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Emily and Hanna, you might be interested in This Film Is Not Yet Rated, Kirby Dick's 2006 documentary about the Motion Picture Association of America.
Through a side-by-side comparison of footage, Dick revealed several prevailing MPAA biases: beyond drawing distinctions that favor violent displays over sexual ones, the MPAA seems to punish homosexual and female sexual displays with harsher ratings. Additionally, Dick asserted that the MPAA is intimidated into assigning more lenient ratings to big studio films while cracking down on the content of movies that were independently produced.
The MPAA claims to be comprised of average parents with children ages 5 to 17. Dick discovered, however, that some of the raters didn't even have children and none had received any formal training for their job. This might explain why you found their ratings (ostensibly created for parents' use) to be more than a little off-base.
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Emily, this is, as they say, a failure in the marketplace. Despite years of protest and battle, movie ratings still draw lines along the old Puritan boundaries and bear no relationship to the sensibility of an actual child. They measure nudity, or language, and maybe specific acts of violence, but they are not sensitive enough to pick up something like nightmare-inducing terror. I took my daughter to see Man on Wire, in which there is a fleeting, silent-movie sort of sex interlude that flew right by her. This is an adult documentary about the Frenchman who tightroped between the Twin Towers, and she read it as a straight up inspirational tale. But in the various cartoons we've seen with violent chases or fistfights or mock torture scenes she is hiding under her seat. Some of this has to do with video-game culture and the fear factor brought on by better animation, as you say. And some has to do with our cultural tolerance of violence. Once a home-schooling mom recommended a Spiderman movie for my 5-year-old but warned me about a "disturbing scene," by which she meant not the death by impalement, or bombing carnage, but the upside down kiss. I think we need to set up our own informal rating system, based on the coming night's sleep: sound (S), light (L), disturbed (D), high possibility of night terrors (HPNT).
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I, too, was fascinated by that Washington Post piece on pregnant high school students—and very conflicted about it. Making it as easy as possible for pregnant teens and young moms to get an education is admirable, but it also, I'd imagine, establishes unrealistic expectations for these girls. Once they're done with high school, even if they qualify for assistance, as many of them do, they'll face far more obstacles. It seems highly unlikely that they would have access to on-site day care in the real world, for instance.
Ann, I love your idea of having a new mom speak at the "family life" courses—and maybe she can be joined by a young mother who got pregnant as a student and has spent a few years trying to juggle work and getting a toddler to (and paying for) day care. That might help the girls and guys alike realize that the school's Tiny Titans is not something to be taken for granted.
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Not sure what we should or could do about baby-brained grown-ups who suffer from a total lack of sense, Emily. But you are so right to point out that cyber-strega Lori Drew didn't "cause'' that poor girl to kill herself. Not to give this horror show of malignant, helicopter mommying a pass, but these arguments over who or what ever "make'' someone do such a thing always seem to undermine the most important thing we know about suicide, which is that the culprit is pretty reliably the disease of depression. (I was reminded of this a few years ago when a friend took his life. Oh no, I told another friend; he called me last week, and I never returned the call! Gee, don't think that's why he lost hope, she answered--snap.) And I also agree that we cannot criminalize every invitation to "Oh, go jump off a cliff!''--whether issued on the Internet or nose-to-nose.
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Everyone lusts after stories of bad mothers—the worse, the juicier. As you might recall, in the late 1990s, at the peak of the Clinton-era culture wars, a moral panic arose over "dumpster" or "toilet" babies—infants abandoned by panicked, often teenage moms who had told no one they were expecting a child. In the spring of 1997, the nation was riveted by an especially horrific case. In New Jersey, 18-year old Melissa Drexler gave birth to a baby boy at the senior prom, stuffed the child into a trash bin, and returned to the dance floor.The baby died, and Drexler served three years in prison.
"Safe haven" or "baby Moses" laws emerged as a response to such crimes. They allowed parents to abandon their children to the state at designated locations without being charged with a crime. The pro-life movement, which heartily supported the laws, contended that baby abandonment was on the rise because Roe v. Wade had eroded the "culture of life." That is doubtful at best—the abandonment of disabled, weak, and, in many cultures, female newborns has taken place throughout human history. Nevertheless, it's a good thing to provide a safe, anonymous way for struggling parents to turn an infant over to the state. Though safe havens are used extremely rarely, there's no reason for them not to be there.
But these laws had unintended consequences. As the New York Times reported last month, after Nebraska passed a safe haven law in July, officials were shocked that parents were abandoning children as old as 17. Sometimes the parents were suffering from mental illness; often the children were. Many of the families were uninsured or underinsured. But whatever the cause, in the midst of a financial crisis, and in a state with some of the lowest spending on mental health and child welfare services, dozens of parents seemed so unable to cope that they were ready to abandon their kids.
Today, Nebraska responded by amending the safe haven law to apply only to babies younger than 30 days old. And while that will prevent these other families in crisis from coming out of the woodwork, it will do nothing to address the underlying problems of poverty and health care. Just a reminder that while we obsess about freakish stories in our fervor for identifying society's "worst mothers," bigger problems are often hidden in plain sight.
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Yes, it is embarrassing, but I am going to say it, anyway: How glorious to have a president I can not only stand to see on television, but would have watched over Desperate Housewives, had it come to that. I kept trying to think of the last time such a thing had occurred—is it time yet? the president's going to be on!—but the answer is: never. ("For the first time in my adult life ...") A year from now, Obama will no doubt have to do more than show up and say true things grammatically, absent any mugging or winking. But tonight, he had me at "America doesn't torture.'' And when he declined to place sole blame for deregulation on Republicans. And when he said he was not very interested in having the same old tired left-right tug-of-war. So for as long as this lasts, I'm going with it.
I was a little surprised that he put Eisenhower up there with FDR and Lincoln on his list of presidential greats; Was this post-partisan politesse, or was it Eisenhower's lack of drama he admires? His warning about the military-industrial complex, maybe? Or the taste and vision of his granddaughter?
It also came as news that the first couple's 60 Minutes interviewer, Steve Kroft, was such a T-Rex: "So, you have a new dog and your mother-in-law's moving in?'' (Right, it stinks to be Obama.) But 44 put the kibosh on that and on Kroft's suggestion that Michelle's whole mom-in-chief routine is going to get old in a hurry when she's "knocking around that big house'' on Pennsylvania Avenue. "Here's one thing I know about Michelle,'' the president-elect informed him. "She's serious when she talks about being a mom; that's why our girls are so wonderful.'' It doesn't happen by accident, in other words, or in five-minute snatches of quality time. So we shouldn't judge low-income families by one standard (stay home and read aloud all day; turn off that TV!) and Ivy League graduates by another (you're home with your kids? gosh, sorry to hear that). If parenting is so important, how come Kroft and Traister and maybe most of us at some point act as if no one who could get a decent job would spend their days doing it? Obama seems proud of his wife's accomplishments as a mother, among other things—and why wouldn't he be?
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So, does this mean that Bristol Palin has already been forced down the aisle? (On Facebook, she's Bristol Palin-Johnston now.) If so, I hope the Palin-Johnstons beat the odds. But if she was frog-marched into church on our account, I'm sorry, because like all women, she deserves better. And for anyone who sees marriage as a sacrament and a covenant, the idea of involving God in a campaign-season command performance is pretty shocking.
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In his "Human Nature" blog, Slate's Will Saletan rejoices over the recession's toll on the cosmetic surgery business and expresses horror at the idea that some suckers (social parasites?) still refinance their homes to get cosmetic surgery during economic downturns. Then these vain people justify their ill-gotten boobs and rhinoplasties on the grounds that their plastic surgery was "an investment." Saletan cries foul: "When you can't pay the mortgage, we're supposed to bail you out? And your surgeon calls what you did an 'investment'?"
But isn't that a perfectly reasonable perspective? Sad but apparently true: We live in a society that rewards beauty and punishes ugliness, often using the medium of cold, hard cash. A 2005 Federal Reserve study, for instance, found that attractive people—in all occupations—earned 5 percent more per hour than the physically average, while the ugly earn 9 percent less an hour than everyone else. So say you find yourself, through sheer genetic bad luck, stuck in the low-earning "ugly" category—why shouldn't you decide that putting down $5,000 for a nose job or $2,500 for a "chin augmentation" is a smart long-term investment? If you can go from "ugly" to "average," you've potentially got a lifetime 9 percent income boost right there! Even if you're utterly devoid of vanity, some wisely chosen plastic surgery might be a sound economic decision.
I'll go further: Research suggests that the benefits of physical attractiveness start at birth. Nurses in maternity wards spend more time with the cute babies. And even parents, God help us all, apparently take better care of cute kids than of ugly ones—in a 2005 Canadian study, researchers found that parents with unattractive children often didn't even bother to buckle the little tykes' seat belts. Clearly, parents, if you want your ugly kid to get a fair shake in life, you need to get him or her to a cosmetic surgeon, pronto. And this, comrades, should be our new rallying cry: high-quality, government-subsidized day care; universal preschool; and free pediatric cosmetic surgery on demand!
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Well, if you're not, go to the playground and look around. One of the three married mommies innocently trailing their little tyke is cheating, according to a new "Sex and the American Mom" survey conducted by Cookie magazine and AOL Body and apparently filled in by 30,000 women. When faced with this statistic, my own (perhaps nervous) husband pointed out that this was a self-selecting survey, answered by people probably attracted by a survey with "affair" in the title. But, then, our own Emily Bazelon says this matches evidence gathered from other scientific surveys and paternity tests. So I guess I have to believe it.
But I, too, would be much more likely to believe that 30 percent of all Cookie-reading moms are having affairs. (And now prepare for a long festering rant about Cookie.) It's not merely that the hot moms of Cookie attend picnics in Italian gowns that cost as much as my laptop or have skinny jeans for every occasion. It's their sense that they deserve to preserve their "lifestyle" exactly as it should be, and God help any chocolate-smeared infant or rumpled husband who stands in their way!
When I first read about Cookie I thought I was the perfect demographic. Those mommy magazines in the ob waiting room always seemed a little sad and frumpy to me, with their tenty maternity clothes and perennial lists of "10 tips" for everything. I was even willing to overlook the fact that Cookie was founded by two hipster New Yorker roommates who didn't even have kids.
Then I picked up an early issue a couple of years ago, and Oh My God. One feature I recall was called something like "You Can Decorate White!" Some poor kid lived in a house with white couches and white side tables and fluffy white rugs. His room was all white, and there was a white model airplane on his bedstand. (Cranberry juice, anyone?) The ads were a marvel and gave the demographic away. Anyone remember that New York magazine feature about the little demon shopper girl—a 6-year-old who seemed to know everything about Marc Jacobs' latest line? Well, every ad was tailor made for her: back to school wear that ranged from $400 shoes to $1,000 plaid miniskirts and made a normal person yearn for JC Penney.
Well, a mom who sends her 6-year-old to school looking like an expensive hooker could certainly not be expected to put up with a little middle-aged husband paunch or to resist the come-on from the hot new Israeli gym teacher.
Back to the main point: Take the survey. If you don't have time, we'll excerpt what we XXers have decided is our favorite question, a decidedly normal one:
Would you rather:
1. Have more sex
2. Make more money
3. Lose ten pounds
4. Get more sleep
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Once upon a time, a nice house in the suburbs with yard enough to contain energetic children served as a snapshot of the American dream. But these days, those of us who rationally weigh the pros and cons of urban vs. suburban living and end up on a quiet cul-de-sac in a good school district are feeling the heat. For example, in a Slate "Culturebox" posted today, Tom Vanderbilt decries the hostile takeover of the American lawn by ugly plastic toys and giant swing-sets that no one ever plays on. As the owner of a too-large suburban home and accompanying "enormous swing-set with a plastic slide," I feel compelled to defend my honor.
First, a note about those plastic toys. While they might be unsightly, they are durable, safe (no splinters or jagged rusty metal), and affordable. We have a few that get hauled into the garage each night, but the main feature of our backyard is a sturdy wooden play set with swings, a slide, a rock-climbing wall and other accessories. When the weather is nice, and occasionally even when there's a foot of snow on the ground, my two sons play on it probably two or three hours a day. That leaves many hours of the day when one could pass by and see it looking lonely and abandoned, but it is by far their favorite plaything. However much or little they use it, it was a worthwhile investment. It can accommodate the dozen or so kids who live on our street, or our passel of nephews, or even all of them at the same time. It provides exercise, helps develop agility and self-confidence, and even jolts the imagination, as the kids are always coming up with games whose rules and objectives escape me. One of the knocks on parents these days is that we either park the kids in front of the TV for six hours with a bag of chips, or we hover over them obsessively and overbook them with dance, gymnastics, karate, and swimming lessons. To me, having some toys in the yard to go climb on is a remedy to both of those ills.
I admit to getting a little rankled when I read burb-bashing pieces. For one, they make me feel like the subject of an anthropological study. "Who are these strange creatures, and why do they choose this alien lifestyle?" (Frankly, I don't understand the fascination. I don't sit around wondering why people in the city prefer to live in small apartments on noisy streets; I figure they have logical reasons for doing so.) For another, such pieces can fall back on stereotyping and generalization. Admittedly, the cookie-cutter houses and the parade of indistinguishable SUVs contribute to that, but it lacks intellectual rigor to say we're all alike. One stereotype in particular bugs me: the one about how we come home from work, park our cars in our huge garages, then go inside our big-box houses and don't socialize with the outside world. That has not been my experience anywhere I've lived, but I do think there is an applicable kernel of truth in there. If I may indulge in one generalization, I've found that—aside from the occasional nosy homeowner's association president whom we all ignore—people in the burbs tend to adhere to a live-and-let-live ethos. You think a garden is a good use for your lawn? Good for you; plant it. Have fun with the weeds and the bugs, and I'll do my best to keep my kids from trampling it. But on my little patch of green space, I vastly prefer the sights and sounds of children laughing and playing. Your "garish blight" just happens to be my harmony.
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Mom who works at home: Bill will be picking up the girls today.
Non-salaried mom: Why, are you out of town?
M: No, just on deadline.
N: Well that's awfully nice of him. I hate for him to have to do that.
M: It's not nice; he's their dad.
N: But, you can't come?
Is this conversation ever going to change?
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Granted, Tim, the timing is convenient for Patti Solis Doyle's mommy crisis. But couldn't both versions of events be true for Hillary's former campaign manager? Say your life's work is going down in flames—to the point that One Life to Live seems more realistic all the time, and that storyline about waitressing in Paris, Texas, not altogether unappealing. And just when you're at the absolute snapping point, the one bright spot in your life ... wants Daddy? Not that this is a historical first, no, but when you're overwrought, I could see it being a moment of clarity, just as Hillary needed to make a change. (And as Paul Begala said on CNN the other night, when a campaign is in trouble, you can't fire the candidate, so somebody else has to take the hit.)
"The kids needed me'' may be poll-tested, but it's also a narrative I can't say no to—unless, and this is absolutely unfair—a man is telling the tale. For instance, I heard George Allen on the radio Tuesday saying how it was worth losing to Jim Webb because his 9-year-old daughter made him pancakes last Saturday, and that I found pukatrocious.
As for the crazy goddesses, I'm just as fond of them all the same as I was of my Aunt Ginny who spoke to dead people; they've earned those off-the-meds moments, and may even feel they are required. Though snits like that do suggest that somebody's power is being threatened, which is why I also take them as a sign that the abortion lobby worries that Obama—who is 100 percent pro-choice, despite Hillary's claims to the contrary—might fail to get into the kind of big pointless fights that raise a lot of cash for interest groups.
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I've written before about the effect of birth order on intelligence. It's not my favorite topic, because it pits older siblings against younger siblings and inevitably makes parents feel guilty. Here's a new study from Brigham Young University economics professor Joseph Price that offers a possible explanation for the IQ edge that firstborns supposedly have, on average, in addition to higher earnings and educational attainment. The central finding is that "first-born children get about 3,000 more hours of quality time with their parents between ages 4 and 13 than the next sibling gets when they pass through the same age range." More inequity. More guilt. Parents spend time evenhandedly on any given day. But, the study found, parents spend less time with children daily as families grow older. "First-born children get more quality time simply because they pass through childhood when there is more overall family time to be shared." What's more, the time that younger siblings do spend with their parents more often involves TV. Lucky them. I guess the good news is that more time with parents is good for kids' brains.
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Clearly, any article that describes the dilemmas of "young" parents, age 28 (using the same language of regret-for-lost-childhood once reserved for teenage mothers), has a hidden agenda: To make all of those fortysomething readers feel better about themselves. For if 28 is the new 18, then 38 must be the new 28 ... and 48 the new 38!
Subtle message to readers: You're not as old as you thought you were!
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Wow, Dahlia, thanks for sharing that story on "young" parents in the WaPo. I'm not quite sure I get the point of the article, but it leaves me with a million random thoughts. First off, it puts to rest the notion that only women write puff pieces. Are these just-about-thirtysomethings looking for sympathy (for forgoing all those wild nights out and exotic trips to the Galapagos) and plaudits for braving the uncharted waters of having a child ... in their late 20s? Give me a break. For how many years after college do you really need to be hitting the party scene every weekend, or hopping last-minute flights to Vegas, or taking that girls weekend at the spa? (Lest I sound too callous, I should add that I fit the profile of the couples mentioned. After five years of living together, my husband and I married in our late 20s and had our first child when I was 30. We were even among the first of our friends to have kids. Big whoop.)
I have no doubt it can be difficult to decide whether to have children before your career truly takes off or to wait until you're established. Alas, there's no one-size-fits-all solution to that dilemma. But the fact remains that, whether one is 28 or 33 or 38, if you are a college-educated, married professional, raising a child is a heck of a lot easier than it would be if you were 22 and single and struggling to make ends meet. I'm sure there are plenty of such TRULY young parents out there who are doing an admirable job—even if they are too busy to reflect that "parenthood is giving them a new level of ambition that is sophisticated and rejuvenating"—and I think their stories would be vastly more interesting than what was deemed worthy of front-page treatment in the Washington Post.
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Did anyone else find the Washington Post’s front page story today about “young” college-educated parents just surreal? (Disclosure: They own us.) First off, all these extremely young parents who are not hanging out in bars or brunching with their buddies are all either 29 or 31. Where are these playgrounds in which all the parents are “old"? And what, precisely, are “older-looking” parents anyhow? Apparently something to do with Rolling Stones T-shirts but, er, wait, wouldn’t those dads be 60, then?
Unexplored and unexamined is the assumption that it’s best for your kids to have your attention while they are toddlers, so you can be free to make partner when they’re potty trained. Except every mom I know says the opposite is true. Thoughts?
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Juliet, your post on the Dutch couple who abandoned their adopted child is a nice bookend to this story I'd wanted to blog about: According to (also!) the Daily Mail, the world's oldest mother—she gave birth to her sons last year at 66—is seriously ill. Carmen Bousada , who apparently lied about her age to be eligible for IVF now faces the prospect of leaving her twin sons orphaned. She has no spouse or partner. The folks who criticized Bousada's decision to give birth last year are getting their "I told you so" moment early, and reigniting the big Wendy Wasserstein debate about single women who choose to have babies alone, later in life.
Frankly I don't know what it means to be too old to parent, or too culturally myopic to parent, or too selfish to parent. But your story of the Dutch parents has an extra layer of grossness to it, Juliet. Apparently the parents are "traumatized" and "in therapy" for their decision to ditch their 7-year-old daughter for not fitting in.
Oh barf. It's one thing to be hopelessly selfish but quite another to expect folks to pity you for it.
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I just had to join in with a "hear, hear" for stamping out evolutionary psychology (at least in its pop-science incarnation.). Now that I have a child of my own, I'm constantly eavesdropping on playground conversations about which behaviors are "hard-wired" in boys or girls, mother or fathers. The minute I hear the word "hard-wired," I wince in anticipation of its inevitable accompaniment: an affirmation of the gender status quo. Boys are hard-wired to like trucks. Girls are hard-wired to wear pink. (What role motor vehicles or rose-patterned tights played in caveman culture has yet to be determined by science.)
The truism that newborns tend to resemble their fathers more than their mothers so that the father will know the child is his, and thus protect it, has become a veritable item of dogma among parents in my circle. This claim, based on a 12-year-old study that has been amply refuted since, is a classic example of an ev-psych argument: While the first part of the theory (that babies look more like their dads than their moms) may or may not be true depending on whose research you trust, the second part (that this resemblance serves as a proof of paternity for the doubting father) is pure and unprovable speculation. But it certainly is handy that the imagined mating behavior of monkey-men happens to reinforce contemporary Western values about male breadwinning and the specter of female infidelity.
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More frivolously occupied than Dahlia or Emily have been, I spent a bit of my weekend flipping through The Daring Book for Girls. I picked it up after my daughter had written about it for her high-school newspaper—and after The New York Times had mocked it as yet more helicopter parenting for our technology-dependent indoor kids, not a manifesto in favor of daredeviltry at all. My daughter's take was different. She pointed out that the book, billed as "the no-boys-allowed guide to adventure," is actually boy-based and imitative at its core (tips for building scooters, etc), with girl frills around the edges. And it's not very new, she noted: Tomboyishness has always been derivative, taking cues from the guys.
I buy both views of the book, which looks old-fashioned but taps right into the current micromanagement of youth culture. Once upon a time—or so I recall—the tomboy impulse was also defiant, a girl's way of flouting peer and parental expectations. But when adults get into the act, packaging boy stuff specially for girls, the result all too often gets cloyingly tame, to nobody's obvious benefit-except the manufacturer's (or publisher's). An article in today's Times reports on another example. Trading cards, a boy craze for decades, are suddenly being marketed to heretofore generally uninterested girls. The new girl-targeted card game, called Bella Sara, sounds tedious as well as sexist. Featuring pastel-colored ponies, unicorns, and "caring" messages ("use your love to bring peace to the world"), Bella Sara evidently skirts the competition and trading that define boy card games like Magic; it's about cleaning and feeding horses (on a special website, using secret codes on the cards). And it's about buying ever more cards (because the codes can only be used once). Here's where The Daring Book perhaps has advice the whole family could find liberating: "Forget asking your parents for a horse; ask for a ping-pong table instead."
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Emily, I noticed while reading your piece on breast-feeding and IQ that you touched on a point that has always been mind-boggling for me:
Previous studies have also linked breast-feeding to higher IQ, but they generally haven't ruled out the fact that breast-fed kids are also more likely to come from wealthier and better-educated families than formula-fed babies. [italics mine]
You've written on this topic frequently, so I wonder if in your research you've seen anything that explains why mothers who are less well-off are more likely to use formula. It seems like a contradiction to me. I nursed both my sons for all the reasons you cite--it's nurturing, it's practical, it's portable!--but also for the fact that it's just plain cheaper.
I realize that WIC lessens the financial burden of formula to some extent. But WIC also tries to promote breast-feeding and rewards moms who make that choice. And, while breast-feeding might not offer an IQ boost for everyone, it still seems that in almost all cases the pros outweigh the cons. Should we be doing more to encourage low-income moms to breast-feed, or is that paternalistic?