Sharon Astyk: Home Economics, Sustainability and the "Mommy Wars"

I've heard a great many bloggers refer warmly to Sharon Astyk's work, but I had only dropped by her site briefly here and there. As we are soon expecting the birth of our baby boy, one of her recent posts (via Energy Bulletin) really struck me as incredibly insightful and well-conceived. She really hits on some major points on the structure of our society and its effects on the happiness of both parents and children. An excerpt:

Until 200 years ago, a vast majority of all children spent most of their lives with both parents every single day. In hunter-gatherer societies, the tribe often travelled together, and since hunting was generally a less common activity than gathering, male hunters often had considerable time to spend with their children. In most such societies in existence today, they do a considerable amount of parenting. Once agriculture came to predominate, again, children spent their days with their parents. Young, nursing children were often with their mother, but by the age of weaning (four or five in most traditional societies, unless a younger sibling pushed it ahead), children might work or play alongside their fathers for part of every day. Boys would join their fathers in traditionally male work, but even daughters would often help in the barn or around the farm. Everyone would recovene for regular meals, and the family would spend all sabbaths and festivals together. Many agricultural societies had much more free time than we do now - 11th century serfs worked only 178 days per year. Helena Norberg-Hodge has documented that the people of Ladakh, one of the harshest climates in the world, were able to feed themselves by working intensely only four months of the year, spending much of the winter in celebration and parties, and described the integration of children into the lives of both parents and grandparents as well.