Uncle John’s Presents Mom’s Bathtub Reader (34 page)

Of course, raising a champion cowboy isn’t something you set out to do; it’s a mind-set and a set of values. Joy says that raising children is the hardest job anyone can ever do. Her philosophy was to raise each child as an individual. She tried not to focus on Ty more than the girls, but as the kids grew up, it became obvious that while the girls enjoyed rodeo, Ty was obsessed with it.

Although the Murray kids learned early about doing without, they also learned about working hard to get what you want. Joy taught them the power of persistence. When Ty was a young teen, he worked all of one summer to save enough to buy a mechanical bull. By the time school started again, he’d earned $840. But mechanical bulls were selling for thousands. Joy never gave up. She searched the want ads and spent hours on the phone, and one day her persistence paid off. She found a mechanical bull for sale for $1,000, talked the man down to $840, and Ty had a career in bull riding ahead of him.

Inspired by his mother’s determination and his father’s work ethic, Ty Murray set out to become the world’s greatest
cowboy. He wanted to break the record held by Larry Mahan, who had earned six All-Around Cowboy titles.

Joy watched in the stands as Ty won rodeo title after rodeo title, including Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association’s (PRCA) overall and bareback-riding Rookie of the Year and six PRCA World All-Around Championships.

In 1998, Joy Murray was in the stands yet again watching as her son finally achieved his goal and broke the world record, capturing his seventh PRCA world championship!

Unfortunately, kids grow up and leave home. “We spent our whole life on our kids,” Joy Murray says. “Then our kids, dang it, grew up on us.”

Fortunately, Riley entered Joy’s life. Riley, a beautiful brown and cream paint horse with a white face and blue eyes, gave Joy something to do: learning how to ride all over again. Yes, even cowgirls who have been riding all their lives can learn a thing or two. Proving that you can teach a cowgirl new tricks, Joy recently began studying “Universal Horsemanship” with Dennis Reis to learn how to work with a horse’s nature versus trying to control it.

Although her kids keep reminding her that she’s 60 years old, Joy says she’ll worry about getting old when she’s 90. Until then, Joy Murray hasn’t turned in her spurs, and even though her bulls riding days are over, she plans to keep riding until the trail’s end.

What the statisticians say about moms.

According to the year 2000 U.S. Census, there’s a lot of interesting info about American moms.

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There are 75 million moms in the United States.

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57% of women aged 15 to 44 are mothers.

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There are more single moms (with children under the age of 18)—the figures grew from 3 million in 1970 to 10 million in 2000.

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24.8 is the median age at which U.S. women give birth for the first time. Median age rose almost 3 years from 1970 to 2000.

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Over the past decade more births are occurring to women over 30 years of age.

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The United States has the highest teenage pregnancy rate of all developed countries. Almost half a million
teenage women (10% of all women aged 15–19) become pregnant annually.

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But teenage pregnancies are declining: by 17% from 1990–96 (from 117 pregnancies to 97 per 1,000 women). By 2000 the rate had declined by 21.9%.

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78% of teen pregnancies are unplanned, accounting for about one quarter of all accidental pregnancies annually.

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Daughters of teen mothers are 22% more likely to become teen mothers themselves.

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Of having twins? About 1 in 33. In 2001, twin births exceeded 3% of all U.S. births for the first time. The twinning rate has climbed 33% since 1990 and 59% since 1980.

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Of having triplets or multiple births? About 1 in 539. The triplet-plus birth rate has risen over 400% since 1980, largely due to older mothers taking fertility drugs.

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Of delivering by caesarean? About 1 in 4. The caesarean rate has increased steadily since 1996, climbing to 24.4% of all births by 2001.

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In 2001, Tuesday was the most popular day for giving birth with 12,000+ births daily.

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In 2001, August was the leading month—360,000 births occurred.

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Most babies arrive in August and September meaning they were conceived around the holidays. (Can we blame it on the December eggnog?)

• The fewest babies are born in April meaning fewer are conceived during the hot summer months, particularly in the Southern United States.

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The hotter the U.S. summer, the fewer the number of babies conceived. (Although colder winters do not necessarily produce more babies.)

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U.S. families are shrinking. In 1976, 36% of moms had 4 or more children. These days it’s closer to 11%.

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Most U.S. moms will have 2 kids.

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3 is the average number of children that Utah women can expect—the highest in the nation.

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The average child used 10,000 diapers before being toilet trained. With an average of 2 kids that’s 20,000 diapers that need changing!

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An average-income family will spend $165,630 on a child by the time he or she reaches age 18.

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Stay-at-home moms put in 65% of the child-raising time compared to 60% put in by working moms.

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The College Board estimated that tuition, room, board, and other college expenses in 2000 came to about $11,000 a year for students at in-state public colleges and almost $24,000 for private institutions. Four years of schooling can cost $44,000 to $96,000.

Is she or isn’t she? Only Uncle John knows for sure!

M
eet these political “first ladies.” They were each the first to achieve a goal for their gender. They became legends in politics. Were they legendary moms too?

First woman to be prime minister of India

She was the only child of India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Oxford-educated, Indira was elected to India’s parliament two years after Nehru’s death following the death of his successor. Her party made her a compromise candidate for prime minister of India thinking she would be easy to control if she won. Oops, big mistake! Indira had political smarts to elbow out her would-be bosses and became a powerhouse of a prime minister who led India for 15 years (1966–1977 and 1980–1984), won a war with Pakistan, and established the state of Bangladesh.

Was Indira more than mother to her country?

First woman to be prime minister of England

She went from a grocer’s daughter to a baroness and in between (1979–1990) she ran the United Kingdom as the Conservative prime minister. Maggie Thatcher worked her way up in her party by holding cabinet positions like secretary of state for education and science. She was a
hard-line Conservative, notorious for tough actions like abolishing free milk, which earned her the soubriquet “Maggie Thatcher, milk snatcher.” As prime minister, Thatcher was the “Iron Lady,” slashing government services, promoting business, and stomping Argentina in the Falkland Islands War.

Was Maggie Thatcher too tough to be a mom?

First female principal chief of the Cherokee Nation

Wilma started life in 1945 on an Oklahoma farm until a drought forced her family to relocate to San Francisco, where Wilma later attended college. As a young woman, Wilma returned to her ancestral lands in Oklahoma outside of Tahlequah. She immediately began working for her people, and in 1983 won her first office as the Cherokee Nation’s deputy chief. In 1985 when the former chief stepped down, as deputy chief she became the principal chief of the second-largest tribe in the United States. Mankiller faced death threats from those who refused to be led by a woman, but she persevered to be elected outright in the 1987 and 1991 tribal elections. She won respect for her focus on education and health care, and for tirelessly helping her tribe achieve economic independence.

Has Wilma continued the family line with children of her own?

First female U.S. National Security Advisor

Condoleezza Rice, one of the most powerful women in the United States, grew up in a segregated Birmingham, Alabama. To combat prejudice, she concentrated on her
education and being “twice as good” as everyone else to succeed. Rice was a political science professor at Stanford University when she was picked by President George W. Bush in 2000 to serve in his cabinet. A powerful member of the administration, she has helped manage the Afghanistan and Iraqi wars, but she says her dream job is to be commissioner of the National Football League.

Is Condoleezza Rice working to make the world safer for her own children?

Answers on
page 301
.