Archives for January 2011

The article Why Chinese Mothers are Superior has been a hot topic in Internet-parenting circles, blogs and news sites. The response to the article has been heated to say the least. I enjoyed reading this level-headed analysis for a change.

Anybody who has children in violin or competitive gymnastics  knows that Asian children are, on the whole, better. They are emotionally stronger under pressure and technically superior. To say that we, as “Western Parents,” are not ready to go to the lengths of hard work that “Chinese Mothers” put their children through is obvious. Equally obvious is that any skill requiring technique to succeed, like music or gymnastics, will be mastered through repetition. Practice makes perfect. It’s a  fact, not only a convenient catch phrase. Natural talent will only take you so far.

So what? If I have learned one thing in my parenting career, it’s that there is 24 hours in a day for everybody. The sun sets everyday for Western, Chinese or Questioning mothers. What you do with your 24 hours is up to you. I have accepted the fact that my children will never be as good as those who practice their music 4 hours a day; as rested as those who sleep 12 hours a night or as literate as those who read all the time. On the flip side, my children are more pleasant in society than those who read all the time; have more friends than those who practice their music all the time and are more helpful around the house than those who sleep all the time (chores oblige…). I have chosen to raise well-balanced children and steered away from extremes: they will never be known for their prowess at anything but they will likely grow to become competent, responsible, considerate, and generous men and women who are committed to live by principles of integrity (h/t to educator James Stenson for the catchy phrase).

That’s what I do with my 24 hours. How about you?

I cannot tell you how many articles I’ve received about this MTV 16 and Pregnant special that covers “the abortion option.” Pro-choice fanatics heralded it as the greatest thing ever, which meant my guard was up. But pro-lifers jumped in and asked how the special could be seen as cheerleading for the pro-choice cause given how torn up the mother was.

I don’t love “reality TV” and was resisting even taking the topic on as a result.

But I’m breaking down. The special can be viewed online here. I’ve seen only the first little bit at time of posting but I’ll probably watch the whole thing and update with my personal views later.

A recent blog post linking to a Slate article asks if parents’ brains are different than child-free brains. Off the top of my head, I would say that parents’ brains are non-existent. Actually, AWOL more accurately describes it: used to have a brain. In fact, I sometimes re-read things I wrote in University and am struck by how clever I was. Now, I stare at one of my children and call every other sibling’ name — including the dog — before I can remember the child’s name. A child I named myself!

One of my friends has a theory: what they call the placenta is really half of our brain. After six children, I’ll let you figure out how much grey matter I have left. But oddly enough, while I did lose short term memory and attention span with the “placenta” <wink, wink> I also lost the need for sleep and the ability to sweat the small stuff. Last night, at 2 am, when I was comforting my 2-year-old newborn baby, I marvelled at how relaxed she was, poured into my arms like warm milk; I marvelled at the complete trust she had in me, that the monsters of the night would not harm her if I only gave her a hug; I marvelled at the intelligent design of a child’s head, how the softness of the hair and the curve of the head was always a perfect fit for a mother’s neck and shoulder.

I don’t mind losing half of my brain as long as it is replaced with half of my heart.

They are out there, oh yes! Oftentimes, especially in the United States, less so in Canada, we are led to believe that being pro-life comes with a certain package of other political beliefs. That was never the intent of this web site, quite the contrary. The problem is that I am right of centre, and I started this web site, so there’s a “right of centre” bias that comes naturally. In case readers thought I wasn’t aware of that, I am.

Anyways, here’s a news article about a prominent Democrat pro-lifer:

What makes Cassidy different from many pro-life crusaders is his card-carrying liberal credentials with a long history of involvement in Democratic Party campaigns and legal fights to represent the poor and the marginalized. He admits that “there was a point in time when I didn’t think at all about what abortion did to women. And so I was all for it.”

That changed in 1990 when a couple came to him after their child was born with Down syndrome. The doctor had not performed tests which might have tipped the couple off to the baby’s debilitating condition. The couple wanted to sue for “wrongful birth;” meaning, they would have aborted the fetus had they known her condition.

As Blustain tells it: “Cassidy declined the case (asking himself): ‘What would it be like for me and for this little girl if I stood in the well of a courtroom and argued to a jury that they had to give lots of money to her mom and dad because they didn’t get a chance to kill her?'”

And so you see, even left-wingers can tell right from wrong. (That was a joke. I refer you to point A about my right-of-centre bias.)

There’s a story on CNN about how women can get ahead in the workplace. I especially like rules 1 and 8:

1. Quit thinking the workplace is fair

[…] The reality is that gender matters, says professor Sheila Wellington, who teaches the course “Women in Business Leadership” at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

She says one of the most common mistakes women make is believing the playing field is equal. “They have it in their minds that it doesn’t matter if I’m a woman.”

By acknowledging the barriers ahead such as the difficulties of reintegrating into the work force after having a child, women can better plan their careers. Wellington also pointed out some managers still believe women may not work as hard or put in as many hours. A woman can overcome this assumption by putting herself forward and offering to do more work.

8. The way you look and talk matters

Your attire and speaking skills affect how others perceive you, and it’s nothing personal.

Author and psychologist Lois P. Frankel says company cultures may vary, but proper workplace etiquette is essential for landing the next big job. Frankel advises young women to look to how successful senior female managers dress and emulate that style.

When women communicate, they should stick with simple but confident sentences. The more words used, the softer the message sounds, Frankel says. Women can also practice short speeches at home to help push their main ideas to the beginning.

Maybe you think the workplace ought to be more fair. It doesn’t matter what you think. So you have to work harder to prove yourself? Do it. If you care about the job, why wouldn’t you? But I especially like the last point about looks (and language). Please, girls, do yourselves a favour and dress for the office, not the club. Showing too much skin (even when you’re really good looking) hurts your career prospects. When in doubt, cover that cleavage a bit… (hint: if we can see all the way down to your bra without effort when you bend forward a little bit, your shirt is too revealing).

The other points are worth reading, too.

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Véronique adds: I especially liked  4. Don’t ever, ever cry at work. My husband ran a company with only men for about 6 years before a couple of women joined their ranks and he was floored by the hand-holding he had to do (figuratively speaking of course). Ladies, get a grip.

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Andrea adds: I’ve been away, so I’m late adding this. Just wanted to say that I’ve had to “hold men’s hands” in the past too. Don’t mean to make this tit for tat, but it’s worth mentioning. Every person is different. Finally, though I have fortunately never cried at work (I have come dangerously close) I don’t think this is a cardinal sin, depending on how/why it happens. If a couple of tears fall and you ignore them and move ahead, I’d say that’s just fine. If you cry and expect people (your manager) to care, that’s a problem.

I came across this blog post on the cost of staying home with young children, linking to another post on the cost of staying home with young children, referring to a series of articles on the cost… Not exactly a new topic, is it?

In the interest of full disclosure, I will mention that I sacrificed a potentially successful (I will never know) and highly paying (heck, why not?) legal career to stay home with my four oldest children. I returned to university when my fifth child was born and started working while pregnant with my sixth. I like to think of myself as a specialist in matters of family-work balance or (more often) lack thereof.

Let me make one thing clear to all the mothers, working or otherwise, thinking of “opting out:” this is not an economic investment. You will not be better off financially if you stay home with your children instead of working for remuneration. Kids don’t pay. If they do, it’s with your money. Anyway, they cost way more than they bring in. Until they grow into successful hockey players and hip hop artists and buy you a house, you will be out of pocket. And even then.  This is an investment in yourself, your family and your children, rooted in deep-set values and a sense of doing the right thing.

That being said, you cannot pay the rent with good intentions. If you decide to leave the work force to raise your children, someone will have to support you financially. This role generally falls on the other parent, often the father. And for each millionaire who can acrimoniously support his ex-wife to stay home with their children, I can name you 10 000 regular guys who cannot pay their rent as well as yours. As a result, your ability to stay home with your children hinges on a solid commitment between yourself — the caretaker — and the provider, also known as marriage (or something like that–civil union, nuptial agreement, memorandum of understanding, I’m not fussy.)

Women don’t find themselves suddenly “post-divorce, with two adolescent sons to care for, no job, no job prospects and a seriously dated resume that looks less-than-stellar in the middle of a recession” because they stayed home with their children but because of the breakdown of their marriage. Don’t get me wrong: my resume is less-than-stellar and I am working an entry-level job for an entry-level salary in my late-thirties.  Staying home for ten years has kept me from building-up my resume and networking in the workplace. However, it should be understood that the most important decisions of your parenting career are the myriad of choices, small and large, that build-up (or destroy) a solid commitment between you and your spouse (or whatever you call the person you reproduce with). A solid, respectful — ideally loving — relationship between parents is the bedrock of all parenting decisions. The rest, including the loss of income and work experience, will fall into place.

…to “come out” to colleagues that you’re pro-life. For me personally, it doesn’t affect my job, though it will I’m sure affect any further university study I do. Even then, I admittedly have to overcome a certain level of personal apprehension. But what if you work in the educational or health care fields where your opinion might just have more of an impact? That’s when a pro-life stance is seen as dangerous.

A Christian mental health worker is facing the sack after giving two colleagues a leaflet warning of the physical and psychological damage some women suffer after having an abortion.

Margaret Forrester passed the booklet to family planning staff at the health centre where she works because she felt that the NHS was not offering patients enough information about the risks associated with terminating a pregnancy.

But Ms Forrester, 39, said she was suspended from her job as a psychological wellbeing practitioner based in Westminster because managers at Central North West London Mental Health Trust disagreed with her personal beliefs.

She will appear in front of an internal disciplinary committee on Wednesday, charged with “distributing materials some people may find offensive”. Her supporters fear that she could lose her job.

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Brigitte adds: What bugs me the most about all this is the use of euphemisms. Distributing materials some people may find offensive? My foot. What they mean is: We are pro-abortion and those who want to be pro-life will have to be pro-life somewhere else. They could at least have the guts to say it.

There are awards given in Margaret Sanger’s name, for all her very fine work to exterminate undesirables encourage “reproductive freedom.” A quote I stumbled upon from the lady herself:

The American socialist Margaret Sanger was the founder of Planned Parenthood and is still a feminist and liberal icon. On black people and immigrants in general, these were “human weeds” and “reckless breeders,” “spawning human beings who never should have been born.” She believed in the sterilization of the mentally ill, in “racial purification” and the elimination of those she labelled the “feeble-minded.” She was aware, however, that her racism might cause a few problems and warned that, “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population” because it might provoke “their more rebellious members.”

Now tell me–if her life’s work had been in chemistry or engineering or math, there’s a snowball’s chance in hell she’d be held up as an icon today. But no, her life’s work was birth control and abortion, and so, the abortion distortion means we are meant to put aside her racism and generally abhorrent views, or contextualize them–she was living in a eugenic age, so we should tolerate her views–etc., etc., etc. Enough of the excuses–hers is not a byline you’d want in your paper today, and we shouldn’t give or accept awards in her name. More to the point, her racism was not a side view, it was intimately connected to her life’s work. Despicable.

A friend in Australia recently sent me Giving Sorrow Words, by Melinda Tankard Reist. It’s a book for women who don’t exist, the author writes, because women who grieve the abortions they had are told it was just another choice and that if they suffer, it’s their fault:

Attitudes towards women overwhelmed by grief following abortion demonstrate a cruel indifference to women’s pain. Their suffering is considered a figment of their imagination; their guilt and remorse a byproduct of social/religious conditioning. In short, they are an embarrassment.

The book allows women to tell their personal stories. I read one last night and cried–a woman followed by the ghost of her child everywhere she went, for whom suicide felt like it might provide welcome relief.

I think I’ll likely quote from this book as a I read it, from time to time, but I wanted people to be aware of the book in the first place. It’s the first time I’m seeing all in one place, detailed stories of how and why these women went for an abortion and what that did to them. And I think it’s important both for women who have had abortions and are suffering right now, but also for the rest of everybody to remember that abortion causes tremendous pain for so many.

Still think it’s because they want what’s best for women?

London – “The global hormonal contraceptive market is a fast growing market, with oral contraceptives considered to be the most common method of avoiding unplanned pregnancies by women. In 2009, the global contraceptives market was $11.2 billion and is forecast to grow to $14.5 billion by 2016, which represents a growth rate of 4% between 2009 and 2016.”

You can’t find reports like this on Men’s Health Markets, because they don’t exist. Sure, there are reports on Viagra revenues, but nothing to the extent of a Contraceptives Market report. $14.5 billion makes that Facebook kid look like a bellhop, and it’s not an amount the major pharmaceutical players are willing to part with easily. New growth is on the way, with new players vying for their piece of the birth control pie. What can we expect? More ads, new forms of contraceptives, and all of this at a record pace. We can also expect more of the same in terms of real consideration for women’s health.

Hundreds of women have become pregnant after a long-term contraceptive implant failed, it emerged last night.

Even more have complained that they were left injured or scarred by the rod inserted into their arm, which was supposed to protect them against conceiving for three years.

The NHS has had to pay compensation to women hurt when the implants were inserted and seven women who were left traumatised by unexpectedly becoming pregnant have received payouts totalling more than £200,000 – an average of more than £28,000 each.

A lawyer revealed that many of the women affected had suffered ‘psychological difficulties’, had miscarriages or decided to undergo abortions after the implants went wrong.

One woman who became pregnant and underwent an abortion said the trauma had led to her marriage ending.

The fiasco involving the implant, called Implanon, is one of the worst mass contraceptive failures to hit the NHS in living memory.

A total of 584 women who had the hormone-filled rod inserted in their arms have reported unwanted pregnancies to the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency – the Government’s drugs and medical devices watchdog.

But the total could be far higher, as many women may not have complained after becoming pregnant and either undergoing abortions or giving birth.

The MHRA received 1,607 complaints about the implant going wrong, some from doctors deeply concerned that the devices are difficult to insert and that it is impossible to check if they are correctly installed because they are invisible to X-rays.

Implanon’s manufacturer MSD, a subsidiary of global pharmaceutical giant Merck, has now replaced it with an updated product called Nexplanon, which has a new pre-loaded applicator and can be detected by X-ray or CT scan.

I know when I use a product that injures me and fails miserably that I’m certainly not going back for a refill from the same supplier. Merck, hmm, why does that name sound so very familiar? MSD are not the only giants scampering to release new product, Bayer (partnered with the IPPF) is also looking toward the next big market.

Objectives of Bayer’s Sustainability Program

Lighthouse project “Family Planning”

• Introduce original contraception products at prices in line with the market in 11 African countries jointly with USAID by 2012
• Double current family planning activities in collaboration with our partners (e.g. USAID, UNFPA, IPPF) by 2012
• Increase annual provision of oral contraceptives to 110 million cycles jointly with partners (e.g. USAID)

The pipeline looks something like this: A projection of $14.5 billion in contraceptive revenue is made, companies push to produce, approve and market the next big drug, Bayer sends out a “Youth Truck” to assess the prospective customers and get Ugandan children familiar with the idea of prescription birth control (while women in the west see more and more ads), and Planned Parenthood and Marie Stopes have their clinics, those philanthropic beacons of family planning, write the prescriptions. At what point are we going to realize that women’s health may not be at the forefront of their priorities?