link-love: gender boxes, sexual fluidity, and extreme breastfeeding

These are excerpts from some posts worth reading if you haven't already:

Gender boxes limit all kids by Margot Magowan at Reel Girls
A thoughtful post with helpful, practical advice for parents:

I do have some tactics to suggest for parents to deal with sexism/ gender-pressure, but before I even go into that, it’s really important not to let this issue devolve into: who has it worse, girls or boys? When we create rigid gender boxes for our kids, everyone loses out. Everyone. This is about raising healthy, happy, children, helping their brains grow so that they can reach their potential. [...]

Here’s the thing: Most kids like to play with dolls, but we label them “dolls” or “action figures.” Most kids enjoy pushing objects on wheels, but we sell them either trucks or babystrollers. As I wrote, most kids would have fun painting their nails if they thought it was OK to do so. Most kids, while playing outside will pick up sticks and occasionally poke each other with them. Most parents respond to that same act with “Boys will be boys” or “Sweetie, stop that! You’ll hurt yourself and rip your dress.” [...]

quizzical mama's feminist vision at the mamafesto

Quizzical mama aka Anne G. Sabo

I was proud to be featured at The Mamafesto's "This Is What A Feminist Looks Like" series this week. In case you missed it, here's a link to it. And below is a brief excerpt.

At least here in the US, I see working for more comprehensive, paid parental leave as one of the most pressing items on the agenda for feminism. With only 6 to 12 weeks of maternity leave, many new moms opt to sacrifice their careers to stay home with their children, and for good reasons too, breastfeeding being one of them. This pattern will continue to reinforce traditional gender roles to the detriment of women and men. Cut to Norway, where political groups are now lobbing for an even more equal division of the one-year parental leave between the parents, lest the women lag behind in the workforce in terms of promotion and retirement plans.

french parenting is not for me

Pamela Druckerman: wannabe French

I got interested in Pamela Druckerman's memoir Bringing up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting based on a couple of reviews that suggested I had some things in common with French moms. As it turns out, we got just about nothing in common. Nor do I care much for their approach to parenting.

Druckerman, on the other hand, does. Druckerman is practically drooling in awe over French moms' approach to parenting, from how they get their kids to sleep, eat, and behave so well, to their attention to adult time and sassy looks.

Of course, all these things sound great. But then take a minute to pause as Druckerman learns to do the French way with her children and consider this: practicing the pause in terms of (not) checking on their babies when they are learning to "do their nights" when only a few days or weeks old (and at least by three months) is the same as Ferberizing or even crying it out at a very young age. It only has a different name and since "everyone" in France practices it, nobody worries about it either.

different cultural approaches to parenting and uses of homes: books i'd like to read

Summer arrived this past weekend just in time for spring break, and it makes me want to kick back and relax in the sunshine with a good book. Of course, that's not so easily done when you have a 3-year-old home from preschool all week, but should the opportunity arise, these are a few of the books I'm eager to get my nose into:

• Bringing Up Bebe: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting by Pamela Druckerman.
  The balanced, laissez-faire style of parenting her memoir recounts appeals to my own approach to parenting. "Most French children, unlike many of their American counterparts, did not need to be entertained constantly by their parents," explains Druckerman to NPR. — "'French children seem to be able to play by themselves in a way.' Some might see this scenario as evidence that the French are less thrilled with having children and are more selfish as parents than their American counterparts who are constantly playing with their children. But Druckerman does not think this is the case. 'The French view is really one of balance, I think. ... What French women would tell me over and over is, it's very important that no part of your life — not being a mom, not being a worker, not being a wife — overwhelms the other part.'"

why you shouldn't trust sleep experts {featured read}

I've always been skeptical to the universally prescriptive measures of sleep experts, so this new survey of 300 sleep studies analyzing more than a century of sleep experts' research, stood out to me for at least a couple of reasons. 1) For more than a century, children have consistently gotten less sleep than recommended guidelines. 2) Recommended guidelines change over time and appear to be pretty subjective. 3) The hectic pace of modern life has been blamed as the culprit throughout all the surveyed studies, dating from the late 19th century.

So perhaps they do need more sleep. But in reality, there is almost no evidence about how much sleep kids truly need to function their best. “We think for no particularly good reason that kids need more sleep than they’re getting,” says [senior author Tim Olds, a professor of health sciences at the University of South Australia in Adelaide, who studies health and how we use our time]. “People are always recommending kids sleep more than they do.” “Every so often a group of blokes get together and say, What do you recommend, boys? Should we push it up to 9 hours, 15 minutes? It really is like that, honestly. It’s an arbitrary public-health line in the sand that people draw.”
...
The take-home message, according to Olds? “Never trust sleep experts.”

Read the whole article at Time Healthland: A History of Kids and Sleep: Why They Never Get Enough

i could be tilling the soil

I am a stay-at-home-mama-writer who struggles with guilt. How about you? If you're a stay-at-home-parent who's also pursuing your own work, do you feel guilt too?

I posed this question to a friend and fellow mama-writer in town at a book reading she had from her hot-off-the-press stay-at-home mom manual earlier this week (cover pictured). She answered no, not so much; your standards sort of slide, she explained (as a mother of two).

I know I probably worry too much because I dread so much being anything like my mom. I also know it's my responsibility, and certainly not my child's, to set the boundaries I need to ensure I get enough done of what's important for me to stay sane.

We live in a more child oriented time than ever. Many of us structure our lives around our new babies (unlike tiger moms and French parents who apparently expect a baby to smoothly fit into the life they already have). I've written that:

good arguing is good for the family

Research shows that arguing can be good for your marriage, but only if it's done right, reports the Star Tribune. "There's a difference between 'good fighting' and 'bad fighting,' and the latter can be as destructive as the former is beneficial."

I grew up in a house of anger and never knew there was such a thing as "good" or "constructive" arguing until I met the family of my first boyfriend. A raised voice still reduces my body to a pit of dread. In my head, I know that it can be totally fine and healthy to engage in a heated argument, but my body just doesn't trust it.

I really struggle with this one, because I want to be a good role model for Lilly. I want to be able to demonstrate constructive-issue-oriented arguing to her (as opposed to destructive-people-oriented, intentionally hurtful and abusive fighting) but I still haven't been able to have an argument with Leighton without feeling death, even if, when looking back on it, the argument was in fact quite "good," and with a sense of closure, resolution, at the end. Says William Doherty, a professor in the University of Minnesota's Department of Family Social Science, about arguing in front of your children:

bad parenting: how much slack should we cut parents?

There's a post over at BlogHer that has provoked quite the storm of responses this past week, essentially for provoking moms who feel the author Issa Waters (of the blog Love Live Grow) isn't cutting them enough slack when she argues that "parenting isn't hard." But the claim is rhetorical, for Issa immediately states that, "okay, sometimes it is hard." Her point is that we cannot excuse abusive parenting with the dismissive "parenting is hard." Excerpt:

Sometimes I participate in a discussion about someone in public being mean to their child. By “being mean” I mean spanking, slapping, grabbing, yanking, dragging, yelling, name-calling, belittling, punishing and so forth. And there’s always someone in these discussions ready to declare that “parenting is hard” and we should therefore cut the parent some slack. And I just reject this wholeheartedly. It is not hard to not treat people like shit. Children are small, dependent people, and we should be doubly sure not to treat them like shit.

Parenting is the very act of caring for these smaller people. It should not be synonymous with treating them in abusive ways.

Say I’m in a McDonald’s. In a booth near me is what appears to be a romantically involved man and woman enjoying a meal together. Near the end of the meal, the woman accidentally knocks her soda over and it spills over the table and floor. The man leaps to his feet and yells, “Oh my god! I told you to be careful with that!” He grabs her by the arm and drags her out of the booth. “That’s the last time you get to have a medium drink!” He shoves her off to the side while he starts to clean up. “Go stand by the door, we’re going home right now!” After an initial little gasp at the spilled drink, the woman remains silent, body slack, eyes averted.

more business of being born

More Business of Being Born premiered this week in Los Angeles. I loved Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein's first documentary The Business of Being Born with its empowering messages for women to claim their power to birth on their terms, and this promises to be a solid follow-up.



About the film: Executive Producer Ricki Lake and Filmmaker Abby Epstein follow their landmark documentary, The Business of Being Born, with an all-new, four part DVD series that continues their provocative and entertaining exploration of the modern maternity care system. More Business of Being Born, available on November 8th, 2011, offers a practical look at birthing options as well as poignant celebrity birth stories from stars including Alanis Morissette, Gisele Bundchen, Christy Turlington-Burns, Cindy Crawford, Molly Ringwald, Kimberly Williams-Paisley and Melissa Joan Hart.

why you should read banned books to your kids

We're nearing the end of Banned Books Week, an appropriate time to introduce your child to Captain Underpants if you haven't already. Captain Underpants is the widely popular children's books series by awarded author Dav Pilkey. Diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia in elementary school, he was frequently reprimanded for his behavior in class and often sat at a desk in the school hallway where he created the Captain Underpants character: a superhero who is kind and nice to everyone, especially to children. In the book series, he is the alter ego of the evil principal hypnotized to think he is Captain Underpants.

Apparently, some think this sends too unruly of a message to kids. The series has been banned in some schools for encouraging children to disobey authority.

battle hymn of the troll mother

I finally got around to reading Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (2011), which caused the mama Blogosphere to explode in outrage against this über strict mother who denies her daughters all fun and play, forcing them instead to work hard at academics and music through constant monitoring, threats and punishment. I can see now how it struck such a nerve with people. Why? Because while in the US we take pride in our right to individual freedom and the pursuit of happiness, our culture nevertheless places an outrageously high price on accomplishment and success. Which is what Chua claims she ensured for her children through rigid enforcement of music practice and drilling for hours on end until excellence was achieved.

when all men are potential pedophiles: the park & rec board weighs in on "proper swimwear"

The hostility punched me in my gut as I entered the meeting room last night. I was there to talk about this summer's "pool attire" incident when I was told to put a top on my three-year-old daughter. I explained as I've already done to the pool manager and the pool manager's supervisor, that I find the request offensive in its sexualization of little girls. I also see the matter as beyond the pool staff's area of jurisdiction, which when you look at the pool rules has everything to to with the sanitariness and proper functioning of the pool water (swim diapers required for children not potty trained; no street wear like "cut-offs" and "t-shirts" whose fibers can clog pool filters; no spitting or blowing nose in the pool water; no infectious disease), and the physical safety of the pool patrons (no running, pushing, or alcohol; diving only in designated areas; and diving board and climbing walls only allowed for "good swimmers"). Otherwise, the safety of the child is the parent's responsibility: "children 8 years of age and under must be accompanied and supervised (within arms reach at all times) by responsible person 15 years of age or older." In other words, whether to have my daughter wear a top or not is my decision, which I make based on my child's level of comfort, and mine, and whatever other factor I deem wise to take into consideration.

This is proper swimwear (at the beach in Norway in June.)

In reality, I think the issue is moot. There is at this point not an upper age limit for toplessness stipulated in the rules at our local pool, and it's not like you're seeing girls or women strut around topfree over there when the pool's open. In our culture, a girl wants to wear a top. As many have said chiming in on this issue, any girl will require a top herself by the time she turns five. Even my Lilly wants to wear a top (to my dismay) because she wants to look like me. It's just that the top feels so uncomfortable, so she'll take if off (to my relief). But as she grows older, she'll want even more to look like her peers. And what they wear is limited by what's available in stores, much of which is made for kids to emulate pop stars. For heavens sake; they make bikinis with tops for babies a mere months old.

different people

"Wow, people are really white around here!" exclaimed my friend. She'd driven all the way down from the cities to join Lilly and I at the City pool, the idea being our three-year-old kids could play in the water while we got a chance to catch up. I realize I can be a bit slow at times but my first thought was, "they're tanner in the cities?"

We actually have a sizable Latino/a population in our small college town but you won't see many of them at the pool. Perhaps partly due to the obscene cost of the pool passes. But I think it has more to do with our town's segregation of "different people" to the outskirts of town. The heaviest Latino/a inhabited neighborhood is a mobile-park located on the northeast side of town. Our City pool, on the other hand, is situated smack in the middle of the well-kept houses and gardens of white upper middle class families who also happen to live close by the golf course. Sadly, I can't think of one child of color among Lilly's friends.

Laura Baker Services Association, the school and home of many children and adults with developmental disabilities is located close to one of the colleges in a very nice residential neighborhood of historic houses, but while efforts are made to integrate with the community, this population remains on the outskirts too. Originally a school for people with developmental disabilities, it now also offers services to families in the community, including respite care services.

"proper swimwear:" why sexualize and discriminate against little girls?

Why can't this be "proper swimwear"?
Mail Online

I've been pretty worked up this week since we were told at the city pool last Sunday that Lilly, who just turned three, had to put a top on. The pool manager has since clarified that "proper swimwear" requires a top for girls from when they are at least of school age, which I'm still not happy about. I asked her to bring it up with her supervisor and City Council, and am working on a letter to our local newspaper.

I am also working on a longer article about this for the Sexy Mama column at Good Vibrations Magazine; stay tune for that. In the meantime, I'd like to hear what you think about this. -- What message is this giving young girls? Does it seem reasonable to you to require girls as young as five to cover up? Or might you consider this sexualizing girls as young as five or six. A gender discriminating issue, in fact, allowing boys--and men--to swim, play, and roam naked from the waist up while the female sex, be they five or fifty, are asked to cover up their breasts, -- be they there or not.

Also, feel free to contribute to the discussion about this on Facebook, here or here.

Update Sat. July 23: My article on this at Good Vibrations Magazine: "Proper Swimwear" for a Toddler Girl Includes a Top?! 

Update Wed. July 27: After today's publication of my letter about this incident to our local newspaper, the pool manager's supervisor, which would be the head of the Park and Recreation Advisory Board, finally called. She told me the board had discussed the "pool attire" incident at last week's meeting and concluded that for girls, "proper swimwear" implies tops for girls age five and up. I am not done pursuing this matter. Please; I'd like to hear from more of you what you think about this.

happy moms?

It's summer time, which means "fellesferie" (literally "all together vacation") in Norway;  basically, everyone's off for the month of July, vacationing.

 (On a 1 1/2  hr. ferry "cruise" of Lake Superior around Duluth during our three-night summer vacation there this summer.)

The interesting part about it, to me, is all the e-mails and facebook status updates I've been receiving from friends in my native Norway, telling me that, yes, they're having a splendid time, though it's raining a lot ... and it gets kind of hard to be with the kids all the time like that.

My response? "See?! It really is really hard, huh! To parent a child full time." (if not in so many words.)

In this recent post I quoted studies that show how, in general, moms in the US feel overwhelmed, while Scandinavian moms feel happy.

unhappy moms

The New York Magazine article about Why Parents Hate Parenting that I've talked about earlier, quotes this online discussion between moms:

(Photo: Jessica Todd Harper, from the New York Magazine article)

"MOMS: Ever feel alone in how you perceive this role? I swear I feel like I’m surrounded by women who were once smart & interesting but have become zombies who only talk about soccer and coupons.

This was an opening gambit on UrbanBaby this past April. It could have devolved into a sanctimommy pile-on. It didn’t.

I totally feel this way.

I am a f/t wohm—Work Outside the Home Mom—have a career, and I don’t feel smart or interesting anymore! I don’t talk about soccer or coupons, but just feel too tired to talk about anything that interesting.

I freely admit that I have gained “more” than I have lost by becoming a parent, but I still miss aspects of my old life."

I'm beginning to feel the full effects of mommy mush brain. Maybe it's because I'm a full time mom again this summer, trying to make it about easygoing times and fun, and not just time efficiency, work and tasks. I suspect it also has something to do with the fact that she's been resisting naps since spring a year ago and now will only nap occasionally. Meaning that by dinner time, I feel fried most days. More and more, during the hours between 3 and 5 p.m., I feel "ill," to use the words of a mama friend of mine in town.

In any case, I don't feel smart or interesting anymore, and I find myself avoiding situations where my shot brain would be put on the spot.

why parents hate parenting

This article in the New York Magazine, All Joy and No fun, about why parents hate parenting, reports some pretty interesting statistics on how parents in the US feel overwhelmed by the task of parenting. We're exhausted, moms in particular miss their former lives of intellectual stimulation, we feel we fall short, and marriages suffer.

(Photo: Jennifer Todd Harper. Pictured is Harper when one of her twin babies.)

In countries where the social support system is in place to relieve parents, on the other hand, the numbers are different:

"One hates to invoke Scandinavia in stories about child-rearing, but it can’t be an accident that the one superbly designed study that said, unambiguously, that having kids makes you happier was done with Danish subjects." In short, "countries with stronger welfare systems produce more children—and happier parents.

in style

Cameron Diaz and I were born the same year, she in Long Beach, California, I in Oslo, Norway. We were children in the seventies, went to school in the eighties.

In 1981, Norway's first female prime minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland, was elected. Before serving as prime minister, she had worked as a physician, first at the Directorate of Health (Helsedirektoratet), after that as a doctor in Oslo's public school health service. In 1989, after her third term as prime minister, she was elected Director-General of the World Health Organization. In 2004, the Financial Times listed Brundtland the 4th most influential European over the last 25 years, behind Pope John Paul II, Mikhail Gorbachev and Margaret Thatcher.

"Gro" was also the mother of four and she looked a whole lot like my mom. And she told us that it was "best to be Norwegian."

(Photo of Gro Harlem Brundtland, courtsey nrk)

So though my mom was a stay-at-home mom with some part-time office gigs, I never questioned my opportunity to be just like "Gro" when I grew up; to have a career, and be a mom.

Diaz has another perspective. In InStyle's July issue, she explains, "I grew up in the '80s, when women who were powerful wore men's suits and couldn't have families and were tough as nails. Then in the '90s, women decided, Wait, I want to have kids and a career, I want it all. And now we're discovering in our first decade of the new century that you can't do all of it--not well--all at once. Sometimes you have to pick and choose. And that has to be good enough, having faith that you're doing the best that you can." (183)

Frankly, I am amazed and impressed by Diaz' perspective. I entered motherhood naively thinking I could continue to have a full-fledged career while being a full-fledged (as in fully present and attached) mom.

How wrong I was.

I guess, had I never left Norway, I might have stayed at home the first year of my child's life, on fully paid parental leave (established in 1946, it has grown steadily from 12 weeks in 1946 to 42 weeks, with no salary reduction, by 1993, or 52 weeks with a 20% reduction), and then gone back to work with my child in state subsidized daycare as almost all other moms in Norway do. And then I probably would have returned to a full-time career while perceiving myself a very well-attached and present mom for my child.

what is the ideal mama?

When speaking with fellow mamas in our small rural college town, I've been struck by how different their ideals for mothering are from the ones held by moms in Norway.

One mama I interviewed, who majored in women's studies and has a Master's in social work, talked to me about how she wants her son to see her as a person of her own, not just a mama the way she grew up seeing her selfless stay-at-home mom. She is also a devout attachment parenter who wants to be present for her child, and so she was home with him for the most part till he was one and has only worked part time after that when either her spouse is home with their son, or when her mom can watch him. When he turned 2, he was in daycare a few hours a week, and when he turned 3, he started at the Montessori pre-school in town. This has opened up some more hours for her to work.

It seemed to me she had attained a perfect balance for herself, based on her feminist and attachment parenting deals. Yet at the end of our interview, she expressed guilt for not living up to the ideal mama; a mama who's always home and present, not sending her son to daycare or pre-school.

In Norway, on the other hand, the ideal mama is a mom who returns to work full time after her paid parental leave (which she can take a full year of or split with her husband). This is the norm for urban middle class moms who set the leading standard for everyone else. This means that most children in Norway are in daycare from they're one, and it's not really questioned.

perceptions of a "housewife"

In the feature article ("Mama Wants a Brand-New Job") of the winter issue of Brain, Child: The Magazine for Thinking Mothers, Katy Read reports that "in a 2007 study by psychologists at Northwestrn, Princeton and Lawrence Universities, researchers measuring public perceptions of different groups found that "housewives" were perceived to be approximately as competent as elderly and mentally retarded people" (p. 34). This is the public sentiment (sentence?) I'm in for.

In an earlier post, I wrote about how I've been fretting this winter about where to settle with my little family; what kind of lifestyle I want for us. We've come to a decision: we're going to do our very best to make a living for ourselves here in the US and not move to my native Norway. I'm not going to put my soon-to-be 2 year old child in daycare; I want to continue to attachment parent her, no matter how hard and intense it is. Throughout this year, I'll be able to take turns with my husband writing and being with her while he finishes his thesis. After that, I might have less, and perhaps only her nap times, to write, depending on what my husband ends up doing. As of fall 2011, she'll be in preschool and so even if my husband is away from home all day, I'll at least have from around 8:30 till 11:15 or so to write. Plus nap time, if I'm lucky.

I'll continue to perceive myself as a writer and a mama, but in the eye of the public, I'll most likely be seen as a typical housewife. And now we all know how they're judged.