An Interesting Article for Father’s DayPosted by admin on June 20th, 2010
In honor of Father’s Day, I thought I’d share this interesting piece from the NYT with all of you: Now, Dad Feels as Stressed as Mom
Filed under: Social Issues | No Comments
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Returning to The NestPosted by admin on April 12th, 2010
It’s the hush-hush topic of my generation: moving back in with your parents.
Nearly every person I know who graduated from college in the last 5 years has moved back home at some point. Sometimes, this is for personal reasons, but it’s most often for financial reasons.
After all, living with the ‘rents looks much better on paper than any apartment we could afford.
Mom’s & Dad’s: stocked pantry; laundry on-site; full cable package; one or more bedrooms furnished with comfort items from childhood; free parking; built-in babysitter, counselor, friend, etc…
If it weren’t for the sinking feeling — the lurking F for Failure — that accompanies this common living situation, we’d all be at our happiest in this mid-20s period of material fruitlessness. In a culture that propels us forward with nebulous promises and expectations, though, a move back home often requires a lengthy explanation. As degree-bearing, family-starting young people, we no longer have to endure the barrage of questions about what we will do with our lives at some indefinite point in the future; now, the questions focus on today, tomorrow, and next week.
Have you gotten a call about that job you applied for?
Did you get into grad school?
How much work do you have this week?
It can be even more uncomfortable answering these questions than dealing with an onslaught of unwanted advice.
Instead of feeling like we have to explain away our difficulties, we should consider that there is incredible freedom in having no plans. For once in our lives, we can forget about preparing for some day that will never come and just live. We don’t have to be moving forward (which way is forward?). Sometimes the best way to see clearly is to stand in one place for awhile, to observe rather than act. If that place is our parents’ house, we should consider ourselves lucky.
Financial lack is a powerful cultural force. All the lies inherent in our varying-degrees-of-privileged childhoods can now be unearthed as we reevaluate what we want in terms of identity and values. Things that have nothing to do with money are the hardest to create and maintain.
Will we live up to the expectations of economists and sociologists who label us the Recession Generation? Or will there be more to it than just safer fiscal behavior?
Living with Mom and Dad again gives us an opportunity to metamorphose the definition of the American family. Perhaps we won’t see it as necessary to push our own kids out of the house at some arbitrary age (18? after college?) and we will find a way to support them with more than just large bedrooms and free meals. After all, our parents’ eagerness to send us out into the “real world” was always driven by their wish to retire and reap the rewards of 30+ years of work. If we won’t have those same rewards — i.e. a robust 401(k) promising years of travel and relaxation — how will we view our relationship with our adult children? How can we use this time at home to shift our mindset, desires, and expectations?
I, for one, am hopeful that there will be a more permanent shift towards inclusion of the extended family in raising children, as exists in many non-Western cultures. Living with my mother sometimes presents challenges for me, but has been nothing short of a godsend for my son. He gets the structure of the parent-child relationship and the fun and trust of the grandparent-child relationship in one place.
Who’s to say that we need to check off young adult milestones in the traditional order if that’s going to make life more difficult for everyone? As long as there is mutual respect and we don’t take advantage of our parents, a cooperative household of more than two generations can be beneficial for everyone. The difficult part is learning to share life’s burdens. Sometimes, we simply can’t do it alone.
Job to VisionPosted by admin on March 19th, 2010
It’s never too late to be what you might have been. ~ George Eliot
On a good day, I think I have the best job in the world. It comes with flexible hours: I work a few hours a day, sometimes online. It’s rewarding: I guide students through tough tests, tough courses, and sometimes, tough personal struggles. Fortunately, the going rate for private tutoring is such that it has sustained me for many years.
On a bad day, I feel hopeless. If I am not getting through to this one child, how could I possibly get through to the many more who need my help? The very thing that is absolutely necessary for the continuation of my career — the per-student cost — is the most depressing part; it denies access to large numbers of floundering students.
Most days, of course, fall somewhere in between. I feel tugged away from tutoring by the need for stability (no more dead summers), yet my ultimate career interests center around the skills I have perfected in my decade of one-on-one academics. Since job satisfaction fluctuates like this for most people, it helps to maintain a vision of something better, if not bigger. As with other life goals, putting this in writing (or at least allowing the thoughts to be directed into dreams) takes it from impossible to improbable.
Here’s my career vision:
My ideal job would combine tutoring and mentoring in a large-scale nonprofit. I would train others in my “methods” (once I render them into something concrete and transferable) and have each student sponsored by an adult willing to pay for his/her supplemental education. It’s the same idea as sponsoring a single hungry child on the other side of the world, and would eliminate the need for excessive fundraising from stingy corporate sources.
Whether or not this particular vision materializes, its articulation reminds me that a job is a job is a job…until we turn it into something more. A little daydreaming, a little reconnecting to the reasons we work, may be a good start. Even those jobs that just get us through a summer, a crisis, or a decade can act as stepping stones.
With all the bad news and dim forecasts swirling around, right now is the best time to examine the difference between a job and a career, work and life’s work.
Do you know what your life’s work would have/should have been?
It still is.
Mommy BodyPosted by admin on December 1st, 2009
I do not remember a period of time in elementary, middle, or high school when I didn’t worry about what I was wearing or how my hair looked. I was the tallest of all my friends, and often the widest. I wanted to wear the tiny clothes from Limited Too and 5-7-9, but my hips never wanted anything to do with juniors’ clothes. Worst of all, I started breaking out at age 10 and haven’t stopped.
Everyone has their body woes, and there’s no doubt that we exaggerate our own flaws. Still, the formative influence of the preteen years on girls’ lifelong body delusions is profound.
Size is relative, and competition is fierce. Depending upon who we are around, we might feel thin or fat, tall or short, trendy or outdated. This is particularly damaging when we reach the stages of pregnancy and nursing.
Pregnancy is the only legitimate excuse a woman ever has to eat what she wants and gain weight on purpose. It is equally liberating and terrifying. After years of trying to have control over your size and shape, you have to relax into whatever mold the baby and your body decide to put you in. Postpartum, you still have much of the weight/skin, yet feel that you have none of the excuses. We all hear about the Heidi Klums of the world losing all their baby weight in a month, and suddenly feel pressured to be runway-ready with a newborn in our arms. In reality, it is incredibly unhealthy to rapidly lose weight while breastfeeding, and even if you are not. There is a reason for those fat stores, and getting rid of them intentionally means depriving your exhausted self of what little energy nature gives you to get through new motherhood.
The younger you are, the quicker you bounce back, but your body is still permanently changed from the pregnancy and birthing experience. It seems to me that it’s even more difficult to face the physical alterations of motherhood when you’re a young mom, because the world doesn’t yet expect you to be going through them. If I were in my 30s or 40s, complaining about stretch marks and shopping for “mom jeans” would be acceptable. At 23, I still want to look my age (i.e. shop at American Eagle), but according to the modern timeline of life experiences, I’m a good decade ahead. A young mom can’t say a thing about the way a baby has changed her body without an older mom looking down her nose and shooting her a “just-you-wait” scowl.
In some ways, I appreciate my body more now because I can look into the eyes of the little person it created. But it’s difficult to ignore the temptation to compare myself to women my age who haven’t had their breasts stretched and butts widened. At the same time that I miss the feeling of a creature fluttering in my belly, I am critical of my new hint of a muffin top and smaller bra size.
Just like many other things in life, the mommy body is a paradox. Skinny-girl worship in the media hits us with the same force as messages about loving The Shape of a Mother. It is impossible to maintain the pre-baby figure, even with the help of cocoa butter and surgical intervention.
All I know is: I can’t wait until my friends have an opportunity to grow in all the right places. Then, while I may not always love my body, I’ll at least be able to talk about it in an appreciative way, rather than an “ohmygod, i am so fat this week” way. Body talk changes when baby talk begins. Let’s start talking.
20Something DoubtPosted by admin on November 14th, 2009
Generation Y. We grew up with cassette tapes and VHS movies, Walkmans and LiteBrites. Now, we are the Facebookers and Tweeters, the perpetually connected.
Many of us had few worries until recently. We got everything we ever needed, and most of what we wanted. Our parents turned their Clinton-era riches into our cars and college educations.
So, why is every 20something I know severely depressed?
Part of it is just the natural side effect of pulling away from those who kept us fed and clothed and happy. But Generation Yers have to deal with something unique: literally not being able to pull away. We can’t all afford to pay for our own apartments, cars, food, cell phones, and certainly not our own health insurance. Yet, we want to be able to. None of us wants to rely on our parents forever. Do we have a choice, though, in an era marked by the lowest relative wages since the 1970s and a steadily rising cost of living?
The “Great Recession” has contributed to the burgeoning ranks of unemployed and underemployed college graduates, but this problem was present before the real estate bubble burst. Young, educated people have met unprecedented problems in the job market since 2000. A decade ago, it was less clear that this was a symptom of nationwide financial sickness. Now, even though the reality of a fruitless job search is widespread, we still blame ourselves. That’s the American way, after all: to believe that we all have control over our economic circumstances. All that we’re getting from this attitude is a huge amount of guilt, and large piles of unpaid bills.
Our parents and grandparents could call it entitlement, could say that we expect too much and aren’t willing to work hard enough. These are the same people that brought us up to believe we would find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, if we just followed the rules.
We should all be concerned about more than attitudes when an entire generation is incapable of supporting itself. I have all the desire in the world to keep my son happy and healthy, but the fact remains that if either of us had a dire health emergency, I would not have the funds in place to keep us from sinking into a bog of medical debt. Even things as vital as food are driving a wedge between those who can afford them and those who can’t. It’s no longer true that you can simply invest some elbow grease and reap fair rewards, and we certainly can’t get ahead as quickly as our parents did.
While this exaggerated period of struggle is disproportionately affecting those of us who already have children, it is also defining the ability of the childless young people to ever create a stable home life. Economists have identified our generation as the first since the beginning of the 20th century that will not be better off than the previous, and who knows what that will mean for our children? If we can’t give them anything close to what we had, will they have even more challenges? Or will they be better able to face financial difficulties, and therefore well-adjusted?
There are exogenic cultural factors in the 20something, “I’m broke” dilemma. But on a personal level, no matter their origin, feelings of worthlessness can be devastating. If we push and push and never see results, we lose faith in ourselves and our belief systems. I only hope that my peers can find something worth living for when they have nothing to live on, and learn to distinguish between the things they can change and the things that happen to them.
Layers of PrivilegePosted by admin on October 22nd, 2009
Was I born with an inflamed social conscience, or has it simply come to overwhelm me over the years? I guess you could say it’s ironic that someone like me — more listener than speaker, more loner than star — is so preoccupied with things that require a voice.
I get frustrated with stagnation, especially in social conditions. Maybe it comes from studying human rights and political science in depth, although my concern for the oppressed existed long before college. Maybe it’s an inescapable part of the Leo-Virgo cusp personality. I just know that I’m constantly fighting with myself, and a world that seems resigned to letting things happen unfairly.
Inequity persists for obvious reasons (the drive for surplus being number one), and because there has always been a powerful-powerless dichotomy, many people assume it is human nature to exploit others to raise your own social position. I don’t subscribe to this too-bad-so-sad philosophy, though. People stay at the bottom of the social food chain because they have been ignored or used by those at the top. This can start to feel much like the biological food chain, in that we think we need to feed upon the lowliest to maintain our place — that others must be miserable in order for us to be happy.
I am not okay with people saying that this is just the way things are, that I shouldn’t feel guilty about my place in society, or responsible for that of others. I DO feel guilty, or at the very least uncomfortable, about being a member of the white upper-middle-class in America. By virtue of birth, I am one of the luckiest people on earth. But it takes work to preserve that luck, and wealthy white people work hard at that. So, we can’t simply say that those who are born into unlucky circumstances (poverty in America, but especially in the developing world) got themselves into it, and must pull themselves out. The tiniest tweak in quantum order could have reversed our worlds, and nothing that is so dependent upon chance could be worthy of exacerbation. (Besides, What the Bleep Do We Know?)
Instead of trying to close the income gap, the rights gap, we widen it with fear. Political banter about the U.S. health care system or the state of American education is small talk, disguising the real issues underneath. If we don’t believe we have an ultimate responsibility to provide these things for all people (and I do mean ALL people), policy cannot change them significantly. We should be diving into the original mess of our assumptions and prejudices, swirling around for awhile, and revolutionizing the way we think about humanity and happenstance.
This doesn’t mean feeling guilty, because that is only a recipe for reparations. Still, it is difficult to feel anything but apologetic when there is no genuine public outlet for discussing such things as gender, poverty, the environment, and the direction of the human race. Churches and schools have their own agenda, as do private organizations. Motives aside, involvement in these groups can prove positive, but what is the underbelly of charity work? Morality. A relative concept. Thus, the difficulty in looking at the shackled from the vantage point of the free is that we apply standards that must sometimes be swept aside in order to right the wrongs that are wrong to us all.
I can live my life in a Starbucks world and appreciate its luxuries, but I never forget that there are other worlds, and I never want to. I am stuck between the ease of indifference and the cliff of hopelessness. Are you?
I know my restless nature will produce good things in the end, but I feel a burning desire to relate to people with my level of discomfort first.
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Fertility Treatments and Older ParentsPosted by admin on October 14th, 2009
They’ve been all over the news lately: the costs and consequences of fertility treatments, such as IVF and IUI. Articles like this one from The New York Times explain the real concerns that prospective parents should have regarding multiple births, especially the complications that arise from prematurity. Given the high cost of these insemination procedures, it is understandable for people to be thrilled at the idea of getting more than one baby, but the risks have a ripple effect on the health care industry, the mother’s health, and, scariest of all, the babies’ futures.
While I believe that fertility drugs and procedures are necessary for some people who have legitimate problems getting pregnant, it worries me that so many people feel okay about putting off babymaking because they know there is a fallback plan if it doesn’t happen naturally. Our career-focused culture encourages later partnering and delayed parenthood, and ignores the lasting effects of producing a generation of less healthy children — babies who, if they are not multiples with severe problems from premature birth, often have health problems associated with their mothers’ age (anything from asthma to Down’s syndrome). Older mothers have a higher rate of Cesarean births and longer, more difficult labors. In addition, older moms are more likely to have difficulty breastfeeding because of the conflicting hormones of simultaneous pregnancy and perimenopause. (La Leche League International)
Of course, there is a certain amount of common sense in waiting until you are financially secure to have a baby, but 2009 has taught us that even this kind of security is fleeting. Because of the exorbitant costs of higher education in America, college graduates spend much of their 20s and 30s struggling to pay student loans, and are lucky if they can ever reach homeowner status (which is, ironically, also an unlucky title in many cases). If you’re waiting until you have enough bedrooms to house your new bundles, you will likely be in the higher risk, over-35 category of parents.
There are many unknowns when you have a baby at 21, like I did. But I’d take the kinds of unknowns that arise from living in one-bedroom apartments and finishing college over the ones that could permanently damage my child’s (or my) health. Even with my young age and complication-free pregnancy, I gave birth at 35 weeks. Prematurity is often unexplained, and is scary enough when you are at average risk for its occurrence. I cannot imagine choosing to take a greater risk by placing two, three, or more fertilized embryos in implantation position.
Granted, I also don’t understand what it’s like to desperately want a child and not be able to have one. That would be the most devastating news of my life, and I was lucky to have been able to conceive sans intervention. Do we need to address the educational and economic circumstances in our country such that our children don’t have to wait until they are 40 to be comfortable becoming parents? Or is conception by whatever means necessary just an individual decision with isolated consequences?
If fertility treatments contribute to longer stays in the NICU and lower rates of breastfeeding, I say they are a social problem at the same time that they allow greater freedom of choice.
To what extent should we be able to dictate a biological event such as procreation? If simply letting it happen –when our bodies are most prepared for it to happen — is fighting all of the things we have decided are good for us, eventually there won’t be any viable “us” left to climb the proverbial career ladder. Is that really creating a better world for our offspring, or is it presenting them with the most difficult challenge of all?
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Gender WonderPosted by admin on October 5th, 2009
I’ve always had somewhat radical views on gender, in the sense that I believe it is a mutable social construct. It is not until we start placing bows on baby girls’ heads or putting mini basketballs in little boys’ hands that they represent gender differences. As I watch my boy grow and change, I wonder (even more frequently than I did before I was a mother) what would happen if we never placed them on one side of the scale or the other. What kinds of differences would emerge naturally?
Of course, it’s impossible to know because even this kind of (arguably unethical) experimentation would take place in the context of a society built upon the male-female dichotomy. Still, many people fail to remember that sex and gender are two different things. Sex is chromosomal, biological — a mere determinant of phenotype. The way we dress, speak, act, work, and love are all elements of gender. We have to act out our gender, or else no one knows what it is. And we are all familiar with the prejudice and confusion that can arise from that kind of mystery.
As parents, we play a special part in the perpetuation of gender roles. While there is nothing inherently wrong with buying Tonka trucks for a boy and Barbies for a girl, it becomes ambiguous when we freak out about our kids playing with the “wrong” toys. When I was at the store with my son yesterday, he played with such a variety of toys in the span of 20 minutes that it wouldn’t have been far off to say that he doesn’t have a preference for blue or loud toys at all. At home, though, because there aren’t any dolls around, I tend to assume that he has an affinity for cars and balls — really, anything that can be raced or thrown.
I’m not poised to spend money on gender-balancing my son’s toy collection, but I wonder what I will say if, when he becomes fully verbal, he asks me to buy him a toy that’s slated for girls. I would probably get it for him and worry more about answering questions as to why my son owns something girly than about how it would affect his gender identity.
Toys are just the most glaring part of what genders a child’s world, though. I notice certain skills and tendencies in my son that are typically associated with males (and especially developed in the males in my family): mechanical abilities, a desire to perform daring physical stunts, and — most fascinating of all — the instinct to laugh at bodily functions. Are these things really related to his sex, or are they simply the things I notice or value most about him because I have been conditioned not to pay attention to, for example, his love of cuddling and babies?
This is one of the larger questions that seem to take up an abnormal amount of my time. I am a big-picture person about most things, and parenting is no exception. Gender is one of those grand structures that seems to exist for no reason and every reason, and I cannot (nor will I ever be able to) reconcile its incredible influence in modern life.
I wonder about gender as I play it out for myself. As a woman raising a boy, I wonder how to make gendered choices for him until he can make them himself.
What are your gender wonders about raising children?
Our President’s Message: Nothing NewPosted by admin on September 9th, 2009
I love our Prez as much as the next Democrat, but I couldn’t help but be disappointed by his long-awaited speech to schoolchildren yesterday morning. As a student of political science, I heard too many trite phrases to be impressed with his message. While Obama is himself a case for the value of an education, I am saddened by his lack of courage (or political pugnacity) when it comes to disclosing the reality of his hardships to our youth.
While the theme of his speech was personal responsibility, his line of reasoning was filled with played-out patriotism:
“…And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. The future of America depends on you. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future…”
I can appreciate where this is coming from: a genuine place of concern for progeny, a presidential need to inspire the downtrodden and better the best, and a father’s didactic heart. Obama did reach out to kids who are struggling in school by saying that he had been there –sharing the well-known anecdote about his early morning lessons with his mother. Still, he shirked his own personal responsibility by placing all the blame for less-than-desirable circumstances squarely in the kids’ laps.
When did the man running our country –the black icon — decide to start mimicking the aging, conservative, white men he succeeded? This “do it for your country” mentality is like parental bribery. It doesn’t give a child someone to look up to, but makes him feel like even less of a true American if he can’t yank his bootstraps up quite far enough to permanently change the course of his life.
“But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life — what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home — none of that is an excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude in school. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. There is no excuse for not trying.”
I think there are plenty of excuses — legitimate ones. But the very fact that we call happenstance an “excuse” means we indoctrinate our youth too quickly with an awareness of just how large a cloud of failure can surround a person in this world in which we must always be movin’ on up. Tell the kids it’s their problem, and it will never be ours. It’s worked so far, and it’s the easiest philosophy to adapt in times of swaying ideology.
In true Obama fashion, the speech included a variety of historical and personal references. After listing a few examples of famous people who have endured hardship, he said:
“These people succeeded because they understood that you can’t let your failures define you — you have to let your failures teach you.”
Good point, if it weren’t followed by this:
“And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you, don’t ever give up on yourself, because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.
“The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.”
Having worked with children of all ages in an educational context for quite a few years, I understand that what they need more than anything is context. Context should ultimately factor in a broad sense of purpose, but that purpose should focus on the intersection between the self and the cause. A country is not a cause, but it is full of them. Kids need to see how their math homework will prepare them for reaching their immediate goals and confronting those amorphous long-term effects of today’s decisions. Guilt is not inspiration, and President Obama poured on the guilt.
I have no doubt that it was partially a result of the pressure to rid his speech of “socialist” ideas that its message became obviously directed toward the patriotic duty inherent in compulsory education. Part of me is angry at his cowardly critics for pushing him into oversimplification, and the other part wishes that Obama the Politician would show us more of Obama the Man. Obama the Man knows that hard work is not the only factor in worldly success. Although he has achieved the kind of success we are all taught to admire, there are layers to him and his experience that, with adequate exposure, could redefine success for the next generation.
Filed under: Social Issues | 1 Comment
Does Time Make Us Forgive or Forget?Posted by admin on July 28th, 2009
“Now is just a little, bare, empty word in English, just a scrap between an ancient buried past and a starry future.” – Jay Griffiths, A Sideways Look at Time
As I look around at my support network, I notice that I have forgotten a lot of the reasons I used to hold grudges. People that I intentionally cut out of my life because of some disagreement or another are back, and I can’t seem to remember why I ever deleted them from my phonebook.
Or is it that the passage of time has allowed me to forgive transgressions that once seemed so grave?
I’m sure that embarrassment plays a part in this. Everyone does and says stupid things during their teenage years. My peer group seems to be growing out of the petty, gossipy stage and simply appreciating friends for who they are now. I know that I’m not the person I was at 17, 18, even 20. Surely, many others have changed and are ready to move forward with me into stronger friendships.
But is there any “moving forward” if time is not linear? We think about the past as though we are far removed from it, when in some views, it is just as real as the present. One of my favorite books, A Sideways Look at Time, presents a fascinating historical perspective on time and its role in various cultures:
Is time an arrow or a bicycle, a straight line or a circle? Once, time was widely seen as cyclical; the Hopi image of time is a self-contained wheel, the Gabra peoples of East Africa have the idea of finn meaning fertility or plenty in the cycles of life, and in Hindu thought, time moves in the unimaginably long cycles of the Kalpas. In the Aions of the ancient Greeks, eternity wheeled round over and over again, while the Stoics believed in the eternal regeneration of the cosmos. Aristotle said ‘for even time itself is thought to be a circle’ and Plato described time as a ‘moving’ or ‘revolving’ image of eternity. Throughout history, time seems to have been thought circular since it could not be separated from the cycling motions of the sun, moon and stars…The modern Western view of time is linear, moving like a ruler straight from past to present to future and in this it is highly unusual. (155-6)
I like the idea that time is a circle, because it feels more real to me than the old adage of history repeating itself. Each time I encounter an old acquaintance or relive a memory, I feel as though there is no distinct line between then and now. Then is now if it is defining my now.
When it comes to grudges, regrets, and mistakes, can we ever leave them behind? If we subscribe to the cyclical view of time, the mere judgment of things as grudges, regrets, and mistakes seems completely irrelevant.
It is hard to break away from the vacuum of Western life, that which sucks us toward some invisible horizon. There is no such thing as arrival, as being “done” with life. While we can morph into different characters over different periods of time, we just ARE. Even though I need to remind myself of this alternate vision of hours and days, it brings me great comfort and allows me to open up to today instead of worrying about what people once thought of me or will think of me in the future. This is who, and where, I am now. I am suddenly being stricken with the notion of that being enough.
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