A Quote by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
We were pressured to accept kids we were not qualified to handle. And we do that to people all the time, which is why we don't have enough foster parents.
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People have a comic bent or an angularity to their thinking, and those are the people who make jokes. And it's usually people who were in an environment, when they were young, where jokes were at a premium, or at least considered important to a life. My parents always listened to the comedy radio shows, we went to the comedy movies, and my parents appreciated comedy. So kids listen and follow what their parents like.
Something else was different when we were young: our parents were outdoors. I’m not saying they were joining health clubs and things of that sort, but they were out of the house, out on the porch, talking to neighbors. As far as physical fitness goes, today’s kids are the sorriest generation in the history of the United States. Their parents may be out jogging, but the kids just aren’t outside.
We were really professional by the time we got to the States; we had learned the whole game. When we arrived here we knew how to handle the press; the British press were the toughest in the world and we could handle anything. We were all right.
My father worked for IBM. My mother raised us kids. There were six of us, and a couple of extra foster kids at any given time.
My dad and mom were more like World War II-era parents, even though it was the 1960s, because they were both born in the '40s. They were young adults before the '60s even happened, and married, and already having kids. But by the time we were adolescents in the '70s, the whole culture was screaming at parents, "You're a good parent if you're open with your kids about sex." They attempted to be open with us about sex, and it made them want to die, and consequently, it made us want to die.
Some parents were awful back then and are awful still. The process of raising you didn't turn them into grown-ups. Parents who were clearly imperfect can be helpful to you. As you were trying to grow up despite their fumbling efforts, you had to develop skills and tolerances other kids missed out on. Some of the strongest people I know grew up taking care of inept, invalid, or psychotic parents--but they know the parents weren't normal, healthy, or whole.
We were kids that didn't have any education. None of our parents were in the music business or even college graduates. We didn't have someone guiding us. We were just uneducated kids from the middle of nowhere that suddenly had a band going around the world.
All these kids in Hollywood, the people born and raised out here, their parents are all in show business, and that's why I think we're good. That's why we're on top of the game now because we were born in it.
My parents were rather unconventional and did not accept rules unless they thought they were defendable. They were atheists when Sweden was a very Christian country.
Kids don't have a little brother working in the coal mine, they don't have a little sister coughing her lungs out in the looms of the big mill towns of the Northeast. Why? Because we organized; we broke the back of the sweatshops in this country; we have child labor laws. Those were not benevolent gifts from enlightened management. They were fought for, they were bled for, they were died for by working people, by people like us. Kids ought to know that.
In some communities it is - like, for me, coming out with my parents, they were not accepting; they were not understanding. So it depends. For kids in New York and L.A., maybe it's different, but for kids in Iowa, for kids in Tennessee, it's still something that's not really talked about.
We were fortunate at that time we were working with Virgin, and with Flood, probably more well-known as Brian Eno's engineer now and U2's producer, etc. Even though we weren't working in a strictly popular music area, which was great, we were lucky enough to work with people who were on the cusp of those sort of things.
All my foster homes were very good to me. But it's still not a very nice experience. It's only when you're older, you realise: we were on our own in there. As kids, you don't know what's happening. You're here. Then you're in the next house. But the families were all very good to us.
I'm missing work. We didn't have enough money for preschool. I had a panic attack. I couldn't do it. I became one of those horrible foster parents who give the kids back.
Our house was a place where you were welcome to make an idiot out of yourself. Silliness was valued. My dad worked with foster kids in the foster care system, and I think silliness was a way for him to leaven things up.
My parents subscribed to both Time and Newsweek and in 1978, I remember the covers of both that December were of the bodies in the jungle. The fact that many of the people who drank the cyanide - as well as Jim Jones himself - were originally from Indiana, that stayed with me. I wanted to know why they did such a baffling, horrendous thing, why they would kill their children.
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