Strollerderby : college

Katie Roiphe Doesn't Like You Or Your Kids

Brett Singer — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 03:00:00 GMT

If you use a photo of your child on your Facebook profile, Katie Roiphe thinks you are not a good woman.

(For some background on who Katie Roiphe is, read this Wikipedia page. One of her claims to fame is a book called "The Morning After" in which she argues that women are partially to blame in cases of date rape. She is now a professor at NYU and a respected writer.)

I usually hate arguing with academics. One reason is that they know how to do it better than I do, because that's a big part of their lives. I have but one degree, and it isn't from an Ivy League school. I've never taken a Philosophy class. I can spell Socrates but couldn't tell you much about the Socratic method.

So taking on a respected writer like Katie Roiphe is a bit daunting. I don't have the level of education that she has. I'm not a professor at NYU. (Although I did once guest-lecture at Yale. Take that!) For that matter, I'm not a woman, and Roiphe's article is about feminism. So why did this article at DoubleX.com get me so fired up?

One reason is because I firmly believe that when it comes to feminism, a lot of women attack their own gender in the name of defending them. That's what I see in Roiphe's article, which is titled "Get Your Kid Off Your Facebook Page" and asks "Why do women hide behind their children?" Roiphe seems to think that Facebook is an incredibly important part of a woman's personal identity, and that if a woman uses a photo of her children instead of herself, she is "hiding".

There are so many things about the piece that rub me the wrong way. I think I could literally go over it line by line, like The Iliad, and find something annoying every couple of sentences. Here are a few thoughts; let me know what you think.

Roiphe has a habit of putting herself next to great and important writers, such as Edith Wharton (in a 2007 New Yorker article), and this time Betty Friedan. I have no idea what Ms. Friedan would say about women putting photos of their kids on their Facebook pages. But I think there's a chance that she would say that it was far more important to worry about the gap between men's and women's wages. Or, to take an extreme example, women in third-world countries being raped. It's even possible that Ms. Friedan wouldn't give a hoot about Facebook.

Roiphe is also inconsistent. In the DoubleX piece she all but attacks women who have the nerve to talk about their children at a party. But in a 2007 New York Magazine article about her divorce, she writes the following about her daughter:
"Others will be quick to point out—others have been quick to point out—that this kind of closeness is unhealthy, that she and I are too connected. And to that I offer only that if you take out the unhealthy closeness, the pathological intimacies, you will have taken out many of life’s wilder joys."

So which is it? Are we not allowed to talk about our children? Are you the only one who can?

Roiphe very arrogantly writes: "The mystery here is that the woman with the baby on her Facebook page has surely read "The Feminine Mystique" in college, and "The Second Sex", and "The Beauty Myth". She is no stranger to the smart talk of whatever wave of feminism we are on, and yet this style of effacement, this voluntary loss of self, comes naturally to her. Here is my pretty family, she seems to be saying, I don’t matter anymore."

Or maybe she doesn't define herself the way that you do. Is it possible for a woman to actually make a choice to not read these books, or to read them and not think they are as important as you seem to? Or perhaps -- perish the thought -- she went to a community college! Or even -- I hope you're sitting down -- she didn't go to college at all. Does that make her less of a woman?

Roiphe's idea of a "brilliant, accomplished woman" is very specific -- a woman "who wrote her senior thesis in college on Proust, who used to stay out drinking till five in the morning in her twenties." Wow. Someone who wrote a college paper? Someone who used to drink a lot? That's very impressive. Much more impressive than raising a child.

And that's not all:
"Many of these women work. Many of them are in book clubs. Many of them are involved in causes. But this is how they choose to represent themselves."

First of all -- book clubs? Really? Isn't that a huge stereotype? Why not add "many of them watch 'Oprah' and read romance novels?" Frankly, if a woman's identity were wrapped up in her book club, I would think that was much worse than being consumed by her child. And what if they do work? Or if they don't? How does that factor in to the equation? Maybe for some women, Facebook isn't about work. (That's what LinkedIn is for. Ha ha.) Maybe they use the site specifically to show off their children. It doesn't mean that they are "hiding behind" them. The idea that anyone's identity is based exclusively on what photo they post on a social networking site is asinine.

Again, I'm no academic. But I see a huge flaw in Roiphe's argument. Focusing exclusively on women who use their kids' pics on Facebook profiles allows her to make a point about feminism. But fathers do the same thing. What then? Did they read "Iron John" and participate in drum circles in the early 90's, but are now "hiding behind their children"?

If Roiphe wanted to talk about parents who choose to create their identities around their children, that would be one thing. Instead she picks a trendy topic -- Facebook -- and incorporates it into what she usually talks about, which is feminism. Bully for her. Emphasis on the word "bully" because that's what she's doing to the women she's talking to.

To sum up: In general, Roiphe seems to have a very immature view of the world (she calls herself "Katie" for Pete's sake) and feminism in general. You don't have to be an Ivy League professor to know that there are many different kinds of women, and that they express themselves in different ways. It's not about what you did in college, or how often you read Proust, or how much you used to drink. And it certainly isn't about your Facebook page.

So. What do you think?

Source: DoubleX.com

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Your Kid's Identity Is at Risk

JeanneSager — Tue, 19 May 2009 16:01:00 GMT

Identity theft may be the hot topic at many a dinner party, but it might be time to start talking social security numbers on the playground.

Because hackers have turned their eyes toward our kids, making them the number one target of identity theft.

According to a recent article in Hitched, kids identities are the fastest growing sector for theft, and because kids aren't generally USING their own identities (not in the sense of a credit identity anyway), it can go unnoticed for years.

Just think, when was the last time you had to haul out your child's social security number for anything? Besides our yearly tax filing, I can count on one hand the number of times I've used it since she was born, and each time I've had to pull out the card to check the digits. Where we as parents can keep close tabs on our credit card bills to monitor any odd spending, most kids don't have bills coming to the house. Even kids' savings accounts are less likely to be monitored by adults - chiefly because we don't use them for anything other than holding money, which we'll check in oh, about eighteen years when the first tuition bill arrives.

No wonder the FTC has found half a million child identities are stolen every year, a number they expect to rise. According to the Identity Theft Resource Center, more than half of those children whose identities were corrupted were under the age of six. Late last year, a study from Javelin Strategy and Research estimated one in twenty kids overall have been victimized. They've rung up an average of $12,000 in wrongly assigned debt.

Foster kids are a major target too. Shuttled in and out of homes, their most secret information is an open book shared with hundreds of adults, and not always the most trustworthy types. They're also more likely to come out of homes where parents have fallen on hard times, parents who used their identity with the best of intentions. A mom who couldn't get an electric company to allow her to open an account in her name, for example, uses her child's name and social security number to try to keep lights on for the family. But when she can't get a job and fails to pay the bills, the black marks grow on the child's credit.

With the grim economic picture, that's a factor that's spreading to more and more homes. The economy is no doubt having an affect on the numbers of desperate people looking for a clean slate.

Makes you want to run out and order your child's credit report, doesn't it? You should. Hitched has a list of other tips to protect your kids here. Will you be making some changes?

Image: Dr Bulldog

Can Facebook Cut the Apron Strings?

JeanneSager — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:28:00 GMT

While we adults are caught up in catching up on our past on Facebook, there's a possibility our kids are going to miss out on one of the great joys of late teenagehood. Escaping.

An interesting piece by Peggy Orenstein in the New York Times this week ponders whether kids will be able "to get busy with the embarrassing, exciting, muddy, wonderful work of creating an adult identity" with four hundred of their old high school buddies watching over a T-1 line.

She's got a point. While I kept up with several of my high school friends when I left for college, it was mostly via e-mail and AOL's Instant Messenger, maybe the sporadic phone call. Although more technologically advanced than Orenstein (who admits she grew up in the "postage stamp" age of college communication), the advantages to all these forms of communication were clear - I could start . . . and stop . . . them at my will.

Facebook is non-stop action. Change your relationship status, and everyone knows . . . now (and trust me, those shockwaves can resonate - ask the cousin who accidentally erased her husband when she was trying to update her favorite books list.). As long as they're your "friend," anyone can and will see - and can and will comment.

Orenstein posits kids will remain tethered to home much longer via technological apron strings, tied to the kids they were forced to spend time with in high school and might otherwise naturally distance themselves from come college. Except, thanks to Facebook (and to be fair, Myspace), now they're tied . . . for good.

I think she might be crediting Facebook with a little more power than is warranted, however. Surveys have found that even users with a friends list in the thousands traditionally only interact with a solid core of "friends." I'd hazard a guess that's the same core today's kids will take to college with them - like the high school friends we kept contact with back in the day. She's also overestimating kids' fidelity. The teenagers I know "friend" and "un-friend" one another with the speed of an eyeroll, to an extent I doubt will change much in the early days of college.

The truth is that old saying, "you can never go home again," will never die. Because leaving your parents' house, even if your friends follow, changes you. Often for the good, sometimes for the bad. But kids grow up - even kids with a Facebook.

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Affordable Birth Control: No Longer a Thing of the Past

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 20:30:00 GMT

This week, Obama signed into law a new bill that has restored the old commonsense practice of allowing community clinics and college health centers to sell birth control at lower prices. After the passage of the 2005 Deficit Reduction Act—which made it all but impossible for pharmaceutical companies to sell birth control to clinics at a discount—the price of contraception shot up as much as 10 times a month.

A University of Nevada graduate who fought for the new legislation, known as the Affordable Birth Control Act, wrote in a blog post, "I recall having to decide between paying for groceries or for birth control - decisions no male athlete would ever have to make." As a competitive swimmer, the young woman depended on the pill not only to prevent unplanned pregnancies, but also to regulate her cycle.

Allowing college students and uninsured women access to family planning services simply makes sense. Not only does it save taxpayers money and drastically reduce the number of abortions, but it also gives all women a better chance of becoming happy and responsible members of society.

Photo: Jezebel

Lock in Your Kid's College Price NOW

JeanneSager — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:01:00 GMT

If Republican lawmakers in New York have their way, parents of kids as young as, well, as young as possible, could lock in now the price they'll pay eighteen years down the road for college tuition.

The twist? Your kid will have to attend a state or city school.

State lawmakers have proposed a pre-pay tuition program, which will allow parents with kids fourteen and younger to buy "credits," at today's tuition rate that will be redeemable when their kids go to college.

It's tempting. Tuition is ever-increasing. According to the most recent estimates from the College Board, families paid on average from $108 to $1,398 more for the 2008-09 school year tuition and fees than they did for 2007-08. They even have a handy dandy tuition cost projector on their site to really freak you out.

But my kid is three. I have no idea if she'll want to attend a State University of New York school in fifteen years. Who says she'll even want to stay IN the State of New York? What if she goes private? Or follows my husband's footsteps and attends college online? It seems a little unfair to lock her in to an institution she won't necessarily be happy attending for the sake of a little savings. True, the plan says families would get a full refund, but imagine the guilt trips on these kids: "Well, I saved all this money, and I had it all tied up in the state for fourteen years when I could have had it in an interest-bearing account, and now look what you went and did? So ungrateful . . ."

OK, a lot of savings. But that's what they make scholarships for (as my colleague Brett pointed out, Harvard is offering full rides to smart kids - some of them anyway). And loans - they worked for our president, why can't they work for our kids? Or maybe - and I'm just spit-balling here - the state lawmakers could instead see fit to work on shaving the cost of tuition so it can be affordable for every family and level the playing field for the poor and middle class families?

Image: SayEducate

Fun Stuff To Do When The Kids Get Older

Brett Singer — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 23:30:00 GMT

Pictured here are a mother and her son. What's happening in this photo? Have they just received horrible news about a family member? Are they watching Joaquin Phoenix's Letterman interview, or Hugh Jackman's opening number at the Oscars? Or is it something far more sinister?

Give up? They're just trying to figure out college financial aid forms. Something to look forward to when the kids grow up.

I must admit that I did not at all appreciate what my mother had to deal with financially when I went to college. Unless you have a dump truck full of money lying around, it's not that easy to just write a check and forget about it. With college costs going up and up and up, and our savings going down down down, filling out those forms is something that we all might have to do when the time comes.

Source: NY Times

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Smackdown: I Don’t Care If My Daughter Has Sex as a Teen

Miriam Axel-Lute — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:01:00 GMT

Progressive, feminist, supposedly sex-positive parents are, of course, pretty well united against the absurd excesses of abstinence-only education and the religious no-sex-until-marriage frenzy.

What continues to amaze me though, is how little the positions they do take really vary from the underlying values of the abstinence worshippers.

As a parent, I keep running into a nudge, nudge, wink, wink understanding that even though we know it’s not good to base policy on it, of course really we all want to put off our daughters’ sexual awakenings as long as possible (or at least until they’re out of the house). There are jokes about chastity belts and not letting boyfriends come over until age 30. Every once and a while I feel the urge to get out a calendar and check the year.

I confess that I don’t get it. Not a smidgen. (And neither, for the record, does her father.) I don’t think this is just a matter of my having a defective freak-out gene. I really think that this attitude is not in our daughters’ best interests.

Concerned and thoughtful parents like my colleague Shannon, argue that it’s not really about the squick factor. They think it’s important for their daughters to put off the confusion and emotional drama of sexual relationships in order to get solid in forming their own identities, to make sure that they don’t get distracted by serving other’s needs first.

It sounds good at first, but I have to disagree. It’s not sex that hampers girls’ development, sense of self, or progress toward a career. It’s negative, hysterical, sexist attitudes about sex. (And the unintended pregnancies, abusive relationships, etc. that follow.)

The self-esteem argument is really the religious right’s argument minus the God and marriage specifics. It says this: “Sex is such a god-awful big deal that it will necessarily consume you when it happens and so you must wait for some future time at which you will miraculously be able to handle it.”

I don’t buy it. Sex is a powerful force, sure, but we have a fair amount of control over how much power we really give it. Making it something dangerous to your very identity gives it just as much power as making it central to your very identity.

I think this attitude is partly to blame for teens continuing to mistake sex for love. It also still places far too much emphasis on the importance of the “first time,” leaving girls (and women) feeling attached to first lovers who don’t deserve a third glance (or feeling like failures for choosing a less-than-perfect first lover).

In its usual gender-specific form, this attitude also perpetuates the idea that girls can’t really want sex for their own reasons, that they must be succumbing to the media hype and trying to please someone else and they will automatically lose their sense of self in a sexual relationship.

(Yes, clearly, far too many girls are getting pushed into sex they don’t want. But telling them they should never say yes does not help teach them when/how to say no.)

Of course I also have to wonder why, if people think sex is such an overwhelming cognitive thing to get started at, the conclusion they draw from that is that it’s a good idea to put it off until kids leave the nest and are distanced from familial support systems and previous friends, have easier access to alcohol, are first learning to live on their own, and are facing academic and/or job pressure. Or, for that matter, until they are 30, feeling their biological clocks and suffering pressure (internal and external) to find “the one” and settle down.

Obviously I wouldn’t argue that everyone ought to start having sex in high school. “Ready” is a super complex and individual cocktail (and takes two). Not everyone over 18 or 20 is ready. Not everyone younger isn’t. But high-school does have some potential advantages: financial security, parental backup if needed, and some extra time to be processing, daydreaming (or angstfully writing in a journal). That could all actually form a safer place to experiment than newly adrift in the “real world.”

Of course we all use our own experience as a touchstone. I starting “fooling around” at 15 and having sex at 17 with someone trustworthy I’d been dating for many months and who served, as good friends and partners do, to help me learn more about myself as well as how to have a relationship. I made out with a jerk or two in there first and lived to tell the tale with my self-esteem intact. In fact, those early experiences gave me a very clear and relatively safe tutorial in the difference between attraction and love, flirtation and friendship, passion and trust that has served me well.

If my daughter has the chance to do the same—armed with the facts to protect herself and the solid knowledge that her worth doesn’t depend on her choosing one way or the other—it won’t bother me in the slightest.

Photo by Made Underground, via Flickr.

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Forget Smarts: Will Your Toddler Have The Bucks For College?

Kate Tuttle — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 20:02:00 GMT

Start saving now (only, whoops!, maybe not in the stock market), because by the time your toddler is ready for college, it's quite likely to be far, far out of the average family's price range. According to a new report released this week, costs for college have increased 439% from 1982 to 2007 (family incomes rose 147% in the same period; neither figure is adjusted for inflation).

The report, put out by National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, is titled “Measuring Up 2008,” and it calculates the average net college costs against the average net income of families. It reports that in 2007 the net cost of a four-year public university took up 28% of the median family income, while the same family could drop 76% of its income sending a kid to a private school -- and that's with financial aid factored in.

Think the tuition bill won't affect you directly, because you'll use loans and grants? Think again, says the New York Times article:

Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade, and students from lower-income families, on average, get smaller grants from the colleges they attend than students from more affluent families.

Luckily, the younger your child is, the more time you have to save -- on the other hand, the more time there is for tuitions to continue to skyrocket. So what's a parent to do: save? invest? pray? The article offers no advice or easy answers, but for now the only reasonable course seems to be some combination of all three. And cross your fingers that junior shows some extraordinary talents that can be leveraged for scholarships.

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Photo: Nina Leen, 1942, for Life Magazine

Health Scam: Crisis Pregnancy Centers

Kate Tuttle — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 20:55:00 GMT

They've been around for ages, but they've gotten slicker at marketing themselves, and now they have college health services pimping for them as well. Calling themselves "crisis pregnancy" or "pregnancy resource" centers, they are sham clinics that pretend to offer comprehensive reproductive health services, but really exist only to try to shame and scare women out of having abortions. And far from being protected from them, women in college are being sent to them by a source they ought to be able to trust: their university health services centers.

According to a new study from the Feminist Majority Foundation (and reported online by Ms. magazine's newswire), nearly half of the university and college health centers surveyed routinely referred college women to these centers, rather than to reputable clinics or hospitals. Once there, women facing unexpected (and often unwanted) pregnancies find this kind of treatment:

...many of these centers attempt to coerce and intimidate women out of considering abortion as an option, and prevent women from receiving neutral and comprehensive medical advice. They are typically run by anti-abortion volunteers who are not licensed medical professionals. Crisis pregnancy centers also often spread false information, such as the disproved and discredited claims that abortions increase the risk of breast cancer and frequently cause mental trauma.

The study looked at nearly 400 college health services, which together serve around 34% of the nation's student population.

Even creepier, these centers are now reaching out to students directly on Facebook and MySpace, advertising their fake services and advocating for inclusion on referral lists given by colleges. Funny how these groups, which claim to be protecting the innocent unborn, have no problem at all deceiving and preying upon the most innocent and naive among those of us who have already been born.

A Third of Parents No Longer Saving for College

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 17:30:00 GMT

One of the more alarming aspects of the financial crisis is its potential effect on the next generation of American workers. If young people can’t afford quality higher education, what will happen to the educated workforce? A new survey has found that more than a third of American parents have substantially decreased their college savings or have stopped saving for college altogether.

According to the Boston Globe, parents’ expectations about how to pay for college given these reduced investments breaks down like this: “55 percent of parents will be expecting their children to work part time while in college, 44 percent plan to have their children live at home while commuting to college, 37 percent will be encouraging their children to attend a less expensive public school and 23 percent will ask their children to graduate in fewer semesters.” Although these are all reasonable options, they sound like a recipe for some pretty stressed families.

Also, 35 percent of parents now expect to retire later than they had previously planned in order to pay for college. This is a scary plan, not only because working into one's 70s is hardly part of the American dream, but also because it means banking on two unknowns: that one's health and one's job will be both in stellar shape many years from now.

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Photo: mspmag.com

Social Networking, the Next Hurdle to Getting Them Into College?

JeanneSager — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:58:00 GMT

As if getting them into the right pre-school, making sure they tie their shoes on time, and packing their adolescent days with just the right balance of after-school activities and opportunities to "give back" wasn't enough to stress about for the next 18 years. If you want to get your kids into a good college, you might want to make sure they keep those Myspace pages private.

One in 10 college admissions offers surveyed by Kaplan Test Prep admitted they browse prospective students' social networking profiles before deciding whether to toss an application into the "yes" pile or toss it out the door. Although my 3-year-old won't be posting online anytime soon, what's limited to a few hundred sites right now will be virtual minefield for the Google-savvy admissions staff 15 years down the line. And I don't see myself keeping her off-line.

Unlike parents I've heard who have actually set up systems on the family computer to log every keystroke their child makes (essentially allowing them carte blanche to their child's instant messages, Myspace blogs, e-mails and even their random Google searches), I'm crossing my fingers that the answer to keeping her safe will be in arming with her with the right information. Want to go online? Don't tell anyone anything. Want a Myspace page? Keep it private.

That's what confuses me about the chief Myspace complainers. They're logging on, searching, and finding their kids' Myspace pages - left wide open to everyone, including snooping college administrators. Instead of telling their kids' to button up, they're shutting down their entire world. And what do we all remember from our high school days was the best way to for our parents to get us to do something? Tell us we couldn't. Myspace, Facebook and the like have become kids' alternative to the good old-fashioned pen and a journal. In a world where they spend the day with fingers glued to a Crackberry or a laptop, it's no wonder. And it's just as cathartic.

But for a college admissions officer who doesn't know your kid, who's looking for any reason to throw one more application in the rejection pile to satisfy the college's limited availability, a social networking page written by a silly kid, a goofy kid, isn't going to come off as someone being silly or goofy or just getting things off their chest. In fact, 38 percent of officers said a page view put a child's application firmly in the rejection pile.

So what's a parent to do? Remind your kids, big brother is watching - so keep the blinds closed.

Image: Nick Halstead

I can tell how much you orgasm because of how you walk

Brett Singer — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:30:00 GMT

Let's say a guy tells a group of female college students that he can tell how often they've had orgasms by watching them walk. That guy would likely get a smack for that, right?

But if he's a SCIENTIST… well, that's different.

"A new study found that trained sexologists could infer a woman's history of vaginal orgasm by observing the way she walks. The study is published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine."

Oh! Only TRAINED sexologists. Not those UNtrained sexlogists. (I think every male on the planet qualifies as an "untrained sexologist.")

"Led by Stuart Brody of the University of the West of Scotland in collaboration with colleagues in Belgium, the study involved 16 female Belgian university students. Subjects completed a questionnaire on their sexual behavior and were then videotaped from a distance while walking in a public place. The videotapes were rated by two professors of sexology and two research assistants trained in the functional-sexological approach to sexology, who were not aware of the women's orgasmic history.

"The results showed that the appropriately trained sexologists were able to correctly infer vaginal orgasm through watching the way the women walked over 80 percent of the time. Further analysis revealed that the sum of stride length and vertebral rotation was greater for the vaginally orgasmic women. 'This could reflect the free, unblocked energetic flow from the legs through the pelvis to the spine,' the authors note."

So they videotaped college girls walking and then determined that the way they walked revealed fascinating details about their sexual experiences. Are these guys geniuses or just too nervous to actually get into porn?

I realize I'm not a scientist, but did the Beavis and Butthead Foundation fund this study? "Hey Beavis… heh heh heh heh… I bet I can tell you how many times that chick O'ed by the way she walks…" "Dude, you can't even spell orgasm." Heh heh heh heh…

image: some blog

Source: Science Daily via Morning News

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5 Ways To Prevent Drunken Douchebaggery in Your Boy

Amy Kuras — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 17:02:00 GMT

We all knew them in our younger days: the guys whose bodies were expertly crafted by Budweiser and yet who referred to any girl over 100 pounds as a "fat chick," who targeted dorky guys and quiet girls, who were always "that drunk asshole."

If you've got a boy and half a brain, you really, really don’t want your son to turn into That Guy. The fabulous ladies over at Jezebel have a great piece up, beautifully titled "5 Ways to Prevent your Son from Turning Into a Date-Rapey Alcoholic Douchebag."

The biggest thing, of course, is teaching him to treat himself and his fellow humans –male and female –with respect.

Help him understand the odds of injury when overindulging, the dangers of ending up alcoholic and that peers don’t always have the right idea –like that girls only like guys who act like assholes (okay, some of us were stupid but wised up sooner rather than later). Know his friends –if they are douches, chances are he will be acting like one too the minute he's out of your sight.

And most importantly – stay in touch when he goes away to school.

I like the article, but it rocks even harder because it was a response to a Newsweek piece about warning daughters about alcohol before they go away to school, including warning them about how drunkenness raises your chances of date rape. As one of the commenters over at Jezebel said "That's not the alcohol's fault, dude."

So much attention is given to girls and their need to control their sexuality, to not "send the wrong message." And while girls certainly need to be aware that the nice guy filling their drink at a party might just not have their best interests at heart, guys need to be equally as aware that rape is rape and it doesn’t matter how drunk or slutty the girl in question might be. While yes, our girls need "the talk" about relationships, self-respect and how to behave, so do our boys.

Like father like son

Brett Singer — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 19:00:00 GMT

This is just funny.

Andrew Giuliani, son of Rudy and ex-wife Donna Hanover, is suing Duke University because they kicked him off the golf team.

He wants monetary damages, to be reinstated to the team, and "the right to use Duke’s golf center for the rest of his life" because that's what he was promised when Duke "recruited" him to play golf.

Why did they kick Andy off the team? Well, for one thing, he wasn't that good, at least not according to info in the New York Times: they say that he was "in the bottom half of the 14-person team." He also, allegedly, threw an apple at a teammate, smashed a golf club on the ground, and "played harder than some of the other boys wanted to play" during a friendly football game. Andrew doesn't deny any of this, according to the Times, but he still feels he was treated unfairly. He also plans to pursue a professional golf career. Luckily, he has rich parents.

Andrew's father, former Mayor and failed Republican Presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani, is not involved, and at the mere mention of his name, mom Donna Hanover stopped the interview with the Times. Daddy's personal accomplishments include announcing his divorce from Donna to the press before he told her. (Yes, he was great after 9/11. But he was Mayor for eight years before that. I live here. Trust me, there's a reason they called him "Generalissimo Giuliani.")

His former coaches spoke out in Golf Week about the lawsuit. They think, shockingly, that he's wrong.

As proof that his coaches are nimrods, specifically head O.D. Vincent, Andy G offers up this photo (posted above, with Andrew at right.) That is, any coach that would allow his golf team to have their picture taken in their undies must be a crappy coach. If that's not a sound legal argument, I'm not a member of the bar. Oh wait…

image: Gothamist

Sad footnote to sad story

When Granite Attacks

Is it fair to take pictures of Britney's kids?

Congress Moves To Ban Phthalates, Despite Bush Opposition

They Say: Practice Really Does Make Perfect (hear that, Andrew?)

Should Parents Be Naked Around their Kids?

Baby survives tornado

Political Nanny: No Gifts from Mom and Dad for the Obama Girls (maybe Andy got one gift too many)

They say: Drinking with your kids makes them less drunk

Brett Singer — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:30:00 GMT

Now we've all gotten drunk. Fall down, sloppy, mess-making drunk. My first bad drinking experience involved vodka, straight up, in a garage during a thunderstorm. It ended badly. I had a couple of others, but not too many that included me puking my guts out. But it happens.

According to this article from Time magazine, it might happen less if you drink with your kids. But that's illegal, you say. The drinking age is 21. Well, yes, but not exactly. According to Time, "When Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act in 1984, it explicitly allowed kids to drink at home or in 'private clubs or establishments.' Similarly, under most state laws, it's legal for those under 21 to consume alcohol under certain conditions. Only six states, mostly rural ones, ban underage alcohol consumption completely."

This "have a drink with your kids" thing isn't a new idea. A recent Babble Bad Parent essay by Gretchen Roberts titled Booze Clues talks about the idea of making alcohol something commonplace rather than this big taboo thing, which only makes it more interesting. The Time Magazine article backs up this notion, quoting a paper from the 2004 Journal of Adolescent Health as saying, "Drinking with parents appears to have a protective effect on general drinking trends."

The problem, of course, is when "not uptight about alcohol" translates into "letting the kids get wasted in the basement with their friends." Drinking a glass of wine with dinner is very different from getting drunk. When I sat in that garage, swilling vodka straight from the bottle, it was partly about the alcohol but also partly about being young and stupid. (I'm not condoning it or calling it a "right of passage", nor am I saying it was a sin worthy of caning. Just being honest.) Drinking until you, ahem, hurl, is something that you should only do when you're young and stupid. The other time I got sick from drinking was in college and again, I drank too much and I paid the price. There were other people that I went to school with who got that wasted on a regular basis.

So should you drink with your kids? I don't know. Personally, I don't think kids need wine any more than they need soda. That doesn't mean that we present alcohol (or soda) as something off-limits and exciting. Neither is a particularly big deal in our house, and different people have different rules. As with so many things, behavior that a reasonable person can handle (letting kids have a sip of wine every now and then) can become something else entirely in the hands of an irresponsible moron (hosting a kegger at home.)

Do you think that letting your kids in on the drinking at home will make them more or less likely to overdo it with liquor someday?

image: Addiction Inbox

They Say: Limit Kids Screen Time

Substitute teacher shows up drunk

Baby Born Drunk

Child Gets Drunk Off Hand Sanitizer

Drunk Mom Lets One-Year-Old Drive

Mommy Got Drunk - Jordan Embarrasses Her Husband

Christina Aguilera Slightly Drunk?

Helicopter Parents -- Now With More Spying Capabilities

Madeline Holler — Mon, 05 May 2008 18:36:00 GMT

Ugh! Please don't let me become one of these!

The New York Times ran a story over the weekend about parents who, in short, need some hobbies. Because instead of macrame and collecting antique cookie tins, they're spending their time, energy and money on spying on their kids' every move -- you think I'm saying that metaphorically, I'm not -- at school.

Schools are adopting one of the scads of software programs that allow parents to go online and check out what grade Maddie got on her history test that day. Some programs will send alerts to Mommy's cellphone. One mom prints out her kid's daily grade report -- highlights the shitty grades and lays it all out on Jr.'s desk -- yet, goes ahead and asks him what he got on his test. Isn't that some kind of domestic entrapment?

Oh, come on, you say. They're a great way for parents to keep track of pending and incomplete assignments. True! It's far too much to expect the actual students to learn to manage that -- and to suffer the consequences when they can't. Parents can also log on to see whether a kid was late or absent from class, and get updates on any discipline issues. Those programs build the parent-teacher dream team!

Go ahead and say it -- I'm too old-fashioned. I might as well send my kids to a one-room school house, so resistent am I to adopting these modern, necessary kid spying tools. I shunned the nanny cam as well. We just kind of trusted our babysitters and listened to our kids.

What's your take? Are these programs they key to your child's success, or pretty much a guarantee that the professional workforce 15 years from now is going to be filled with idiot Americans who can't make it to the board meeting without their aging mother's encouragement and/or admonishments?

Son, perhaps you should consider a trade

Brett Singer — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 18:15:00 GMT

Not only is it impossible to get junior into that elite Kindergarten, once you do, the little rat won't be able to get into college. At least that's what the numbers are telling us this week.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Harvard admitted 7.1% of students who applied this year, down from 8.9%. Yale and Princeton showed some drops as well. OK, you say, that's the Ivy League. As Garfield might say, big fat hairy deal. But, in yet another example of why we really shouldn't listen to Garfield (especially regarding college advice), state schools such as the University of Texas are showing a similar trend.

Although The Journal reports that many high school students are "freaking out" about the news, I would like to remind children everywhere that Dr. Phil McGraw attended the University of North Texas, which, according to U.S. News and World Report, is a fourth tier school. And he's done pretty well for himself.

In all seriousness, I think it's possible to get a good education in a number of different venues, but it's undeniable that the Ivy League and other top-tier schools offer connections and resources that are sometimes harder to come by at other institutions. The other aspect of this is the pressure it places on kids, the ones who are "freaking out" because they may not get into the college of their choice. More stress is never a good thing. Hopefully this news won't make crazy parents who started obsessing over college while their children were in utero start to act even crazier.

Look at it this way -- you can use all that money you saved to take a really nice vacation.

image: College Planning Specialists, and webdesign-guru.co.uk

Liquidate the College Fund

Madeline Holler — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:43:00 GMT

How about we cash out that 529 right now and go ahead with a new sofa? Who needs tax-deferred college savings plans when so many universities -- really, really good, really, really expensive universities -- are now saying they'll waive college tuition for middle class kids.

Brown and Stanford (clearly safety schools for your MIT-bound geniuses), are the latest in the Ivy League to give middle class smarty-pants a free ride. It's really good news for folks in the low-cost-of-living heartland. Families who make up to $60,000 -- or even $100,000 if you're looking at Stanford -- qualify for the break. They get to grow up in the largest nicely appointed super-sized house six figures can buy and STILL leave college completely debt-free.

With all this talk about universal healthcare and now free college, there's never been a better time to be a struggling, barely solvent, vanishing middle-class American!

So what's it going to be? Are you going to dip into the college fund and enjoy life during the recession? Or are you playing it safe and assuming your little guy's gonna wind up at a state school that boasts annual tuition hikes.

To Afford Tuition, Quit Your Job

Brett Singer — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:23:00 GMT

You know those letters you get that tell you to starting to save now for the kids' college? Here's a better idea: just quit your job.

Brown has joined Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and Stanford and will offer free tuition to students whose families earn less than $60,000 per year.

One way they can afford this is to increase tuition by 3.9%, inching ever closer to the $50,000 mark for one year of tuition plus room and board (the New York Times says the amount is $47,740). As my lovely wife says, cool - we'll just stop working when the kids graduate high school.

I'm not saying free tuition for those who can't afford it is a bad thing. In fact, it's quite good. But you wonder whether or not the financial aid folks will take into account factors other than income, such as where the family lives - it's just a tad more expensive to live in Manhattan than it is to live in Sheboygan. It's also a fair question to ask just how many students will actually be admitted who can't afford to pay. It's easy for a school to say they'll take all comers in a press release, but what do the numbers look like? Even Brown doesn't have the kind of endowment that Harvard does, and therefore could not likely afford to have a freshman class full of folks who pay $0 for their education. Also, is there a grade requirement, like there is with scholarships, or is the formula purely income based? And what about private wealth that isn't considered "income" on a tax return? I went to school with someone whose family could afford to pay full freight, yet she received a huge amount of financial aid because her father was good at "fooling" the I.R.S. I'm still not completely clear how my mother paid for my college education on her single-mom salary (I don't know what that salary was, but let's just say she didn't exactly work at a hedge fund). I just know that I graduated without a single loan. I worked part-time (about 20 hours a week) while I was in school to earn extra cash for books (OK, and beer).

As a Manhattaner with two kids in private school, we're not saving for college anymore. What's the point, when we're paying for school already? We just figure we'll keep working until college is paid for and try to save for retirement. Then, when the little buggers graduate, it's party time!

photo: Dorsetforyou.com

Weekly Check-Up: Good News/Bad News About Risky Business

Kelly Mills — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 13:33:00 GMT

Okay, so good news first? Parents do actually have some influence over their kids' practice of risky behaviors like drinking and drugging and screwing, even when the kids are college-age. A new study found that if moms and dads are in the loop about what their offspring are doing, even when the kids are off at the dorms, the kids were less likely to do risky stuff like befriend a hooker and dance around in their underwear and consume tons of liquor. (Actually I think that Risky Business was about a teenager, not college kid, but you get the idea.) Specifically, when dads knew about their lives kids were less likely to have unsafe sex and use drugs; and when moms were in the know they were less likely to drink until they puked.

Bad news? I guess this means that it ain't over when they leave the nest, and while the study authors talk lots about how delaying adulthood is a good thing, I'm just saying, you've got more than 18 years ahead of you. But hey, beats having your kid wreck the Porche and help run a brothel for teens, so maybe there is no bad news here if you don't mind staying in touch with your kids for a long time.

P.S. Ahhh, remember when we didn't know that Tom Cruise was whackadoodle?

When Do You Finally Become a Grownup?

Karen Murphy — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 15:04:00 GMT

Those crazy kids today; what will they think of next?

Apparently what was de rigeur back in the day of my parents, who married at 20 while still in college and began a family at the relatively late-for-the-time 28, is Old News. Passe. And when I was in college it was pretty well understood that when you graduated, you got a job and started living Real Life. But no longer.

Because even when you can drive and vote and get killed in war and drink legally, you still may have yet to pass the real tests of adulthood:

taking responsibility for one's actions and having good emotional control

Um...which rules out a LOT of people I know. But a recent survey of students and parents across five college campuses revealed that people in the 18-25 demographic didn't necessarily consider themselves to be actual adults. And their parents agreed. So maybe this helicopter parenting thing is working out pretty well, enjoyed on both sides of the equation? After all, if you've got Mom and Dad managing your affairs, and nothing really pressing to do in life since there's far less pressure to become immediately immersed in career and family upon graduation as there used to be (not to mention the fact that more years of education are required now to be really viable in the workplace than was necessary 30 years ago), why grow up at all?

So I'm wondering, what can we use as a line of demarcation from this extended adolescence to adulthood? Secret handshake? Special tattoo? A certain piercing? What?

Photo: nabilonline.net

Helicopter Parenting Might be Good for Kids After All

Karen Murphy — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 18:09:00 GMT

Okay, all you hovering over-protective parents out there...relax. You don't have to change, at least not for me (you never have to change baby, I love you juuuust the way you are, can I sing you a little song now about that? "Don't go changin'...to try to please me...."). But yeah, if you're still cutting up your kid's meat when he's going off to college, don't worry. He'll be totally okay. More than okay, in fact.

Yep, now they say that kids of helicopter parents thrive. So tighten up those apron strings a bit and let's talk about why:

Kids of helicoptering parents were said to "report higher satisfaction, more deep learning activities and greater gains on desired outcomes such as learning on their own and learning to work with people from different backgrounds." Yay for the parents! These are the folks who are in frequent contact with their kids, mostly via email and texting, less often by phone or face-to-face. It seems to me this is simply a throwback to an earlier time when multiple generations stayed in contact by sharing the same house. Not that I am in any way suggesting you encourage your kids to live with you while they go to college (though who knows, that may be the best option for all of you at that point).

I do have to give you the rest of the findings, though, in which oddly, those kids whose parents were in frequent contact had slightly worse grades than did the kids whose parents ~~didn't care about them~~ had less contact with them. Were talking only slightly, however, a difference of a GPA of 3.21 vs 3.31. Which should only make a difference to the most anal.

When I was in college? I think I talked to my parents, by phone, about once a month. In the days before email. Write a letter? Are you kidding? And I never went home. And look how I turned out!

Save Up Now for a College Coach So Your Kid Can Go Ivy

Karen Murphy — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 17:03:00 GMT

It's not enough that you've got to be filling out preschool applications before your morning sickness ends. No, if you want your kid to ~~not suck~~ succeed in life, it's all about college. And parents are shelling out $40,000 or more to hire a coach to get their kid into the right college.

The secret? It's all about branding.

A savvy coach can assess your kid's interests, help him build an impressive resume and high school class load, and hone and fine-tune him into becoming everything he can be, and more.

I completely relate to the incredible pressure that begins in middle school to get your kid in the right "track" so they can be positioned into taking the right classes in high school and pulling the grades necessary and having the right summer job and volunteering for the right causes. Just reading this Business Week article caused me to hyperventilate a little: I have a kid who just started middle school; he's in 6th grade and I'm already thinking of what he'll be doing in high school and beyond.

But what happened to letting kids be kids? About letting them stumble a little along the way, helping them up afterward of course, but learning to make decisions? About trying on different things to see what they really like to do? Choosing a college major was painful for me at 17; does a kid really know what he wants to do for the rest of his life at, say, 12, so he'll be okay with the branding and the honing and the fine-tuning? Or are most kids simply going to go along with whatever someone tells them, and then wake up one morning fifteen years later to find out they really didn't want that MBA after all?

Are we putting too much pressure on our kids, and adding to that with these ridiculous coaches?

Frankly, I'm a bit torn on this one. I have a smart kid. He'll probably do well at whatever he chooses, and I'd like to support that, encourage his interests and help him build his potential. We're already talking about him skipping a grade next year. I'm a parent like all of you, and as a parent I want my kid to be happy and do well at whatever he chooses, and help him get there. But where do I draw the line? I haven't got an extra $40K to blow on a coach, fortunately, but plenty of helicopterish parents will likely get themselves even deeper into debt to do what they think is best for their kids.

We talk about slowing down as adults, parents, and families. We talk about building priorities and letting go of things that don't matter. We talk about focusing on what's really important in our lives. I think we should start with our kids, so maybe they don't have to go through the same sort of introspective, life-altering process that we did.

Helicopter Parents Hover Over College "Kids"

Madeline Holler — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 13:11:00 GMT

I am married to a college professor and while you might now be imagining smudged reading glasses, hot tea and sweaters with patched elbows, don’t. Life with an academic involves lots of swearing, boring parties and a glimpse at unbelievable new failures in American education.

All that, and helicopter parenting. You get to see lots of helicopter parenting.

At the end of each semester, minutes after cheaters are busted, grades filed, and GPAs recalculated, the whirling blades descend into our home in the form of late-night emails. Parents write in defending the honorable intentions of Precious and Mr. Man. “She’s a hard worker,” Daddy writes of his plagiarist daughter. “Why the Gestapo tactics?” Or, “He must have misunderstood the directions,” Mommy argues on behalf of her flunking son. “He needs an A in this class!”

“Isn’t there any way they can retake the exam?” these baby-boomer parents demand to know.

It’s not just my husband, either. Anyone who works at a university has a story of an over-involved mother or father (or both). Here’s a report from ABC News about these helicopter moms and dads who – and I don’t want to give away the ending – have no idea that calling the university to complain about salt content in the chicken is, simply put, pathetic.

According to a researcher in the report, at least 60 percent of all college students have what fits the definition of at least one “helicopter parent.” That’s more than half. That makes it the norm.

The researcher breaks down that 60 percent into five neat categories: black hawk (angry, abusive, straight to the president's office); toxic (paranoid, researches child’s friends and roommates on MySpace, 24-hour web cam (!)); safety expert (anxious about school safety, forms emergency plans); consumer advocate (negotiates discounted tuition and fees); traffic and rescue parent (first sign of trouble heads to campus with supplies and tender hugs).

These parents argue that college is an expensive investment, and they have a right to protect it. I would argue they had 18 years to get it right and now it’s time to let Princess make a few phone calls on her own or have a private email account. Seriously, Scooter has got to figure out how to do his own laundry. And I can’t even process the fact that there’s a kid with a web-cam on his computer so mommy can check on him any time she wants. Did she see Sonny Boy nailing that hot chick from Psych? Is she listening to him fart? Reminding him to floss? Coaching him during those special moments with himself?

If you can get through the first video without calling your parents to thank them for nothing – no, really, thanks for leaving me the hell alone in college, Mom and Dad -- then watch the second one. It’s about parents who are firing up the Black Hawk so they can attend career fairs and job interviews, and negotiate starting salaries. Look at those phone boards light up when Bear can’t find coffee filters in the break room!

I know we Gen X/attachment/kid-as-equals/emotional IQ parents will be scrutinized some day for how we handle our kids' transition from childhood to adulthood. But somehow I think we sort of front-loaded our over-involvement by sharing beds, forming co-op preschools, working from home and nursing to the end of time. I think we're getting it out of our system in the early years, hopefully nudging them out of the nest when it's time and letting them figure out the rest.

Just shoot me now if I come even close to exhibiting these helicoptering behaviors. I mean, where will these parents show up next? Med school internships? Real-estate offices? The fertility clinic? When do these “kids” get a chance to try something and fail, and figure out how to pick up the broken pieces without Mother first fetching a pair of safety goggles and work gloves? The first time Junior's dentures go missing at the nursing home?

Image: Duke University magazine

Candidate Likes Baby Bonds. The Money Kind!

Madeline Holler — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 22:34:00 GMT

She’s bought …. wait, I mean … she’s GOT my vote!

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has proposed giving every baby born in the U.S. $5,000. She was speaking at a forum of the Congressional Black Caucus Friday when she unveiled her plan of earmarking money for education for American kids.

Ahhhh, but there’s a catch. Recipients of the bond have to be 18 years old and high school graduates before they can get at the money. And they have to use it for college.

The money is granted in the form of a bond, so it will grow (a little) with interest over time. But how much? Enough to keep up with the endlessly increasing college costs?

How about reforming college grant programs instead. The effect would be immediate, and include many more middle class families who are getting priced out of higher education. And also doing something about how freaking expensive college is. Students leave with a lifetime of debt in addition to their remorse of having majored in English.

What about a $5,000 grant at birth to help families with childcare and preschool, which also costs a small fortune and ties up money families could otherwise be investing on their own for college savings.

What do you think? Am I being too greedy? To reliant on a welfare state? Not bold enough. Are you already saving for your little one's college? Anyone out there just crossing their fingers and hoping for the best 18 years from now?