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| Noteworthy |
September
2004 edition:
- Elsewhere
on the web:
From Alternet: what
happened to women at Wal-Mart, bitches, bastards and modern
marriage, motherhood in the war zone, and historian
Ruth Rosen on the Summer of ‘64; Catherine
Blinder on the changing face of feminism;
A program on maternal depression from American
Radio Works; In Slate, End
of Blackness author Debra Dickerson wonders if rich
kids always end up with an obnoxious sense of entitlement; Checking
up on U.S. Healthcare by Merrill Goozner for TomPaine.com;
and “Aborting my marriage” by Laura Walters
and Amie Klempnauer on babymaking for lesbian couples from Salon.
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It’s
official:
women do more housework, child care than men
Results from the first American Time Use Survey
American women devote
far more time to housework and child care than men do, while
men with full-time jobs dedicate slightly more time— about
36 minutes a day— to paid work and related activities
compared to women who work full-time.
These findings are
from a report on the first results of American
Time Use Survey, which was released by the U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics on September 14.
The ATUS represents the U.S. government’s first systematic
effort to collect information about the actual number of hours
Americans expend in specific non-paid activities such as housework,
recreation and child care. The new report, which is based on
a 2003 survey of 21,000 individuals age 15 and over, confirms
once again that women living in households with children under
18 put more time into domestic tasks and care-giving and less
time into leisure and recreational activities than men in comparable
families.
Women reported spending
significantly more time caring for children under 13 as a secondary
activity than men (6.38 hours compared to 4.12 hours), although
both men and women were most likely to multi-task caring for
young children with household chores (including cleaning, food
preparation, yard work and laundry) and leisure activities
(which include socializing, watching TV, recreational pursuits
and exercising). Of the time men and women spend caring for
young children as a primary activity, women spend the greatest
amount time providing physical care (.69 hours) and the least
amount of time reading to or with children (.05 hours); men
spend the greatest amount of time providing physical care or
playing with children (.22 and .21 hours respectively) and
the least amount of time reading with and talking to children
(.02 hours each). In households with children no younger than
6, men spend a negligible amount of time “looking after
children” as a primary activity; for children of all
ages, women spend at least twice as much time as men in “travel
related to care of household and children.” The latest
ATUS findings are consistent with those from other recent studies
on mothers’ and fathers’ time use.
A finding that is
more perplexing—but perhaps not unexpected—is that
men and women classified by the ATUS as “not employed” use
their time very differently when there are children under 18
in the home. Not-employed men spend a whopping 10.11 hours
in personal care activities—which include sleeping, bathing
and “personal or private activities”—compared
to 8.72 hours for employed men and 9.68 hours for not-employed
women. Not-employed men in households with children under 18
also spend significantly more time in leisure and sports activities
(6.76 hours) than either employed men (4.07 hours) or not-employed
women (4.91 hours); employed women in households with children
under 18 had the least amount of time for leisure activities
(3.49 hours). The leisure gap for employed mothers has long
been recognized by work-life scholars but is not often factored
into public discussions about the recent surge in the number
of mothers leaving the work force, although it probably should
be. Not-employed women gain almost an hour-and-a-half of leisure
time a day, as well as another 25 minutes for personal care
(but they only gain more personal care time if their youngest
child is 6 or older). Not-employed women in households with
children under 18 spend far more time doing housework (3.29
hours compared to 2.12 hours) and care-giving (2.47 hours versus
1.29 hours) than not-employed men in similar families. In fact,
not-employed men spend less time on caregiving than employed
men living in comparable households. I’ve heard that “all
work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” but it appears
that some not-employed fathers may be taking this concept to
the extreme. And although the scope of ATUS doesn’t venture
anywhere near this touchy subject, there may be significant
differences regarding how men and women feel entitled to
spend their time outside of paid work, especially when caring
for young children is part of the daily mix.
The
MMO used selected data from the new ATUS report to whip
up two handy graphs of time spent in selected
non-work activities by adults in households with children
under 18. Readers are invited to download, print, share
and/or tack firmly onto the husband’s forehead:
Graphic
1: Time
spent on selected non-work activities by men and women in
households with children under 18 by employment status. (PDF)
Graphic
2: Time
spent on selected non-work activities by men and women in
households with children under 6 by employment status. (PDF)
The
American Time Use Survey – First Results
Bureau of Labor Statistics, September 2004
Report
and Tables (in HTML)
Full
Report (in PDF)
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Bad
Mothers in The New Yorker
A Canadian mother falsely accused of Munchausen
syndrome by proxy is the focal point of a thought-provoking
feature by Margaret Talbot for The
New Yorker (“The Bad Mother,” August 9, 2004). According to
Talbot, a journalist and Senior Fellow at The
New America Foundation (www.newamerica.net),
Munchausen syndrome by proxy, or MSBP—a very rare but potentially life
threatening disorder—was first documented in the late 1970s by a British
physician who authored a case study of two mothers who intentionally harmed
their otherwise healthy children to induce symptoms of severe or chronic illness.
Unlike run-of-the-mill child abuse, the doctor speculated that MSBP mothers
were motivated by a pathological need for the attention and sympathy they received
from medical professionals. Talbot writes that in the last few years, public
concern about MSBP has grown out of proportion to its actual incidence, leaving
mothers of chronically ill and disabled children vulnerable. “In recent
years, Munchausen by proxy has seeped into popular culture, with rapidity and
a fervency that recall the fascination with child sexual abuse in the nineteen-eighties. … Paid
experts now regularly testify in court about the syndrome and conduct workshops
for law-enforcement officials and social workers. Web sites publicizing the
disorder offer checklists and warning signs. And, lately, mothers of chronically
ill kids nervously joke—or openly worry—about being accused of
the disorder.”
Indeed, Talbot’s
investigation suggests that the line separating well-informed,
proactive, emotionally invested mothers from criminally pathological
ones has become razor thin: “By the mid-nineties, clinicians
in the United States, Britain, and Canada had begun to disseminate
a psychological profile, a set of suspect traits, of the Munchausen
mother. According to various journal articles on the subject,
a perpetrator was “masterful in the world of deceit,
because she gains the support of the nursing and medical staff,” who
view her as a dedicated, committed, loving, and caring mother.” She
might call doctors and nurses by their first names, or bring
them cookies. She was familiar with medical terminology and
knew complex details of her child’s case. She might “solicit
and encourage diagnostic procedures,” and be calm in
the face of them. …When she was asked about her child’s
illness, she appeared to be ‘tearfully frustrated with
the chronic nature of the condition.’ She was reluctant
to leave the sick child’s side; her constant hovering
made her, in the words of one expert, a ‘helicopter mother.’ She
was likely to be ‘overinvolved’ and ‘overprotective’ of
the child, and would ‘tend to him as if he were younger.’ The
Munchausen mother was prone to bond with other parents of sick
children on the ward. She was, in sum, ‘obsessed with
the child’s illness’.” Needless to say, one
cannot imagine that a mother who is not to some degree “obsessed” when
her child has serious or unexplained illness—or one who
fails to advocate for her child’s effective treatment—would
be viewed as either normal or caring.
Talbot also reports
that a new group of mothers—those who constantly pressure
school authorities for more testing or professional intervention
for children with learning disabilities—now run the risk
of being branded as Munchausen moms. She also relates an incident
in which a child with severe asthma was removed from the home
of his welfare activist mother because she frequently demanded
emergency treatment for him and was consequently suspected
of MSBP; shortly thereafter, the boy died while in foster care
because no one had bothered to inform the foster parents of
the severity of his condition. While Talbot emphasizes that
real cases of MSBP do exist and the syndrome does result in
fatalities and terrible pain and suffering for its victims,
her article suggests that mothers who persistently challenge
reigning authorities regarding the best treatment options for
their child are more likely to fall under suspicion; the threat
of being labeled MSBP—and facing a possible criminal
investigation and/or losing custody of one’s children—is
another big stick individuals and organizations with greater
social power can use to keep unruly mothers in line.
Talbot’s The
Bad Mother also sounds a warning bell that the formation
of a new negative stereotype of the over-achieving, over-involved “full
time” mother is already underway, and—considering
the level of public exposure moms of the “opt out revolution” have
received lately—I’d hazard a guess that we are
likely to see an increase in studies and news reporting on
mothers who damage their children by living for and through
them.
The full text of Margaret
Talbot’s The
Bad Mother is available online through the New
America Foundation web site.
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The
sagging safety net:
Women’s eNews series on women and welfare
Women’s eNews (www.womensenews.com)
launched an exceptional five-part series on women and welfare in early August.
All the
articles are free and available online.
Law
Drops Moms in Deeper Poverty
By Jennifer Friedlin, Run Date: 08/06/04
“In 1996, the federal program that provided cash aid to impoverished families--90
percent of whom were headed by single mothers--changed dramatically. This is
the first of a five part series that takes a long, hard look at welfare as it
functions now.”
Child
Care Promises Fall Through
By Jennifer Friedlin, Run Date: 08/13/04
“When the federal welfare program was restructured in 1996, the government
promised to provide child care to single parents required to take jobs outside
the home. Often, however, that promise is not being kept and families pay the
price.”
Child
Support Cash Kept by States
By Jennifer Friedlin, Run Date: 08/22/04
“Diverse groups agree that more state-collected child-support payments
should go directly to families rather than refilling welfare coffers. Action
on the popular reform, however, remains pinned under a large and stymied reauthorization
bill.”
Services
for Abused Women Scarce
By Jennifer Friedlin, Run Date: 08/27/04
“Most states have adopted The Family Violence Option, which waives welfare
work requirements for up to a year in cases of domestic violence. But advocates
say too few states are aggressively implementing the option.”
Block
Grants Starve State Budgets
By Jennifer Friedlin, Run Date: 09/03/04
“The federal government funds welfare with so-called block grants to states,
which have not been raised since 1996 and provide no adjustment for inflation.
Even though programs are getting pinched, no increase is on the horizon.”
Belva
Elliott, Mother of Five, Speaks
By Belva Elliott, Run Date: 09/02/04
“Belva Elliott chronicles her experiences as a married victim of domestic
violence who seeks safety and turns to welfare for assistance. Accompanied by
a photo essay.”
Also on mothers, work
and welfare:
Walking
The Child Care Tightrope
Karen Schulman and Helen Blank, September 23, 2004
TomPaine.com (www.tompaine.com)
“Help in paying for child care makes a big difference for both families
trying to leave welfare and low-income families trying to hold on to their jobs.
Parents struggling to make ends meet cannot afford child care on their own, and
parents cannot work without child care. Yet for the third year in a row, Congress
has left child care funding on hold—leaving millions of families’ lives
on hold.”
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Nurturing
the class divide
Two recent articles from Salon.com inadvertently
expose a grimy corner of the dirty little secret of motherhood, which is that
one of the key social functions of mothering is the reproduction of class.
The scope
of this issue is too complex and too controversial to cover
in this small space, but consider that in our present political/ideological
climate certain mothers— the affluent ones— are
expected, under ideal conditions, to cut back on their workforce
participation
while their children are young, while other mothers— the
poor ones— are compelled to work at low-wage jobs whether
or not safe, affordable, good quality care is available for
their little ones. Both situations are rationalized as being “best” for
children and society in general, but it seems unlikely that
children’s need for attentive one-on-one care— the
baseline quality and quantity of care-giving necessary to ensure
optimal development— fluctuates to such extremes based
on a child’s economic status. What we end up with in
the eyes of society is one group of kids who are primed to
do well “because of” their mothers and another
group who— with the right kind of support, self determination,
hard work and a great deal of luck— may do well “in
spite of” their mothers. We are also force-fed political
rhetoric and public policies that sort women into groups based
on a narrow assessment of the social potential of their fertility.
For one group, child-bearing and child-rearing is a prized
commodity that nourishes a burgeoning consumer market in children’s
clothing, gear, furnishings, toys, enrichment activities, and
private and supplemental education— not to mention the
rapid proliferation of costly assisted reproductive technologies.
The fertility of the second group is viewed as a threat to
the economic and social order, and the prevailing strategy
is to discourage child-bearing by limiting these mothers’ and
would-be mothers’ access to public resources. This is
hardly a new problem, although it’s likely to become
a more urgent one as the gap between the “haves” and “have
nots” in America reaches unprecedented proportions. For
the time being, perhaps it is enough to begin questioning why
we’re willing to believe that the motherhood of some
women is innately more valuable than that of others, and why
some children have greater value to society than others.
This is the kind of
mood I’ve been in lately, which is why a piece by Rebecca
Traister on the latest upscale baby gear really
ticked me off. In “Bugaboo,
beware!” (Salon.com, August 9, 2004)
Traister devotes 1,800 words to extolling the too-too-coolness
of the high-tech Danish baby stroller—which just happens
to sport a hefty $750 price tag—she predicts will be “the
world’s priciest and most sought after transport device
for humans under 4.” The “world” Traister
is alluding to is not, of course, the one that most of us actually
inhabit but that of trendy moms and dads in major metropolitan
areas with the financial means to morph parenthood into an
ultra-hip fashion statement. Why a reasonably critical cultural
outlet like Salon would print such an unreflective paean to
lifestyle porn is beyond me, but there it is.
Another article published
the same week is both more inquisitive and less overtly oriented
toward the very privileged set, but the undercurrent is there.
In “Beyond
Harvard and the SATs” (August 5,
2004), Katy Read interviews
Beth Kephart, author of Seeing Past
Z: Nurturing Imagination in a Fast-Forward World.
It’s not Read’s approach or writing that’s
flawed, but the whole subject of “nurturing” (a
perfectly good word that's been encrusted with all sorts of
messy ideology) always makes me very nervous. It turns out
that Seeing Past Z is part lyrical memoir, part parenting
advice; Kephart argues that by over-scheduling children with
structured enrichment programs and over-stressing the importance
of academic achievement, today’s parents—or at
least the ones who have good reason to expect nothing but the
brightest futures for their children—are filling up the
open space their children’s imaginations need to grow
and flourish. She suggests that instead of pushing children
into the type of activities that ultimaty look good on an Ivy
League college application, parents should consider a more
homemade approach—specifically, they should reach out
and nurture the creative whimsy of children in their neighborhood
by organizing informal workshops in the arts.
This sounds kind of
fun, and I’m all in favor of making more room in everyday
life for imagination and creativity. I hope that one day America
will have an exceptional public school system with plenty of
well-trained (and well paid) teachers who have the all time
and resources they need to expand every child’s mind
in all possible directions. But since we’re not there
yet, I find something a little fishy about books like Kephart’s
and the values that drive them. In my thinking, the plight
of children who are expected to do too much seems to underscore
the plight of children who are expected to do too little. Kephart’s
advice may flow from a spirit of open-mindedness and generosity,
but it’s aimed squarely at mothers and fathers who can
count on their kids ending up on the top of the socio-economic
heap. Perhaps what more parents need is some timely advice
on how to level the playing field.
Bugaboo,
beware!
“Come this October, the Bugaboo Frog won't be the only designer stroller
option for hip (and wealthy) parents. Meet the new stroller on the block: The
$750 alien-like Stokke Xplory.” By Rebecca Traister.
Beyond
Harvard and the SATs
“In ‘Seeing Past Z,’ Beth Kephart argues that ambitious parents
are smothering their kids’ creativity with lessons, activities and schedules.” By
Katy Read.
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Elsewhere
on the Web:
From
AlterNet (www.alternet.org):
The
Women of Wal-Mart
By Geri L. Dreiling, September 16, 2004.
“A gender discrimination lawsuit offers a glimpse inside the nation's largest
private employer and its treatment of women. It ain’t pretty.”
Marriage
and Its Discontents
By Larry Smith, August 17, 2004
An interview with Cathi Hanauer, editor of The Bitch in
the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and
Marriage, and her husband, Daniel Jones, whose anthology The
Bastard on the Couch: 27 Men Try Really Hard to Explain Their Feelings About
Love, Loss, Fatherhood, and Freedom was released earlier this year.
CATHI:
For women especially—but it applies for men, too—there’s
a maternal instinct that conflicts directly with ambition,
or at least it seems to. It’s something you don’t
face until you have a child. You can’t understand
the intensity of that dilemma, and the conflicts it can
cause if you’re a working woman until you become
a parent.
Then
begins the dilemma: Am I going to work or am I going to take
care of my baby? And if I have to do both—or I want
to do both—how can I find the time and the energy for
it? The cliché that she has two full-time jobs is
true. So suddenly she’s completely overwhelmed, at
least when the baby is young and if she has the sort of career
that’s unforgiving.
DANIEL:
That's the great awakening for a lot of women these days.
She’s zooming along through college then into a career
and on up the ladder. Then suddenly she's home with the baby
and thinking: So how is this supposed to work? And then her
husband’s paternity leave ends—if he even gets
one—and he heads back to work.
I
think this is where the resentment begins for many career
women. Not because she doesn’t want to be with her
baby, but because she's the one being tugged in two directions
and he usually isn’t. In his essay ["My Problem
with Her Anger"], Eric Bartels says fathers may miss
being with their children when they’re at work, but
they won’t feel guilty because they are doing what
they are programmed to do.
Mothers
at War
By Judith Matloff, August 19, 2004
“Mothers who cover wars go to agonizing lengths to balance child-rearing
and work. … Female war correspondents readily admit that it goes against
all maternal instincts to place the most precious thing in their lives in danger.
They find it wrenching to leave their children for weeks while they cover the
front lines. But as women swell the ranks of senior correspondents, a growing
cadre – nearly all in their forties – are choosing not to relinquish
high-profile careers just because they have kids.”
The
Summer When Everything Changed
By Ruth Rosen, August 24, 2004
“The summer of 1964 is when the sleepy 1950’s ended. During those
months, and in the years that followed, many of us lost our innocence. Official
lies led to skepticism, which eventually gave way to cynicism and political indifference
for too many Americans. The demand for equality – for minorities and women – created
new fault lines and irreversibly altered the political landscape.”
From
ctnow.com (www.ctnow.com)
This
Is Not Your Mother’s Feminist Movement
Catherine Blinder, August 29, 2004
In a Hartford Courier/Northeast Magazine cover story, Catherine Binder reflects
on the 2004 March for Women’s Lives, the Second Wave, the Third Wave
and the future of feminism. Access to the article is free but registration
is required.
From
American Radio Works (americanradioworks.publicradio.org)
Suffering
for Two: the bind of maternal depression
By Sasha Aslanian, August 2004
“More women than ever before are taking anti-depressant medication, including
more pregnant women. An advisory panel to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
wants to add a warning that some babies exposed to drugs like Prozac and Paxil
during the last trimester of pregnancy developed tremors, jitteriness and even
required hospitalization. While the FDA negotiates with drug makers over wording,
Canada has moved ahead with similar warnings. But researchers warn that not treating
depression also poses a risk to mother and child.” An article, audio file
and transcripts are available online.
From
Slate.com (www.slate.com)
First
Class:
Is it possible to raise rich kids who don’t
have a sense of entitlement?
By Debra Dickerson, September 3, 2004
“ I'm desperate to prevent them from becoming the kind of privileged snots
with that disgusting sense of entitlement I saw in too many of my trust-funded
classmates at Harvard Law School. Their (white) grandfather is tenured at a public
Ivy. Their mother writes books and is on television. Dad’s an architect.
My son’s godparents are Harvard muckety-mucks. My infant daughter’s
are journalism big shots—can you say early admission to an Ivy, snazzy
internships, and eenie-meenie-minie-moe-ing between cushy first jobs? I scheme
and freelance so as to squirrel away money for them so they can have all the
ski trips and concert tickets that their mother never had. And yet even as I
do so, I begin to wonder if, on some level, I'll come to despise them.”
From
TomPaine.com (www.tompaine.com)
Time
For A Checkup
Merrill Goozner, September 21, 2004
“ Infant mortality—a prime indicator of how well health care services
are distributed in a society—is another area where the United States lags
sadly behind its industrialized rivals. The CDC rankings of selected countries
showed the United States at 28th out of 37 countries. …Who fell below us
in safe and healthy childbirths and infant care through the first year of life?
Virtually all the laggards (other than the United States) are countries of the
former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. How can it be that we not much better
off than Romania in this vital statistic? It’s not middle-class moms in
suburban hospitals losing babies. It’s poor mothers without prenatal care.
It’s teenagers who hide their pregnancies, deliver low birth weight babies
and have few support systems to help them care for their newborns.”
From
Salon.com (www.salon.com)
Aborting
my marriage
By Laura Walters, August 19, 2004
“With or without William, the idea of having a child overwhelmed me. I
had few local friends or family, and lived in a city I detested. And yes, I was
selfish: The prospect of having a child and raising it on my own felt insurmountable,
like the end of my life. For a woman like me who’d lived an independent
life, the idea of giving birth and raising children began to seem almost a retro,
labor-intensive enterprise, like growing your own vegetables or sewing your own
clothes. There's a reason why women in the 1960s and ‘70s tried to escape
this way of life – it’s hard work, and it’s not for everybody. …Yet
when I suggested terminating the pregnancy, I hoped, against all the evidence,
that William would pull me back from the precipice, assure me that we’d
work things out, that he’d take care of me. He didn’t. Panicked about
the impact a child would have on his career, he readily agreed to an abortion.
I scheduled the procedure for the earliest date I could have it.”
Babymaking
By Amie Klempnauer, August 11, 2004
“Jane and I spent 10 years discussing whether to have a child. Like many
straight couples, we finally decided to leave it to the fates. But in our case
the fates held a speculum, a catheter and a vial of sperm.”
— MMO,
September 2004
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