Notes on Christmas

Thoughts on Christmas, now we’ve survived it.

1. I Heart Doctor Seuss: On Christmas eve, my (Jewish) partner and I found ourselves reading “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” I was newly aware that what makes this story so great is its moral complexity. Unlike George “you’re either with us or against us” Bush, Dr. Seuss presents his central character as both villain and hero. Dr. Seuss may be laughing at his grinch, but he also seems to identify with him; who hasn’t sometimes felt their stomach turn and their heart shrink when witnessing this saccharine celebration of purchasing piles of cheaply made crap? The over-indulgence in tinsel, toys, and gorging that grosses out the Grinch is repugnant. His theft of all the ticky tack in Whoville is mean, but it is also a gift, clearing out room for the Whos to remember the real spirit of Christmas.

2. Down with White Christmas, Up with Herald Angels and Satan’s Grasp: When I listen to the Bing-era Christmas songs, I hear the jingle of cash registers. I can’t separate these modern secular songs from malls and mobs of bargain hunters. On the other hand, I’m no Christian, but I get choked up when I hear “Joy to the World,” “Hark the Herald Angels,” “We Three Kings, and “Holy Night” (way, way better than the sentimental pap of “Silent Night”). These songs are serious and sometimes dark. (Note the minor key of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” and the reference to freeing us from “Satan’s grasp when we had gone astray.” Not for nothing is this song, and that very line, the background of the ominous last scene in “Three Days of the Condor.”) The joy is therefore earned and real. What they celebrate is the possibility of the redemption of the world through the birth of a child. This is the miracle we all participate in with every birth.

Bah humbug and happy Boxing Day (don't forget the presents for the servants). On to Three Kings Day.

Build windmills and wipe babies' bottoms

A number of critics have begun to note the macho slant of Obama’s job plan, as it’s being outlined so far. Katha Pollitt, for one, has done so, but then she would, wouldn’t she? (I mean that very much as compliment.) More noteworthy are columns in The New York Times, the Boston Globe, and, believe it or not, Forbes.

The economist Randy Albelda writes in the Boston Globe that although we certainly need bridges, roads, windmills, and efficient cars and the jobs that go with them, those jobs will overwhelmingly go to men. Albelda notes that “almost one-quarter of families with children under the age of 18 are headed and supported by women as are the majority of single-adult households without children.” You wouldn’t think that you’d have to point out that leaving out women leaves out most of the country, and the majority of its breadwinners, but you do.

Writes Linda Hirshman in the New York Times, “Mr. Obama compared his infrastructure plan to the Eisenhower-era construction of the Interstate System of highways. It brings back the Eisenhower era in a less appealing way as well: there are almost no women on this road to recovery.” This column is almost enough to make me forgive her for her earlier polemics.

Neither Albelda nor Hirshman include in their criticism the demand that Obama’s jobs plan should include aggressive affirmative action and efforts to pull women into apprenticeship programs in the construction trades. In Forbes, Ruthie Ackerman makes this point. “The answer is not, as Hirshman suggests, to create more low-paying jobs "in fields like social work and teaching, where large numbers of women work." The solution is redefine what we consider women's work.”

I can’t help feeling that Hirshman and Ackerman both have it half wrong, and both carry some misogyny around, Hirshman in assuming that women will always do “women’s work” in social work and teaching, and Ackerman in rejecting that work as unimportant. Ackerman would do well to read her fellow Forbes columnist Thomas Cooley arguing for investment in education as part of the stimulus package, not because it helps women, but because it will have the biggest long-term payoff.

Ackerman describes the trades as unsexy. Not to me. A person who knows how to build something—that’s pretty sexy. When my sweetie puts on a pair of Carharts, I go a little mushy. That kind of apparel puts me in mind of the men who worked as part of the original stimulus plan, in the Civilian Conservation Corps, building the trails, bridges, picnic tables, and other amenities I enjoyed throughout my childhood and that my children still enjoy. My daughters ought to get a chance to build such things and say proudly to their daughters, “I built that.”

If I had sons, I would want them to be proud of jobs they'd had caring for children, to point to flourishing people and tell their sons, "I helped raise that." If such work were better paid, such a thing would be far more likely.

How about both and? Get people (including women) building trails, daycare centers, and windmills, and give people (including men) well-paid jobs caring for our elders and children. I want it all. We can do it.

What kills children?

What poses the biggest threat of death to children? You might think infectious diseases, and that’s true for infants. But if a child survives infancy the single biggest cause of fatal injury is cars. Cars are the single biggest killer of children ages 10 to 19.

That’s true around the world and across cultures.

This has implications for President-elect Obama’s jobs and infrastructure program: better make sure all that road building includes plenty of sidewalks, in short supply across much of the U.S. And how about bike paths, traffic-calming intersections, crosswalks, and stoplights?

Yet again that old socialist bogeyman Sweden comes out well on this issue, with much safer streets than other countries. Obama should be studying Sweden for lessons on infrastructure projects, as well as how to rescue a banking system.

Our bodies, our ignorance

The New York Times today was a bonanza: not one but two stories relating to reproductive science and Crazy Things Americans Do. Especially when they have a) too much privilege and b) too little accurate scientific knowledge.

Exhibit A, page A1: “Born to Run? Little Ones Get Test for Sports Gene,” about a genetic test designed to “determine which sports suit the talents” of a toddler. One parent of a toddler aiming to sign up for the test thought “it’s good to match them with the right activity.” The test analyzes one gene in the 20,000-strong human genome. Supposedly, the reporter tells us on A1, “a 2003 study discovered the link between ACTN3 and those athletic abilities” for speed or endurance. But gentle readers who make it past the jump find that a scientist says the test may actually be “snake oil,” and that the genes merely “have a role in athletic performance.” A role, as in one role among many, as in a link, not the link.

Always keep an eye on the verbs in sensational stories about genetics: there’s nearly always some very flabby words flapping around in there taking up the slack where clarity and rigor ought to be. “Has a role in” and “link” tell you nothing about what causes what or exactly how it does it.

The problem goes deeper than the usual sensationalism necessary to sell newspapers. To think that any complex human trait or behavior could be controlled by a single gene is terrible science (a scientist quoted in the article said that at least 200 genes affect athletic performance) is to have a totally wrongheaded understanding of genetics. Nor do genes alone determine athletic performance or height or weight or … Never mind the broader environment, like, oh, say, how much encouragement to play baseball a child is given; current genetic science suggests that the precise choreography of hormones and growth that happens in the womb is crucial to the expression of any trait.

Which brings me to Exhibit B, cover of the New York Times Magazine: “Her Body, My Baby,” reads the title, next to an astonishing photo of two women. One, very pregnant, is dressed in slightly rumpled khakis and functional shirt that could have come from Wal-Mart or Sears. The other is slim, taut, hair perfectly upswept, black spike heels tall, jewelry exquisitely understated, and black dress little and perfect.

The small smile on the slim author in the little black dress looks smug. How could it look anything but? Iew, iew, iew. I don’t think I can take anymore of these posts from the New York Times’ bubble of privileged women.

Anyway, it turns out that nowadays most surrogacies involve the surrogate woman carrying a baby that is genetically unrelated to her, created through IVF using the sperm and egg of what the article calls “the intended parents.” (Let’s call it like it is: the paying parents.)

This is a strategy to get around the legal implications of the Baby M case and ensure that the surrogate mother’s legal claim to the baby is as weak as possible. Somebody, however, should call a genetic biologist to the stand to talk about the role of the womb in creating a mammal’s essential nature. (For more on this, see for example my review of The Century of the Gene.) The woman whose womb created the baby may not be the “genetic parent” of the child, but she most certainly is biologically related to it.

If I can make it through this article without gagging so hard I rip the magazine, I’ll have more to say…

Walker on Michelle O., or the stupid job of First Lady

It’s hard not to read a major Oedipal* subtext to Rebecca Walker’s work. It ain’t hard to link the distancing from feminism in her writing to her struggles with her mother, Alice. This dynamic was obvious in a recent column for The Root about Michelle Obama.

I don’t know what Michelle Obama’s so embodying feminist goals that she surpasses them is supposed to mean, especially given the quote at the end of the article: "The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class—it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity." I don’t know what feminism is if it isn’t the cause of freedom, and I don’t know how you surpass that.

Too, Walker’s criticism of feminism’s “monopoly by women over 50” would have been a say wha? moment for me if I didn’t know who her mother was or that she’s has had a very public falling out with her.

In most senses of the words “feminism” and “monopoly”, the claim is totally false. If feminism means the broad movement for women’s equality, I’m counterexample number one, being a feminist and still many years shy of 50. And I know I’m not the only one. What Walker has to mean is that her mother monopolized for her what feminism is, and she’s got issues with her, so she’s got issues with feminism. I can’t think of a nicer way to make sense of her blather on the subject.

Of course this hasn’t hurt Walker’s career, since the powers that be are always delighted to give an anti-feminist woman, better yet an anti-feminist black woman, plenty of airtime. It’s too bad, though, because there are interesting things to say about Michelle Obama. I think Michelle Obama is the bomb and I loved it that she was quoted immediately after the election saying she’d be working to raise awareness of the struggles of working moms. And damn is it something fine to see a gorgeous, regal black woman as First Lady of the United States of America.

But all that wonderfulness doesn’t change that fact that First Lady is a sucky thing for any self-respecting person to have to be. A pure decorative adjunct to a man in power—what could be more antithetical to feminism? Even as I glory at how Michelle Obama will raise the position to its highest function, and indeed to some extent by her very existence open new possibilities for black women and women in general, I’m sorry the position still exists and sorry for Michelle Obama. She’s putting her own career on hold to go sit on a pedestal and try to give her daughters as normal a life as possible while they’re on a pedestal.

Walker’s right that Obama’s response to a question about having to leave a “high-powered and highly compensated career” was graceful (though the bit about her kids coming first was straight from the necessary script of a First Lady). Quite so, one’s whole life defines who one is, with what this culture normally means by career (paid work in the market) being only one part of a meaningful life. But that doesn’t mean it’s right that in our system women married to men in very high positions of power are required to sacrifice their own ambitions.

Still, if Hillary Clinton shows anything, it’s that the crappy job of First Lady just might finally be transformed into a stepping stone to power in one’s own right. And that thought opens all kinds of avenues for fantasy about the future.

*Of course this is not the right word for struggles with one's mother and her legacy of power; not surprisingly, our language lacks such a word.

Blue blind spots

Non-evangelical Americans were puzzled as to why Bristol Palin’s pregnancy caused so little distress among evangelicals, so it was only a matter of time until someone in the chattering classes tried to explain the matter. Margaret Talbot’s article on the subject in the New Yorker, “Red Sex, Blue Sex,” is an intriguing stab in the direction of an answer, but its brief, shallow treatment of the question left me dissatisfied.

It’s always seemed to me that right-wing-appeasing liberals of the Hilary Clinton ilk, who think they can find common ground with anti-abortionists in the goal of reducing teen pregnancy, were not only wrong to concede that abortion is a “tragedy,” but also wrong in the assumption of common ground on teen pregnancy. (This showed, I think, the same tin ear for both effective politics and integrity that Hilary exhibited in thinking she could get universal healthcare if she just made enough compromises with the insurance industry, and that Bill showed in just about every issue he ever addressed.)

Here’s what I’ve always suspected: Reducing teen pregnancy isn’t a goal of the religious right. Their reaction to Bristol Palin’s pregnancy suggests I’m right. Religious conservatives aren’t horrified by sex before marriage or sex by teens (in fact, your mainstream liberals may be more uncomfortable with teenage sex). In fact, teen pregnancy is actually more good than bad, in the religious right worldview. More (white) babies is good, but, more important, girls having babies young, as long as they get married—and within a conservative social framework pregnancy can push women into marriage--helps keep women disempowered and under the control of men. The bedrock of religious right ideology is gender hierarchy. Sex, even teen sex, isn’t bad, as long as it’s controlled by men (or boys) and women pay the price for it. (For more evidence that this is so, check out The Girls Who Went Away and my review of it.)

All this makes sense of the various phenomena Talbot describes. Liberals may be as much—or even more—uncomfortable with teen sex as religious conservatives, but liberal culture has absorbed the assumption that women deserve independent lives and careers. Having babies young, in this you’re-on-your-ownership society that lacks either strong government supports for mothers or strong extended family supports, is an economic and personal disaster. These are such fundamental assumptions of liberal culture as to be invisible to most liberals and centrists, which is why they assume without evidence that the religious right must share their goal of reducing teen pregnancy. The liberal worldview on these matters is a muddle—motivated half by a moral impulse, namely feminism's call for the equality of half the world, which it can’t quite yet really own, and half by economic rationality. Whereas the conservative worldview is pure, principled, and coherent (though of course it runs counter both to economic reality in the 21st century and to the great arc of history in favor of the principle of equality).

Health insurers discriminate against women

This one sent my outrage-o-meter off the charts: The New York Times is reporting that women pay significantly more for individual health insurance than men do, and the difference persists even when you consider only insurance that doesn’t cover childbirth. One insurance company, Anthem in Columbus, Ohio, charges 30-year-old women almost 50 percent more than men the same age.

The health insurance companies claim that women go to the doctor more often and have more lingering health problems. Just when you thought you couldn’t get more offended, read what the spokesperson for one of the insurers, Humana, said by way of justification, which just justified my belief that insurers are the lowest blood-suckers of the earth: “Bearing children increases other health risks later in life, such as urinary incontinence, which may require treatment with medication or surgery.” Screw you, too, buddy. As if having to suffer humiliating long-term medical issues as a result of helping continue the human race weren’t unfair enough, he has to throw it in our faces as an excuse for ripping us off? (See my earlier post.)

The article quotes Marcia Greenberger, a lawyer for the National Women’s Law Center criticizing the discriminatory practices. Greenberger claims that this practice can’t be justified by actuarial principles. That may be true—men probably incur more costs associated with heart attacks, say—but it misses what seems to me the deeper lesson. If anything is by rights a social cost, the burden of childbirth is. That our current system lays this cost at the feet of individual women throws into dramatic relief the utter bankruptcy of our system of treating health care as a private issue. The only insurance pool that makes sense is all of society, as (historical paradox though it is) United Autoworkers founder Walter Reuther saw. Or, as Malcolm Gladwell has put it, we should ditch the actuarial model of insurance for a social model of insurance.

These gender disparities show what a discriminatory dead-end efforts, like John McCain’s, to further privatize the system are. Greenberger notes that tax credits for health insurance—like those McCain would offer—would be worth less to women than men because of the higher premiums they face.

If McCain wins, and implements his health care plan, further privatizing the costs of reproduction, I suggest women go on reproductive strike. (Not a new idea, I’ll admit, although we’ve got one up on the Athenians, since we could go on reproductive strike without going on sex strike, at least until McCain and Palin outlaw abortion and contraception.)

Over 3 million cribs recalled

While waiting for research actually comparing the dangers of babies’ sleeping in cribs versus sleeping with parents, I read of the latest crib recall. This time it’s 1.59 million Delta cribs (yes, you read that right, million with an m), the biggest single recall in a string of crib and bassinet recalls over the last few months. In September the Consumer Products Safety Commission recalled 600,000 Simplicity drop-side cribs and another million of a different type of Simplicity cribs. In August it recalled 900,000 cribs. The recalled cribs had been linked to a number of infant deaths.

So I’m still skeptical about New York state’s campaign against co-sleeping. Where’s the science that says it’s better than the alternative?

Lenders prey on kids

In case you weren’t already outraged at the bailout for Wall Street, check out this op-ed in the New York Times on how parents are being disproportionately hurt by the mortgage crisis (AKA the predatory lending crisis). According to Eric Nguyen, “Nearly two-thirds of those trying to save their homes in bankruptcy have young children.” Among the many nasty elements of the disastrous bankruptcy bill passed in 2005 was one making it much harder to renegotiate the terms of a mortgage on a primary residence than on investment property.

Nguyen imagines a mother who becomes ill, racks up medical debt, and can’t pay the mortgage on her children’s home, then compares her with a wealthy childless couple who invest in a condo, run up credit card bills, and declare bankruptcy. Who winds up on the street? The kids.

Oh, and by the way, who voted for the bankruptcy bill? John McCain. Barack Obama voted against it. (Shamefully, though, his running mate Joe Biden voted for it.)

The right to register at Home Depot?

While I was out in the woods last week, I missed the remarkable Connecticut decision on gay marriage. And it is something. Not only did the state supreme court rule that gays have a right to marriage; it went further and said that civil unions are no substitute. The court ruled that both a law restricting marriage to heterosexuals and civil unions intended to provide all the benefits of marriage to same sex couples are unconstitutional because these laws violate the equal protection clause of the state constitution.

I think the Connecticut Supremes took the only coherent position possible, and the decision, couched as it was in comparisons to the civil rights and women’s movements, was inspiring, and nearly choked me up.

Interpreting our state constitutional provisions in accordance with firmly established equal protection principles leads inevitably to the conclusion that gay persons are entitled to marry the otherwise qualified same-sex partner of their choice,” Justice Palmer declared. “To decide otherwise would require us to apply one set of constitutional principles to gay persons and another to all others.

And then, reading down the New York Times article on the ruling, I was deflated by this, from one of the plaintiffs who’d sought the right to marry: “For 28 years we have been engaged. We can now register at Home Depot and prepare for marriage.”

Home Depot? This is what the great struggle is about?

I return to what I said in an earlier post: if the state grants marriage to any, it must grant it to all. But let’s get the state out of this bogus business altogether.

Cloth versus disposable: the fight goes on

In the perennial--and to new parents, fascinating--debate over disposable diapers versus cloth, add a good article in the Boston Globe. I'm still a cloth advocate, but a hypocritical one, because we're now using disposables on our second child. The decision wasn't entirely ours--our daycare won't use cloth--but then again we aren't even using cloth at home now.

One line from the Boston Globe article made me snicker, mostly at myself. Turns out that Seventh Generation, the leading "ecofriendly" disposable, whose diapers come in an inconically natural brown color and which my baby wears, dyes them that color for branding purposes. Doh.

One of the reasons I'm skeptical of studies that purportedly find cloth vs. disposable a toss-up is that it seems factors that favor cloth get left out. Such as the possibility that multiple children can use the cloth diapers--they last a good while. Also, the author left out of her article the issue of disposable diapers encouraging later toilet training (because they hold so much liquid away from the child's skin that the child doesn't learn to find soiled pants unpleasant).

Anyway, check it out and decide for yourself.

Washington paid leave sinking, women lawyers rising

The bad news and then the good news. First, Washington's groundbreaking paid family leave program may be going down the toilet, done in by a bad economy and a governor who can make herself seem fiscally conservative by cutting a controversial new program, even though it's small change compared to the many-billion-dollar deficit the state faces and it's a social support families need now more than ever in these tough times. Officially, Governor Gregoire is just "suspending" work to set up the program, not killing it, but it will be hard work to get it going again once setup is halted. And you can forget about it and a lot of other good programs if her opponent, Republican Dino Rossi, unseats her in the upcoming election.

Now the good news, or maybe it's the good news-bad news: Although women have made up at least half of law school graduates and new hires at big firms for the last 20 years, there are few women partners at the top firms. That's largely because of the hostility of the profession to mothers: according to the Los Angeles Times, about 42 percent of women leave the profession because of a lack of family-friendly policies. But (here's the good news part), the LA Times also reports, firms are finally beginning to see the error of their ways, implementing mother-friendly policies, like longer maternity leave and part-time positions.

I've got to harsh my own buzz now: Until these policies are made mandatory for all companies across the country, they will remain the privileges of the lucky few.

All the news that's pseudo-science

I found this week’s cover story in the New York Times magazine on “The Bipolar Kid” troubling. Despite the apparently reflective subhead, “What Does It Mean to Be a Manic-Depressive Child?” the article didn’t answer that question. By page two of the article we learn that experts don’t agree on what characterizes manic depression in kids and many say the “the illness looks significantly different in children.” And the prime expert quoted in the article says that mania, one of the twin poles that define manic depression, actually looks not like” elevation” but like “irritability” in kids.

Huh? If you don’t know what characterizes a disease, how do you know what counts as having it? And if you redefine the terms that had been used to characterize the disease, what does it even mean to say someone has it? This is classic bad science.

That’s bad enough. But the heartbreaking part is that labeling these kids with this pseudo-diagnosis sets them on track to medication with psychoactive drugs with major and often devastating side effects. Drugs like Lithium are nerve agents that cause Parkinson-like damage to the brain. Bad enough to do that to a grownup, whose brain is fully formed and can give meaningful consent to such treatment. But to do this to the forming brain of a child is barbaric.

The children described in the article are seriously disturbed—and disturbing. My heart went out to the little sister of a rage-filled boy, who clearly had been abused and traumatized by him since birth. And I could imagine that when a child is that out of control and violent, especially if you have other children, you would feel desperate to find some way of controlling him. Drugging him no doubt seems preferable to putting him in a padded cell for the rest of his life. But to call the drugging “treatment” and claim you have a scientific diagnosis becomes an excuse to treat thousands of much less disturbed children with these drugs. No surprise, that’s exactly what’s happened. A recent study cited in the article found a fortyfold increase in the number of children diagnosed with manic depression between 1994 and 2003.

Breast is best; formula may be deadly

Yet another reason to breastfeed: The latest poison news from China is about babies sickened or even killed by tainted formula. Seems to me we've been here before. Remember the Nestle scandal back in the 1970s and '80s and the boycott that got Nestle to back off from marketing formula in the Third World?

The story of formula has always seemed to me like a parable of capitalism. Start with something free, a gift of nature, and figure out a way to get people to pay to buy a substitute. Brilliant!

Breast is certainly best. That said, there are many reasons women in industrialized countries may find themselves with few options but to feed their babies formula. If you work full time, it is challenging to keep breastfeeding. Believe me, I know this well. The last few weeks, since I've gone to fulltime paid work, have been stressful. Despite a supportive work environment where I have a comfortable place to pump, and a daycare that supports breastfeeding, I've just barely been keeping up with my baby's eating. Where breastfeeding is a beautiful balance, a perfect positive feedback loop, where the amount the baby eats determines how much milk a mother produces, pumping is a creaking substitute that easily becomes a vicious spiral. The machine rarely pulls out as much as a baby eats. And the stress over this can cause one's milk supply to slow. And then if you start supplementing, it's likely your supply will further decline, and so on.

All of which is not to say mothers of babies shouldn't work, but rather that a society that cares for children must provide a panoply of social supports, from paid leave to places and time to pump to well-paid part-time work.

For me, a combination of running down to the daycare at lunch each day to nurse, pumping all the time, and taking the herbs fenugreek and blessed thistle has worked--for now. The liquid gold reserves in the freezer are finally building up again. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Palin and the issues--finally

In the wake of that painful ABC News interview, I'm glad to see feminists are shifting the discussion of Sarah Palin from the political-is-only-personal question of whether it's okay for a mother with an infant to pursue a high-powered job. Answer: Sure, although that's hardly a choice facing most mothers. For most of us, it's a question of exactly when the rent money is due and will my no-power job cover it once I send the baby to daycare.

Let's move on to the real issue: whether our society properly supports mothers so they can freely choose whether and when to take a paid job after giving birth. Oh yeah, and then there's the matter of whether to give birth, and Palin's cruel support for subjecting victims of incest or rape to forced childbirth.

That's just the shift Women Against Sarah Palin are pushing. And of course the trusty Katha Pollitt.

The shards of the glass ceiling still cut

Judith Warner’s New York Times column gets it dead-on about Sarah Palin and the utterly condescending way that women politicians have been talked about lately. As she said, ”Could there be a more thoroughgoing humiliation for America’s women?... Having Sarah Palin put forth as the Republicans’ first female vice presidential candidate is just about as respectful a gesture toward women as was John McCain’s suggestion, last month, that his wife participate in a topless beauty contest.”

I think they find her acceptably 'real' because Palin’s not intimidating, and makes it clear that she’s subordinate to a great man. That’s the worst thing a woman can be in this world, isn’t it? Intimidating, which appears to be synonymous with competent. It’s the kiss of death, personally and politically.
But shouldn’t a woman who is prepared to be commander in chief be intimidating?

Warner goes wrong in only one place: ”Her presence inspires national commentary on breast-pumping and babysitting rather than health care reform and social security,” Warner writes, as if breast-pumping and babysitting were fluff with nothing to do with issues of national importance. But speaking of serious national policy issues like Social Security, who does Warner think will pay for the benefits of the next generation of retirees? The children being cared for by breast-pumpers like Palin.

The assumption that the need to breast-pump and find babysitters (or bring your kids to work with you) inherently make you an unintimidating lightweight is just the kind of sexist condescension Warner is inveighing against. Why can’t you be a highly effective worker or even a powerful, intimidating power broker and pump breast milk? (Once upon a time, millennia ago, the ability to bring forth life and nurture it at the breast was the very model of intimidating power.)

Isn’t it time we had a conversation about these assumptions? And about the need to revise our workplaces to accommodate powerful, intimidating—or ordinary and not so intimidating—people who breast-pump? And to realize that these people are not obscure exceptions to the norm, but, potentially, half the workforce?

In fairness, what Warner’s getting at is presumably not breast-pumping and childcare per se, but the stupid way they’re being discussed, as purely private matters (and thus titillating), rather than as aspects of fundamental issues—namely how we support the primary caregivers of our next generation—that our society needs to come to terms with institutionally.

The stupidity of the discussion of Palin’s family situation is a symptom of what Warner calls the “dogged allegiance to up-by-your-bootstraps individualism—an individualism exemplified by Palin, the frontierswoman who somehow has managed to 'balance' five children and her political career with no need for support.” As Warner says, this individualism “is leading to a culture-wide crack-up.” Perhaps that’s because it was always a hypocritical individualism, dependent on the unpaid, nonindividualistic caregiving of women. Here’s to its rapid demise.

Blackberries, Breast pumps, and Oval Offices

As different as Hilary Clinton and Sarah Palin are from each other—one tough, smart, cosmopolitan, and centrist, the other naïve, shallow (in the words of a high school classmate), provincial (only once has she left the country), and far-right, their candidacies provoke similar emotions in me. A moment of elation that a woman has come so far, followed quickly by dismay. Not this woman.

I was delighted to read that Palin regularly brings her children to work, has a stay-at-home husband (at least at the moment), has “discreetly” nursed her infant in meetings, and answered a question about whether she’s a night or morning person by mentioning putting down her Blackberry to pump breastmilk.

Of course she can get away with all this because she also hunts animals from airplanes. So it always is—the first woman allowed in the door has to out-man the guys to get in the door (call it the Maggie Thatcher syndrome). And it doesn’t hurt that she plays the religion card while enacting her Madonna and child tableau.

I’m ready to defend her against critics who cluck their tongues at her for returning to work a few days after having given birth. A woman has to do what she has to do to make it in this unforgiving work world, and no one would think twice if a father went back to work a few days after his wife gave birth (indeed, that’s the norm). Certainly, after having done the tremendous labor of giving birth a woman is exhausted and depleted in a unique way, and she shouldn’t have to do anything but lie in bed and nurse. But doing otherwise harms no one but herself. I’m sure Palin had terrific care for her infant.

Indeed, it appears she brought her child with her. And it’s here that Palin’s story gives glimpses of a different world and a different conversation. We shouldn’t just be having a conversation about whether and when a mother should return to “work.” We should be redefining work itself. If mothers had the right and the financial supports to not return to paid jobs for a reasonable time after giving birth, workplaces and work hours were far more flexible, and parents had the right to part-time work, perhaps the occasional mother who loved her job might choose to return to work shortly after giving birth, bringing her infant with her and working as many or as few hours as she felt able. In short, work should be redefined so that it no longer is incompatible with caregiving, and the normal worker should be redefined as someone who likely is the primary caregiver to someone.

For all that Palin’s story offers a glimpse of these possibilities if we look for them, in truth she is a single, privileged exception that only proves the rule. What we need is a movement to demand these privileges as rights and commonplace necessities.

Superbugs and birth

Second in an occasional series: What I’m reading while pumping breastmilk...

A recent article in the New Yorker about antibiotic-resistant infections and their prevalence in hospitals is truly frightening, and it prompted this thought: Birthing women and newborns should, wherever possible, stay the hell away from hospitals. And: C-sections, representing just the kind of surgical wound (an oft-infected one, I might add) that drug-resistant bacteria love to colonize, should be done as rarely as possible.

The tragic history of childbed fever, which proved to be a doctor- and hospital-caused epidemic, suggests good reason for worry about infection of birthing women. While discovery of the cause in the late nineteenth century—that doctors were moving between patients and from dissecting cadavers to delivering babies without washing their hands (ugh)—and introduction of antiseptic techniques dramatically reduced deaths from childbed fever, they weren’t eliminated until the introduction of antibiotics. But the bacteria that cause it were never eliminated—it's caused by the Group A and B strep bugs, among the bugs known to be developing antibiotic resistance. So the news that antibiotics are losing their effectiveness bodes badly for women birthing in hospitals.

Boston marriages revived?

I’m glad to see Broadsheet picking up on a topic I’ve discussed previously: the need to recognize other forms of partnership besides either heterosexual or gay ones. Although Carol Price’s post didn’t make the connection with the debate over gay marriage, she did pose the question, “Isn’t it time to legally recognize the bonds of friendship?” She cited others asking the question, noting articles on the subject in the Boston Globe and The New York Times.

No one in the articles or the blog post suggested the kind of systematic revision of the tax code I do, and several experts quoted seemed to miss the point altogether, dismissing the idea of giving friendships legal standing as typical American over-legislation. But Laura Rosenbury, a law professor at Washington University quoted by the Boston Globe, gets it:

"If the law decides to support some relationships, why not others that similarly involve care and support? What is it about marriage or marriage-like relationships - that is, relationships that are assumed to have sex in them?"

Jane Gross in the New York Times focuses on those who are single and childless and their need for support in old age. But this isn’t only an issue that should concern single women. It’s past due time for women to consider that most of us will spend less than half our lives married to a man (see my old article in Salon on this topic). I’ve already considered that my spouse is likely to die many years before me (sorry, sweetie) and that my friends will be the support of my old age.

Most women quit breastfeeding quickly

First the good news: Three out of four U.S. mothers are now breastfeeding their newborns, according to a recent study from Brigham Young University. I’ve heard horror stories from older women of babies being fed mixtures of Karo syrup, so let’s hear it for some enlightenment.

But now the bad news: Although the American Academy of Pediatricians recommends breastfeeding through the first year and the World Health Organization recommends breastfeeding for two years. most women have quit breastfeeding by the time their baby reaches six months.

The researchers found that children who were most likely to be breast-fed for more than six months typically had mothers with higher levels of education and incomes. Before we all leap to blaming stupid moms, surely a major cause of the drop-off is the lack of paid family leave in this country, the pathetic part-time job market, lack of flexibility in most work places, and the downright hostility of most workplaces to pumping and breastfeeding. Those women with more education are more likely to be able to take significant time off and to have higher-status jobs where pumping is a viable option (Starbucks, for example, wins kudos for supporting mothers among its managerial staff, but just try being a barista and breastfeeding).

I’m here to tell you that breastfeeding is great—no need to remember to lug any food with you! And it’s free!—but pumping sucks. Itoffers nearly all the stupidity of formula feeding—endless bottle washing—and you have to hide in a bathroom or cleaning closet and hook yourself up to a milking machine, all the while watching the clock tick and hoping nobody else is noticing that, once again, you’re not at your desk. Which stress of course tends to reduce your milk production, which in turn ups your stress. I understand why women quit breastfeeding after they return to paid work.

But here’s to my fellow Western staters and to immigrants—the populations most likely to breastfeed.

Depression increases your risk of...depression

Why is it that news about postpartum depression seems so often to fall in the no-shit-sherlock category?

Check out this item: “Psychiatric history affects 'baby blues,' study says.
Mental health issues may increase postpartum suicide risk.” Um—it took researchers with master’s degrees to figure this out?

Then again, read deeper and you find more to undermine conventional wisdom than to reiterate common sense. Midway down the article I see this: Rates of suicide attempts by women after giving birth is much lower than in the general population.

This does make sense; most women, even depressed ones, feel an obligation to their newborns to stay alive. Still, you might think from all the publicity about postpartum depression that women were at high risk of suicide after pregnancy.

Talk about postpartum depression is a strange mixture of the deadly obvious repackaged as profound scientific insight and thoroughly bogus leaps of logic repackaged as unquestionable science. This says to me that we’re thoroughly confused about postpartum depression. And "mental illness" in general, for that matter. My favorite billboard ever, which I used to pass by daily on my way to work, is "Number one cause of suicide: Untreated depression." Can we say tautology, class?

Go, Ohio

As an article in the Dayton Daily News put it forlornly, Ohio rarely leads the nation in anything. (Not even plant closings, where it's probably edged out by Michigan.) But Ohio is poised to become the first state in the nation to require employers to give workers paid sick leave.

I don't have to tell parents how important sick leave is. The Dayton Daily News article reports that 2.2. million Ohioans have no paid sick leave and another million don't have the right to use it to care for their sick children. For low-income workers, who are least likely to have paid sick time and least likely to have the right to use it to care for sick children, one illness in the family can mean losing a job and financial ruin. This is just one element of the shadow of fear that defines the American economy. Most other rich countries have seen fit to lift that shadow by offering, among other pieces of the safety net, paid sick leave.

If voters pass this initiative this fall—and as of now 71 percent support the measure— Ohio workers will get seven paid sick days.

Here's hoping Ohio is just the first.

As the economy slides, the safety net doesn't catch women

You know times are tough when the Wall Street Journal runs stories on how hard it is to qualify for unemployment. This week the Journal reports that most of those losing their jobs in the current economic slide won’t qualify for unemployment benefits.

Only 37% of the country's unemployed received benefits in 2007, down from 55% in 1958 and 44% in 2001, according to the Labor Department. The others have exhausted their benefits, haven't applied or don't qualify.

The article goes on to note that the unemployment insurance system was set up for “traditional male breadwinners in traditional, manufacturing-type jobs," according to labor economist Lawrence F. Katz, and doesn’t fit people who work part-time, move in and out of work, or juggle multiple jobs. Which means, especially, it doesn’t fit mothers.

This is not news to me. When I went on unemployment after losing my job shortly after my first child was born because my employer was unwilling to accommodate my need for part-time work, I went through the wringer. First I had to fight to prove I qualified, in part because I’d been working part-time. I had to claim I was seeking full-time work. Then, I faced the Kafka-esque double bind that jeopardizes mothers who try to claim insurance benefits: Failure to have childcare counts as not being “ready and available for work,” and therefore disqualifies you for benefits. It’s true; how can you even look for work if you don’t have childcare, let alone accept work, what with decent childcare taking so long to locate? But how are you supposed to pay for childcare if you don’t have a job—and you can’t get unemployment? Nor of course is childcare provided as an unemployment benefit. It was maddening.

I got caught on the horns of this dilemma because I was twice required to come in to the unemployment offices to wait around and let underpaid bureaucrats peruse my paperwork. Once my partner was unavailable to watch our daughter, and although I was allowed to reschedule my mandatory appointment, this triggered the remorseless wheels of denial. Luckily, the human caseworker carefully asked me if I was unavailable—had no childcare—all the time or just that one time. I said just the once, she didn’t push further, and I was docked exactly $36 from my unemployment check. Thank goodness for real humans inside the system.

But the system must be changed, not just as the Journal suggests, to allow for people outside of long-term, full-time work, but also by providing childcare assistance as an unemployment benefit. In these hard times, change can't wait.

Slogan of the week

The first in an occasional series, Highlights of my reading while pumping breastmilk...

Writing in the Nation, Linda Gordon says, "As the feminist slogan goes, "Women deliver." I've never heard this slogan before and don't know who used it, but it rocks. Here's Gordon's explanation, which encapsulates a big chunk of the meaning of feminism:

In other words, when women control resources, the social gain is greater than when men control resources. Improving health for the poor is as likely to produce progressive change as any other strategy, because health activism these days requires challenging the world's most powerful and destructive
forces. Matters of the body are politically fundamental.

A break for single parents

Since having kids, I now divide the world into two kinds of people: the ones who give me the evil eye when my children are howling and the ones who offer to help. Nowhere does this Manichean division seem more true than when I’m traveling. My heart bleeds when I see a mother struggling to keep a couple of children calm while herding them and all their belongings onto an airplane and I’m always shocked that everyone isn’t leaping forward to help. On Guatemalan buses, friends have told me, a crying baby is handed from arm to arm among the passengers. America a child-friendly culture, my tuckus.

My mother tells epic tales of traveling alone with me, so I’m delighted to learn (via Mothertalkers and Newsweek) of organizations that cater to single parents. About time. These organizations offer not only assistance, but company, something single parents could use just as much.

McCain is scary: installment #5,543

This doesn’t really need any commentary: Feministing headlines it “McCain: "Isn't rape hilarious?!" McCain allegedly told this joke in 1986:

Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, "Where is that marvelous ape?"

Here’s his campaign’s response to the story resurfacing, which pretty well confirms the story's true:

He's long said that he's said and done things in the past that he regrets," Rogers said. "You've just got to move on and be yourself -- that's what people want. They want somebody who's authentic, and this kind of stuff is a good example of McCain being McCain.

Yup, that’s just what I’d say. Let’s sure not let him be McCain in the White House.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town…CNN ran this headline about a recent Obama press event: “Obama talks about glass ceilings, child care, equal pay.” Moms Rising has sent out an alert asking folks to send Obama a thank you for talking about these issues. Contrary to what some may think, Obama ain’t the second coming. He’s a cautious, savvy politician and he’s going to disappoint us. But, jeez, he doesn’t make rape jokes. Or say he doesn't want to talk about his position on birth control, or think the cause of the gender pay gap is women's underqualification.

Teen sexual activity no predicter of HPV risk

If public health decisions were made rationally in this country, a new study from the Centers for Disease Control would put paid to the argument that only sluts should get the HPV vaccine:

Turns out a teen’s level of sexual activity doesn’t predict her level of risk of contracting HPV, the virus that causes genital warts and cervical cancer. The researchers report that HPV is so common that anyone who ever becomes sexually active is likely to get it, and so every girl should get the vaccine.

But of course public health politics aren’t rational and so women will continue to die from a preventable cancer. Including, it seems likely, especially the daughters of right-wing Christians, whose parents, if this vaccine is not made mandatory, will be free to decide that their daughters don’t need this sluts’ vaccine, but whose husbands, judging by the recent track record of right-wing Christian politicians, may well be engaged in plenty of extracurricular sex that puts their wives at risk. Seems to me there’s only one interpretation possible: right-wing zealots want women to be punished for having sex (and even for their husbands’ having sex). There’s a dark side of me that takes grim pleasure whenever this truth is exposed, but mostly I’m depressed. The daughters of zealots don’t deserve to be punished for their parents’ misogyny. Nor do the rest of our daughters.

Sadly, it’s not just the children of the far-right who are at risk. Many parents are reluctant to give their young teenage daughters the vaccine because they can’t conceive their daughter might be sexually active or about to become so. This study should provide the squeamish with a reason to vaccinate their daughters: Any time their daughter ever has a single sexual partner she will be at risk unless she’s vaccinated. Every female but a nun should get it, and, hey, nuns have been known to change their minds, so they should too.

The study should also change the mainstream medical establishment’s approach to the vaccine, too. According to RH Reality Check's blog, the American Cancer Society recommends that women 18 and older talk decide whether to be vaccinated based on a conversation with their doctors about their sexual history. This study shows sexual history is no predicter of HPV risk and the cancer society should get on board with vaccinating everybody. (And indeed it suggests that even the CDC's recommendation that all females ages 11–26 get vaccinated is too narrow. What about older women?)

Why I’m not for gay marriage

Before you decide I’m a homophobe, let me be clear: In a society where the government sanctifies heterosexual partnership under the name of marriage, I regard the denial of that sanctification to same-sex couples as a violation of basic rights. If the government grants anyone that right, it must grant it to all.

But instead, let the government stop granting marriage to anyone.

But I am married, so what gives?

There you get to the heart of why I’ve been thinking so much about this issue, but have taken so long to post on it. I have always been skeptical of marriage, and I used to have nightmares about finding myself in a white dress walking down an aisle. (Eek! How did I get here?) But after I had been with the man I’m now married to for a few years and realized I planned to create a lifelong partnership with him, I came to see refusing to accept the label of marriage as largely irrelevant and pointless. We had a wedding—I wore red, not white—and against all my expectation I enjoyed it. A woman rabbi married us, our families were there, and I, who am an only child and the daughter of a single mother, was delighted to be embraced in a new family. Warm and loving as that family would have been to me if we had decided not to get married, there’s no denying that that ceremony gave me a new status in the family. I now belong in a deeply comforting way. I gained a privilege that gays have traditionally been denied and that must change.

I also gained the 300-some dubious legal benefits of marriage. I say dubious, because many of these benefits are gains for my family unit but they have the effect of disempowering me. Our family unit may gain economically from the marriage—we can file a joint tax return, and my husband can claim for the family the right to Social Security based on 150 percent of his income, instead of 100 percent. But as a wife, I will face significant disincentives on my paid work. Because of joint filing, my earnings are taxed at a much steeper marginal rate than they were when I was single. (Ann Crittenden explains this well, although she doesn’t emphasize that this is a different problem from the more commonly known “marriage penalty”—the problem remains even if the couple as a unit doesn't pay any more than the total the two would pay separately. For a more technical explanation, see Siv Gustafsson’s scholarly paper [PDF]. For a full-length book on the subject, check out Edward McCaffery's terrific Taxing Women. )

Many women in this situation elect to drop out of the paid workforce, basing their decision only on a comparison of current costs and benefits. Yet dropping out of the workforce results in major long-term costs, including big hits to my lifetime earnings, my savings (including government-encouraged, tax-free savings under a 401K), and my accrual of Social Security. Social Security is designed to allow me to receive benefits under my husband’s umbrella, but my marriage had better survive for more than 10 years or I get nothing. If the marriage survives and I do take paid work, I likely will get no return on the Social Security taxes I pay on my earnings; that is, a non-wage-earning wife will get the same Social Security benefits I do, despite all the additional taxes I pay in.

If I am among the working poor, and I stay in the paid workforce once I marry, I will likely lose all or most of the Earned Income Credit, subjecting my earnings to whopping effective rates higher than the rich paid under the New Deal.

When a couple has a child, these disincentives to the wife’s paid work kick into overdrive. Rather than treating childcare as a business expense (as it clearly is) and allowing full deduction of it, let alone offering major tax credits or a full system of government-funded childcare, we get a token credit on a small fraction of the enormous cost of childcare. So lots of women drop out of the paid workforce when they have a child and even more do so when they face the cost of childcare for two or more children. Yet earnings are power, so this means they lose power, both within the marriage and in the larger world.

Marriage as a government-backed institution, whatever the privileges that come with it, remains a raw deal for women.

A majority of Americans now support domestic partnerships, but are uncomfortable with gay marriage. To which I think the solution is the abolition of marriage—as a government-backed institution. Which is not to say that marriage should be abolished altogether. Just get the government out of it. Let rabbis, priests, imams, and gurus and their associated communities provide the sanctification people want and need and let them call it what they want. Meanwhile the government would offer only domestic partnerships. And while we’re at it, let’s extend the right to enter these partnerships not just to gay and straight couples, but to any pair of consenting adults who want to live together and share living expenses, property, and, perhaps, responsibilities for children. Which is to say, junk the link between sex and partnership. Friends, sisters, cousins could become domestic partners if they liked.

When an unmarried acquaintance of mine faced a terminal illness, she knew she’d be turning to Medicaid to cover the high costs of dying, but Medicaid required her to spend down all her assets first. Her only asset was a condominium she occupied with her sister and wanted to pass on to her. If the sister had been her husband, she could have done so, without jeopardizing Medicaid coverage. Why should the government treat this relationship with her sister as any less significant than marriage to a man? Why should the government treat any life partnership between two adults less seriously than a sexual one between a man and a woman? Gays have raised this question, but we should take it far deeper and broader. This is both a practical matter and a matter of liberty and human flourishing, especially for women. Let us create less rigid and more expansive notions of family.

We should abolish joint filing and jettison the system that grants social benefits—from Social Security to health care—on the basis of marital status, in favor of granting them as rights of citizenship, or better yet as human rights.

Facebook to users: pick a gender

This is kinda off topic, but it combines two subjects close to my heart—gender and grammar, whoopee!—so I can’t resist. Broadsheet reports that when Facebook sends a newsfeed about your friend’s latest picture tagging, instead of “Pat Smith tagged themself in a picture” you’ll now read “Pat Smith tagged himself” or “Pat Smith tagged herself.”

Darn but that old third-person singular is still giving us feminist grammarians grief. I’m not crazy about singular use of “they”—it violates my love of precision in language and often creates confusion—but I’m inclined to think it’s about as good a solution as we’re gonna get. We do need a solution, because “he” just isn’t a generic pronoun. And weird invented pronouns just sound, well, weird. Language after all is a social game; as Wittgenstein said, you can’t just go off and create a private language. Unless everyone suddenly embraces a new pronoun you can’t create a new one.

This is why Facebook’s effort to accommodate those who don’t wish to be boxed into gender categories by allowing users to enter whatever they want in the gender category doesn’t cut it. If you enter “shim” for example as your gender, you have immediately labeled yourself oddball. Which is not the same as staying gender neutral.

I’m sorry Facebook has taken this step. Everywhere else in life we’re forced to announce our genders, and now we’ve lost one place to opt out of that game. As a parent, I’m acutely aware of how ferociously gender is policed in children. People get really uncomfortable when they guess wrongly that my blue-bedecked baby is a boy, even though neither the baby nor I care. And heaven forbid a boy child should wear pink. And when my partner and I chose not to find out the kids’ sex before birth, people were more startled by that than when they learned we were choosing to have the children at home. Which is precisely why we chose not to find out. Let the kids—and us, their parents—be free of the rigid pressures and expectations of gender at least until they’re born.

You didn't think I was going to be able to bring this back to parenting, did you?

Cuddling is risky, says New York

This is one of those stories that sets my outrage-o-meter climbing higher with each detail: New York and a number of other states have launched “Babies Sleep Safest Alone” campaign, claiming that “Co-sleeping is risky.” (In multiple languages, no less.)

There appears to be no science behind this claim. New York’s Office of Children and Families claims that co-sleeping is involved in approximately 20 percent of the child fatalities reported to the Statewide Central Register of Child Abuse and Maltreatment, but as we used to say in graduate school, let’s unpack that statement. “Involved” is an exceedingly weak verb, eliding a lot of imprecision as to what the real causes of the deaths were.. The campaign notes that alcohol, drugs, obesity, and overcrowding of the bed with people, toys, or blankets also appear to have been “involved” in these deaths.

And what about the risks of not sleeping with your baby? Of the 80 percent of child fatalities reported to the register that didn't involve co-sleeping, what fraction were caused by sleeping alone? That is, by unsafe cribs, from SIDS—the risk of which has been shown to be reduced by co-sleeping—from smothering in blankets or toys in cribs, or more broadly from whatever went wrong that was unnoticed because the baby was far away from an attentive caregiver?

This campaign and previous ones like it don’t cite studies proving cribs are safer than co-sleeping. They simply assume it. In fact, the burden of proof rightly goes the other way; humans have been sleeping with their babies since before we became human (and in most countries they still do). It’s a practice that was part of our evolution, and it seems plausible that closeness to the breathing warmth of one’s mother helps regulate all sorts of functions in the unformed human newborn. SIDS studies bear this out.

And co-sleeping makes breastfeeding a heck of a lot easier.

I got even more irritated when I read what I assumed would be a rebuttal of the campaign from Mothering magazine. The author wrote that she had planned to participate in activism against it, then decided against it.

After some reflection, I realized that New York's campaign wasn't really directed at me…The recommendation…fails to differentiate between parents with limited resources who bed-share out of necessity, those who do so out of neglect, and those who intentionally bed-share in what they believe to be the best interests of their child.”

She goes on to detail the evidence in favor of co-sleeping, but that comment illuminated one of the creepiest aspects of the campaign: its not-so-subtle classism. It’s okay for well-to-parents to choose to bed-share (or better yet buy an expensive “co-sleeper” sidecar), but heaven forbid you should do so because you’ve got nowhere else for the child to sleep. Perhaps co-sleeping is okay if you’re sober and slim and so on, but we can’t expect stupid (read poor) parents to understand that nuance and act on it. And we well-to-do, educated parents shouldn’t oppose the campaign because it isn’t directed at us.

But we’re all in this together. Official campaigns that discourage breastfeeding affect all of us. Guilt-tripping mothers for doing the most natural thing in the world affects all of us.

This seems to me yet another installment in the official valuing of the parenting money can buy over what it can’t; rich parents can buy nurseries with fancy cribs and high-tech monitors, while poor ones can only cuddle. I for one think cuddling is the better deal.

Missourians finally free to give birth at home

Finally, women in Missouri have the right to a midwife-attended home birth. By a 5-2 decision, the state supreme court rejected an effort by doctors to abolish a recent law legalizing the practice.

Until recently, Missouri was the only state where having a home birth attended by a certified midwife was actually a felony. A group of doctors sought to return women in Missouri to that benighted situation, claiming they had standing to sue by virtue of speaking for their patients. That is, seeking to speak on behalf of women who might foolishly try to have home births if they weren’t prevented, and therefore can't be trusted to speak for themselves. As Susan Jenkins, legal counsel for the National Birth Policy Coalition and a consultant to the Missouri midwives, stated:

“This case confirms the message that’s been reverberating loud and clear in both the mainstream media and the blogosphere ever since the American Medical Association launched its attacks against midwives and home birth last week—physicians do not have the right to speak for patients when it comes to deciding who delivers their babies.”

Our Bodies Ourselves notes how weirdly the concept of choice is being used by the medical establishment when it comes to reproduction and childbirth. At the same time that the AMA and American College of Obstetricians pushes the acceptability of “elective” C-sections, it is making VBACS harder and harder to have and opposes the expansion of women's choices in caregivers and birthing places.

Pope Benedict the lactivist?

I’ll make a wild bet here and predict this will be one of very few posts in which I praise the Catholic church’s stance on anything having to do with women and reproduction. So I’m going to enjoy this moment.

The official newspaper of the Holy See, L'Osservatore Romano, has chided Catholics for being offended by depictions of Mary’s breastfeeding baby Jesus. "Jesus was a baby like all others. His divinity does not exclude his humanity," church historian Lucetta Scaraffia said, according to the British Telegraph. The newspaper noted that since the 17th century artists have been covering up Mary’s mammaries to avoid “unbecoming” “carnality” in sacred images.

But, as Father Enrico dal Covolo, a professor of classic and Christian literature at the Pontifical Salesian University, pointed out in L’Osservatore, that’s kinda the point. The word made flesh and all that.

You ask me (and you did, since you came to this page), there isn’t anything more sacred and symbolic of the human condition than a mother nursing a child. Anybody who says there’s no such thing as a free lunch was never breastfed (or owes his mother an apology).

I may never say this again: Go, pope!

Now I’ll get tiresome and suggest that the irrepressibility of the Mary cult shows how tortured Christianity is. The ancient worship of the mother goddess makes a whole lot more sense than the death cult that is the Jesus myth, and the weirdness of the Holy Trinity dissolves if you let the threesome be father, mother, and child... I’m sure theologians all over the Holy See are now smacking their heads, saying, “Why didn’t I think of that?” and turning right to revising their texts. Get to it, boys.

AMA seeks to outlaw home birth

Not content with discouraging and disapproving of home birth, the American Medical Association at its annual meeting last weekend passed a resolution to press for the outlawing of home birth. Given the skyrocketing c-section rate, the spiraling cost of birth, and the nothing-to-be-proud-of U.S. maternal and infant mortality rates (our newborn mortality rate is the second worst in the developed world), this move seems, well, a little insecure. Fact is, studies have found home births to be as safe or safer than hospital care for low-risk births and they cost two-thirds less. Chalk this one up as just one more episode in the sorry history of the AMA.

RH Reality Check rightly places this as part of broader attempts to criminalize motherhood, having “at their core coercive control over pregnancy and childbirth.”

"It's unclear what penalties the AMA will seek to impose on women who choose to give birth at home, either for religious, cultural or financial reasons-or just because they didn't make it to the hospital in time," said Susan Jenkins, Legal Counsel for The Big Push for Midwives 2008 campaign. "What we do know, however, is that any state that enacts such a law will immediately find itself in court, since a law dictating where a woman must give birth would be a clear violation of fundamental rights to privacy and other freedoms currently protected by the U.S. Constitution."

Gays: not all galloping down the aisle

Just when I was beginning to worry that the gay community had gone all square on us:

The New York Times’ article on gays who married in Massachusetts started off peddling the soothing line that gays are no threat to conventional marriage. (They’re just like us! They get divorced. They can’t get their boyfriends to commit. They dream about their wedding outfits.) I began getting depressed.

They saved the good stuff for after the jump. There we get Eric Erbelding and Michael Peck, whose “rule is you can play around because, you know, you have to be practical.” Most married gay couples Erbelding knows are “for the most part monogamous, but for maybe a casual three-way.” Phew.

And after I was embarrassed by the statistic that two-thirds of same-sex weddings in Massachusetts have been lesbian marriages—see, every woman’s life goal really is that white wedding dress—I read of Joyce Kauffman, who aims at a more creative definition of family and considers marriage a patriarchal institution that “politically makes me kind of queasy.” Thank you, sister.

Weddings tend to make me kind of queasy, too—so smug, they are—and I always felt the air lightened by knowing gay folks looked at them askance too. The gay subculture provided alternative models for living that expanded the sense of the possible in intimate life. Much as I agreed that it was a matter of human rights that if straights had the right to marry, gays should too, the world felt narrowed when gays began clamoring for marriage.

But this conversation isn’t over, not among gays and not among straights.

Retrograde in the City

In case you were tempted to see Sex and the City, read this.

Especially this:

Worse still is the sneering cut as the scene shifts from Carrie, carefree and childless in the New York Public Library, to the face of Miranda’s young son, smeared with spaghetti sauce. In short, to anyone facing the quandaries of being a working mother, the movie sends a vicious memo: Don’t be a mother. And don’t work. Is this really where we have ended up—with this superannuated fantasy posing as a slice of modern life?

…[A]lmost sixty years after “All About Eve,” which also featured four major female roles, there is a deep sadness in the sight of Carrie and friends defining themselves not as Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, Celeste Holm, and Thelma Ritter did—by their talents, their hats, and the swordplay of their wits—but purely by their ability to snare and keep a man. Believe me, ladies, we’re not worth it.

I love you, Anthony--this isn't even your best stuff.

Leave it to women to save the world

File in the no duh department:

Pick any litany of environmental horrors you can think of.

Little if any of this would have transpired had human numbers peaked long ago. Such a peak might have occurred by now, even with the gains in life expectancy of the past century, if the status and reproductive intentions of women had found consistent support rather than silence and censure.

writes Robert Engleman of the Worldwatch Institute in an excerpt on Alternet from his new book, "More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want."

Leave to women, more than to anyone else, the decision about when and how often to bear children ... History ... suggests that doing so has moderated population growth in the past, and contemporary evidence makes clear that it does exactly that today.

This has been said many times before, but it seems to keep being forgotten. And thanks to Engleman for taking a swipe at those moaning about falling birth rates, who apparently want to see women perpetually barefoot and pregnant and the world groaning with the weight of us all. I thank Engleman especially for taking a swipe at that stripe of environmentalist who favor Big Fixes (which as he notes are often not only ineffective but downright dangerous).

What’s new(ish) in his piece is that he joins his warning about population with the problem of worsening resource depletion and ends up with a rather encouraging thought:

The current momentum of population growth all but guarantees there won't be population declines for several decades. Those are precisely the decades during which humanity could make the easiest gains in energy efficiency. And just about when energy use is about as efficient as it can be in an imperfect world, human population could begin to shrink. That will remove much of the burden of squeezing additional water from the stone of a super-efficient global energy system. The need to reduce demand for fossil fuels will grow more urgent with each passing year as the global climate warms and the illusion of endless carbon-free energy gradually fades. And population decline reduces energy demand, all else equal, without any hardship for anyone.

Birthing behind bars, but not alone

Reading a recent article in the Seattle Times on doulas in the state prisons, I wasn't sure whether to feel ashamed or proud of my state. It’s a horrible thing for babies to be born in prison—horrible for the mother and boding horribly for the child—made worse by the inhumane ways most prisons treat laboring women (some prisons actually handcuff women to the bed during labor, and prison health care is rarely good). Although the article describes doulas as having been resources for pregnant women for centuries, and it’s true that there have always women who’ve informally offered other women their expertise about childbirth, in fact doulas as such were created only in the last few decades by the women’s health movement, with a prominent role by activists in Washington state, including Penny Simkin.

Typically doulas attend births, while it appears the doulas in the Washington prisons are mostly restricted to prenatal counseling and attend birth in only a few cases. That’s too bad, because studies (PDF) have found that having doulas supporting mothers during labor and delivery dramatically improves health outcomes and reduces C-section rates. Which is a good thing even if you don’t care about incarcerated women; reducing C-sections and reducing complications in birth saves a lot of money for the state’s taxpayers.

The Times article failed to mention that the rate of babies born to incarcerated women has skyrocketed in recent decades, as the female incarceration rate has skyrocketed. U.S. imprisonment has been rising dramatically across the board—we now have the biggest prison population in the world, 1 out of every 100 American adults—but it has been rising much faster for women than men. The female incarceration rate is up 775 percent since 1971, double the rise for men. The single biggest factor in that rise, according to Silja Talvi, author of Women Behind Bars, is the drug war, as I noted in an earlier post.

Again this is an issue worthy of concern whether you’re a bleeding heart or not; imprisonment is expensive. Drug treatment, on the other hand, is cheap.

The Times reporter barely brushed against the other horror of female imprisonment: Most women in prison have been sexually abused. Nearly every one of the hundred or so women Talvi interviewed for her book had been a victim of sexual abuse or domestic violence, and many had been raped. Giving birth can bring the trauma of that experience back to the surface, according to Simkin, who offers special counseling and birth support for abuse survivors.

It will be interesting to track whether the state continues this program and whether it expands it to provide labor support. And keep on eye on whether Washington’s female prisoner population continues to grow. Perhaps as state budgets grow ever tighter, bean counters will notice this huge budget item and see an opportunity.

Got sliced? No health insurance for you

Another way the American birth system and the you’re-on-your-ownership economy rip women off: The New York Times reported this weekend that some insurers are denying health coverage or raising rates on women who’ve had C-sections. With more than 30 percent of all births in the U.S. now ending in C-section—and rising—and more and more people self-employed or freelance and therefore looking for individual health coverage rather than the group coverage sponsored by employers, this potentially affects a huge number of women.

These insurers are being entirely rational. C-sections are hugely expensive compared to vaginal births, and when you’ve had one C-section you’re nearly guaranteed having them in subsequent births. Ninety percent of women with a previous C-section now have repeat C-sections, thanks largely to guidelines issued in 1999 by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists that strongly discouraged vaginal birth after caesarean, So a woman who has had a C-section does represent a risk of heightened medical costs. Insurers, like the rational capitalists they are, seek to off-load that risk, just as employers seek to offload risk to workers by hiring them on a freelance basis, without offering health coverage.

The insurers may be acting rationally, but the larger medical system is crazy. If capitalism worked the way it’s supposed to work, “the market” in its infinite wisdom would push C-sections to a minimum, perhaps lower than the WHO recommended maximum of 15 percent. Instead, the C-section rate keeps rising.

Despite mythology about women who are “too posh to push,” this rate is not driven by women asking for C-sections. A 2005 survey by Childbirth Connection found that only one woman among the 1600 polled said that she’d had a C-section at her own request for no medical reason. On the other hand, one quarter of those polled reported feeling pressured by a medical professional to have a C-section. And then they pay for it, in a high rate of infection of the incision, extended recovery and pain in comparison to vaginal birth, risks of injury to the baby, greater difficulty initiating breastfeeding, and greater risks of breathing problems in the baby—and finally in a loss of insurance coverage.

Ponder market insanities like this when presidential candidate John McCain advocates pushing our medical system even further into the 'free' market (you can go to his site if you're willing to translate the rhetoric into English, but Elizabeth Edwards' explanation of his plan is a whole lot more direct).

You will learn from this experience, or else

At a dinner party last night, we got into a discussion about what country it would be most educational to take children to. A friend who’s a former teacher mentioned she’d taken a group of high school students to Poland about ten years ago. To which my partner responded, “Poland? Poland? You could have gone to any European country and you chose Poland?”

Sorry, Poles and Pole-philes, no offense, but Warsaw just doesn’t have the allure of Rome or Barcelona or even London. Too many Soviet-era concrete high rises. Learning about WWII and the concentration camps was a major reason behind our friend’s decision to take the kids there, but as my partner noted, teens aren’t likely to be transformed by a trip to Auschwitz if they are dragged there against their will. Which is an important truth about education in general—you can't make a person learn. Education happens when a teacher somehow taps into a student’s desire to learn.

So here’s a fun game: Where would you take a group of American children for an educational trip of, say, a week? My vote: Cuba. Why? It’s a dramatically different culture from ours, with a dramatically different economic system that has been vilified in this country, yet despite poverty has achieved remarkable successes. Such as healthcare for all and literacy for all. And, after the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of cheap oil imports, Cuba transitioned major elements of its economy away from oil (including by moving toward organic agriculture on a large scale). Plus it’s warmer than Poland, with better music. And cooler cars. Lectures on economic systems and oil use go down better when they’re followed by sunbathing.

What travels did you find transformative, readers?

Texas can't take FLDS kids away, says court

Update on the Texas Fundamental Latter Day Saints case, in which over 400 babies and children were seized and sent to foster care all over the enormous state of Texas:

On Thursday, an appellate court ruled that there was no evidence that the children were in immediate danger of physical or sexual abuse. (Which seems right to me; it’s when the girls hit puberty that they’re in danger, not at age 1 or 5, as most of these children were, and in any case they’re in danger from their fathers and the church’s fathers, not their mothers.) If the ruling holds, the state’s case falls apart.

Can’t call this exactly a happy ending, as mothers interviewed by The New York Times said they’d go back to the ranch and the ultra-patriarchal cult that runs it. But it is a victory for justice, denying the government the power to separate children from mothers except where there’s clear evidence of immediate harm, even if they belong to a despised group, whether it’s poor black folk, dramatically over-represented in foster cases, or a misogynist cult. Here’s hoping the decision has ramifications beyond this lurid case.

Australia moves closer to paid family leave

The U.S. has just moved closer to solo spot on an ignominious list: The U.S. and Australia alone among industrialized nations fail to offer paid parental leave, and last week an Australian government panel held hearings on implementing paid leave. It’s unclear when Australia would get the leave, but the recently elected Labor government has supported paid leave.

Under one plan being floated, mothers would get six months paid leave and fathers four weeks. I don’t like the gender bias of that, but that’s quibbling. It’s a vast improvement over the current Australian scheme, which grants families a payment of $5,000 on the birth of a child. Because of this credit, some sources already put the U.S. as alone in failing to give paid parental leave. That’s incorrect, because the baby credit is very different from paid leave, and it’s important to understand why.

A child credit was a major plank—the most expensive plank—in the Republican Party’s Contract with America back in the ‘90s. Whereas paid leave from one’s job empowers women, enabling them to stay in the paid labor market, child credits, like Australia’s or the Contract with America’s, are payments to families and in no way alter the barriers to mothers’ employment. In fact, they can encourage women to stay out of the paid labor market, further reinforcing gender role specialization within families and therefore the imbalance in power between women who specialize in unpaid caring labor and men who specialize in paid labor.

Another way to look at it is that paid parental leave reduces the economic penalty for child rearing, whereas child credits are rewards for breeding (and since they go as much to fathers who don’t engage in caregiving as to mothers, or fathers, who do, they reward a merely biological function). People who choose not to breed—and who might do so for admirable reasons, such as not contributing to the overpopulation of the world—might rightly resent such bias. Paid leave reduces a tilt in the playing field, while child credits increase the tilt toward traditional families and inequality within them.

Cold bars, blue eye shadow, and the price of not snitching

This story broke my heart: In one of those “heartwarming” Mother’s Day stories, a reporter went to a Southern California youth prison to cover a special visiting day for the inmates from their children. A nonprofit had even provided free transportation for families. “The eager moms pulled their hair into neat pony tails, borrowed their favorite blue eye shadow and ironed the only clothes they own as they primped for a visit from their young children.” But only one child showed up.

It gets worse: Father’s Day is always more crowded than Mother’s Day.

The imprisonment of women is skyrocketing, up 775 percent since 1977, rising at double the rate of men. The single biggest factor in that rise, according to Silja Talvi, author of Women Behind Bars is the drug war, with its mandatory minimum sentencing, the resulting pressure to snitch to avoid those sentences, and the fact that women are less likely to snitch than men. “Prosecutors will come to them and say they will go to prison unless they give up the names of three higher-ups, but women usually either say they don't know those people or will simply decline. Men will snitch and, unfortunately, they often get less time in prison than women who don't,” Talvi says. And then men get visits from their kids and women don’t.

Just in case you weren’t already totally bummed:

Nearly every woman I interviewed (around 100) had a serious history of trauma or abuse in her life, emotional abuse or sexual abuse or domestic violence. Many had been raped. More than a third of the women entering the prison system were homeless.

God, this world is unfair. But there are people like Talvi in it. Talvi scraped and fundraised and spent her own money to get the stories of these women out to the world. And she found women beaten but unbowed:

I also didn't expect the women to be as tremendously resilient as they are. I expected to hear "Help me!" or "I can't take it anymore!" or "I'm going to kill myself!" They didn't do that. ... Instead, they often said, "This isn't just about me" ... they have a real sense of responsibility for each other.

The amazing, indispensable female body

Happy Mother's Day!

I've just discovered another couple of cool sites relevant to this blog: The Women’s Bioethics Project blog and the Center for Genetics and Society. For all those of you either thinking of keep the wolf at the door at bay by donating eggs or those who might use donated eggs, the CGS tracks the ethics and science of egg donation, among other topics. Bottom line: egg donation is painful and dangerous, much more so than the companies that harvest eggs let on. Apparently the latest industry effort to expand its business is trying to convince women to harvest their eggs and freeze them for procreation later, when they’ve established their careers. Don’t go for it, this site suggests. Stick with the old-fashioned form of impregnation.

Doing away with the need for women’s bodies is a long fantasy of science fiction and indeed of science. But the Women’s Bioethics Project explains, along with lots of other topics, the difficulty of creating an artificial womb. Although we’re often treated to news stories that assume we are the products of genes alone—that we are our genes—more and more scientific research is demonstrating the indispensability of the whole maternal body for creating a baby. Quoting another blogger, the site reports that we’re many decades off from a successful “human uterine replicator” (and that might be optimistic). “Even once we've sorted out the technical aspects of the womb itself, we'll have to deal with what the rest of the mother's body contributes to development.” (Which, by the way, has important implications for surrogacy. Even though, post–Baby M, most surrogates carry babies that are not genetically related to them, the importance of the gestating body to development suggests that the surrogate has to be regarded as biologically related to the baby she carried, and therefore she has some parental rights.)

Déjà vu all over again. We’re always hearing that the female body is defective and could be readily improved upon by science. Except whenever it's put to the test, technology falls short of the old-fashioned female body. Remember how formula was supposed be as good and maybe even superior to breast milk? Then scientists began discovering myriad ways that mother’s milk is better than any artificial milk. Same thing, apparently, with gestation. Doesn’t look like us moms will be obsolete any time soon. (In case you were worried.) Happy Mother’s Day—you’re amazing!

Children are parasites?

When I recently published an article at Crosscut.com on Washington state’s landmark paid family leave legislation (only the second in the nation), readers’ responses were striking. Two-thirds of comments expressed the same feeling: the legislation is “a token for the irresponsible,” a “confiscation of my tax dollars” for “social parasites.” One reader even called the legislation morally depraved.

Putting aside the extreme language and not terribly coherent arguments (“If you can't take the time to raise a child why are you having one?”—the point is precisely to enable parents to take time to care for their newborns), I think these comments reveal an important and deeply American strain of thought. The line of thinking goes something like this: Individualism is the ideal state, we shouldn’t be fostering dependency, people are responsible for themselves and their own children, and don’t ask the rest of us for handouts.

This line of thinking has some appeal—I value individualism and independence myself. But independence is an achievement, attained only temporarily in the middle of life by even the luckiest of us. Somehow I just know that these letter writers were men, and men who have forgotten that they got to their enviably independent state only thanks to years of care by their mothers (and probably many others). (And who probably have wives who do their laundry, cook their food, and maybe type their manuscripts.) I’d say the real social parasites are all of us on our unpaid mothers. So if you have a distaste for this kind of social parasitism, consistency requires you to support test tube gestation and the raising of children in dormitories by well-paid professionals. Or you don’t mind the human race ceasing to exist. Or—phew—how about a little paid family leave?

I tend to think people like the letter writers don’t mind dependency—of their wives on them, for example—and it’s in fact the independence social supports like paid family leave foster in women that discomfits them. I’d like to ask the reader who wrote that “I for one am not planning on being a social parasite in my dotage” who he thinks will be paying for his Social Security. In fact, it’s those who are children now (it’s a politically useful myth that we each pay for our own Social Security).

I may mock this kind of thinking, but it has a powerful hold in America, and loosing its grip is crucial and difficult.