Child brides

While you all are taking Mojo Mom's advice to practice yoga in order to ward off the bad vibes of living, I must remind you that bad shit happens in the world that you could at least complain about. Read this article and photo essay on child brides in Afghanistan...

Interview with Columnist Katha Pollitt on Feminism

In this very interesting interview with Nation columnist Katha Pollitt, she claims that we need to be bolder in promoting women's equality to counter a backlash against it. She says:

"The basic idea of women being self-directed creatures as opposed to being there to help some man through life and stay with the children and do the cooking -- that idea has been delegitimized; you just don't hear it that often if you live in much of the country."

But she ends on an optimistic note:

"I guess I feel that the rollback of our rights is only temporary -- and I say that in my introduction. That a big modern industrial country like America is not going to become a right-wing Christian nation in which you have to show your marriage certificate to get birth control. If you can measure the strength of an impulse by the ferocity of the opposition to it, I would say that feminism is very much alive. People don't spend a lot of time anymore bashing unions, for example. They don't spend a lot of time bashing the black power movement, but feminism really gets to people. So I think the fact that it really gets to people shows both its relevance and its power."

More on the HPV vaccine

Some people don't like that 12 years is the recommended age for the vaccine that prevents cervical cancer. They want their kids to remain kids. But this is a ridiculous argument.

The reason the group recommended that 12 years is the correct age is simply that kids routinely get a round of other shots at that age, so it would be convenient.

I doubt people would complain about giving children a vaccine to prevent future alzheimers (this is hypothetical, it unfortunately doesn't exist) even though the disease wouldn't appear until late adulthood. Such a vaccine wouldn't make kids act like senior citizens, and the HPV vaccine won't make girls sexually active. This a form of the old, tired "sex is bad, especially for girls" lie.

HPV vaccine recommended for pre-teen girls

In a sensible move to prevent the 4,000 or do deaths each year from cervical cancer, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has recommended that 11- and 12-year-old girls be routinely vaccinated. The committee makes official recommendations under the Department of Health and Human Services. The religious right complained, but didn't get their way (they would rather see women die than do anything that they perceive could promote sexual activity).

Salon has more...

Reducing a thing to its parts

There is actually a store in Glendale, CA called "Bellies, Babies, & Bosoms". I think they forgot to include "Vulvas". Maybe someone should open a store with men's stuff called "Scrotums and Ass-cracks". Is anyone else slightly offended by this stupid name?

Your lack of a life is bad for your kids

As Ben, my favorite reader, put it, moms that have no lives outside their children stagnate their kids' development. How true. The worst kinds of housewives are immediately recognizable by how they identify themselves. A license plate that reads "BILLYSMOM" is a dead giveaway.

Kids need room to grow and develop independent skills. They need peer interaction, not a parent who wished they'd always "stay little". Back off, you overbearing identity-suffering mothers!

Just Say No to Juice Boxes

OK, my posts have been a little heavy lately, so here is a thought that I think we can all ponder amicably (because it is of so little consequence).

Who invented juice boxes, anyway, and can we punish them? I can barely get the straw in without squirting juice all over myself. How can a young child be expected to drink from a juice box without letting loose a sticky stream? How many of you have been soaked by a child with a power grip? I've had it!

And don't get me started on juice BAGS! They are beyond absurd.

Security Mom

This is old, of course, but I'm revisiting it because it just got bumped off the fridge collection and I couldn't let it go quietly in the night. Hilarious! (Most of my readers won't understand this, I realize... so this is for those few who do.)

Security Mom

A good cause in your spare time

The FDA is currently deciding what to do with the new vaccine that prevents the HPV virus, which causes cervical cancer. It's simple - administer the vaccine, no more cervical cancer. Don't you love when medical research furthers the overall health of women!?

Anyway, the religious right is trying to restrict the vaccine. Learn more about this, and what you can do here.

A Question of Leisure Time

Why are almost all of the comments on my blog nasty? It's a simple matter of leisure time. My friends (and you know who you are!) all have careers, and they don't have time to surf the web all day posting comments full of spelling and grammatical mistakes that make them look uneducated.

The majority of mothers with young children are employed, however. Are they the silent majority?

I have never abandoned my child to strangers

Yes, again, I am amazed by the ignorance displayed in comments on the topic of day care.

I don't know what you people think day care is, but I'm talking about the kind of high quality child care enrichment center that is fully licensed, with appropriate oversight and curricula. In my area of the country (civilization), it runs from around $1200 per month for infants to $900 per month for pre-schoolers. I'm not talking about a housewife who makes extra money by "watching" other kids, in other words. Real day care is not for everyone, and I understand that. It's expensive. The parents are almost always older than average, at a point in their lives where it's easier to afford good education for their children.

And they are not strangers. They are well known to us, to our neighbors, to our friends with small children. It takes a village to raise a child, and our neighborhood day care center is an important part of that village.

Happy Parenting

I found this hilarious book on child rearing this past weekend, and it's definitely a must-read. Because I'm feeling lazy today, I'll cite one of the reviewers on Amazon:

The Three-Martini Playdate: A Practical Guide to Happy Parenting

"Finally, a book about being an effective, responsible parent without losing your sense of humor along the way! If you think that today's parents let their kids run the household and the whole family's lives, and if you long for the days when children behaved in public, when parents weren't constantly excusing their kids' lack of manners, and when parents actually had their own lives, then read this book! Full of humor (some of it slightly acidic), the book does yield some practical advice and offers tips on how to parent well and not create monster children in the process. Read parts of it out loud to your spouse or friends for added fun -- I had my husband laughing his (...)off with some of the funnier parts.
"

I couldn't have said it better myself. Order it now!

Anyway, what does this have to do with my working mother mantra? I'm tired of hearing that I'm selfish and don't love my children because I have a successful career. What crap! Children are not the center of the universe, and they shouldn't be. Children who are treated as if they are the center of the universe develop an entitlement mindset. If the mixing pot of kindergarten doesn't cure them of this affliction, they turn into the kind of adults who weave through traffic and cut in line. Assholes, in other words. So stop treating your kids like they're the center of the universe (they aren't) and get a life!

Inappropriate use of apostrophe (or lack thereof)

This is a notice to all my adoring readers that I will no longer be commenting on comments that make inappropriate use of apostrophe.

A primer on satire

There has been some confusion as to the point of my post "Housewife worth $134 K, Dog worth $125 K". Let me explain.

In my post about a dog's worth, I was employing what is commonly known as satire. Here is Webster's definition of satire:

satire
One entry found for satire.
Main Entry: sat·ire
Pronunciation: 'sa-"tIr
Function: noun

Etymology: Middle French or Latin; Middle French, from Latin satura, satira, perhaps from (lanx) satura dish of mixed ingredients, from feminine of satur well-fed; akin to Latin satis enough

1 : a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn

2 : trenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly

Since my post certainly was not literature, you can see that the second definition applies to that original post (and some others as well).

I was attempting to discredit a folly - the Salary.com survey that claims housewives with children are worth $134 K per year.

How did I use satire to discredit the folly? I calculated all the jobs my dog could potentially be considered to do if I squeeze my eyes mostly shut and put aside all reason. Then I added up his hourly pay for each job and the time spent at that job. I came up with a figure that is clearly ridiculous. That's satire.

And I don't have a dog, which is even more evidence that the post was satire.

Ignoring kids in coffeeshops

I was at a coffeeshop the other day, and seated at the table next to me were three women and a toddler. They were busy complaining about how horrible day care is, and how they would never subject it to their kids.

The toddler was oddly passive, and sat in a highchair. In the 20 minutes that I was there, no one (including her mother) interacted with her in any way. They didn't even look at her, let alone speak to her. This is supposed to be better than day care?

A story of day care versus nanny

I came across this story of one family's search for a nanny that led them to day care. My kid initially had a nanny, then we put her in day care (a real center like the one in this story) and wished we'd taken that option from the start.

For all you people who think that day care is a horrible place, read on... this is our experience exactly.

I also just recently posted my list of reasons why day care is better than a nanny. Later I'll post why day care is better than home.

Why day care is better than a nanny

My child had a nanny from age 3 months to 15 months, then started day care. I've had experience with both, and if I had to do it all over again, I'd choose day care over the nanny. It's not that we didn't have a good nanny - quite the contrary. She was very capable and caring, and devoted all her attention to our child.
But a high quality day care center is better than a nanny. Here's why:

1. Some of the best day care centers (like Bright Horizons) have a nurse on staff. This made us feel a lot better, especially during the choking-hazard phase. Most nannies have no medical training.

2. Day care centers follow an established curriculum, and employ teachers with certified educational training. There are no educational requirements for nannies, and most have no degree qualifications. Most don't develop any kind of curriculum appropriate to development, but are simply "watching" the kids.

3. Day care centers don't let kids watch TV, and rarely show videos. Kids at home with a nanny are likely to be watching TV. You can ban it (we did), but if you aren't there, how do you know?

4. At day care, kids are almost never alone with any particular adult. The classes are staffed by two teachers, and there is a director, usually a cook, sometimes a nurse, and other staff. This brings accountability, so it's safer. For example, your nanny might fall asleep during naptime and fail to wake when your child dones, but that won't happen in day care.

5. Peers close in age are important for development. When my child was 15 months old, she learned to eat soup from a bowl with a spoon. I would never have done this at home, but she saw the slightly older kids doing it and imitated them. Potty training, language, socialization, and more seem to be easier among a group of kids close in age. (Day care centers group kids by age.) They learn from the slightly older kids and teach the slightly younger kids (which helps with socialization).

6. If your nanny quits, your child's life gets turned upside down because it's such a dramatic change. At day care, if a teacher quits, it's less of a disruption for the child. The other teacher and staff are still there, along with their peers.

7. There is generally more accountability at day care than with a nanny. Teachers have to follow the rules of the director, who provides oversight.

8. Children in a rich peer setting make close friends, even when they are very young. When they spend their weekdays with peers, they develop strong relationships.

I keep hearing people say that a nanny is better than day care, and I once thought that myself. But it's simply not true, for at least 8 reasons.

Mojo Mom interview today

Amy Tiemann was interviewed today on The State of Things, a North Carolina public radio show. She is the author of Mojo Mom, a book about how to live a life as an upper middle class mother.

In the introduction of her book, she mentions that she wrote the book because she was shocked at the changes in her life after her first child was born. She wrote, (I'm paraphrasing) "what if you suddenly found that you had lost your job, ceased most adult interaction, and were now spending hours a day doing boring work while giving up your financial independence?". What? Let's be clear here - she didn't "lose" her job. She QUIT her job. So I think the lesson here is this - don't quit your job then suddenly act surprised that you no longer have a job.

In the interview today, however, Tiemann made a good point that entrepreneurial skills can help women get out of a career path that they don't find flexible enough to make them happy as mothers. If you don't like the ridiculous hours of the partner track in your law firm, then start your own practice. That's good advice, to be sure. So don't drop out entirely - use the transition to be your own boss. Of course, you have to actually work and make money for this to count. And what about the father's career? Why don't people expect fathers to want to cut down on their work hours to spend more time with their kids?

She also talked about the sleep deprivation and hard work of caring for an infant. Yes, of course any parent knows this. But what about the father? Is he not deprived of sleep, too? Or does he refuse to do anything to care for his own children? Why are we talking about this as if it was just a mother issue?

As an aside, I can't believe the host actually said that we should find a way to work mothering into the gross domestic product figures. I guess he was fooled by the recent Salary.com survey. I suggest that we not only find a way to introduce the massive unpaid work of mothers into the GDP, but also look into measuring the value of the unpaid work of our pets.

A caller later in the show wanted advice on how to work at home and take care of a toddler at the same time. Here's my advice - don't try to do these at the same time. You can't do either well. If you are trying to do actual work, then you are probably relying on videos to entertai your kid, and he'd be much better off in daycare. In fact, I'd wager that children who lack high quality early childhood enrichment experiences watch much more TV than those who are luckier.

By the way, the author of Mojo Mom has a rich husband, an executive at Red Hat. I'm sure that helps, too.

What pro-choice means

I got a comment from an anonymous reader that was so rich I just had to repost it.

An anonymous reader wrote that he/she assumed that I was pro-choice (that would be correct), and so why couldn't I respect the choices of housewives to stay home.

Huh? Pro-choice means a specific thing. It doesn't mean anything else. It doesn't mean that I believe in choices in general. For example, it doesn't mean that I believe you should have a choice of white, wheat, or rye toast. It doesn't mean that I believe you should have a choice of pink or purple ballet slippers.

And no, it doesn't mean that I have to respect the choice of mothers to stay home.

11 reasons why working mothers can't stand housewives

1. They have nothing to talk about but their kids. I'm tired of hearing about your stupid kids. Get a life and have something else to talk about.

2. No, relaying every detail about the school box top fundraising campaign does not count.

3. Housewives have an obnoxius attitude that they are better than us working mothers in general.

4. Specifically, they imply that they love their children more.

5. They seem to think that hanging out at the mall is child enrichment.

6. They brag about how their husbands don't do anything around the house. This is insulting to men and completely uninteresting.

7. They treat their husbands like they are incompetent to handle the kids for any length of time. Again, insulting to fathers.

8. They claim to be doing society a favor by breeding, but we all know it's an inherently selfish endeavor. News flash - raising your brats is not a favor to me!

9. They take their toddler along to the older child's ballet lesson, then completely ignore him as he proceeds to scream, whine, disrupt the class, and generally appear to be wasting away from lack of truly involved interaction.

10. They talk about how horrible day care is, but they don't know anything about it.

11. They are the reason I am frequently asked the insulting question "Do you work outside the home?". What is this, 1950?

Dog job update

Well, I inquired about a securlty job for my dog at the mall, and it's not looking good. It turns out that to be paid for the work, you actually have to be qualified.

Not all that qualified, but you have to have a high school diploma and be able to say (in English) "you kids move along, now". Unfortunately, obedience school doesn't count, and my dog can't talk. So much for that plan.

Maybe I overestimated his value?

Millions of new part-time psychologists

Inspired by the Salary.com "study" that shows a mother's worth to be $134K, millions of moms across the country are hoping to earn desperately needed extra money by offering their more valuable skills to the market. With the excellent rates psychologists are getting, it seems an obvious choice.

Oh, but wait a minute. Don't you have to have a graduate degree to be a practicing psychologist? And a license? Hmmm, maybe that survey attributed too much value...

Housewife worth $134 K, Dog worth $125 K

Salary.com released a "study" of the value of housewife work. They claim that if paid for all their work, housewives would earn $134,121 per year. In addition to the usual maid, cook, and chauffeur roles, Salary.com included CEO and psychologist. I think they forgot, um, callgirl.

Wow, that's a lot of money. But housewives aren't the only ones doing unpaid work in the home. My dog performs serious work in the home, too. I decided to add up the value of his various functions.

Security guard - $91,980 per year

My dog is a 24 hour security guard, and he's very good at his job (not that it seemed to be a factor in the Salary.com study). Yes, he sleeps at night, and sometimes during the day, but his ears are keen and he can be trusted to wake up and do his job. To be realistic, I will count the sleeping hours as "on call", which can be considered about half salary. My research shows that security guards with his level of experience (7 years) earn about $14 per hour. I'll assign $7 for the on call hours. If he works actively 12 hours per day, and is on call 12 hours per day, then his salary comes to $91,980 per year.

Touch therapist - $22,100 per year

Petting my dog is very therapeutic after a hard day at (actual) work. A quick Google search for information on touch therapists led me to some, well, questionable content. But I eventually discovered that the going rate for touch therapists is $85 per hour. My dog spends about 5 hours per week in this job role, so that comes to $22,100 per year.

Personal trainer - $11,700 per year

I go running with my dog. He's a great personal trainer. I used to pay $75 per hour for this service, but now it's his (unpaid) job. He spends an average of 3 hours per week as my personal trainer, which comes to $11,700 per year.

Add it all up and you get $125,780 per year. I think my dog needs to get his ass out there and bring home a paycheck! Security guard is his best role, so I'm going to try to get him a job at the mall. Updates to follow...

Caitlin Flanagan Promotes Dependence

Caitlin Flanagan, author of "To Hell With All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife", is dead serious that a husband should be the head of the household, and that women should be homemakers. This video excerpt from The Colbert Report is unbelieveable. When he asked her if she believed that women should still be dependent on their husbands even if it's a bad situation (the implication was domestic abuse), she said yes.

Of course, housewives seem to think that the bad consequences of having no real financial means of their own will only happen to someone else. With divorce common, I would think that women would be wary of becoming dependent. But even if they think divorce will never happen to them, it could be worse. What happens if you have no marketable skills and your husband is killed in a car accident. It happened last week to a woman in my neighborhood, a housewife. I feel sorry for the family, especially since she doesn't work.

Why I care about other women's choices

I resent the influence housewives can have on my daughter's worldview. A housewife's children grow up expecting that women are responsible for (unpaid) household work. It doesn't take long for kids to understand that baking cupcakes for soccer practice is less valued in society than being a lawyer, for example. If you can count the number of diapers their father has changed on one hand, kids know that. They see fathers with careers and mothers doing housework, and they grow up with at least a latent expectation that they are natural roles for men and women. It sets a tone for inequity.

I don't volunteer for PTA activities

And I don't feel guilty about it.

When my daughter started kindergarten, I was suddenly exposed to the unpleasantness of the upper middle class housewife universe. My friends with older children warned me of the housewife culture of inducing guilt in mothers who fail to volunteer time for menial tasks related to school fundraising.

For the record, I am NOT going to collect box tops as a school fundraising effort. Did it ever occur to the housewives that the box top clipping campaign is just a clever ploy to get them to buy more of that particular brand of product in exchange for a pittance to the schools? My friend has a hilarious story of the box top campaign chairwoman at her PTA meeting. How a person can go on for 20 minutes about the box tops is beyond us. Nothing says "loser" like having memorized every product eligible for the box top program, including lists of suggested menu changes to work the products into every meal.

I am NOT spending my Saturdays doing menial labor to raise a couple of dollars for the school. I will ignore the email I just got asking for a volunteer to cut the grass and pick up trash at the PTA thrift store. I am also going to ignore all those pleas to help sort the donations, or work in the store.

But the housewives had better get their little keisters right over there. The fact is that as a fully employed household, we pay more tax than the housewife families do (typically, because we make more). We're ahead on contributions to the public schools, so they have some catching up to do.

It's not that my husband and I aren't concerned about the schools' resources. In fact, even though we are already ahead with the added taxes, we figured out exactly how much the PTA collects each year, per child. The number was $90, and we have one child, so we wrote a check for that amount as a donation to the PTA. How about just get a job and write the check?

Childcare is father's work, too

I travel a little for work, and I'm out of town a few days per month. An acquaintance recently asked me if my mother comes to stay to take care of my daughter when I'm out of town. I was a little surprised - she knows I have a husband - then I realized that my sheltered world of gender equality does not apparently extend into hers.

For the record, they get along just fine without me. In my world, mothers and fathers share childcare equally, and men are generally as capable as women.

When I mentioned my acquaintance's question to my husband, he was offended. What kind of idiot does she think he is? My modern husband thinks any father who can't handle childcare is a loser. But there are plenty of men who can't or won't.

My brother-in-law complains about his neighbors exhibiting an absurd imbalance in childcare effort. Their neighbor refuses to deal with own his kids in any way. He even joked about coming in the back door so he can go straight to his basement rec room without seeing the kids. His wife deals with them exclusively from the minute they wake up to the minute they're asleep (she's a housewife, of course). If you're not going to interact with your own kids, what's the point of having them?

This guy's case is a bit extreme, but there are plenty of women who tolerate incompetent fathers. Some even seem to encourage the behavior. I suppose it's a form of job protection for housewives.

We mothers need to encourage fathers to step up to their childcare responsibilities, and assure them that they are just as competent as we are. Equality begins at home.

Count me out of the opt-out revolution

This is why I started this blog - to give voice to all the rational, reasonable, working mothers and involved fathers that I know are out there.

See Judith Stadtman Tucker's editor's notes for the April edition of The Mothers Movement Online:

http://www.mothersmovement.org/editors_notes/0604.htm

She is fighting to correct misinformation in the press about women's and mothers' issues and trends.

It's not about the money

Why do women work? The same reason men work, ideally. To make a living for themselves and their families, to find satisfaction in a successful career, to challenge and improve their skills, and to enjoy the social network that comes from work. OK, so most jobs don't live up to the complete ideal, but it's very clearly about more than the money.

When I hear women say that they don't work because the money would barely cover childcare, I cringe. Are you never going to work again? What about the gap in work experience that will prove damaging when you re-enter the job market? What about the insecurity caused by complete financial dependence on someone who could get run over by a bus or leave you for a younger woman any day? (Everyone always says it won't happen to them, but we all know that it happens all the time.) There is a personal satisfaction in knowing that you can support your family. What about the example you're setting for your children - that mothers are glorified family servants? I'd rather my daughter gain exposure to women with careers in her formative years.

I contend that a mother's "choice" to work is not about the money. But we keep hearing stories that miss the point. In this article by Kristin Maschka at Women's eNews, she describes her decision to stay home based on the tax code. Since her husband makes more money, her income is considered "secondary". The tax rate is higher for the "extra" income, a leftover from mid-twentieth-century tax policy designed to encourage women to drop out of the workforce after WWII. In her calculations, she uses the higher tax rate on her salary, and the lower rate on her husband's salary (never mind that the money is pooled and taxed together anyway). This simple calculation is apparently all she needs to decide to be a housewife.

Is the tax code fair to married couples with two incomes? No, a change is clearly warranted. But should women give up the personal and family benefits of a career because of regressive tax laws?

The Premise: backtalk

The national press highlights the antagonism between working mothers and stay-at-home moms. Organizations advocating for women, such as NOW, tell us this antagonism doesn't, or shouldn't, exist. They say the national media is driving a wedge between women doing all kinds of valuable work.

They've obviously never waited at the walker door.

In a sea of 3 million blogs, one voice appears to be missing. As a working mother, I am tired of hearing that I should feel guilty for working. I am tired of hearing that staying home with children is better for them than daycare. I am tired of being asked the embarassing question "do you work outside the home?". I am tired of the assumption that my husband is incapable of childcare. And I'm tired of the insipid conversation about minor PTA fundraising efforts at the walker door.

So it's time for backtalking. I expect some of you will rip me to shreds in the comments. But I'm not the only one with these views. I'm just the one making time for backtalk.