MO Woman

Poor, Poor Barbie

I always thought I would never let my daughter own a Barbie doll. Barbies send off all sorts of wrong messages to children about ideal body image (beautiful woman= 5'7" tall, shiny long blond hair and long thin legs, teeny waist - clearly Barbie was never pregnant, and on and on).

But when our lovely elderly neighbor from down the hall, who my daughter so adored, bought her a Barbie doll, I just couldn't take it away. I'm not too worried about my daughter. When she was invited to her 6th "princess party" last year her response was "not ANOTHER princess party!" Also, she still loves to play with boys, and they even (at age 5 and 6) still love to play with her. I have relaxed a bit about my original Barbie ban, but if they were her favorite toy I would probably worry a bit more.

Well, Barbie is back in the news raising new concerns for parents. Judith Warner, author of Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, writes in today's NY Times (sorry you do need Times Select subscription) about a newly discovered phenomenon of "Barbie Abuse":

...Girls, aged 7 to 11, were expressing “violence and hatred” towards their Barbie dolls and acting on their emotions in the most barbarous ways — decapitating the dolls, pulling off their limbs and melting them in microwave ovens....

...American researchers have postulated that girls may be jealous of Barbie for being skinny or for seemingly “having it all.” Some believe that she connotes a frightening kind of adulthood at a time when girls are clinging still to childhood. But the British researchers, from the University of Bath’s department of psychology and school of management, found nothing of the sort.

What they discovered was, simply put, that a Barbie doll is just a doll. She’s a doll that girls are outgrowing at an earlier and earlier age. (Four, believe it or not, is now the optimal age of Barbie.) Barbie dolls also are cheap. Girls have a lot of them — and as a result, don’t consider them special toys.

Based on this research, Warner laments the fact that kids are growing up faster than ever before and asks, "what’s left of the years that can properly be called childhood?"

I fully agree with her concerns. But what also bothered me was the excessive materialism revealed in these studies. The wasteful image of girls destroying the toys they no longer play with is a sad one. What about encouraging girls to hand them down to a sister or cousin, or giving them to a child whose family can't afford Barbies?

 

Same Name, Change Name: Part II

Last time I wrote about the decision to keep or change one’s name upon marriage, I received a slew of fascinating comments, such as this one:

In Spain, people officially have two surnames, the first one being the father's and the second the mother's. So children never have exactly the same name as their parents. Thus, the daughter of Pedro Suárez Irureta and Ana Garmendia Rodríguez would be Isabel Suárez Garmendia.

Mother-in-Chief, another blogging mother has recently wrote about what prompted her to keep her name when she got married. She also directs us to The Barely Attentive Mother who decided to change her name all because her husband’s last name was available as a domain name, while her’s was not!

Some of you may have noticed that ever since I moved (in early August), I have been posting under the name Karen Miller Jackson, as opposed to Karen Miller. As I described in Part I, I have discovered that I don’t actually like having a different name from my kids. Yet, I did not want to burden them with a hyphenated last name (for the record my husband would have agreed to hyphenate). My sister-in-law and brother-in-law solved this problem by giving their three boys the father’s last name, and their daughter the mother’s last name.

When we moved to a new community, it seemed the most natural time to try out something different and see how it felt. I am making this decision after going by my “maiden” name for seven years, so it goes to show that you can always change your mind about these things. Some of my friends and family may feel that I have deserted them, but remember I am not dropping my name, just adding my husband’s.

Potty Training Prodigies

As if parents don't have enough to feel pressured about, the NY Times now tells us about some parents who are potty training their children within their first year:

A mother in Medford, Mass., Sarabeth Matilsky, said elimination communication helped strengthen her bond with her son, Ben, who began using a potty when he was about 10 weeks old and who was colicky as an infant.

As the article points out, you certainly save a lot of money on diapers!

My first reaction was, "are you insane??!!" But having calmed down a bit I wonder if this is just the beginning of yet another new parenting fad. While the norm in my mother's generation was to formula-feed and put babies down to sleep on their stomachs, today's wisdom tells us that breastfeeding is best, and babies should sleep only on their backs. Who knows about this potty training thing...

Ivy League Moms

Thanks to my friend Mick for pointing out an article in yesterday's NY Times about female Ivy League grads choosing to be at home moms once they have children. The article expresses disappointment over the thought that after Ivy League education and a short career in law or business a woman might choose to take some time off to raise her children.

The article comes across as quite black-and-white. The choices seem to be that either a woman devotes her life to her career or is super-mom. But there is so much imbetween! A woman can work part-time or can just take a break for a few years and later return to her former career choice or make a new one.

Laura Wexler, a Yale professor quoted in the article argues that, "women have been given full-time working career opportunities and encouragement with no social changes to support it." This is an important point. I would just add that workplaces need to also provide more serious part-time working opportunities for women who want to be around for their children but who also want to keep their careers moving (albeit more slowly) during the years before their children start school.

Video Games - Good for Kids?

Today's Ha'aretz has an article about Liel Leibovitz, a man who is about to finish his dissertation at Columbia University on whether or not video games can actually have good effects on children.

He seems to have approached his research in a somewhat biased way if you ask me (he has always loved video games). However, his and other academics claims that there are useful analytical skills attained through playing video games are worth reading about.

The article mentions that one reason video games would be harmful is because of the high levels of violence associated with many of them, but it does not ellaborate much on this "other side" of the issue.

As my children are not quite near video game-obsessed-age I don't have clear opinions on this issue, so I would be happy to hear about other people's personal experiences/ views.

Women and Hamotzi

I am sorry my writing has become so sporadic. I am a little preoccupied at the moment since we are in the midst of a major move (I will hopefully write more about that soon!)

Because we are moving, we are hosting a small kiddush this Shabbat. I told my five year-old daughter about the kiddush this morning, knowing how excited she would be (there will be cholent there and she loves cholent). She was in fact very excited and then said, "And I want me and Ima to make hamotzi."

Actually, there won't be bread at the kiddush so no one will be making hamotzi. But this interchange reinforced for me the educational impact of small things we do in our homes. Children tend to model their parents' behavior, for the good or the bad. My daughter has seen me make hamotzi at our Shabbat table for as long as she can remember. I feel proud that now she is growing up imagining herself doing the same thing.

For background reading on the topic of women making hamotzi, visit the JOFA website.

Laughs for Moms

Debbie Farmer composed the Mommy's Bill of Rights in honor of July 4th this year (via Mom in the Mirror). She writes:

I decided the Constitution, a model for human rights and democracy, gives little hope to mothers who don't have time to pursue life or liberty, and whose happiness is stopping at a red light to finish brushing their teeth in the rear view mirror. Someone has to uphold the rights of a group of people whose arms are too tired by the end of the day to hold anything else up.

Lessons from JetBlue

A solution may have been found for parents who want to work but also want to be at home with their children. Thomas Friedman discusses "homesourcing," a term he learned from David Neeleman, founder and CEO of JetBlue Airways, in his new book:

JetBlue now has four hundred reservation agents... working at home in the Salt Lake City area, taking reservations - in between babysitting, exercising, writing novels and cooking dinner...

Neelman has a personal reason for wanting to do this. He is a Mormon and believes that society will be better off if more mothers are able to stay at home with their young children but are given a chance to be wage-earners at the same time. So he based his home reservations system in Salt Lake City, where the vast majority of the women are Mormons and many are stay-at-home mothers. Home reservationists work twenty-five hours a week and have to come into the JetBlue regional office in Salt Lake City for four hours a month to learn new skills and be brought up to date on what is going on inside the company.

From Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century,p. 37.

This is a great suggestion for women who want to be stay-at-home moms, but who also want to earn a salary. However, there still need to be more converations in the workplace about women and men who want to have meaningful careers (which require them to work outside the home) but who also want to balance that with having and actively raising children.

Be the Best (Parent) You Can Be

Have you ever had a day when you felt you were a bad mother? I had one of those days today. But I brightened up when I read this by Chez Miscarriage.

If you have ever felt ambivalent about your breastfeeding choices, or wonder whether you spend enough (or too much?) time with your children, or if you were the recipient of too much conflicting and unwanted advice on how to be a good parent - you will find this amusing.

MO Woman's Blog-in-Review

Here are some recent posts from some great blogs which might interest MO Woman readers:

1. Elms In the Yard has an interesting blog (including photos) on the mechitza set-up in the Jerusalem hospital Hadassah Ein Kerem.

2. Orthomom has a post on Drive-By Jewish Mothering, in which she collects anecdotes about other people telling you how to mother.

3. There is an ongoing discussion reviewing the recent Women's Health and Halacha day in Woodmere, NY which can be found on the Mayim Rabim and In the Barren Season blogs.