Apt. 11D

Economic Inequality and Babies

Melanie Thernstrom writes about her experiences with using egg donors and surrogates to produce her kids. If she had written a "just the facts" sort of story, I would have read the first paragraph or two and then moved on. Instead, she wrote a long rationalization for her method of producing kids and completely ignored the risk and the economics of child-birth, which caused me to read the whole thing and run to the computer on this Saturday -- a non-blogging day.

In early her 40s, Thernstrom was unable to make a baby on her own, and adoption wasn't an option. She said that it's harder to adopt children today, because of abortion and international restrictions. Actually, she could have adopted a kid with special needs pretty easily, but she failed to mention that. Friends of ours recently adopted a little girl from China who had a cleft palate, so it can be done. 

She received eggs from a donor and used two surrogates to produce two babies. My usual reaction to surrogacy is that these are consenting adults, who should be allowed to do whatever stupid-assed thing that they want to do, as long as we don't pretend that they are making good decisions.

In 1986, Mary Beth Whitehead, a surrogate mother, gave birth to Baby M and then refused to hand it over to the Sterns, a couple from my home town. Whitehead agreed to have the baby for the Sterns, because she needed the money. However, she bonded with the child during the nine months pregnancy and couldn't give her up. After a long legal battle, Baby M went to the Sterns, and New Jersey no longer allows surrogates to accept cash.

Thernstrom says that her children were born out of the generosity of other people. No, they were born out of economic inequality. Thernstrom had the money to pay for their services, and these people needed the money.

Harvesting eggs is a lot harder than getting a sperm donation. There is much more involved that an old issue of Penthouse and a plastic cup. Egg donors have to take fertility pills for a while, so they produce more eggs. Eggs are removed during an operation. There are risks that accompany this procedure, including infertility. Nobody in their right mind would go through the hassle of egg donations for free. That's why women are paid about $4,000 for this service.

Egg donation is a breeze compared with pregnancy and birth. While some women truly love the experience of pregnancy, it does horrific stuff to your body. Death is always a possibility during birth. Giving up a child that you carried for nine months is a traumatic experience.

The only reason that a woman would deal with the enormous physical pain of pregnancy and birth and then the emotional pain of handing over a child, while she's lactating, is money.

Thernstrom mentions that one of the surrogates provided her with breast milk in a cooler every week. The surrogate's milk would drop when she heard the baby cry. Thernstrom then rambles on about that she generously let the surrogate breast feed the baby, but was unable to understand the physical pain of having engorged breasts with no relief of a baby.

Thernstrom fails to give us the dollar amount for her children. In a long story that provides us with every other minor detail (a doula is dismissed for being insensitive), she leaves out the dollar amount for her kids. I don't need a degree in psychology to recognize repression and denial when I see it. I feel like I should I sit down next to her, hold her hand and tell her the truth.

Listen, honey, I know that you must have been in a lot of pain when you realized that you couldn't have children on your own. Some people really, really need to have children, and it's earth-shattering when you are denied something that you wanted a lot. However, you have to recognize that the egg donors and the surrogates provided a service for you, because of CASH. They needed it and you had a whole lot of it. If they had enough money, they would have never gone through with the physical and emotional hardships and the social stigma of egg harvesting and pregnancy. They might have had a baby on their own and kept it. Please be honest about the cash relationship between you and the donors.

As I said in the beginning, I think child surrogacy should be legal (though heavily regulated), but I'm really uncomfortable with these white-washing stories that fail to recognize the hardships and economics of childbirth.

The Least Likable Couple in the Vows Column

I've caught one of the several viruses sweeping through the house, so I'm not in top form at the moment. That's my disclaimer for the following admission - I'm watching Kathie Lee and Hoda.

Kathie Lee and Hoda were just talking about the Vows column in the New York Times. It caught the attention of several of my Facebook friends, too.

This couple were married to other people, fell in love, got divorced, and now are getting married to each other. Both couples had children. Spouses were hurt. Nothing new, just sad.

The reason that this column is gathering so much buzz is the language that the couple uses to justify their actions. They say that their relationship is a "gift." Their decision to break up their marriages was "brave." To stay in the previous marriages would have been "dishonest."

People get divorced and remarried all the time. This couple isn't particularly evil, but it is very strange that their sad affair would be confused with romance.

Sick Leave

This has been a chaotic week compounded by sick children.

Jonah missed three days of school, because of a bad virus. Last night, Ian started puking at around 1:00 am and puked every hour after that. He's buried under a pile of blankets on the sofa right now watching SpongeBob.

As the boys get older and I'm no longer around dirty college students, we don't get sick as often anymore. Still, nursing kids through bad colds and stomach viruses is a basic part of raising children. I want to take this minute to point out how little protections there are for parents in the workplace. From in Institute for Women's Policy Research:

Nearly half of all workers do not have paid sick days, including more than 22 million women. Even fewer have paid sick days policies allowing them to visit the doctor or stay home to care for sick children. Only one in four low-wage workers is provided with this health benefit. For those without paid sick days, short-term health needs can mean missing work and pay, or even being fired.

I need to hydrate Ian slowly and wash a mountain of stinky sheets. I'll be back later when he's stabilized.

Appreciated and Compensated?

I stopped working at the college a year and a half ago. For the most part, leaving academia was  a good thing.

Although I really liked my job, I managed to turn a part-time job into an 80-hour work week. Because I'm neurotic. I found myself AWL (always writing lectures). If I was reading the newspaper on the sofa, I would stumble across something that related to my class. I would run upstairs to write it up for the next day's lecture. Or I might fine a good chart, so I would run upstairs to rip it off for a powerpoint slide. I never turned it off. I was also busy writing papers and doing research -- activities that I didn't get paid for.

So, it's really better if I channel my insanity into projects that are appreciated and compensated. I'm not sure that I've accomplished either goal.

I'm putting a lot more time into the kids in the past year. I'm more patient with homework, and I'm not losing my mind with stress during all the school closings. Do the kids notice? Probably not. I'm cooking better food. Hubby appreciates it, but the kids miss the days of chicken nuggets. I'm writing a lot, but I have to be better about finishing projects and sending them out for review. (My goal for the day is one pitch letter.) So little compensation there.

But there is appreciation and compensation of a different sort.

I appreciate the fact that I'm no longer doing all the parenting, the housework, and the job any more. I would have liked to do everything, but it wasn't possible. I was seriously stressed out, because we just couldn't handle two high stress jobs and two kids. I never made much money in the past, so we're aren't missing the income much. I'm creating a new lifestyle for myself, and it suits me better.

I'm not getting compensated financially, but I'm compensated with time to think, experiment, socialize, and read.

It took a while for me to get to this point. At first, I was pissed off at the world for creating such a lousy job market. I was pissed off at myself for squandering all that time in dusty libraries. I deferred gratification for years with the hopes of a big payoff. I gambled and lost. I also felt guilty for letting down the sisterhood by leaving the workplace.

I got over it. Every day, I find fresh things to remind me that I'm lucky. Like the Baker Creek Heirloom seed catalog that arrived this weekend. Pictures to follow.

The Science of First Impressions

I'm reading a fascinating profile of Amy Cuddy, a social psychologist who investigates how people perceive and categorize others. The whole article is fascinating. Her finding on the differing perceptions of working mothers and working fathers was particularly good.

On the job, many studies have shown that working moms are seen as both significantly nicer—and significantly less competent—than working fathers or childless men and women. “We call this the ‘motherhood penalty,’ ” says Cuddy. “At the same time, fathers experience the ‘fatherhood bonus.’ They’re viewed as nicer than men without kids, but equally, if not more, competent. They’re seen as heroic: a breadwinner who goes to his kid’s soccer game once in a while. But in or out of the office, working mothers experience a fair bit of hostility from people who think they should be at home with their kids. Researchers have documented thousands of cases of motherhood discrimination; a mother being laid off might hear things like, ‘I know you wanted to be at home anyway.’ ”

Do the Dishes, Boys, and You Might Get Lucky

Jeremy S. sent me a link to a great post on Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog a couple of weeks ago, and I've been remiss for not passing it on sooner.

Oliver Wang, a guest poster, pointed to a interesting study of the sex lives of couples. The researchers examined the impact of work, both paid and unpaid, on sexual frequency. In other words, do people who spend lots of time in the office and then do lots of housework have time to get busy in the bedroom? If you folded the sheets, do you want to mess them up later on? If you scrubbed the toilet, do you want to do any other rubbing later on?

Apparently, yes. The researchers found that couples where both partners did work around the house (not entirely equal, but somewhat equally) saw more action than couples where the woman did most of the housework. They found that the busiest couples who worked the most at home and in the office, the go-getters, somehow found the time for each other.

I'm not sure if these go-getters also had children.

When I was working at a policy research center many years ago, a fellow researcher, Sarah, would occasionally talk about the drama of married life. I wasn't yet married to Steve, so I was curious what the future held. She said that she and her husband had a nickname for his kitchen-cleaning duties at the end of the day. They called it foreplay. 

I'm hesitant to go further in my discussion of this study, because the conclusion is so useful. Do the dishes and you'll get laid. It should be a bumper sticker or something.

However, the researchers were off in explaining why there's a correlation between sex lives and housework. They said that people who were really busy in their work and around the home were hyper organized people who made sure to schedule time for date nights. That's probably partially the case. I also think that if you're busy in your career, you're feeling good about yourself. You're cleaning up, because you have an active social life with people coming over for parties. You're happy. And happy people have sex.

UPDATE: Thanks to Feministing for spreadin' the love this way.

Revenge of the Caretakers

All those old people in Japan who out live all of us by eating fish and rice fashioned into bite-sized morsels that require wasabi and soy sauce to provide flavor? Yeah, well, not so much. A good number of those 100+ geezers in Japan actually died a long time ago, but their relatives failed to report their deaths in order to collect pension money.

Japan has long boasted of having many of the world’s oldest people — testament, many here say, to a society with a superior diet and a commitment to its elderly that is unrivaled in the West.

That was before the police found the body of a man thought to be one of Japan’s oldest, at 111 years, mummified in his bed, dead for more than three decades. His daughter, now 81, hid his death to continue collecting his monthly pension payments, the police said.

There may have been a few hundred cases of mummies collecting pensions in Japan. Police are banging on doors demanding that people produce their grandmothers.

Foodies are in an up roar. Is the much-touted Asian diet a hoax?

This is what happens when caretakers are unappreciated by society. If the state won't appreciate and compensate their work, then they'll find other ways to get their just rewards.

Barriers for Moms

David Leonhardt in the New York Times today writes about how well women (without children) are doing in the workforce. We have had three women (without children) nominated to the Supreme Court in recent years. The feminist movement was very successful in getting women (without children) to achieve equal pay as men (until they have children) and in breaking barriers to have them reach top positions in business and politics (until they have children).

The problem is in the parenthesis, of course. Women find it hard to work full time and balance a family life. If they take time off, they never catch up to the men. There are few opportunities to work part time or flexibility, so women are increasingly dropping out of the workforce entirely after they have children.

Leonhardt discusses a recent study of business school graduates from the University of Chicago.

A recent study of business school graduates from the University of Chicago found that in the early years after graduating, men and women had “nearly identical labor incomes and weekly hours worked.” Men and women also paid a similar career price for taking off or working part time. Women, however, were vastly more likely to do so.

As a result, 15 years after graduation, the men were making about 75 percent more than the women. The study — done by Marianne Bertrand, Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz — did find one subgroup of women whose careers resembled those of men: women who had no children and never took time off.

This is hardly an original column. We've been talking about this problem for ages on this blog. Leonhardt should have interviewed other experts and referred to some key books. Whatever. Just glad it's being discussed.

SUVs versus the New Hippies

Freegans, Radical Homemaking, Etsy, Chicks with Chicks, Farmer-Chic, Food Rules -- there is definitely a counter-culture forming partly out of necessity (economic downturn and unemployment) and out of politics. It's all about consuming less, homemade, and frugality.

There's been some resistance to this trend from feminists who say that making your own food and your own aprons out of doilies is very charming, but it is incredibly time-consuming and it places unreasonable burdens on women. You can't put in a 80 hour week on Wall Street and then come home to knead your own bread using your own starter.

In today's Salon, Madeline Holler writes about how she's a radical homemaking failure. She became a radical homemaker accidentally. Her husband gave up a high paying job to get a PhD and become a college professor. She really misses her stuff and didn't really like growing her own basil. 

Hayes has an answer for my reluctance: Radicalizing one's homemaking is a process. First, you renounce (Satan's not the boss of me! Fuck Crate and Barrel), then you reclaim (you learn how to can). Finally, you rebuild, which means convincing others to radicalize, too. No one gets there overnight. Or, in my case, ever. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Like a majority of Americans, I'll always prefer direct deposit to getting paid in chicken eggs. I'm comfortable with the smile-and-wave relationships I have with most of my neighbors. While I share the Radical Homemakers' family, environmental and social justice values, the way they propose bringing about change requires too much of the kind of work I frankly don't want to do. I'm fine giving up stuff. But I can't imagine spending afternoons rendering fat and lacto-fermenting cucumbers. That would be too much like shoveling rocks, even if it wasn't for Satan.

While I sympathize with Holler about seeing the drudgery in radical homemaking, I couldn't help getting a little bent out of joint. When we were writing our dissertations and raising Jonah, we lived on much less money than she did and we did it in Manhattan. She complains about renting homes near pit bulls, and I know all about pit bulls. She complains about driving a '97 car, which is what I drive. So, no whining for you, lady! 

I suppose there is a difference between taking on a anti-materialism lifestyle out of choice and politics, rather than having it imposed on you because of circumstances. Holler tried to disguise her poverty with an ideology, but it didn't work.

More Childless Women, More PhD Moms

The Economix Blog for the New York Times passed on new research from the Pew Foundation. Pew finds that the number of childless women has increased in all ethnic groups. 20 percent of white women have no children.

I suppose this isn't surprising; European women are even more likely to skip the minivan years. They are slightly ahead of us on this trend. The Economix was surprised that PhD/professional women are slightly more likely to have kids than women with a MA or BA. They are much more likely to have kids than a previous generation. Trail blazing with a kid in a Baby Bjorn isn't easy.

The Economix ends with an interesting hypothesis and question.

Perhaps this has something to do with Claudia Goldin’s findings that some of the fields that require the most educational investment upfront — like pediatrics, or veterinary medicine — also happen to be fields whose work schedules allow for a healthy work-family balance. High-achieving women who want children may be discovering this, and making their career choices accordingly.

Are there other explanations for why the country’s most educated women are more likely to have children today than they were in the 1990s?