Is it All in a Day's Work for a Doula?

On Slate there's an article about doulas working with women having abortions. I found it compelling. There are so many situations we face, particularly in health care settings, when we feel alone and isolated making a miserable situation even more awful. Why not have someone nearby who can help you out? Marisa Meltzer, who wrote the article, writes:

Doulas can do one thing that a friend or boyfriend cannot: They're allowed to be present during surgery. The abortion doulas are trained volunteers with the clinic—they wear scrubs, undergo training, and are covered by the clinic's insurance. Even if they're not imperative, ultimately, they don't do any harm—and in many cases they're welcome, comforting additions to an abortion process that can be pretty terrifying. As Lauren Mitchell, the other Doula Project co-founder, points out, "Surgeries are scary even in the best of circumstances, and if you add to that the huge social and cultural taboos that surround reproductive healthcare, it would seem a logical extension to expand the doula model of care to work with people who have chosen abortion."

More On Court Appointed Mom

Kate Harding has a long response to Peter Beinart's call for a mom on the Court. Hers is a considerably more in-depth response than mine, she points out many of the flaws of Beinart's piece (which I too found really annoying), and it's a very good read. Here's Harding's kicker:

"Look, I'm all for seeing more mothers in positions of power, and I think Diane Wood would be a fine choice for the Supreme Court. But the problem here is not a lack of role models. It's an overwhelming lack of support for working mothers and respect for female ambition. And the idea that the success of childless women is somehow sending the wrong message to little girls -- who are still, after all, growing up in a society where 80 percent of women eventually have children (and among the other 20 percent are women who were infertile, who were prevented from adopting for one reason or another, who never found the right partner and weren't up to the challenge of single motherhood, etc., not just women who chose to be childfree, as Beinart claims) -- is absurd. In fact, it's sending a very honest message: That the expectations placed on mothers and on highly ambitious professionals are both so demanding that it is actually incredibly difficult for women to "have it all." A job and a kid, sure, that's possible. But kids and a Supreme Court appointment? Well, two women have already pulled it off against all odds, but the odds still suck. Seeing Wood on the court would not change that."

Scary Yoga

I used to love yoga. I was never very good at it, but I really, really loved it. I loved how classes were paced, I loved how poses opened up my body, I loved how I felt after a class. I mostly took vinyasa, or "flow" yoga classes, as most people did, and I tried to ignore it when, in the late 90s early aughts, yoga classes got competitive. I just tried to opt out, I took basic classes, then I moved to Philadelphia and started taking classes with Joan White, one of the most experienced and respected Iyengar yoga teachers in the country and her attention to form and discipline just blew open my yoga world and really changed how I approached the practice. Then, I had kids. Then, I hurt my wrist (Four years later I can't put any weight on it). Then, I realized that when all was said and done, a yoga class takes at least two and a half hours, which mostly I don't have. Now, it's been years since I've been in a yoga class, and while I miss it, I don't miss it as much as I once thought I would. The whole yoga thing, as this Jezebel post explains, it can just be too much, which is too bad, but there it is.

A Mom on the Court

Peter Beinart, who has a column on The Daily Beast, a "working wife" and a two-year-old daughter, wants Obama to nominate a woman who has kids to the Supreme Court. As Jezebel notes, Beinart is being provocative here. He writes:

"It’s important (to have women with kids in positions of power) because otherwise, the message you’re sending young women is that they can achieve professionally, or they can have a family, but they can’t do both. And without quite realizing it, that is the message our government has been sending. According to the Census Bureau, 80 percent of American women over the age of 40 have children. But look at the women who have held Cabinet posts in the last three presidential administrations. Only two of the Clinton administration’s five female Cabinet secretaries had kids."

Reading Beinart's piece, I felt like I was talking to a new, nice and very earnest dad at a birthday party. Why can't you ladies have it all!?! We'd nod over the general unfairness of workplace requirements and division of family labor. Maybe I'd mention the piece I read in the Wall Street Journal back before I had kids explaining how a lot of women who worked while their kids were young found they really needed to scale back on office time when their kids were in middle school. Wow, we'd agree, it's terrible. Right before I wandered away to get more seltzer, me and Pete would really break some new ground in that conversation.

Of course I'm all for women with kids succeeding in the workplace, but, of all the messages our President has to send with his next Supreme Court nominee, one that reassures women that they can work at the highest levels and have kids need not be one of them. Really. Because if I've learned anything from five years of motherhood, it's that no two women do it the same way and since everyone's pretty much doing the best she can given her own special circumstances and family needs, shining examples of extreme success are nice, but they sure aren't roadmaps.

Kids & Boring Food

OK, I was skimming along this fairly predictable essay about kids who like to eat the ten things they like to eat and a parent who despairs and then I hit this:

"Of course the only important question is whether by trying to turn my child into a foodie I found another way of turning him into a food neurotic. When Adam was 5, and eating hardly more than pasta, cheese, broccoli and Cheerios, we did talk to a child psychologist. She laughed: “Not eating is a problem. Boring tastebuds are not.” Perhaps my expectations were utterly unrealistic, and my complaints a cause of tension and, thus, the problem?"

Um, perhaps. The writer goes on to say that he's "lightened up a bit" and now he's gone to some sushi bars with his son. Well, there you go! (Thanks to Yummy Mummy, I think, for the link.)

Concert Night

I got to this LA Times story about a dad taking his daughter to see Taylor Swift via Jezebel. I didn't even bother reading the Jezebel post; I was much more interested in the writer/dad's experience with his daughter. David Ulin writes in his lede paragraph "...Sophie, age 11, was singing every word along with her, waving a colored light stick back and forth above her head. Her grin was electric, her attention sharply focused; she wasn't missing anything."

The personal essay of the early-middle-age-parent-takes-child-to-concert could very well be some kind of sub-genre. Local newspapers must run a column like this at least every few years. I bet many a parent has blogged on the topic, too. Watching a child at a first concert of music of their choosing, it's like watching them take their first steps away from us, only this time there's no wobbling on chunky feet, no arms thrown out to the side like a young Frankenstein exploring the world of balance. We know what music will mean to our kids when they're 13, 15, 18, how personal and defining it could be, helping them find their way away from home.

Thinking about the LA Times story, I remembered a similar piece in The New Yorker, this one by David Remnick in The Talk of the Town. It was about taking his kids to see Hanson. I looked it up. It was from 1998, when Remnick's kids were "almost eight"; "practically five." Since the piece requires a subscription, I'll quote Remnick's conclusion.

"The most devastating thing about taking the boys to Hanson, of course, was to know how ephemeral the experience was. It's true that for once I'd made myself a hero in the household, and they thanked me about then thousand times. But soon Dad's presence will be neither required nor desired, and it will be on to, say, Marilyn Manson. Who is today's Alice Cooper, I think. I don't really want to go, but I'd give anything to be asked."

Sometimes I Wonder....

Who are these kids and what do they wear when they eat?