This is going to be long.

No lie, the thread on that post below about friends and their relationships to one's kid made me feel crazy. And it's come up again enough that I want to take a few to revisit, revise, clarify. In a long and intertextual way. I didn't give that much space to the claims about kids and bigotry in the original post because, frankly, I didn't think they were all that controversial. They are, in large part, rehashes of shit B has written here for years. Some examples ...


From this post:

Why do we take the institutional status quo as authoritative, as normative even, and NOT take basic facts of human biology as authoritative and normative? Yes, individuals can choose not to have children. More power to them. But collectively, on both the social and species level, we cannot make that choice. Being living creatures and all. Moreover, the economic disadvantages of having kids pretty much accrue because we've all agreed to alienate our labor. Ok, fine, but let's don't pretend that it is the children, rather than the social structure, that is the "choice."

From this post:

[Children] are human beings. Actual members of society. Who, yes, happen to be in a dependent position. Nonetheless, inasmuch as they are members of society, they have a claim on society to help care for them in their dependence so that they do not starve. Now, since they have parents, there are many aspects of their dependence that society needn't bother with: y'all don't have to wipe Pseudonymous Kid's ass, you don't have to give him his bath, you don't have to read him mouse books over and over and over again. [...] But yeah, goddamnit, you do have to deal with his presence in public spaces, even if he's acting like a little turd; you do have to recognize that because I have all that other stuff to do, I might be slightly less at the disposal of my employer for a few years (then again, no one should be at the disposal of their employer 24/7 anyway); you do need to deal with the times when I bring him into work because there is work I can't put off and there is no one else who can care for him on that day; and you do, I think, have an obligation to figure out social and economic policies that take into account the fact that this is not only my life, but the life of most adults at some point sooner or later. And in exchange, my friends, I and he have an obligation to deal with you when you have had a shitty day and are being a turd in a public space; or when you have to leave work early to pick up a friend at the airport or because you have opera tickets or a hot date; or when you have to call in sick; or when your illness turns out to be acute and far more expensive than any individual can afford; or when you get old and need to retire, and yadda yadda yadda.

And note this: I am not saying you have to deal with children because someday they will deal with you; or that other people have to deal with you because you have dealt, or will at some point deal with them. I am saying we have to deal with each other because refusing to do so is wrong, anti-social, anti-human. Everything else comes after that.

And then this one:

[T]his "children are okay, as long as I never have to deal with them" thing--including the resentment of people who get "more" resources because their health insurance covers their family, or because their kids get tuition breaks at the colleges where they teach, or who breastfeed in public, or whatever. Children are part of society. They are human beings. They are not exotic pets. They get to go into restaurants; they get to eat in places other than public bathrooms; they get to have bad days; they get to have their needs met, too.

Yes. Kids have certain needs that are specific to being kids. [...] Admittedly, other people are inconvenient sometimes.

Now, to what I wrote. I want to pull out the paragraph, the one of thirteen, that everyone responded to:

Now, maybe I meet someone who doesn't necessarily dislike Little V in a personal way but who is "not really a kid person." And here I mean not necessarily someone who doesn't want to have kids or who doesn't have any experience being around kids or someone who lives a lifestyle that doesn't produce any exposure to kids. I mean someone who is expressive about a "I don't really like kids" attitude or a "I hate going to restaurants or museums where kids are making noise" attitude or a "of course it's fine for other people to have kids but I don't want to be around them" attitude. This sort of thing is a deal-breaker for me. I've gotten pretty rigid about it in recent years as I become more assured in my certainty that it's an anti-feminist attitude and you suck if you hold it. Kids are a vulnerable, disempowered, inevitable portion of the human community and you do not get to "not like" them or to wish that weren't a part of your public space. Not allowed. I invite you to swap out "kids" for any other disempowered community in the above phrases ("women," "schizophrenics," "hispanics," "the blind") and notice what an asshole you sound like. If you are the type to espouse this position, you and I are never going to be close.

There were several comments I made that I feel like expand on this helpfully, and there were lots of comments by readers, both helpful and not, that nicely illustrate some of the problems here, but the post is getting way too long, so I'm gonna not pull them. Instead, I will condense and reiterate some things -

I do know that my rhetoric got increasingly polemical as the thread went on, but seriously, y'all, that is a way measured contention up there from the original post. It would be a measured thing for my real-life self to say, let alone for Sybil Vane to write on a blog called Bitch PhD.

I understand the extent to which people understand their 'I don't like kids" attitude as connected to their feminism. One of the very important works of feminism has been to authorize non-child-bearing/non-maternal subjectivites for women, and that has only been shakily accomplished. I understand, or know of and intellectually understand at any rate, the cultural pressures for women to be mothers and to feel maternal. I endorse wholeheartedly the rejection of those pressures. I reject the naturalness of maternity or maternal feelings.

I also understand that the deployment of an analogy about hatred of other marginalized groups was problematic for people. And I understand why - an analogy implies equation or comparison, it makes a rhetorical gesture that seems to level differences and eliminate nuance. There is, of course, a reason that some people ban analogies. It's rhetorically cheap, I concede. But listen: the way I deployed it in the first place was to ask people to think about how it sounds when they say, "I hate X people." And then, by extension, to think about why it is that it sounds assholeish when they say such things. In other words, it was with awareness of the progressive sophistication of my audience (or hopefulness of it anyway), that I used the device. With awareness that bigotry and stereotypes emerge from unexamined privilege and assumptions, that the presumed sensibility of this blog's readers is such that they know enough to be too damn embarrassed to ever say something like, "I really hate it when there are a ton of deaf people at the store," and that a quick examination of the reasons *why* they would feel shameful about saying such a thing should reveal that those same reasons apply to a statement that places "kids" in the same spot.

I never anywhere suggest that the struggles or lived experience of children are equivalent to or look like even the struggles of gay people or Arab Americans or the blind. I took care not to. I can understand why the rhetorical gesture seems to veer close to this, and again, I concede it was a kind of shock tactic, but really, this is not something I suggested. I do in fact continue to think that it's intellectually credible to think about why some biases are stigmatized and some aren't. In that service I deployed the analogy.

Ok, so. Some people have pointed out that I am being an asshole by accusing people of being bigots when bigotry against children is not an actual thing that exists. In some cases, people compare the non-oppressed status of children to the actually oppressed status of gays/Jews/the disabled/whatever. This oppression Olympics game is not interesting to me. "I am actually oppressed, and any discussion of this bigotry offends me." Just not interested. Until the oppression gold-medal winner is raised up we aren't allowed to think about the runners-up? Good luck with that. Or with thinking in any way about your oppression as you use a computer and the internet and communicate in English.

Does bigotry only exist if we can measure oppressive effects? That is, if you are a bigot alone in a forest, are you still a bigot? People remind me all through the comments that they are never mean to women and children, they do their best to be civil, they just don't enjoy the time. And as I say repeatedly, whatever. I don't care what you feel really, insofar as I can't ever really know how you feel, just how you act. Act decently, that's really the baseline. But there's really no reason why I oughtn't have an opinion about the feelings you feel authorized to express. And to attach values to the source of that authorization.

Certainly no one disagrees that children are a vulnerable and exploited class. Not up for debate. And we know they are more vulnerable to all sorts of things (poor nutrition, economic disadvantage, laxly enforced regulations about product safety, insular individualistic behavior) than their adult counterparts. I don't know, as I asked in a recent comment, what precise data you would want to see if you wanted to see information about the systemic and institutional implementation of anti-kid bigotry. I assume you want to know that children suffer as a result of your hating them before you feel compelled to modify your attitude, yes? Is that a good-feeling position? Obviously, employment stats, earning potential, imprisonment rates, these are not the right metrics. I do think this should be legible to everyone: when you drop a friendship with a person because he has become a parent, when you roll your eyes or make a shitty comment to a parent or kid about that kid's (not pathological or destructive) behavior in a public place, the kid may not experience what you are putting out there, but you alienate/isolate the parent. You do. And that sense of alienation/isolation trickles down to the care the kid receives and to the messages she gets about her role in the world the role of parenting in society at large. It does.

People repeatedly justified hating kids on the basis of kidness being temporary. Those unlikeable behaviors are the result of incomplete socialization, they say, and will eventually be left behind. I will treat, this logic implies, that creature as fully human when she leaves behind her partiality. The silliness of this should be apparent - firstly, because while each individual kid may grow up, kids as a class will always exist (I think I ripped that line from Twisty but I can't look for it); secondly, because it full-on admits the figuring of childhood as something to be gotten over, a handicap to be cured of, a regrettable but necessary stage on the way to full humanity. Which, I assume, is again relinquished once one enters a stage in life, either by virtue of age, disease, or accident, when one is not capable of fully autonomous and self-contained existence. This is - and here is my most basic point - the thing you are supporting when you say, "I hate kids," and then insist on claiming it is just a social preference, a little personality quirk, perhaps one you even feel proud of, and one that no one has any business assigning a moral value to. You are contributing to the discursive reduction of children to sub-human status. Childhood is not a bad smell you get to hold your nose around until it passes. It is an iteration of humanity.

When I called this attitude antifeminist, I didn't even originally mean the thing some readers mentioned, which is the extent to which kid hatred tends to disproportionately isolate women and/or be a veiled discursive gesture towards critiquing mothering. What I mean is that as an intellectual/activist sensibility, feminism (and so here I guess I mean something more like radical feminism than cultural feminism - terms that may not really work as oppositional, but for illustration's sake ...) is fundamentally opposed to patriarchy. That is, to systems that are based on oppression/pathologizing of the powerless by the powerful.

[ETA: I just noticed that blogger published this without my final concluding paragraph - it had FLOURISH!! - which I can't find the energy to remember/retype, so I will conclude with this instead.]

Labels: bigotry, dead horses, sexism, women and kids

So I just got around to reading the comment thread to this post. Jesus fuck, no wonder I hardly blog any more.

I hope Sybil is having an awesome fucking day and that all the kid-haters get therapy.

Labels: bigotry, sexism, women and kids

Gag! Gag! Gag!

I know I shouldn't read these NY Times style articles before my morning coffee; I know it. And, yet, here I am reading about the 'widows' of New York financial guys who need a support group because their alpha male traders, bankers and whatnot are melting down along with the economy.

From the piece:
Dawn Spinner Davis, 26, a beauty writer, said the downward-trending graphs began to make sense when the man she married on Nov. 1, a 28-year-old private wealth manager, stopped playing golf, once his passion. “One of his best friends told me that my job is now to keep him calm and keep him from dying at the age of 35,” Ms. Davis said. “It’s not what I signed up for.”

Really, Dawn? Your boyfriend quits golf and *that's* the moment you realized the economy was in trouble??

My eyes rolled so hard they almost got stuck.

She may not have signed up for nursing her husband through this fiscal crisis (though I believe that's what 'for better or worse' covers) but neither did a lot of women sign up to stand at the edge of our economic pit of despair. I was on a conference call last week with some other association folks and one of them said that she's frustrated by how this recovery package is being compared to, and perhaps modeled on, the New Deal. She said, 'Our workforce is different now! A significant portion of the workforce is low-income women with children. How will this package help them?' She has a point.

Where do women work? The majority of women work in the service industry, in education, child care, human services and other 'traditionally' female sectors (like nursing.) But what are the priorities in the stimulus package (at least, the House version I read)? Green industries, technology, infrastructure and science. How many jobs will be created for women? What about making it easier for businesses to provide work supports for women with families? Paid sick days? Child care support (which is included in the package, yes.)

When the talking heads spew crap about the stimulus package, there is an assumption that what's good for dudes will automatically trickle down and benefit the ladies, but maybe not.

The Senate version of the recovery package is going to undergo changes as the two sides dicker and bargain over the next week. (Keep your eye on S. 336, the Senate appropriations bill for the recovery package.) I've heard that the administration wants to be able to sign this bill by President's Day, so things are going to be moving fast. But it's crucial to make sure work supports that directly impact working women stay in the bill. (GOP senators want to obstruct? Whatever. Their ideas didn't work the first time.)

Extra reading:
Ms. Foundation's recommendations (including allied organizations)
The Obama administration's explanation of the job impact on women
Linda Hirshman's observation that the recovery package is stuck in the 50s
The Nat'l Women's Law Center's breakdown of the recovery package

(sorry, no fun posts from Ding; this has been a douchebag of a work week.)

Labels: the economy, women and kids, work

I got my hair cut this morning. First time since February. It was relaxing; and then this happened:

In my mirror, I could see the reflection of a woman behind me who was getting her hair colored. She was in her 50s, I would guess. She kept doing this thing where she used her hands to tug back the skin around her eyes, then around her neck and chin, cocking her head at angles and considering the results. She was doing a thing with her mouth that she probably never does in real life, but which she probably imagines is her default condition.

(Mr. Vane says I have a mirror-face; I expect we all do. A thing we do with our features when we look in the mirror that creates the face we see in our mind but which no one else ever sees)

While she was doing this, the woman applying her color was oblivious. The stylist was really young, maybe 22, super thin, a shock of red trendy-messy hair. Way too much makeup for a face that young. Skinny jeans tucked into massive boots, a cling clang of bracelets rattling around. The whole time she applied the little foil envelopes of color she watched her own face in the mirror. Cocked her head different ways to watch how her hair fell. Narrowed her eyes and pursed lips just a tiny bit. Checked out her profile while coloring the bangs.

I watched this scene for about 2 minutes and it was all I could do not to dissolve into tears. I ended up getting bangs cut into my hair for the first time ever. They are already distracting me with the feeling of something being in my eyes.

Labels: aging, beauty standards, women and kids

I feel indulgent updating here on this situation, but a few of you have emailed asking, so, screw it, I am indulging.

Labels: childcare, women and kids

I have a pretty sweet childcare set up. I don't have enough childcare (for 2 years now I've been working 40-50 hrs/wk on 24 hours of care) and we spend more on it than we do on the mortgage, but it's good care.  My kid (she needs a pseudonym handle, doesn't she?) hangs out with 2 other kids her age under the care of a nanny we share with a couple other families for 3 full days.

Labels: family values, women and kids

I'm off for the rest of the week to a delegate-rich state to hang with my folks and let them get some precious grandparenting time in. I wanted to drop a couple quick notes, though:

1) Leblanc's post below is awesome and brave. I have my own myriad and shameful racist and sexist impulses, but there is one in particular I have been reflecting on today: I am biased against women who breastfeed longer than a year-ish. Not because I think it is in some way "inappropriate" or "icky" or whatever dumb shit people say, but because I am apt to conclude that the woman in question is more self-sacrificing (of her time, her body, her patience) in the name of motherhood than I think is warranted. This is obviously really shitty of me.
Especially as I would never dream of judging any paternal behavior in a similar way. Leblanc nots in the post below her "disdain for the idea of being a 'stay-at-home' mom." I think this is my version. I don't have a bad feeling about SAHMommying, but for whatever sexist reason I tend to internally condescend to the extended breastfeeding.

I wish I didn't do this because I wish I weren't so sexist, but also because -

2) I am flying alone with the toddler for the first time this week and I wish to god I were still nursing her. I don't care what kind of looks we might get if I had a surefire way to keep her happy. I am really super wimpy about planes.

Labels: breastfeeding, sexism, travel, women and kids

Officer Jiang Xiaojuan breastfeeds starving quake orphans

I am perplexed by CNN's decision to hyphenate "breast-feed" throughout this article, but am otherwise entirely moved by this kickass police officer, who is herself fairly nonchalant about her heroism:

"I am breast-feeding, so I can feed babies. I didn't think of it much," she said. "It is a mother's reaction, and a basic duty as a police officer to help."

Maybe intuitive but definitely heroic.

Labels: China, earthquake, heroine of the week, women and kids

When my daughter was born, my in-laws got me a subscription to one of the mainstream parenting magazines. I am not ungracious, so I said "Thank you," and totally ignored the thing after an initial read discovered a million needless products being marketed to keep my baby safer from, well, everything and a lot of articles about getting back my flat tummy by combining exercise with household chores. Suffice it to say, I am not the target audience for this particular publication. And yet, it still comes because neither Mr. Vane nor myself really care to make a thing about it.

So last month, Mr. Vane is flipping through the Mother's Day issue reading some choice pieces aloud; he finds this amusing. Every bit of advice in this magazine emphasized "giving mom a break" from her domestic labor. "Cook dinner with the kids!" "Wash the dishes before she asks!" "Do the laundry with the kids - make a game out of it!" And then various other suggestions that involve "pampering," wherein "pampering" is understood as spa treatments, shopping, and desserts.

So, I love 2 of those 3 things (I loathe shopping). I'm not going to turn them down. But as a paradigm for understanding Mother's Day, this sucks. One because the former suggestions are all predicated on the notion that domestic labor is mom's job and by sharing the labor for a Sunday you are giving a gift. That sucks for fairly obvious reasons. Sharing domestic labor should be part of the partnership. Skirt up and do it all the time, not as an exceptional treat. Furthermore, domestic chores are not the same thing as mothering. This should be obvious.

Further, while "pampering" is nice, it is a pretty insubstantial way to think about mothering, what it entails, and what constitutes recognition and appreciation of that work. We can bemoan Mother's Day as a Hallmark holiday, but it didn't start that way. Two kick ass feminists, Julia War Howe and Anna Jarvis, are credited with making it a national holiday. Howe wanted it to function as a day for anti-war activism, seeing women as crucial shapers of national and foreign policy. From her "Mother's Day Proclamation" - "Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause."

Jarvis advocated for the holiday after the death of her own mother, Anna Marie Reeves Jarvis, who was also an anti-war agitator. The younger Jarvis was appalled by the eventual commercialization of the holiday, noting "A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother—and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment!"

These women would not have been at all amused by a "Get out of Laundry" coupon from their spouses.

What I want for Mother's Day is some demonstration that the adult-ish people to whom my mothering matters (which is currently only my husband as our daughter is young) have reflected on what it means to try to mother with intelligence, grace, courage, and kindness in this historical moment. I want a recognition that I am under-served by social and business policies that do not value the work I do as a mother, and that I am under-served by the sentimentalization of motherhood. I want awareness that while the domestic labor I do is unpaid, it is not, de facto, my labor and has very little to do with mothering. I want conscious decisions to value the social and political influence of mothering, and commitments to increasing the visibility of the ways mother's are disenfranchised.

For my own part, I will try to give these things to my mom. I will think hard about the obstacles she overcame, the work she quietly and sometimes invisibly balanced and the sacrifices she made, in particular the ways that she shouldn't have needed to make them. I will promise to do my part to make those sacrifices less necessary for my own daughter, should she decide to be a mother herself. I will try to show my mom that I recognize what she did and the fights she had to do them how she wanted.

And if I get a pedicure too, I will count the day a real success.

Labels: mama, war, women and kids

Dooce nails it.

guess there are some people who are very uncomfortable with the fact that I and many other women are writing about our children on our websites. How dare we violate your privacy like this, how dare we endanger you like this, we obviously care more about ad revenue than what this is going to do to your adolescence. And I have been asked countless times if I am at all worried that you will totally resent me for the details I have shared here.
....
Will you resent me for this website? Absolutely. And I have spent hours and days and months of my life considering this, weighing your resentment against the good that can come from being open and honest about what it's like to be your mother, the good for you, the good for me, and the good for other women who read what I write here and walk away feeling less alone. And I have every reason to believe that one day you will look at the thousands of pages I have written about my love for you, the thousands of pages other women have written about their own children, and you're going to be so proud that we were brave enough to do this.

Labels: storytelling, women and kids

Ugh.

Unlike the Clinton-Lewinsky liaison — which may have introduced many children to the idea of a man having extramarital sexual relations — the Spitzer scandal involved prostitution. Racy pictures of the prostitute have surfaced in news media, heightening the chance children could be exposed to the images and ask questions.

Parents should be ready if children ask what a prostitute is, said Judy Kuriansky, a professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University Teachers College.

"If they ask," she said, "You say, 'Sadly there are some women who feel that when they have an intimate experience with someone they need to get paid for it. This is something that is not healthy and I don't accept it or condone it.'" (h/t Pandagon.)

NO. YOU. DO. NOT.

First, I do not think that it is appropriate to tell children that you "don't accept or condone" people's feelings. Hello? The primary rule of parenting young children is teaching them that there is No Such Thing as unacceptable feelings. There are unacceptable actions, and there are people, yes, who are very very screwed up and have desires or feelings about wanting to hurt other people. That is the sort of thing that is "very sad," and those people should get help.

Second, we do not lie to children. The cause of prostitution is not "women who feel they need to get paid" for sex. The causes of prostitution are poverty, addiction, trafficking, abuse, and (arguably) teh Patriarchy.

Third, jesus, social awareness much? You want to teach your kids that you disapprove of women who prostitute themselves without implicating, oh, say, the men who hire prostitutes? Ostensibly the entire reason this question is coming up (according to the article, at least), is that your kids have seen a news story about the Spitzer scandal. Which is scandalous because of what *he* did, not what she did. Let's stay focused here, people.

So. Here is the official Bitch PhD Good Mama answer to the question, "omg, what do I tell my children about prostitution?!?" (One of these days I am going to write a book about how to explain grownup things to kids, I swear.)

As in answering all children's questions, the basic rules are simple:

Tell the truth.
Tell it in a way that models empathy to others.

When I explained to Pseudonymous Kid what prostitution is, which happened several years ago for I no longer remember what reason, I told him "well, there are a lot of people in the world who are very very poor. And when people are really poor, they'll pretty much do whatever they have to to feed themselves. Some women will have sex for money, and that's called "prostitution." A lot of women who end up working as prostitutes are doing it to make money to feed their children, or their families, as well as themselves. It's a really dangerous and terrible job, and it's really sad to have to do it, but mamas will do whatever they need to do to feed their kids."

Is this a complete answer? No. And the bright or curious child may well ask follow-up questions. Is prostitution only something women do? No, sometimes men do it too, but it's mostly women--"why?"--at which case you can get into the "it's the patriarchy, stupid" explanations if you want to, Why are some people that poor? Here is where you can mention addiction, or global poverty, or homelessness, or inner city/rural/reservation joblessness. Shouldn't people just *give* those poor women (or men) money instead of making them have sex with them? Yes, probably, but a lot of people don't think about that, or are kind of mean, or are themselves so very lonely that the only way they can get another person to have sex with them is by paying for it. Why is sex so important? Well, it's something you'll understand better when you're older, but basically it's a way for grownups to be together and feel good, and people sort of need it the same way children need hugs. Etc.

Now, you can adjust the answers to these questions according to your kid's attention span (first) and your own ideological preferences (second). E.g., you might believe that the "some people are very lonely" explanation for why men hire prostitutes is a poor one. However. I think it's really important, when explaining things to kids, to be truthful and empathetic, even to people and ideas you disagree with, so I really do try, when answering PK's questions about Social Issues, to offer him as many possible reasons as I can think of, *regardless* of whether or not I, personally, think those reasons are adequate.

It is, of course, okay to say "I don't think that's a very good reason, but probably some people do X for that reason, yes." You do want kids to learn, after all, that sometimes people have bad reasons for doing things, and that you can disapprove of someone's motives without necessarily thinking that person is a Bad Person.

And finally, I, personally, think it is kind of important, whenever possible, to bring the "kid angle" into these explanations--like the idea about mamas prostituting themselves to feed their children, etc. In *my* opinion and experience with PK, this sort of thing helps sort of "balance" explanations which often make him feel quite sad with implicit reassurances that mamas always take care of their children. Which I know is also not true. And so does he; we have had explanations of abuse, addiction, mental illness, etc., and he in fact has friends at school who were adopted because of pretty awful situations in their original families. But it is *generally* true that mamas do the best they can--even if their "best" is often pretty crappy--and certainly it is true that *his* mama will always take care of him, come hell or high water.

Because he is one lucky kid.

Labels: mama, parenting, prostitution, Pseudonymous Kid, women and kids

So a lotta feminist blogs are talking about this anti-child nonsense from "Reason" magazine. Which I get--sort of--because sure, a lot of feminists don't have, and don't want, children.

But that shouldn't lead you to say things like this:

There are many reasons social and economic that people (read: women, for the purposes of the anti-choice doom-sayers) don’t want children, or at least many children. They’re expensive, they’re time constraints, and our fast-paced economy doesn’t have time for the slower lives required to raise children properly.

They're also human beings. If you don't want kids, bully for you: take your birth control, hope it doesn't fail, and if it does, have an abortion. You absolutely have the right to do all this shit, and I will absolutely support you.

But for fuck's sake. If you're a feminist, you ought to know better than to buy into the bullshit idea that people are commodities. Because conceding that point leads to this sort of thing. Isn't it just hi-larious?!? Nothing's as funny as laughing at a class of people for "choosing" to be poor, don'tcha know. (See the very first comment and ensuing thread for more. Apparently children = cancer, and there's nothing wrong with saying you "don't like children, period." Because children are all the same, and prejudice against an entire class of people ought not to make you "some sort of social pariah.")

Let me reminds you, once again, that people do not "choose" to have kids. A lot of people choose *not* to have kids--birth control, wealth, and modernity certainly contribute to this decision, which is perfectly irreproachable, by the way--but reproducing is not a conscious decision. It is something that the bodies of living creatures simply DO. It is, in fact, part of the definition of "living."

And it's not funny, feminist, "reasonable," or acceptable to talk about children as things, or to imply that people who "choose" to have kids are crazy or stupid. When you do those things, you implicitly support the idea that women's reproductive systems are abnormal, that women with kids are fools, and that children and reproducing women are not part of human society.

I get that a lot of women without kids feel beseiged by sexist bullshit about how unfeminine and selfish they are. Y'all 100% deserve not to hear that crap, and y'all 100% deserve for those of us with kids to have your backs on the right not to.

By the same token, women with kids deserve better than to have childless women support sexism by thinking that if they drink the smug libertarian kool-aid, they'll somehow get treated as honorary men. I expect feminists like Ann and Amanda to be able to see through the game where we're asked to turn on each other in order to take the pressure off the folks with the real power--in this case, the power to "choose" whether or not to acknowledge that children are people, too. It's the same fucking logic that underpins the "if I can't force her to have an abortion, I shouldn't have to pay child support" argument: children are someone else's (read: those bitches') problem. If you don't have a uterus--or if you choose not to use yours--then hey, kids are just theoretical abstractions to you.

Yes, having children is the biggest risk factor for poverty. It is time-consuming. It is at odds with being a Good Worker. But as a commenter at Pandagon put it,

the same people who are whining about too few babies of the style and color they prefer are the ones who continue to promote a culture and economic system in which any sensible person will recognize just how far the incentives against having kids go.

That is the real point. I agree with Amanda that people with kids and people without kids can be on the same side. Being amused by or endorsing "rational" anti-child arguments is NOT something we can agree on, though.

Labels: family values, feminism, sexism, women and kids

This story is getting linked all over the place, mostly lauding the seven year old who saved her mother's life by throwing herself in front of mama's murderous ex-boyfriend's gun as a heroine.

Which I guess she is, but goddamn, this is one appalling story to a mama.

A 7-year-old-girl is being hailed as an "angel from heaven" and a hero for jumping in front of an enraged gunman, who pumped six bullets into the child as she used her body as a shield to save her mother's life.

Alexis Goggins, a first-grader at Campbell Elementary School, is in stable condition at Children's Hospital in Detroit recovering from gunshot wounds to the eye, left temple, chin, cheek, chest and right arm. The girl's mother, Selietha Parker, 30, was shot in the left side of her head and her bicep by a former boyfriend, who police said was trying to kill Parker. . . . Police identified him as Calvin Tillie, 29, a four-time convicted felon whom Parker had dated for six months.

Just, holy fucking crap, you know? Mama and child got shot in their fucking heads by some motherfucking asshole. Thank god they're both alive. Seriously, thank god.

This entire story is so, so depressing.

Parker called (her friend Aisha) Ford and asked if she and Alexis could spend the night at Ford's home.

"She said she had no heat and they were very cold, and I said , sure I'll come and get you," Ford said.

Jesus christ. Mama with a baby and the fucking heat's been cut off, or maybe they can't afford to fix the furnace. That shit pisses me off, man. Yeah yeah, the utility folks want their bills paid, but you know, heat is a *necessary service* in Detroit in the winter. I mean, have some fucking humanity.

Ford said she drove her burgundy 1998 Ford Expedition to Parker's home on Dwyer. She said as Parker and Alexis walked up to her vehicle she saw a man on the porch, who she assumed was a furnace repairman. She said Alexis, who walks with a limp, slipped momentarily on the icy sidewalk and as she helped the girl up, she saw the man and recognized him as Tillie. He was holding a gun.

Tillie ordered them into the vehicle, cursed at the women and angrily told Ford to drive him to Six Mile Road, she said.

"He looked like he was enraged and didn't care what he did. I knew if we went to Six Mile, he would kill us," Ford said. Instead, she told him she needed gas and drove to the Fast Stop Gas station in the 5000 block of East Seven Mile Road, a station that requires customers to pay the attendant inside.

"I figured if he got out to pump the gas, I was going to take off," Ford said.

Smart, smart lady. Would that we all had friends like this.

Instead, Tillie gave her $10 and told her put in $5 worth of gas.

Ford said she dialed 911 on her cell phone as she walked into the station.

The first person I hear saying that poor people should be paying their utility bills rather than owning cell phones gets slapped.

"The first operator clicked off

The holy fucking what did you just say?!???

and I dialed again and told that operator a guy with a gun was holding me hostage with a mother and baby and threatening to kill us. I told her the name of the gas station and then she said they didn't have a unit to send."

Dear god in heaven. Let's assume that the dispatcher isn't just being an asshole here; let's assume that the problem is that the Detroit police force is seriously underfunded and undermanned. Still and all, holy crap, people: let's have some priorities here. How about some federal funding for cops when cities are too poor to fully fund their local police departments? Maybe our elected assholes will get on that now that they're done voting about whether or not they support Christmas.

Ford said she paid for $5 of gas and slowly returned to the vehicle, stalling for time as she handed Tillie the change. She said she kept stopping and starting the pump, hoping the police would show up.

"I told him I needed more gas and took money out of my purse and went back into the station," she said. The attendant, Mohammad Alghazali, 30, said he noticed Ford was crying and she told him what was happening. He called 911 as he heard shots coming from the vehicle.

Third time was the charm, I guess, since the cops will show up here in a little bit. (Btw, I was recently in a really bad accident--not my fault, and I wasn't hurt--and called 911. Five fucking times before I got through. So it's not just Detroit.)

"It was very scary. She (Ford) was scared and screaming when the guy was shooting. I was scared, too. I was on the phone talking to the police when he started shooting," he said

Parker told police that Tillie said Ford was taking too long

She said she pleaded with him but he pointed the gun at her and shot her in the side of the head. She told police she was shot in the arm as she lunged at Tillie.

Brave woman. But I bet almost anyone would lunge at a man with a gun if their child was in the car.

Before Tillie could fire again, Alexis jumped over the seat between her mother and the gunman and begged him not to shoot her mother.

Oh my god. That poor, terrified little girl.

The police report said Tillie "without hesitation" pumped six shots into the child.

As police arrived, they saw Parker, covered in blood, running from the truck, screaming, "He just shot my baby."

Gosh, it's nice that they finally showed up. Isn't it?

The officers said Tillie came out to the vehicle holding a blue steel 9 mm semi automatic and dropped the weapon when ordered to do so. Officers said they found Alexis huddled on the floor under the steering wheel, covered in blood, surrounded by spent cartridge casings, a spent bullet on the floor and teeth on the seat. There were bullet holes in the windshield and blood inside.

Alghazali said a police car on a street nearby arrived in less than a minute after his call.

I'm glad they arrived before he managed to run down the mama and execute her while the child bled to death on the floor of the car.

The little girl underwent six hours of surgery. She still can't speak, and has lost her right eye, though a medical supply company has donated a prosthetic eye for her. She already had epilepsy, which had given her a stroke and some resulting weakness even before the shooting.

Selietha Parker, her 30-year-old mother, stayed by her daughter's bedside until around 10 p.m., when numbness in her own left arm, which still had a bullet lodged in it, forced her back to Detroit Receiving Hospital's emergency room.

If you possibly can, it would be a mitzvah to try to help that little girl and her mother pay their medical bills, get the heat turned back on, and maybe even have some presents under the tree for Christmas. All About Race provides the address (and a phone number). Checks should be made out to the Alexis Goggins Hero Fund and sent to

Campbell Elementary School
c/o the Alexis Goggins Hero Fund
2301 E Alexandrine St
Detroit, MI 48207.

For information, call (313) 494-2052.

Labels: domestic violence, heroine of the week, women and kids

I've just finished reading a book called The Girls Who Went Away, which is about "the hidden history of women who surrendered children for adoption in the decades before Roe v. Wade."

Adoption's an issue I'm interested in for a lot of reasons. I know people who were themselves adopted, and women who placed children for adoption. And I'm well aware of the argument that anti-abortion people often make that women with unwanted pregnancies should "just" place their children for adoption--an argument that, after watching a couple of people go through that process, I'm inclined to think is one of those offhand remarks that people make without actually thinking about what they're saying.

For instance, listen to what "Nancy," whose story is one of those told in the book, has to say:

It's hard to convince others about the depth of it. You know, a few years after I was married I became pregnant and had an abortion. It was not a wonderful experience, but every time I hear stories or articles or essays about the recurring trauma of abortion, I want to say, "You don't have a clue" I've experienced both and I'd have an abortion any day of the week before I would ever have another adoption--or lose a kid in the woods, which is basically what it is. You know your child is out there somewhere, you just don't know where. It's bad enough as a mother to know he might need you, but to complicate that they make a law that says even if he does need you we're not going to tell him where you are. [My emphasis.]

Or "Karen":

The only way to heal from this is to be accepted by your child and for the public to know the truth of what's really happened. And understand it's the truth. Instead of always pushing adoption as this loving, wonderful, rescuing thing. Yes, that may be the case for people who adopt. It is not the case for us. You never are whole. Never. It's a hugely damaging thing. It's an enormously injuring, painful, fracturing amputation of families. . . .

We were not criminals. We're mothers. The difference was I was not an authenticated mother. I was an illegal mother. I was a denied mother. And I had to come home and live my life after being robbed of my child. It's as if I was an unwilling accomplice to the kidnapping of my own child. So you have to live with the trauma of losing your child and then you have to live with the trauma of knowing you didn't stop it. How do you do that? [Emphasis in original.]

Moreover, the years between 1950 and 1980, which were the high point of formal adoptions of white babies in the U.S., were atypical in ways that discussion around adoption [and abortion] usually fails to acknowledge. In 1950, 66 percent of Americans were married; in 1960 it was 68 percent. But

in 1980 the percentage of the population that was married was the same as in 1900: 54 percent. In the U.S. Census for 2000, the percentage was also 54 percent.

Also,

the median age at first marriage in the 1980s was the same as in 1890, roughly age 22 for women and 26 for men. However . . . [in] 1950, almost 60 percent of women between 18 and 24 years of age were married.

The point here is that

Even though marriage and child-rearing norms of the time [are] seen as characteristic of traditional American family life, in fact they were abnormal in comparison with marriage and childbearing patterns throughout the twentieth century.

And part of that abnormality was a serious punishment of [middle-class, particularly white] young women who got pregnant out of wedlock. Homes for unwed mothers, which had previously focused on helping young women find stable jobs and social support to keep and raise their children, started becoming baby factories where young women were pressured into giving their children up to married couples who "needed" a child to fulfill the new nuclear family "norm", and told that they were unfit mothers because, being unmarried, they *didn't* fit this model. There was a very, very strong--and abnormal--image of the "proper" family, one that caused a lot of grief to women who didn't conform.

This kind of thing is implicit in any argument about what constitutes a "good" mother, whether or not people "should" have children if they're "too" poor/young/single, and in the flip side "pro-family" pressure that everyone "should" have children and "should" behave in particular, narrowly-defined ways once they do.

And there's a lot in this book to demonstrate the results of this kind of thinking--panicked parents who beat or ostracized their daughters for becoming pregnant, parents who colluded with adoption agencies to coerce women into signing blank papers, girls who were talked into placing children for adoption so they could "get on with their lives" only to find that the emotional trauma of the adoption made doing so impossible, women who lost jobs when their adoptions were found out, women who went to their graves never telling their siblings, parents, husbands, or children about having once placed a baby for adoption.

Crazy, crazy shit. An absolute must-read if you're adopted, if you're thinking of adopting, or if you know someone who is having to think about the options for an unwanted pregnancy. And highly recommended, really, for everyone.

Labels: adoption, book review, family values, reproductive rights, women and kids

Bush is apparently willing to compromise on SCHIP.

"If putting poor children first takes a little more than the 20% increase I have proposed in my budget for SCHIP, I am willing to work with leaders in Congress to find the additional money," he said.

But

Bush also said that six states project that they will spend more SCHIP money on adults than they do on children in this fiscal year. However, those states got federal permission, in many instances during the time Bush has been in office, to cover adults. The president urged both parties to come together to support a bill "that moves adults off this children's program."

SCHIP covers children *and pregnant women*. Moving adults off it means not providing health care to pregnant women. Make sure that anyone you talk to about this knows that.

Culture of life, my mama ass.

Labels: Bush, health care, money, politics, SCHIP, women and kids

John McLaughlin, disgusting excuse for a human being:

We have a number of immigrants coming every year. One hundred million new Americans will be in this country by what, 2015? Now that's wear and tear. It's on emergency rooms, it's on roads, it's on bridges and so forth...Are you surprised that the American government -- the Federal government, did not anticipate (that) the waves of immigrants that have been coming into our country and joining this great society (would) exact wear and tear on the infrastructure?

Found today: the bodies of Hana Sahal, 20 months old, and her mother, Sadiya, 23, five months pregnant with her second child. Apparently the remains were in such a condition that it was difficult to tell if one body or two had been found.

It's impossible not to think of what it would feel like, going over a bridge with your baby strapped into the back seat.

Hat tip to Mr. Ogged.

Labels: civility, immigration, women and kids

Y'all are over at Flea's telling stories of your children's horrifying outbursts.

And if you're not, you should be.

And if you lack children, you should go and read. It'll make you feel superior *and* relieved, which are hard feelings to combine in most cases.

Labels: cool stuff, family values, storytelling, women and kids

Wow, I've managed to pile up quite a backlog of interesting links, questions, and friendly hellos. Email is teh awesome; email is teh devil. Sans further ado, here's some reading matter for you. You weren't going to get any work done today anyway, were you?

Congressmen try living on food stamps--and blog about the experience.

Yesterday, I didn’t eat anything at all until lunchtime, and that really took a lot out of me. So far today I’ve had some cottage cheese, a cup of coffee and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I think that now that my body has had some time to adjust, it’s a little easier, but my energy level is still noticeably lower than normal.

As people have read and begun to talk to me about our small effort to bring attention to a very big concern, I was surprised by how many people I work with at a small cancer nonprofit have faced this personally.

Another survey of blog readers by a grad student in Poli Sci. If you can do one good thing today, helping a grad student with her dissertation is a noble cause. Please don't discuss the survey in comments--'twill bias the results--and know that any identifying demographic info asked for will be stripped from your specific answers by the software.

Lindsay the Fabulous rakes the muck about Bush's disgraced "birth control czar" Eric Keroack. You know, the birth control = abstinence guy.

Nancy Goldstein, who is a most fabulous chica with a most fabulous wife, reviews Michael Beschloss's book about "Presidential Courage." Find out what she thinks of his glowing story of Republican heroism through the years.

Some good folks are pushing a UN Treaty for Women's Rights. Tell your senators to ratify the thing already 'cause women are people too.

How are those bitchy chicks with PhDs doing in Universities? See what Ms. has to say.

Remember how grateful we all were to Cecilia Fire Thunder for stepping up when it looked like South Dakota women were going to be the first on the "no abortions, nohow" list? Let's not be all white about it: continue to support Indian women in South Dakota (and wherever you live), one third of whom will be raped in their lifetimes. We all know that reservations are some of the worst ghettos in America, and that the consequences of poverty usually fall hardest on women. Pony up.

Hopefully you're aware of the Walter Reed scandal, because I'm not up to filling you in. It's just the tip of a much larger iceberg of bullshit (bad metaphor alert!) in how the Bush Administration and its biggest fans, the Religious Right treat military vets.

Okay, enough bad news. Here's some great news: the fabulous Miss Flea, who continues to be my role model in all things blogular (a role model I'm well aware I haven't been living up to of late), is expanding her empire. And we, the seekers of free first-class content are the beneficiaries. She's guest blogging at Feministe and runs a brand-new sex column over at Offsprung, Neal Pollack's new online parenting magazine for people like us. Amanda's got a gig over there, too, covering politics without having to worry about whether or not she ruffles the panties of cranky Catholic Bill Donohue. I have to admit that I am fighting back feelings of green, green envy.

Labels: academia, cool stuff, family values, feminism, good cause, health care, human rights, media, politics, rape, reproductive rights, veterans, violence, women and kids

Today's a writing day, so hopefully I'll manage a "real" post later, but since I'm doing a li'l research right this moment about a book article I'm writing on grad student mamas.

So, if you all have anecdotes about your own experience as a grad student parent (mom or dad)--bad or good--and/or know of good studies or articles on the subject, would you please leave a comment?

And if you have specific questions or issues that you'd like to see addressed in such an article, would you please email them to me--bitchphd at yahoo--with the subject heading "mamaphd"?

Thanks muchly, y'all.

Labels: academia, good cause, women and kids

Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas's Promises I Can Keep is the first in my long-promised and long-delayed series of "reviews of all the great stuff I've been reading lately." It's been out for a while (2005), so this isn't exactly a newsy review, but it's a fabulous book and if you haven't already read it, I think you should.

The authors are sociologists/anthropologists who did a study of poor single moms. So the book is kind of sociology/ethnography. Which means that it does a great job of combining interesting, readable stories about individual women (told in the women's own words a lot of the time) with a longer-focus analytic view that helps interpret the stories. It's kind of rare to find a groundbreaking academic book that's a great read, but this one is.

What Edin and Kefalis found is that the moms have mainstream, even conservative ideas of what marriage should be, and they don't want to get married if they don't trust that the men will be faithful, help provide for their children, not be abusive, etc. And that these fears are quite reasonable, given the men they have to choose from.

But. The women also have mainstream, conservative ideas about the value and importance of children--so much so that they often think of abortion as irresponsible. Which is an interesting and profound realization, I think, and one that those of us who are pro-choice would do well to think very hard about. A lot of the time we argue for abortion rights as if we were doing so on behalf of poor women; we need to realize that many poor women are not themselves pro-choice, and that if we really want to advocate for them, we should start by listening to what they have to say.

The key thing the women in this book have to say is that having kids while young and poor has been good for them. According to their own account (and the author's observations), their children have given them a reason them to straighten up their lives, grow up, and become responsible adults. Their children provide a source of love for these young women, where boyfriends, peers, and parents have so often failed them. I think most of us in the middle class think it's a little fucked up to want a child for the love that child will give you (and Edin and Kefalis say this too). But at the same time, I think those of us who have had children will say that one of the most powerful and gratifying things about parenting is precisely that experience of love. It's possible that poor young women, who are often much closer to the experience of parenting than their middle-class peers by virtue of helping raise their siblings, or seeing friends have babies, are simply more realistic about the emotional benefits of parenting than the middle class is.

The one major argument we usually offer, though, for why young and/or poor women shouldn't have children, is that doing so is economically damaging: they won't get ahead if they have kids too early. It turns out that this argument isn't true. Poor women's economic prospects are demonstrably no better if they postpone childbirth than if they have children young. In fact, there's some evidence that their lives, economically and otherwise, would be worse, as kids provide them an incentive to stop using drugs, to end abusive relationships, to get jobs, and to further their educations. Setting an example for their children, or improving their situations for their children's sake, proves to be a much more powerful motivator than doing so for themselves.

Of course, in the end, a lot of these women still aren't able to provide much for their children, despite great effort, and even those who do provide well aren't always able to save their kids from the dangers of poverty and drugs. But a lot of that failure isn't theirs. It's not their fault that impoverished neighborhoods are dangerous, that poor schools are appalling, that there aren't many job prospects, that gangs are omnipresent, or that the process of college admissions is mysterious to them. In the middle class world, these obstacles don't exist; so from our point of view, waiting to have children is kind of a "guarantee" of a good outcome. We tend to assume that poor outcomes are the result of early childbearing when in fact, as this book suggests, this may well be a case where correlation has nothing to do with causation.

For the middle class and the wealthy, it makes a lot of economic sense to postpone having children. We're wrong, though, to prescribe waiting to poor women, for whom there are no economic disincentives to early childbearing. For these women, early childbirth is, at worst, neutral, and at best a positive improvement on not only their economic but also their emotional and mental well-being. We're used to thinking of what we have to teach the poor; this book does a great job of showing us what the poor have to teach us about parenting, childrearing, and looking at things from a more genuinely feminist point of view--one in which children really are a central part of life, rather than an optional choice.

You can read the book's second chapter here, and an article by the authors that excerpts some of the book's material here. You can also get a sample issue of Contexts, the journal in which the latter article appeared, by clicking that link and going to "pdf sample issue" in the left-hand pull-down menu, under "content."

Labels: book review, feminism, human rights, reproductive rights, storytelling, women and kids