MMO: Noteworthy - February 2006

Articles on assisted reproductive technology, the anti-abortion paradox, access and contraception, the sorrow of infertility, sex after baby, sexual harassment on campus, fistula documentary.

past editions of mmo noteworthy ...

Research & reports:

Are we having fun yet?

"Bundles of… Misery: Parenting Got You Down? You're Not Alone, Says
Study" reads the headline of a recent Washington Post article (Elizabeth Agnvall, 3.jan.06). The story summarized researchers' attempt to determine whether, as with other adult roles, having children predicts better mental health outcomes. For example, sociologist note there is a strong correlation between marriage and employment and increased mental wellbeing for both men and women -- but whether parenting confers similar mental health benefits is largely unknown. To find out, Ranae J. Evenson of Vanderbilt University and Robin W. Simon of Florida State University analyzed adults' reports of depressive symptoms from an existing national survey. The researchers found that, overall, parents were no less likely to report depressive symptoms than adults without children, but some subgroups of parents were more likely to report depressive symptoms than childless adults with similar socio-demographic characteristics. The authors cautioned that the survey instrument was not sensitive enough to determine whether such spikes of depressive symptoms among sub-groups of parents were causal or coincidental.

Outside of academia, an appropriate response to Evenson and Simon's research might be: "So what?" Yet several major newspapers and a number of news blogs reported on the study. In this case, the weight of the science is not nearly as important as the narrative subtext of the media's reaction to it, which is that parenthood can really get you down.

According to social worker Devra Renner, co-author of "Mommy Guilt," it's impossible to draw any hard and fast conclusions about the relative "happiness" of parents and non-parents from Evenson and Simon's study. First of all, she says, incidence of depressive symptoms was self-reported, which always compromises the validity of social surveys. Then there's the added complication of not knowing whether people who report more depressive symptoms would describe themselves as downhearted in general or just going through a rough patch (when the survey was conducted, respondents were asked to report only the blue moods they experienced in the past week). There's also no way to tell if those who report low incidence of depressive symptoms -- as was the case for around 85 percent of both parents and non-parents -- are uniformly lovin' life.

Ultimately, the parental depression study may not have great significance, but -- considering the still-raging debate about whether women think it's more important to have babies or a career and why we should care -- one has to wonder about the media's spin on it. Perhaps there is an emerging news market for proof that parenting sucks. Evenson and Simon's research actually suggests there may be social and economic factors that make having kids more difficult for some people than others (for example, married parents with minor children reported greater well-being than similar unmarried parents), but the press did not probe those findings. The tone of reporting on the study is also interesting in light of recent media buzz about ugly confrontations between childless adults and parents who take young children to trendy cafes and reports of growing numbers of college-educated twenty-something couples who worry they can't afford to start a family.

Another measurement of parent's and non-parents perceptions of well-being comes from the Pew Research Center, which just a released the results of a survey to find out if Americans are "very happy," "pretty happy," or "not too happy." The survey found that parents with children under 18 were more likely to feel "very happy" than non-parents. However, further analysis reveals that while slightly happier than average, married parents with young children were not significantly happier than married couples with older or no kids; unmarried parents with minor children were the least happy of any group. The survey also found that men and women are about equally happy. Whites are happier than African Americans, Republicans are happier than Democrats, and the wealthy are happiest of all: a whopping 50 percent of those having incomes over $150K say they are "very happy." (According to the survey, about one-third of Americans are "very happy" overall.) People who reported feeling "always rushed" were considerably less happy than those who almost never felt rushed, which might help explain why, as a group, parents of young children score only fair-to-middling in the happiness department.

Still, I wonder if heightened interest in the downside of parenting isn't the sort of reality check disaffected mothers have been hoping for. After all, it is recognition that parenting isn't just fun and games, that it's hard work and takes a toll on the human psyche, that motherhood is not, in fact, an experience that guarantees endless rapture and delight. But the question left unanswered by recent news reports on parental gloominess is why we do it anyway, and what society can and should do to make it easier.

Parenthood Does Not Make People Happier
American Sociological Association, ASA News, 21.dec.05
“People with minor children at home, noncustodial children, adult children at home, and nonresidential stepchildren all report significantly more symptoms of depression than nonparents when controlling for sociodemographic factors,” say the authors of a new study. “In fact, there is no type of parent in this national sample that reports less symptoms of depression than nonparents.”

Are We Happy Yet?
Pew Research Center, Social Trends Report, 13.feb.06
Summary & charts
Full report, 42 pages in .pdf

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resources:

National Women’s Law Center
2006 Tax Credits Outreach Campaign

You may be eligible for tax benefits to help pay for child care and other expenses and reduce the income taxes you pay or increase your tax refund. The National Women’s Law Center has prepared a variety of federal and state-specific materials to inform you about some of the federal and state tax benefits for which you may be eligible, and to assist advocates in educating others about the value of these benefits.

Ready-to-use materials prepared by the NWLC include a tool kit designed to assist the child care community with outreach during the 2006 tax filing season, fliers on federal and state tax credits in several languages, fact sheets, a sample public service announcement and other resources for individuals and community organizers.

National Women's Law Center
www.nwlc.org

NWLC 2006 Tax credit campaign web page

Federal tax fact sheets (3 pages in .pdf)

Q&A: Credit for Child and Dependent Care Expenses (4 pages in .pdf)

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love & work

Pregnancy Remains Heavy Load for Working Women
Anju Mary Paul, Women's eNews, 16.feb.06
A female employee was told that her pregnancy was costing her company too much money and that it would pay for her to have an abortion. It's an extreme example, but advocates say the workplace is still tough on pregnant women.

Alito: A Defeat for Working Women
Martha Burk, AlterNet, 11.jan.06
"When most people think about women's rights and the Supreme Court, abortion is the first thing on the list. Though organized women's groups are vehemently opposed to the confirmation of Samuel Alito to the high court because he is almost certain to vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, the right to privacy is not the only thing on the line for women."

All work and no play could hamper job success
Penelope Trunk, Boston Globe/Boston Works, 25.dec.05
Don't be the hardest worker. You shouldn't look lazy, but if you work the most hours, you risk looking the most desperate. After all, why do you need to work so much harder than the next person? Are you not as smart? Not as organized? Not as confident in your ability to navigate a nonwork world? In many cases all three are true for those who work the hardest.

Time is Now to Take Back Your Time
Ralph Nader, AlterNet, 9.jan.06
"One hundred and Sixty Three countries offer some form of paid family leave, including paid childbirth or maternity leave. There is no national law in the U.S. to provide for such priorities."

Couples find swapping roles builds versatility
Maggie Jackson, Boston Globe/BostonWorks, 29.jan.06
"The learning curve is steep when you fill in for a spouse. Simple domestic chores are often harder than they look. How do you change a fuse, bargain with a car dealer, or determine whether the baby's sick? And cranking up or downshifting a career is tough."

Spain's Easygoing Siesta Burdens Working Moms
Jerome Socolovsky, Women's eNews, 23.jan.06
Spain's traditional afternoon nap is key to the country's reputation for easygoing charm. But women trying to combine career and family say it adds time pressure and the government just set a 9-to-5 schedule for its own employees.

Call Centers In The Rec Room:
'Homeshoring' takes off as moms and others provide an alternative to offshoring
Business Week Online, 23.jan.06
"Of course, there's a dark side. While home agents earn more than their brick-and-mortar counterparts (most earn $10 to $15 an hour without benefits vs. $7 to $9 with benefits in a call center), they are also going it alone in the workplace jungle. Critics say homeshoring is thrusting more jobs into the global discount-labor bazaar."

Employers Step Up Efforts to Lure Stay-at-Home Moms Back to Work
Sue Shellenbarger, Wall Street Journal Career Journal, 9.feb.06
"A need for skilled employees, particularly in accounting, consulting and finance, is leading big employers in these fields to get creative. Although their new programs are open to both women and men, they're drawing more females because skilled women are more likely to leave high-paying jobs in the first place, to raise children and for other reasons."

Two-Income Couples Deserve Sweetest Valentine
Caryl Rivers, Women's eNews, 1.feb.06
As she monitors the retro media messages about mating and dating, Caryl Rivers advises against believing in the return of the Sugar Daddy. Two-income couples, she says, are here to stay and deserve the season's sweetest.

Daughter Catches View of Future From Ailing Mother
Martha Wegner, Women's eNews, 17.jan.06
Part of caring for an elderly parent is confronting one's own mortality. Martha Wegner admits her first reaction to her mother's aging was childish anger and denial. Now she's resolved to care for the woman who took such good care of her.

Men in love
Ira Boudway, Salon, 30.jan.06
A new book asks hundreds of husbands what they think about the real issues in their marriage -- from porn and housework to adultery. An interview with author Neil Chethik. "I think the biggest progress is having women as equals in marriages. When that happened, it created the possibility of really deep, important relationships and, at the same time, made it possible to try work out the differences that are inevitable in every relationship. However, I think we've been in upheaval over the last 30 years or so since this happened."

Same-Sex Marriage Wars Causing Battle Fatigue
Peggy Drexler, Women's eNews, 18.jan.06
Comic relief helps explain the success of Broadway's revival of "The Odd Couple." Peggy Drexler says two straight men quarreling over dust balls relieve the strain of the national dust-up over same-sex marriage. (Drexler is the author of "Raising Boys Without Men.")

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Wages and earnings:

Minimum Wage Fight Sidesteps Washington
Katherine Stapp, Common Dreams, 9.jan.06
"The U.S. Congress reached a dubious milestone at the start of the New Year: its 100th month without raising the minimum wage earned by millions of workers at the very bottom of the economic ladder. With low expectations that action on the issue will be forthcoming -- at least, not unless there is a changing of the guard in mid-term elections in November -- advocates for the working poor are campaigning hard at the state and local level to translate popular support for a living wage into local ballot initiatives.

Working for a Living (Wage)
Kathleen Hunter, AlterNet, 23.jan.06
As state after state raise their minimum-wages far beyond the federal level, the struggle for fair wages is shaping up to be a hot election-year issue.

Demystifying the Power of Moolah
Sheerly Avni, AlterNet, 24.jan.06
"In her new book, 'Money: A Memoir,' Liz Perle argues that when it comes to their wallets, women still have a long way to go." Perle is also the author of "When Work Doesn't Work Anymore" (1997).

'Strapped' for Adulthood
Jodie Janella Horn, AlterNet, 3.jan.05
A new book explores the societal and financial reasons that today's twenty- and thirtysomethings are finding it nearly impossible to stay afloat. "At this point in my life, it makes sense for me to find a career that allows me to also stay at home to raise children or that pays well enough to afford quality child care, but these are lofty goals, and my options are limited."

Readers Write: 'Strapped' for Adulthood
Onnesha Roychoudhuri, AlterNet, 17.jan.06
AlterNet readers debate the current state of the economy and its implications for younger generations.

The Indebted Generation
Tamara Draut, Demos "Around the Kitchen Table," jan.06
The dire truth is that public policy has failed to address the changing realities of the New Economy-- and today's youth are the first to experience it head-on.

The Middle Class on the Precipice
Rising financial risks for American families
Elizabeth Warren, Harvard Magazine, jan-feb.06
As tough as life has become for married couples, single-parent families face even more financial obstacles in trying to carve out middle-class lives on a single paycheck. And at the same time that families are facing higher costs and increased risks, the old financial rules of credit have been rewritten by powerful corporate interests that see middle-class families as the spoils of political influence.

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Parenting:

Nation of Wimps web site debuts

Hara Estroff Marano, author, journalist and editor-at-large for Psychology Today magazine, recently launched a web site featuring her articles on the hyperparenting craze. NationofWimps.com "explores the growing evidence that childrearing in America has taken a bewildering turn:"

Armed with hyperconcern and microscrutiny, parents are going to ludicrous lengths to take the lumps and bumps out of life for their children today. However well-intentioned, their efforts have the net effect of making kids more fragile. That may be why the young are breaking down in record numbers or staying stuck in endless adolescence.

Marano is one of the few professional journalists who approaches the "helicopter parenting" phenomenon from a broad psychological and cultural perspective. While her articles suffer from a lack of formal research on the effects of over-parenting and offer only cursory analysis of social pressures on middle-class parents to produce offspring who are outstanding in every way, her writing on the topic is intelligent and interesting.

Nation of Wimps
www.nationofwimps.com

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More news & commentary on parenting

Oh (No) Baby
Sarah Klein, AlterNet, 10.jan.06
"Is the 'childfree' community a fast-growing, misunderstood movement -- or just a bunch of mean old kid haters?"

Readers Write: 'Child-free' or Just Cranky?
By Rachel Neumann, AlterNet, 30.jan.06
AlterNet readers respond to Sara Klien’s article on the child-free movement.

The Benefits of Bozo: Proof that TV doesn't harm kids
Austan Goolsbee, Slate, 16.feb.06
"Most studies of the impact of television… are seriously flawed. They compare kids who watch TV and kids who don't, when kids in those two groups live in very different environments. Kids who watch no TV, or only a small amount of educational programming, as a group are from much wealthier families than those who watch hours and hours. Because of their income advantage, the less-TV kids have all sorts of things going for them that have nothing to do with the impact of television."

No More Nightmares at Tranquility Bay?
John Gorenfeld, AlterNet, 23.jan.06
Largely unregulated, the teen rehab industry has scarred thousands of kids for life. Now one lone congressmember is pushing to stop the abuse.

Josie Who? Maxine What?
Marjorie Ingall, East Village Forward, 13.jan.06
"We were not trying to be Difficult. We were not trying to be Edgy. We were not making a Statement. Yet sometimes, when people hear that our two children have two different last names, they look at us like we have a really large booger hanging out our noses."

Conspicuous Little Consumers
Kelly Sharp, AlterNet, 13.feb.06
A new book explores the effects of marketing on children. Is it making them more autonomous, or turning them into depressed, obese mega-consumers?

Ringing up baby
Dale Hrabi, Salon, 2.feb.06
Rich, older moms in N.Y. and Chicago are snapping up $1,240 diaper bags and $500 bassinets. But the rest of the country is about to throw an enormous tantrum.

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Motherhood in the media:

Mommy Wars Redux
Bonnie Erbe, PBS "To the Contrary," 16.jan.06
"Fulltime homemakers of the female and male persuasion need to get over ranting against being looked down upon. They're not. But neither is fulltime homemaking something you do for anyone other than yourself, your spouse and your children. It's simply not an ambitious or competitive pursuit and will never hold the same allure as pursuits in which ambitious people compete and succeed."

There Are No Mommy Wars
Why It's Time to Forget the Hype and Begin Learning from Each Other
Mary Ann Romans, Parent Express Pennsylvania, jan.06
Features interviews with Miriam Peskowitz and MMO contributor Anjali Enjeti-Sydow

At home with David Brooks
Rebecca Traister, Salon, 4.jan.06
On the same day the right-wing Times columnist argued that women are happier at home, a mom who stayed at home contradicted him. "It's about time we all started taking the politics of the American home seriously again, remembering that the personal is absolutely political. If David Brooks is so quaintly fascinated by the number of pieces about domesticity in 2005, I urge him to buckle his seat belt in preparation for a bumpy 2006."

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Feminism

Betty Friedan, 1921-2006
Katha Pollitt, The Nation, 9.feb.06
"[Linda] Hirshman claims Friedan as her muse. But what strikes me about The Feminine Mystique is the absence of one-size-fits-all pronouncements."

Feminism after Friedan
Joan Walsh, Salon, 6.feb.06
More than 40 years ago, she launched a movement by denouncing stifling, stay-at-home motherhood. Today, are women who choose to stay home betraying feminism?

Betty Friedan, Mapmaker
Alida Brill, AlterNet, 7.feb.05
Friedan was a cartographer, mapping the undiscovered territories of women's lives. "I think of her as a cartographer. Early maps are never perfect. They have errors, omit essential places, and warn of mythical dragons. And some continents depicted turn out not to exist at all. Yet, lacking such early chartings, we would drift without any direction at all."

Losing Our Feminist Leaders
Jessica Valenti, AlterNet, 8.feb.06
Within a week, America lost three great women who worked for social change in different ways. Who will continue their work?

Two Funerals Play Dirge for Feminist Vote
Alexander Sanger, Women's eNews, 15.feb.06
Presidents, TV crews and political aspirants flocked to the funeral of Coretta Scott King, but only one politician turned up to memorialize Betty Friedan. Alexander Sanger says that shows how little the feminist vote currently seems to count. "The feminist vote has become detached from a broad set of interests--such as enhanced health care and child care--in which women, as a group, show particular interest. Instead, it has come to be seen as an isolated and controversial single-issue focus on abortion rights that does not translate reliably into votes."

In a Lonely Place
Martha Nussbaum, The Nation, 9.feb.06
A review of Vivian Gornick's biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
"The Solitude of the Self"

Gloria Steinem, Power Geezer
Sheelah Kolhatkar, AlterNet, 11.jan.06
At 71, the grande dame of feminism is sanguine, salty-tongued and still politically active after all these years.

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Gender buzz:

Girls Against Boys?
Katha Pollitt, The Nation, 12.jan.06
"The conservative spin on the education gender gap is that feminism has ruined school for boys."

Will Boys Be Boys?
Ann Hulbert, Slate, 1.feb.06
Why the gender lens may not shed light on the latest educational crisis. "PET scans and MRIs not surprisingly beckon as irrefutable support for keeping gender differences in the spotlight -- except here data don't quite match up with dogma either. Male and female brains, the new imaging technology shows, are indeed surprisingly dissimilar in form, function, and maturation. Yet experts caution -- as even Time did in a cover story about girls and math a year ago -- that it's far too soon to extrapolate from neural architecture to specific intellectual potential."

Like a Girl
Annalee Newitz, AlterNet, 10.jan.06
"I just can't seem to act like a girl, even when I go on the Internet." Commentary on a new Pew study on the way men and women use the internet.

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Wiring the revolution:

Can Blogs Revolutionize Progressive Politics?
Lakshmi Chaudhry, In These Times, 6.feb.2006
"Technology is only as revolutionary as the people who use it, and the progressive blogosphere has thus far remained the realm of the privileged --a weakness that may well prove fatal in the long run."

Internet Fosters Local Political Movements
Ron Fournier, Associated Press, Common Dreams, 27.dec.05
Frustrated by government and empowered by technology, Americans are filling needs and fighting causes through grass-roots organizations they built themselves — some sophisticated, others quaintly ad hoc. This is the era of people-driven politics.

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Diversity:

Most Corporations Don't Tell Diversity Data
Sandra Guy, Women's eNews, 23.dec.05
In the wake of a report that many top U.S. companies fail to publicly disclose their efforts to hire and promote women and people of color, activists express dismay and point to other ways to monitor corporate practices.

Finding Words to Talk About Race
Maria Luisa Tucker, AlterNet, 16.jan.06
Whenever I start getting lulled into the idea that maybe race and ethnicity don't matter, something happens to remind me of their power.

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Domestic violence & women's health

Programs for Batterers Changing Their Focus
Suzanne Batchelor, Women's eNews, 31.jan.06
A new domestic violence program in Texas signals a shift in the treatment of batterers. Increasingly, ex-offenders are leading recent offenders to confront how their own decisions to use violence are linked to an underlying belief in male dominance.

Responders Learn to Spot Signs of Strangulation
Marie Tessier, Women's eNews, 19.dec.05
Non-lethal strangulation is a common but often invisible crime against battered women. New research and investigative techniques are helping to bring it into the courtroom and make it a felony in a growing list of states.

Budget Falls Short for Domestic Violence Programs
Allison Stevens, Women's eNews, 17.feb.06
The president's spending plan for next year omits programs approved last year in the Violence Against Women Act. Anti-violence advocates challenge the cuts as political, saying the savings are too small to make a dent in the overall budget picture.

Two Women, Two Cancers, Two Health-Care Systems
Tom O'Brien, Common Dreams, 29.dec.05
"The scary question for anyone but the rich hit with a catastrophic illness in the U.S. health-care system is: How long will an employer's support go on if the battle goes far beyond the time allotted for sickness and vacation? Susan worried about the loss of health-care coverage and what ensues -- second-rate care, bankruptcy, choosing between timely drug therapies and even modest necessities. She died this month before those fears were realized. But had she lived, she and her family would have confronted the excruciating battle survivors have to fight with insurance companies, employers and health-care providers over cost, length and quality of treatment."

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Reproductive rights & health, sexuality

The baby industrial complex
Lynn Harris, Salon, 9.feb.06
A Harvard economist reveals that the booming fertility industry is shockingly unregulated -- and says it's time for the U.S. government to step in. Interview with Debora Spar, author of " Baby Business: Elite Eggs, Designer Genes, and the Thriving Commerce of Conception"

Inability to Conceive Knocks Life Off Course
Jennifer Friedlin, Women's eNews, 17.feb.06
The emotional turbulence of infertility is making Jennifer Friedlin dread the sight of smiling babies. Slowly, however, she is finding comfort in the stories of other couples who have navigated the same difficult and confusing chapter of life.

Did the Pro-Choice Movement Save America?
Rachel Fudge, AlterNet, 17.feb.06
In her new book, "How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics, and the War on Sex" (Basic Books), Cristina Page boldly declares that the pro-choice movement is "doing a better job at what the public understands to be the pro-life agenda than the pro-lifers are": that is, not only dramatically reducing the number of abortions in the United States, but also putting forth (and achieving) a truly pro-family, pro-child vision of life in America.

Excerpt: The Anti-Abortion Paradox
Cristina Page, AlterNet, 12.feb.06
Pro-life tactics have actually helped encourage abortions and have led to riskier sex, especially among teens.

Life Before Roe v. Wade
By Molly M. Ginty, AlterNet, 20.jan.06
More than thirty years later, three people who helped provide abortions before Roe tell their stories.

Target at Center of Battle Over Plan B
Allison Stevens, Women's eNews, 15.jan.06
Planned Parenthood and Target are scuffling over a woman's charge that a pharmacist refused to fill her emergency-contraception prescription. Onlookers say access to Plan B is the latest frontier in the battle over reproductive rights.

Reproductive Regression
Carole Joffe, TomPaine.com, 23.jan.06
"Given the current realities of American society—where teens take matters in their own hands to end a pregnancy, where anti-abortion lawmakers cut funds for contraception, where 'pharmacists for life' lecture married women while refusing to refill their birth control prescriptions -- am I suggesting that American women really are in the same boat as they were before Roe? The answer, of course, is no -- or more correctly, not yet."

Sexual healing
Mary Elizabeth Williams, Salon, 28.jan.06
I used to relish the challenge of being good in bed. I read the Kama Sutra with steely discipline, confident there wasn't a skill I couldn't master. Then I had a baby. (Non-subscribers must view ads before reading)

Study: Both Sexes on Campus Are Harassed
Allison Stevens, Women's eNews, 27.jan.06
College women are still more likely to experience higher rates of physical harassment, but a study shows overall that they are nearly equal to males in unwanted sexual attention, such as being flashed, mooned or made the subject of sexual rumors.

Filmmaker Sharpens U.S. Focus on Fistula
Kristin Bender, Women's eNews, 14.feb.06
A U.S. filmmaker is hoping that her documentary will stir U.S. politicians to do more to alleviate fistula, an easily treated condition that has turned millions of African women into outcasts. Important screenings are planned for February and March. "Like the lepers of the last century who were marooned on islands to suffer and die, women in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia who are stricken with obstetric fistula are often abandoned by their husbands and shunned by their family and community."

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February 2006

previously in mmo noteworthy ...

editor@mothersmovement.org