The Canadian company, which operates in Vancouver and Langley, has taught students age nine and up in regular classes, and has gone as young as five years old in private lessons.

Maybe I am wrong here. Maybe the type of pole dancing being taught at Tantra Fitness is rooted more in the ancient Chinese circus tradition of pole dancing. Oh, wait a sec. What did you say the names of those pole dancing classes were? Bellylicious, Sexy Flexy, Pussycat Dawls and Promiscuous Girls?

Apparently, it’s an awesome ab workout. Yeah, well, if I want my 6 year old daughter to have rock hard abs, I’ll pick an activity that isn’t rooted in thousands of years of sexual history, like maybe the monkey bars.

“Children have no [erotic] association with the pole whatsoever,” says Morris, arguing that kids would see the same apparatus at a firehall, playground or circus. “Unless you teach someone how to grind and make reference to taking off your clothing, there’s nothing wrong with it.”

Oh, wait. This is MY issue. I am the one who is making the act of pole dancing sexual, projecting MY opinions and attitudes about the sexual nature of pole dancing onto the activity. Because, you know, the little girls (thank goodness) have no idea that there is anything sexual about dancing around a pole. But doesn’t that fact make this activity even more repulsive? Hey, I have an idea! Let’s teach our little girls to be sexual without them actually realizing they are taking part in an act most of society finds sexual. Nothing like preparing them early on with the necessary skills they will need to understand the hyper-sexualized world they inhabit. I mean, being a kid is already confusing enough, let alone being a girl. Do we need to make it even more confusing for little girls by adding in the complexities and gradient shades of gray involved with sex? Why even go there with 5 and 6 year old girls?

Yep, nothing says wholesome summer fun like pole dancing.

The site and video speak to the power of potential in young women as agents of change in their communities. Girls grow into women, strong and powerful women who ae capable of becoming lynchpins of their community. Like Brian, I am the Dad of a daughter and these types of messages resonate with me. It is a powerful piece and message.

Image by Serendigity via Flickr

Early in the new year a new law will go into effect in the US that may have severely damaging effects on small, independent toy makers.

The new law, called the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, was designed to prevent unsafe toys (like the made in China toys that seemed to be under constant recall last year) from entering the marketplace. Unfortunately, it appears that the new law is a blanket law that will impose strict mandatory testing of all toys in the marketplace, regardless of where they are made.

A group called the Handmade Toy Alliance fears that this will have a devastating effect on independent toy makers, not only in the US, but small scale international toy makers who sells products in the US market

For small American, Canadian, and European toymakers, however, the costs of mandatory testing will likely drive them out of business.

International toy makers like Selecta Spielzeug, who are already governed by strict regulations in their home country of Germany, have already announced they will no longer be selling their products in the US because of the law.

On their website, the Alliance spells out a couple of different scenarios.

• A toymaker, for example, who makes wooden cars in his garage in Maine to supplement his income cannot afford the $4,000 fee per toy that testing labs are charging to assure compliance with the CPSIA.
• A work at home mom in Minnesota who makes dolls to sell at craft fairs must choose either to violate the law or cease operations.
• A small toy retailer in Vermont who imports wooden toys from Europe, which has long had stringent toy safety standards, must now pay for testing on every toy they import.
• And even the handful of larger toy makers who still employ workers in the United States face increased costs to comply with the CPSIA, even though American-made toys had nothing to do with the toy safety problems of 2007.

While it is nice to see a government act to prevent threats to our children’s health, I would sure hate to see small, independent toy makers who make safe, high quality toys hurt in the process. The amendments that the Alliance recommends (things like exemptions for toys made from trusted countries and for toys made from raw woods and food grade materials) seem like a good starting point to make sure there are alternatives to Fisher Price and Mattel in the marketplace.

Thanks to Craftsbury Kids for the info.

I bring this up because a little part of me feels that the same fear and panic may be behind the lawsuit that Christian Martin and Paula Critchley are threatening to bring against the federal government should their request for twin parental leave be denied.

In Canada, we have a pretty good batch of parental benefits. We lag behind many European countries, like Sweden, Estonia and Bulgaria, but are far ahead of our American counterparts.

In Canada, birth mother’s get 15 weeks of maternity leave. Then there is an additional 35 weeks of parental leave that can be taken by one parent, or split up by both parents. Both these benefits are paid for by the federal Employment Insurance Program.

But whether you are having 1 kid or 4 kids, the time remains the same at 35 weeks. Christian and Paula are arguing that, since they are having twins, they should be entitled to double that parental leave – 70 weeks. And if you listen to the interviews they have been giving (the audio and video clips are available in Real audio format on the CBC site), I think you can hear the voice of freaked out first time parents going, ‘holy crap, we are having babies! WE NEED HELP!”

Still, the have a point. And you would be hard pressed to find me, a guy who believes parents should be with their kids as much as possible in the early, formative years, arguing that they should not get this. After all, if they had one baby now and a second a year from now, they would still be eligible for 70 weeks of parental benefits. So they happen to use them at the same time. Is there really anything wrong with this?

Economically, we as a country can afford this. Despite the fact that the incidents of multiple births have been on the rise, multiple births still account for only 2% of overall births. The effect this precedent will have on our national bottom line would be negligible.

As well all know, having kids is hard work. The first year with one kid was a haze for me, trying to figure out just how profoundly my life had changed. Yeah, people tell you, but you just don’t realize how much it does change until you are there. So, if bucking up a few thousand dollars is going to mean this family will have a better shot at riding it out, then so be it. I would rather my tax dollars go to this than bailing out failing companies with bad business models who refuse to create products that consumers really want. Oops, sorry…another rant.

Image via Wikipedia

In Quebec, families pay $7 a day for childcare. Or, to put it into terms I can directly relate to, if our family lived in Quebec, we would have $862 a month more in our pockets. $10,344 more in disposable income each year.

Talk about an economic stimulus package.

But beyond the economics for working families, the societal benefits in Quebec have been dramatic. According to research done by CBC’s The Current, in the 10 years since Quebec has adopted universal child care (at a cost of around $1.8 billion dollars per year for 209,000 children), Quebec has seen their child poverty rate cut in half, school test scores have gone from the lowest to highest in Canada, and maternal labour force participation has gone from the lowest to the highest in Canada.

Now, not all of these outcomes are solely the result of the implementation of universal child care, but it is hard to argue with the author of the program when she asserts that the universal child care system has been a major contributor in each of these factors.

That author is Pauline Marois, the current leader of the Parti Québécois in Quebec. Pauline Marios was recently recognized as a Champion for Child Care by the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care. Gordon Campbell and Stephen Harper, I hope you are taking notes.

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