Apt. 11D

We Love Dooce

Dooce's reaction to Linda Hirshman:

My reaction then, I guess, is that here is my middle finger and here is me waving it at Linda Hirshman. This IS my choice. It is mine. I want to be at home with my child, not because my husband said I had to want it, or because my mom said that I had to want it, or because I am blinded by society’s bias toward women and their role in the family. I had the option of going to work outside the home or staying at home with my kid and I made a choice. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything more fundamentally feminist than exercising that choice.

Then, for the first time, she opened up comments on her blog. 1357 people spoke up.

Happy Housewives

In today's column, "The Happiest Housewives," John Tierney writes about a recent study of 5,000 married couples. Researchers found that women were most happy with husbands who were affectionate and understanding. After that, women were made most happy by primary bread winner husbands and tidy husbands.

(I know. Quite a shocker.)

"Women today expect more help around the home and more emotional engagement from their husbands," Wilcox says. "But they still want their husbands to be providers who give them financial security and freedom."

The blogosphere is going to go crazy with this one. Heh. Looking forward to it. Totally late getting the kids to school, but let me just add two points.

- Making a lot of money doesn't buy you out of picking up your socks.
- Women may be reporting that they prefer traditional relationships, but only because the two high earning model is too difficult to maintain -- packed weekends of chores, managing babysitters and cleaners, stress. What we need are new nontraditional relationships.

UPDATE: Funny response by Amanda.  Women are so weird, seriously. Who knew that having more money coming into the home would make women feel more secure? By god, next thing you know you’ll be telling me that women enjoy naps and trash TV, like honest-to-god human beings.

Is It Better In Europe?

Newsweek ran a troubling and contradictory article last week, entitled "Stuck In Place: The Myth of Women's Equality in Europe." (Thanks Jeremy.)

In the US, when a woman has a baby, she is entitled to 3 months unpaid leave. If she wants her job waiting for her, she has to find a sitter, pop on those nipple pads, and pump in the bathroom. Some European countries offer as much as three years paid leave. They have state sponsored daycare. Part time work is plentiful.

Which is better, Newsweek asks.

Well, Newsweek tells me that the European model isn't that great, because all those generous child leave policies mean that women take too much time off and never put in the time needed to get to the top of the career ladder. They end up with jobs, not careers. The representation of women in the top positions of business and politics is far lower than the U.S.

Newsweek didn't prove to me that child leave policies are solely responsible for the lower numbers of women in positions of power. Europeans may have more traditional ideas about women; it's possible for sexism to exist in economically liberal countries. (Later in the article, they sort of come around to that point.)

The goal of child-leave policies is to give parents options and balance. If parents wish to take time off, they can. If they want to return earlier and put in the hours necessary to reach the top of their profession, they can. You have to evaluate work-family programs based on how much flexibility it gives families and how content they are; these programs shouldn't be evaluated based on how they enable women to achieve power. Most propopents of work-family balance recognize that balance might mean not making senior partner.

How women with kids can get ahead is a whole different topic, but one of the best ways is to have a stay at home dad.

The Newsweek article also goes on to say that Europe isn't generous enough. There's not enough childcare in Germany. The tax programs discourage second incomes. The workplace is excessively rigid and doesn't offer enough flextime. What the hell is their point?

In bizarro world, the article proceeds to lecture European countries that they should do more to help working families. No inner thoughts about what we could learn from their example.

All things considered, I would rather be in Paris.

I know that Elizabeth has written about the Newsweek article, too. I didn't peek at her post, yet. Let's see if we got the same answer....

Sunday Night Journal

This weekend was seriously cold with a biting wind that knocked against you like a fat lady on the subway. Really all we could do was amuse ourselves inside.

Question of The Day

Homemade humus, organic eggs, spinach lasagna, free range chickens, seven grain bread, lentils, bean sprouts.

What is earthy-cruchy? Are you crunchy? Would you drive to 20 miles to Whole Foods for organic eggs (oh, the fossil fuel emissions) and spend five bucks more than what you could have picked up at Shop-Rite?

Crunchy Cons

Lovely day in LI. Just enough time to check e-mail and dash out a quick post before I have to nuke some Trader Joe's fish sticks and briani for dinner.

I'm a big fan of Trader Joe's. I like their burritos and organic stuff. I can spend five minutes nuking some frozen cod and still feel warm inside for giving my kids the good stuff.

It's also worth the trip just to see white people in dreadlocks. There is absolutely no counterculture out in here in the heartlands of New Jersey, and I'm craving it having lived on a Pottery Barn and Gap diet for far too long.

Actually, there doesn't seem to be a counterculture anywhere. A couple of days ago, we drove down the Bowery on our way to Chinatown and found that they put a Whole Foods there. Now, there isn't wrong with a Whole Foods. It just doesn't belong there. I used to step over junkies on the way to poetry slams there back in the mid-80s. Of course, I was scared out of my mind that I was going to get jumped at the next corner, but that's not the point.

Amidst my e-mail are two notes from my dad. He points to a new book, Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, ... America (or at least the Republican Party)

I haven't read it, but it appears that the main argument is that there are a group of conservatives who, like liberals, reject consumerism and embrace environmentalism, while retaining certain core conservative values. Has anybody else looked at it?

Dad then forwarded a comment by Jon Podhoretz about this book. It also provides a big-tent excuse for "sanctimommy" parenting, which is not so much about raising your own kids as you see fit but more about finding other mothers and fathers wanting because they're not as austere and controlling as you are. There's a lot of sanctimommying over at the Crunchy Con blog.

Two points for JPod for giving me the term "sanctimommying." Snort.

UPDATE: I'm looking forward to reading what Russell has to say about the book.

UPDATE2: OK, so I've been getting up to speed on the conservative blogs about this book. I'm enjoying the debate about crunchiness sans politics avec class. Read Ross Douthat:

Sure, the three dollars extra for the free-range chicken isn't a lot, but over time the cost of a Whole Foods (or "Whole Paycheck," as a friend calls it) lifestyle tends to add up, especially when you're talking about the kind of working-class families that are most likely to have the kind of traditional instincts we're interested in cultivating. There's a reason that birkenstocks and free-range chickens and rambling old Victorian houses and energy-efficient cars tend to be associated with the lifestyle of upper-middle-class liberals, and it's that somewhere in the last half-century, the "crunchy" lifestyle got really expensive. And I think this is one of the dangers hidden in the whole "crunchy" meme (if I'm allowed to use a Richard Dawkins-coined word on a "crunchy" website), which is that it runs the risk of being assimilated too easily into the culture of consumer capitalism, as just another "lifestyle choice" for upper-middle-class people who like that sort of thing, and can afford to choose it.

Work Shmerk

Yesterday, I was a little frustrated, because I haven't gotten any work done in ages. Things are out of balance. I am haunted by the fear that opportunities are whizzing by and others are snatching them up.

Today, I'm having fun. Work shmerk. My kids are warm and cuddly and we are free and we're driving all over the tri-state area to meet up with cool friends. When Steve came home last night, Ian and I told him about the playdate at Tamar's. (Thanks, Tamar!) Ian said with the big dimpled smile that doesn't leave his face these days, "Cats. Black and white. Jump on tree. Drums. Guitar. Sing and dance. "

Jonah woke up at 6:00 so that he could talk to Steve before he left for work at 6:45. Still half conscious, I could hear him talking to Steve while he showered. Through the shower curtain, Jonah related his battles on Age of Empires. "And then I'm the Spanish and we are fighting the Huns and the Vikings and the Franks and my guys got the battering ram and then we crushed the Huns and we went to the town center and then we found the gold."

In an hour, we will drive to Long Island for a visit to Margie and the girls who perch on chairs drawing pictures of lines and faces for hours on end. Jonah will join them, and Ian will run into the basement to find their train set. Margie and I will talk about our writing projects and life. We'll sit on the kitchen table and quietly admire the four kids who are growing stronger every day.

Failing Multi-tasking 101

One of the reason that I like reading Lilek's Bleat is to get inspiration. He watches a kid AND writes three columns AND scrubs the tub with a toothbrush AND writes a blog AND scans in pictures of matchbook covers AND smokes a cigar AND calls into a wacko radio show AND pauses to appreciate the perfectness of the world under the current administration.

I am humbled before the master of multitasking. Lately, I am pleased if I nudge my two kids through the day with three meals and a clean outfit. If I get in a shower, it's a gold star day.

I had a good run of it. After my oldest was born, I learned how to work during naps. Even pumped out a dissertation during those couple hours of silence. I worked in the evenings. I also had some daycare back in those old days. Then I had another kid. A kid with issues. Still, it was okay, because he took two naps a day and the older one started school. Moving to the suburbs saved time in some ways, but took more time in other ways.

This fall, Ian stopped napping. I now have only two hours a day to myself, while he is in school. Hardly enough time to answer e-mail and scan the paper. Many days, I don't have a chance to even use those two hours for work, because I have an appointment with the school, the doctor, the accountant. Or I have to buy some more jeans, because Jonah's new pants are too big and kept falling down and the kids made fun of him all day sending him home in tears. Those two hours routinely get eaten up by newly hatched crises.

As Steve's work responsibilities have mounted, he has managed to keep his hours constant only because he works even harder during the day. He still comes home at 7:00, but is more wrung out. I had to pick up some slack at home.

All that illness this month meant zero work. The kids are off this week from school -- zero work.

I just made a list of the half written or half conceived projects that I have brewing. Seven projects. Zero progress.

Ian's school just nixed the idea of daycare for him. He still needs too much individual attention to get his speech up to snuff. They thought that maybe a home-based babysitter might work, so I have to go into the mommy underground to find one. I think that a couple of afternoons a week might work out okay.

I guess it would be easier if I just did one thing. If I only watched the kids and did that well or if I only worked and did that well. But I want both. Some days, it works out. Some days, not so much.

Academic Annoyances Big and Small

The two big stories on the academic front are Larry Summers (see Burke and Bitch and Kieran) and student e-mail (Burke, Kieran and Dan).

UPDATE: Meg from Xoom was misquoted by the Times. We at 11D are big fans of Meg and are very, very sore at the Times for messing with our buddy.

Why Tierney Is Wrong

My dad and I are debating Tierney's column via e-mail. Tierney wrote that African-American support for vouchers could lead to party realignment and the passage of new voucher bills.

Dad writes in his last e-mail:

But the PROBLEM remains, the contradiction, as Marx would say: upward-aspiring black parents watching their kids going to crappy public schools, falling behind more and more every year, while Democratic politicians send their kids to private schools and extol the merits of public education.
Two things can happen: the black parents can say, "Oh, OK, the problem's insoluble, we'll just have to take it." Or else, at some point, there might be a different reaction.
A dream can be deferred and deferred and finally dried up, like a raisin in the sun. Or it can explode.

My far less eloquent response:

But that's not the situtation at all. What's happening is that there are a few black leaders who are demanding vouchers. However, most black leaders are deeply indebted to the urban Democratic machine, which is in bed with the unions; they'll never come out in favor of vouchers. Public opinion polls show that blacks want vouchers, but many poor blacks don't vote. The African-Americans who do vote are highly, highly unlikely to vote Republican.

Upwardly mobile blacks are moving to the suburbs. The rest just have to suck it up like they've always done.

No change in party affiliation. No change in vouchers.