Nurturing Nature

A group of scientists at the University of Iowa have made a huge announcement: it isn’t nature or nurture, it is both or neither.  My reaction: a big, fat, slightly unenthusiastic woo hoo.

While it would be nice and, in some ways, reassuring to have a clear sense of what behaviors and skills are due to nature and which are due to nurture, I have always wondered how anyone who has seen kids learning about and exploring the world could think it was as simple as one or the other.

While at first glance this may seem like a scary thing to parents- it becomes harder to blame that picky eater on your husband’s family- I think it is actually kind of a relief.  It means that we are involved in their development and growth, but that it also isn’t all on us.  We don’t have to hover all the time to make sure the environment is just perfect, but we also get to play an active role.

So I, for one, would like to thank the researchers at the University of Iowa for stating the obvious and helping to try to refocus important child development research towards a new and more complex approach.

I’m not hitting on you, I swear!

So, today, in my quest to befriend a stay-at-home dad I introduced myself to a dad at the playground with his one-year-old daughter.  I am pretty confident that he is a stay-at-home dad because I have seen him there before and overheard him making plans with other stay-at-home dads (potential jackpot!).  But all did not go as planned…

It started out really well.  He complimented my son on his Grateful Dead onesie.  I then said hello to his daughter.  We then exchanged the normal, requisite (dare I say tedious) pleasantries: age of kids, names of kids. And that is when it got awkward.  I introduced myself, “I’m J, by the way.”  He introduced himself.  And then, silence.  I didn’t know what to say. I suddenly felt totally constrained by lame-ass insecurities.  I didn’t want to seem too eager and I definitely I didn’t want it to seem like I was hitting on him.  So I just went quiet.

After a couple of minutes I asked if he lived nearby (another normal playground question).  He answered.  We each said one sentence about how great the playground was.  And, done.  Then he wandered off, and I wandered off.  And we avoided one another for the rest of the hour or so we were both at the playground.  Lame and awkward.

I did have a nice conversation with another mom, though.  Same questions to start, but then it just happened.  Was it because there weren’t the same stereotypical gender dynamics to worry about?  Was it because we just clicked better? Was it because I was more relaxed?

I still want this to happen and I will try again.  But somehow I feel like I need to adjust my approach so that it doesn’t seem like I am desperate- don’t want them to smell blood in the water… Suggestions? Words of advice? Tales of your own humiliations?

You call those cookies?!

The lack of momentum on the professional front has definitely getting to me, as has the weather, so when the sun came out yesterday I decided that it was time to change my outlook and focus on what I have in front of me, rather than what I am missing.  

So despite a horribly failed nap in the morning and a rather cranky baby, I was determined to have a good and productive day.  We met up with a friend and her baby for lunch, which was wonderful, and then headed home to try for a more successful afternoon nap.  Once M went down I kicked into high gear- catching up on a bunch of emails, straightening up the house, getting a bunch of summer plans moving, and baking.  I was so proud of my two batches of scones that I decided I had time to make chocolate chip cookies, too.  And that is when things went terribly wrong. Half-way through making the batter the baby woke up and started crying and I tossed everything into the Cuisinart, scooped the batter out quickly onto the cookie sheet in little rounds, and ran up to get M.  When I came down to check on the cookies this is what I found:

For a moment I thought, “who are you kidding? You can’t do this stay-at-home mom thing.  You can’t do the career thing. What kind of mom/woman are you?”  And then I realized I was being a self-pitying idiot.  I may not have mastered the multi-tasking thing yet but at least I get points for trying, right?

Of Mice and Women

 

Image credit: http://www.thekidswindow.co.uk

The news that researchers in China have found a way to encourage the reproductive systems of female mice to continue to generate new eggs past their normal fertility age is, I grant you, an interesting new twist in fertility for women, but am I the only one who also finds it disturbing?

 

Now as someone who is adamantly pro-choice and has also benefitted from fertility research I absolutely believe that a woman has the right to all reproductive choices and I am not saying this option shouldn’t exist, but I have to say… are we serious?!  I mean, there are days when my almost-toddler completely flattens me and I am only 30.  I can’t imagine having a toddler at 55 or 60, let alone a 12-year-old at 67 or 72!  I guess I just feel like maybe there is a reason that our bodies go into menopause…

All the Cool Kids Are Doing It…

In the interest of total honesty I should say that while I am very social and love spending time with friends and peers, I am not a joiner.  I’m not big on book clubs, I’m not one to have a big group of girlfriends that all go out together, and I always find a reason to avoid signing up for a whole session of a class- opting instead to be the drop-in student who goes to the back of the room.  So my visceral reaction to the profile of The Bowery Babes, an elite and exclusive mommy’s group in NYC is probably not all that surprising, and yet…

The idea of a mommy’s group that selects its participants based on an exchange of letters which will help to determine whether an applicant’s intentions are “pure” makes me crazy.  Motherhood, especially early motherhood, is an incredibly lonely time.  Your world has been turned on its head and all of your priorities and lifestyle choices are called into question.  At a time like that, why on earth would other mothers be exclusive in their decision about whether or not to let you into their bougie, Bloomingdales-visiting group?!  That doesn’t sounds more like the move of a high school diva than a “connector of souls” to me.

Oh, She’s Just Hormonal

Research like this new study that supposedly shows that women are more impulsive in the 10 days leading up to their period makes me livid.  Not only is the science, with such a small sample size (443) and such limited questions, just pathetic, but it is also using the cover of research to perpetuate myths and assumptions that are completely off the mark. 

We all have days of impulsivity- it is part of what makes us human.  How many times have we heard the stereotypical equivalent story of guys going out and buying some ridiculous new TV or game system?  No one is calling them hormonal.  It is just part of being a person- sometimes you have to make bad decisions, you have to let off steam, and, yes, sometimes you are going to regret those decisions.

It reminds me of bullshit “science” that told us that certain races were smarter than others and that women were well-suited for certain jobs.  We don’t need this kind of small-mindedness out there, especially from researchers. 

But, who knows, maybe I’m just hormonal…

Advice, Schmadvice

Maybe I have become overly sensitive in my pent-up, stay-at-home state, but I have started noticing these absolutely obnoxious “news” stories that show up a couple times a week on the log out page of my Yahoo account.  They are relationship advice stories like “Ten signs you are emotionally cheating” or “The real reasons men cheat” or “How to know if he is the one” or “How to keep the man you love.” 

There are a number of things that really bother me about them.  It drives me crazy that they are almost exclusively geared towards women who, in case you missed the memo, are desperate for love and incapable of keeping it if they have found it.  It also irks me to no end that they seemed to be playing on these antiquated and gendered notions of relationships- that it is up to the woman to keep her man happy, shit like that.  And finally, the advice could not be stupider.  Just in case you were wondering, one sign that you have probably crossed the line into an emotional affair with your guy friend is when you “touch your male friend in “legal” ways, like picking lint off his blazer.”

And then I realized something even more upsetting: these articles are there because people like them and read them.  People are eating this crap up.  Why is that?  Why do we think that we are going to find the answer to all of our problems in an article on a generalist website or within the pages of Cosmo or Jane or Men’s Health?  Is it because it is easy and requires no effort to seek it out?  Is it because they are approachable?  Or is it because they are playing on our unrealized fears and creating problems where they likely isn’t one?  I don’t know.  But in the meantime, I am going to feel perfectly fine picking lint off of my guy friends’ shirts and I may even give them a *gasp* hug.

Importance of Independence

When I was a tween/young adolescent we moved from the east coast to Boulder.   In the first week I headed down to the pedestrian mall to meet up with an old friend who happened to be in town.  We hung out for a while and then, when it was time to go home, I decided to walk.  Boulder is on a grid system with the mountains to the west so I figured that it would be easy to find my way home.  Little did I know, the street I wanted, 19th St., disappeared for a couple of blocks and then picked up again.  Needless to say, I got lost and ended calling my parents from a 7-11 to get picked up.  It was embarrassing, sure, but in the end it turned out that I was only a couple of blocks from home and I had learned a lot more about my new hometown. 

In my tweens going to the movies as a group, trick-or-treating without parents, walking to get pizza at the local pizza place with my buddies, excursions to the corner store to get candy with my brother were all things that I loved and are some of my best memories from those awkward-ass years.  It was how I began to feel more independent and confident about my place in the world.

That is why I was so disheartned by this post on Free-Range Kids yesterday.  Apparently a mother let her 10-year-old son walk to soccer practice on his own got in trouble with the police.  The field was only 1/3 of a mile away, he had her cell-phone just in case, he knew the way like the back of his hand, and she was going to be at the field 15 minutes after he was to arrive.  Her son did not make it 3 blocks before a cop car stopped him to find out what was wrong.  Apparently, people had been calling 911 because they saw a child walking alone.

How are our kids going to develop that ever important sense of independence and confidence in their abilities to navigate the world if we parents are constantly getting in the way?  This is true of 10-year-olds who want to walk to soccer practice and of 10-month-olds who want to crawl on the grass.  I know it is scary when we hear all the stories of kidnappings and sexual assaults of children.  But the truth is that most of those horrible things are perpetrated by people the kids know and not by strangers.

In some ways it isn’t surprising that our generation is so crazy about protecting our kids.  We were the tikes who were bombarded with messages about not talking to strangers who might be kidnappers (I’m still scared of vans), we had our finger-prints taken so we could be tracked down if we were to disappear, and we learned all about “good touch, bad touch.”  And let’s not even get started on all of the scary episodes on our favorite TV shows- Diff’rent Strokes, Punky Brewster, etc., etc.

But the truth is, we still were allowed to play in the park until dark, we were still allowed to walk to the corner store, we still took buses on our own.  And, if we want our kids to be capable and responsible adolescents and young adults, we are going to have to let our kids do those things too.

What about Mama?

So we think that today my 10-month-old son said “Pai” (what his father will be called).  And, more importantly, he said it in such a way as to lead us to believe that he was saying it to and about my husband.  I am very excited both because it is exciting for my son to have his second word (the first was, of course, “Kitty”)  and because it is awesome to see him recognizing his dad like that.  But it also stings just a tad.  Of course I know he loves me and needs me, etc., etc.  But it does leave one feeling a bit peripheral, especially as I just finished the weaning process… True, the I get extra glass of wine here and there is really, really nice but where’s the “Mama”???

Ah, well.  I guess I will just add it to my repertoire of things to guilt-trip him about when he is being a pain-in-the-ass teenager…

Gobs of Goop

Poor Gwyneth Paltrow.  Both she and her Goop have really been getting panned recently.  It must be hard to be so “fortunate” and to not be taken seriously as a lifestyle guru.  

All sarcasm aside, though, I actually find the attacks to be a bit much. The thing is, while I actually agree with much of the criticism and find the site’s content to be close to intolerable (her description of her expression of emotions to her children makes me cringe for poor Apple and Moses!), I also find the attacks to be a bit disingenuous.  The truth is, she is just doing what many of us bloggers are doing- albeit without the comments.  I mean, really, what is the difference between her practice in narcissism and my own (or of that a crafting blog or a parenting blog or an exercise blog) other than a whole lot of money to make it look pretty and professional and insane connections?

Sure, she has a whole host of people writing for her and all kinds of “experts” sharing their “wisdom,” but it is basically a site chock-full of thoughts and suggestions on fashion, cooking, travel, parenting.  Perhaps what makes people unhappy and uncomfortable is that her narcissism is so blatant and reminds us that we are all guilty of the same thing- believing that we have something special or some gift that needs to be shared.

In any case, I say if we are going to do our thing then we have to let her do hers. Just cause it is out there doesn’t mean we need to follow her detoxing regimen…