Sink or swim:

Future for baby boomer mothers not so rosy

Dispatches from the indebted generation, Newsweek's marriage problem and other observations

Reproductive health & rights:

CDC to U.S. women: Think pregnant!

Other notable news and commentary on reproductive health & rights

UK work-life group reports on men, work and family

The Work Foundation, a British public interest group, "exists to inspire and deliver improvements to performance through improving the quality of working life" based on the belief that "productive, high performance organizations are those committed to making work more fulfilling, fun, inspirational and effective."

Dads' Army: The Case for Father-Friendly Workplaces by organizational consultant Richards Reeves is one of the many reports and publications available to the public through the Work Foundation web site. Reeves' report uses social research from the U.S. and UK to argue that fathers' equal involvement in child-rearing and domestic labor -- and workplace culture and conditions that support it -- is essential to women's social and economic equality. Reeves offers an incisive, provocative and realistic assessment of the structural and cultural barriers to men's greater involvement in family life and makes several policy recommendations to help fathers integrate rewarding paid work with shared caregiving. Although Reeves concentrates on the UK, many of his observations are applicable to men, work and family in the United States. For example, Reeves considers the underlying gender bias in the metaphor of "balancing" work and family:

As women have scaled the walls of the corporate compounds, so children and families have become a workplace issue. Thus far, however, only for women. For "working parent," you can fairly easily read "working mother." …When someone is discussing the problem of "balancing work and children," they still have a woman in their mind's eye. Although this is a blinkered view, it is the prevailing one.

Reeves suggests that the dual-earner model, which has rapidly replaced the breadwinner/homemaker couple as the dominant model of work and family in industrialized countries, must ultimately give way to the "dual carer" model if men and women are to have equal opportunities in all areas of public and private life. Reeves short work offers a persuasive, father-focused overview of the central issues of gender, work and family in contemporary society.

The Work Foundation - UK
www.theworkfoundation.com

Dads' Army: The Case for Father-Friendly Workplaces
Richard Reeves, The Work Foundation, 2002
48 pages in .pdf

Also from the Work Foundation:

New study exposes flexibility myths
12.jun.06
"The widespread conviction that low levels of employment regulation and weak trade unions are the cause of Britain’s good record at creating jobs and keeping unemployment down is today exposed as a myth in a new study by The Work Foundation. The study also takes aim at the assumption that 'being more like America' is essential if high levels of unemployment in some continental European countries are to be reduced."

About Time for Change
Alexandra Jones, The Work Foundation
"The Work Foundation, in association with Employers for Work-Life Balance, commissioned research into whether working people are feeling a ‘time squeeze’ and how they are managing their work-life balance. The results of the survey were clear: despite the increased profile of work-life balance, despite the government legislation and despite all the campaigns, people are still feeling a time squeeze."

More commentary from the UK on women, work and family:

Working Girls
Alison Wolf, Prospect Magazine (UK), April 2006
"Women used to enter the elite as daughters, mothers and wives. Now they do so as individuals. This marks a rupture in human history. It is one that has brought enormous benefits to many people, and to many women in particular. But its repercussions are not all positive, either for society as a whole, or for all women. …Three consequences get far less attention than they deserve. The first is the death of sisterhood: an end to the millennia during which women of all classes shared the same major life experiences to a far greater degree than did their men. The second is the erosion of 'female altruism,' the service ethos which has been profoundly important to modern industrial societies -- particularly in the education of their young, and the care of their old and sick. The third is the impact of employment change on childbearing. We are familiar with the prospect of demographic decline, yet we ignore, sometimes wilfully, the extent to which educated women face disincentives to bear children."

- back to top -

News & commentary on families, caregiving and caregivers' rights

The maternal is the political
Nina Burleigh, Salon, 23.may.06
In a new book, one of the founders of MoveOn.org argues that the next Web-based grass-roots political movement should be led by mothers.

The Mommy Wage Gap
Terrence McNally, AlterNet, 12.jun.06
Mothers are half as likely to be offered jobs as non-mothers -- and they get paid less for doing the same work. Joan Blades and Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner are out to change that.

Vargas' Pregnant Pause Reignites Job-Kid Debate
Matea Gold, LA Times, 29.may.06
"ABC anchor Elizabeth Vargas' recent announcement that she would be giving up one of the most prestigious jobs in broadcast news because she is expecting her second child was viewed with skepticism among some television industry observers, who noted the sharp ratings decline at 'World News Tonight' this season… But in the awkward merger of her personal and professional lives, others have found a very public reminder of the conundrum facing a generation of women raised to believe they could do whatever they set out to achieve -- and are finding that increasingly difficult to fulfill." Registration required.

Getting Back in the Game
Melissa Silverstein, AlterNet, 13.jun.06
A new documentary highlights a growing issue for women's sports: What happens when a player gets pregnant?

Some stress in pregnancy may be good for baby
Reuters, MSNBC, 1.jun.06
Children of moderately stressed women are more advanced, study shows. "This study should put pregnant women's minds at ease and help them stop 'worrying about worrying,' [the study's author] said. 'The reason to avoid stress is because it can be bad for (the mothers) and it's not a good idea to go into labor/delivery and childrearing exhausted,' she emphasized."

States promote nursing, protect moms
Christine Vestal, Stateline.org, 15.may.06
"Mississippi, the state with the lowest rate of breastfeeding in the country, has passed a broad new law allowing mothers to nurse at work and in public. In addition, five other states—Arizona, Kentucky, Kansas, South Carolina and Alabama—passed laws this year protecting mothers from charges of indecent exposure when they nurse in public places. Kansas and South Carolina took the added step of putting the law and state phone numbers on a laminated card so women can inform others of their new rights."

Breast milk for sale?
National Public Radio, Marketplace, 16.may.06
There's nothing as good as mother's breast milk for a baby. Increasingly, that milk could come from businesses that operate on a strictly for-profit basis. Nancy Mullane reports. Audio file and transcript available.

When Will I See My Kids Again?
Sara Campos, AlterNet, 25.may.06
Three immigrant women remember the children they left behind: 'My heart still breaks in half when I think about it ... You long to hold them, and they are so far away.'

My son, the stranger
Anne Lamott, Salon, 22.may.06
From the author of Operating Instructions. "Recently I have begun to feel that the boy I loved is gone, and in his place, a male person who so pushes my buttons, with his moodiness, scorn and flamboyant laziness. People tell me that the boy will return, but some days that is impossible to imagine. And we were doing so well for a while, all those years until his junior year of high school, when the plates of the earth shifted inside him. I've loved and given him so much more than I ever have anyone else: And I'll tell you, a fat lot of good it does these days."

The Fine Art of Letting Go
Barbara Kantrowitz and Peg Tyre, MSNBC, 14.May.06
"Letting go is the final frontier for boomer parents, who've made child rearing a major focus of their adult lives. The 76,957,164 Americans born between 1946 and 1964 are the wealthiest and best-educated generation of parents in human history, and they've had unparalleled resources to aid them as they've raised an estimated 80 million children."

The Dr. Spock of Sleep: How Richard Ferber became the icon he is
Ann Hulbert, Slate, 31.may.06
"Over the past two decades, baby boomers who were 'Spocked when they should have been spanked' have led the popular quest 'to Ferberize' children, a by-the-clock method that promises to turn little screamers into independent sleepers. A new edition of Ferber's book -- heralded as mellower than the original -- prompts a question: What made him an icon in the first place?"

Spare the quarter-inch plumbing supply line, spoil the child
Lynn Harris, Salon, 25.may.06
Saying no to "timeouts," some fundamentalist Christians "train up" their children by carefully hitting them with switches, PVC pipes and other "chastening instruments." "As the Pearls, their advocates, and supporters of similar Christian parenting approaches appear to see it, child 'training' serves, in part, as a bulwark against "modern," liberal, secular, permissive, 'child-centered' parenting -- the touchy-feely stuff of timeouts that, they suggest, spoils children into believing in a boundary-free world that revolves around them."

Mothers of invention
Sarah Jackson Han, Healthcare Today UK, 1.jun.06
A surprising new book on maternal depression should be required reading for the healthcare industry.

Psychiatric Labels Plague Women's Mental Health
Paula J. Caplan, Women's eNews, 16.may.06
"Having been told they are sick, many women--like second-class citizens everywhere--think in terms of how they can change themselves rather than thinking that another person or, in many cases, a system (such as public assistance) or a setting (such as the workplace or the family) is the source of the trouble. Often feeling powerless to change the major systems that oppress them or to escape from harassment or violence, they try to maintain control over their lives."

A Burden to Be Well:
Sisters and Brothers of the Mentally Ill
Audio Documentary, Karen Brown, NPR/WCFR
This documentary focuses on the issues and emotions that face the sisters and brothers of people with mental illness. These siblings often feel ignored by family, health care providers, and society at large while the ill sibling takes up most of the available attention. Meanwhile, these siblings may be suffering in their own right -- from the trauma of exposure to mental illness, the grief of watching a sibling lose control, the responsibility of caring for an ill sibling, and the guilt of being the "healthy one."

For many, an attendant's care enhances quality of life
Maggie Jackson, Boston Globe/BostonWorks, 21.may.06
"We all depend on one another's help with caregiving throughout our lives. You may pick up your neighbor's kid one day, or ask a friend to drive you home from a medical procedure. But more and more, we will depend on a web of both paid and unpaid care to help our country's growing numbers of aging or disabled who want to live independently. The challenges to setting up such systems are many, but the benefits ripple through society."

Parents, kids not necessarily 'family' everywhere
Martha T. Moore, USA Today, 16.may.06
"When Olivia Shelltrack saw the yellow house with green shutters, she loved it right away. It had a yard, a deck, a finished basement and five bedrooms -- plenty of space for Shelltrack, her partner of 13 years, Fondray Loving, and their three children. It was in their price range. But the house is in Black Jack, Mo., where anyone moving into a house must get a permit of occupancy. When Shelltrack and Loving went to get theirs, the city said no."

Meth abuse lands more kids in state care
Daniel C. Vock, Stateline.org, 9.jun.06
"Drug and alcohol abuse of various kinds is common in cases that lead to state intervention in families, but meth use presents unique problems… Meth users are much more likely to manufacture their own drugs, leaving toxic chemicals in their home that can poison their children. That means in meth busts, children usually are taken straight from their homes to a hospital, where they undergo testing and, if necessary, treatment. To avoid further contamination, the children often are forced to leave behind their possessions, including clothes, toys and school materials."

- back to top -

Women with young children more likely to volunteer

A new report on volunteerism in America finds that one-third of U.S. women -- and one-quarter of U.S. men -- serve as volunteers. Women with children under 18 and working women were more likely to serve than other women. In 2005, employed women had higher rates of volunteerism (63 percent) than women not in the labor force (34 percent) -- a significant change from 1974, when 54 percent of women volunteers were not employed.

According to a press release from the Corporation for National and Community Service, "Nationwide, women with children under age 18 volunteer at a significantly higher rate (39.9 percent) than do women without young children (29 percent). The role of women with children who volunteer is particularly important because of the impact their volunteering has on their children. A study released by the Corporation in November 2005 revealed that youth coming from families where their parents and/or siblings volunteer are more likely to volunteer themselves."

The study also found that volunteers were most likely to provide service through religious organizations (34 percent) or in educational and youth service settings (26 percent). 13 percent participated in social or community service activities and 6.4 percent of volunteers were involved in civic, political, professional or international organizations. Volunteers were most likely to be involved as a coach, referee, tutor, teacher or mentor. The second and third most common volunteer activities were fundraising or selling items to raise money and collecting, preparing, distributing and serving food.

The report, which was based on information collected by the U.S. Census Bureau, found that while the number of U.S. volunteers has increased in the last five years, the overall rate of volunteerism has remained unchanged since 2003. The full report looks at regional trends in volunteering as well as patterns of volunteerism in the states.

The CNCS estimates that America's 65.4 million volunteers contribute the equivalent of almost $150 billion in services annually.

The Corporation for National and Community Service is an independent federal agency and the nation’s largest grantmaker supporting service and volunteering.

Corporation for National and Community Service
www.nationalservice.org

New State, Federal Volunteer Service Study Released;
Nationally, Women with Jobs, Kids Lead the Way
CNCS Press Release, 12.jun.06

Women Volunteer at Higher Rates than Men Across U.S.,
New Federal Study Finds
CNCS Press Release, 13.jun.06

New Federal Report Outlines Economic Benefit of Volunteering in America
CNCS Press Release, 12.jun.06

Volunteering in America: Executive Summary
June 2006, 24 pages in .pdf

Volunteering in America: State by State Rankings
June 2006. Full report, 148 pages in .pdf

- back to top -

Fact sheets on work-life interaction, flexible work

Workplace Flexibility 2010 is a campaign to support the development of a comprehensive national policy on workplace flexibility at the federal, state and local levels. Supported by the Alfred P. Sloane Foundation Initiative at Georgetown University Law Center, WF2010 uses up-to-date work-life research to inform the media and policy-makers about the needs of working families.

Workplace Flexibility 2010 defines workplace flexibility as:

• The ability to have flexibility in the scheduling of full-time hours (e.g., a range of flexible work arrangements, including flextime and compressed work weeks);

• The ability to have flexibility in the number of hours worked (e.g., reduced hours, such as part-time or part-year);

• The ability to have career flexibility with multiple points for entry, exit and re-entry into the workforce (e.g., extended time off and career on- and off-ramps); and

• The ability to address unexpected and ongoing personal and family needs (e.g., short-term time off and episodic time off).

WF2010 recently released a comprehensive fact sheet on the needs of working families; highly recommended for activists and advocates working at the state and local level.

Workplace Flexibility 2010
www.workplaceflexibility2010.org

Meeting the Needs of Today's Families: The Role of Workplace Flexibility
Fact Sheet, 13 pages, in .pdf

WF2010 Definition of Workplace Flexibility
1 page, in .pdf

- back to top -

New census fact sheet on Americans with disabilities

51.2 million Americans -- 18 percent of the U.S. population -- have some level of disability, according to a new fact sheet from the U.S. Census Bureau, and over 32 million are seriously disabled. 11 percent of children age 6 to 14, and 20 percent of females of all age groups, are disabled. Individuals age 80 and over were most likely to be living with disabilities (72 percent). 26 percent of people with severe disabilities are living in poverty, compared to 11 percent of those with non-severe disabilities and 8 percent of the general population.

Americans with Disabilities (fact sheet)
U.S. Census Bureau, 24.may.06

- back to top -

Future for baby boomer mothers not so rosy

Baby boomer women are in trouble, according to Paul Hodge, Director of the Harvard Generations Policy Program. "Unlike any other time in our nation's history, unless there are dramatic policy shifts, in terms of absolute numbers, baby boomer women, most particularly minority women, will find their elder years to be a 'never ending' struggle. After selflessly caring for their children and aging parents, a significant number of our country’s 40 million plus boomer women will not be able to afford to retire, will fall below the poverty line and experience financial insecurity and poorer health in their later years with limited aid from traditional safety nets."

The Harvard Generations Policy Program has just released a study on the prospects of baby boomer women as they approach retirement age. Key findings of Baby Boomer Women: Secure Futures or Not? include predictions that baby boomer women will be less financially secure in old age than older women in previous generations, that the U.S. health care system does not adequately address the health care needs of aging women, and that because of their lower earnings, women's increased labor force participation does not guarantee a secure retirement.

Baby Boomer Women: Secure Futures or Not?
Press release, 31.may.06
Key Findings
Article summaries, links to full articles, and contributor's profiles

- back to top -

Dispatches from the indebted generation, Newsweek's marriage problem and other observations

Generation X's Debt Headache
Laura Barcella, AlterNet, 31.may.06
Today, more and more twenty- and thirty-somethings are struggling to stay afloat -- and 'Strapped' author Tamara Draut knows why. "The grim financial situation many young folks are now facing is part of a broad governmental failure to regulate the rising costs of higher education, to boost the minimum wage to a livable wage, and to create a sufficient number of full-time jobs -- with benefits -- to ensure that America's massive twenty- and thirty-something work force is healthy and paid well enough to provide for their families." Plus: An excerpt from Tamara Draut's "Strapped."

A Generation of Debtors Grow Up Owing
Mischa Gaus, AlterNet, 23.may.06
From college loans to soaring health costs and mortgage payments, twenty-somethings face a life of staring into a deep financial hole. "Saddled with loans, students have a hard time finding a stable job that will actually support them. Steady productivity gains have been swallowed by capital, stagnating wages for young people. A Federal Reserve survey says the median net worth of households under 35 rose just 1.3 percent in the last decade after inflation."

In debt before you start
Sandra Block, USA Today, 12.jun.06
"After years of rising college costs and shrinking financial aid, it's come to this: Some graduates are now leaving college with student-loan debt in the six figures."

Young and Uninsured
Tamara Draut and Cindy Zeldin, TomPaine.com, 23.may.06
"There is a popular assumption that twenty-somethings don’t enroll in health insurance because they think they’re invincible against illness, but in reality most young workers lack health insurance coverage because their employers don’t offer it, or because they don’t qualify for the benefit. There are many factors that have led us here, but the basic truth is that today’s young Americans are starting out in an economy that is radically different from the one their parents entered a generation ago."

Poverty: The Real Terror of Singlehood
Jean Elson, Common Dreams, 9.jun.06
Newsweek's shocking analogy 20 years ago about single women's marriage prospects missed horrors to come. "Marriage is a cause of inequity because, in the current economy, it generally takes more than one paycheck, and certainly more than one marginally employed single mother's paycheck, to support the needs of a family. It is a consequence of inequity because, statistically, those women who grew up poor are less likely to marry as adults, thus passing on disadvantages if they have children. This does not mean that, for poor mothers, marriage solves the problems of social stratification. A marriage license does not automatically enable parents to provide for their children."

Newsweek's Apology Comes 20 Years Too Late
Caryl Rivers, Women's eNews, 14.jun.06
Newsweek has issued a grand correction: Contrary to a cover story 20 years ago, single women over 40 actually do marry. Caryl Rivers says the article was clearly wrong at the time and fed media gospel about the woes of ambitious women.

Marriage by the Numbers
Daniel McGinn, Newsweek/MSNBC, 5.Jun.06
Twenty years since the infamous 'terrorist' line, states of unions aren't what we predicted they'd be.

The Moral Minimum
Holly Sklar and Rev. Paul Sherry, TomPaine.com, 19.may.06
A values movement is on the rise across the nation in red states and blue, from Arizona to Ohio, Arkansas to Pennsylvania. It's pulling Americans together to raise the minimum wage -- instead of pushing us apart.

- back to top -

CDC to U.S. women: Think pregnant!

If you're a woman of child -bearing age who drinks, smokes or indulges in other insalubrious habits, the U.S. government has a message for you: Cut it out! Because even if you're taking steps to prevent pregnancy, you might get pregnant and your wayward behavior could, you know, put your baby at risk for birth defects or something worse.

In an effort to lower exceptionally high rates of infant mortality in the U.S., the CDC now recommends that "even before pregnancy, women of child-bearing age should see their doctor about controlling existing medical conditions, such as diabetes, high blood pressure and eating disorders. They should take 400 micrograms of folic acid to help prevent neural tube defects and avoid smoking or drinking alcohol."

On one level, the CDC's new recommendations on preconception health and health care -- which identify more than a dozen risk factors and conditions that require interventions before pregnancy to be effective -- are not unreasonable. Addressing pre-existing health conditions before and throughout pregnancy is critical, and taking folic acid is no big deal and may have other health benefits. However, asking women to alter their social behavior because there is a remote possibility an unplanned pregnancy might occur at any time during a woman's fertile years is a bit of a stretch, and it leaves the impression that the federal government views the nation's women as little more the walking wombs.

The CDC's recommendations for behavior modification are particularly problematic if the goal is reducing infant mortality, since factors outside a woman's control may be more significant. For example, the U.S. might look at maternal and child health provisions offered by other economically developed countries, almost all of which have lower infant and maternal mortality rates than the United States. As it happens, universal health care coverage, paid maternity leave and greater socioeconomic equality are related to better infant health outcomes. How about looking at reducing infant mortality as a social responsibility, rather than something women can fix on their own?

CDC Releases National Recommendations
to Improve Health of Babies and Moms
Press release, 20.apr.06

Recommendations to
Improve Preconception Health and Health Care -- United States
Report and recommendations

- back to top -

Other notable news and commentary on
reproductive health & rights

The GOP Forced Me to Have an Abortion
Dana L., AlterNet, 8.jun.06
By fighting against Plan B and other emergency contraception, President Bush left me with no choice but to have an unwanted abortion.

The War On Sex
Cristina Page, AlterNet, 18.may.06
"Shocking as it may be, there is not one pro-life organization in the United States that supports the use of contraception. Instead the pro-life movement is the constant opponent of every single effort to provide Americans with the ability to prevent unwanted pregnancies."

Why the Religious Right Fights Cancer Prevention
Gene Gerard, AlterNet, 13.jun.06
Conservative religious groups have caused an uproar by opposing the development of a vaccine for the second-deadliest cancer for women. "One of the most vocal opponents was the Family Research Council. The council, according to its mission statement, 'promotes the Judeo-Christian worldview as the basis for a just, free, and stable society.' Last October the council's president, Tony Perkins, spoke against the vaccine. 'Our concern," he said, "is that this vaccine will be marketed to a segment of the population that should be getting a message about abstinence. It sends the wrong message.' He went on to say that he would not vaccinate his 13-year-old daughter."

See Dick Be Jane
Julia Reischel, Broward/Palm Beach New Times, 18.may.06
The country's youngest transgender child is ready for school. But is school ready for her? "Born a biological male whom the family named Nicholas, Nicole today dresses, acts, and lives like a girl. She's been insisting she's female since she could talk, say the Andersons, who asked that their real names not be used for this article. 'He has always been attracted to the flowers, the bright colors, his Barbie dolls, and his beloved mermaids,' Lauren says, using the male pronoun for her child. In fact, talking with Lauren, who fully supports Nicole's desire to live as a girl, it's clear that the family is still working out the grammar of how to refer to its youngest."

- back to top -

Other news and commentary of note:

Governors push access to preschool
Kavan Peterson, Stateline.org, 18.may.06
Heeding studies showing that investing money in kids before kindergarten increases their chances of graduating and staying out of jail, nearly half of governors this year are pushing for -- and many are getting -- more funding for preschool education.

Lawmakers set new ages for marriage
Daniel C. Vock, Stateline.org, 1.jun.06
Raising the legal marrying age for teens too young to vote or even drive proved challenging as legislators struggled with the possible effects on abortion rates, welfare rolls, citizens’ privacy and the nature of marriage itself.

Female Pundits Could Use Help With Hate Mail
Heidi Schnakenberg, Women's eNews, 24.may.06
When Heidi Schnakenberg took up opinion writing she had no idea that she would come under such savage personal attack. Female pundits, she says, take special flak and can be driven into retreat if they don't have enough moral support.

When Mom Dies
Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, Common Dreams, 2.jun.06
"Despite… the fundamental decency of the majority of the American people, ours is in many ways not a society of which we can be proud. The decency of the American people is not moving up the ladder. This troubled our mothers. And it troubles us."

Rejecting The YOYOs
Jared Bernstein, TomPaine.com, 30.may.06
"Under YOYOism, whatever economic challenges we face as a nation -- globalization, health care, inequality -- the best solution is for people to fend for themselves. Its central goal is to shift economic risks from the government and corporations onto individuals and their families. …We need an alternative vision, one that supports individual freedom but also emphasizes that such freedom is best realized with a more collaborative approach to meeting the challenges we face. The message is simple: We’re in this together, or WITT."

How Corporate America Perpetuates the Health Care Crisis
David Sirota, AlterNet, 22.may.06
"The problems undermining America on a daily basis can be fixed if our government starts representing the interests of ordinary people."

Myth of the Liberal Nanny State
Joshua Holland, AlterNet, 8.jun.06
Economist Dean Baker lays waste to one of the most cherished myths of conservative philosophy. "Well, you go through a list of policies, and [conservatives] want to act like the way the market works today -- the way the economy's structured -- that it's simply the natural course of things. They didn't do it; it just evolved that way. And what I'm trying to argue is that they did do it."

Why White People Are Afraid
Robert Jensen, AlterNet, 7.jun.06
What do white people have to be afraid of in a world structured on white privilege? Their own fears. "If white privilege -- along with the other kinds of privilege many of us have living in the middle class and above in an imperialist country that dominates much of the rest of the world -- were to evaporate, the distribution of resources in the United States and in the world would change, and that would be a good thing. We would have less. That redistribution of wealth would be fairer and more just. But in a world in which people have become used to affluence and material comfort, that possibility can be scary."

- back to top -