Strollerderby : Axel-Lute

They Say: Pregnant Women with the Flu Should Take Antivirals

Miriam Axel-Lute — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Given that pregnant women are among those considered at high risk for severe cases of swine flu, and there has been at least one death, concerned doctors have experimented with giving them antiviral medications early, to apparently good results.

The numbers are small (20 women tracked by the CDC so far), and drugs like Tamiflu are usually not recommended during pregnancy, but the CDC has decided that the known risks to mother and baby from flu outweigh the unknown possible dangers of the drug to the fetus, and is recommending the drug to all pregnant women with flu symptoms and "a history of likely contact with someone else with swine flu" (whatever that means). Because timing matters, they don't even want to wait for tests to come back.

Meanwhile, if this is making you feel like a hypochondriac again, check out this detailed description of when to worry—it's not just a head cold.

Photo by kannon, via Flickr.

Related Posts:

More by this author:

Leaked Minutes: BPA Makers Fight Back

Miriam Axel-Lute — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:00:00 GMT

The public health blog Effect Measure has gotten their hands on a set of leaked minutes from a meeting of representatives of industries that use the toxic endocrine-mimicker bisphenol-A (BPA) on how to counter the negative media about it.

It's rich: They figure getting a scientific spokesperson won't be possible (gee, why?), but are hoping to find a young pregnant mom to do it. They want to emphasize the loss of conveinence to poor folks and busy mothers, appeal to our desire for choices, and make us worry about losing jobs. They don't figure they can win on Facebook and complain about already having spent too much money on this.

In fact it's so rich that I have to acknowledge that while I have no reason to doubt its veracity, if I were writing a satire of how I expected such a meeting to go, it would look just like that. Only it would be shorter and less detailed.

So y'all: You are forewarned. Someone's going to try to tell you BPA is good for you and your kids. It'll be just as insincere and self-serving as it sounds.

Photo of BPA-free sippy cups CC Tiffany Washko, via Flickr.

More by this author:

How Much Would It Cost You to Take a Career Break?

Miriam Axel-Lute — Fri, 29 May 2009 15:00:00 GMT

The New York Times (h/t Creative Class blog) has an interesting report on the financial penalties sustained in different fields by people who take some time out of the workforce. Apparently, although medicine has the most grueling training, once you get there, it's a lot easier on work/life balance than, say, finance, business consulting, or law. Or even academia.

Of course by "people who take time off for family" we still mean mostly (but not entirely) women (it used to be called the Mommy track, remember?), and I'm surprised that the research didn't explore whether women and men experienced different financial penalties when they do take time. (And I'm surprised that the Creative Class blog post didn't even acknowledge that gender is still a huge factor in this.)

It's also, perhaps, a little hard for me to get too worked up about the relatively lower salaries of highly paid MBAs and PhDs who've taken a few years off when there are so many other people for whom work-life balance means being able to get paid time off or support their family without taking on a second job. Ok, so perhaps that's a little too harsh. Work-family balance is important for everyone, for the kids, and because people who've been forced to work 70-hour weeks when their kids are young often have a I-did-it-so-you-should-too attitude toward their own subordinates, not to mention about efforts to improve work-life balance for everyone.

More by this author:

Is It OK to Hate Your Kid's Sport?

Miriam Axel-Lute — Thu, 28 May 2009 15:30:00 GMT

Don't mess with the soccer moms. It might be a bit of a hackneyed sentiment in this post-Palin era, but as Sarah Rain from Delmar, NY, found out when she wrote a post titled "At Least It's Only 8 Weeks Long" on the local paper's blog for her town discussing her dislike of soccer season, the vicious soccer mom isn't gone.

You'd think from the vituperative comments that she'd said she hated her kid or couldn't be bothered to want to do anything with him at all. What she actually said, quite clearly, is that she believes that kids develop better social skills and autonomy from informal pick-up games, but since that's not really happening for her son she's dragging herself through soccer season because she thinks the benefits outweigh the costs, though all the while she's quietly hoping he doesn't fall in love with the sport.

"Mustering up the interest in something your child does is a challenge? How self absorbed can one person be?" writes one person, deriding informal games as "a can babysitting your child."

"The writer’s desire for 'informal games with their friends' means 'I don’t have to be there' . . . they are only young and “ours” for too short a period of time . . . relish the moment!" writes another. (Or, you know, she could actually believe that informal games and time not being hovered over by adults are better for children's development, an argument that has a lot going for it and is distinctly less selfish than trying to soak up the time kids are "ours".)

Another rhapsodizes about how much she loves dragging herself out of bed on Saturday mornings to pack snacks for games, clearly implying that this is the proper attitude of motherhood.

I happen to know that the writer was much amused by all the kerfuffle (and probably courted it on purpose), but what she wrote was hardly extreme. If these are the attitudes of the people she has to hang out with when her son's at soccer practice, I don't wonder that she dreads it. Is this level of martyrdom-to-the-planned-activity-gods attitude really so pervasive? It makes me scared to consider organized sports for my kids.

Photo CC by Chip Griffin via Flickr.

More by this author:

Post-Hurricane Video Games Poison Kids

Miriam Axel-Lute — Wed, 27 May 2009 19:30:00 GMT

Hurricanes, of course, do plenty damage. And then there are the many dangers that follow that them, including carbon monoxide poisoning from poorly functioning/ventilated generators.

A creepy little report in the June issue of Pediatrics gives a new spin on this problem: Texas researchers note that in 75 percent of the cases of kids who were treated for carbon monoxide poisoning after Hurricane Ike, the generators that caused the poisoning were not being used to keep food fresh or run AC—they were being used to power video games.

I have many conflicting reactions to this.

At first, it almost seems like a joke: Hey look, video games can be blamed for something else!! Did you know they also cause blindness and hairy palms?

On the other hand: Wow. You're out of power entirely and you're going to use expensive fuel to run video games? That is a little hard to swallow. Of course, who am I to talk? Under such circumstances, if Internet connectivity were available, I would probably charge my laptop and run the modem if a generator were already running. Also, from a distance, it's probably easy to underestimate the value of a little familiar entertainment following a natural disaster. (And depending on the weather, video games probably use less power than AC would.)

Then again, if we need a clearer picture of how hard it is for us to wean ourselves and our kids off energy-consumptive habits, even for a little while, there it is.

(Sidenote: researchers suggested that school programs and text-message warnings to children's cell phones should be instituted as a response. No bad thing, but does that mean these kids are running the generators themselves with no oversight? I suppose many of them were teens, so probably, yes.)

Photo CC Rebecca Pollard, via Flickr.

More by this author:

6 Reasons to Hate Mother's Day

Miriam Axel-Lute — Sun, 10 May 2009 10:04:00 GMT

It was originally an antiwar holiday, but was defanged and corrupted to be about cards and flowers and brunch.
It was originally an antiwar holiday, meaning you should be vigiling or writing letters to Congress when all you want is to sleep in and have brunch.
The hoopla over it as compared to Father's Day just proves how society still expects moms to do most of the parenting.
The one time someone takes you to brunch, everyone else is doing it and there's a 45 minute wait.
Someone will always bring up the false idea that Mother's Day is a top suicide day, in case you felt like forgetting to mail the cards in time or not arranging your day to plump the self-esteem of every mother in your extended family was forgivable just this once.
All the attention is not about you anyway, it's just about the part of you people have been overemphasizing since your first kid was born anyway.

Photo CC Mothers&Daughters, via Flickr.

More by this author:

Not Every Kid With a Mother Has a "Mommy"

Miriam Axel-Lute — Fri, 08 May 2009 19:00:00 GMT

A few weeks ago I was at Music Together with my daughter. We were singing a song where a typical verse went like this:

"Who's that tapping at the window? /Who's that knocking at the door?
Mommy's tapping at the window?/Daddy's knocking at the door."

(Makes you think of the toddlers who lock their parents out, doesn't it?)

After it was over, my daughter turned to me and said "That's song's silly."

"Why?" I asked, though I was pretty sure I knew what was coming.

"It doesn't have a Mama in it."

And indeed it didn't. Though most of the world thinks of "Mommy" and "Mama" as interchangable, for children like her who have both, they're not exactly. She's been told, and basically understands, that they are just "parent names" and that all mothers and fathers get to choose a specific ones like "mommy" or "mama," and that doesn't mean they have different roles as parents. Nonetheless, she likes them to be in balance—from early on she would assign various unnamed mothers in her books, human and animal, one or the other and stick to her designations firmly, and she's quite concerned to know which one the various parents-to-be in her life are going to pick.

Now clearly it's no revelation that kids from anything other than a one mother-one father family don't see their family structures reflected in stories, songs, school exercises, etc. very often, and they feel it.

But what struck me about this exchange was that the parent names angle provides a fairly easy way to be a lot more inclusive without interrupting things with extended awkward clauses like "except some kids instead have two moms or two dads . . ." Not that kids shouldn't be explicitly presented with the idea of family structure variety—they should—but in passing cases like this music class, it can get a little silly. In those cases, perhaps just adding more parent names to our patter could go a long way. Nothing PC and obsessive. Just mixing it up a little.

In fact, it has the extra benefit of being a little more comfy to those from a het two-parent family who have a mama or papa. I've heard from one grown woman who had a papa who says that she was fairly annoyed by the "daddy" hegemony. Meanwhile, for the kids for whom they are interchangable, it likely won't even register.

I mentioned the idea to the music teacher, who acknowledged that she'd had concerns about those mommy/daddy songs too. This session, she's been singing a different song that mentions parents by name, and she's given it four verses—Mommy, Mama, Daddy, and Papa. It doesn't cover everyone, certainly, but I think those are far and away the top choices, so they should cover a lot of ground. It was simple and non disruptive and my daughter doesn't think that song is "silly."

What do you think? Would your kids notice? Would they care?

Photo CC license, YatesLaberge, via Flickr.

More by this author:

The Thermodynamics of Porridge Cooling in Goldilocks

Miriam Axel-Lute — Tue, 05 May 2009 19:00:00 GMT

If you thought I was a nitpicker when I went after science errors in children's books that were trying to be realistic, you'll have a conniption about this: some of bloggers over at scienceblogs.com have started taking on fairy tales: the thermodynamics of cooling porridge in Goldliocks and the physics of hair rope-ladders in Rapunzel. (hat tip: Jake)

In each case, much like with my own post, the commenters make it all worthwhile, kibbitzing about mother bear's potential drinking habit (adding whiskey cooled her porridge down faster) and whether it matters if the hair ladder would hold if it would take 180 years to grow.

Of course there is the question of where do we start to critique fairy tales. I'll admit (or brag) that I'm nerdy enough to have noticed and been bothered by the porridge cooling anomaly myself on one Goldilocks-reading marathon. ("Again!") Likewise the wolf falling into a pot of boiling water at the end of Three Little Pigs and just being hurt enough to be mad and jump up and run out the door howling. (Granted the Richard Scarry tome I'm working from clearly contains cleaned up versions for kids, not the originals.)

Matt Springer, who wrote about Rapunzel, says "Suspension of disbelief requires that we grant the story the ability to say wild things so long as it does so in an internally consistent way." I agree.

They are internally consistent in that animals talk, for example, and we don't complain about that. But even before you get to the laws of physics, there's a whole lot of non-hard science issues in fairy tales to deep breathe through: In the Wolf and the Seven Kids, the kids are fooled into mistaking a wolf paw for their mother's hoof because he gets it dusted in flour? How does that work? It's a paw. In the Three Little Pigs, how is it that the bricklayer just gives away a house's worth of bricks?

In the end, of course, I do (mostly) suspend disbelief when we're in the realm of fairy tales. I know the value of a metaphor and an archtypal story line. But sometimes it does feel good to step back with other nitpickers and catalog the bites on our tongues.

More by this author:

Controversial Sex-Ed Book's 15th Anniversary Edition Coming Up

Miriam Axel-Lute — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 22:30:00 GMT

This will not come as a surprise to anyone who knows anything about me, but let me clarify that I describe Robie Harris's It's Perfectly Normal as "controversial" because, technically, it is true: It has caused a lot of controversy, frequently hitting the top ten list of most-challenged books, inspiring hysterical accusations of its being child porn, and generating publicity stunts like that of the woman in Lewiston, Maine, who checked it out and refused to return it because it was "amoral" (generating such attention that the library had to order several more copies. I love—kinda—book banners).

But I do not think that the content is (or at least ought to be) particularly controversial.

It is a comprehensive, well-researched, much-vetted book on puberty, sex, reproduction, and sexual/emotional health and safety. In short, exactly what far too many of our kids don't have access to. Which doesn't mean I don't see where the ideological buttons are getting pushed: It presents various sexual orientations as normal, discusses abortion without condemning it, and gives all the cautionary information necessary for sexual decisionmaking without preaching about timing per se. And yes, it contains tasteful, educational, yet light-hearted line drawings of naked kids and teens, and also of couples in bed (under covers!). It is, after all, a book about (1) how bodies change at puberty and (2) explaining the very basics of some of what people do in bed. Some of us don't learn so well by text alone.

Perhaps less on the usual radar about It's Perfectly Normal are two characters—a bird and a bee—who appear through out the book representing the voices of a curious teen who's eager to grow up and one for whom all this information is a bit much and feels a little uncomfortable. I found it all this joking a bit hokey on first read, but I'm not the target audience. And after a bit of relflection, I could see that the point of their banter was to subtly say to kids reading it, "It's OK if you're not ready to think about this much yet (and it's OK if you're really curious)." That's a level of nuanced thoughtfulness and consideration that the sexphobic abstinence people rarely muster.

Of course by the time some of our kids are old enough for It's Perfectly Normal, that bird and bee will be old friends from It's Not the Stork (ages 4 and up) and It's So Amazing (7 and up), which are quite similar, but with less detail and covering fewer topics in developmentally appropriate ways. I am particularly grateful for the pages devoting to debunking gender stereotypes at the beginning of It's Not the Stork, before the book dives into the anatomy lesson covering what the actual differences are.

I have critiques too (also no shocker to many of you, I'm sure). Particularly, I think that the gender stereotyping in the cartoon version of the sperm and egg meeting (in each book) are overdone, to the point of actually being somewhat untrue to the biology. I think the care to not offend anyone leaves kids with no explanation that breastfeeding is normal or why formula is sometimes used. Then again, they don't need to know very much about that. These are, in the end, small things.

I'm thrilled that these books continue to be updated (the 15th anniv. edition of It's Perfectly Normal is due out this fall), and I hope we're moving toward a time when they can gain the popularity they deserve.

More by this author:

"Sexy Moms" to Discuss Lesbian Parenting

Miriam Axel-Lute — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 12:28:00 GMT

If you were a lesbian couple, where would you think to go to learn about "navigating the medical world as a lesbian couple, communication between the birth and non-birth mother, changing desires, and 'donor dads.'"?

Perhaps your local sex toy store?

No, not the one under the overpass with the blocked up windows and purple neon sign staffed by creepy ex-cons. Your local feminist sex toy store. The kind whose atmosphere is described as "like a shoe store except for the displays of lube and vibrators," sports an extensive how-to library, and hosts public educational and social events.

In this case, Brooklyn's Babeland store, to be exact, which is hosting a discussion of lesbian parenting next Wednesday, April 29, as part of its ongoing "Sexy Moms Series." (Similar events also happen at Babeland's West Coast stores.)

Wedensday's event will feature Lauren Abrams, a community health center midwife from Park Slope, who will speak about her experience as a lesbian partner raising two children and Babeland co-founder Claire Cavanah, who will about her experience as a single lesbian mom. Young kids are welcome; a corner of (kids) toys will be available.

The monthly series, which is billed as "a night for moms looking to put the zing back in their sex lives. We’ll discuss issues relating to desire, body image, making time for sex, and what it means to be a sex-positive family," is itself almost a year old. Past topics have included nutrition, sex and the new parent, and "sex, sanity, and sleep."

It makes more sense to me than discussing sex and parenting with doctors who don't know much about either or looking for help in the pages of Cosmo (kids? what kids?) or Parenting (sex? what sex?).

More by this author:

Heather Has Two Mommies = "Adult Content"?

Miriam Axel-Lute — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 19:30:00 GMT

"Protecting" children (and adults with paper-thin sensibilities) by hiding/filtering/censoring content deemed "adult" has a long history of not working very well. My mother was a children's librarian for a long time in a town in Essex County, NJ, and remembers when the filtering software blocked searches of kids trying to research their county government.

But it takes an ambitious effort to fail quite as spectacularly has Amazon has in its attempts to remove the sales ranking from books deemed "adult." (via Jezebel). (Sales ranking determines placement in searches and inclusion in the recommendation alogrithms, which is why it matters.)

If this just covered hardcore porn DVDs, there would likely have been not much outrage. But the curious decision-making process determining what is labeled adult appears to be (1) wildly broad, yet inconsistent and (2) extremely anti-gay. Petitions have been started and customer service lines flooded. The charge of it being a "glitch" has been dismissed outright.

Parents, in particular, may be surprised and troubled to learn that while heterosexual porn (books of Playboy pinups, for example) and sex toys have not been affected, the classic children's book Heather Has Two Mommies, a history of gay rights written for teens, and a book about anti-gay bullying in high school were disappeared (at least for a while — as of this writing, Heather's sales rank has been returned. It seems the ranks are coming and going with some frequency).

But never fear, The Parents Guide to Preventing Homosexuality has so far stayed ranked and available.

What do think? Is this a well-meaning algorithm gone wrong, an underlying problem about tagging everything GLBT with "sexuality," or flat-out prudish homophobia? Have you been afraid of what your children might find on Amazon? And now, how about what they might not find?

More by this author:

Update: Mom Seeking Lover for Down's Son Says Media Sensationalized Story

Miriam Axel-Lute — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 19:15:00 GMT

Don't believe what you read in the papers. I just got off the air from the World Have Your Say BBC radio program with Lucy and Otto Baxter.

Lucy is the mom I wrote about yesterday who was reported as desperately seeking a lover for her 21-year-old son with Down's. But according to Lucy herself, the article I was working off had things a bit skewed. Yes, she supports her son's right to have sex and to have a girfriend and is helping him look, but, she says, it's absolutely not her in the driver's seat. She also didn't seek the publicity: it sought them based on a small section on relationships in a documentary about Otto's life that's being released soon. And the idea of visiting sex workers in Amsterdam came up between Otto and his friends—she wouldn't disapprove, but he'd be paying himself, thank you very much.

I still harbor a little concern about his life being overshadowed by her mainstreaming activism. Lucy was certainly not letting him talk for himself (not, to be fair, that he had much to say, and I was cringing at the personal and stupid questions being asked of him. Would he rather have a girlfriend or go to a prostitute? Are you serious?). And there was a long debate on the show about people with Down's becoming parents before anyone thought to ask Otto if he wanted to be a father. (Not really, at least not yet.)

But it does seem that the at least some if not most of the yuck factor may have been introduced in the telling. In the meantime, some of the discussions of sex and disability it has spawned could be useful perspectives for parents whose kids may face these issues later in their lives.

Related posts:

Mom seeks lover for grown son with Down's

More by this author:

Mom Seeks Lover for Grown Son with Down's

Miriam Axel-Lute — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Raising a child with Down syndrome is no easy thing. It involves doing a lot of things you never expected to do be doing with your life.

But even the most well-educated and comfortable parents of the most high-functioning Down's children don't generally go publicly soliciting for lovers for their (grown) kids.

Lucy Baxter, a UK mother of four and a leading advocate for the rights of those with Down syndrome, is the exception. She wants her 21-year-old son Otto to be able to lose his virginity—enough that she's going public about it, asking women to step forward (and also admits considering hiring a prostitute). She also, in contradiction to some of the opinions voiced over at my post on the right to procreate, thinks it would be great if he could be a father.

Yuck.

Not yuck to the idea that someone with Down's might be a sexual being or even a parent (though I have concerns about the latter), or to the idea that we have to face the tricky question of when someone does or doesn't have the mental capacity to consent to sex. I don't even, under the right circumstances, think a prostitute would be awful.

No, just a big yuck that a mom is so desperate to prove her kid normal (and, dare I say it, make a political/social point) that she'll violate his privacy and meddle in his life in totally abnormal ways by making his sex life (1) her business and (2) a cause celebre.

If this were a story about a mom who started a dating service for people with Down's after seeing how depressed and lonely her son was, that would be something different. But least the way it's being reported, Otto is certainly interested, but the urgency is coming from his mom. Take this quote: "If he doesn't get a girlfriend, I will feel really bad, because I have sold him this thing that he is like everybody else."

Because everybody else has lost their virginity by 21? And has a partner? And ends up having kids? (And if he's just like everybody else, why would she prefer him to have a girlfriend who doesn't have Down's?)

Can you imagine if every 21-year-old who hadn't yet gotten laid had their mothers getting in on the act?

Update: Mom Seeking Lover for Down Syndrome Son Says Media Sensationalized Story

More by this author:

Get National Geographic Book on Mothers for the Photos, Skip the Words

Miriam Axel-Lute — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:00:00 GMT

For all its insightful information (for a few years I used to read it cover to cover; I miss it), when most of us think of National Geographic magazine, we think of the stunning photography.

And so, it should come as no surprise that the National Geographic Society's little coffee table book (can it still be a coffee table book if it's little? I guess so) Mothers & Children is full of wonderful photos—some beautiful, some tender, some funny, some awkward in their honesty. I love the juxtaposition of cultures and classes.

It's in my nature to overanalyze, though, and I have to say I would have preferred the book without any words at all over the words that were there: over-the-top, one-sided quotes about selfless, all-consuming motherhood (ick!) and three banal essays by the same guy (Craig Wilson, a USA Today writer, whose privilege to get to write most of the text in the book is never explained. His bio is on the Barnes & Noble listing for the book, but nowhere in the book itself). There's no sense of the complexity of defining motherhood, no acknowledgement that while there are commonalities across cultures, there are also huge differences in the experience of it.

(And how is it that pictures of kids alone fit the theme? Does a child only exist in relation to its mother?)

I would have been much happier to get a couple sentences of context for each photo and draw my own conclusions about what the photos say about the relationship(s) between mother and child.

So get it for the photo-lover in your life (at the NGS bookstore or Amazon), but I recommend skipping the words.

More by this author:

They [Didn't] Say: Not Even a Drop of Alcohol

Miriam Axel-Lute — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:30:00 GMT

Oh the pull of the easy, dramatic headline.

Lauredhel, over at Hoyden About Town, has two interesting, detailed posts up recently about the, shall we say, divergance between what a scientific study and a set set of agency guidelines, respectively, actually say, and what's been been reported about them. It's all Aussie, but I know the same things happen here (and presumably booze and pregnancy aren't that different down under, physically).

In the first, she takes apart a study that finds an increased risk of pre-term birth for binge drinkers (shocking, I know) and, with very slim margins of confidence, women who drink heavily in the first trimester and then stop (but not, interesting, those who keep going. It would be interesting to come up with a mechanism for why that would be). It does not find an increased risk for light drinking. Also, much of its data appears to be pretty tentative.

But the coverage of it says the report states that "abstinence is still the safest option" (It might be. I did. But the report says no such thing) and also gets the data about the trimesters wrong. Laurdehel takes both the original study and the coverage apart in minute detail.

In the second, quite similarly, she notes some health guidelines that, based on no new evidence, reverse their previous stance that a light amount of drinking is OK while breastfeeding and start suggesting abstinence, though retaining a level-headed description of what would constitute a cautious approach to alcohol and lactation. The coverage (1) implied that there was some new evidence that it's more dangerous than previously believed and (2) never even mentioned the existence of the more nuanced guidelines.

It's easy to pick on journalists, sometimes too easy, but it's also necessary sometimes, because they have all the same cultural biases and habits (like infantilizing women and being alarmist about pregnancy) as everyone else.

Photo by timomcd.

More by this author:

Do We All Have a Right to Procreate?

Miriam Axel-Lute — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 14:48:00 GMT

Though we would rarely admit it, most of us, upon hearing about some abusive situation, have muttered about requiring a license to parent or "fixing" the offenders so at least no child will have to go through that again. But when push comes to shove would we really think either was a good idea?

Carter Dillard, writing in the Georgia Law Review, is not exactly recommending either (in fact, he speaks, rightly, of parental licensing schemes as "comical"). But he is, very seriously, arguing that there should be no fundamental right to procreate, that there is a duty on prospective parents to be "fit," and that courts should have the right to issue no-procreation orders in certain limited circumstances.

In the narrowest case that Dillard focuses on, it's hard to argue: If, due to egregious harm to previous children, a no-custody order has already been issued, such that any child born is immediately taken into state custody, wouldn't it be better for all to prevent such a pregnancy in the first place with a "no-procreate" order?

Trouble is, this seems to me almost as rife with problems as parental licensing. Much as Dillard wants to separate out the principle from how it would be implemented, I can't.

Dillard never manages to acknowledge that the state does a pretty awful job in most cases of determining "fitness" now, and often gets it wrong (in both directions). Some of that can't be avoided: We need to be able to take kids out of danger, even if we suck at it. But I heard in Dillard's writing a disturbing willingness to expand the definition of "fitness" tests to include finances (how much money is "enough"? does it matter how you spend it?), "pending neglect cases" (and if they were ruled to be unfounded, as many are?). It just seems like a clear slippery slope to pre-emptive sterilization of people who are different, poor, etc.

But even if we do set aside implementation for a moment, Dillard's argument that his "no-procreate" orders could be good for everyone by shifting resources from helping kids who have already been harmed to prevention rings a bit hollow.

For that to work, the no-procreate orders would actually have to substantially reduce the number of children born into abusive situations. But only a tiny fraction of the worst cases already have no-custody orders. And even then, how to ensure the order works? Foricble abortion? Sterilization? (Long sordid history of that already) Court-ordered Norplant (serious side effects for many people)? Criminalizing sex? Imprisoning people? Sending them to a convent?

The answer, of course, is you don't. You just say it, and if it's violated, it changes to a "no-custody" order and unspecified penalties are applied after the fact. Could that have a deterrant effect? Unlikely. At least for women, if carrying a pregnancy you know you're going to have to give up isn't a deterrant, it's hard to know what would work better. And most men in this situation are unable to pay the child support they already owe and any other penalties may suck for them, but it'll make it even less likely that they end up paying. Pregnancies are not always preventable, and in stressed families like this, are also rarely planned.

Would the orders make a point? Perhaps. But they're not going to make some huge difference in the number of kids who are born to "unfit" parents or who end up abused.

Here's what might work better:

If you want to put resources into prevention—of unwise pregnancies and of abuse—do it. Don't wait for some neat legal principle to make you feel better about it. Fund health care, birth control, abortion, good sex ed, parenting education, respite services, and domestic violence response, etc. and improve access to them. There's plenty of info out there about how to do these things well.
If you want to ensure that babies born to parents with a history of serious enough abuse that they already have a no-custody order in place aren't bounced around from foster home to foster home and maybe-maybe-not back to birth parents sometime (which I agree is not a good plan), make no-custody orders include automatic termination of parental rights for any child conceived after they are issued and allow the kid a permanent adoptive home from day one. It's still subject to errors in judgment, but at least you know it'll have real results. (And, frankly, it might be more of a deterrant than some random legal penalty.) (Note: This suggestion works when both bio parents have the no-custody order. What is the proper response when it's only one of them who is subject to such? I don't know.)

Ick.

Photo by walknboston.

More by this author:

Parenting in Gendered World

Miriam Axel-Lute — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 20:00:00 GMT

There's a great thread over at Womanist Musings about the ongoing challenge of teaching our kids to be openminded about gender, especially when they are in school and experiencing both a bombardment of "this is what girls do; this is what boys do" and also watching peers tease/label/ostracize non-gender-conforming kids.

It's all so familiar to me: the tiring repetition, the feeling that others think you are going too far, and the related backlash: It's going too far to tell my kids that a hurtful term is not acceptable?! Or to fight like hell to keep them from constraining their own options in order to gender conform? Argh.

We've started using the "[That adult] just made a mistake [in assuming all girls like princesses/that you were a boy because you weren't wearing any pink/etc.]" line in our household that several commenters talk about. And we're still in the primarily spoon-feeding perspectives stage, where one of us is on hand to provide nearly instant feedback on all questionable statements. So it doesn't get any easier from here, I assume.

I'm sure it's the same any time you're trying to teach your child values that are not commonly held by the culture at large, whether it's gender fluiditiy, religious tolerance, or non-violence. You don't want to let things you find patently offensive and dangerous go by without response, and yet you have to walk the line of not seeming so obsessive you spark a rebellion or even just shut down conversation. I really appreciated hearing from so many parents in that thread who spoke of not freaking out over their daughters' girly phases, merely sticking to the "there's no such thing as girl/boy toys" mantra, and reporting that it "worked" (as in the message stuck with respect to others, not any particular outcome for their kids' interests). There's hope yet . . .

Photo by llamafloor.

More by this author:

Water Broke at 17 Weeks; Baby Survives

Miriam Axel-Lute — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Sometimes the stars align. They certainly did for Matthew Janson, who was born Friday in Cleveland. See, his mother's amniotic fluid had started to leak back in November, when she was only 17 weeks pregnant.

Ususally that would spell doom. But they hung on. The premature rupture wasn't caused by infection or bleeding of the placenta or any of the "usual" caused.

The leak was slow, and infection was kept at bay. Although she'd been told to expect to miscarry within a few weeks, she made it to viability still pregnant. She entered the hospital at 23 weeks, but made it to 34 before delivering—Matthew was still premature, but not even wildly so, and quite healthy.

Although all the doctors involved want everyone to know just how unlikely this was (1 in 500,000 chance said one), it's still always nice to hear about a happy ending.

Photo (which is not of Matthew Janson) by Yager-Madden.

More by this author:

Census Woes: Defining Parenthood

Miriam Axel-Lute — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 15:03:00 GMT

It's census time again, folks, and you know what that means! Lots and lots of us trying to fit ourselves into a limited range of government-defined categories, whether on race, family structure, or goodness knows what else.

Let me preface this by saying that even though it's going to be a long time before my family is accurately captured by the census, I am actually more sympathetic to the challenges of the Census Bureau than many. I've had to use Census data a lot, and one of the main uses for it is to study changes over time. But if you keep changing the categories, you can't do that, at least not as well. Thus, when you add "mixed-race" as a category, and then you try to determine the shifting racial composition of an area, you can't really do it, because you don't know what the people identifying as mixed race previously identified as, etc. This doesn't mean I don't think the categories should change to reflect reality (and please someone, kill the whole "female-headed household" claptrap already!); the census should be about describing what is, not what someone thinks ought to be. But I understand why they are awfully feet-dragging about making big changes.

Such caveats aside, it does seem like some easy chances to get more useful data have been skipped this time through. Choosing to identify same-sex legally married couples as "unmarried partners" seems more lazy than anything—here's new information and we won't record it. It's not like this one would screw up the data anyway—you can always sort those couples separately using gender. Mombian, in a roundup of census issues for queer families, notes an important take-away: If you record yourself as "wife and wife" or "husband and husband" at least some hard-working researchers might be able to pull the info out later. So if it applies, by all means do it.

And then there's defining parenthood. What are you: biological parent, adoptive parent, or stepparent?

Those are your choices. How about non-bio parent, married to a bio parent, on the birth certificate so didn't have to adopt? (Could be a same-sex couple, could be a surrogate/donor kind of situation.) Or how about non-bio parent not able to adopt for some reason? (For example, laws against same-sex parents adoption or having more than two legal parents.) Will Cat Cora and her wife's data be thrown out if they both declare themselves bio parents?

If this applies to you, what will you put down?

Photo by takomabibelot.

More by this author:

Grieving a Lost Pregnancy? Sorry, We'd Like a Drug Test

Miriam Axel-Lute — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 22:00:00 GMT

The fight over when women lose all rights when they become pregnant continues. A bill under consideration in Tennessee would mandate drug and alcohol testing for pregnant women under several conditions:

(1) No prenatal care;
(2) Late prenatal care after twenty-four (24) weeks gestation;
(3) Incomplete prenatal care;
(4) Abruptio placentae;
(5) Intrauterine fetal death;
(6) Preterm labor of no obvious cause;
(7) Intrauterine growth retardation of no obvious cause;
(8) Previously known alcohol or drug abuse; or
(9) Unexplained congenital anomalies.

Refusal of "treatment" results in referral to child protective services. Now, there are all the usual (good) arguments to made in response against mandating drug testing and rehab for pregnant women, such as: it deters them from seeking health care in the first place; it interferes with a doctor's judgment; treatment is impossible in a state where there are aren't enough beds available and nearly all the facilities don't take pregnant women or allow women to bring their children along (see Salon for details).

But as Rachel from Women's Health News points out eloquently, the list of triggers for the testing here adds a whole extra layer of ick: Preterm labor? Intrauterine death? We don't know what causes these things most of the time—are we now going to by default blame them all on the mother's behavior? Should a woman grieving a lost pregnancy not be able to drink for while for comfort without fear of being sent to rehab or losing her other kids?

And how about "incomplete prenatal care"? So now it is not up to us to choose whether we want ultrasounds or invasive tests that tell us nothing or carry a risk of miscarriage themselves?

If you care about the effects of drug and alcohol abuse on kids, for god's sake spend your energy making the treatment system actually work.

Photo by michab37.

More by this author:

They Say: Breastmilk Fights Respiratory Viruses Better in Girls

Miriam Axel-Lute — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:30:00 GMT

Science gets particularly exciting when it turns up things no one was expecting. Researcher Fernando Polack, working in Buenos Aires investigating how much protection breastmilk provides for very-low-birthweight babies against the wicked metapneumovirus (no vaccine yet developed), was surprised to find stark gender differences in his results:

Girls who were not breastfed had a much higher risk of rehospitalization for respiratory illness than boys, but breastfed girls were almost never rehospitalized. In boys, the difference between breastfed and not was insignificant. (The researchers hasten to point out that there are plenty of other benefits of breastfeeding that still hold true for boys.)

The fascinating part of this is that a gender difference may point to breastmilk's protective properties working differently than previously supposed. Maybe it's not just delivering mom's immunities until the kid gets its own—why would there be a gender difference in that? Could breastmilk prompt anti-viral protection in the absence of exposure to viruses somehow, interacting directly with the baby's developing immune system? (Of course, why would there be a gender difference in that either?) The report from Vanderbilt Medical Center speculates maybe, though they have no idea how.

Sounds to me for now like another thing to throw on the "we don't know what breastmilk is well enough to replicate it" evidence pile.

More by this author:

Database of Hospital VBAC Policies Released

Miriam Axel-Lute — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:29:00 GMT

If you're planning a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean), you'll want to know about the International Cesarean Awareness Network's new database of hopsital VBAC policies (i.e. supportive, ban them, de facto ban because no docs do them...).

While the Our Bodies Ourselves blog notes a few small issues with methodology, it's a darn good start. I've heard of too many people learning too late that the hospital they were planning to go to wouldn't allow them to try VBAC.

Photo by davhor.

More by this author:

Are You a Good Candidate for Hospital Birth?

Miriam Axel-Lute — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:30:00 GMT

It's always nice—and often informative—to try a little role reversal to reveal unstated assumptions. So I have to admit I'm tickled by the concept of Gloria Lemay's post "Are You a Good Candidate for Hospital Birth?", a checklist that includes items such as:

Must not be scared of needles.
Must not be claustrophobic or uncomfortable in confined spaces.
Must be able to go for long periods of time without eating or drinking.
Must be happy to share a bathroom with others.
Must enjoy sleeping on a mattress covered with plastic.
Must accept the possibility of contracting antibiotic-resistant infections.

Any given one won't apply to every hospital birth, it's true. (If I were writing it, I would have adapted things a bit, such as saying "Must accept a high likelihood that your written birth plan will be ignored" rather than "Must accept your written birth plan will be ignored," for example.) But that's really no different that the way many people phrase things like when asking you if you really want an out-of-hospital birth.

So while I wouldn't use it as is in a childbirth education class, I'm happy to see a little offense as the best defense, especially when doctors are pushing back on attempts to expand midwife care.

Hat-tip: Citizens for Midwifery. Photo by la_cola_de_mi_perro.

More by this author:

What defines a girl or a boy?

Miriam Axel-Lute — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:30:00 GMT

Writing about transgendered kids is tough. If you believe sex is biologically set by chromosomes and organs, then even considering the whole notion is silly. If you believe that gender identity is entirely socially constructed, it's hard to understand why some kids raised in households without rigid gender roles—boys allowed to dress up and not like sports, etc.—still develop passionate, intense desires to be the other gender. (Me, I'm thinking hormones. Pesky things.)

The stories in the recent article on transgendered kids in the Minneapolis CityPages should certainly give pause to anyone who thinks these kids are having passing phases that their parents could easily deflect. And they also show the interesting challenge of coming out to potential romantic partners when you have transitioned early enough to pass completely. It's worth a read.

But as whenever we talk about what it means to "feel" like one gender or the other, the article ends up giving credence to conventional gender stereotypes and binaries along the way. It opens, for example, like this: "On her third birthday, Sarah Barnett tore open a package from her grandmother that would delight most girls her age. Gently folded on a pillow of tissue paper lay a frilly, ruffled dress." Sigh. Is it mixing my issues to wish that transgender awareness could manage not to rest on ideas like "girls inherently like frilly dresses?" Isn't the point that cross-dressing isn't enough?

The point of that anecdote, of course, is that her response was not (as my happy-to-be-a-woman childhood self's would have been) "Ew. I hate dresses," but "Why don't you tell Grandma I'm a boy?" Still, it points up how hard it is to talk about this issue without the crutch of "what most girls/boys" would like/prefer.

Photo by anyjazz65.

More by this author:

"I wanted to go with my mommy": Kids left in car for an hour while mom detained for parking ticket

Miriam Axel-Lute — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 22:00:00 GMT

How many of you have ever had an unpaid parking ticket? Been pulled over for a minor traffic infraction? Have non Native American ancestors? Don't answer—I don't care. But keep your answer in mind as you think about this story:

Hispanic rights advocates filming routine traffic stops in Maricopa County, Arizona, in January, captured on tape officers in ski masks who detained a woman for an hour while her young kids (4 and 6) were left alone in the car, unable to go to her. (Eventually a relative came to get them.) The girl reported the sheriff told her to be quiet.

The mother had been pulled over for having her lights off and was arrested for an unpaid parking ticket. Oh, and she was undocumented and later deported.

Where to start, right? If she'd been wanted for murder, or come out brandishing a gun, or some such, then, well, this might have been necessary. But how twisted can you get to think serving justice on a parking ticket is worth traumatizing a couple of innocent children?

I know the question of undocumented immigrants is a tinderbox, but even if you think being one is a crime so heinous and the flight risk so large that it had to be handled right then, couldn't you have let the mother and kids be together until someone came to get them? Or, as it is easy to suspect, has the dehumanization of immigrants made such basic decency farfetched?

The commenters on various news stories who wax eloquent passionate about how it's all the mother's fault for being an evil lawbreaker make me ill. When there are people like Josef Fritzl in the world? And I love the one about how the ski masks were necessary because those awful people were filming. Since when do traffic cops have the right to anonymity in doing their job? Annoying to be documented in this fashion for sure, but pairing the right to use force with a right to anonymity is a recipe for disaster. Shown here quite well.

I'm sure that this hits me harder as a parent than it would have before (bad blogger confession: I've read numerous news reports on this, but couldn't make myself watch the video itself), but I would like to think I still would have recognized it as an seriously perverted set of priorities. If you agree, MomsRising is trying to gather people to protest the sheriff's tactics, of which this is apparently not unrepresentative.

More by this author: