politics
On Maternity Leave
On Thursday, January 8, 2009, one Rachida Dati, a French Cabinet Minister, returned to work after having taken a short break after giving birth to her child via Cesarean Section. This event made International headlines because of the length of her maternity leave: 4 days. She caused a public spectacle arriving to work, with her tightly bundled, newly minted daughter in her arms. Her reasoning behind the brevity of her leave: “to avoid the devastating image of a president of the Republic announcing a fundamental reform of the legal system without her being present.”.
4 days. What took her so long? Why not 3? 2? How far can this madness be pushed? Dati’s case is an isolated incident – mostly because of its public nature; but for me, it’s a highly telling one. And it begs the question: how long should maternity leave be? Under French law, Dati was entitled to the following: “Maternity leave commences six weeks before the expected date of the employee’s confinement (eight weeks if she already has two or more children), and ends ten weeks after the confinement (sixteen weeks from the third child onwards). It is extended in the event of a pathological condition or of multiple births, and is adjusted if the birth is premature. This leave is deemed, in principle, to be a period of effective employment. It constitutes a period during which protection against dismissal is specially increased, with the guaranteed right to return to the same job”. At best, Ms. Dati’s actions constituted a simple decline to the advantages offered her, and she bravely made her way back to work. At worst, she acted in a highly irresponsible manner.
Dati is a very successful, professional woman and public figure. She is the kind of person that sets the example for working moms. She makes me look terrible.
Terrible because my own infant son is 12 weeks old today. And 12 weeks seems to be the gold standard for what passes as maternity leave among my friends and colleagues. And even so, I don’t think this is enough time. Am I just lazy, then? Dragging my heels? Do I lack Dati’s courageousness? No, no and no.
For those readers that have not actually given birth themselves, here’s what happens: The Entire Gravitational Pull of Your Life is Shifted. The planets are forced out of alignment. I don’t know how else to say it. Your body has been put under tremendous physical stress, if not cut open, and you must heal. This takes rest and time and lots of help. There is a new little person on Earth who depends on you for every little thing, and who does not know day from night; who has no understanding of what used to be important to you, and cannot communicate in any other way than to cry. Sometimes loudly and for hours. At 3am. He does not understand explanations for things, or requests. You must change, and your priorities much change as well. And you will need a village just to be able to take care of both him and yourself in the most basic way.
In short, you have a new job. What this means for your old job depends on a highly personal set of circumstances. But in listening to the particular situations of a large group of women locally, it seems that they always try to make as large an accommodation as possible. Many of my friends are in the education field, and try to time their babies births for the onset of summer vacay, ensuring at least a 12 week leave that doesn’t have to depend on drawing from sick leave, “short-term disability” (shudder), or missing out on the natural progression of work related stuff. But they are the fortunate exception; many of the rest scale back their duties – in one example, a 6 week leave (as dictated by Family and Medical Leave Act), followed by a 3 month period of part time work. Some quit their jobs to return full time several years later.
But this new job that you have, this mommyhood? It doesn’t pay. During maternity leave itself, almost no one has paid leave – and there are no legal guidelines at all for this. If anyone among the group that I asked was paid, it was via accumulated sick or vacation time. So it’s a sticky situation for most. Almost no one can afford the full 12 weeks of unpaid leave, so in most cases, something’s gotta give. And I wish that somehow the maternity leave fairy might be able to descend on new moms and supply enough pay to alleviate the financial strain of being able to devote oneself to mommyhood, because it is something that ought to be valued very highly.
But Ms. Dati’s case seems to be backsliding on this notion; very publically placing value on the old job over the new one.
So, I’m sorry Ms. Dati, that I am not the superwoman you are. I cannot simply bundle up my newborn and sling him around so that I can avoid the embarrassment of being left out of something important at work. You see, my little one is taking his nap, after which he will need to be nursed and have his diaper changed. I only have this small window of time in which to write in my blog, and in order to carve out this chunk of time, I have to neglect other things, like the dishes and the laundry and maybe even a nap for myself since I was up with the baby a couple of times last night. And seeing how he has not given me his schedule, I do not know how long my chunk of time will last, so I’ll make this short: Take that baby home and tend to her, and then tend to yourself. Do not make a public show of how tough you are by returning to work so idiotically soon, because it leads the public to think that any longer is unnecessary. And it is. It so. very much. is.
Why I Hate Facebook
Okay, okay, I can’t even keep up the pretense: I don’t hate Facebook. At all. In fact, I love Facebook.
Imagine this: all of the people in your life, past and present, available to you at the touch of a mouse. For free. For someone like me, a work-at-home mom who is pretty isolated in the country, but has befriended hundreds during different times in her life, it’s catnip. All of my Facebook friends are folks that I have known at some point in my life or other; a collage of my real-life social history. And Facebook offers the perfect platform to be able to interact with all of them – since I have joined, I have been privvy to all sorts of things in my friends’ lives that I would have previously been out of the loop for: Marriages beginning and ending, sons and daughters being born, relatives passing, health problems and concerns, moving….the list goes on. So yes, for this I love you, Facebook. To institute some kind of pay structure would surely alter this lovely landscape.
But Facebook can’t exist purely for our entertainment. To exist, it must make money. And like radio and TV before it, that revenue comes from advertising. But the rub is different with Facebook. The relationship between advertiser and Facebook user does not stop, as with TV, at the screen. Because of the very nature of Facebook, advertisers have our number. They become privvy to all kinds of information that previous generations of advertising companies could only guess about. Who our friends are. Who our favorite actors are. How old we are. What we do for a living. Do we care? Should we care? Is the sacrifice of this information better than paying for the service in more traditional ways (i.e. cash)?
I’m picking on Facebook here. But it is one of the web’s most successful stories that has adopted this “pay with information” model. Far more online entities have also been doing it with great success; among them, a little outfit called Google. Has this become the new answer to the longstanding question of how to monetize the web? I really really hope not, and think there are better models out there.
Daniel Lyons recently wrote about the problem of buying things with privacy in Newsweek: “With money, five bucks is five bucks. But what is the value of your list of friends? …if it’s incredibly valuable, you’re getting massively ripped off.” And more and more, online businesses that are geared toward gathering data and private information are flourishing: from an Alice.com that tracks your shopping needs, to a Mozy.com that backs up your files online. For most of these services, an approximation of what we are paying, in the form of a privacy agreement, is available to us at signup. But who among us reads carefully enough through the fine print in order to quantify this price?
Very very few, as evidenced by a recent story regarding the accidental sale of 7500 souls to an online gaming site. “The retailer, British firm GameStation, added the “immortal soul clause” to the contract signed before making any online purchases earlier this month. It states that customers grant the company the right to claim their soul”. This is certainly a humorous and rather extreme example, but if GameStation can slide this practical joke into their fine print and make away with 7500 souls, it does beg the question about what larger and more nefarious companies might also be able to do.
Lyons wraps his Newsweek piece in the following way, a near perfect-pitch admonishment to pay attention to how ideas of payment and privacy are changing: “Only the techies know how much your info is worth, and they’re not telling. But the fact that they’d rather get your data than your dollars tells you all you need to know”.
Are Moms Really That Busy?
Yesterday, for the first time ever, I watched the Dr. Phil show. No, I haven’t been living in a cave; it seems I’ve always known about Dr. Phil, it’s just that the TV here is, 99% of the time, switched off during the day. And I like it that way.
But I was compelled to watch yesterday’s show, “Are Moms Really That Busy?” in support of my Champaign-Urbana homie, Amy Hatch, who is half of the awesome duo behind chambanamoms.com. She made an appearance on Dr. Phil’s panel in order to debate a recent finding by University of Maryland’s Dr. John Robinson that moms have, on average, 30-40 hours of leisure time each week.
It’s an easy thing to get a knee-jerk reaction to – particularly if you are among the aforementioned moms who are spread reeeeeally really thin in order to be the best mom and caregiver and housekeeper and working professional that they can be. The consensus on the panel as to Dr. Robinson’s findings can be summed up the following way: “Are you freakin KIDDING me?!”. The panelists and moms in the audience were happy to provide the kind of heartbreaking detail of how patently NON-leisurely their lives really are; and how hard, in fact, they do work, and how very very much is expected of them. That they should even be put in the position of having to defend themselves on this subject is altogether insulting. Actually, “adding insult to injury” is a perfect characterization.
Of course moms will be put on the defensive by Dr. Robinson’s findings. I’m guessing that that, and the publicity surrounding it, was his aim in the first place. The absurd examples of leisure time cited by Dr. Robinson should be all the evidence we need: waiting for a tow truck (in the car w/o kids), opening business email, sitting in the dentist’s office, and the like.
But what went largely undiscussed on yesterday’s show is exactly how we should address this finding: What’s getting valued? Who’s setting the standards here? And why, for christ’s sake, is no one standing up for the very idea of leisure time? The very notion that we have leisure time carries a subtext that we’re not working hard enough.
Because if we picture it, the dream of leisure time floats above all of mom’s heads, like a detached, unattainable balloon – where one can exist, enjoying our favorite things without interruption, without guilt; outside of time and responsibility. and as much as we want and crave and need to be in that balloon, if we’re fortunate enough to have the ability to step in it, we’re afraid that others will judge us as being………..the word which can only be whispered………lazy.
Apparently, with the industrial revolution and the gadgets of the 20th century which allow for tasks to completed in a shorter amount of time, there has been a new cold war: the War on Lazy. We have become so very time and productivity obsessed that we have come to believe, as a culture, that busy-ness is the natural and right state of being. Which is counter-intuitive. One would think that the progress made in the last 200 years would allow for more leisure time, and that it would become a natural and virtuous thing. But something else happened: the standards were raised. Wash day work cut down to a few hours? Better impose a higher standard of cleanliness and sell a lot more clothes. We’ve increasingly been sold a standard that we can’t, and shouldn’t, live up to. And as moms reach a breaking point in which they can barely handle the stress of raising a family and being everything to everyone, mostly without compensation, they are made to apologize for the joke of what passes as leisure time. Shame on us.
Listen to how Brigid Schulte wraps up her fine response in the Washington Post: “it’s 1:31 in the morning; this story is two days late; the dinner dishes are still in the sink; and there’s a form I need to fill out before my daughter goes to school. For a few fleeting moments earlier this evening, however, as I searched for my son’s bike helmet, I did notice that the moon was uncannily beautiful”. The saddest of poetry, but as moms, we’ve been there. Maybe even four times already this week. So instead of going on the defensive, please join me in the following chant:
“More Leisure Time Now! Better Leisure Time Now!”
And fellow moms, when you see a television commercial which leads you to to think that your teeth should be as white as your wedding dress, and implies that anything less constitutes something sub-standard, please see this for the trap that it is, and take hold of what’s important in your life. Having flashy white teeth is not being good to yourself (though corporations would love you to believe it) – having time and a little peace in your life to enjoy yourself IS.
Absence of process
In so very many ways, we are living far different lives than our ancestors did. The division is even palpable going back only 100 years; in terms of human history, this is only a flash in the pan, but one fundamental linchpin of 100+ years ago life is all but disappeared from our “modern” life: Process. It was not so very long ago that if you wanted/needed a product, you had to be materially involved in its process. Want a new dress? How’re your sewing skills? Want it clean? Gotta washtub? Want a pot of soup and bread for dinner? What have you harvested or slaughtered or preserved lately that you can use? Churn some butter for that bread?
Granted, we have always been an interdependent species, so no one person was ever typically responsible for every little want/need being filled. But days were typically devoted to a series of processes that are far different from those of 21st century life in the US. At most times in history, processes have been something that you could buy your way out of, if you had enough wealth or power. So as the last 100 years progressed, and the US grew wealthier and more powerful, we have slowly, as a culture, bought our way out of the processes that defined our ancestor’s lives. Are we richer as a culture for it? This is what I wonder.
CIE’s Person of the Year: Barack Obama
Ben Bernanke? Really, Time magazine? Certainly not here at CIE. And I realize that you already chose Obama as your 2008 Person of the Year, but in all due respect, that was a really safe choice at the time (pre-inauguration). Safe, and well, maybe it was also a small contribution to the PR problem that Obama currently faces. While Bernanke is the de-facto face of the economic bubble and its unraveling, Obama had a bubble problem of his own: an image bubble. The rock star-cum-messiah-cum-Santa Claus persona that he developed thoughout his campaign was perhaps what ultimately led to his election, but in such a serious time of economic downturn and real social and civic need, that bubble has also unraveled over the first year of his presidency. Please understand, those of you out there who are disillusioned with Obama these days, this had to happen. Obama is not a rock star. He is not a messiah, he is not Santa Claus. But he is a very very good president. Already. In his first year. And we are not spoiled children. We need things, to be sure. Things with which Obama can help. But throwing tantrums because your own set of personal needs was not addressed immediately after the election is unrealistic. Even for Santa Claus.
Obama inherited a broken system. More specifically, he inherited a system that the previous administration willfully and intentionally broke. If that sounds a little far-fetched, please read Thomas Frank’s brilliant book on the subject, The Wrecking Crew. Among the reasons to willfully hollow out government (see also “Starving the Beast”): so that the public learns not to rely on government to assist in meeting their needs. If people expect the government to be absent, or poorly run and inefficient, they will find alternative ways to get the support they need, and not expect the government to offer any oversight or protections. Viva la Free Market! And all those tax dollars, which are still pouring in? To be spent as freely and irresponsibly as you can dream (though not by you, of course)!
But what we’ve learned in this 10+ year experiment in Free Market-ism is that the Free Market, without effective government, has no oversight. And the Free Market does not care about what’s best for you, or the world at large. Just what gets and keeps cash flowing. At the expense of our health, our education, our well-being, our homes, our judgment, our economy, our environment. How the heck do you think we ended up with such things soda and junk food machines in our nation’s public schools, or insurance companies that refuse individuals based on previous condition, or cancel policies if they develop a serious illness?
We need our education system to work efficiently, we need infrastructure that is well maintained, we need our basic rights and liberties protected. We need a government that works for us. We have to be willing to support our President in putting it back together. He’s got a tremendous amount of work to do, and one year is a small amount of time to tackle even some of them. Despite the head-scratching conventional wisdom that “Obama’s administration hasn’t done anything yet” (Seriously – who floated this turd? Grover Norquist?), please read John Richardson’s line-up of accomplishments (via Esquire Magazine). Among them, “Two days after he was sworn in, Obama banned the use of “harsh interrogation” and ordered the closing of Guantánamo. Two weeks after that, Obama signed the stimulus bill — a $787 billion accomplishment. In June, Obama reset the tone of our relations with the entire Arab world with a single speech — an accomplishment that the Bush administration failed to achieve despite a series of desperate PR moves (anyone remember Charlotte Beers?) and a “public diplomacy” budget of $1 billion a year“. These are just a few, and now, after Christmas Eve, might I add: a Health Care Reform Bill. Yep. On the table since the 1960s and not one President has been able to send it through House and Senate. Until now. And to all those who decry it because it is ‘not enough’; Obama himself has acknowledged that it is a start. Finally on the right path.
One morning in early October, I heard in passing that Obama had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. My heart swelled with pride. This was actually happening to our President! In that moment, I was struck with giddy joy: not only had our country elected to the highest office a Harvard professor of Constitutional Law, but a Nobel Laureate to boot. Amazing. Simply amazing. This feeling lasted all day until I turned on the TV news to watch some coverage. No feeling of national pride there at all. Oh sure, there was plenty of noise about the nomination, but it was to the tune of “he doesn’t really deserve it”. I was crestfallen. The image bubble had not only burst, but it seems our citizens were so disillusioned as to refuse acceptance of this honor. De-legitimized. Just as the Birther movement had been trying, unsuccessfully, to do for months. Granted, the timing was bad; Obama was already set to announce the ramping up of troops in Afghanistan; a patently non-peaceful move.
But this President has inspired in me something that all other Presidents of my lifetime have not: Trust. Obama is highly educated, analytically-minded, worldly and well-traveled, from a background that is similar to many of us in this country, well spoken and composed. GW Bush was none of these things. Obama has a capacity for understanding and empathy, and a strong will to do right by his office and its citizens. GW Bush did not. And although he was swept into office by fueling our hopes for change, he has not been a chest-beating purveyor of his own accomplishments (yep. like GW Bush). So when he orders more troops to Afghanistan, I assume that he has sufficient reason. But just in case, I still listen carefully to how he frames his decision. I could read between the lines sufficiently to reckon that his worry was Pakistan (Rogue nukes? Unstable government?), and not in fact Afghanistan, but as one wouldn’t openly declare war on a nuclear state, it was a prudent thing to make it about Pakistan’s neighbor, where troops had already been for eight years. And I am at peace with his decision. Out of trust.
I worry that the Free Market-ism will once again reign supreme in this country, its hold having gone too deep into the fabric of our lives, but one thing is certain: if we can’t get behind our President and his aims to repair the badly damaged system of government in this country, it will reign again (starting after the 2010 elections). So please, let us all get over our hurt at Obama not being Superman, or at least a superhuman who can come to our rescue on every little thing, and support him in what he has done, and is doing. In the words of the Neko Case, “bet the hand that your money’s on”. Our future is at stake.
No more whining!
Lynne Cheney on Art
In a new Huffington Post article, late night talk show host Craig Ferguson recounts a conversation with the Cheneys during the 2008 White House correspondent’s dinner. Among the topics of conversation, fine art:
“On meeting the Cheneys, Ferguson recounts that his wife discussed art with Mrs. Cheney, who proudly described the Picasso sketches she owned. When Megan [Ferguson's wife] asked Cheney where she hung the artwork, Cheney’s response stunned them:
“Oh we don’t,” replied Mrs. C. “They’re nudes, and we have grandchildren. We don’t want them to see them when they come over.”
“But they’re Picassos,” protested Megan.
“But they’re nudes,” smiled Mrs. Cheney dangerously.
Smart Choices?
Advertisers are very keen on making consumers feel good about their purchases: smart, beautiful, trendy, healthy, knowledgeable. Problem is, for us consumers, that the market is flooded with choices, and actually making well-considered choices from among our options would be at least a full time job. And who among us can take on another full time job? So advertisers operate in the business of shorthand, assuring us that we don’t really need to look into our options, because what they’re offering is the best choice anyway.
I can’t begrudge advertisers for this. I can, however, begrudge the food industry for this; for teaming up with nonprofits in the so-called “Smart Choices” program, wherein certain food items receive a big green check mark on their labeling, leading the consumer to believe that by purchasing the product that bears the check mark, they are making a smart choice (and the implication is: smarter choice than the products that don’t bear the green check). I can understand that food choices, in large part, do govern our health, and agree that measures taken to nudge the consumer towards healthier options are well worth the effort. But the criteria for selection of the “smart choices” foods is simply wrongheaded.
As reported in the New York Times, the following paragraph alone ought to illustrate just how wrongheaded the standards are: “Froot Loops qualifies for the label because it meets standards set by the Smart Choices Program for fiber and Vitamins A and C, and because it does not exceed limits on fat, sodium and sugar. It contains the maximum amount of sugar allowed under the program for cereals, 12 grams per serving, which in the case of Froot Loops is 41 percent of the product, measured by weight. That is more sugar than in many popular brands of cookies.” Hmmm…..is it that Froot Loops naturally contains those ingredients that help it to meet the Smart Choices standard? Nope. They are additives.
In fact, this type of program only incentivizes the food industry to add synthetic vitamins and fiber to processed foods that have been stripped of any nutritional value, a practice that has long made my head spin. Conversely, there seem to be no guidelines for the questionable additives that are placed in store bought food: preservatives, sugar substitutes, flavor enhancers, GMOs, food coloring, and the like. Wonder if Morgan Spurlock would do 30 Days on a Smart Choices Program diet and monitor his results?
Read all about the Smart Choices program on their website. And for added fun, do a search among the product categories. This is the telling part — how very few products are listed, represented by even fewer corporations that manufacture almost exclusively processed food. Among the few that are in my pantry at the moment: Hellman’s Mayonnaise and Quaker Instant Oatmeal (maple and brown sugar). Not exactly shining beacons of healthy food choices.
The only true shorthand I can think of that might be worthy of such labeling practice is this: Don’t eat anything with ingredients that your grandmother wouldn’t recognize. But the food industry wouldn’t be very gung-ho on that one, would they?
Updated 10/26: Success! Kudos to the news media for staying on top of this story, and to Gaga for the link: Food Label Program to Suspend Operations
An Open Letter to President Obama
Yes, the honeymoon is over. The tide of optimism that swelled with your inauguration has dwindled into the usual political bickering, which is kind of sweet, because that means one thing’s official: You’re Our President. Really and truly.
But I’ve gotta tell you. The stack of Esquire magazines in my bathroom got re-arranged, and, unbeknownst to me, I was looking at the cover headlines from an Oct 2006 copy: “Think the Middle East is a Mess Now? Wait Till Egypt Blows”. What? I thought. Cognitive dissonance. What could go wrong with Egypt that Our President couldn’t head off at the pass? Didn’t he just choose Egypt as the venue for his major speech to the Muslim world? Wouldn’t that be the base, then, for his attempts to reach out and begin to smooth all of the fissures of our last administration? In fact, isn’t the Egyptian president visiting the White House tomorrow?
Then I saw the next headline: “Keys to the ’06 and ’08 Elections”. Ohhhhhhhh………sigh of relief as I realized the issue was an older one. But it brought back the old familiar awful frustration of having a leader for this country that does not do a decent job of representing the people in it, and isn’t really even trying. And pinning so much hope on the future, so that in those ’06 and ’08 elections, this wrong might be righted, if only we could find the person for the job.
So here we are, Mr. President. Finally having met that future exactly the way so very many of us had hoped, rendering the ominous headlines like the ones on Esquire Oct. 2006 nugatory. Thank you, Mr. President, for taking the job, and thank you as well for ruling with your very sharply attuned brain, and not your bloated and hard-of-hearing “gut”. I am proud to have you as President, and further, I am also proud that you are the Little One’s president as well. Talk about hope for the future.
Very Sincerely,
Erin Nieto
