Occupying Boys

I think the best thing you can do with boys like yours (and mine) is occupy them with caring for living things--plants and animals. I think it's worth doing this even if it costs more than it pays.

I understand that a child might be able to help in his dad's woodworking shop or help him build mini-barns, but there's something about dealing with living things that provides feedback and fascination and urgency that other things can not do for a child. I lament that so few of the children I have taught in school have had this opportunity. I think they are impoverished because of it.

I understand the problem with having only "women's work" for boys to do. That's why I think they should be offered other opportunities and given other responsibilities. Don't underestimate, though, the gift you are giving your sons and their future wives by seeing to it that they are competent doing a variety of household tasks.

In an ideal world, every boy could work alongside his dad, who would mentor him in his own trade, or apprentice him to another godly man whose trade was a better match for his son's interests and abilities. The reality is that many (most?) men work away from home in jobs that are dangerous or inconvenient for children to participate in, to say nothing of the fact that their doing so is often illegal. Children go off to school where they are further isolated from the "real world" and connections between work and provision or work and homemaking. Mother, Father, and children occupy different worlds most of the time, with those worlds intersecting only briefly each day.

Making care for living things pay could mean having a greenhouse and selling plants, having a market garden, raising and selling meat rabbits, selling eggs, raising or selling puppies or parakeets, bottle-feeding calves, etc. Of course, if you have a full-sized farm, all these things or other things just as good would be all in a day's work.

The more connection you can make with the above activities and actually putting food on your own table, the more significant a child will feel when he helps with them. If you sell the animals for money, turn some of that money into cash and take it to the grocery store with you and let your child see what you can (or can't) do with that money. Understanding checking accounts, etc. can come at some point, but seeing the cash and what it can do is valuable in the beginning.

Raising animals for food brings up a few problems, of course, if the rabbits and calves and chickens feel more like pets than food. Raising rabbits didn't work very well for us because no one at our house could bear to butcher them. I think it works best if children see some of the steps in processing meat early on--the last steps first, actually. I grew up helping on processing day when we went to Melvin's butcher shop and all stood around the long table cutting meat off the bones, grinding, slicing, packaging, etc. At home, we also raised and butchered fryers every summer.

I personally hate watching any animal killed, although I can't believe I used to pull heads off baby sparrows with my bare hands. However, it's one of the cruel realities of a meat-eating habit that some animal has to die if people want to eat meat. Use this reality to teach children about the consequences of the Fall of man in the Garden of Eden. Only a sacrifice could restore what man lost in the fall--convenient and adequate nourishment on plant material alone. (Don't attack me if you're vegetarian. I realize that it may be possible to get adequate nourishment from plant material, but it takes very careful food choices, with the right combinations, etc., to get enough protein in a vegetarian diet, particularly if all animal products are avoided.) Some day you will be able to lead into teaching how the shedding of Jesus' blood was the only way that
a loving relationship could be restored between God and man--something else that had been lost in the Fall.

LeRoy H. puts it very succinctly when he says "eating meat involves sacrifice." When he went off to Yale, and discovered how distressing this reality was to some of his friends who were far less familiar with the messy side of meat eating than he, he arrived at this realistic way of speaking of it. It is probably not to anyone's credit if they can take the life of any animal without some regret at having to do so. I don't see it as a moral problem, but it's not nothing either. You do well to recognize this when you raise and process your own meat.

Right from the beginning you need to be very clear about the intentions for your animals. If it's going to be a family pet, talk about what you expect the scenario to be when you get the pet. Include what happens when pets die. It would probably be wise to explore things that might go wrong before then, too--like a parakeet that bites everyone who comes close, or a dog that bites visitors, or a cat that eats the birds at the feeder. If you have laying hens, butchering day is farther off, but still in the future plans. If puppies and baby rabbits and calves are to be sold, make that clear. It will help if you plan to keep some breeding stock around, more or less permanently. I once gave a home to a rabbit buck previously owned by a family that had raised and sold hundreds of meat rabbits, and eaten a lot of rabbit, but they could not eat the patriarch of their rabbit project. I understood.

Talk to your husband about this and pray about it. I'm sure you have already done this. Ask other people to help you pray.

I think we who have glibly left behind our agricultural heritage have lost more than we realize. Among the men, there is too little concern about addressing it. It's the mothers and teachers who are left to deal with the fallout, and that's not right or fair, or good for our churches in the long run.