Nearly one-third: that's the share childcare takes out of the budget of the average middle-income family of four with young children. Eating up 29 percent of their money, childcare represents the single largest item in these families' budgets, according to a report from Pre-K Now.
If you don't have kids and this figure astounds you, I'm here to tell you it's about right. I guess my partner and I and our two kids are getting a bargain; only 25 percent of our budget goes to childcare.
Given that a parent can't work for a wage unless she has childcare and (especially since the end of welfare) can't live unless she has a wage-earning job (or a sugar daddy), this is a crisis.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
Boys been reading Rock the Cradle
Some college kids in California have filed a ballot initiative to do just what I’ve been advocating: get the government out of the marriage business. No surprise, the media are largely getting it wrong, calling it a “gay marriage initiative” and suggesting it’s a joke.
The boys’ initiative would erase “marriage” from the legal books and grant everyone the right to “domestic partnerships,” gay or straight. It’s unclear to me whether the contract would have to be a sexual one, or if you could create a union with your sister, friend, cousin, whatever, for purposes of life partnership, sexual or not.
I first learned of this from a libertarian-leaning blog in my home state, which got the point better than the MSM mostly did, although he did file the post under “gays.” Are other posts tagged “straights”? “Squares”? “Bigots”?
And the initiative sponsors don’t have quite the right analysis of their brilliant idea, calling it a “compromise.” There’s nothing compromising about it. It's a radical departure in the right direction. See my blog post on the subject.
Anyway, way to go, boys.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
This trend just in
Different media same day: “Some Laid-Off Women Now Stay-at-Home Moms” (MSNBC) and “As Economy Slips, New Mothers Cut Short Their Maternity Leave" (Wall Street Journal). I thought I’d wandered into an Onion parody. Which is it—are women being opted out or opted in?
Both stories are no doubt true—as descriptions of the experiences of some moms, somewhere. But that’s not how the pieces are framed. Instead they purport to describe a new “trend.” Trend stories are the slipperiest game in journalism. Journalists especially love to get breathless about supposed trends in women’s social roles, mixing up description and prescription, from the supposed marriage dearth peddled in the 1980s and debunked soon after by Susan Faludi to the “opt-out revolution” hyped by the New York Times’ Lisa Belkin in this century and debunked by Joan Williams in the American Prospect, among others. The New York Times’ trend stories are weirdest, warped as they are by the confluence of gender and class. Their m.o. is to pick some tiny slice of the East Coast’s ultra-privileged and take them as representative of the whole country.
Both stories are no doubt true—as descriptions of the experiences of some moms, somewhere. But that’s not how the pieces are framed. Instead they purport to describe a new “trend.” Trend stories are the slipperiest game in journalism. Journalists especially love to get breathless about supposed trends in women’s social roles, mixing up description and prescription, from the supposed marriage dearth peddled in the 1980s and debunked soon after by Susan Faludi to the “opt-out revolution” hyped by the New York Times’ Lisa Belkin in this century and debunked by Joan Williams in the American Prospect, among others. The New York Times’ trend stories are weirdest, warped as they are by the confluence of gender and class. Their m.o. is to pick some tiny slice of the East Coast’s ultra-privileged and take them as representative of the whole country.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Strollers are bad for you
I always wondered what the effects of all the containerization we subject kids to these days might be. From carseats to strollers to high chairs to motorized baby swings, we love to place our babies inside of plastic containers removed from human contact.
It didn’t seem like the effects could be good. My kids howl whenever I stick them in their lonely carseats, although the sensory deprivation eventually puts them to sleep.
Researchers in Britain wondered, too, and have found evidence that, indeed, forward-facing strollers, which cut children and parents off from almost all sensory contact with each other—no touch, no eye contact, on noisy streets we can't even hear each other—have bad effects. Spending a lot of time in one of these strollers apparently retards children’s language development.
I fear that the stroller controversy will become one more thing for moms to feel guilty about and one more thing for poor folks who can’t afford fancy front-back convertible strollers to get beat up about. Keep in mind, though, a swag of cloth tying a baby to your body beats the fanciest stroller any day.
(And I’m still unconvinced by the efforts to tell parents that a fancy crib is better than sleeping with their babies. Last I checked we were still mammals, and mammal babies need touch. To convince me otherwise, show me the research and don’t sweep all those crib recalls under the rug.)
It didn’t seem like the effects could be good. My kids howl whenever I stick them in their lonely carseats, although the sensory deprivation eventually puts them to sleep.
Researchers in Britain wondered, too, and have found evidence that, indeed, forward-facing strollers, which cut children and parents off from almost all sensory contact with each other—no touch, no eye contact, on noisy streets we can't even hear each other—have bad effects. Spending a lot of time in one of these strollers apparently retards children’s language development.
I fear that the stroller controversy will become one more thing for moms to feel guilty about and one more thing for poor folks who can’t afford fancy front-back convertible strollers to get beat up about. Keep in mind, though, a swag of cloth tying a baby to your body beats the fanciest stroller any day.
(And I’m still unconvinced by the efforts to tell parents that a fancy crib is better than sleeping with their babies. Last I checked we were still mammals, and mammal babies need touch. To convince me otherwise, show me the research and don’t sweep all those crib recalls under the rug.)
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
The petri dish can't replace the female body
It’s not really surprising, but it is interesting that evidence of the long-term health risks to babies born from IVF is starting to emerge. For a while now there has been some evidence of higher rates of prematurity, low birth weight, and birth defects in IVF babies. What’s more interesting is what the New York Times is reporting today—that there are “unusual gene expression patterns”—bad ones—in IVF babies.
This dovetails precisely with what current biological science would predict. Turns out that the science I was taught in high school biology class about genes, that they are blueprints from which critters are mechanically churned out, is nearly all wrong. The blueprint, or computer code, metaphor doesn’t work. We can’t be said to simply be the sum of our genes. It’s more like we’re the sum of a process, namely what’s called by biologists “development”—the precise, complex choreography that results in the growth of a creature from (almost) nothing.
So it makes sense that doing part of that development in a Petri dish instead of the human body would have consequences, genetic ones at that. The age-old yearning to be free of the female body has once again been frustrated.
This dovetails precisely with what current biological science would predict. Turns out that the science I was taught in high school biology class about genes, that they are blueprints from which critters are mechanically churned out, is nearly all wrong. The blueprint, or computer code, metaphor doesn’t work. We can’t be said to simply be the sum of our genes. It’s more like we’re the sum of a process, namely what’s called by biologists “development”—the precise, complex choreography that results in the growth of a creature from (almost) nothing.
So it makes sense that doing part of that development in a Petri dish instead of the human body would have consequences, genetic ones at that. The age-old yearning to be free of the female body has once again been frustrated.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Everybody's favorite villain (again): the single mom
Events have shifted that octuplets story. I figured it would play out the way the story of the McCaughey septuplets in Iowa did—with oohs and ahs and a donated 16-room house, 15-passenger van, baby food from Gerber, and a lifetime supply of Pampers from Procter & Gamble —and I was all set to rain on that parade.
Never underestimate the power of race or sexism to flip a story. Now that it has emerged that the mother of the octuplets is unwed (and has six other kids), there isn’t much gushing. The headline in my local paper reads, “Winning Sympathy the Hardest Task.” In the article, a call-out headed “Cost of 14 Kids” reads “for a single mother, the cost of raising 14 children through age 17 ranges from $1.3 million to $2.7.”
Excuse me?
Last I checked, children cost the same to raise whether by a single mom, a single dad, two moms, two dads, or a mother and a father. Suggesting children cost more if raised by single mothers vilifies single mothers, implying they’re parasites on society. The birth of the octuplets already burdens society, in the form of the millions of dollars their birth cost our medical system, but that would be true even if Ozzie and Harriet were their parents.
This woman is surely crazy, but then so are the McCaugheys and the Gosselins (of the TLC reality show). It’s just that certain forms of insanity—such as having sextuplets in God’s name or putting your children on a reality show—are socially acceptable and others aren’t.
Lynn Paltrow of National Advocates for Pregnant Women (so glad to learn about them!), put it best (courtesy Salon’s Broadsheet):
Never underestimate the power of race or sexism to flip a story. Now that it has emerged that the mother of the octuplets is unwed (and has six other kids), there isn’t much gushing. The headline in my local paper reads, “Winning Sympathy the Hardest Task.” In the article, a call-out headed “Cost of 14 Kids” reads “for a single mother, the cost of raising 14 children through age 17 ranges from $1.3 million to $2.7.”
Excuse me?
Last I checked, children cost the same to raise whether by a single mom, a single dad, two moms, two dads, or a mother and a father. Suggesting children cost more if raised by single mothers vilifies single mothers, implying they’re parasites on society. The birth of the octuplets already burdens society, in the form of the millions of dollars their birth cost our medical system, but that would be true even if Ozzie and Harriet were their parents.
This woman is surely crazy, but then so are the McCaugheys and the Gosselins (of the TLC reality show). It’s just that certain forms of insanity—such as having sextuplets in God’s name or putting your children on a reality show—are socially acceptable and others aren’t.
Lynn Paltrow of National Advocates for Pregnant Women (so glad to learn about them!), put it best (courtesy Salon’s Broadsheet):
"When the pregnant woman is not brown or black and the drugs/technologies are provided by big pharma, the discussion focuses on questions of ethics. But if the issue is childbearing by low-income women of color, and the drug is homegrown/ illegal then the debate is a question of punishment through the criminal justice or civil child welfare system." Paltrow also cited a study showing that, while we often talk about the effects illegal drugs can have on pregnancy, "women who take fertility drugs and choose to carry three or more embryos to term often experience pregnancy loss and risk severe, lifelong harm to the children who survive."
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Why aren't Sasha and Malia going to public school?
Michelle Obama rocks, but I'd feel a lot more excited about her recent visit to the Department of Education and promises of improvements in public education if she and Barack sent their kids to public school.
I can just hear the but of course they can't do that guffaws, and it may be true that DC public schools suck. That begs the question of why they suck. I bet they'd stop sucking if the elites sent their kids there. The bottom line is that our public schools should be good enough for the president's children. This is a democracy. We should expect no less.
I can just hear the but of course they can't do that guffaws, and it may be true that DC public schools suck. That begs the question of why they suck. I bet they'd stop sucking if the elites sent their kids there. The bottom line is that our public schools should be good enough for the president's children. This is a democracy. We should expect no less.
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