As a mother, I do as much as I can to smooth my children’s paths.

I want them to know what it feels like to succeed.

I want them to be comfortable with themselves.

I want them to be willing to take risks because they know there’s a safety net to catch them if they fall.

What kind of parent doesn’t want her child to be happy?

As I listened to a story on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” though, I wondered how far I’d go.

Alix Spiegel’s story about a family’s decision to give their child treatment to delay puberty was one of the more compelling parenting dilemmas I’ve come across.

What do you do if you have a son who has believed since the age of 2 he was meant to be a girl?

The parents of this particular child accepted that he had a gender identity disorder and let their son become their daughter.

That’s not the interesting part.

According to Spiegel’s story, sometime over the next year, the child will begin a treatment to ward off puberty.

To put off puberty, children –- usually between 10 and 13 — are injected with hormone blockers once a month. Spack explains that the blockers only affect the gonads, the organs responsible for turning boys into men and girls into women.

“If you can block the gonads, that is the ovary [in women] or the testis [in men], from making its sex steroids, that being estrogen or testosterone, then you can literally prevent … almost all the physical differences between the genders,” Spack explains.

Without testosterone, boys will not grow facial or body hair. Their voices will not deepen. There will be no Adams apple, and height growth will slow. Without estrogen, girls will not develop breasts, fat at the hip, or menstrual periods. And since most growth happens before puberty, if you block estrogen — and therefore puberty — girls will grow taller, closer to a typical male height.

– Alix Spiegel, “Parents Consider Treatment to Delay Son’s Puberty,” National Public Radio

Having avoided puberty, the children will have an easier time if they decide to take hormones and mature into the opposite gender. According to researchers, they could be almost indistinguishable from someone born that gender.

On the other hand, the treatment could buy a family time to let the child grow old enough to decide what course of action to take.

It’s an interesting issue. I’m one of those people who believes that you just love whatever child you’re blessed with and don’t try to pump ‘em with hormones to make them bigger, better or smarter.

But what if they’d be happier?

What if they’d feel whole?

How far do you take it?

It’s an old story.

The children of Baby Boomers couldn’t help but think that if they followed the same formula as their parents they could have it all.

A college degree was supposed to equal a rewarding career, a house, family vacations and all the other things we took for granted when we were growing up.

Instead we’re finding that becoming young urban professionals doesn’t mean we get to put bright yellow “baby on board” stickers on the backs of our Volvos or BMWs. If we have babies on board, our luxury car payments are going to preschools, enrichment programs and all sorts of other activities to occupy our kids so we can work enough hours to make the payments on our budget cars.

Our parents were yuppies, but according to an article in Sunday’s edition of “The Observer,” the Europeans have coined us the “Baby Losers.”

I never expected to be rich. I was aware that when I chose to major in English, I might be picking passion over prosperity, but the decision didn’t doom me to poverty, as I’d been warned it might.

I have a college degree, two children and (hopefully) some marketable job skills. It’s not a bad place to be, but it’s certainly different from the future I imagined when my parents were my age – and my prospects aren’t likely to improve if I stay in Hawaii.

Then again, the Observer article indicates that it’s not a Hawaii, or even an American phenomenon. It quotes European “losers” who followed a different path and ended up in the same place as many of my peers.

From The Observer:

Freelance architect Emilio Tinoco Vertiz, 32, earns just €1,000 a month. ‘Who needs architects when no one wants to build houses?’ he said. In Spain people such as Emilio are known from their pay as the ‘mileuristas’ (thousand euro-ers). In France they are the ‘babylosers’ - a term coined by sociologist Louis Chauvel to contrast them with ‘babyboomers’. According to Chauvel, 41, a sociologist at the National Foundation for Political Science, for the first time in recent history a generation of French citizens aged between 20 and 40 can expect a lower standard of living than the one before. ‘Mileuristas or babylosers: it’s the same story,’ he said. ‘They have an average of three years more education than their parents, a worse job and a lower standard of living.’

— “After the boomers, meet the children dubbed ‘baby losers’”
“Across Spain, France and Italy, young middle-class professionals with good degrees and diplomas are facing a lifetime on low salaries with unrewarding jobs, forever poorer than their parents. Investigation by Graham Keeley in Barcelona, Jason Burke in Paris and Tom Kington in Rome

It’s easy to get caught up in all the things that we thought we could have but don’t. We end up speculating about what we could do differently to get to that place we expected to be.

But sometimes it’s easier, and far less discouraging, to just look on the bright side. We might be working harder for less, but at least we’re changing the expectations for our children.

On Sunday, take a look at the full-page “monster graphic” Derrick DePledge and I are putting together to show the status of dozens of bills the 2008 Legislature considered this session.

On family related matters, though, here’s a preview:

The Legislature passed Senate Bill 2245, which makes it illegal to leave a child under nine unattended in a car for five minutes or longer.

Part of the rationale:

“(In Hawaii) four times within seven months in 2005, children were left in cars that were stolen. Since 2003, three children have died from heat stroke after being left unattended in a car by a parent or caregiver. ”

– Senate Bill 2245(2008)

Rep. Marilyn Lee, who has championed the bill for seven years, sent out a press release on Wednesday celebrating passage of the bill:

“This prohibition provides one more tool with which law enforcement, firefighter, or rescue team personnel may take concrete action in protecting Hawaii’s children by allowing personnel to use whatever means necessary to protect and remove endangered, unattended children from the vehicles. Law enforcement, firefighters, or rescue team personnel will be required to immediately report this violation to the police if the guardian of the unattended child cannot be located within a reasonable time.

“In addition, there is an educational component, which requires the examiner of drivers to test license applicants for knowledge of this offense. The requirements and penalties of leaving a child unattended in a motor vehicle shall be printed on a card, which shall be placed in the glove compartment of every rental motor vehicle offered to the public.”

– Hawaii State Rep. Marilyn Lee

The bill still needs to go to the Gov. Linda Lingle, who can sign it, veto it or allow it to go into law without her signature.

If you have an opinion on what she should do, you can email her at governor.lingle@hawaii.gov.

I’ll be busy with the graphic for the next couple days, then taking a few days off at the beginning of next week, so I won’t blog again until Thursday.

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals think so and advertised as much in a poster that ranked among the 10 most controversial ads in the United Kingdom last year, according to BBC News Magazine.

Ironically, the article came out the day after my pets vs. protein musings, so I had to look.

Here’s the ad, as reprinted on the BBC News website:

PETA ad, via BBC News

According to the article (which is worth reading to see all the “offensive” ads), the Advertising Standards Authority received 68 complaints about this ad:

” ‘Feeding kids meat is child abuse,’ ” stated the poster in question and featured a close-up image of a child eating a burger.

“Complaints argued it was irresponsible as it encourage parents to withdraw meat from their child’s diet without replacing the nutrients it provides.

“People also complained that it trivialised child abuse, was offensive and distressing to parents who fed their children meat and misleadingly implied that eating meat could lead to obesity.

“The message was ‘anti-meat’ said the ASA, but parents were likely to understand that if you withdraw a food from a child’s diet the nutrients that food provides should be replaced.

It accepted some might find the wording of the ad inappropriate but decided it did not trivialise child abuse or mislead consumers.”

— “AD BREAKDOWN: The Magazine’s review of advertising,” April 30, 2008, BBC News Magazine

Yesterday was one of those days at the Legislature that started at 10 a.m. and went on forever.

As I was trying to eat a sandwich, write a story and monitor what our House lawmakers were doing, I heard Rep. Alex Sonson say, “One man’s pet is another man’s protein.”

The comment was made during floor discussion on a Senate Bill 2895 CD1, which adds equine animals to the list of animals covered under the animal cruelty law.

I don’t think Sonson was saying, “Hey, let’s go out and eat a zebra.”

He was opposed to expanding the list of protected animals because to some people, they happen to be food.

That’s a dangerous topic, so I’m going to step around it and bring it back around to raising kids.

I think all of us have that “ICK!” feeling when we first realize we’ve eaten a cute ol’ cow or silly lil’ chicken.

My daughter is different. Either she doesn’t grasp the concept or doesn’t care, no matter how much her brother tries to impress on her that she’s eating chickens just like the ones that cheer her up every time she spots them on the side of the Pali.

She likes those chickens, but she likes her Chicken McNuggets (and cheeseburgers), too. She’s not giving meat up for any ethical reason.

Sonson’s comment reminded me of a discussion I’d had with my daughter a couple days before, after we waved at the horse and cow we regularly pass on our way home.

“People eat cows?” she asked.

She didn’t seem particularly distressed when I said yes.

She was just leading up to the big question, though. “DO PEOPLE EAT HORSES?” she asked in horror.

“Um, no,” I told her, figuring I’d leave the dog food discussion for another day.

To her, it’s pretty clear: bovine = protein; equine = pet.