Demonizing Mothers In Greatest Need

"Just remember, you don't come first anymore."

These were words said to me by a friend over the phone after I told him I was pregnant with my first child. This took me way off guard as this was a liberal friend who I knew through the Humanist movement. An awkward silence followed, after which I struggled to articulate a response. I finally said something like, "I think we both come first. After all, I can't take good care of a kid if I don't take good care of myself."

Why would such a reminder be necessary or appropriate? I was an adult woman with a career, great marriage, financial security,  good health, and family support. With all that going for me, the only way I'd be an awful parent is if I'm an awful human being.

I doubt my friend thinks I'm an awful human being. But I also doubt he'd have made that comment to my husband or any other father.

There is a pervasive message in our culture that when women become pregnant and then mothers, we're taking on some monumental endeavor, opposed to one that is, while significant, commonplace. It is as if, such as in this Shel Silverstein drawing, we're escorted to a pedestal, after which the only options are to climb atop to be revered as goddess-like matrons, or fall short of expectations and be despised.

For over a decade, legislation such as the Unborn Victims of Violence Act has turned on women before their children are even born, criminalizing the abuse pregnant women inflict on themselves due to mental illness, addiction, and/or desperate circumstances, because that damage extends to a fetus.

The most obscene example of prosecution and imprisonment of a woman because of severe health issues suffered while pregnant is the case of Bei Bei Shuai. Shuai attempted suicide with rat poison after her unborn child's father left her. Friends found and saved her, but after treatment, an emergency c-section and the subsequent death of her baby, she was charged with murder and imprisoned. At one point the prosecution offered a deal if Shuai would plead guilty to feticide, but she refused. In the end, she plead guilty to criminal recklessness. But not before she'd already spent over a year behind bars.

There are other cases, such as that of Melissa Ann Rowland, a mentally ill addict with a record of child abuse, who was charged with murder for not having a c-section that would have saved her fetus. Rennie Gibbs who was charged with murder for her use of cocaine, resulting in the stillbirth of her child. Neither of these charges resulted in convictions, but the persistent trend is disturbing.

Alabama has prosecuted 60 addicts who used while pregnant. One well-publicized case was Amanda Kimbrough, charged with chemical endangerment for the use of meth during her pregnancy and leading to the premature birth and immediate death of her child.

Most recently, Tennessee passed SB 1391, a bill that allows women to be charged with assault if their children are harmed by their drug use. It passed despite warnings from pretty much the entire medical establishment that the law would discourage addicts from seeking treatment while pregnant.

Imani Gandy of RH Reality Check wrote:

Multiple medical associations and counseling services, as well as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Tennessee Association of Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Other Addiction Services, opposed SB1391 as the dangerous threat it is.  

These doctors stressed that any such law would continue a frightening trend of women who fail to seek out prenatal care – 23% of pregnant women in Tennessee receive none at all, and the trend is more common among women of color. A 2009 review by the National Institutes of Health found that 30% of women in a study failed to get prenatal care because of substance abuse problems.

The only aspect of SB 1391 that saves it from being a totally heinous attack on women who suffer from addiction is an amendment which gives women the option of abandoning charges if they enter an approved treatment program. Of course by that point, the damage is already done. 

There are two issues with these laws that criminalize the behavior of pregnant women. The first is an issue of choice. The biological reality is that a fetus, while a discreet human organism, is completely dependent on the woman as incubator for his or her survival. There is no perfect comparison to this situation in the real world. However it says something that we do not force people to be organ donors, even in death, and even though doing so would certainly save lives.

A woman who neglects or abuses her children can have those children removed and placed in the care of other adults. This is not an option if the "child" is a fetus. If fetuses are given the same legal rights as children, then every pregnant woman no longer has the same rights that everyone else has over our bodies. 

In his stand up, George Carlin said:

If a fetus is a human being, how come the census doesn't count them? If a fetus is a human being then how come when there's a miscarriage they don't have a funeral? If a fetus is a human being then how come people say "We have two children and one on the way." instead of saying "We have three children."

Carlin makes the point that culturally and legally, we acknowledge the difference between a fetus and a baby that can live independent of its mother's body. Laws such as SB 1391 are little more than anti-abortionist attempts to establish a legal precedent out of line with these societal norms.

The second issue with these laws is the harmful outcomes.

As much as people might despise a woman who smokes crack cocaine while pregnant, much mental illness and addiction is exacerbated if not caused by the conditions of poverty, and are therefore preventable. Putting the mentally ill and addicts in prison only makes a bad situation worse.

We now have evidence that growing up in the conditions of poverty are more harmful to a child than being a "crack baby."

Now, after nearly a quarter century, the federally funded study was ending, and the question the researchers had been asking was answered.

Did cocaine harm the long-term development of children like Jaimee, who were exposed to the drug in their mother's womb?

The researchers had expected the answer would be a resounding yes. But it wasn't. Another factor would prove far more critical.

That other factor: poverty.

Of course if poverty can have a worse impact on a child than exposure to crack while in the womb, harsh conditions of poverty can also impact the health and choices made by pregnant women. Poverty is associated with increased drug abuse and more prevalent mental illness. People like to point to rich addicts such as Phillip Seymour Hoffman and say, "See, anyone can be an addict." The implication being that it is simply a matter of personal will. But these arguments fall apart when we look at the statistics and the horrible impact poverty has, particularly on children and the women who bare and raise them.

More than one in five children are growing up in poverty, and 75% of households under the poverty line are headed by mothers. What business do we as a society have imprisoning women who suffer from serious health problems when we don't have a universal, comprehensive health care system, we're cutting supplemental food programs, Head Start, and public schools in poor communities are failing. If we want better outcomes for children, we need to give more support to the adults who bare and raise them.

They say that behind every great man is a great woman. This Mother's Day let's remember that behind every exceptional mother, there's both a history and present community of support.

An Owl with Quaker Values

Last year, while browsing in a comic shop, I came upon a delightful collection titled Owly: Tiny Tales by Andy Runton. The cover featured a cartoon owl with enormous eyes in an armchair, reading a book for a gathering of forest critters, all wearing gleeful expressions on their faces.

Curious, I flipped through a few pages, and found it to be both child-friendly in content, but more interestingly, wordless. The characters communicated through a series of symbols, exclamation points and question marks, as well as lightbulbs to express having an idea and horseshoes to say "Good luck!" As a teaching artist who values visual literacy and parent of two pre-readers, I was pleased with my discovery. I purchased it while imagining my daughters learning to read symbols and also having a book they could "read" all on their own.

Later, I realized it had even greater value.

Owly: Tiny Tales (you can read an excerpt on Andy Runton's website) is a collection of short stories told in classic comic format. The first story was "Splashin' Around." On a blazing hot, summer day, Owly and his best friend Wormy go to water a drooping flower and find that their watering can has a hole in it. They take it to the Nursery where Raccoon patches it up, but not before they notice a flock of birds joyfully playing in a puddle that has formed under the can. Racoon tells the pair about a contest to build the best bird bath. Owly and Wormy decide to enter. They bounce their ideas back and forth and come up with a bird bath that is a large bowl of water attached to a potted tree, because birds love both water and trees. Their birdbath isn't the most aesthetically pleasing design, and they become worried when they see a much larger, fancier, shinier birdbath in the competition. Nevertheless, they wish their competitors good luck. Even though the judges all express approval with the reasoning behind Owly and Wormy's tree birdbath, the first prize is still awarded to the fancier entry. Owly and Wormy eyes fill with tears and they mope all evening. But the next morning, Raccoon shows up at their door with news of a happy surprise. They rush back to the nursery to joyfully discover that the birds prefer their birdbath.

I'm not ashamed to admit that my own eyes teared up a bit when I read this story. Most children's stories in books, shows, and movies fail to achieve this level of just sheer goodness, even when, and maybe especially when they are trying to teach morals, ethics, and values to kids.

In NutureShock, chapter 9: "Plays Well With Others", journalists Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman report on studies into children's entertainment. Dr. Jamie Ostrov and Dr. Douglas Gentile ran repeated studies, trying to find out if watching violent shows such as Power Rangers made children more anti-social, and conversely, if watching "educational" shows such as Clifford and Arthur would make children more pro-social. The results were surprising:

More exposure to violent media did increase the rate of physical aggression shown at school -- however, it did so only modestly. In fact, watching educational television also increased the rate of physical aggression, almost as much as watching violent TV. And just like in the Minnesota study, educational television had a dramatic effect on relational aggression. The more the kids watched, the crueler they'd be to their classmates. This correlation was 2.5 times higher than the correlation between violent media and physical aggression.
    Essentially, Ostrov had just found that Arthur is more dangerous for children than Power Rangers. 

Ostrov was quoted saying:

"Preschoolers have a difficult time being able to connect information at the end of the show to what happened earlier. It is likely that young children do not attend to the overall 'lesson' in the manner an older child or adult can, but instead learn from each of the behaviors shown." 

In other words, when preschoolers watch fictional bullies, they learn about the social advantages that motivate bullying behavior.

This is why Owly is so refreshing. "Splashin' Around" was a narrative that didn't resort to anyone being cruel or selfish in order to create conflict. Every person honored the dignity of every other person. Some experienced painful emotions, but were able to quietly sit with those feelings without lashing out at others. Resolution was found not in the protagonists getting the showy accolades they sought, but in them receiving a more profound appreciation for their efforts.

One of the first things that struck me about Owly is that his best friend is a worm. One of nature's most vicious and stealthy avian predators paired with a creepy crawly synonymous with bird food! I instantly thought, here is a contemporary version of the Peaceable Kingdom.

The Peaceable Kingdom is a series of 61 paintings by Edward Hicks, inspired by the Biblical passage Isaiah 11: 6-8:

 The wolf will live with the lamb,
    the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling[a] together;
    and a little child will lead them.
 The cow will feed with the bear,
    their young will lie down together,
    and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
 The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
    and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.

(From the New International Version) 

One of Edward Hick's Peaceable Kingdom paintings.

Of course taken literally by anyone deeply acquainted with biological science, the passage seems absurd. But I (and most Christian theologians) would argue that taking the passage literally is absurd. Certainly Hicks, a Quaker, didn't take it literally. This passage is far more interesting and indeed inspiring when interpreted symbolically. Quakers such as Hicks believe the "inner light", or that which is of God, is part of every human being. Learning to think and live the right way allows people to tap into the divine, and thus salvation.

To me, a secular humanist, this passage and Hick's fanciful imagery represents the human animal striving to create conditions that bring out that which is most noble about our species.

I taught art for two years at a PreK-8th grade Friends (Quaker) school, and reading Owly stories, I constantly find parallels between his fictional world and the ideals expressed in the Quaker Testimonies.

Quakers worship in silence, only speaking if moved by the "inner light." Referring to the testimony of Silent Reflection as a "habit of mind", the American Friends Service Committee writes:

...silence is often used to settle into a meeting, to invite reflection, or to allow time for the synthesis of ideas. Silence refreshes the spirit and makes way for deep thinking about both ethical and intellectual quandaries.

There is a lot of silence in Owly stories, not only because of the absence of true dialogue. Almost every tale begins with a framed panoramic view of the larger setting. Owly and his friends are often seen eating in silence, awake in bed thinking, quietly assessing their surroundings, setting up, building, or just sitting quietly. All of these moments compel a deeper appreciation for simply being alive and self aware.

The testimony of Simplicity is often expressed. The winning bird bath was rather ostentatious, but in the end the birds preferred Owly and Wormy's more simple design. In the story "Helping Hands", the rabbit drops and breaks a fancy potted plant she has purchased as a gift for her grandfather. Owly and Wormy help her create a new pot with handmade decorations. The rabbit worries that her grandfather will be disappointed by her handmade gift, but after she sheepishly explains what happened, he declares the handmade pot to be better than a whole bunch of fancy store bought ones.

Many associate Quakers with the testimony of Peace, due to their long history of organized war protest and conscientious objection to military service. Violence, both physical and verbal, is so prevalent in popular children's literature and entertainment that it is taken for granted. But in Quaker schools and homes, it is common to ban even toy weapons. At the school where I taught, children were prohibited from excluding others from games. Out of the 12 stories in Tiny Tales, none involve physical violence, and only 2 include the violence of harsh words or aggressive behavior. In both of those, the conflict was resolved through changes in circumstance, kindness, or cooperation, opposed to the "good guys" responding with their own threats.

Another testimony is Stewardship, or reference for nature and conservation of natural resources. The characters in Owly are constantly outdoors, planting and caring for plants and feeding wildlife. Racoon's nursery is is an essential part of many stories. An appreciate for nature has been part of Owly's world from the beginning. In the back of Tiny Tales, Runton writes:

When I was trying to come up with a comic book idea, I tried dragons, aliens, ninjas... but nothing worked. Then one day, I looked closer at my little owl. And I drew this... It kinda summed up what I felt. I wanted to draw comics about this little owl. But I was afraid to be myself. 

Note how Owly doesn't pick the flower. He simply enjoys it, and then draws a picture so as to translate the experience through creative expression and then have a piece of that experience with him in his home.

The best thing about Quaker testimonies is that although they are proscribed by a religious sect, they are ultimately secular and universal to the human experience. It is no surprise for me to discover, in my work at a Quaker school, that many modern-day Quakers, especially on the East Coast, are also atheists and agnostics.

I recently purchased a copy of Owly & Wormy: Friends All Aflutter. This book is a large, hardback, full color 40 page picture book; in other words, an object of value to be cherished. My daughter was thrilled.

The story was in line with the values of the previous volume. In it, Owly and Wormy attempt to attract butterflies with flowers, To their dismay, a couple of caterpillars begin munching away at the plants. Despite their initial upset, Owly and Wormy befriend these invaders and come to prefer their company to the hypothetical butterflies. Soon they are striving to keep the caterpillars comfortable enough to return when they disappear (unbeknownst to Owly and Wormy, the caterpillars never left; they are merely in their chrysalises). Owly's and Wormy's putting kindness and friendship over their desire for superficial beauty is rewarded when their friends emerge, transformed.

Truly these are the values to teach the upcoming generation; the values and actions necessary to live the best life possible, and also build a better world.

May we all learn from the wisdom of owls.

Addendum: On a related note, another stunningly illustrated picture book with owls and which supports the values of nonviolence, quiet contemplation, and appreciation for simplicity and nature is The Happy Owls by Celestino Piatti.

Is Food In America Cheap?

Perhaps you have read, as I have on several occasions, that in the USA, "food is cheap". At least compared with both our nation's past and to other nations when we look at what percentage of Americans' household expenditures pay for food.

According to the latest numbers from the USDA, Americans spend about 10% of our disposable income on food, and this is the lowest in the world. If you do your own Google image search for "percent of disposable income spent on food by country" you can find lots of similar charts such as this one from the Economist and articles with data from the last few years repeating similar data.

When I do the math based on Americans spending 10% of disposable income on groceries, I find that an individual with an annual gross income of $30K (twice minimum wage) is spending about $40/week on food - which seems barely manageable, even for just one person.

Also according to the US Department of Agriculture, an American family of 4 must spend between $147 and $289 per week on food to meet basic dietary requirements for good health. That seems about right since I have a family of 4 and we spend about $150 per week on food. I've tried to get it below that, but I can't without resorting to buying junk food instead of healthy food.

With a weekly grocery bill of at least $147 a family of 4 that spends that as 10% of their disposable income on food must have a gross income of more than $90,000 - that's a hell of a lot higher than the median gross income of just below $70K for an American family of 4.

Additionally, median incomes only can tell us so much when income disparity in America is so pronounced. 15% of Americans live in poverty (that same percentage, according to the USDA, received food assistance through SNAP in 2013.) Many more live in the gap between being eligible for government food assistance and actually earning enough to be spending merely 10% of disposable income on adequate nutrition.

The reality is, many American families are being forced to choose between adequate nutrition and junk food, or worse yet, between food and other expenses, such as heat. Or student loans, as millions of borrowers are now in deferment for financial hardship or default.

So regarding this claim that American food is cheap, what gives? Because it seems to me that in reality, either food is too expensive, or... ooooooooh. Wages for most Americans are just too low.

Fruit! Eat As Much As You Can (Afford)

For many families, easier said than done.

One of the most basic things I do for my kids as a parent is provide them with fresh fruit. As much as they want, every day.

We all know that fruit is great for health. The message has been drilled into our minds by posters in doctor offices and schools, ads in magazine and on television. The links between eating more fruit and avoiding a whole host of health problems is well established. Fruit is high in fiber, provides many nutrients, and is low in fat and calories. Filling up on fruit means being less likely to fill up on junk. The FDA says it. The American Cancer Society says it. The American Pediatric Association says it.

Simple: eat more fruit. But is it?

I decided to write this post because I'm starting to notice the financial consequences of encouraging my kids to eat as much fruit as they desire. I only have two children, and they are only 2 and 4 years old. And yet I find myself spending nearly a third of our grocery budget on just fruit. I try buying the fruit on sale, but it spoils more quickly and often tastes past its prime. Luckily, my family can afford to make cuts in other areas of our budget to make room for all that fruit.

My eldest is enrolled in a state subsidized preschool program which offers free breakfast, lunch, and snack. After seeing the menu, and because we can afford to, I turned down the free food. The main reason? Fruit. Regulations require a certain number of servings of fruit. But they also allow the fruit to come in the form of fruit juice from concentrate, sweetened applesauce, and sweetened fruit cups. Since the price of fresh fruit is so much higher than for these processed, sugar-added alternatives, guess what gets served for more than half of the requirements? I wanted to do better for my kids.

But shouldn't we as a society want to do better for all kids?

The FDA recommends 1.5 daily servings of fruit for kids, and 2 for adults. Half a cup is generally one serving. One serving is one small apple or banana, an eighth of a cantaloupe, or a couple handfuls of grapes. It's not a lot of calories, maybe 30-100 per serving, depending on the fruit. Considering that kids need anywhere from 100-1800 calories per day, fruit should account for about 20% of our caloric intake. The average price of one serving of fresh fruit costs 28 cents. To achieve the minimum number of servings a day for everyone, a family of 4 would spend about $14 a week on fruit (That's assuming that everyone actually eats their share and nothing goes bad. Those of us with young kids know why that's funny.) According to the US Department of Agriculture, families of 4 are spending between $147 and $289 per week on groceries. If those families spend $14/week on fruit, then fruit accounts for about 10% of their bill. So that works out, if a family of 4 can afford at least $147 per week (over $7,000 per year.)

For a family of 4 straddling the poverty line, $7,000 per year is about a third of their gross income. Which explains why so many Americans are on SNAP benefits (food stamps) and why school breakfast and lunch assistance programs are so common.

Looking at the numbers and the failure of government-subsidized programs to provide 5 servings of fresh fruit to school children, I consider the 1 in 5 American children living in poverty, and I wonder how often those 21% of American children even see a fresh piece of fruit.

A poster at my daughter's preschool.

*Take a step back*

This is a small issue compared to many others impacting poor children. Beyond just fruit, millions of American children are food insecure.  Insufficient early childhood care and education take a huge toll. So does violence, as 60% of kids are exposed to violence or crime in their homes, schools, or communities.

This blog post isn't actually about advocating for the inclusion of more fresh fruit in government food assistance programs. I wish America were at the point where that sort of advocacy could be a reasonable priority.

This post is really about putting things in perspective. Middle and upper class American parents like me are worried about making sure our kids are offered a wide range of fresh fruit on their plates, daily, while children who might live just miles or even blocks from us are skipping whole meals.

And while the majority of households receiving government food assistance include children, conservative media demonizes them as freeloaders, and politicians are yet again cutting already insufficient SNAP funds.

As a society, can't we do better than this? Or will we who are lucky remain content and complacent, so long as we can serve up a bowl of fresh blueberries for breakfast to our own kids?

Chewbacca Goes to the Salon

Nothing too fancy, just a little off the top, please.

The other day one of Lysi's best friends came over to play. He's been coming over regularly since he was 18 months old (he's now 5), so knowing his way around, he pulled out a familiar drawer, and upon seeing a bunch of dolls, asked, "Hey, where are the blocks?"

Oh, yeah, sorry, the giant Mega Bloks, Tinkertoys, letter blocks, and generic wood building blocks got replaced with dolls because our two girls (ages 2 and 4) didn't play with them anymore.

"That's okay." He said, walking to a large storage cabinet in another part of the room, "I'll just play with Legos."

Yes, while all the other building toys have been tossed aside for stuffed animals and dollies, Lego has remained as the only building toy our girls still enjoy. But that's OK, because they really enjoy it.

I've already gone on here and here in praise of Lego's new sets which target girls, because at least for my girls, it is working. Here's what I mean:

Pet salon is busy. Not sure if Ariel is a customer or staff.

First of all, as a typically girlie girl, Lysi has something she can still do with her rough-and-tumble boy friend, and which they are both passionate about. When they were both two and three years old, almost any toy was fine for playing together. But now she's asking to play puppy and house, paint and dance ballet, while he wants to fight ninjas and make things explode. With Lego they can combine their interests and play together without either feeling as if they are totally giving in to the other.

In fact, this boy friend was so intrigued by the details in the Friends pets that he asked his parents for several for Christmas. The biggest bonus for me is perhaps getting to see things like Chewbacca going to the pet salon.

What 2 four-year-old girls made in 20 minutes.

Second, just as Jesus Diaz claims in his post Hey, Anti-Lego Feminists, "Lego for Girls" Actually Kicks Ass, Friends and Disney Princess sets can and will be broken up and made into new stuff by any typical kid, which is exactly the point and why Lego toys are so great for encouraging creativity, imagination, and early building of STEM skills. I thought about Diaz's post today when Lysi and another four-year-old girl built this awesomeness (according to them it is a fishing dock combined with a launching pad for a rocket ship - how sweet is that?)


Third, the Lego sets marketing to girls are not dumbed down in terms of their complexity or how much bang you get for your buck. In Why Lego Friends is not one of the worst toys of 2012 (and why Mega Bloks Barbie is), David Pickett reports on his comparison of construction complexity of various lines of Lego sets and Lego competitors. He writes:

If we assume that constructions sets with similar price points will result in completed models of equivalent size, then we can use the piece/dollar ratio of construction sets as a rough indication of the complexity** of one building kit relative to another. The higher the piece/dollar ratio, the more building is involved in a given set or group of sets. This is a way of quantifying the differences that are obvious to the naked eye in the above comparison of the Friends and Babrie sets. I charted these values for sets from nine different themes and found the average pc/$ ratio for each line of products. The product lines I used were LEGO Friends, Mega Bloks Barbie, LEGO City, Mega Bloks World of Warcraft, LEGO Ninjago, LEGO Paradisa, LEGO Lord of the Rings & The Hobbit, Mega Bloks Skylanders and Mega Bloks Halo. 

Much to my surprise, Friends came in second (Halo was highest) with a ratio of 9.8. 

Diaz argues that the heavily themed sets are a "back door" to hook kids on Lego and eventually interest them in other sets that are even more challenging and spark even more creativity:

Once the radioactive Lego brick bites them, they become hooked. The next time they will want one Lego set just because it seems cool or more complicated. The space shuttle. A Lego creator building. A Technic car. Both girls and boys would pick those and build whatever they want with them.

Two preschoolers concentrating for an hour and politely
taking turns following an instruction manual - just because
they wanted to build a scorpion. Lego must be magic.

When I first read that, I wanted to believe it, but I didn't know if it would be true for my kid. Now I'm watching it unfold just as Diaz described. As Lysi flips through her Lego magazine, she gasps and exclaims, "Whoa, cool! I want that!" at sets of robots, tow trucks, and airplanes. She's become such an impressive builder already, that she and her before-mentioned boy friend together built the scorpion from Lego's more challenging Creator line. It is a set geared for kids ages 7-12, and she and her friend intensely built it over an hour and 15 minutes, politely taking turns following the steps in the instruction manual.

As a parent, I must just say: Dude, that is so much cooler than watching her dress and undress fashion dolls for an hour. 

Harming Young Mothers with Stereotypes

Hypothetically, imagine a single woman who becomes unexpectedly pregnant. 

The father is a man she has been dating, but not for long, and she can't tell yet if they're suited for marriage. He has a job, but lives paycheck to paycheck. He sometimes mentions more lucrative career aspirations, but she doesn't know him well enough to know how serious and capable he is to achieve them. 

She has a full time job, but also lives paycheck to paycheck, so she's also attending college part time, and aspires toward a degree that will help her get a job that pays better. 

She decides to keep the baby. Not because of any moral or religious pressure - she is politically pro-choice. She knows being a mother will introduce many challenges, and that she will need to depend on family, friends, and possibly social services for assistance. But she has family and friends, there are programs for food, medical care, and early childhood education (WIC, SNAP, CHIP, Medicaid, and Head Start) if she needs them. Most importantly, now that the potential for a child of her own is growing inside her, she feels strongly that she is ready to be a mother. 

This hypothetical includes a lot of information about the mother-to-be. One thing it doesn't include is her age. Assuming that every other factor remains the same, what different challenges will she face if she is 20, 30, or 40? 

Another detail left out is how her family and friends react to her decision. If this were your friend or relative, would her age make a big difference in your response? Would you be more supportive and less likely to try to talk her out of keeping the baby based purely on her age? 

Over the years, I've slowly realized that I've picked up unfairly prejudicial attitudes toward young mothers (think between 18-25 years old.) These attitudes include that young mothers are short-changing themselves in terms of earning potential, career development, and long-term personal fulfillment. That they are, in their immaturity, acting on foolish and romantic notions, not considering the full ramifications of their choices, and likely to have regrets. 

Such attitudes about young mothers are common among middle class, educated liberals (such as myself.) We rationalize our prejudices two ways: first with statistics, and second as a way to position ourselves in opposition to religious conservatives. 

Statistics

The evidence firmly reveals that young mothers across the spectrum are at an economic disadvantage. But why are younger mothers so disadvantaged? 

Stephanie Coontz points out that all mothers have decreased earning potential. 

Much of the progress that women have made in income parity has gone to childless women. Motherhood, writes the sociologist Joya Misra, is now a greater predictor of wage inequality than gender in the United States. According to her research, conducted with Michelle Budig at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, motherhood imposes about twice the earning penalty in the United States compared with what women face in countries that have expansive publicly financed child care systems.

Coontz goes on to cite evidence that mothers are discriminated against by employers when it comes to hiring, hours, and promotions. This means that women who choose to have their first child young start out their careers facing discrimination. 

The problem is a system failing mothers, especially young mothers, not of women messing up the timing. 

Advising young women to put off those aspirations toward motherhood - regardless of what they want - because they will face discrimination is like advising a woman not to go into a career field known for its sexism. When we advise people to give up perfectly valid aspirations because we fear the system will treat them unfairly, we are supporting that status quo instead of demanding that it  change to fit peoples' needs. 

Opposing Religious Conservatives

Young motherhood is often associated with anti-feminist, religious values; the Bible instructing women to obey their husbands, the Quiverfull movement, high divorce rates among young couples in the Bible Belt, and even child brides forced into marriage. 

All of that is scary, harmful, and needs to be firmly countered by modern humanist values. But what does the Religious Right have to do with a single, young, and independent woman who happens to have an unplanned pregnancy and wants to raise the child? What does the Religious Right have to do with recently graduated high school sweethearts who are ready to get married and begin their family? 

I often hear people say that women should wait so that they can finish their education. But 43% of Americans obtain no formal education beyond high school, and only 30% will get a Bachelor's Degree or higher. (source.) A majority of jobs are done by workers without any higher education, including occupations in management, administration, and sales. 

Again, the problem is the economy, not religion. It is that most young, full-time working Americans cannot earn enough to even modestly support a family. This sinks so many single mothers into poverty, and puts tremendous strain and hardship onto young married couples with children. 

Stereotypes Hurt

Prejudiced attitudes from liberals against young women who choose motherhood adds shame to the list of challenges they must face. 

According to a survey reported on Parenting.com, young mothers often do feel that they are being shamed for their decision. 

Thirty-six percent of younger moms (and a whopping 54 percent of moms 24 years old or younger) say that an older mom has tried to make them feel like they're too immature or inexperienced to care for a baby.
...
13 percent of the younger ones cite "the disapproval of others" as one of the main drawbacks to having kids when they did. 

The Stacked Deck 

Wage stagnation prevents too many single mothers (of any age) from being able to support themselves, and prevents too many husbands (especially the young ones) from being able to support their stay-at-home-wives and children. One need only look at stats on household income to see that most working Americans are being asked to do more with less. Liberals giving all young women the impression that having a kid young leads to poverty is just as bad as conservatives telling women they just need to find a good husband to depend on. 

The reality is that many young women, both married and unmarried, are ready for motherhood. It's not their fault that the deck is stacked against them. The deck is stacked against a lot of people in our society, some because of their race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic background, and some because of perfectly legitimate, personal decisions, such as to start a small business, become an artist, or raise children. 

If we as a society decided that the hardships of the poor and working class - food insecurity, inadequate health care, unsafe neighborhoods, under-performing public schools, un-affordable day care - were unacceptable, if we were to prioritize alleviating those hardships, then all people would be free to make the educational, career, and family choices that best suit them, without fear, and without shame. 

Kid Climbs on Sculpture, an Excuse to Mock Art

My friend Dave posed for this photo as a joke because he 

doesn't share my love for Mark Rothko paintings. That said, 

despite not being into this one piece, he values and respects 

art and would never let his toddler touch it.

Earlier this week, gallery owner Stephanie Theodore tweeted a photo she took of a child climbing on a Donald Judd sculpture on display at the Tate Gallery. For those who don't know who Donald Judd is, he's one of the most famous American artists from the 20th century, and his sculptures are worth millions.

Before I go further into the meat of this post, let me respond to the original tweet. I wasn't there and I certainly can't know whether the parents were knowingly dismissive toward museum/gallery etiquette, or merely ignorant. Mistakes happen. I won't go as far as calling them "bad parents." However, they would have been very sad parents had the child done any damage.

I share Stephanie Theodore's shock, and I would have done exactly what she did: first she told the parents why the kid shouldn't be doing that, and when they ignored her, she told the guards. And of course she also snapped a photo and tweeted. Of course she did - because it's a friggin' kid climbing all over a Donald Judd in the Tate! As a gallery owner who makes a living in the arts, Theodore would have been an idiot to not tweet that.

Now on to the real bee in my bonnet.

The photo tweeted by Stephanie Theodore.

Unfortunately, I stumbled on this story on Gawker, and made the horrible mistake of reading the comments. As I've come to expect when certain types of art (in this case from the Minimalist movement) are brought to the attention of the general public, Philistines come out of the woodwork to call the work junk and mock the art establishment that gives it value.

Many of the comments go so far as to morally denounce Judd for his success, such as this gem:

If your shelf-looking sculpture sells for millions of dollars, and you don't donate at least half of that to charity, you're fucking horrible.

That would be difficult seeing as Judd's been dead since 1994. Although I do wonder if this person is equally outraged by anyone who, against the odds, ends up producing something worth millions of dollars.

By the way, at least according to one study, the median salary of artists is $43,000/year. While this sounds comfortable, it is a far cry from millions (especially when you take the student loans into account.) More importantly, this median only represents the people who succeeded in turning their artistic aspirations into a career. The vast majority who study and practice art, especially fine art, work day jobs or live off spouses for years, and never make a living solely off our work. But by all means, piss all over the giants in our field.

The award for irony goes to the countless people who mocked a Judd sculpture for looking like shelves from Ikea. Not only was Judd an actual furniture designer as well as fine artist, but I guess they don't know that the Minimalist movement in art was a driving influence in design across the globe, including the aesthetics of Ikea.

As a working (and struggling) artist, as someone who values art, and as a parent who aims to raise kids to appreciate the arts, I'm so sick of this shit. 

We artists and art dealers, collectors, curators, critics - everybody who makes up the art world - are basically a subset of nerdom. To quote today's wikipedia entry on Nerd:

Nerd (adjective: nerdy) is a descriptive term, often used pejoratively, indicating that a person is overly intellectual, obsessive, or socially impaired. They may spend inordinate amounts of time on unpopular, obscure, or non-mainstream activities, which are generally either highly technical or relating to topics of fiction or fantasy, to the exclusion of more mainstream activities

Indeed, we spend an inordinate amounts of time on unpopular, non-mainstream activities. We tend to be intellectual. We often have our own, unique social quirks. The mainstream tends to not "get" what we do. And while some who don't share our interests still respect us and acknowledge that our creations/writings/purchases have value, others mock us and insist our activities are nothing but pretense.

I don't get sports fandom. What I mean is, I've watched games of basketball, baseball, football, soccer, and I feel bored. However, when I look around at other spectators and see expressions of deep emotional engagement, when I overhear people going into very detailed debates and discussions about strategies and plays, when I notice that there is an entire establishment of writers, historians, and museums constructed around sports, and when I see how sports have widespread appeal across nations and class divides, I recognize that this is a valuable, meaningful part of the human experience.

So while most people don't get Judd's work, it's important to acknowledge that the reason it's worth millions is because there's actually a lot to it. In its full context, to enough people, Judd's work evokes as much passion as Paul "Bear" Vasquez's reaction to a double rainbow:

Another Jolly, White-Bearded Old Man

I am one of those people who flew into a rage after seeing this holiday season's controversial Toys R Us commercial. The one where a busload of  kids are tricked into thinking they are going on a wilderness field trip to learn about trees (which they apparently find boring), and are then told that really they get to run around a toy store and take home free stuff (this revelation causes them to explode in a fervor of maniacal joy.) If you haven't seen it, you can watch it now.

For those who just watched it for the first time, if your mouth is hanging open with shock and disgust, then you have responded the same way I did. The horribleness of this ad is so painfully obvious, I'm not going to get into it. Suffice to say, it reflects badly on our society that commercials such as this get made.

Work by one of my Wagner students, a sculpture of an Aardvark placed in a diorama

As a secular humanist mom, nature and science education are hugely important to me. My kid knows the names of all the captive animals at two nature centers. We have pet millipedes because after holding a giant, African millipede at a bug show last summer, they wanted to have some of their own. We're members of the Academy of Natural Sciences and attend all the preview parties and special events.

This year I'm an artist-in-residence at the Wagner Free Institute for Science. I work with science teachers to design and teach curriculum that integrates our two disciplines. During the Wagner's summer camp, I had inner city middle schoolers draw butterflies, cicadas, and other wildlife in nature journals and create mini-dioramas of animals in their natural habitats.

Hands-on experience of nature in parks and with rescued wildlife engages all our senses and makes it real.

Dude, that's an owl! 

Drawing from life is an exercise in really looking, rather than skimming over what is in front of our eyes.

Now that I get a really good, long look, geez, those talons are seriously scary looking! 

Well-presented information in a good book takes us deeper into understanding.

Owls are predators, descended from dinosaurs. They need those talons to swoop down on their prey.

Finally, creative illustrations transcend what can be seen by the naked eye or camera lens in any single moment. They have the potential to evoke an emotional response, which impresses on us the mystery and profundity of the natural world.

Click here.*

In the library last year, the kid and I came across Every Autumn Comes the Bear by Jim Arnosky. It's a quiet sort of book. When you really get down to it, all that happens is that a bear appears, hangs out for a bit, then goes to sleep in a cave. And yet we both fell in love. What got me was the subtle beauty of the watercolor illustrations. They were detailed, yet loose and painterly. Naturalistic, yet full of unexpected color choices.

In the months that followed, I kept coming across Jim Arnosky's name again and again.  My kid expressed interest in turtles, and we found All About Turtles. I pulled a book off the shelf because of its striking cover image of an osprey, and it turned out to be Arnosky's Thunder Birds. The kid got really into bugs, and we found Arnosky's Creep and Flutter. Talk about prolific!

Jim Arnosky popped up once again while I was looking for books for a workshop I teach. In the adult section of the library, among the field guides on trees, I came across Crinkleroot's Guide to Knowing the Trees. An adorable, gnome-like man on the cover charmed me instantly. Inside he introduced himself to me as "Crinkleroot", and said he was "born in a tree and raised by bees." I took the book home and immediately read it to my kid, who loved it. Not only that, now they knew the difference between coniferous and deciduous trees.

To our joy, we discovered a whole series of Crinkleroot books: guides to butterflies and moths, animal tracking, knowing the birds, giving back to nature, and more. We checked out as many as our public library kept in stock (which was most of the series).

Even though the books were basically doling out textbook information about their subjects, because Crinkleroot addresses his readers directly and is full of personality, the kid responded to him the same as they respond to Angelina Ballerina, or any of their favorite characters in literature. The first time we went to the Morris Arboretum and saw a real log cabin, she exclaimed with delight, "It's Crinkleroot's house!"

The only Crinkleroot books the kid found disappointing were the ones titled Crinkleroot's 25 (fill in the blank with "animals", "more animals", "mammals", "fish", and "birds") Every Child Should Know. In each of these books, Crinkleroot only appears at the beginning, and the rest of the pages are filled with profiles of animals listed. The reason the kid didn't like these books was, as they put it, "I want Crinkleroot to come with us."

Even though Crinkleroot is a delightful character in a series of informative and playfully illustrated books for children, you will not find Crinkleroot dolls, t-shirts, backpacks, or other hokey merchandise. He does not star in a cartoon on Nick Jr., the Disney Channel, or even PBS Kids. You will, however, find Crinkleroot books in most public libraries and many schools. On Crinkleroot's website you can purchase teaching leaves with art and science lessons, download free coloring pages of animals, and even listen to the Crinkleroot song.

I wish Crinkleroot were as familiar a literary character as Fancy Nancy and Arthur. He is a full fleshed-out personality who presents children with facts about the natural world in a way that is engaging and beautiful. And yet, when I have brought him up to educators at nature centers and the Wagner Institute, they have never heard of him. Just like that horrible Toys R Us ad, Crinkleroot's anonymity is perhaps indicative of our society's disconnect and disinterest in the natural world.

A side by side comparison of Crinkleroot and Santa Claus

Crinkleroot looks quite a bit like Santa Claus. White beard. Rosy cheeks. Friendly expression. They're both chubby and wear a lot of red. Crinkleroot might be shorter, but then in many historical incarnations, Santa is an elf or elf-like man of short stature. (Snopes has a good article on the history and myth surrounding Santa's appearance.)

Then there are the significant differences. Crinkleroot merely lives in a cabin in the woods with his pet snake Sassafrass, consorts with nature, and tells tall tales about being raised by bees. Santa on the other hand, lives in the far-off North Pole (a place covered with shifting ice water) and has magical powers: he can fly in a sled, visit all children in a single night, and spies on all children throughout the year.

A late autumn walk in the woods

If we must associate a jolly, white-bearded fictional character with gift-giving in December, how about purchasing some Crinkleroot books to add to the home libraries of the children in our lives? Instead of putting cookies out for a mythical elf, we can take a walk in the woods and note that the nakedness of the deciduous trees signifies winter and the time when bears sleep.

* The image was Owl In Flight, an oil painting by Jane Gough.