New Study Disses Day Care

Today, the New York Times reported (here) on a study that claims that young kids who are in day care for at least 10 hours a week for at least a year are "more disruptive" when they start school. And, apparently, this diruptiveness continues through 6th grade. (But then what? Everyone becomes equally disruptive? Or I guess the disruptiveness jusst becomes an equal-opportunity thing by that point.) In any case, I can't decide if the article itself is pointless--along with the study--or if it's just the study that's crap. This is how the NYT describes the new-found evidence of the day care/disruption connection:

The effect [of day care on behavior] was slight, and well within the normal range for healthy children, the researchers found. And as expected, parents’ guidance and their genes had by far the strongest influence on how children behaved.

So, what's the point of this study? And why report on it as if the findings mean anything? I may have a bit of a personal bias against the anti-day-care position, partially because it seems to go hand-in-hand with a discussion of stay-at-home vs. working moms. Um, hello? Haven't we decided that mothers are not the only people who are responsible for or capable of taking care of children? And maybe the problem is with how preschoolers are scoialized in general. Or the weird chemicals, hormones, antibiotics, and mutant genes in their food. Or the way they are expected to behave/are treated once they get to school. But it's probably just easier to blame it all on moms. 'Cause we know they don't care about kids anyway.

Hello again.

Hello, dear readers. I'm back! It's been a while since I posted here, but--in my defense--I do have two drafts of posts waiting to be born. I'm not going to post them now, though. One will eventually show up here and the other will probably just remain a reminder of time gone by. But I will tell you that my list of pet peeves includes the words, "tummy," "yummy," and "comfy." And now, in the spirit of newness and positive thinking, here are some things for which I am grateful:

• modern dentistry
• hippie food
  
• The Search for the Next [Pussycat] Doll
• karaoke with friends and/or strangers
• flash drives!

And there you have it.

Who are you rooting for to become the next Doll? I'm not totally sure. Probably Sisely. But I don't have as many strong feelings about the Dolls (except toward one contestant, but to say it would go against my positivity pledge). I do, however, have very strong feelings about Diana on America's Next Top Model. (I heart her! A lot.)

Blog for Choice

MNS told me that today (ok, technically yesterday, but I haven't gone to sleep yet so for me it's still today) is Blog for Choice Day and that bloggers for choice are encouraged to blog about why they're pro-choice.

So, here it is: I'm pro-choice because I believe that no one should be forced to give birth. I've never articulated my stance so succinctly or in that exact way before, but I think that that's it in a nutshell. At a reading for her co-edited book, Bitchfest, Lisa Jervis encouraged the audience to start calling the anti-choice movement the "forced childbirth movement;" and I liked the idea. I don't know if it's necessarily the best possible phrase out there, but I do find it helpful to move away from the notion of "choice" as what appears to be the only widely recognized way to articulate a "pro-choice" position. "Choice" is tough to define and harder to assure that everyone has. "Choice" also has a kind of flippant or mutable connotation that doesn't always suit abortion--"choice" as a broad concept, I think, is difficult to separate from the more ubiquitous and specific notion of "consumer choice" in the US. Abortion isn't merely about "choice" or even "rights," but about labor, health, opportunity, binary gender, notions of family . . . the list goes on. To frame the debate as an issue of "choice" may, strangely enough, move the discussion too far from the fundamental issue in the "abortion debates": who decides when and which women can or cannot give birth? But even now we're touching on forced sterilization, reproductive healthcare, organization of the workplace and the economy . . . again, the list goes on! So why not just parse it down to the bare bones problem: no one should be forced to give birth. Sounds right to me.

What does everyone else think?

Charlotte and Miranda choose their choices.

Total Overload

If you do nothing else today, go to Cute Overload. Watch the videos of the tiger cub and the scuba diving cat. You. Will. Die! Of cuteness!

Official Loser

Well, I have lost the Blog-a-Day Challenge. Yesterday was a kind of crazy and mixed-up day, and I just forgot to post something! But I guess that's how these things go. The good news, though, is that I won't have to write (and, more to the point, you won't have to read) things like "Who doesn't like Keanu Reeves?" and "I love coffee" just to have something posted for that day. My new challenge is to write more interesting things every time I post. Can I do it?

Coffee = Life

I love coffee. The taste, the smell, the buzz--all of it. So if a hippie holistic healer asked me to give it up, would I? Well, if all of my problems could be solved by simply skipping the coffee in the morning, I would consider it. But any less of a pay-back really doesn't seem all that enticing. And really--how can it be that bad?! It's so good!

I do wonder if these are just the words of an addict. Am I just taking the defensive, predictable stance by saying, "I don't have a problem! There's nothing wrong with this!"?* Maybe. But I think I can live with a caffeine addiction. I am pretty happy to allow myself that fault. Is that crazy? What do you think?

*That's some tricky punctuation but I don't have time to figure out if it's correct, so I'm just gonna say that it is.

Ugh.

Not that many things have happened today, but it still sucked. Part of the sucky-ness has been due to my thoughts about my life (e.g. that it sucks). I'm reading this book called It's a Wonderful Lie: 26 Truths about Life in Your Twenties, so that should give you an idea about where I'm coming from and where I'm about to go. The good thing about the book is that the worries and problems that the writers discuss certainly echo my own. So at least I don't feel like I'm totally crazy. But I can't really envision the happy endings (or at least the happy twists on the endings) that these women offer. Yes, it's true that I'm holding out hope for my thirties to mark the beginning of a new and better era, especially as my twenties come closer and closer to their end. ('Cause it can't get much worse than this, can it?) But I really doubt that I'll be so wittily appreciative once it's all said and done. Will I really feel so warmly nostalgic for the ways in which this decade of my life made me the "smart, sassy woman that I am today?" I doubt it--and not just because I don't think I would ever use the word "sassy" so seriously. I think it's more likely that, looking back, I'll write something like this: "The best part of my twenties was falling in love with all fifteen of my cats. But I really could have done that at any age."

[Note: There are a bunch of things that I like about the book, though. And one of the best ones is the name of a stuffed animal that's a mini daschund: Weenis! So good!]