I'm writing this in a cafe near Market and Castro in San Francisco. The weather is perfect. I see people outside, ordinary people doing ordinary things. Then I turn back to the Internet and cruise through right-wing blogs, youtube footage, news coverage, and I don't know whether to laugh or take my family and run to Sweden.
The McCain campaign is now officially behaving like a cornered animal. Ta-Nehisi Coates, blogging at The Atlantic Monthly, puts it best: "Wow. They're just emptying the clip, throwing chairs, file cabinets, jabbing folks with keys and cell phones."
Thoughtful conservatives (and former conservatives) are starting to speak out against the hate and fear that the McCain campaign is hurling at Obama. It's actually somewhat inspiring, though I think they have waited far too long to speak out. I won't link to every piece here, but I can present a sampler.
David Frum writing at The National Review : "Those who press this Ayers line of attack are whipping Republicans and conservatives into a fury that is going to be very hard to calm after November. Is it really wise to send conservatives into opposition in a mood of disdain and fury for a man who may well be the next president of the United States, incidentally the first African-American president? Anger is a very bad political adviser. It can isolate us and push us to the extremes at exactly the moment when we ought to be rebuilding, rethinking, regrouping and recruiting."
Republican Gov. William Milliken: "He is not the McCain I endorsed... I'm disappointed in the tenor and the personal attacks on the part of the McCain campaign, when he ought to be talking about the issues."
Lincoln Chafee, a former Republican U.S. senator from Rhode Island: "That's not my kind of Republicanism. I saw what Bush and Cheney did. They came in with a (budget) surplus and a stable world, and look what's happened now. In eight short years they've taken one peaceful and prosperous world, and they've torn it into tatters." As for McCain's choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for his running mate, "there's no question she's totally unqualified."
Christopher Buckley in The Daily Beast: "John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, 'We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.' This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?"
Frank Schaeffer in the Baltimore Sun: "John McCain, you are no fool, and you understand the depths of hatred that surround the issue of race in this country. You also know that, post-9/11, to call someone a friend of a terrorist is a very serious matter. You also know we are a bitterly divided country on many other issues. You know that, sadly, in America, violence is always just a moment away. You know that there are plenty of crazy people out there. Stop! Think! Your rallies are beginning to look, sound, feel and smell like lynch mobs."
Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic Monthly: "This election really is a classic battle between fear and hope. All Palin and McCain are offering right now is more fear: fear of a black man, fear of terrorism, fear of the other, fear of Iran, fear of the future, fear of Islam, fear of the truth. And above all: fear of defeat. On that last one, they're rational. Which side are you on?"
*** UPDATE *** Here's how McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers responded today to criticism of their tactics: “Barack Obama’s attacks on Americans who support John McCain reveal far more about him than they do about John McCain. It is clear that Barack Obama just doesn’t understand regular people and the issues they care about. He dismisses hardworking middle class Americans as clinging to guns and religion, while at the same time attacking average Americans at McCain rallies who are angry at Washington, Wall Street and the status quo."
In other words: Get ready for more of the same. Is it working? It seems that the answer is no.
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
It's happening
Raw, mindless, frenzied hate:
In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."
...Palin, speaking to a sea of "Palin Power" and "Sarahcuda" T-shirts, tried to link Obama to the 1960s Weather Underground. "One of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," she said. ("Boooo!" said the crowd.) "And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,' " she continued. ("Boooo!" the crowd repeated.)
"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.
And as the economy crashes, it's only going to get worse. People are starting to look for scapegoats. Brace yourselves.
Palling around with terrorists
Sarah Palin continues to accuse Obama of "palling around with terrorists"--namely, Weatherman founder Bill Ayers, with whom Obama has a very, very tenuous connection.
Basically, it seems, over a decade ago both Ayers and Obama lived in the same Chicago neighborhood, they attended some of the same charity board meetings, and Ayers once hosted a house party for Obama when Obama was starting out in Chicago politics. Shocking. Not as bad as meeting with Saddam Hussein in order to supply him with weapons to kill Iraqi dissidents as well as Iranians, but still, absolutely shocking.
Well, I am standing up to admit that I'm even friendlier with terrorists than Obama. I met Ayers once, he and I have some mutual acquaintances, we share a book publisher, and I once spent an evening (in a farm in Waldo, FL) with two of Ayers' former comrades in the Weather Underground. You're shocked, I know.
Fortunately, I'm not running for President of the United States.
One of the things I've learned from my travels in radical America is that most veterans of 60s underground organizations deeply regret endorsing and participating in violence; they saw themselves as soldiers, but when the war was over, they moved on with their lives. Many of the survivors have gone on to make positive, even extraordinary, contributions to our society, not to mention becoming fathers, mothers, neighbors. In short, they're human beings, more passionate and committed than most; they made mistakes and they've had to live with them.
Ayers is actually a good example. If you go to his webpage, you'll see that "terrorist" is a pretty small part of his biography. He's still very much a left-winger, but after the fires of the 60s died, Ayers became a respected educator.
He's now a Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and author of many books with titles like A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court (Beacon Press, 1997), The Good Preschool Teacher: Six Teachers Reflect on Their Lives, (Teachers College Press, 1989), and To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher, (Teachers College Press, 1993) "which was named Book of the Year in 1993 by Kappa Delta Pi, and won the Witten Award for Distinguished Work in Biography and Autobiography in 1995."
I'm sure that many people have worked with Ayers over the years, not just Obama, and many children have learned from him. You can demonize people like him as "terrorists" if you want to score a few quickie political points, but the truth is much more complicated.
Just to really drive the point home, here's a video of that vicious, radical terrorist Bill Ayers giving a talk to a group of new teachers:
Horrible, isn't it? And to imagine, the next president of the United States once sat in a room with him.
Basically, it seems, over a decade ago both Ayers and Obama lived in the same Chicago neighborhood, they attended some of the same charity board meetings, and Ayers once hosted a house party for Obama when Obama was starting out in Chicago politics. Shocking. Not as bad as meeting with Saddam Hussein in order to supply him with weapons to kill Iraqi dissidents as well as Iranians, but still, absolutely shocking.
Well, I am standing up to admit that I'm even friendlier with terrorists than Obama. I met Ayers once, he and I have some mutual acquaintances, we share a book publisher, and I once spent an evening (in a farm in Waldo, FL) with two of Ayers' former comrades in the Weather Underground. You're shocked, I know.
Fortunately, I'm not running for President of the United States.
One of the things I've learned from my travels in radical America is that most veterans of 60s underground organizations deeply regret endorsing and participating in violence; they saw themselves as soldiers, but when the war was over, they moved on with their lives. Many of the survivors have gone on to make positive, even extraordinary, contributions to our society, not to mention becoming fathers, mothers, neighbors. In short, they're human beings, more passionate and committed than most; they made mistakes and they've had to live with them.
Ayers is actually a good example. If you go to his webpage, you'll see that "terrorist" is a pretty small part of his biography. He's still very much a left-winger, but after the fires of the 60s died, Ayers became a respected educator.
He's now a Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and author of many books with titles like A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court (Beacon Press, 1997), The Good Preschool Teacher: Six Teachers Reflect on Their Lives, (Teachers College Press, 1989), and To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher, (Teachers College Press, 1993) "which was named Book of the Year in 1993 by Kappa Delta Pi, and won the Witten Award for Distinguished Work in Biography and Autobiography in 1995."
I'm sure that many people have worked with Ayers over the years, not just Obama, and many children have learned from him. You can demonize people like him as "terrorists" if you want to score a few quickie political points, but the truth is much more complicated.
Just to really drive the point home, here's a video of that vicious, radical terrorist Bill Ayers giving a talk to a group of new teachers:
Horrible, isn't it? And to imagine, the next president of the United States once sat in a room with him.
Two events and Two Interviews
1. This Friday, October 10, 2008 at 7 p.m., I'll be celebrating the opening of a new San Francisco bookstore and discussing the role of media in U.S. social movements on a panel with Jen Angel and Bob Ostertag. This event marks the opening of The Green Arcade, a new bookstore located at 1680 Market Street at Gough in San Francisco. This is intended to be a fairly informal discussion. If you're a Daddy Dialectic reader and you stop by, please introduce yourself to me!
2. On October 22, 2008, 6:00-7:30 p.m., Greater Good magazine (where I serve as senior editor) will host an evening with legendary psychologist Paul Ekman, who will discuss his new book with the Dalai Lama. Emotional Awareness: Overcoming the Obstacles to Psychological Balance and Compassion distills 40 hours of conversation between Ekman and the Dalai Lama about the roots of love, compassion, anger, and morality. At this free event at UC Berkeley, Ekman--one of the world's foremost authorities on emotions and facial expressions, and a member of Greater Good magazine's editorial board--will present highlights from their discussions, accompanied by photos and audio excerpts from his conversations with the Dalai Lama. A Q&A with the audience will follow. This event will occur at the UC Berkeley journalism school, North Gate Library, Hearst at Euclid Avenue; for more details and directions, see the j-school website.
3. I recently interviewed Harvard cognitive psychologist and bestselling author Steven Pinker and UC Santa Barbara neuroscientist (and member of the President's Council of Bioethics) Michael S. Gazzaniga about science policy, the legacy of the Bush administration, and what the next administration needs to do to restore trust in science. Though the Pinker interview will appear in print and I will be using the Gazzaniga interview for a forthcoming article, due to their timeliness we decided to post both discussions in Q&A format to our blog. You can read the Pinker interview here and the Gazzaniga interview here. We invite your comments.
2. On October 22, 2008, 6:00-7:30 p.m., Greater Good magazine (where I serve as senior editor) will host an evening with legendary psychologist Paul Ekman, who will discuss his new book with the Dalai Lama. Emotional Awareness: Overcoming the Obstacles to Psychological Balance and Compassion distills 40 hours of conversation between Ekman and the Dalai Lama about the roots of love, compassion, anger, and morality. At this free event at UC Berkeley, Ekman--one of the world's foremost authorities on emotions and facial expressions, and a member of Greater Good magazine's editorial board--will present highlights from their discussions, accompanied by photos and audio excerpts from his conversations with the Dalai Lama. A Q&A with the audience will follow. This event will occur at the UC Berkeley journalism school, North Gate Library, Hearst at Euclid Avenue; for more details and directions, see the j-school website.
3. I recently interviewed Harvard cognitive psychologist and bestselling author Steven Pinker and UC Santa Barbara neuroscientist (and member of the President's Council of Bioethics) Michael S. Gazzaniga about science policy, the legacy of the Bush administration, and what the next administration needs to do to restore trust in science. Though the Pinker interview will appear in print and I will be using the Gazzaniga interview for a forthcoming article, due to their timeliness we decided to post both discussions in Q&A format to our blog. You can read the Pinker interview here and the Gazzaniga interview here. We invite your comments.
Monday, October 06, 2008
Links, links, links
Paid Family Leave in the United States and Around the World: "Just 13 percent of U.S. employers offered paid paternity leave in 2008, according to a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), down from 17 percent in 2007. (By comparison, SHRM found that only 15 percent of U.S. employers offer paid maternity leave.) But the news among the 100 Best Companies isn’t all about growth; the number of paid weeks offered to new dads last year averaged three weeks, only a week more than was offered on average five years ago." (Dads: I really recommend reading this article.)
Dear Lucy: "There will come a night when the phone rings for me to bail you out of jail and I will probably be angry. I will drive to the jail and mull over the possibility of smoking cigarettes again. But I hope that I’ll be able to remember the day you stormed a soccer field to devour the horizon. Because on that day your rebellion made me smile. You reminded me that I am truly inside your bones, testing the limits of what can be done."
A Mother’s Perspective on Palin, Disability Issues, and Reproductive Rights: "My son Ansel always hated the notion, growing up, that he should hang around with other 'disabled' kids. If I tried to hook him up with the other physically challenged boy in his school, or wanted to send him to muscular dystrophy camp, he resisted. 'Mom,' he'd complain, 'Just because I use a wheelchair doesn't mean I have anything in common with other people in wheelchairs.' He thought that, even though muscular dystrophy was a genetic illness he had, it was only a very small part of who he was. And I had to rather reluctantly agree."
Another way of thinking about "racism without racists": "Allow me the liberty of generalizing here--whites are most concerned about racial bigotry. That is, 'I don't believe in interracial marriage' or 'I don't want black people living next to me' or even 'I think black people are prone to crime.' Black folks don't like racial bigotry, but they're mostly concerned--not about racism as bigotry--but racism as oppression. That's a loaded word, I know. But let's go to the dictionary-- 'an unjust or cruel exercise of authority or power.' I think job discrimination falls under that category. I think redlining falls under that category... Blacks aren't so much worried about whether white people like them, they're worried about the fact that in New York City, their job prospects are about the same as white guy with a record. In that world you can have a guy who isn't a racist bigot--but in fact is a racist oppressor. It may be 'racism without racists' but it's still 'racism with racist oppressors.' Frankly, that terrifies me."
A CAMPAIGN JOHN MCCAIN WILL REGRET: If McCain were to accept the likelihood of loss, his incentives would be to ensure he falls with honor. Instead, he insists, understandably, on holding fast to the increasingly slim possibility of winning. But that requires an increasingly vicious and desperate strategy that is, by turns, racist, bigoted, fear-mongering, and dishonest. Barack Obama does not picnic with Bill Ayers or seek to plant bombs beneath the White House... McCain knows all this, but a recognition of that knowledge would require an acceptance of his likely loss. McCain will not accept that loss, and so he will deny this knowledge, and his campaign strategy will be shaped accordingly. This next month will be ugly. And it contains a great danger: If it works, McCain's vicious strategy will be purified in the clean light of victory."
Dear Lucy: "There will come a night when the phone rings for me to bail you out of jail and I will probably be angry. I will drive to the jail and mull over the possibility of smoking cigarettes again. But I hope that I’ll be able to remember the day you stormed a soccer field to devour the horizon. Because on that day your rebellion made me smile. You reminded me that I am truly inside your bones, testing the limits of what can be done."
A Mother’s Perspective on Palin, Disability Issues, and Reproductive Rights: "My son Ansel always hated the notion, growing up, that he should hang around with other 'disabled' kids. If I tried to hook him up with the other physically challenged boy in his school, or wanted to send him to muscular dystrophy camp, he resisted. 'Mom,' he'd complain, 'Just because I use a wheelchair doesn't mean I have anything in common with other people in wheelchairs.' He thought that, even though muscular dystrophy was a genetic illness he had, it was only a very small part of who he was. And I had to rather reluctantly agree."
Another way of thinking about "racism without racists": "Allow me the liberty of generalizing here--whites are most concerned about racial bigotry. That is, 'I don't believe in interracial marriage' or 'I don't want black people living next to me' or even 'I think black people are prone to crime.' Black folks don't like racial bigotry, but they're mostly concerned--not about racism as bigotry--but racism as oppression. That's a loaded word, I know. But let's go to the dictionary-- 'an unjust or cruel exercise of authority or power.' I think job discrimination falls under that category. I think redlining falls under that category... Blacks aren't so much worried about whether white people like them, they're worried about the fact that in New York City, their job prospects are about the same as white guy with a record. In that world you can have a guy who isn't a racist bigot--but in fact is a racist oppressor. It may be 'racism without racists' but it's still 'racism with racist oppressors.' Frankly, that terrifies me."
A CAMPAIGN JOHN MCCAIN WILL REGRET: If McCain were to accept the likelihood of loss, his incentives would be to ensure he falls with honor. Instead, he insists, understandably, on holding fast to the increasingly slim possibility of winning. But that requires an increasingly vicious and desperate strategy that is, by turns, racist, bigoted, fear-mongering, and dishonest. Barack Obama does not picnic with Bill Ayers or seek to plant bombs beneath the White House... McCain knows all this, but a recognition of that knowledge would require an acceptance of his likely loss. McCain will not accept that loss, and so he will deny this knowledge, and his campaign strategy will be shaped accordingly. This next month will be ugly. And it contains a great danger: If it works, McCain's vicious strategy will be purified in the clean light of victory."
Thursday, October 02, 2008
No, not live blogging, but...
Here, predictably, was my favorite part of the debate. From Biden:
That felt true and heartfelt to me; I don't think he was faking it.
As long as I'm blogging, my opinion on the debate: Palin played up all her strengths and minimized her weaknesses. Good for her. Meanwhile, Biden was Biden, seasoned and real. Biden clearly won on the substantial points, which everyone, even the stalwarts of the right, expected. I wish that were more important. I predict a slight poll bump for McCain/Palin tomorrow, followed by more decline.
Look, I understand what it's like to be a single parent. When my wife and daughter died and my two sons were gravely injured, I understand what it's like as a parent to wonder what it's like if your kid's going to make it.
I understand what it's like to sit around the kitchen table with a father who says, "I've got to leave, champ, because there's no jobs here. I got to head down to Wilmington. And when we get enough money, honey, we'll bring you down."
I understand what it's like. I'm much better off than almost all Americans now. I get a good salary with the United States Senate. I live in a beautiful house that's my total investment that I have. So I -- I am much better off now.
But the notion that somehow, because I'm a man, I don't know what it's like to raise two kids alone, I don't know what it's like to have a child you're not sure is going to -- is going to make it -- I understand.
I understand, as well as, with all due respect, the governor or anybody else, what it's like for those people sitting around that kitchen table. And guess what? They're looking for help. They're looking for help.
That felt true and heartfelt to me; I don't think he was faking it.
As long as I'm blogging, my opinion on the debate: Palin played up all her strengths and minimized her weaknesses. Good for her. Meanwhile, Biden was Biden, seasoned and real. Biden clearly won on the substantial points, which everyone, even the stalwarts of the right, expected. I wish that were more important. I predict a slight poll bump for McCain/Palin tomorrow, followed by more decline.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
The shelter of each other
Shortly after I started working full time again, Liko and I developed a tradition: On certain Sundays we take the F train downtown and we spend the afternoon watching hockey or figure skating, playing on the playground, going to museums, eating.
This past Sunday I took him ice skating. We had tried it about a year ago and I had concluded that it was too early. But on Sunday he took right to the ice, and we skated around and around the rink, holding hands, and neither of us could stop smiling.
Later we went to the playground and Liko hooked up with two little girls, twins, about six years old.
"Did you guys go ice skating?" he asked.
They nodded.
"Did you see me? I was really good!"
They laughed, as they should have, and ran to the slide. Liko chased them.
Later we rode the merry go round and I watched his face and I thought, I'm happy.
That night I put him to bed. "I love you, Dada," he said as he nodded off.
Then on Monday I read that the House voted to reject the $700 billion bailout package. Today I read that the war in Iraq continues to go badly; we're now losing the war in Afghanistan. An internal Justice Department investigation has concluded that White House fired federal prosecutors for political reasons, while a former CIA official pleads guilty to fraud--just two examples, plucked at random from today's headlines, of the ideological corruption that now seems to permeate American institutions.
The word I keep hearing in all these articles, the common thread that connects all these scandals, is "trust"--it seems that we no longer have enough it. People don't trust banks, banks don't trust each other, and neither trusts our political leaders or judicial system.
I'm not a sky-is-falling kind of guy; I tend to see history as the story of progress, and I have a great deal of faith in the creativity, decency, and resilience of human beings.
But the signs and portents are not good; it is now very likely that America is about to enter a full-blown crisis, one that will unfold on every level: spiritual, psychological, philosophical, financial, political, and military. Every institution will be affected, and so will every person.
Am I being melodramatic? I really don't think so. America could plausibly pull out of its nosedive, but at a certain point you have to admit, if only to yourself, that we are going to crash.
Journalists keep raising the specter of the Great Depression, but we're not going to see history repeat itself; America is a different place than it was in the 1930s or, for that matter, the 1960s, two previous crisis points. The next decade will be as different from those two decades as they were from each other.
In retrospect, both the 30s and the 60s were bridges; the Depression and New Deal completed the modernization of America, readying us for the role we occupied in the second half of that century; the 60s laid the foundation for the values we have needed in the twenty first century: diversity, tolerance, cosmopolitanism.
It's conceivable that the next decade will also be a bridge, though where it's going, I have no idea. At the moment, it seems that we are on the now-proverbial "bridge to nowhere," built by nihilists, but I don't want to believe that.
I can't; I'm a dad. For me, for all of us responsible for nurturing life, nihilism is not an option. "When I travel alone far from home, I think of my children's faces to calm myself down," writes Mary Pipher in her 1996 book The Shelter of Each Other. "Those faces are my mandalas. They comfort and secure me. The faces of those we love are the first, the primal, mandalas for us all."
Now I'm thinking of Liko's face, and of my wife's, faces I trust. They comfort me, but they also remind me to try to do the right thing, to be my best self, to try to be a hero, not a villain. We're walking on the bridge together. We all are, I think.
This past Sunday I took him ice skating. We had tried it about a year ago and I had concluded that it was too early. But on Sunday he took right to the ice, and we skated around and around the rink, holding hands, and neither of us could stop smiling.
Later we went to the playground and Liko hooked up with two little girls, twins, about six years old.
"Did you guys go ice skating?" he asked.
They nodded.
"Did you see me? I was really good!"
They laughed, as they should have, and ran to the slide. Liko chased them.
Later we rode the merry go round and I watched his face and I thought, I'm happy.
That night I put him to bed. "I love you, Dada," he said as he nodded off.
Then on Monday I read that the House voted to reject the $700 billion bailout package. Today I read that the war in Iraq continues to go badly; we're now losing the war in Afghanistan. An internal Justice Department investigation has concluded that White House fired federal prosecutors for political reasons, while a former CIA official pleads guilty to fraud--just two examples, plucked at random from today's headlines, of the ideological corruption that now seems to permeate American institutions.
The word I keep hearing in all these articles, the common thread that connects all these scandals, is "trust"--it seems that we no longer have enough it. People don't trust banks, banks don't trust each other, and neither trusts our political leaders or judicial system.
I'm not a sky-is-falling kind of guy; I tend to see history as the story of progress, and I have a great deal of faith in the creativity, decency, and resilience of human beings.
But the signs and portents are not good; it is now very likely that America is about to enter a full-blown crisis, one that will unfold on every level: spiritual, psychological, philosophical, financial, political, and military. Every institution will be affected, and so will every person.
Am I being melodramatic? I really don't think so. America could plausibly pull out of its nosedive, but at a certain point you have to admit, if only to yourself, that we are going to crash.
Journalists keep raising the specter of the Great Depression, but we're not going to see history repeat itself; America is a different place than it was in the 1930s or, for that matter, the 1960s, two previous crisis points. The next decade will be as different from those two decades as they were from each other.
In retrospect, both the 30s and the 60s were bridges; the Depression and New Deal completed the modernization of America, readying us for the role we occupied in the second half of that century; the 60s laid the foundation for the values we have needed in the twenty first century: diversity, tolerance, cosmopolitanism.
It's conceivable that the next decade will also be a bridge, though where it's going, I have no idea. At the moment, it seems that we are on the now-proverbial "bridge to nowhere," built by nihilists, but I don't want to believe that.
I can't; I'm a dad. For me, for all of us responsible for nurturing life, nihilism is not an option. "When I travel alone far from home, I think of my children's faces to calm myself down," writes Mary Pipher in her 1996 book The Shelter of Each Other. "Those faces are my mandalas. They comfort and secure me. The faces of those we love are the first, the primal, mandalas for us all."
Now I'm thinking of Liko's face, and of my wife's, faces I trust. They comfort me, but they also remind me to try to do the right thing, to be my best self, to try to be a hero, not a villain. We're walking on the bridge together. We all are, I think.
Friday, September 26, 2008
The wages of sexism
This is interesting:
And here, to me, is the really interesting passage:
Organizational psychologists Timothy Judge and Beth Livingston found that men who reported holding traditional views (that is, that women belong in the home, while men earn the money) earned on average $11,930 more annually for doing the same kind of work as men who held more egalitarian views. The reverse was true for women, to a much smaller degree. Female workers with more egalitarian views (that men and women should evenly divide the tasks at home and contribute equally to their shared finances) earned $1,052 more than women who did similar jobs but held more traditional views.
The effect was starkest, however, when researchers compared women's salaries to those of men, while also taking into account their gender-role biases. Men with traditional attitudes not only earned more than other men with egalitarian attitudes, but their annual salary was $14,404 greater than women with traditional attitudes, and $13,352 greater than women with egalitarian attitudes. Put differently, men with traditional attitudes made 71% more than women with traditional attitudes, while egalitarian-minded men made just 7% more than their female counterparts.
And here, to me, is the really interesting passage:
"What really surprised us was the magnitude of the difference," says Judge. "We suspected that 'traditional' gender-role attitudes would work against women. What surprised us was the degree to which that effect held, even when you start controlling for a variable that you think would make the effect go away, like how many kids you have, or how many hours you work outside the home, what type of occupation." When the researchers controlled for education, intelligence (based on the participants' IQ test scores), occupation, hours worked and even what region they lived in the United States, Judge found that "none of those really made the effect go away."
In other words, it's not that men make more than women because they work longer hours, are more highly educated or simply take higher paying jobs. Rather, the new findings suggest the wage gap may be largely attributable to gender-role attitudes. And the big winners, it seems, is men with traditional views. Why the gap persists, Judge and Livingston aren't sure, but Judge thinks it might be have something to do with the different ways men and women sign onto new jobs. Women on the whole are less effective at negotiating salaries than men, and they tend to be less aggressive about asking for bigger salaries, or they accept employers' offers without negotiating at all. And Judge suspects that tradition-bound women may be even worse at it than their more egalitarian counterparts: "I would posit that egalitarian women are not as susceptible to settling for less in the negotiating process," he says.
As for those money-making traditionally minded men, Judge theorizes that if they believe they are the family's primary breadwinner, they may show greater dedication to career and are perhaps more aggressive than other men in terms of salary negotiation. Compared with men with egalitarian attitudes, the primary breadwinner simply has more at stake. "Maybe the egalitarian guy thinks, 'Well, I don't have to go the extra mile because my wife and I share earning responsibilities equally,'" Judge says.
Another factor could be bias on the part of the employer. "We're learning that more and more aspects of organizational psychology are operating somewhat subconsciously," says Judge. "It may be that employers are more likely to take advantage of traditional gender-role women."
"I have two moms"
If you live in California, Arizona, or Florida, please, please, please, vote no on the hateful, idiotic anti-gay propositions on each state's ballot.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
The Democratic Party on Fatherhood
Did you know that the Democratic Party platform, for the first time ever, has a plank that addresses fatherhood? Here it is, in its entirety:
On a policy level, I have no problem with any of this--quite a few of these items are critical, especially for poor families. There are some items missing, such as legal protections for caregiving parents of both genders, but I don't hear the "pro-family" Republican Party pushing expanded paternity leave. (For exegesis on the policy details, see The American Prospect and Ta-Nehisi Coates at his Atlantic Monthly blog.)
But note where the plank begins, with deadbeat dads. Thus fatherhood is framed, first and foremost, as a problem to be solved. Note as well that throughout the paragraph, fatherhood is primarily defined as breadwinning; nearly all these policies are focused on funneling money from the father to the mother and children.
I would argue that, with fatherhood, an once of prevention is worth a pound of cure: If we want fathers to stay involved, emotionally and financially, we must make sure that they are involved from the beginning, by providing, for example, paternity leave and eliminating the factors, such as informal on-the-job penalties for prioritizing caregiving, that drive wedges between fathers from families. If we do that, I think we'll ultimately need to spend slightly less time collecting child support.
What if the plank had instead read this way, with a hopeful, inspiring vision of fatherhood, explicitly connected to a public policy that could support that vision:
What do you think?
[Originally posted to my Mothering magazine blog.]
Too many fathers are missing–missing from too many lives and too many homes. Children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and are more likely to commit crime, drop out of school, abuse drugs and end up in prison. We need more fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to understand that what makes a man is not the ability to have a child–it's the courage to raise one. We will support fathers by providing transitional training to get jobs, removing tax penalties on married families, and expanding maternity and paternity leave. We will reward those who are responsibly supporting their children by giving them a tax credit, crack down on men who avoid child support payments, and we will ensure that payments go directly to families instead of bureaucracies.
On a policy level, I have no problem with any of this--quite a few of these items are critical, especially for poor families. There are some items missing, such as legal protections for caregiving parents of both genders, but I don't hear the "pro-family" Republican Party pushing expanded paternity leave. (For exegesis on the policy details, see The American Prospect and Ta-Nehisi Coates at his Atlantic Monthly blog.)
But note where the plank begins, with deadbeat dads. Thus fatherhood is framed, first and foremost, as a problem to be solved. Note as well that throughout the paragraph, fatherhood is primarily defined as breadwinning; nearly all these policies are focused on funneling money from the father to the mother and children.
I would argue that, with fatherhood, an once of prevention is worth a pound of cure: If we want fathers to stay involved, emotionally and financially, we must make sure that they are involved from the beginning, by providing, for example, paternity leave and eliminating the factors, such as informal on-the-job penalties for prioritizing caregiving, that drive wedges between fathers from families. If we do that, I think we'll ultimately need to spend slightly less time collecting child support.
What if the plank had instead read this way, with a hopeful, inspiring vision of fatherhood, explicitly connected to a public policy that could support that vision:
Fathers play essential roles in their families as both breadwinners and caregivers. But too often, government has failed to support fathers in fulfilling those twin roles. We will support fathers by expanding maternity and paternity leave, requiring that employers pro-rate benefits for part-time employees, removing tax penalties on both married and non-married families, and providing anti-discrimination protection for parents who are primarily responsible for child or elder care. As we enact these public policy reforms, however, we need more fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. Too many fathers are missing–missing from too many lives and too many homes. Children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and are more likely to commit crime, drop out of school, abuse drugs and end up in prison. We need them to understand that what makes a man is not the ability to have a child–it's the courage to raise one. We will reward those who are responsibly supporting their children by giving them a tax credit, crack down on men who avoid child support payments, and we will ensure that payments go directly to families instead of bureaucracies. Above all, however, we recognize that fathers must be more than just cash machines; they must also be involved in their families. We call upon fathers to fulfill that roll, and we call upon employers to support them.
What do you think?
[Originally posted to my Mothering magazine blog.]
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Engage Her
Last night I went to a screening of a new documentary, Engage Her, about the need for women of color to vote and get involved in the political process.
But, as I discovered, the film (and the organization that sponsored it) isn't really for me: It's aimed at women of color themselves. If you, dear reader, have some way of getting this film in front of an audience that needs to see it, please do contact Engage Her and tell them you want to help.
At the screening I had a chance to meet some folks from the redoubtable activist group MomsRising as well as Elisa from the wonderful blog Mothertalkers, who has been very supportive of Daddy Dialectic.
But, as I discovered, the film (and the organization that sponsored it) isn't really for me: It's aimed at women of color themselves. If you, dear reader, have some way of getting this film in front of an audience that needs to see it, please do contact Engage Her and tell them you want to help.
At the screening I had a chance to meet some folks from the redoubtable activist group MomsRising as well as Elisa from the wonderful blog Mothertalkers, who has been very supportive of Daddy Dialectic.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Links, I got links
The No-Fear Option: Just wait 'til your father gets home! "What I wanted to be different about my children’s upbringing was their attitude toward their father: I did not want them to be afraid of me. Looking back, I see that there was something I had overlooked. If I raised children who were not afraid of me, I would have children who were…well, not afraid of me."
Obama's Mixed Heritage: A Mother's Perspective. "It's an interesting historical moment to be a white mother of a Black child, as another white mother's Black child is running for president of the United States. Who'd have thought?"
Sacrifice and the Black Family. "When black families do what white families do instinctively and routinely—somehow, it pisses people right off."
The Push to ‘Otherize’ Obama. "The political campaign to transform Mr. Obama into a Muslim is succeeding. The real loser as that happens isn’t just Mr. Obama, but our entire political process." More wisdom on race and the election: "Barack Obama, John McCain and the Language of Race" and "Poll: Racial views steer some white Dems away from Obama." (My quick take: Argh!)
Contraception Foes With Friends in High Places. "Claims of equivalency between contraception and abortion have been a long time in the making among contemporary religious right activists. The recent eruption of their claims onto the public stage, helped along by an aggressively anti-choice administration, is the culmination of grassroots work begun in the early 1980s among fundamentalist and evangelical Christian activists, particularly in the homeschooling movement, who developed a pronatalist theological movement that came to be known as the Quiverfull conviction."
More Kathryn Joyce: "This twisting of feminist history and rhetoric to protect a champion of anti-feminist causes, traditionalism and sex-kitten objectification, is particularly unnerving for exactly the reasons that Palin's biggest supporters claim it is: for its elevation of antifeminist 'real women' as icons of rebellion against a supposedly powerful and elite feminist status quo (however depressing it is to begin untangling that premise)."
Another fine selection from our collection of Nixon-era children's books. "Congratulations, Mom, you've now got a pint-sized Doppelgänger of the jerk you married!"
Art of Darkness. "No wonder we crave an entertainment like 'The Dark Knight,' where every topic we’re unable to quit not-thinking about is whirled into a cognitively dissonant milkshake of rage, fear and, finally, absolving confusion... If everything is broken, perhaps it is because for the moment we like it better that way. Unlike some others, I have no theory who Batman is — but the Joker is us."
Obama's Mixed Heritage: A Mother's Perspective. "It's an interesting historical moment to be a white mother of a Black child, as another white mother's Black child is running for president of the United States. Who'd have thought?"
Sacrifice and the Black Family. "When black families do what white families do instinctively and routinely—somehow, it pisses people right off."
The Push to ‘Otherize’ Obama. "The political campaign to transform Mr. Obama into a Muslim is succeeding. The real loser as that happens isn’t just Mr. Obama, but our entire political process." More wisdom on race and the election: "Barack Obama, John McCain and the Language of Race" and "Poll: Racial views steer some white Dems away from Obama." (My quick take: Argh!)
Contraception Foes With Friends in High Places. "Claims of equivalency between contraception and abortion have been a long time in the making among contemporary religious right activists. The recent eruption of their claims onto the public stage, helped along by an aggressively anti-choice administration, is the culmination of grassroots work begun in the early 1980s among fundamentalist and evangelical Christian activists, particularly in the homeschooling movement, who developed a pronatalist theological movement that came to be known as the Quiverfull conviction."
More Kathryn Joyce: "This twisting of feminist history and rhetoric to protect a champion of anti-feminist causes, traditionalism and sex-kitten objectification, is particularly unnerving for exactly the reasons that Palin's biggest supporters claim it is: for its elevation of antifeminist 'real women' as icons of rebellion against a supposedly powerful and elite feminist status quo (however depressing it is to begin untangling that premise)."
Another fine selection from our collection of Nixon-era children's books. "Congratulations, Mom, you've now got a pint-sized Doppelgänger of the jerk you married!"
Art of Darkness. "No wonder we crave an entertainment like 'The Dark Knight,' where every topic we’re unable to quit not-thinking about is whirled into a cognitively dissonant milkshake of rage, fear and, finally, absolving confusion... If everything is broken, perhaps it is because for the moment we like it better that way. Unlike some others, I have no theory who Batman is — but the Joker is us."
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Listen to the Man
And, for a short, sweet, and sane analysis of what's gone wrong with the economy, see Robert Reich.
Perhaps you noticed? I'm blogging about the election and politics quite a bit. Why? Because, really, I'm worried. Really worried, and more than a little furious. And you should be, too.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Yah!
Florida Gay Adoption Ban Declared Unconstitutional!
And if you want to help defeat the anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 in California, consider making a donation to the "No on 8" campaign.
And if you want to help defeat the anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 in California, consider making a donation to the "No on 8" campaign.
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Kafka For Fathers
The other day I picked up a copy of a letter Franz Kafka wrote to his father in the winter of 1919. He was attempting to repair and understand their estrangement. It was 45 pages long, typewritten, and never delivered.
Franz, then in his late 30s, was making his third attempt at marriage, after two failed engagements. He informed his father, who immediately rejected the match. Believing that a successful marriage bid was his only chance to win happiness as a young man, and a high place in his father's esteem, Franz attempted in his letter to overcome a generation gap that contributed to the period's greatest upheavals.
Two thirds of the way through this confession written to a father who never read it, I was startled to come across the following lines:
Marrying, founding a family, accepting all the children that come, supporting them in this insecure world, and perhaps even guiding them a little, is, I am convinced, the utmost a human being can succeed in doing at all.By his own measure, Kafka was a failure. He succeeded at something quite other than what he claims to have valued most, and then only by accident. His deathbed instructions were that his papers be burnt; the instructions were ignored, and by virtue of this betrayal and a few subsequent accidents, now we now read Kafka in college and coffee shops.
The literature of the 20th century, it seemed for a long time, was praised for its fortifying properties, bolstering us against the harsh truths of the modern age: there is no God, human beings are isolated and alienated from each other, and all the certainties we cling to are illusions.
And yet here we have a literary modernist who, at heart, yearns for family values. Not the heroic modernist who mocks all that came before and challenges the void, leaving masterpieces in his wake.
I get the feeling Kafka would have welcomed the chance to start a family, which he never got. I also get the feeling that he might not have minded being a little bit more Jewish, which he might have tried had he lived longer. And I certainly get the feeling that he would, above all, have traded it all in for a rapprochement with his father.
It's hard not to suspect that the planetary influence of a father upon a son straining to break from his orbit had something to do with the themes, style, and very impulse of Kafka's writing. But had they been close, would we still have the art?
[D]uring my last illness, you came tiptoeing to Ottla's room to see me, stopping in the doorway, craning your neck ... and out of consideration only waved to me with your hand. At such times one would lie back and weep for happiness, and one weeps again, writing it down.
It's been said that revolutions, in politics or in art, are about the overthrow of the father. Everything else flows from that. But what if Kafka's father had come in the room and stayed? Would Franz have written his letter, attributing most of his life's misery to misunderstandings with the man?
It makes me wonder in general what happens if we let the father live, or if the mother delivers the letter. If the father comes home, if the sons and daughters succeed at "the utmost a human being can succeed in doing at all," maybe they won't have made a revolution, or written great books (or maybe they still can?) but they will have accomplished something else that leaves much different monuments.
I like the idea.
Take the Morality Quiz!
First, read this: What Makes People Vote Republican? By Jonathan Haidt
Then take the morality quiz.
I did. In the graph below, I'm green, self-identified liberals who took the quiz are blue, and self-identified conservatives are red.
And here's the explanation of the graph:
The bottom line: Yours truly is liberal, liberal, liberal. I'm more liberal than most liberals! I'm so liberal, I think endangered baby seals are entitled to food stamps and free condoms!
And on that note, here's something else from today's New York Times: "Hold your heads up," by Bob Herbert.
Then take the morality quiz.
I did. In the graph below, I'm green, self-identified liberals who took the quiz are blue, and self-identified conservatives are red.
And here's the explanation of the graph:
The scale you completed was the "Moral Foundations Questionnaire," developed by Jesse Graham and Jonathan Haidt at the University of Virginia.
The scale is a measure of your reliance on and endorsement of five psychological foundations of morality that seem to be found across cultures. Each of the two parts of the scale contained four questions related to each foundation: 1) harm/care, 2) fairness/reciprocity (including issues of rights), 3) ingroup/loyalty, 4) authority/respect, and 5) purity/sanctity.
The idea behind the scale is that human morality is the result of biological and cultural evolutionary processes that made human beings very sensitive to many different (and often competing) issues. Some of these issues are about treating other individuals well (the first two foundations - harm and fairness). Other issues are about how to be a good member of a group or supporter of social order and tradition (the last three foundations).
Haidt and Graham have found that political liberals generally place a higher value on the first two foundations; they are very concerned about issues of harm and fairness (including issues of inequality and exploitation). Political conservatives care about harm and fairness too, but they generally score slightly lower on those scale items. The big difference between liberals and conservatives seems to be that conservatives score slightly higher on the ingroup/loyalty foundation, and much higher on the authority/respect and purity/sanctity foundations.
This difference seems to explain many of the most contentious issues in the culture war. For example, liberals support legalizing gay marriage (to be fair and compassionate), whereas many conservatives are reluctant to change the nature of marriage and the family, basic building blocks of society. Conservatives are more likely to favor practices that increase order and respect (e.g., spanking, mandatory pledge of allegiance), whereas liberals often oppose these practices as being violent or coercive.
The bottom line: Yours truly is liberal, liberal, liberal. I'm more liberal than most liberals! I'm so liberal, I think endangered baby seals are entitled to food stamps and free condoms!
And on that note, here's something else from today's New York Times: "Hold your heads up," by Bob Herbert.
We are culture
From today's New York Times:
I'll be reading the study. Some preliminary points: These results are seemingly contradicted by plenty of long-term studies showing that the two genders are actually converging in both behaviors and attitudes in the Western world.
I'd suggest that the reason for this seeming contradiction is pretty straightforward: For centuries, gender differences were dramatically exaggerated in the West and constantly reinforced, through custom, ritual, law, power structures, social structures, and, more recently, the media. This created profound inequalities of power between men and women. Over the course of the past three to four decades, women have gained more power and we've regained a measure of sanity, though I would describe our culture are still being fairly sick when it comes to issues of sex and gender.
In other words, while gender differences still seem exaggerated in the Western world, and unsurprising disparities persist between that world and others, they are less so than they were fifty or a hundred years ago. And I would argue that this is the more natural state of affairs.
Still, virtually every study I've ever seen does suggest some differences. As the article points out, men are persistently more competitive, and also more violent--a trait 21st-century, Western men have in common with our counterparts in less technological cultures. The evidence for this is pretty conclusive, and it meets the sniff test of most people's experience.
It still remains the case, however, the gender roles are exquisitely sensitive to social context--as this new study reveals, yet again. Capacities for competitiveness and violence can be shaped, developed, discouraged, encouraged. “Culture and tradition are part of our flexibility, and we can, therefore, change the dictates of culture because we are culture,” writes the anthropologist Meredith Small. “This is why cultures not only evolve, they can also be forced to change, can be revolutionized.”
A series of research teams have repeatedly analyzed personality tests taken by men and women in more than 60 countries around the world. For evolutionary psychologists, the bad news is that the size of the gender gap in personality varies among cultures. For social-role psychologists, the bad news is that the variation is going in the wrong direction. It looks as if personality differences between men and women are smaller in traditional cultures like India’s or Zimbabwe’s than in the Netherlands or the United States. A husband and a stay-at-home wife in a patriarchal Botswanan clan seem to be more alike than a working couple in Denmark or France. The more Venus and Mars have equal rights and similar jobs, the more their personalities seem to diverge.
These findings are so counterintuitive that some researchers have argued they must be because of cross-cultural problems with the personality tests. But after crunching new data from 40,000 men and women on six continents, David P. Schmitt and his colleagues conclude that the trends are real. Dr. Schmitt, a psychologist at Bradley University in Illinois and the director of the International Sexuality Description Project, suggests that as wealthy modern societies level external barriers between women and men, some ancient internal differences are being revived.
The biggest changes recorded by the researchers involve the personalities of men, not women. Men in traditional agricultural societies and poorer countries seem more cautious and anxious, less assertive and less competitive than men in the most progressive and rich countries of Europe and North America.
To explain these differences, Dr. Schmitt and his collaborators from Austria and Estonia point to the hardships of life in poorer countries. They note that in some other species, environmental stress tends to disproportionately affect the larger sex and mute costly secondary sexual characteristics (like male birds’ displays of plumage). And, they say, there are examples of stress muting biological sex differences in humans. For instance, the average disparity in height between men and women isn’t as pronounced in poor countries as it is in rich countries, because boys’ growth is disproportionately stunted by stresses like malnutrition and disease.
Personality is more complicated than height, of course, and Dr. Schmitt suggests it’s affected by not just the physical but also the social stresses in traditional agricultural societies. These villagers have had to adapt their personalities to rules, hierarchies and gender roles more constraining than those in modern Western countries — or in clans of hunter-gatherers.
I'll be reading the study. Some preliminary points: These results are seemingly contradicted by plenty of long-term studies showing that the two genders are actually converging in both behaviors and attitudes in the Western world.
I'd suggest that the reason for this seeming contradiction is pretty straightforward: For centuries, gender differences were dramatically exaggerated in the West and constantly reinforced, through custom, ritual, law, power structures, social structures, and, more recently, the media. This created profound inequalities of power between men and women. Over the course of the past three to four decades, women have gained more power and we've regained a measure of sanity, though I would describe our culture are still being fairly sick when it comes to issues of sex and gender.
In other words, while gender differences still seem exaggerated in the Western world, and unsurprising disparities persist between that world and others, they are less so than they were fifty or a hundred years ago. And I would argue that this is the more natural state of affairs.
Still, virtually every study I've ever seen does suggest some differences. As the article points out, men are persistently more competitive, and also more violent--a trait 21st-century, Western men have in common with our counterparts in less technological cultures. The evidence for this is pretty conclusive, and it meets the sniff test of most people's experience.
It still remains the case, however, the gender roles are exquisitely sensitive to social context--as this new study reveals, yet again. Capacities for competitiveness and violence can be shaped, developed, discouraged, encouraged. “Culture and tradition are part of our flexibility, and we can, therefore, change the dictates of culture because we are culture,” writes the anthropologist Meredith Small. “This is why cultures not only evolve, they can also be forced to change, can be revolutionized.”
Friday, September 05, 2008
The Sarah Palin Chronicles, Continued
It seems that I more things to say about Sarah Palin. Weird.
There are lots and lots of mommy bloggers and mommy columnists out there saying that, as "Suburban Turmoil" puts it, it's hard "to believe that this country needs Sarah Palin more than her own children." They look at the baby with Down Syndrome and the pregnant teenager, and they think, mom is the one who needs to be there.
Whenever I read things like this, I think of the Hoffman family (not their real names). They are a family I profile in my book.
The mother, Misun, has a super-high-powered career (she was in the private sector when I interviewed them, making gobs of cash advising Fortune 500 companies; now they live in Washington, D.C. and she works in a high-level position for the Securities and Exchange Commission.) The father, Kent, is a stay-at-home dad.
Their son Clinton was born with multiple, life-threatening disabilities, at just the moment when Misun's career was taking off. In the year after Clinton was born, Misun was working 70 hour weeks and traveling 2-3 times a month. "It was very hard," Misun told me. "I remember for several weeks I would cry when I got on the plane."
But she still got on the plane. She knew her husband Kent was at home taking care of Clinton, doing what had to be done. And she was doing what she had to do, providing for the family.
She never doubted her choice, and neither did Kent. The burdens he carried were terrible--Clinton demanded 24-hour care--but he took them on willingly. To Misun, making money was a part of mothering; to Kent, caring for his child was a part of fathering.
“Her career got a major boost as a result of me staying at home,” said Kent. “When she goes away, she doesn’t have to worry about the kids or juggling anything. She’s been able to do what it takes and focus on her job.”
It's a waste of time to judge Misun as a bad mother for not being the one to take care of Clinton or judge Kent as a bad father for not serving as the breadwinner, because they don't care what you think. Here's the only thing that matters: When I interviewed them, Clinton was starting Kindergarten, and he was a happy, healthy little dude.
I have no idea what kind of person Palin's husband is. I don't know who does what in their family, but I suspect that there's a lot of responsibility falling on his shoulders right now.
And you know what? As a father, he can do it; there's nothing in his biological sex or even his socially constructed gender that will prevent him from serving as a caregiver. He can be the one to take care of the baby. He can be the parent who is there for his daughter. The mother doesn't have to be the one to do it. And it's not for us to judge a mother like her.
There are lots and lots of mommy bloggers and mommy columnists out there saying that, as "Suburban Turmoil" puts it, it's hard "to believe that this country needs Sarah Palin more than her own children." They look at the baby with Down Syndrome and the pregnant teenager, and they think, mom is the one who needs to be there.
Whenever I read things like this, I think of the Hoffman family (not their real names). They are a family I profile in my book.
The mother, Misun, has a super-high-powered career (she was in the private sector when I interviewed them, making gobs of cash advising Fortune 500 companies; now they live in Washington, D.C. and she works in a high-level position for the Securities and Exchange Commission.) The father, Kent, is a stay-at-home dad.
Their son Clinton was born with multiple, life-threatening disabilities, at just the moment when Misun's career was taking off. In the year after Clinton was born, Misun was working 70 hour weeks and traveling 2-3 times a month. "It was very hard," Misun told me. "I remember for several weeks I would cry when I got on the plane."
But she still got on the plane. She knew her husband Kent was at home taking care of Clinton, doing what had to be done. And she was doing what she had to do, providing for the family.
She never doubted her choice, and neither did Kent. The burdens he carried were terrible--Clinton demanded 24-hour care--but he took them on willingly. To Misun, making money was a part of mothering; to Kent, caring for his child was a part of fathering.
“Her career got a major boost as a result of me staying at home,” said Kent. “When she goes away, she doesn’t have to worry about the kids or juggling anything. She’s been able to do what it takes and focus on her job.”
It's a waste of time to judge Misun as a bad mother for not being the one to take care of Clinton or judge Kent as a bad father for not serving as the breadwinner, because they don't care what you think. Here's the only thing that matters: When I interviewed them, Clinton was starting Kindergarten, and he was a happy, healthy little dude.
I have no idea what kind of person Palin's husband is. I don't know who does what in their family, but I suspect that there's a lot of responsibility falling on his shoulders right now.
And you know what? As a father, he can do it; there's nothing in his biological sex or even his socially constructed gender that will prevent him from serving as a caregiver. He can be the one to take care of the baby. He can be the parent who is there for his daughter. The mother doesn't have to be the one to do it. And it's not for us to judge a mother like her.
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