better person?

[Catalina]

I think people are a little more complicated than that.

[[deleted user]]

Agreed.

That's like the argument posed a while back about who would make a better leader: an alcoholic, womanizing, sexist, bigoted, overweight man, or a tee-totaling, vegetarian-eating, sex-refraining, relatively healthy man?

If you said the latter, then you agreed Hitler was the better leader. The former was Winston Churchill.

[Lobstergirl, el principe]

I think this is a really important issue.

I do think that once children are old enough to be aware of what their parents are doing (say, age 6-7 on), parents should set some example of doing good in the world, and not just in the home, by volunteering or doing whatever, and talking about it with the kids or even taking the kids along to get a taste of it. I see some parents who are so focused on micromanaging their family life that the kids never get a look at the big picture. The world and what's going on in it.

[Brittomart]

Winston Churchill was sexist and bigoted?

[janine]

hitler ate vegetarians? he was more evil than i thought.

[Mona]

It is tempting to judge others with our own values. You can't give without taking it away from somewhere else. "Do Gooder" has to take away from personal life to give to the world. However, that is his/her decision to make. Socrates in "Republic" defines justice as one getting exactly what one deserves, nothing less and nothing more. It does seem cruel world gives many less than they deserve. Do Gooders try to compensate, at times sacrificing their dear ones. Dr. Martin Luther King junior echoed the same sentiment when he asked if philanthropists ever wonder why there is need for philanthropy in the world. I believe if we can do the best job of what we do and make lives of people we touch little better, this will be a better world.

[RandomAnthony]

I agree with the "this is more complicated than it looks" assumption. A mom who is working sixty hours at Wal-Mart to support kids in a tough sitaution is as much, if not more, of a do-gooder than an affluent person accepting an award at a lavish party for donating money that he/she won't miss. You can't count on media recognition to separate the do-gooders from the not-so-do-gooders. Too many will miss coverage.

[Michele]

When I was 30: I worked 40 hrs/wk, went to school 2 nights/wk, worked 40 hrs/month building up the women's crises service, volunteered at my son's little league snack bar twice/wk. However, I only slept 4 hrs a night. A couple of years ago my now adult son called me up to tell me how proud he was of all the work I'd done with the Crises Service...he was reminded because the san francisco paper had just published the address of the new "safe house" for the victims of battering and he was furious! He remembered we didn't have a "safe house" for us to go to when we needed it. I think you csn do it all but you pay quite a price. I would come home and bake cookies and/or brownies. We would go to the library together on Wednesday afternoons, then get a pizza then he would read at my Crises Service steering committee meeting. He got to hear my speeches first and would make suggestions. I paid for it in poor health later but would not change a thing. Neither would my son.