Strollerderby : anger

Disturbing Baby-Swinging PSA

Cole Gamble — Tue, 12 May 2009 17:00:00 GMT

In this hilariously disturbing (is that possible? discuss) PSA we see drinking and baby throwing don't mix.

This comes PSA comes from Australia, where they're apparently in the midst of a baby swinging epidemic. Is this effective or laughable?

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10 Great Books For (Traumatizing) Children

Homebirthing Advocate's Baby Dies During Homebirth

Brett Singer — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:00:00 GMT

Janet Fraser is a big advocate for homebirth. She is described as "one of the principals behind the homebirth organization Joyous Birth," and goes so far as to call C-sections and episiotomies "birthrape." "I don't care if you don't like the word or the idea," she writes in an article on the site. "Survivors are angry and we are starting to talk about it."

Sadly, Ms. Fraser lost her baby during a recent homebirth. One site says that she had been in labor for "several days" at her Australian home. The Age had published an interview with Fraser a week before, in which she stated that she planned to deliver "the baby at home without an attending midwife," prompting The Australian College of Midwives to say that she "recklessly" promotes "free-birthing," which is where the mother gives birth alone, according to London's Daily Mail. (If that's not a good description of free-birthing, let me know and I'll update this article.)

The Age reports that police are investigating the newborn child's death. At press time authorities were unsure if the baby died after delivery or was stillborn; in the latter case, there is no autopsy.

It's tremendously sad when this happens of course, no matter where the birth occurs. It never occurred to my wife and I to have a homebirth, but of course millions of people do it and everything turns out fine. Medpie offers some statistics that are alarming, such as one study that found "an infant mortality rate of 2.2 per thousand for home births and 0.7 per thousand for hospital births in Sweden." They interpret these numbers as saying that "having a home birth resulted in a preventable death of the infant in one out of every 666 cases," which they call "not a reassuring number." But again, I'm not trying to say that homebirthing is automatically a bad idea. It's a choice, one that should be taken very seriously.

The real problem with Fraser's views isn't the views themselves but the way she expresses them. She's clearly angry, and may have reason to be. But as with those who are strong proponents of breastfeeding, it's better to advocate rather than attack anyone that may do things differently than you do. C-sections are sometimes medically necessary. Is that a "birthrape"? The rest of the site appears to be equally high in volume, such as this page about C-sections which makes the claim "The fact is that surgery is a suboptimal way to be born and that most surgeries are not for evidence based reasons," (emphasis not added), and advises mothers to "Put your anger where it belongs - with your surgeon." Because yelling at your doctor is an excellent way to get better healthcare.

With the obvious tragedy of what happened to Ms. Fraser's baby, it seems uncouth to really go after her with the same level of vituperativeness that she displays on the Joyous Birth site. And one sad event does not mean that every homebirth is a bad idea. But it seems fair to take a moment to suggest that the best course of action, when lives are at stake, is to take a deep cleansing breath and consider all of your options, rather than act out of anger or any sort of revolutionary zeal.

Source: medpie.com, others

Image from here

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Open Letter To The Woman Who Pushed Me While I Was Picking Up My Kid

Brett Singer — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Dear Lady,

Hi. How are you? I ask because you seemed very agitated this afternoon. What do I mean? Well, you shoved me and a few other people as you made your way through the throng of folks standing on the sidewalk.

I know, you had two small children with you. That can be annoying. I know, because I have kids too. So did all of the people who were standing on the sidewalk today, the ones you knocked around like bowling pins.

See, that street has a school on it. (Actually, it has more than one school on it.) And we were there to pick up our kids. So when you shoved me and declared, "I HAVE SMALL CHILDREN WITH ME!" I could relate. To the "having small children with you" part. I can even relate to the "I have small children with me and I really, truly want to just get where I'm going already because it's cold out here, and damn it if these kids aren't tougher to wrangle than they were a couple of months ago." I get it, trust me.

The thing is, please don't yell at me. I'm not going to tell you that I've never done the same thing. No saint, me. So I'm not trying to get all high and mighty with you. Mostly I just want you to not yell at me, and use your kids as an excuse.

Maybe that is kind of high and mighty. Sorry about that. If you think about it, though, maybe you'll see that I'm right. Or not. Like I said, I'd just prefer not to be shoved. There really isn't anyplace else to stand, and it can get a little crowded around dismissal time. A simple "excuse me" and a tap on the shoulder should suffice. Give it a try. I did, and it feels better than "HEY! MOVE IT SCHMUCKO!"

Sincerely,

Brett Singer

Image: SXC (not the woman who pushed me, just a stock photo. I suppose it could be the same woman but that would be a coincidence so huge it boggles the mind.)

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McCain Campaign Verbally Abuses an Innocent Child

Cole Gamble — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 23:31:00 GMT

This wretched story comes from the Daily Kos, in which a politically excited kid gets his ass handed to him by the sinister folks at McCain HQ:

I’m fairly certain the story I’m about to relate happened when I was in 6th grade, an age at which I was old enough to appreciate what was happening, but now sufficiently eroded away in my memory to preclude a perfect recall of the event.

The assignment was a grade school perennial: Write to our local Congressperson or Senator. If he wrote back? Extra credit. So I took my #2 pencil in my chubby fingers and applied it with an unmistakably adolescent scrawl to a sheet of wide-ruled, three-hole punched notebook paper.

“Dear Senator McCain,” I began; I probably picked McCain because he had recently been “promoted” from the House to the Senate, and his name was in the news. I wasn’t – at 11 or 12 – what you could call “politically engaged.” I don’t think I knew what the ideological differences between the parties were. I mean, to be honest, I didn’t know much of anything. I just wanted to finish my homework before Spenser: For Hire started.

So I filled the rest of the two “body” paragraphs of the letter with whatever semi-coherent content my preteen mind could generate. I don’t remember the line by line specifics, but a few words and phrases stand out in my memory from the time – words and phrases I was particularly pleased with being able to use at the time, as I was fairly certain they made me sound more grown-up and politically aware than I actually was at the time:

“Constituencies”

“Partisan gridlock”

“Reach across the aisle”

String these three items together and you get the picture: I exhorted him (although I didn’t know that word at the time) to “reach across the aisle” and fight against “partisan gridlock” on behalf of his “constituencies” at home in the great state of Arizona.

As I said: No great indication of a developing political mind— but what could one honestly expect from someone who was saving up his allowance to buy Serpentor?

I mailed my letter and all but forgot about it.

Several weeks later, during dinner, the phone rang. I remember that I answered the call. I don’t remember the name of the youngish-sounding guy on the other end of the phone (in the tall-tale version of this story it would be Mark Salter), but I remember where he worked.

“This is ___ from Senator McCain’s office. Can I talk to Jeffrey, please?

“This is he.”

What follows is, as best as I can reconstruct from my memory, the remainder of the call in its entirety. Once he started speaking, I didn’t say a word.

“Well, Jeffrey, I received your letter to Senator McCain, and I wanted to respond to you. First of all, the Senator has one constituency, the residents of the State of Arizona—not multiple constituencies, as you wrote.”

“Also, since the Senator just arrived in the Senate, he has not been a part of the problem of “partisan gridlock” you write about. What’s more, if you had done your research, you would see that while he was in the House of Representatives, Senator McCain made it a point to “reach across the aisle” on multiple occasions, just as your letter would have him do.”

“I can tell you’re a kid and everything, but if you ever want to be taken seriously you should you get your facts straight, especially before you write a letter like this.”

I think I said, “Okay, thanks,” before he hung up on me. That was it.

“What the hell was that?” I thought to myself.

Whatever my expectations had been for that assignment, one thing I didn’t expect was to be taken to task for my (admittedly middling) effort at engaging with my government. I remember feeling as though I had just been kicked in the gut, or had my pants pulled down by a bully from an older class — neither of which were entirely foreign experiences to me at the time.

I also recall being astonished at the fact that whoever this guy was, he apparently had nothing better to do than call up a grade-schooler during dinner and yell at him. As the schoolyard saying went at the time, I wondered “Who had piddled on his Post Toasties that morning?”

Now, I’m not defending my letter. Clearly, I hadn’t done the homework to do my homework. But it’s not like there was an Internet to research anyone’s congressional voting record back then, and the assignment simply wasn’t worth enough, points-wise, to justify coercing my Mom into taking me to the library (which she would have done).

The perturbed call from McCain’s office actually did teach me a valuable lesson in “not talking out of my butt.” However, I’m certain I could have learned that same lesson, given the same set of circumstances, without the meanness. Since then, I’ve dealt with kids in a variety of capacities (student teacher, camp counselor, etc.) and I can say that, no matter how dumb they act, you’re never supposed to treat them like they’re stupid.

Mainly, I recall this experience as one of those childhood moments—certainly not my proudest—that sticks around in your memory because, even if you’re just a stupid kid, you can see right through a so-called grown-up’s behavior:

At that moment, I knew that he handled the call poorly.

I marveled at the fact that I had been yelled at for using a word (”constituencies”) that I knew I had used properly. I mean, conceivably, weren’t kids one constituency and adults another? Men one, women another? Goldwater Republicans and Udall Democrats? Constituencies.

But mostly, I wondered what sort of jerk Senator McCain must have been to inspire his staff to achieve such levels of jerkiness?

Twenty-something years later, Senator McCain’s conduct during his presidential campaign has provided me with the answer to that question: Whether he’s furiously taking exception with the assertions of mendacity by the Des Moines Register or referring to his distinguished colleague from the Senate and opponent in his race for the nation’s highest office as “That one,” one thing is clear about Senator McCain.

He’s exactly the sort of guy who would tell one of his minions to rough up a naive 12-year-old constituent by phone.

In short, not much has changed since then… Except the shows on Prime time.

In related news, Obama smells like rainbows and unicorns.

More by this author:

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What Gay Marriage Can Tell Us About Straight Marriage

Adrienne Martini — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:30:00 GMT

Let's just start with the money quote: “Heterosexual married women live with a lot of anger about having to do the tasks not only in the house but in the relationship,” said Esther D. Rothblum, a professor of women’s studies at San Diego State University. Have I captured your attention?

According to a recent study that compared same sex with opposite sex unions, researchers discovered that many of the issues faced by couples aren't gender dependent. Which is to say: men in relationships with other men (ditto women) tend work through their problems with fewer bitter divides and greater understanding.

In short: it isn't nature that makes men insensitive and women passive-aggressive; rather, it's heterosexual relationships that drive them there.

Perhaps that is the implicit threat from gay marriage that the Republicans keep harping on about. It might be that same sex relationships will prove to healthy, loving and, therefore, irresistible.

Photo credit: workitmom.com

Clay Aiken ain't no fruit

Brett Singer — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Far be it from me to imply that Clay Aiken is anything less than muy macho. But, you know, there have been those nasty rumors, which led to threats of a lawsuit from his devoted fan base, who are known as the Claymates. (Really. They call themselves Claymates, and one of them tried to sue Clay over rumors that he was homosexual. Don't you feel normal now?) So perhaps -- and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this, you know -- Clay's recent actions are fueled by a desire to "butch it up, Mary" as the saying goes.

First: he impregnates a woman. This is a clear sign of masculinity. I mean, try doing that if you're... you know, not manly. Well, it was artificial insemination, which means there was no actual physical contact. But hey, there's nothing wrong with that either. (Even if Aiken isn't the father, he could have been. Hey! Stop laughing!)

Second: when a ~~vulture~~ cameraperson from ~~the fiery pits of Hell~~ TMZ confronted him on the street, he pulled a Sean Penn and whacked the camera. In a very aggressive, manly way. Again, nothing wrong with that. (Video of the incident is below, or click here.)

One thing that I've always found interesting is what constitutes "manliness." Impregnating a woman means that your sperm is, you know, spermy. Strong swimmers, etc. But so what?

And punching someone, even if that someone is ~~being a dick~~ just doing their jobs, is more out of control than it is "macho." To be fair, Clay just kinda pushed the guy; more specifically, he pushed the camera. If he had ripped the dude's arms off and beaten him within an inch of his life, that would have been much more manly. (Not that we advocate such behavior. But it would definitely have been big news.)

So maybe it's possible that all of this "news" just happens to be coming out (no pun intended) around the time that Mr. Aiken has a new album out. Just a thought.

In closing, let me request that the phrase "Claby" (Clay + Baby) never, ever catch on. It's just... there is something wrong with that.

(TMZ.com screenshot)

other image: offoffBway.com

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Breaking News: Clay Aiken might not be the father

Brett Singer — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:30:00 GMT

Could the whole "Clay Aiken can impregnate a woman without even touching her" news be a big fat stinkin' lie? The Calgary Herald is reporting that "several people close to" babymama Jaymes Foster are denying claims (clayms? Nope, not going there) that Aiken is the daddy.

~~One Of The Signs Of The Apocalypse~~ TMZ first reported that Aiken had artificially inseminated Foster, the sister of record producer David Foster, going on to say that, "Clay is a lot more than sperm -- we're told he will have an active role in raising the child." The story was picked up by roughly 12 million media outlets. BUT one of the so-called sources is denying that he ever said Clay was the daddy-to-be, even asking People.com to retract their story. And B.J. Cook, David Foster's ex-wife and Jaymes Foster's ex-sister-in-law said, "Jaymes is definitely pregnant, that much is true...I can guarantee that it's not Clay Aiken's baby." (emphasis added.)

Of course, no one directly involved is talking to the press, including Clay, who is very busy punching cameras.

It must be pointed out that we have no knowledge of this incident, or alleged incident. Maybe Clay is on his way to fatherhood. Maybe not. Who the hell knows? Clearly this is the most important story of the decade. Well, other than the Sex and the City movie. (Election? What election?)

Aside #1: Foster went from "in her late 40's" to "50" in a matter of days -- I guess it is stressful being in the public eye. Here's a photo of the happy non-couple.

Aside #2: Even if this whole thing turns out to be bull, at least we'll always have the phrase "Clay is a lot more than sperm." Thank you ~~Satan~~ TMZ.

images: thehollywoodgossip.com, offoffBway.com

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Mad Moms Make For Sad Moms

Adrienne Martini — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 18:30:00 GMT

I've always been amazed that it takes a scientific study to point out something that seems obvious. Like this one, just completed by the University of Haifa in Israel.

One hundred and sixty moms-to-be were interviewed about their expectations of motherhood. The pregnant ladies who had unresolved conflicts with their own parents envisioned parenting to be challenging. Those who had warm relationships with their folks figured their relationship with their infants would be warm.

Which makes a certain intuitive sense, yes? But now that someone has been able to quantify the obvious, perhaps OBs will take an extra 30 seconds to ask a pregnant lady how her relationship with her parents has been and, I don't know, help her get some insight into those unresolved issues because they might have an effect on her future well-being. Seems a lot more helpful than just doing another check of her cervix, anyway.

Oh, and no word yet from those researchers working on the "water still wet" hypothesis.

Photo credit: www.evilbeetgossip.com

Mad at Your Partner? Let it Out!

Amy Kuras — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 22:33:00 GMT

From the "things I already knew" file: Researchers at the University of Michigan School of Public Health found that spouses who express their anger tend to live longer than couples who bottle it up.

Or it just seems like it, yuk yuk.

Professor Ernest Harburg and his colleagues followed 192 married couples over a 17-year period. Their research focused on aggressive behavior considered unfair or undeserved by the person on the receiving end. The spouses ranged in age from 35 to 69.

Harburg placed couples into one of four categories, based on how they responded to anger-provoking hypothetical situations: both partners express their anger; the wife expresses anger or the husband does, while the other suppresses; and both the husband and wife suppress anger.

Only 26 couples, meaning 52 individuals, in the study were "suppressors" in which both partners held in their anger. A quarter of them died during the study period compared with about half that for the remaining couples.

The study didn’t look at styles of expressing anger or of suppressing, just whether people tended to do one or the other, and didn't delve into differing styles, like when what one partner considers a major blowout the other considers healthy communication.

We're teaching our daughter to clearly state when she's angry, and explain to her it's fine to be angry, but not to hit or be mean because of it. How do you attempt to model healthy "anger styles"?

Lessons We Learn From Celebrities: Having a Baby Just Makes You More Pissed

Kelly Mills — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 21:07:00 GMT

Having a child can certainly change you. But before we put vaseline on the lens and break out the soft lighting on our maternal and paternal moments, Eddie Vedder reminds us that sometimes we just go from irate to, um, irater. "When I had a child, everyone was telling me that I was going to see the world through her eyes, and everything was going to get this nice gloss to it. I kept waiting for that to happen, and thought there was a real problem with me that it wasn't," reports Mr. Vedder. While I imagine an angrier Eddie Vedder might just turn green and bust out of his t-shirt at any moment like the Hulk, I feel this one. Because having a kid makes some of us more sensitive.

Pre-kid I could read news stories with a moderate sense of outrage and smite my forehead at the cruelty and stupidity in the world. Now? It's personal. The crappy educational system is grinding down my little baby, the planet may not be livable in her old age. Child abuse stories make me physically ill, and sexism is more painful because it impacts my angel. I always hated the invocation of "save the childen" as unnecessarily rabble-rousing, but now I kind of feel it. Maybe it's sad that I had to procreate in order to get that kind of emotional response, but hey, that's life. Now if I could just find the time to, you know, actually do something about all these global problems...

Strollerderby : anger

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Eating Your Baby's Placenta

Dumb Kiddy Product Makeovers

10 Great Books For (Traumatizing) Children

Homebirthing Advocate's Baby Dies During Homebirth

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Woman Will Go Free If Son Comes Back To Life

Did Sarah Palin Know That Bristol Was Sleeping With Levi?

Babble Talk: Do We Still Judge Women for Having C-Sections?

Open Letter To The Woman Who Pushed Me While I Was Picking Up My Kid

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What Gay Marriage Can Tell Us About Straight Marriage

Clay Aiken ain't no fruit

Breaking News: Clay may not be the father

American Idol or American Psycho? Clay Aiken Gives Pap a SMACKDOWN!

Fans Show Support For Clay Aiken

Clay Aiken Involved in Pregnancy

Breaking News: Clay Aiken might not be the father

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