Penny Wiseacre

When to nurse a grievance

Summer vacation season is looming, which means that we're about to enter the point in the yearly journalism cycle where someone, somewhere, becomes a "lactivist" because they were asked to cover up while nursing at an airport/on an airplane/at the pool/at the Starbucks/at Disney/at a local park/at a big-box store [1], and their outrage, it must be shared with all of us.

I don't doubt that these incidents still happen, even in 2014, even with the reliable spate of TV news coverage about nurse-ins, even with angry blog posts circulated among like-minded fellows on Facebook, even with hashtags on Twitter.

I don't doubt it's distressing when it happens to you. It is always distressing when some presumptuous stranger swoops into a situation sans context and presumes to say, "Parenting: You're doing it wrong!"

But I really can't get worked up about it. Why? Because breastfeeding in the U.S.A. is a privilege indicator, and I have yet to see anyone who is dealing with the "Please cover up" gaffe admit that, then springboard into saying, "I admit it's a privilege. Let's make it an uncontested right."

And yes, breastfeeding in the U.S.A. is a privilege.

Putting aside the financial investment in what lots of people call the low-cost way to feed your baby -- I'm talking about lactation consultants, breast pump rentals, breast pump purchases, the nursing bras and/or clothes you wear to accommodate nursing or pumping, the pads, the cream, etc. -- putting aside the lucrative breastfeeding customer, let's examine exactly what it takes to make nursing work.

It takes time.

More specifically, it takes having a measure of control over your time. In the U.S., being able to exert some autonomy over your schedule is a side effect of economic and/or professional privilege.

Support for nursing starts with the ability to take paid family leave. (One bit of data to support this: In California, the median duration of breastfeeding doubled once paid family leave was introduced as state policy.) Mothers who return to work before six weeks postpartum are three times more likely to stop breastfeeding. In the U.S., 70% of pregnant women are working, and half of them will be back on the job five weeks after they give birth.

On a national level, if you are in the bottom quartile (25%) of wage-earners, you have a 5% chance of having paid family leave and only a 30% of having paid sick leave. Your good news? You have a 78% chance of being allowed unpaid parental leave. Good luck saving up the cash to take it on your $378/week salary.

We live in one of THREE countries in the entire world without mandatory paid parental leave policy on a national level. We make it harder for lower-income mothers to feed their babies cheaply, i.e. on breastmilk, which is yet another staggering example of how freakin' expensive it is to be poor. Save The Children agrees: In 2012, the U.S. ranked last on the breastfeeding policy scorecard.

So if we're going to get worked up over nursing in America, get worked up over the fact that we've turned something that could benefit all children into a deeply privileged class signifier. Women who nurse for more than a few weeks do so because they can afford to and because they have social and professional capital. They aren't harassed at work when insisting that their employer comply with legal requirements for pumping.

THIS is what I would like to see covered in the news. This is what I want to see people who say they support nursing to get fired up about. Protest because employers are screwing over non-white-collar women who happen to know their rights. Protest to strike the "public indecency" that don't specifically exempt breastfeeding in public from enforcement. Protest because our national policymakers don't give a shit about giving working-class families the same strong start that professional ones enjoy [2].

But if it's mostly complaining at a company because one or more of their employees isn't up on company policy? Eh. Good for you for making companies accountable to their customers. Now let's work on making society accountable to the people who take care of its smallest, most vulnerable members.

[1] I nursed in public -- including on airplanes -- and I never, ever heard a peep out of anyone. To this day, I am surprised nobody gave me a hard time. I have the exact opposite of Resting Bitchface -- really, I'm the human equivalent of a dolphin -- and total strangers often confuse my normal expression for an open invitation to them reading, "Please, open your mouth and monologue at me without preamble or courtesy."

[2] If you're ready to fight for universal paid family leave in the U.S., Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) introduced the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act (FAMILY Act). It's not likely to pass in the current House and Senate, but it doesn't hurt to put pressure on your congressperson to vote for it -- or to explain to you why he or she won't. Also, feel free to support Family Values @ Work, which is hoping to fight for paid leave on a city-by-city and state-by-state basis, pending the day Congress gets its head out of its collective ass.

Why "Whiny Modern Parents" might actually have cause to complain

Normally, I love the Motherlode, but today's post, "Hey, Whiny Modern Parents, Tell Us What You Love About the Gig," sent me on a bit of a rage bender. You can credit the good, old-fashioned cocktail of generational myopia and current affairs ignorance this commenter displays:

I would be interested in some discussion of why today’s parents complain so much. No previous generation has made so many mountains out of molehills, nor do I ever recall my peers, relatives and forbears having so much difficulty with the chores of daily life. All my friends with children work, as did my mother, aunts and both of my grandmothers. They were fun and vibrant. Now all you hear is “sleep-deprived,” “too busy to shower,” “too frazzled to cook — get takeout,” “kids are sooo expensive,” etc. etc.

On the Internet, the mommy bloggers, “parent confession” and discussion sites heavily focus on the negative as does Motherlode. And in real life, most of the under-35 parents I know are in a constant hand-to-brow state of self-pity. It’s rather irritating esp since there are far more safety nets and handouts for parents today than for previous generations, not all of whom lived like June Cleaver.

Why might today's parents complain more? Because the America in which we are parenting hosts a much more challenging economic environment than the America of even 20 years ago, much less 40 or 60. Let us count the stressors that a) reduce all that vibrant fun and b) puncture the myth that the America of yesteryear was some dystopian hellscape lacking social safety nets:

1. Young adults are grappling with rampant unemployment and/or a permanent, long-lasting lag in earnings or financial well-being. Per David Frum, a family headed today by people between the ages of 35 and 44 will be on average nearly 70 percent -poorer than its counterpart in 1984. I would hazard that it's easier to be vital and joyful when your household earning power goes seventy percent further.

2. Perhaps women are less vital and joyful because the persistent salary gap between men and women means that women have a significant retirement savings shortfall relative to men. This after a lifetime of earning less. And bear in mind, women who are mothers face systemic salary discrimination. Still feeling that zip-a-dee-doo-dah about being a working parent in the 21st century?

(Side note: You would think that men, who are increasingly unhappy and stressed about conditions in the U.S. workplace, would be a lot more vocal about how equal pay benefits the entire family. In a country where two-thirds of families are either helmed by a woman breadwinner or co-breadwinner, you'd think that dudes would be into fair pay for all, because it benefits them too.)

3. Pregnant women and caregivers face discrimination and harassment on the job. So you can see where a worker may find it hard to be joyful about, say, a parent's broken hip or a baby's ear infection when she goes from that stressful and unpleasant situation to a boss who will punish her for it on the job.

4. As moms in the workforce get older, the gender pay gap worsens. So, you know, right around college-paying time. So, are parents allowed to start whining yet?

5. Although U.S. productivity has surged, so have hours worked -- while salaries have stayed flat for nearly 15 years. So parents are spending more time at work for less money. Think they might be taking that stressor home with them?

6. Not only do working parents face long hours for less (actual) pay, they face the terror of a wildly unregulated day-care system where the costs for having someone else watch your child can exceed a year's college tuition.

7. Did anyone say student loans? An entire generation of young professionals -- if they're lucky enough to be employed -- is struggling with $1.2 trillion in student loans. While it's delightful that today's young scholars are referred to as excellent revenue sources, what on account of how they can never, ever, ever discharge those loans in bankruptcy and they pay interest rates far, far higher than bazillion-dollar banks have to on their loans, the fact is: Student loan payments can seriously damage your career and love prospects.

Now try being all zesty and peppy about raising kids when you have loan repayments flying out the door on top of the daycare fees that cost more than your college tuition.

It bears repeating: People who are raising children in today's America are facing financial and societal pressures that parents did not have 20, 40, 60 years ago. We are shorter on money and time and opportunity.

To me, the real miracle is that anyone is still taking that tremendous leap of optimism and saying, "Yes. I will do this. I will raise a person in this world,." There's joy in that commitment to the future. Even if it's not the vital, fun type that others would prefer we display.

The great thing about having three kids this weekend? I don't have to keep two of them

We had three kids under one roof this weekend, and it was pretty awesome.

My niece had her sixteenth birthday party at her family's cabin up in mountains in Calaveras county. (No frogs, jumping or otherwise, in attendance.) Her brothers sensibly said, "A weekend trapped in the snowy woods with six tenth grade girls and one bathroom? No thank you." And thus it came to pass they stayed with us.

I've known my nephews since they were fetuses, cuddled them as toddlers, delighted in observing every new personality trait that emerges and shapes them. And one of the most awesome things about these guys is how patient they are with their small cousin. Will and Aaron will spend hours playing with Trixie, redirecting her with their blunt hammer of enthusiasm, pushing her to do things that she'd never do on her own. The kid I have wouldn't have decided it's fun to climb an eight-foot ladder and dance the robot in an attic -- not on her own, she wouldn't. But guess who now loves scrambling up and down ladders? The great thing about 10 and 12 year old boys is that they don't read parenting websites, so they don't really worry about things like safety or developmental appropriateness.

This is how the weekend went: We picked up the boys at 6 p.m. on Friday, and we basically did not have to do a thing with any of the three children for the rest of the weekend. I mean, I left out big bowls of sliced fruit and kept two pitchers of ice water in the fridge, but all I saw all weekend were two blond blurs and a small ginger one, then a door would close as my daughter shrilled, "We need our privacy to play!"

(At night, we made a big deal out of the boys having the run of the TV as a reward for being so patient with their cousin. They elected for Batman the first night. The second night, they saw Liberace's star turn on the Batman TV series. I am not sure whether or not we have become enshrined as a fond childhood memory or if we are going to star in an article on childhood trauma.)

The boys made towers out of Duplos and Bristle Blocks, knocked them down, and made more towers. They played hide-and-seek for hours. They played dress-up. They read books -- at one point, chasing Trix around the house to read her the unfortunately long-winded Larry and Friends*.

It was so weird having wide open tracts of free time without having to elaborately rearrange my schedule beforehand. I read two books. I bought a flat of strawberries and made ten half-pint jars of jam. I cleaned the refrigerator, cooked two casseroles, collected chicken eggs, worked out, had brunch with my girlfriends, napped for two hours yesterday ... I write it all out and it's like a beautiful, boring dream.

Of course, after the beloved cousins went home this evening, my daughter stood on the porch, sobbing, "Take me with you! I want to come!"

I feel for her. It's hard to come down from a great weekend and return to reality.

 

 

* I purchased this book after reading about it on Brain Pickings, and boy, do I regret it. There is no plot beyond "Larry has many hipster arty friends, and you are going to get everyone's biographies in excruciating detail." Also, it is vaguely racist. My daughter likes the book if each page is boiled down to two sentences. When poor Will tried to read the whole thing, there was a point where Trix said, "I need to take a break and read another book in the middle."

In retrospect, taking a child's book endorsement from someone who a) does not have to read to a child on the regular, and b) makes a living by gnawing on the thinky books of the day was probably not going to work well.

Viviparous (Clap it out!), or how a biologist is born

Two notes:

1. Welcome, anyone who came here courtesy of the forum thread on Television Without Pity. I'm so glad you clicked. I'm doing a Lenten practice to spend at least 30 minutes nightly re-acquainting myself with composing and writing, so I've been writing here on whatever bubbles up during my reflective period every day. It's the "40 Days To Submit" category.

2. The following entry is about parenting. I get that reading about parenting is not everyone's jam, so it's behind the jump. Feel free to click away if you're all, "Oh yuck, the world doesn't need more people writing about parenting."

You can't spell "parent-y" without "Type A"

I have been a fan of Brigid Schulte's work for the Washington Post -- a quick Evernote search shows that I've saved ten of her articles and blog posts -- and I'm very excited to read Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play When No One Has The Time ... when I have the time(*). Her beat is on family policy, life-work issues and the area where your day job and your life overlap, even when nobody wants them to.

She's done at least two NPR interviews in the last week, and this one on Morning Edition stood out for this quote:

There's physical labor that goes along with that, but there's also mental labor. You're keeping track of everything, you know? You've got all this stuff going on in your mind: the to-do lists, and "Did I remember the carpool?" and "Oh, my goodness, I gotta fill out the Girl Scout forms," ... all this stuff that kind of gets crowded in there along with all the stuff you've got to do at work. Men generally don't have that. They have one sphere, which is work.

I keep chewing on it for two reasons. First, her experience about the mental labor is my experience with the mental labor.

I am still, frankly, gobsmacked that it took me until last fall to tell my husband, "It would be a good idea if you had the numbers for our date-night babysitter, our nanny and the preschool in your phone."

Why, why, why did I just assume the duty of sole parental communicator without even thinking about it? For that matter, why did it take me until last weekend to say, "You know what? From now on, I'm forwarding you all the emails I get for coordinating playdates and birthday parties. There's no reason I should be the sole keeper of the calendar for our kid's social life."

Confessions of the Santagnostic

Christmas was easy before I had children. All Phil and I had to do was show up at family functions -- or host them -- and fail to mail out Christmas cards in a timely fashion.

Now, however, I have a child and the Santa question looms large.

I had a fairly troubled regard toward him as a child: If Christmas was supposed to be a celebration of the birth of our lord and savior (as I was taught by the nuns at St. Jerome's), then why was the fat man horning in on the action?

Why was Santa never mentioned in the gospels? Shouldn't Jesus be riding shotgun since it's His birthday? Why would Santa be watching us? Wasn't that God's job? Wouldn't things be easier if God and Jesus handled all the presents and let Santa rest? I asked. My parents tap-danced around the answer to those questions until I was deemed old enough to learn that the home-invading Santa Claus was a mythic figure.

And then my question was, Why did you let me believe something you knew was false?

 

Why I can't get het up over sexist children's shirts

Forgive me for not getting worked up over the Children's Place offering assorted sexist girls' t-shirts. I keep losing track of which retailers are offering up this twaddle. JC Penney had "I'm Too Pretty for Homework," Disney offered Avengers t-shirts in which little boys could wear shirts reading "Be a Hero" while little girls had the option of "I Need a Hero" or "I Only Kiss Heroes." Gymboree caught flak for offering boy onesies exhorting their brains while baby girl onesies promoted their looks.

Name a mainstream retailer aiming for the middle class, and chances are good that they've pushed a product for little girls or little boys that ascribes a stereotypical gender role to the poor kid.

(I wonder if it's worse for parents of boys in some ways; it seems to me that the people who police so-called "traditional" gender roles are really aggressive about how boys should look and behave. Which always makes me want to remind these people that pink used to be a boy's color and that "expressions of masculinity and feminimity are culturally and historically specific." )

ANYWAY. The cynic in me suspects that children's clothing designers are, in their heart of hearts, trolling us. An "offensive" t-shirt gets a company's name into the headlines; it lets culture warriors posture without benefit of nuance; it gets recalled in a big, showy display of public enlightenment; business ticks on as usual.

I personally think it's ridiculous to clothe babies and small children in onesies that push stereotypical, heteronormative gender roles. But I'm a San Francisco Bay Area late-in-life parent with a few college degrees, so I'm exactly the type of person who frets about "onesies that push stereotypical, heteronormative gender roles."

But here's the thing: Here in the U.S. in the early 21st century, we have many options for clothing our sons and daughters. There are scads of mainstream retailers fighting for the approximately $32 million that will go to children's clothing expenditures this year.

You want to dress your child like a Real Housewife in training, go ahead. You want to dress your child like a Ravenclaw on day leave to Hogsmeade, go for it! Would you like them to channel a little manic pixie stick dream schoolgirl? Here you go. (And here's the less pricey option.) Want basics that beautifully channel the clean, sporty lines of U.S. designers? Have at it. Would you like your child to look like she should have an umlaut somewhere in her name and eats herring without complaint? Of course you do.

It is not hard to find and patronize retailers who don't make silly slogan t-shirts. And that's how you eliminate these t-shirts. Don't give the companies free publicity. Just ... take your money and attention someplace else. Retailers will stop pushing these messages when it stops becoming profitable for them to do so.

Today in "new ways to miss the point": Finger-wagging about diaper choices

So! We live in a country where parents go without food to diaper their children. I learned about this on Metafilter this morning.

Naturally, the early comments were about why people should use cloth diapers, because this is the Internet and why shouldn't people seize every opportunity to lord their superior choices over other, less fortunate people?

And yes, cloth diapering can be a wonderfully economic alternative, provided you've got the cash up front for the initial investment, you're in a situation where you or your children's caregivers are amenable to the specifics, and you've got the time and facilities for convenient cleaning of your stash.

But there are lots of people who don't have a whole lot of time, or childcare situations which permit cloth diapering, or 24/7 access to washing machines that are just a walk down the hall. Like couponing or using a deep freeze to store homemade staples, clothing diapering is one of those economizing measures that presupposes a certain amount of middle class privilege, i.e. control over one's time and access to the capital that can be sunk into start-up costs like appliances and inventory.

Wearing a clean diaper shouldn't be something only middle class babies enjoy. Until we reach the day where every mother in America gets the Finland-style box of start-up baby essentials and things like washers and dryers are standard in every apartment and daycare center, we may as well accept that sometimes, disposable diapers suit a family's circumstances.

And there are things you can do to help make sure every baby keeps a clean bum:

Donate to a diaper bank. I like Help A Mother Out, mostly because it's easy to set up recurring monthly monetary donations. There's also the National Diaper Bank Network.  There are even cloth diaper banks, if you feel strongly about that.

Use Amazon.com to do good. Thanks to a three-fer of Amazon Mom, Amazon's Subscribe & Save program and Amazon Prime, I can get nearly 300 diapers delivered anywhere for less than $50. I have a standing arrangement with a local emergency shelter: Every month, I email the director to confirm the diaper sizes they need, then make an order through Subscribe & Save to ship a few big boxes to the address she gives me.

(The nice thing about Subscribe & Save is that you can suspend or cancel subscriptions, so this way, I can make sure I'm delivering size 4 diapers one month, size 2 the next.)

I would urge anyone who's motivated to reach out to their local homeless or domestic shelters, or their local food bank, and ask if they'd like a monthly diaper shipment. This is basically frictionless do-gooderism. I can do something useful for someone else in under five minutes and I know what my money's being used for. It literally took ten minutes to email a shelter director and set up the monthly arrangement.

Okay, then! Now that we've solved one problem, let's all write our congresspeople and start lobbying for the big box of baby stuff for all new parents in the U.S. I cannot wait to see a nation of babies crawling about with star-spangled bottoms.

Got any other bright ideas for diapering the babies in your community? Let me know by hitting me up on Twitter at lschmeiser.

Have you hugged a music teacher today?

My brother's a bassoonist. Scratch that -- my brother is a musician, has been since he was a toddler who walked around the house singing long, lyrically complex songs and harmonizing with himself, all before he could speak sentences. Pete's first language is music; his second is English.

My brother's a bassoonist but by day he works for a major research firm, and he teaches and performs on nights and weekends.  Bassoon is not the most popular instrument out there -- my brother was originally a saxophonist and used to schlepp his soprano and tenor saxes around in his car in case civil unrest broke out and a jazz solo was needed -- but it's not like the job market for bassoonists is so robust that he could make a living at music.

My daughter's showing signs of being musical. Her vocal interpretation needs work -- she loves to sing, but her delivery is an awful lot like Fred Schneider's right now -- but the kiddo can keep a beat to anything after hearing a few bars. She only needs to hear a song once before she's singing it, in perfect time, off the top of her head.

My brother knows this, so for Christmas, he sent us symphony tickets for a family performance. The kiddo lasted through the first two movements of Dvořák's "Symphony No. 9" (also known as the New World Symphony), which is not bad for someone who wasn't even two and a half. We were at the symphony with a lot of other families trying to marinate their children in culture, or make up for all that time we didn't spend blasting classical music at our pregnant bellies. That performance was the first time in years I have been to a symphonic performance where I wasn't the youngest person there.

Last night, Phil and I went to see the San Francisco Symphony performing a semi-staging of West Side Story. It's sort of a natural jump from the New World Symphony to West Side Story; both are such American works in their embrace of complex percussive themes and jazz instrumentation.

And once again, we were among the youngest people in the audience. Our program's ads were focused very heavily on asset management and retirement communities.

On the one hand, it's not surprising. If babysitting had not been free, and if we had not decided to skip going out to dinner, one night at the symphony would have run us about $200. That's a big ticket for date night. People who are not in the thick of the working-saving for college-saving for retirement tango will have more money to drop on a night with MTT.

I thought about the aging of the classical audience today when I read the PBS Newshour transcript for "Performing Artists Compete, Move, Adapt in Tough Economy."  They cite the usual bugbear for the incredibly tough employment climate for performing artists: Money. It all comes down to how the arts are funded, whether people are willing to pay for the experience of listening or watching live performance, whether people can afford it.

My daughter is musical. Every 13 weeks, I pay nearly $300 for her weekly music classes, in which she beats drums in time to singing and refuses to dance with the rest of the class. The kiddo listens to the Pengin Cafe Orchestra, and Vitamin String Quartet, and Nick Drake's "'Cello Song" and says, "Some day, I'm going to play the cello."

Tomorrow, I'm taking her by the hand and walking to the park next to our house, where the Alameda String Academy is setting up an "instrument petting zoo" before a free lunchtime concert. I'm sure that a year from now, I'll be looking at our family calendar and mashing violin or piano or drum lessons into the weekly grid. Hey, I've googled "When to start cello lessons." We have a few years.

I am glad, on the one hand, that we have things like free concerts and digital recordings. Money should not be a barrier to enjoying classical music. Money -- or lack of -- should also not be a barrier to devoting your life to the arts. But alas and alack, until we live in a world where music and dance have proven their "value" in education and society, there's always the money question.

Don't be THAT family in a restaurant, baby & toddler edition

One in an ongoing series called "Parenting: It's Not About You!" Or a series called "Things I Write When Warming Up For Paying Work."

 I subscribe to the theory that children are savages and it's a parent's duty to society to civilize their particular savage(s). Since one of the hallmarks of civilization is being able to go to a restaurant without doing anything to justify the waitstaff garnishing your food with their saliva, it stands to reason that you've got to teach your kids how to comport themselves in these places.

But children aren't the only ones who need to learn; parents should recognize that they're also expected to behave well. Here's how to not be an entitled jerk or make your fellow restaurant patrons hate your baby.