Only + lonely + attacked = ?

OK, now this is getting ridiculous.

Without giving details that would endanger trust, I can admit that I know my decision to homeschool at work is being questioned. Questioned as in, implying that having my kids at work is somehow detrimental to the church or my ability to work effectively.

Excuse me while I make some salient points to whomever thinks this makes sense.

"TONIGHT, about four of every ten children in the United States will go to sleep in homes
where their fathers do not live. Before they reach the age of eighteen, more than half of
America’s children are likely to spend at least a significant portion of their childhoods liv-
ing apart from their fathers."

- "Turning the Corner on Father Absence In Black America", Morehouse College Conference on African American Fathers, 1999

"Because parents tend to be stricter on children of the same sex, the role of fathers is crucial to the growth of boys' self-esteem, said Mandara, a graduate student. Specifically, the pressure that fathers place on boys to achieve builds boys' self-confidence.

Mandara and Murray's study flies in the face of recent studies that concluded the role of the father in the African American household was not very important."

-From UC Riverside article re: a study by psychologists Jelani Mandara and Carolyn Murray, 2000


I missed the part that said where having my kids near me was a bad thing.

The fact that someone in an African American church is upset that an African American dad wants his kids to be with him at work is baffling. I would understand if I was giving them 40's and blunts, or if I had them watching reruns of "Sister Sister" for four hours straight.
But at church?

For those who don't know, our schedule fits into my work like this: (try to keep up). I work at the church Monday through Thursday, Saturday and of course Sunday. During those days, I bring my kids to work from 9 to 2 on every other Monday and from 9 to 12 on Tuesdays. Every other day when I bring them to work, they participate in the tutoring program at our church, so that they interact with their public school counterparts. Of course it allows me more time at work, but since I work mostly nights in rehearsals, that morning time is the most I spend with the kids.

So of course, my time with them is affecting my work, right?
Wrong. In that time, they are usually on their laptops in my office. Sometimes I'll become their tech support, getting them back on the internet, checking over a podcast they're downloading, but for the most part they are working on their own. It provides a time away from the temptation of TV and forces them to concentrate on their studies. My kids' interaction with the staff is like that of junior interns. They sometimes deliver messages or run small errands, but mostly they provide comic relief and sounding boards for their projects. There have been no incidents whatsoever of them causing distraction for the office or the employees.

OK, so now there's no employment issue I can find, and no socially negative influence. If there was a liability problem, well, let's not mention the hundreds of children we have in tutoring each day that we are not insured against. Point blank, there is no way anyone can give me a valid reason why I shouldn't have the ability to have my kids at this particular workplace...unless...