Archives for December 2010

I’ve been trying to figure out what happened with Apple ceasing to make the Manhattan Declaration app available. I’ll be the first to say it isn’t a great app (I have it) but then again, neither was the Smurfs’ house building game, which I downloaded late one night thanks to a bout of insomnia. Neither app was offensive to me.

Seems to be that some activists lobbied Apple to have the Manhattan Declaration app removed because they found it offensive. For those who didn’t sign it, the Manhattan Declaration is an ecumenical statement of faith, “a call of Christian conscience” on three major points: life, marriage and, ironically, religious liberty.

Whether or not you could have signed the Manhattan Declaration itself, I’d recommend signing the petition to have the app reinstated. I just hope it doesn’t come to some sort of boycott. I really love my iPhone.

This is a very interesting article about the Pill. It describes how the Pill deceives women, in spite of being applauded as this great liberator. The author describes, rather factually, how the Pill denies women very concrete information about our cycles and how our bodies work. It deceives some women into thinking they have no physical problems with their cycle, when in fact the Pill merely masks symptoms, and any underlying physical problems remain. Finally, it gives women a false sense of confidence that their fertility will last forever. The good news is that many women are catching on to the deceit:

…[W]omen are half-consciously rebelling against the artificiality of the Pill’s regime. Removal from one’s true biological processes was more appealing in the Mad Men era, when machines were going to save the world and pills could fix everything, even the ennui of housewives. But for the wheatgrass-and-yoga generation, there’s something about taking a pill every day that’s insulting to one’s sense of self, as an accomplished, adult woman. “I feel like I’ve gotten a message over the years that the less I have to do with the nitty-gritty biological stuff of being a woman, the better, and that’s a weird message,” says Sophia, 35, who was on the Pill for fourteen years. “In my ninth-grade health class, I remember the teacher saying, ‘You can get pregnant any day of the month, so always use protection,’ and I kind of knew that wasn’t true, but because I was on the Pill, I never really cared about finding out the right answer. The Pill takes a certain knowledge away from you, and that knowledge is empowering.”

One weakness of the article is that it tries to say there are no physical side effects, which isn’t true, but then, this article is more about the cultural side of how the Pill affects women’s choices. Worth the (long) read, particularly when we have some public health nurses and doctors declaring the very best thing we can do is get every teenage girl on the Pill.

Apparently, having kids later in life increases stress levels. Funny: I thought having kids, period, might increase stress levels. What do I know, eh?

According to a new U.S. study, delayed marriage and childbearing lead to increased stress for men and women. Delaying marriage and having kids means that the biggest family demands often fall at the same time that career demands are great, especially among the well-educated, while it increases the chance one’s parents might start to have poor health and need help, before the children are fully grown. American moms are participating in the labour force at a greater rate, the study found, doing 22.6 hours of paid work on average in 2008, up from 18.8 in 1985. At the same time, mothers increased the time they spend on childcare to 13.9 hours a week from 8.4 in 1985, but housework time went to 17.4 hours from 20.4. They spent less time on self-care, too. Fathers have increased working hours from 35.7 in 1985 to 39.5 in 2008, and have upped the time they spend on childcare from 2.6 hours per week in 1985 to 7.8 hours today.

Phew, that’s a lot of numbers. Not sure it means as much as all that, but what the heck, let’s play along. Especially with the “less time spent on self-care” bit. Is this a fancy way of saying busy moms don’t have time to shave their legs as often as they’d like?

Also: Notice, if you will, the increase in the number of hours dads spend on childcare. Then look at their hours worked (at a job, I mean). Both are up. But we mostly worry about moms being overworked (this particular article being an exception to the general rule). Why?