MSNBC - My Turn: What I Never Learned at 'Mommy and Me'

In this latest Newsweek, there is an article by a Kathy Stevenson...she writes in the "My Turn Section" that is reserved for individuals to write in on their lives or experiences. I don't know much about the selection process or how Stevenson was given the space to air her views, but her article is striking as a contemporary perspective of the American parent.

Her basic argument--or woe, as it is better described--is that, basically, she thought that she (and her generation) had made a better life for their children, one where they wouldn't have to be afraid of opening letters or flying on airplanes:

I feel guilty because my generation seems to have been looking the other way, and we let our children down. Or maybe we weren't looking at all. We got blind-sided, sucker-punched in the worst way. We really did think we had it all: healthy IRA accounts and prosperity always on the horizon, Volvos in the driveway, college funds for our children, vacations at dude ranches.

But, of course, September 11 changed all of that. Now she wants to tell her son how sorry she is "that he has to hear words as terrible as jihad and anthrax." Where she once saw the world in its Volvoesque
perfection and rationality (and, of course, safety), she now feels this strong sense of parental guilt--not only because life seems less safe, but because it cannot be explained:

There is no way to explain what can't be explained. I have yet to hear any rational person explain how a young mother could attach explosives to her body, kiss her children goodbye and hours later blow herself up along with innocent civilians.

Again, the event which has suddenly shattered her worldview is predictable: "true logic, as I knew it, flew out the window on September 11."