Sometimes it seems the following must be invoked whenever a feminist brings up the subject of childcare as a burden: “Lots of men who work long hours in high-stress jobs would give anything to spend more time with their children.” It’s supposed to prove that, far from being a burden, childcare is a privilege that women disproportionately enjoy and that, by implication, any feminists who complain are miserable, child-hating whingers.

It’s a red herring. I have every sympathy for the hard-working men - I’ve worked some terrible jobs myself to try to keep the credit card companies off my back - but their plight isn’t directly relevant to the question of whether childcare is or is not a burden. (Whether it’s indirectly relevant is a much larger question, far beyond the scope of this post.) There’s a huge difference between “spending time with” children and “looking after” them.

My dad spends time with my daughter. He sings to her, talks to her, encourages her to smile and clap her hands. And he can do all these things safe in the knowledge that if she fills her nappy or starts crying uncontrollably, or if he just wants to get on with something else now, he can hand her back to me and I’ll take over. Because I’m the one that looks after her.

I love my daughter, but I also know that there are very few high-stress jobs that can compare to the task of looking after her. In a job, you clock off at the end of the day and your time is your own. Parenting means being constantly on duty: even when the baby is asleep, you have to be alert for the moment when she wakes up and needs attention. If you have the financial resources, you can subcontract some of the work to a childminder, but even then you have to be alert for the call that says there is a crisis only you can resolve.

Looking after a baby is exhausting. Normal tasks like showering and preparing breakfast require careful planning so that the baby doesn’t get frustrated with boredom and start crying. Something as simple as reading the paper or writing an essay requires co-operation from someone else, otherwise the baby cries from lack of attention. Trying to cram everything you didn’t get done during the day into the evenings when the baby’s asleep means you don’t get enough sleep, which makes it even harder to cope with what can often feel like never-ending demands.

This is a partial explanation for why I haven’t posted anything recently.

Some time during all of the time that the Duke rape scandal first erupted there was an interesting exchange in the comments section on my blog. A reader linked to this article, which includes the following quote:

Black and Asian women with bachelor’s degrees earn more money than similarly educated white women, and white men with four-year degrees still make more money than anyone else.

My immediate reaction was, no Black women don’t earn more than White women; where does this data come from? So I decided to go to the Census data and see what it revealed. Sure enough the 2004 Census reveals similar numbers, but I was still convinced that something was wrong with this picture. Then it hit me. What this measure does is compare all college educated men and women whether they are in the labor force full time, part time, or not at all. Are college educated Black women really faring better than their White female counterparts in the labor force? The answer is no. In fact, this is a great example of how statistics can be misread and or misleading.

In order to understand what is wrong with using this measure it is important to think about the idea of statistical controls. These figures did not control for the woman’s involvement in the work force. A slightly better comparison would be to look at people who are of similar education, and a similar labor force status. So I decided to look at only those college educated workers who were in the labor force full time year round. When you compare similarly situated women and the gap between White women and Black women reverses, so White women in this position are earning more. The table also shows that this holds true for those women with a high school education.

So what is going here? The explanation is actually simple. White women are more likely to be out of the labor force or in the labor force part time. This is largely because White women are frequently married to White men, who are the highest earners. White men’s much higher incomes make it feasible for White women to be less connected to the labor force, compared to Black women.

Another interesting thing to note about these charts is the position of Black men. College educated Black men earn more than all women, including White women, but they earn less than Asian, Latino, and White men. However, this pattern does not hold true for Black men with high school or less. Less educated White women earn more than less educated Black men.

Lately, I have heard several recent discussions insinuating that Black men are in a better economic position that White women; however, I think overall White women tend to be in a better financial position than Black men. I say this because the data in the two charts above reflects personal income. The vast majority of people do not live alone…they live in households or families.. The Census Bureau defines households and families as two different sets of living arrangements. Here is a quote:

Household A household includes all the people who occupy a housing unit as their usual place of residence. Family A group of two or more people who reside together and who are related by birth, marriage, or adoption.

Since the majority of Black men are married to or living with Black women and the vast majority of White women are married to or living with White men, their living situations are probably best measured by looking at household or family measures as the two tables on the right do. The first table looks at family incomes for both single mother households and married households, and it is not disaggregated by education.

The next table covers households. In this table I looked a four person households, and only those household where the head of household had a college degree or higher. It is evident from these tables that Black and Latinos fair particularly poorly compared to their Asian and White counterparts. While individual income is useful at gauging discrimination against individuals in the labor force, it is not as useful when examining the actually living conditions of people. The only people who this measure would be applicable to is people who live alone (this group is growing, but even many single people have roommates or others they share homes with

So let me get back to the main point here……Black women are not fairing as well as White women when it comes to their financial situation, and this difference cannot be explained away by the higher rate of single parenthood or lower level of education. When Black women and White women have similar levels of education and a similar position in the labor force (full-time, part time, or unemployed ), White women earn more (I actually did look up income for unemployed women, and unemployed White women do have more income coming in.). Unfortunately, the AP report mentioned in the beginning of this article failed to take account of the fact that many college educated White women are working part time or are taking time out of the work force, especially if they have a White male partner who is a high earner. This case is a prime example of how statistics can be misleading. Many people who read that article are probably convinced that Black women are truly fairing better in the job market than White women, but it is not so.

(Sorry that the graphs are so ugly….I’m having a hell of a time learning this program.) If you want to look up data on income, the following link has the data used in these graphs.

This is also posted at my blog Rachel’s Tavern.

Another one of the snippets from my Dissertation on Black/White Relationships. Keep in mind all of these posts are snippets of a much larger piece of work, so feel free to add to things, ask questions or give critiques. I’d love to hear feedback from people. In my dissertation, I focused on family approval of Black/White interracial relationships. The data is based on 39 interviews with people in interracial relationships (conducted individually) and 5 interviews with the relatives of some of these couples, so this is where most of the focus will be.

Clearly biracial children and views on them were a very significant feature in the process of family approval of Black/White relationships. In the interviews I conducted with Black/White couples, “concerns” about the children of Black/White couples was the most common reason cited for opposing a relative’s interracial relationship (IR), but ironically, the birth of a biracial child was one of the factors most commonly associated with an increase in family acceptance.

Before elaborating on families objections to interracial relationships, I should acknowledge two ideas that have had a dramatic impact on how people with a Black parent and a White parent are viewed. Throughout American history the rule of hypodescent and the tragic mulatto image have shaped views of biracial children. Hypodescent involved a set of laws and rules that defined anyone with as little as “one drop of black blood” to be Black; thus, the children of interracial unions were almost exclusively defined as Black (Wright 1993; Dalmage 2000; Moran 2001). The tragic mulatto ideology portrays Black/White biracial people as poor, lost souls caught in between two worlds and accepted by no group. According to this ideology, their mere existence was tragic, and they were destined to lead a life of sorrow because of their social ambiguity (Spickard 1989). Both these views are reiterated by relatives of interracial couples, especially White relatives. Several White respondents had heard negative things about biracial children well before they entered interracial relationships. However, it was not just relatives who had concerns about how biracial children would be perceived; even some members of interracial couples didn’t want to have children or were uncomfortable with having children with their spouse or partner.

Those relatives oppose to interracial relationships “for the sake of the children” feel that biracial children will suffer because they are “different.” They also believe that the child will be confused about his or her identity. People who expressed opposition to IRs also felt that interracial couples couples are seen as selfish, irrational, and unconcerned with the children’s well being, which they base on their assumption that biracial children have identity problems.

The one drop rule often comes up in interracial families because one of the primary concerns people have about such relationships is how the couple will raise their children to identify. In accordance with the one drop rule, most couples in this study tended to see their children as closer to Black. In some cases they said they would define their children as Black, and in other cases they said that their children would be seen as Black, in spite of their biracial backgrounds, something Rockquemore and Brunsma (2001) refer to as an unvalidated biracial identity. None of the respondents who had children identified them as White, and none of those who discussed biracial children referred to them as White; however, some did refer to individual biracial children as White looking, but not as White. Some couples and their families agreed (both Black and White) that the child would be treated as Black and should therefore be raised as such, but in many families racial differences emerged over how the child should be raised or identified (in terms of race). For White members of interracial couples the one drop rule was clearly racist, but for African Americans in interracial families the one drop rule was a racial reality that was part of being African American. Whites seem to prefer a biracial identity and Blacks seemed to prefer a Black identity.

Generally, the families of women, both Black and White, raised more concerns about biracial children. Given that it is women who bear children and women who are primarily responsible for raising children; it is not surprising that concerns about children were articulated more for women’s families. For White women’s relatives the general view is that children are a marker of the interracial relationship that can have a negative impact on how their daughter is viewed, but for Black women’s families the concern is less with the potential loss of privilege and more with the ability of a White male partner to understand and relate to his biracial children.

Families, particularly Black families worried about the racial makeup of the community the child will live in and the messages he or she will be given about racism. Many Black relatives were concerned about racism and/or isolation from other African Americans that a child could face if he or she lived in a predominantly White area.

Black relatives and White relatives generally had different ideas about the child’s racial identity and socialization. For some African American families, raising a child as biracial rather than Black was not seen as a challenge to the rule of hypodescent, but as a sign that the relative in the relationship or the child was (or could be) disloyal to African Americans. Given the long history of privileges bestowed on lighter skin blacks and those who could identify as “mulatto,” it is not surprising that a mixed marriage raises concerns in African American families (Spickard 1989). While white families appear to be more concerned with the loss of privilege that interracial relationships and biracial children bring, Black families are concerned about the privileges biracial children enjoy over their Black (especially darker skinned) relatives.

Although concerns about children are cited as the primary reason for opposition to interracial relationships, ironically, most couples who had children reported that the birth of a child made their families more accepting of the relationship (which is consistent with Rosenblatt et. al., 1995). Several couples talked about how happy their family was when they had children. This was especially true if the child was the first grandchild, and this phenomenon was particularly dramatic in White families who had strongly opposed the interracial relationship. Grandparents wanted to develop relationships with their grandchildren, and in some cases, grandparents began to understand more about racism by gauging others’ reactions to their grandchildren. The birth of a child may lead to greater approval because relatives see the couple following some elements of the traditional family script; moreover, it is much easier for relatives to be upset with adults than it is for them to be upset with children. While having children tended to make families more approving, it did not necessarily mean that the relationship was completely accepted or that there was peace in the family.

The question at the heart of families’ objections/concerns is how children from interracial unions and their parents will fit into the current (and future) racial order. Will they be more closely allied with African Americans? Will they develop into a unique racial group (i.e. coloreds in South Africa)? Will individual children of interracial unions have the power to create their own racial identities? Or will they be forever lost souls with no group to call home as the tragic mulatto image would predict? Although it is not possible to predict the future racial order, it does appear that the way interracial couples and their relatives talk about children with a Black parent and a White parent provides a foreshadowing of the changes that contemporary racial ideology will bring.

If you are interested in the subject of interracial marriage, I have a category at Rachel’s Tavern explicitly dedicated to this subject.

The Journal of Marriage and Family has released a study by sociologist Noelle Chesney that indicates that cell phones are detrimental to family relationships. I am becoming increasingly anti-cell phone for this reason. The need to have to be constantly available is incredibly stressful after a while. I think it may be a good idea for families to turn off their phones at certain times of the day as a method of dealing with the invasiveness of this technology.

I haven’t read the article in full just the summaries of it, but I wonder if the author connects this with what Arlie Hochschild calls the reversal of family and work cultures. In her book the Time Bind, Hochschild argues that the division between home and work has changed and many people are finding work to be more relaxing than home. I personally felt this way over the last year or so. When I am teaching, my job is great and very relaxing–I’m able to forget the stressful things like paying bills, but as soon as I leave it is a different story.

The cell phone enters this picture because it becomes impossible to tune work or family out. Having your family call you at anytime on your cell phone can create conflicts. For example, I have had meetings at unexpected times, and if anyone calls my cell phone, they are not going to get me. The person calling is expecting me to be free and suddenly when I’m not available the person gets worried calling every line. This is completely unecessary stress. For some reason we are not able to treat cell phones like home phones.

I also suspect that this problem is much greater for women than it is for men. I can’t speak for other women, but I feel it really makes finding a space of our own, where we don’t have to organize, manage, and care for others, very difficult. I wonder about this with computers too (E.g.–suddenly we have to send photos of little Joe, Joe to Grandma everyweek.). I know this would be an even greater problem if I had kids; in fact, I get a little agitated when I see preteens checking in with parents on their cell phones. In this sense, the cell phone becomes a kind of surviellance tool, so we can keep up with each other. Then there is the whole language of protection and safety–cell phones make us safer, blah, blah, blah.

I know the work/family issues have been played out over and over again in feminist literature, but I think the role of modern communication technologies has been undertheorized, and the more I think about this the more I feel like these technologies are just one more way to exercise social control over women (children and employees too). In a way this is more of a rant, but I do frequently feel this way about my cell phone and some of the other communication technologies. Am I too much of a conspiracy theorist? Do you think this is true?

This is out of the Rachel’s Tavern archive. It is one of the Snippets from my Dissertation. Keep in mind all of these posts are snippets of a much larger piece of work, so feel free to add to things, ask questions or give critiques. I’d love to hear feedback from people. In my dissertation, I focused on family approval of Black/White interracial relationships. The data is based on 39 interviews with people in interracial relationships (conducted individually) and 5 interviews with the relatives of some of these couples, so this is where most of the focus will be.

My research is most concerned with how contemporary racism…also called colorblind racism or laissez faire racism…affects family approval of interracial relationships. However, we cannot understand how contemporary racism works without acknowledging the extent to which racism is interconnected with other forms of oppression. Multiracial feminist theorist Patricia Hill Collins refers to these complex connections as the matrix of domination. After interviewing couples it is evident that opposition to interracial marriage is not just about racism. The issues of gender and controlling Black women’s, White women’s, and Black men’s sexuality is ever present in the discourses that families use to oppose interracial relationships. One of the most obvious ways gender and race work together to affect interracial relationships is in the likelihood of intermarrying. Currently about 70% of Black/White marriages are between Black men and White women, which contrasts with the early half of the 1900s when most Black White marriages were between Black women and White men. Below I have highlighted a few of the primary issues facing Black women and White women in interracial relationships.

5 Dilemmas Facing Black Women in IRs
1) Of particular relevance in my interviews are controlling images of Black women’s beauty and sexuality. Many Black women married to White men worried that the stereotypes of Black women as sexually promiscuous would affect how their White partners’ families viewed them, and in some cases it very clearly had a negative impact on a White family’s willingness to accept interracial relationships. Black women also worried that the greater value attached to White women’s fair skin and straight hair put them at a disadvantage in the marriage market with both Black men and White men. There was often an underlying worry that even though they were partnered their choices to date or marry Black men and White men were much more limited.

2&3) The other two controlling images that shaped the experiences of the Black women I interviewed were the belief that Black women are domineering “bitches” and “gold diggers.” Many Black women in interracial relationships felt pressure to carefully monitor their behavior, so they didn’t come off as “the typical Black bitch who doesn’t know her place.” The idea that Black women who marry White men do it for money was also mentioned as a common concern. This affected both how they dealt with their family members and those of their spouses.

4) Family approval of interracial relationships is most likely lower for Black women than it is for Black men. Black women’s families had more objections to interracial relationships than their Black male counterparts. Many relatives of Black women (especially male relatives) tried to “protect their daughters/sisters/cousins from White men” who they felt would sexually exploit Black women. Given the history of White male sexual violence against Black women this is not surprising. However, family opposition also has the affect of denying Black women’s agency because their judgment is held up to much more scrutiny than Black men in interracial relationships.

5) Black women who entered interracial relationships also worried about being alone, a phenomnon facing many Black women today. Since the gender ratio of African Americans is imabalanced, many Black women saw White men as a “whole new world of men” who they could date and marry. Considering White men was a way for some Black women to keep from being alone.

5 Dilemmas Facing White Women in IRs

1)When it comes to Black/White interracial relationships my research indicates, that White women face the most family opposition of all of the race/gender groups. The tactics used to show opposition in White women’s families are often more extreme. They appear to be the group most likely to be disowned or disinvited when they enter interracial relationships.

2) Many White women indicate that their relatives feel Black men were sexually aggressive, threatening, and irresponsible. When White families opposed White women’s interracial relationships, they often felt that they were protecting White women from Black men and from White women’s own naivety or passivity.

3) Unlike Black women who are stereotyped as “bitchy” and “aggressive,” White women are stereotyped as naïve, passive, and weak. This controlling image of White women affects how White women’s relatives and their Black male partners’ relatives view their relationships. Many White women’s relatives felt the need to intervene because they think White women are too naïve to know what they are getting themselves into and too weak to defend themselves. Their Black partners’ relatives worry that White women will be too weak to defend their partners or their biracial children against racism, and they worry that Black men have chosen these White women because they are looking for a women who will tolerate a subservient position, something many Black families think Black women will not do.

4) White women’s families not only question Black men’s sexuality, but they also question the sexuality of White women who enter interracial relationships. Even though White women overall may be held up as the epitome of beauty and sexual attractiveness, White women who had relationships with Black men were not viewed in this way. The most common notion is that White women who have relationships with Black men are sexually loose or tainted.

5) Some White women’s families worry that an interracial relationship would make them less attractive to White men after they were “left all alone” by Black men. Implicit in this belief is that White women’s interracial relationships won’t last, and when they do end, White women won’t be able to find anyone to date or marry.

I have much more I can add. I guess it will be out in a book someday, but I think this can be a jumping off point…. What do you think are some of the dilemmas women in interracial relationships face?

The thing about blogs is they let people talk about whatever they like. So there are an awful lot of blogs out there about women’s experiences. Sometimes I wonder if this could be used for something more. If the barrier between feminist blogging, which is primarily about other women’s lives, and blogging on ‘women’s topics’ where feminist women (and non-feminist women) write about their lives, could be broken down. What would it look like if feminists who were writing about body image issues and reproduction, linked more to personal stories on weight-loss blogs and mother blogs (and yes it’s scary that those are the two female blogging topics that come to mind) and vice-versa. Because I do think that feminist analysis is stronger the more it links to women’s experience, and I think talking about women’s experience can be something more, it can be consciouness raising.

This is in response to the great ‘false advertising’ debate. I’ve read a lot of posts on this issue. I feel like I understand the issues around the role women’s bodies play in a relationship, particularly in middle-class white America, but I think many of those observations would apply outside that specific context (incidentally I’ve also developed a plan, if I am in a relationship with someone who thinks a change in my appearance is ‘false advertising’ I will simply tell a couple of my female friends about it, and they will take care of him).

But while I know more, I’m still feeling really ambivilant about the debate, because I’m not sure it’s what I’d call feminism. In supposedly feminst blogs and comments women have been attacked for feeling like they owe it to their husbands to keep their weight down. From I Blame the Patriarchy

Regarding said ass: Women of some races naturally have asses like that. Women of some races naturally have hair like that too. But the kid’s white, and both hair and butt look bought to me. Also besides, being as they are both staunch supporters of the patriarchy, I assume she’s read the fine print. As soon as her ass goes south, he’ll have (and probably take) the option to find another, younger butt.

I get it, I really do. I understand the frustration, the desire to get angry at a woman for accepting and perpetuating so much shit. When I read this:

My boyfriend, the man I thought I was going to marry, brok up with me after 4.5 years. Because I gained weight. To be fair, it was a significant gain (about 25 pounds).

I wanted to yell at the woman why the fuck are you being fair to a man who leaves you because you’ve gained 11 kilos? You should be dancing Numfar’s dance of joy that you got out. But I don’t think that that helps build anything, except the idea that I think I’m better than her. And I’m not, I have my own issues, and I don’t write about them on my blog, except with eight layers of feminist analysis. But does that just make me less honest than her?

Despite these ugly personal attacks, there were real benefits from reading so many different perspectives on one issue. One of the things that really disturbed me, and showed how good the patriarchy (still don’t like the term) is at colonising our minds, was that we shouldn’t just want to attain beauty standards to catch a mate, we should want them for ourselves. From a comment on I blame the patriarchy

I’ve met women who have “let themselves go” after marriage out of the idea that they already have their man, so they don’t have to try anymore. To them, the idea of putting any kind of effort into themselves was a tool to get a mate, and once they had the mate, they could stop doing those things. I’m not saying that one has to wear make-up, exercise, whatever to be happy, but it disturbs me greatly to think that I should only care about my appearance to trap a man, and once I’ve got him I can just “let myself go.”

A slightly different version of the same thought on Tertia

It doesn’t matter if you are 10, 15 or 50 pounds heavier than you were when you got married; if you take pride in yourself and dress nicely, do your hair, spray some perfume on, wear pretty earrings etc, you will feel nice and you will look nice. And I am sure that is all that most men want. They want us to like ourselves and to be happy. Because they know, the happier we are within ourselves the sexier we will feel, and that can only mean good things for the long suffering husband. A happy wife makes a happy husband.

Unfortunately, I can’t really have a conversation here about what these women have said, I’d be attacking them, attacking what they said. Informal, unsure conversations, where you learn stuff together - it’s easier to do that in person.

Which is a shame, because the analysis I found most interesting came from blogs that would probably identify more as Mommy blogs than feminist blogs.

Moxie seemed afraid that everyone would hate her when she came to I Blame the Patriarchy, but I thought her analysis was really useful.

I’ve been thinking about this topic all day. The notion that a woman owes it to her husband or her relationship to keep her body thin (or whatever way the culture decides is beautiful–I’m sure there are women in Africa who feel pressure to stay fat) is part of the truth that when a woman gets married her body no longer belongs to her, but instead is the property of and a symbol of the marital unit.

It’s the woman’s responsibility to get and stay pregnant. Even if she gets pregnant easily, she’s the one who takes the entire physical hit of the pregnancy. Heartburn, acne, sciatica, backache, hemorrhoids, varicose veins, PSD, tendonitis, skin tags, stretch marks, insomnia, swelling. And the labor and delivery is a horror, featuring pain and often cutting or tearing, even when it’s relatively easy. Even if a woman loses all the pregnancy weight, her body is never the same. She sacrifices her body for the family unit.

She goes on to explore what happens if a woman can’t conceive and how this changes as the baby gets older. It’s a really good point, and so much more of what so many other writers say makes more sense when it’s put in this context.

I’ve been reading Jody from Raising WEG for a while, I love her analysis and her writing (and freak out at the very thought of triplets).

As Moxie points out far more eloquently than I could, stress and our mental responses to stress affect our eating habits, too. And exercise that comes naturally to single people gets very hard for parents to find. And I’ll also point out that I don’t believe we are our bodies, and that there’s a difference between living well in the body you have, and trying to make your body into something it was, or should be, so that it looks better to other people. It’s been my experience that it’s not any more work to learn to love your body as it becomes.

[....]

Your body isn’t your self. Your relationship with food isn’t your relationship with your body. There are many ways to be attractive, and they don’t remain static over time. And the thinner women in our neighborhood? I’m pretty sure at least two of them are anorexic. Anything is better than an eating disorder.

I’m going to end with my favourite story. The one that makes me think that maybe this sort of conversation is worthwhile. Maybe it will give women strength, and show them that they are not alone. This is Jen Creer from inkstains

The reason I thought this is because my husband clearly thought differently about me when I was thin and then when I had gained weight in my marriage. One year, when we had two small children, he started running and playing tennis and racquetball and lifting weights. He told me finally that he couldn’t sit around and become a fat slob like me. He said, “No man can respect a man with a fat wife. If you don’t lose the weight, I will leave. If you gain more weight, I will leave.”

I will never forget that conversation. We were sitting in the bathroom at two o’clock in the morning. I was sitting on the lid of the toilet, and he was sitting next to the tub. Our sixteen-month son was sitting in the steamy tub, suffering from the croup. Our four-year-old son was asleep in one bedroom, and our three-week old baby was asleep in another.

Yes, that’s right. I was three-weeks postpartum when my husband said those words to me. And the time that he chose to get back into shape? Was when I was pregnant with his third child. I had a total of three C-sections, and I was not even allowed to pick up our middle child, let alone exercise when he sat and said the coldest words I’ve ever heard from someone who was supposed to love me more than anyone.

Ok that’s not happy, but her next sentance was:

That was the night I stopped loving him

There’s more to the story. Awful horrible stuff that makes me furious, but three years later she did leave him.

I do think bringing together different women’s experiences of the same problem can be helpful. I even think this debate is. But without trust, without sisterhood (with all the problems that brings), I’m not sure this is building anything much. I’m worried that it’s just making ‘feminists’ another group of women with special interests and experiences.

Also posted on my blog.

I have a plan to write a long post about the responses to False Advertising a post in which Morphing into Mama says that she believes that to significantly change your appearance after you get married, for instance by cutting your hair or gaining weight, is false advertising.

Before I go any further I do have to quote Twisty:

And, lard-jesus no! MIM, who says she “works” to maintain her figure “for myself and my husband,” goes on to suggest that a person’s weight is indicative, not, as a rational person might imagine, of how much she weighs, but of her degree of “self-respect.” Overweight people, MIM asserts, are probably “depressed.” She asks, “can you imagine still maintaining the same level of physical attraction for your mate when he’s depressed?”

There has been a huge response to MiM’s post, and it’s that collective response that I want to write about. But before I can do that I have to express disbelief at the context in which she reached this particular conclusion:

Recently, in my psychopathology class, I was reminded of this conversation with Husband. My classmates and I were discussing a journal article on bulimia nervosa and speculative reasons were being tossed around as to why the majority of the women sampled were married.

“Maybe married women feel more pressure to be thin for their husbands,” one young, unmarried classmate said.

“Really? Because when I’m in a relationship, I get all comfortable and actually tend to plump up,” said another, very honest young woman to my left.

“Well, first I don’t think it’s fair to say that being married caused these women to be bulimic ““ especially since being in a relationship can make one conscious about one’s weight just as being single can. When you’re single, you want to be in good shape not just for yourself, but so that you can feel confident about how you look and feel like you can attract a partner. When you’re married ““ and especially after having kids ““ you’re conscious about your weight, which may motivate you to watch what you eat and exercise, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll develop an eating disorder. I am conscious of my weight, so I don’t snack, and I exercise. Personally, I think it would be unfair to Husband if I gained a bunch of weight and did nothing about it.”

She was having a conversation about why eating disorders were more commmon among married women, she thinks about her body, food and exercise, within her relationship, and her conclusion is that it wouldn’t be fair to her husband to gain weight.

I’m reminded of last year’s anti-feminist women’s rights co-ordinator at the local university. She wasn’t into ‘No Diet Day’ so she renamed it ‘Love your body day’. How do you love your body? By eating fruit and doing yoga.

I don’t want to blame her for thinking like this, there’s a lot of resources poured into to making women feel like this. It just makes me terribly, terribly, sad and angry.

Also posted at my blog

Virtually all peer-reviewed academic research on same-sex parenting has come to one conclusion: there’s no evidence that being raised by same-sex parents harms children in any way. This result, which has been replicated in one form or another at least fifty times, drives sexists and homophobes up a wall. If for children, being loved and taken care of by two parents is what matters, then the cherished conservative belief that children “need” parents of both sexes for healthy development is unsupportable. Furthermore, the research undercuts the myth that children need protection from queers (a major plank of the anti-same sex marriage platform).

No Basis by Robert Lerner and Althea Nagai is frequently cited by anti-gay activists to argue against this body of research (and, by a logically dubious implication, same-sex marriage). Christianity Today’s take on No Basis is pretty typical:

From No Basis itself:

Lerner and Nagai claim that studies of same-sex parenting don’t meet minimum standards of scientific respectability. But are the standards they put forward ones they genuinely believe in, or are they standards that Lerner and Nagai opportunistically take on for the specific purpose of rejecting same-sex parenting studies? (It is perhaps worth noting that No Basis was commissioned by The Marriage Law Project, an organization formed to oppose same-sex marriage). One way of answering this question is to see if Lerner and Nagai have held their own research to the rigorous standards they insist are mandatory in No Basis.

Before No Basis, Lerner was probably best known for a 1996 study, published by a right-wing think tank in the wake of the O.J. verdict, which claimed to show that American juries typically treat black defendants more gently than white defendants (the disadvantage of whites compared to blacks is a frequent theme in Lerner’s research). Although the study was never published in a peer-reviewed journal, Lerner’s spectacular findings - in particular, his claim that juries convict white rape defendants twice as often as black rape defendants - created a stir in the mainstream press. From U.S. News and World Report (Oct 14 1996):

The study was widely derided by academics (among other things, it ignored the disparity in sentencing, an area in which the judicial process is clearly easier on whites compared to blacks). For our purposes, what’s interesting is that this study flunks the standards advocated in No Basis. As the ACLU comments,

Lerner and his associates thought a sample size of five was solid enough to trumpet to the national press; but samples many times larger are still too small, according to Lerner, when he needs an excuse to dismiss gay parenting studies.

What about Lerner and Nagai’s other standards? In No Basis, a major objection to many studies of same-sex parenting is the use of non-probability samples, and in particular “snowball” sampling, in which participants recruit other participants. Here’s a passage of recommendations from No Basis:

That’s some very strong language. So, surely, this is a standard that Lerner and Nagai genuinely believe in - not just an opportunistic standard they’ve taken on to bash gay parenting studies? To answer that question, I’ll quote from a review of Lerner and Nagai’s book American Elites (the review was published in the prestigious American Journal of Sociology, September 1997):

(Emphasis added). Again, it’s clear that Lerner and Nagai have altered their conceptions of what is and isn’t acceptable methodology.

These are by no means unique examples - see, for instance, this Lerner and Nagai study of affirmative action. Although Lerner and Nagai argue in No Basis that conclusions can never be drawn without extremely rigorous statistical controls or tests of significance, they didn’t bother using any such statistical tests here. Instead, Lerner and Nagai present only percentages, an approach they single out for harsh criticism in No Basis. Note as well that their study seems to have included only 37 black students - a sample size they’d deride as far too small in No Basis.

You may be now saying to yourself, “so Lerner and Nagai use the same bad methods that the gay parenting studies do. They’re still bad methods, right?”

To that I’ll say: Have patience, folks. I’ll get there.

Today, I’ve shown that Lerner and Nagai are not serious about the standards they used to reject gay-parenting studies in No Basis, as demonstrated by the fact that they’ve never taken these standards seriously in their own work. Tomorrow, I’ll show that - setting aside Lerner and Nagai’s double-standards - the standards they use to dismiss gay parenting studies are illogical, misapplied, and show a severe misunderstanding of social science norms and standards.

In the Boston Globe, “conservative/libertarian feminist” Cathy Young criticizes the empirical support for a recent PBS special about child abuse:

I haven’t seen the PBS special, nor all the evidence Cathy reviews, so I can’t comment on Cathy’s larger points. But I can safely say that Cathy displays a double-standard in the quoted paragraph. It’s true that Dividing the Child found that “far fewer fathers than mothers get the custodial arrangements they want,” but by putting it that way, Cathy fails to distinguish between custody disputes which reached an out-of-court settlement - what you might call “custody by mutual agreement” - and custody disputes in which the Court made the decision. (Also, scroll down to the update - Cathy’s description of the Massachusetts Study is dubious as well).

Here’s a quote from Dividing the Child (it’s a bit long - but if you don’t want to read the whole thing, make sure you at least read the first and final paragraphs):

So when the Massachusetts Supreme Court study fails to distinguish between “custody by mutual agreement” and “custody disputes,” (or did it? see the update below) Cathy says that’s bad and wrong. But when Cathy herself cites a study to prove overwhelming male disadvantage, but lumps in “custody by mutual agreement” with cases decided by Judges - even though the Judges’ decisions were 50/50 between mothers and fathers - is that any better?

[UPDATE (posted 5:30pm Tuesday): It appears I may have misunderstood the Maccoby and Mnookin quote I posted - how embarrassing! When they say "fathers who conceded custody at lower levels of the conflict pyramid," they are referring to fathers who choose not to appeal after losing custody in a lower court. Counting all cases, mothers win twice as often as fathers; counting only those cases in which neither party settled for the lower court decision, fathers had about a 50/50 chance of winning.. Unfortunately, I can't find my darned copy of the book, so I can't settle this for sure today.

So Cathy's citation of the Maccoby and Mnookin study may not be as bad as I thought. Nonetheless, the caveat that fathers who don't give up early in the process get what they want 50% of the time is still a rather important thing for Cathy to have left out. And the following paragraph that I wrote is still good:]

Maccoby and Mnookin explicitly say that their study doesn’t prove or disprove bias against fathers (or against mothers); if Cathy is going to quote their work to suggest Court bias against fathers, she should at least let her readers know that the researchers had a more nuanced view of their results.

Cathy also wrote:

Cathy claims it’s not fair to call her an “anti-feminist,” and I don’t. But I find it odd that a self-identified feminist has so much contempt for feminism that if any feminist activists (many of whom have spent years or decades involved with abuse issues) sign a letter, that is in Cathy’s analysis ipso facto reason to dismiss the entire letter. Maybe next time Cathy should take a moment to examine her own idealogical biases.

(Curtsy: Family Scholars Blog.)

UPDATE: Cathy’s description of the Massachusetts Study’s methods appears to be misleading. Here’s what the Massachusetts Supreme Court’s Gender Bias Study reported (source).

And then, from page 831 (this quote is the “long version” of the above summary quote):

The Massachusetts Study clearly distinguished between cases where there was “agreement of the parties” and cases in which “fathers… actively seek custody.” Cathy’s claim that “this study does not distinguish custody disputes from cases in which the father got custody by mutual agreement” is exactly the opposite of the truth.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I haven’t watched the documentary or researched every reference in Cathy’s column; I’ve basically just looked at one paragraph. However, in that single paragraph, there are important errors and omissions. My guess is that she trusted second-hand sources that she shouldn’t have, but whatever; the real point is, given the errors we know Cathy has made, none of this column’s claims should be trusted without independent verification.

UPDATE 2: Liznotes has some more comments.

I frequently read and hear anecdotes about non-custodial parents (usually fathers) being ordered to pay outrageously high child support - amounts that are impossible for anyone with an ordinary income to afford. No doubt some of these anecdotes are exaggerated, but I’m convinced that some are not. Unaffordable child support payments don’t benefit anyone - not even the children - and should not be imposed. Furthermore, some measures to help non-custodial parents pay child support - such as a tax deduction of some sort - would be reasonable.

However, some men’s rights activists (MRAs) use rhetoric which suggests that child support payments are often or typically outrageously high, or that child support has made single motherhood a profitable situation for women. Neither claim is true.

According to a recent U.S. Census Bureau report (pdf link), the median child support payment in the U.S. is $280 a month. The average child support payment is a little higher - $350 a month. That’s a noticeable amount - similar in scope to payments on a new car - but it’s hardly the crushing, slavery-like burden some MRAs seem to describe child support as.

Although the Census Bureau report doesn’t provide detailed income breakdowns, what information it has indicates that child support amounts are sensitive to income. For instance, among fathers who are below the poverty line, the median child support payment is $125 a month, compared to a median of $300 a month for those above the poverty line.

So despite the terrible anecdotes that we hear (and if you think about it, it’s those who are mistreated by the system who are going to talk about their experiences the most often), the evidence shows that typical child support payments are not ridiculously high. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be concerned about those outliers who are being ordered to pay unaffordable amounts of child support; however, I think the weight of the evidence suggests that while the system may need some tweaking, on the whole it’s not broken.

* * *

So the typical child support payment is $280 a month - put another way, half of custodial parents who receive child support get $280 a month or less. How does that compare to the costs of raising a child?

Again, the federal government compiles some good statistics on this (pdf link). For a single parent with an income of about $17,500, raising a single child for 17 years will cost about $10,125 a year, or $840 a month.

Of course, a single parent who earns $17,500 a year is pretty poor. What about single parents who aren’t poor? For better-off single parents - those earning an average of $65,000 a year - raising a single child for 17 years will cost almost $21,600 a year, or a little over $1,800 a month.

All told, the typical child support payment in the USA covers much less than half the expense of raising a child. Custodial parents - usually mothers - are taking on not only the majority of the work involved in childrearing, and the majority of the opportunity costs - they’re taking on the majority of the cash expenses, as well.

Therefore, I’d support a two-tiered reform to child support. Child support payments should be made more sensitive to individual situations, so that noncustodial parents are not saddled with irrational and impossible-to-pay child support orders, as has happened in some outlier cases. At the same time, typical child support payments are simply too low, compared to the cost of raising a child; therefore, most non-custodial parents should have their child support obligations increased. (This will also have the side benefit of reducing unwed motherhood.)

NOTE FOR COMMENTS: Please don’t post about how you have an income of $500 a month and the judge ordered you to pay $2000 a month in child support to your ungrateful lazy ex-spouse who spends all the child support money on dresses she can wear to the track and she earns more than you do anyway and the judge won’t even reply to your motions. Unless I know both you and your ex-spouse, and can verify for myself that she’d tell me the same version of events that you’re telling me, I don’t think anecdotal evidence of that sort is more useful than the federal data.

Over on the Family Scholars Blog, quoting from his own article in the Weekly Standard, Brad Wilcox writes:

But those studies don’t control for the most important factor of all, for the argument Brad is making: whether or not a child is donor-conceived.

Although it’s certainly true that being raised by a single parent (not just single mothers) has been shown by legitimate research to worsen the odds for children, the research also shows that some children raised by single parents turn out fine. The question is, are studies about the experiences of children of single parents in general really representative of donor-conceived children of single mothers in particular? Or are those children perhaps especially likely to wind up in the “doing fine” population?

It certainly seems possible that donor-conceived children may do better than many children of single parents. Although they have only one parent, that parent - because her pregnancy had to be carefully planned - is likely to be older than the average single mother, with more resources and a better support network. And, perhaps, an on-average higher enthusiasm for being a parent.

Or perhaps not. There’s no way of knowing for sure. However, Brad’s article should have acknowledged this limitation in the data he cites.

Looking around, I found only one study focused on donor-conceived children of single mothers. Contrary to Brad’s expectations, that study found that “this route to parenthood does not necessarily seem to have an adverse effect on mothers’ parenting ability or the psychological adjustment of the child.” Of course, since that study is a long-term study that has just barely begun (the kids were only two years old at the time the most recent report was written), it’s hardly certain, either. (UPDATE: In comments, Dianne pointed out another study with similar findings, this time looking at seven year olds).

I also had a problem with Brad’s point about “listening directly to the voices of donor-conceived children.” The evidence Brad quotes appears anecdotal, and so cannot tell us how the typical donor-conceived child feels (I’ve read anecdotal accounts of donor-conceived children who said they had no problem with it). We’d need surveys of donor-conceived children before concluding that the quotes Brad provides are or are not representative.

Reproductive freedom is not a minor part of life. Before even considering a ban on donor conception, we should have solid evidence of harm. So far, that evidence is lacking.

Wanna know why I don’t post more? A big reason is that I like reading too much. For instance, I was thinking of writing something about Linda Hirshman’s article “Homeward Bound.” But first I thought I’d see what other bloggers were saying about it… and that turned out to take up all my available blogging time.

I may or may not find time to write a post about Hirshman’s article - although the number one thing I have to say about it, I’ve already said, which is that much of her premise simply ain’t true. (Note, however, that Hirshman herself, in comments, argues that my criticism is unjust.) Meanwhile, here’s what I’ve been reading::

[I saw this posted by Kathy Geier on a mailing list, in response to a New York Times article entitled "Forget the Career. My Parents Need Me at Home." As Echidne points out, this seems to be the latest in an ongoing series of Times articles warning women away from high-powered careers. Kathy kindly gave me permission to reprint her post on "Alas." --Amp]