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The Senate has just confirmed Elena Kagan to be solicitor general of the United States by a vote of 61-31. She's the first woman to be confirmed to the post.
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Ladies, you can fret about your mothering methods all you want, but you will never, never beat Big Edie Beale.
Big Edie and her daughter, Little Edie, are the stars of the 1976 cult classic Grey Gardens, a documentary madly beloved by fashionistas, feminists, and gay men the world over. In the '40s, they were glamorous relatives of Jackie O; by the '70s, the Edies were living, Tennessee Williams-style, in a squalid Hamptons manse, locked in a toxic battle of wills (not to mention a toxic fug of cat-piss fumes). On April 18, HBO is going to be airing a feature film based on the documentary, starring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore. Fans cried foul at the casting of Gertie as Edie, but the official trailer has been making the rounds this week, and gosh darn it if Drew isn't spot-on. (See the O.G. Little E here and here.) And how gorgeous are those period costumes?
I did an interview once with Doug Wright, who wrote the book for the 2006 Grey Gardens musical. As Wright described it, the whole saga of the Edies can be read as a parable about overparenting:
I'll watch the film once and think, wow, Big Edie was really a toxic narcissist who forced her daughter to live according to her rules, and in doing so undermined her daughter's entire life. ... And then I'll watch the documentary a second time and think, wow, Little Edie was really ill-equipped to live in the world; thank God her mother gave her sanctuary. And I think at the end of the day, both things are true.
Something to think about for those of us (be-childed or otherwise) planning to spend April 18 fashioning turbans out of hand towels.
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Believe me, Ellen, I probably practice better-safe-than-sorry parenting more than I preach it. I watch my oldest son the entire way if he so much as walks across the street to ask the neighbor kid to play (and we live on the world's quietest cul-de-sac). The fact that our subdivision spills out onto a windy country road is enough to make me want to move before he gets his driver's license (and I have my fingers crossed that the driving age will be 18 by the time he's 16). When you've spent nine months taking vitamins and shunning booze, sushi, and undercooked eggs so as not to harm the wee one you're carrying, when you've invested in car seats to keep them safe, and kept the baby in your room at night for months just so you can reach out and touch him to make sure he's all right when he's sleeping, you're not going to start letting him play in the street overnight.
If the last five-plus years have taught me anything, it's that parenting is actually just a series of agonizing decisions and dilemmas, from breast-feeding or formula? when the kids are infants all the way to when can they start dating? and what college can we afford and can they get in? when they're older. Some decisions come easily and some require much discussion with my husband and with friends who have kids the same age. One of the hardest things—and yet at the same time the most rewarding—is letting them take those steps toward independence: letting them play unattended in an upstairs playroom, letting them play outside by themselves. Someday soon, that will expand to visiting friends more than a few houses away and riding bikes beyond my sightline. Nobody wants their kid to be the next Etan Patz. We just had a terrible, terrible tragedy here in Cincinnati, where a 13-year-old girl was killed while jogging near her home. But, as Emily pointed out, abductions are extremely rare. Kids are far more likely to be injured in a car accident, or falling down at home, or stricken by a terrible disease. No matter what you do, there are risks. I want to foster independence in my kids, at age-appropriate levels, so that as they can grow they can make decisions that will keep them safe. For example, say I tried to shelter my kid from dating, driving a car, and any exposure to alcohol in high school. Something tells me his first trip home from college would see him driving drunk to introduce me to his pregnant girlfriend.
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Audrina Partridge, the resident brunette on MTV's loathsomely addictive love letter to the meaningfully meaningless stare, The Hills, is getting her own television show. Burning yule logs hold the camera better than Partridge, but burning yule logs have never gotten a chance to think confuddled thoughts near Hills star Lauren Conrad, lay out on chaise lounges next to Lauren Conrad, or to mistakenly accuse Lauren Conrad of making out with their greasy, manipulative on-again, off-again boyfriends. If yule logs had such opportunities, and looked as good in a bikini, one would expect yule logs to break out of the Christmas Eve type casting and land their own reality show, just like Audrina and all her Hills co-stars, including The City's Whitney Port and Bromance's Brody Jenner.
Audrina's show will be produced by Mark Burnett, the reality TV guru who created Survivor and The Apprentice. Say what you will about Burnett (like, he’s the guy who briefly resurrected Donald Trump's reputation), but he understands how reality TV works. Just like in movies and politics, a name is better than no name. Partridge doesn't have to be interesting or charismatic in the limited way of The Real World cast members or the expansive way of the hilarious loonies on The Real Housewives of New York City because we already "know" her. In a sweetly human, but incredibly undiscerning way, prior knowledge of Audrina's story is all some of us will need to care about what happens next. She can continue to be as dull and dim as a burned out light bulb and she will have an audience.
In a big leap from brow to brow, Audrina’s show got me thinking of David Foster Wallace. In the recent New Yorker piece on him, D.T. Max wrote that Foster Wallace’s unfinished novel, The Pale King, about IRS employees, suggests that “Properly handled, boredom can be an antidote to our national dependence on entertainment.” I wonder what DFW would make of our dependence on entertainment that is already well and truly boring.
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Emily Y is right to be concerned. Though I was one before unwed mothers were a rising statistic, I don't recommend becoming a single mother by choice. Obviously having social standing, a college education, and a loving husband all make a big difference in the large bore challenges of raising children: assuring a secure environment, good education, and culturally uplifting activities. (Not to mention equipping them with GPS navigators or latitude homing devices as Abby suggests.)
As women, however, we share many experiences not limited to members of "our own middle- and upper-middle-class world" that Emily B describes. Economic assumptions aside, young, poor mothers are just as motivated to do the best they can for their offspring as the moms with manicured lawns or doorman buildings, and a well-heeled background, sadly, doesn't mean we will always remember to speak lovingly to our children when they disappoint us (as they are bound to occasionally), even under the best circumstances.
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Fear not, Bonnie, Emily, Ellen, and Rachael! No more need to worry about whether your teenage daughter is really over at her girlfriend's house on Saturday night or if your son makes it to soccer practice on time. Google is here to save the day with its new Latitude program, launched in February. Now you can pinpoint your kids, your friends, even your kids' friends at any given moment of the day (well, almost—they still have some kinks to work out). It's creepy, useful, and sort of irresistible all at the same time. Now if I could only get my boss to sync up so that I could always beat her to the office in the mornings ...
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Today's paper has a story I knew was coming but have truly dreaded. It turns out that PSAs—the screening test for prostate cancer—may do more harm than good. Most of these cancers are very slow growing, it turns out, and may not need to be treated. Meanwhile, the operations to treat them have serious consequences. So many men have undergone the surgeries needlessly. My father had the surgery, and it really ruined his life. The idea that he may not have needed it kills me.
My takeaway from this story is that when a certain kind of science hysteria takes hold, rational risk analysis goes out the window. When you say "test" and "cancer," the rest of the qualifications and probabilities don't get heard. This is on my mind because of the reaction I've gotten to my recent Atlantic story, "The Case Against Breast-Feeding," where I challenge some of the science supporting breast-feeding.
Of course I've heard from hundreds of grateful moms, and an equal number of people telling me what an evil mother and wife I am. And I've also heard from lots of science scolds. A typical such response is this one from our sisters at Salon.
On closer inspection, we have to conclude that her reporting is biased. She cherry-picked research that suited her agenda, the research suggesting that breast milk isn't really all it's been hyped to be. Yet between us we have interviewed dozens of highly regarded researchers and pediatricians who could offer a point-counterpoint to the research Rosin highlighted.
This is really not good enough. As the latest prostate cancer study shows, it's perfectly possible for the scientific establishment to be in agreement and also wrong. This is like interviewing generals in Iraq about whether the surge is going well. They may be experts, but they are experts with a stake in the outcome. Yes, I highlighted a few studies that support my point. But mainly what I did was critique the research as a whole. And what I found was that if you say "infant" and "health" in the same sentence, no one bothers with the details.
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Hanna and Jessica, perhaps complacency that teen pregnancy rates had been successfully declining for so long, and perhaps ineffective abstinence-only education has something to do with the disturbing rise in young unwed motherhood. But my favorite theory is that such sexual behavior is culturally transmitted. While teen pregnancy rates have started to rise a little, among women ages 20 to 24 who give birth, 60 percent are having those kids of out wedlock. For a large segment of our society, it has become the normal thing to do. But if you're 22 and just had a baby, that probably means you haven't gone to college. As Kay Hymowitz has written, unwed motherhood is the greatest engine of social inequality in this country. There are actually very few Murphy Browns—college-educated professionals deciding to raise children on their own. College-educated women, as Hymowitz writes, have a life script and things follow in sequence: education, career, marriage, children. Following this order means their children will follow the same script. This has broken down for large segments of our population. There is no shame or embarrassment at out-of-wedlock birth anymore; there is often the sense this is a better way to go than getting married (as if the child's father would even entertain getting hitched) and inevitably getting divorced. The year-by-year increase in out-of-wedlock births in this country shows how self-perpetuating this is. What the statistics don't show is the suffering of children whose longing to have a father will be unmet, and who are being raised by overwhelmed mothers.
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Bonnie, your lovely, loving mea culpa raises what's for me a central conundrum of writing about parenting: audience. Do we write for our own middle- and upper-middle-class world? In which it's an easy call, to me, that helicopter parents pose a greater danger to kids than wandering the streets, or rather, the well-groomed sidewalks. Or are we writing to 22-year-old moms like your former self and to poor ones? Sometimes the message is the same. But often it's not, because the set of assumptions we're speaking to are very different. See Paul Tough's smart reporting on Annette Lareau's studies about how child-rearing differs by income. It's a split that affects this discussion we're having and a lot of other ones, I find.
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I have some convincing theories about the rise of teen pregnancy and AIDS cases, Hanna! Let's start with the increased percentage of pregnant adolescents. In an article that "XX Factor" friend Margaret Talbot wrote for The New Yorker last year called "Red Sex, Blue Sex" she quotes sociologist Mark Regnerus on teens who delay sexual activity:
They are interested in remaining free from the burden of teenage pregnancy and the sorrows and embarrassments of sexually transmitted diseases. They perceive a bright future for themselves, one with college, advanced degrees, a career, and a family. Simply put, too much seems at stake. Sexual intercourse is not worth the risks.
Hanna, you note that the Latino population has seen a particularly notable spike in teen pregnancy, and that doesn't surprise me. As an article in Sunday's New York Times about the education of nonnative English speakers showed, there are near-impossible barriers for recent immigrants that prevent them from the "bright futures" Regnerus speaks of. The Times article quotes a 19-year-old Guatemalan woman named Amalia Raymundo, who "was a rising star in her remote village in Guatemala, the region’s beauty queen and a candidate for college scholarships." Because of her experiences in American public school, Amalia saw that her dreams of becoming a doctor were so far out of her reach, she thought about dropping out. “If I am going to end up cleaning houses with my mother ... why go to high school?”
If that's the reality for most recent immigrant women, why would they delay sex or prevent pregnancy? What's the motivation? Which brings me to my next point: I think AIDS is on the rise because condom promotion has all but disappeared and AIDS is no longer seen as a death sentence. If you don't believe you're going to die, and many think sex feels better without a condom, what's the motivation for use? In addition, as Talbot wrote in her New Yorker article, "many evangelicals are steeped in the abstinence movement’s warnings that condoms won’t actually protect them from pregnancy or venereal disease." So you have informed people who choose to take the risk because they think AIDS won't happen to them, and you have underinformed people who think that condoms don't work. Those taken together seem like enough to cause a statistical increase.
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Emily has written lovingly about her sons numerous times here on XX Factor and contributes frequently to Slate's irregular Family columns, so, just as she has demonstrated as a lawyer, journalist, Slate senior editor, and co-founding editor of Double X, I know she is a high achiever in her mommy job. Most mothers are not as accomplished. On the other end of the parenting spectrum from Emily, I had so many mishaps when my adult children were young (especially my daughter who I had, unmarried, when I was 22), I probably should have been charged with child endangerment. The thing is, raising children is a moving target and most of us, even my pediatrician friends, make it up as we go along. As much as we try to maintain policies and structure in our homes, conflicting agendas, wanting to please our children, the gravitational force of the daily grind, absent baby sitters, new friends, sick siblings, sick friends, and new siblings all impact our decisions. Although I was immature, careless, and accident prone most of my questionable parenting moves still somehow turned out OK. Although I expected too much of my little girl, she more often than not lived up to those expectations. At least twice, her lack of supervision led to panicky alarm. Once in Mexico, like the children in Babel, her whereabouts were not traceable overnight. Another time in Key West, Fla., she disappeared in a bookstore. (After police were called, she materialized from behind the chapter-book shelves where, blissfully reading, she'd lost track of the time.)
Despite these parenting accidents, at the same time, I was responsible for her values and self-worth, and on that front, I didn't renege. Stealing was ugly, lying was dirty, other people's feelings were fragile, and she was, always, very loved and cherished. The lessons we pass on to our children come from years of teachable moments. Better safe than sorry is, as Emily says, a pat homily that can't be applied to a nuanced situation. But in a complex, always-changing, child-raising obstacle course, parents need to develop our own aphorisms to guide us.
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Congress spent yesterday grilling a guy who wasn't working for AIG when the infamous bonuses were drafted. Meanwhile, Fannie Mae—an organization that has requested $15 billion in bailout cash—plans to reward some of its top executives with AIG-like bonuses. (Thomas Lund, the guy in charge of Fannie's mortgage business, is slated for precisely $1 million.) Similar bonuses, yet to be revealed, may be in line for Freddie Mac. Add to all that bonus money a $10 million executive suite in the works for Citigroup (lucky recipient of $45 billion in bailout funds—you're welcome!).
The politicization of, say, Citigroup's decision to buy a Sub-Zero refrigerator does not bode particularly well for anyone who wants a quick return to boring, predictable market outcomes. But when you accept heaps of the public's money, you agree to run your company in constant fear of what is derisively referred to as "populist outrage."
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Dayo, I, too, am eager to see Disney's awesome-to-be-beheld marketing forces plaster Tiana's face on lunchboxes and bathing suits. I remember how important the Polynesian Barbie was to me, and I'm thrilled to have cheesy fantasy avatars available to little girls of all colors. But I've never really understood this line of argument:
the Mickey Mousers have cycled through the Middle Eastern, Chinese, Native American, and Hawaiian princesses, not to mention six kinds of white—why not black? Compounding the frustration is the distinct lack of “live action” roles for black actors and actresses, which makes any perception of Hollywood bias smart a bit more.
I understand that Disney probably has more to redress vis-à-vis the African-American community, and obviously roles are limited for performers of color. But Middle Eastern, Chinese, and Native American actors get even less screen time than black actors. (Does the Hawaiian Lilo count as a princess?) I'll admit it right here: I cried when I saw Mulan. In fact, I still cry whenever I see it. I don't think this is or should be a racial pissing contest, but those intervening films are important, too.
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Nina, I think you’re right on about the silliness of hating the light-skinned Prince Naveen character in Disney’s forthcoming Princess and the Frog movie. He’s clearly black—and for a film set in New Orleans, his creolized look is pretty accurate.
But the increased sensitivities are totally understandable—it’s taken how long exactly for the Disney marketers to come up with a black princess? I wrote on this movie as a leap forward for beauty politics back in December 2007; the Mickey Mousers have cycled through the Middle Eastern, Chinese, Native American, and Hawaiian princesses, not to mention six kinds of white—why not black? Compounding the frustration is the distinct lack of “live action” roles for black actors and actresses, which makes any perception of Hollywood bias smart a bit more.
I’ll keep my powder dry because I plan to write a longer piece on the topic soon, but I think this debate is most productive when seen as an issue of branding: Now that Princess Tiana will join Jasmine, Belle, and Ariel on lunchboxes, stickers, and sleeping bags—and will, presumably, have her own doll—shouldn’t we be cheering the crossover potential of this flick? Much like the kerfuffle surrounding stuffed likenesses of Malia and Sasha Obama, I think it’s never bad, and in fact, deliciously ironic, that little white girls might soon be toting black dolls around town.
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Today's news brings us a few dispatches from the land of reckless teendom. Here we have some high schoolers in the Bronx who, upon viewing a picture of pop singer Rihanna's bruised face, remarked "She probably made him mad for him to react like that"—him being her still-boyfriend, Chris Brown. More importantly, we have the latest stats on the Bristol Palin constituency. Teen birth rates among 15- to 19-year-olds have been creeping up for a few years, "putting one of the nation's most successful social and public health campaigns in jeopardy," writes the Washington Post. Given the Obama administration's latest pledge to take politics out of science, we will likely be treated now to fierce debate on the morning talk shows about the effectiveness of abstinence education. True, those programs have been much less effective than the Bush administration lets on. And I would love to put the blame all on them. But I imagine the causes are much more complicated than that. For one thing, it can't be a coincidence that the AIDS virus is also increasing. Condom vigilance waxes and wanes, and we are probably coming out of a lazy period. Also, check out the list of which states have the highest increases. Many are places with relatively recent waves of immigration. The most interesting sub trend is about young Latino rates of teen pregnancy, which are now the highest in the country.
Anybody know any other convincing theories?
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Better safe than sorry: It's unassailably pat. But that's not the real framing of the choice. Actually, there are always nuances: How old is your child, what kind of neighborhood are you letting her walk alone in, at what time of day? And what's the cost of never letting her out of your sight? Because there is one. Wendy Mogel, psychologist and author of Blessing of a Skinned Knee, who I've written about before, calls overprotected kids "teacups" and "krispies." They get to college and they can't fend for themselves because their parents never gave them breathing room.
Maybe the risk you took was too high, Bonnie, because the vacant lot your daughter walked through was trashy and isolated. The story of Etan Patz, which I know, is undeniably and stupendously awful. Beyond the paradigmatic parent's worst nightmare. But a friend of mine whose pediatric practice consists largely of helping abused kids reminds us that child abduction in this country is extremely rare. Almost all of the time, harm comes to kids from adults they know, not ones they don't. We're so transfixed by the worst nightmare scenario that we miss the more mundane but prevalent risks. Or we snatch from our kids any semblance of independence. My friend whose kid went to the store on the corner by himself e-mailed yesterday to say she hopes he can go to the park by himself—or with my older son—in a year or two, or sooner. I hope so, too.