Perhaps it’s never too early to introduce your children to politics? Children’s television network Nickelodeon will be showing highlights of President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration all day on Tuesday.

While the major networks plan to show the whole event live, Nickelodeon is tailoring its coverage for their audience. Snippets of the parade, the speech, and Obama’s oath of office will be televised and Nickelodeon’s own reporters will be broadcasting from Washington DC. Short segments of Inauguration coverage will be mixed in with their regular programs.

Nickelodeon has discovered that children are surprisingly interested in the political process. Nick networks covered the election and ran their own kiddie election, with much closer margin than the real one. Nick’s viewers also voted for Obama who won their election with 51% of the vote, John McCain receiving 49%. 2.2 million children cast their votes. And they say the youth are apathetic about politics!

Another reason that Nickelodeon is paying such close attention to politics is Barack Obama’s daughters, 10 year old Malia and 7 year old Sasha, are part of their target audience, and they are already influential celebrities themselves. Maybe Nickelodeon are hoping to get the First Family’s official approval?

Whatever your political position, most people agree that it’s important for children to understand the political process and want to get involved, understand the issues, and want to vote. I think this is a great thing for Nickelodeon to be doing. If I had cable I’d let my toddler son watch. We’ll have to follow it online if Nickelodeon carries their coverage on their website.

Another way for children to get involved with politics: Legoland has inaugurated President Obama already. An incredible lego model of the Inauguration with thousands of lego people is on display in Legoland in California.

Mark Ciptak of Elizabethton, TN has secretly named his newborn daughter Sarah McCain Palin after the Republican Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates without his wife?s knowledge.

Apparently, Ciptak decided to change the name he and his wife had agreed upon for their child which was Ava Grace Ciptak. What was his reason for the change of heart? This was his third child, and he was unable to give financial assistance to the campaign fund for the Presidential hopefuls of his choice. He felt that by ?taking one for the cause? and by naming his child after the candidates, he could ?get the word out? for free.

One of my precious daughters is named Sarah and I admit that I think it is a beautiful name. I do believe though that I would be very angry if my husband had tried something like this when our son was born?for a lot of reasons. Mr. Ciptak disclosed to the media that he acquired a new set of birth certificate forms from the nurse?s station and secretly filled them out without his wife?s knowledge. When leaving the hospital, he gave the set he?d secretly filled out to the nurse instead of the set he and his wife had filled out. I am amazed, but I feel very sorry for poor Mrs. Ciptak.

I feel most sorry for their infant?she will spend her lifetime explaining her name and probably enduring countless taunts from her peers. I know, I probably shouldn?t think about this, but I do. Imagine the stir her name will create if the candidates she was name after are unsuccessful in their bid for the White House!

By the way, Mr. Ciptak also relayed during the interview that although his wife is upset and in shock, she is still speaking to him. He admits that some of their relatives, however, are not at this time.

When asked what he would think if little Sarah McCain Palin becomes a Democrat when she grows up, he says that as an American, she is free to do so and that he wishes the best for his daughter.

What do you think?

What do you think about political shirts for babies? I’ve seen “Weepublicans” shirts for John McCain, and “Mama for Obama” shirts, onesies and bibs for newborns, babies and toddlers.

Do you think they are cute, or inappropriate for babies? After all, babies don’t have political opinions (yet) and most of us would object to being made to wear a shirt bearing a slogan they didn’t agree with. Political opinions usually – but not always – run in families so while your offspring are likely to vote the same way as you, there’s no reason why a Mama for Obama’s baby won’t be a future Republican.

So are these shirts imposing a political view on someone who should be allowed to make up their own mind, or are they harmless extensions of Mom’s McCain or Obama t-shirt or lawn sign?

Ruth Kelly, the Secretary of State for Transportation in the UK, announced that she would be stepping down from her position to spend more time with her family.

She has four children, all aged under 10. She’s been a Member of Parliament, the British equivalent of a member of the House of Representatives, since before her children were born. She said that “it had not been an easy decision” to leave the her position but she said it was time to put her family first. “It is time just to take a step back and repay [my family] for the support that they have given me over the years,” she said.

Which naturally makes me think of the most famous female politician at the moment: Sarah Palin. The mom of five, and soon-to-be Grandmother, will be our next Vice President if the Republican party wins the election in November.

Aside from my opinion on her political views (let’s say we disagree on many things) I don’t doubt that she has the capability to do the job as well as any man, and I have a lot of respect for her ability to be a Governor and a mom.

But how would she cope with an incredibly demanding job, and still spend any kind of time with her family? Something has got to give.

Maybe me, and everyone else who have commented on this, are all being sexist? No-one would think twice about the ability of a man with five children to do the same job.

I believe that women can do just about anything men can do, and I hope we have a female President or Vice President. But is Sarah Palin the right one? Her youngest son, Trig, has Down Syndrome, and if anyone is going to suffer, that five month-old baby is. He needs his mother.

What do you think? If Sarah Palin does become Vice President, do you think her family will suffer? How do you think she will be able to spend time on her job and with her family? And does it affect your decision of who to vote for?

For those readers who are relatively new to my posts at Babies Online (and probably think I have a severe spelling problem for my excessive usage of the letter “u” in words such as labour or humour), I am a Canadian. And while our country does not tend to receive as much international attention as our neighbours (see, there’s that “u” again) to the south, we are also looking at an election this fall.

This past week, the Conservative Party (the one currently in power, although with a minority government), began running television commercials in an attempt to portray their leader (and current Canadian Prime Minister), Stephen Harper as a doting family man, a wonderful father who loves his kids and is an attentive parent.

Sarah Palin’s selection as a candidate for vice president created a flurry of activity in the media, mostly centered around her family and especially her skills as a mother in light of the unplanned teenage pregnancy of her daughter.

Perhaps I’m naive, or foolish, or just plain ignorant, but I fail to see the relevance of a person’s parenting skills when it comes to politics. My skills as an engineer are not predicated on my ability to play with my daughter, or give her a bath, or feed her. I would never mention that braiding the tails on a My Little Pony, or making a paper mache mask as skills I have developed on my resume. Yet, for some reason, when it comes to selecting a leader for our government, people feel that a person’s parenting skills, or their representation of the definition-elusive “family values”, somehow makes them a better candidate than their competitor.

Tell me what your policy is on funding for health care and education. Tell me where you stand on foreign policy issues such as the conflict in Iraq. Tell me what you will do about the environmental problems facing our world.

I really don’t care if you put lipstick on your pitbull (or whatever your point was).

Sources:
Nice before the nastiness via The National Post
Palin’s Family Has Always Held a Place in Her Politics via The Washington Post

I just read and update this morning about Alaska governor Sarah Palin and her newborn infant son Trig. Governor Palin, 42, gave birth to her 5th child April 18th. I was impressed with the fact that she was still on the job the day she gave birth! According to press, the Governor went into labor while attending a conference in Texas, and flew back to Alaska for the birth.

Shortly after the birth, a press release stated that the child had “special needs.” Governor Palin has now said that Trig has Down’s Syndrome, and that the doctor’s revealed the diagnosis during her fourth month of pregnancy. Down Syndrome is a birth defect cause by an extra chromosome and occurs in 1 out of every 100 births in women who conceive after the age of 40.

This story was very personal for me as I have 5 children myself. Two of my children have numerous handicaps and so I am aware of how a special needs child can incredibly change one’s life. Last week, my sister-in-law discovered that the child she miscarried had Down’s Syndrome as well. Parenting a special needs child is certainly a demanding job, although parenting in general is a demanding job as well. Despite her new job as a parent to a speical needs child, Governor Palin vows that she will still continue on in her role as Governor and that her new duties will not affect her work. I am impressed with her strength and tenacity! Although my personal decision was very different than hers(I chose to freelance from home instead of continuing on with my career), I wish her and her family the very best as they begin this new life journey.

Monsanto are a happy company in the USA. They sell genetically modified seeds for crops grown in the US (banned in most other western countries) and are allowed to sell Bovine Growth Hormone, rBGH, for use in dairy cows (banned in most other western countries).

Cows injected with rBGH produce 10-25% more milk, making farmers very happy, considering the recent high prices they can sell milk for. The cows, however, are less happy. rBGH makes cows more likely to have foot problems and lameness, fertility problems, reactions at the injections site, and more likely to get mastitis. (Nursing moms, did you ever get mastitis? it’s AGONY.)

And what about consumers? By-products of rBGH do pass into milk. Heath Canada studies have concluded that rBGH cannot “biologically plausibly” affect humans, and Monsanto claims that pasteurization render it harmless to humans, but feeding growth hormones to adult animals has been shown to increase the risk of some cancers in animal studies. The drug is banned for use in Canadian cattle on animal welfare grounds.

Currently, milk from cows not injected with rBGH is labeled as such, so consumers can make a choice. Monsanto is hoping to change that though. A supposedly independent group of farmers called Afact is lobbying for changes in the law which will prevent labeling of rBGH-free milk as such. Turns out that Afact was organized by Monsanto. So far they haven’t succeeded. And in Pennsylvania, lawmakers actually tightened the regulations on milk labeling to make it more accurate as to whether hormones had been used.

rBGH-free milk is sold everywhere from Walmart to health food stores, so it’s available for almost every consumer for about the same price as rBGH milk. I’ve just been to SuperTarget: A half-gallon of Target brand milk (may contain rBGH) is $2.19, Kemp’s brand milk (no rBGH) is $2.39.

It’s an easy decision for me to choose which one to buy for my family, especially considering how much milk my toddler drinks.

And what about baby formula? The main ingredient of formula is milk. Enfamil, Good Start and Similac’s websites are devoid of any information about rBGH.

A Similac customer representative read me a statement that said Similac “have no control” over whether the milk they use in their formula has rBGH in it. She also told me “there are no traces of rBGH in formula” because it is inactivated in the formula making process. She also said “rBGH is turned into inactive fragments in the digestive tract”.

Enfamil and Nestle Good Start emailed me lengthy statements saying much the same thing – cows are injected with rBGH, we might be using some of their milk, but no rBGH ends up in our formula.

No studies have shown any risk to humans from drinking rBGH milk. Although, to be fair, not many studies have been done, and none on a large scale, so it’s probably not wise to claim it’s totally safe just yet.There’s other food issues that are proven to be harmful – like trans fats, or mercury in fish, pesticides in fruit and vegetables, and lead in our water, that’s it’s much more important to be aware of. But since I can avoid rBGH milk cheaply and easily, for my family’s sake and for the welfare of dairy cows, I’m certainly going to.

Barneycam VI: Holiday in the National Parks

You know it’s Christmastime at the White House when the Barneycam is rolled out again …