Half Changed World

1)  At 9:52 pm, I got my 10,000 hit on this blog.  I know, lots of sites get more than that in a day.  But I’m excited.  Thanks for reading.

2) I’ve been nominated for Best New Blog in the Koufax awards.  It’s an honor just to be mentioned, and I know I have absolutely no chance of winning, but it would be nice to get a vote or two.

3) With this post, I’m nominating myself for the "Land Mine" award (part of Feministe’s Anti-Awards, Part Deux)

I want to make a confession: even after having read a bunch of the fabulous infertility and assisted reproduction blogs out there, like Chez Miscarriage, and I wasted all that birth control, and a little pregnant, I don’t get it.  I still don’t get why people put themselves through such emotional, physical, and financial torture to conceive and bear a child.  I adore my sons, and am very grateful that they’re in my life, but if I hadn’t been able to get pregnant, I wouldn’t have made the sacrifices these women (and many others) have made.  That sort of baby-hunger is as alien to me as James Boylan’s conviction that he was a woman. 

As an outsider to this world, someone who has never had to deal with infertility, I can’t help but wondering whether assisted reproduction has increased or decreased the net amount of happiness in the world.  On the one side are those people who’ve successfully had children with the help of modern medical miracles.  But on the other side are the people whose heartache has been drawn out for months or years as they ride the reproductive rollercoaster, and those who must endlessly second-guess themselves, wondering whether things would have been different if they tried just one more time.

I’m calling this a land mine because, as Jen at Buddha Mama and I have discussed, it’s hard to talk about the choices that we make without it seeming like we’re implicitly criticizing those who have made other choices.  And that’s truly not my desire.  I’ve actually started to post about this before, and then stopped, for fear of giving pain to people who are already dealing with more than their share of grief.  But I think it’s worth talking about, to open a dialogue, as well as to paint a fuller picture of the diversity of parenting experiences.  I want to tell people that you can be a good mother even if you don’t have that sort of passionate need to be one, even if you could imagine having a happy and full life without children.

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I’m updating this to try to respond to some of the comments I’ve been getting from some of the visitors I’ve received via Uterine Wars.  Let me start by thanking you for taking the time to comment, for being willing to engage in dialogue.  I appreciate it; I know it’s not your job in life to educate me.

A few of the commenters have written that you didn’t imagine or couldn’t have imagined making the choices you’ve made, until you were actually in the situation.  That’s a powerful (and slightly frightening) statement about the limits of our ability to put ourselves in a different situation.  I hear you, and I’ll be more careful in the future about saying what I would or wouldn’t do — I can only say what my best guess is, from the perspective of who I am now.

But some of the commenters implied that I’d definitely make the same choices they are making if I were in their situation.   I still reject this statement; there are many other women who are in their situation who make different choices.  Heck, there are many woman who make a deliberate choice not to have children, regardless of their fertility status.  That’s part of what makes life fascinating; we are all different people and make different choices.

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One more thought.  I am truly sorry to have caused pain, and I can tell, from both the comments and the referring posts, that I have.  I started this post saying I was making a confession, because I believe that my inability to "get it" is a failure of empathy on my part — although some of you are telling me that no fertile woman will ever "get it."  Saying I "don’t get" your choices is different than saying I think you’re making a bad choice.

(For any new readers, I’m trying to live under the Thrifty Food Plan for a month. See this post for background.)

We were entirely out of milk, so went to Trader Joe’s.  And we never manage to get out of there with just milk.

So, after 5 days, we’ve spent $112.38 (not including the cat food).  I was definitely worrying about blowing the budget, so distracted D. when he asked for Pirate Booty.

Today’s book is Life, by Gwyneth Jones.  It’s science fiction, although it’s set in the near future of a world not too different from ours.  It plays with issues of gender and sex, feminism, love, parenting and science.  I enjoyed reading it, but was ultimately somewhat disappointed by it, as it never really delivered the climax it had promised.

As I mentioned previously, the main character is a working mother, a scientist, and her husband is a househusband and at-home-dad.  This isn’t really the main focus of the plot, although it gives Jones the opportunity for a few zingers.  Attending his kid’s soccer game, Spence comments to one of the moms, "It hasn’t been too bad.  I got to hear about Delilah’s mastitis, the hail isn’t right in our faces, and I managed not to be linesman."  Jones (as narrator) concludes: "They laughed together. There’s definitely something Ivan Denisovich about being a full-time parent.  You learn to take comfort in small mercies."  Come on, youth soccer can be bad, but comparing it to a Stalinist labor camp seems a bit over the top. 

Jones’ theme is that in spite of feminism, the sexual revolution, post-feminism, girl power and everything else, things stay pretty much the same.  And even if you erased biological differences (or rather, recognized that there’s more of a continuum than a dichotomy), things would still say much the same.  I agree with her that gender is a powerful cultural construct, even beyond biological sex (just as race is a powerful cultural construct, even though most scientist agree that there is little biological reality behind it).  But I think things are changing more than she suggests, although not as fast as I might hope.

Since my husband did a Costco run on Friday, I’m going to retroactively start our month on the Thrifty Food Plan then, as otherwise our spending this week would be artificially low.  (I recognize that most poor people don’t have the extra money for a Costco membership, and many don’t have the car to get them there.  We don’t do that much of our shopping there, as we don’t have much storage space, so I don’t think it should distort the results too much.)

After tax, that brings us to $64.45; $78.14 if you count the cat food.

Ok, we’re up to $80.83 without catfood/$94.52 with it.

Sunday I did a mini-run to Giant for split peas (I was sure we had them in the house, but we didn’t) and onions.  I can’t find the receipt, but it was under $4.  Say $84.83; $98.52 for simplicity.  So we’ve pretty much blown our first week’s budget, but we’ve got lots of food still in the house.  We’ll probably need to buy milk (we go through a ludicrous amount of milk), but otherwise I think we’re in decent shape.

A few thoughts in reaction to the long (and partisan) discussion of hunger, obesity and poverty at Asymmetrical Information (found via 11d).

Food is mindbogglingly cheap in the US today, accounting for a smaller portion of people’s overall budgets than ever before.  In fact, this is one of the big problems with the official definition of poverty.  Mollie Orshansky, who developed the measure in the 1960s, found that the average family spent about 1/3 of its income on food; the poverty measure was thus set at three times the cost of an economy food plan.

So why are some families struggling to buy food?  Because other necessities have gotten more expensive, especially housing.  Many low-income families spend 50 percent or more of their incomes on housing; if they don’t want to be evicted or have their gas shut off, they pay their rent and utility bills first and whatever is left over is available for food.

Is healthy food more expensive than unhealthy food?  Yes and no.  It’s certainly true that you can prepare nutritious and inexpensive meals, especially if you minimize use of meat.  But if you want quick and easy meals — and if you’re a busy parent at any income level, you want quick and easy meals — healthy food is a lot more expensive than fast food or a candy bar from the store on the corner.  And if you’re looking at a vending machine, the soda is usually half the price of the juice.  (And let’s not even get into the cost of organic food.)

It’s also true that food is an easy way for low-income parents to indulge their children (and themselves).  If you’re poor, you spend a lot of time saying No.  No, you can’t have that.  No, we can’t afford that.  No, you can’t go there.  McDonald’s is an affordable treat, something you can say Yes to.

The Thrifty Food Plan for a family of 4 (with 2 young children) is $434.40 and I honestly think that we spend less than that most months.  But we also eat out occasionally, which would blow that budget quickly.  I also know that it’s cheaper to buy food if you have enough money to buy in bulk and to stock up on groceries when they’re on sale, which we do. I’m thinking of tracking our groceries 100% for a month and seeing if we can stay under it.  Anyone want to join me?

In the past couple of weeks, I keep seeing mentions of what I call "reverse traditional families"’ — families where the mother is the primary breadwinner and the father is a SAHD — in all sorts of media.  I’m most intrigued by the fact that these aren’t stories about SAHDs as such.

• The February issue of Money has an article headlined "Get the Life You Really Want."  One of the families profiled, the Davis family, describes their goal as "wanting their kids to be raised by a stay-at-home mom or dad."  Moreover, they’ve actually managed to take turns at the at-home role, which is a nice trick; I wish the article had talked more about Laurie Davis maintained or developed her work skills while out of the work force, such that she "was recruited for a lucrative job at a medical device company" after having been home for 4 1/2 years.
• In an essay in Working Mother about the value of having two involved parents, Courtney Nowell writes: "Carter and I talked about one of us quitting… "  While they ultimately decided to both work outside the home, I like the matter of fact tone in which she considered it equally possible for either parent to stay home.
• I’m in the middle of reading Life, by Gwyneth Jones. This book is largely about gender relations, so I’m very interested in seeing what Jones does with the fact that the main character is her family’s breadwinner, while her husband is a househusband and SAHD.  So far, it’s mostly been a device for commentary about how hard it is to be a mother and a scientist.
• In one of my favorite comic strips, For Better or For Worse, last week we heard that Liz’s old boyfriend Anthony is taking a year off for parental leave.  Again, I’m looking forward to seeing what Lynn Johnston does with this plot thread; at the moment it seems to be just another way of showing what a great guy Anthony is and what a bitch his wife is: "Therese told Anthony that when the baby was born, it was HIS.  She said he was the one who wanted a family, so he could raise the baby, and he said he WOULD!"

In Kidding Ourselves, which I’ve discussed here previously, Rhoda Mahoney argues that reverse traditional families are a tipping point phenomenon.  More formally, she argues that men’s willingness to be primary caregivers is in part a function of how many other men are (or are perceived to be) primary caregivers. So the fact that SAHDs (and their wives) are showing up in the media, and not just in stories describing them as exotic Desperate Househusbands may actually be making a difference in the choices that families consider for themselves.

First, an update on HB1677 — Maura has posted Del Cosgrove’s email to her, in which he indicates that he will be working with legislative staff to revise the bill language to narrow its application.  (Apparently, he’s been totally swamped with email in the past day or two.  I’m shocked.)  I wouldn’t totally assume the problem is fixed, but it makes sense to at least wait and see what the bill says.

Next, I thought I’d shine a little light on some other proposed legislation.  HJ586, also offered by Del. Cosgrove, would amend the Virginia Constitution to say, under the heading BILL OF RIGHTS:

"Marriage is the legal union of one man and one woman as husband and wife, and no other combination of persons may be licensed to marry or recognized as a marriage by the government. A civil union, domestic partnership, or similar civil arrangement that purports to bestow the rights, privileges, benefits, status, or obligations of marriage upon unmarried persons may not be created, recognized, or enforced by the government. A civil arrangement forbidden by this section shall be void and unenforceable even if lawful elsewhere."

Del Cosgrove feels compelled to propose this amendment, even though the Legislature passed a law just last year that clarified the existing law defining marriage as between a man and a woman, in order to say:

"A civil union, partnership contract or other arrangement between persons of the same sex purporting to bestow the privileges or obligations of marriage is prohibited. Any such civil union, partnership contract or other arrangement entered into by persons of the same sex in another state or jurisdiction shall be void in all respects in Virginia and any contractual rights created thereby shall be void and unenforceable."

This law has already come into play in at least one custody dispute.  It strikes me as pure political grandstanding to push for a Constitutional amendment on top of the existing law, and it just turns my stomach to have it under the heading of Bill of Rights.

Finally, I’d like to point out the really well designed Legislative Information System which makes it possible to find out what bills have been introduced on a subject and their current status with just a few clicks of a mouse. 

Although sometimes I wonder what I’m doing here.

As reported by Maura at Democracy for Virginia (duplicated here if the first link is down) and updated here, Delegate Cosgrove is introducing a bill, HB1677, that would make it a class 1 misdemeanor for a woman to fail to report to law enforcement within 12 hours a fetal death that occurs without medical attendance.  And because another Virginia law defines a fetal death as one that occurs regardless of the duration of the pregnancy, this would affect everyone who miscarried or even had a slightly delayed pregnancy.  I’m not going to try to describe just how stupid and callous this proposal is; instead, read the posting and discussion at Chez Miscarriage for much more eloquence than I could achieve.

Cosgrove is supposedly concerned about the stories you occasionally hear about women giving birth and leaving the bodies in dumpsters.  If it can’t be proven that the baby was born alive, the only crime the woman can be charged with is improper disposal of human remains.  But the proposed response is totally disproportionate to the goal.

It appears that Cosgrove introduced a similar bill in 2003, which died in committee.  (Oddly enough, the 2003 bill was explicitly limited to women who miscarry more than 24 weeks after their last period.)  My guess is that even in the crazy-house that is the Virginia House of Delegates, this bill doesn’t have much of a chance of going anywhere. 

But don’t leave it to chance.  Write or call Cosgrove and tell him what you think of this bill.  If you live in Virginia contact your legislators, and let them know what you think too.  Contact the members of the Committee for Courts of Justice and ask them not to let the bill get out of committee.

And pay attention to what else is happening in your statehouses.  It doesn’t get the attention of what’s happening in DC, but it can make just as much, or more, difference in your life.

Jen (who often comments here) asked me if I knew how the Boxing Day tsunami compares to other historical natural disasters in terms of the number of deaths.  Here’s the most comprehensive single list I was able to find, going as far back as an earthquake in 1201 AD.  Limiting it to the past 40 years or so, it looks like it falls third, behind only the 1970 cyclone that hit Bangladesh and the 1976 earthquake that hit China.  Wikipedia also has an entry on this, broken out by types of event.

For a different perspective, Nicholas Kristof points out in the New York Times that more people die every month of AIDS (240,000) and malaria (165,000) than died in the tsunami, and almost as many die of diarrhea (140,000).  But it’s hard to stay focused on unglamorous, persistent problems, and so kids die for lack of a few cents worth of oral rehydration salts, or bleach to purify their water.

I’d encourage everyone who is giving so generously to the victims of the tsunami to also consider giving unrestricted funds to an organization like CARE or Doctors without Borders to fight chronic disease and poverty. 

Moreover, a recent report from the UN Development Programme points out that most of the victims of "natural disasters" are also victims of poverty.  Poverty means that people live in places prone to flooding, earthquakes and mudslides, live in flimsier buildings, and so forth.  I’m not sure there’s any building code on earth that could have made much difference against the tsunami, but there’s a reason that similar size earthquakes kill tens of thousands of people in Iran, but only a few in California.

No, not the lottery, or the BoB awards, or the Koufax awards, or even Blogging for Books.  I won Jay’s Subtitle My Book Contest.  Except that doesn’t actually mean he’s going to use my recommendation for his subtitle (Adventures of a Reluctant Father) — he picked an entry at random. But hey, I WON.  And I get to read Jay’s book.

Happy Delurking Day!  I’d love to hear from all of my readers.