Quick hits

A lot of interesting stuff I’ve been reading lately that I don’t have all that much to say about:

1) Grade inflation is just nuts.  Currently at my alma mater, Duke, fully a quarter of the students have a 3.7 or above GPA.  In my day– class of 1994– that figure was about 3.4 for the top 25%.

2) In theory, I love the idea of attending a Premier League game in England some day.  In practice, sounds kids of crazy.

3) Catholic school in Columbus, OH fires beloved PE teacher after finding out via her mother’s obituary that she has a same sex partner.  Damn this stuff drives me crazy.  Love this quote:

Perhaps six colleagues met Julie over the years, though they probably weren’t the only ones aware of Carla’s sexual orientation. “I’m sure it was surmised: gym teacher, divorced, short hair, didn’t have a bow in it,” Carla said. “Come on.”

4) All of our babies slept in bed with us at some point.  It’s just so much easier and I’m pretty sure we were as safe as could be about it.  I really enjoyed this discussion of the issue, especially the sad fact that pediatricians will not even discuss how to make co-sleeping safer because they are so dead-set against it.

5) Enjoyed this George Packer post on how technology has made our lives better, but there’s not much it can do about inequality.

6) Apparently parents read more to their daughters.  One theory is that its harder to read to boys because they’re more likely to be squirmy.  That one sounds good to me.  This author’s anecdotal N of 1 family (her own) shed no light on the topic at all, but was an interesting review of the issues.  In my family David loved to be read to and so does Sarah, who actually demands it on a regular basis.   I’d like to see more research to help figure out how much of this is about the parents vs. how much is innate differences in young  boys vs young girls.

Over-parenting

I would love to see a long term study about the relationships between college students and their parents and how that has been affected by changing technology.  I doubt it exists, though.  Based on my own observations, I’ve got a strong hypotheses that modern technology literally makes it too easy for young adults to be in constant contact with their parents and thereby hinders their personal maturity and independence.  It’s good to be close to your parents, but it really does seem crazy to me that 20-year olds are talking to their parents multiple times per day or texting with them all day long (then again, maybe I’ll feel differently when David is 20).

When I was at Duke 20+ years ago, times were such that most all of us still worried about the costs of long distance.  My mom and I were really close and had a great relationship, but I still only talked to her once a week unless something really big came up.  And my sense was that was pretty typical. And sure, N of 1 and anecdotal, but it certainly seemed to me that it did me some real and lasting good to not be so dependent upon my mom.  I can’t help but wonder if modern technologically-enabled relationships aren’t stunting the maturity of many a current college student.

Thus, I really enjoyed this NYT opinion piece on helicopter parenting:

AMERICAN parents are more involved in our children’s lives than ever: we schedule play dates, assist with homework and even choose college courses.

We know that all of this assistance has costs — depleted bank balances, constricted social lives — but we endure them happily, believing we are doing what is best for our children.

What if, however, the costs included harming our children?

That unsettling possibility is suggested by a paper published in February in the American Sociological Review. The study, led by the sociologist Laura T. Hamilton of the University of California, Merced, finds that the more money parents spend on their child’s college education, the worse grades the child earns.

A separate study, published the same month in the Journal of Child and Family Studies and led by the psychologist Holly H. Shiffrin at the University of Mary Washington, finds that the more parents are involved in schoolwork and selection of college majors — that is, the more helicopter parenting they do — the less satisfied college students feel with their lives.

Why would parents help produce these negative outcomes? It seems that certain forms of help can dilute recipients’ sense of accountability for their own success. The college student might think: If Mom and Dad are always around to solve my problems, why spend three straight nights in the library during finals rather than hanging out with my friends? …

So yes, by all means, parents, help your children. But don’t let your action replace their action. Support, don’t substitute. Your children will be more likely to achieve their goals — and, who knows, you might even find some time to get your own social life back on track.

I’ll be really curious to see just how much I can let David stand on his own when he goes to college.  And to be honest, both of us are already really scared he’s going to fall flat on his face.  So, I’m planning on much support, but I do plan on doing my damnedest to see that he (and then his siblings) really establishes his own sense of self and personal accountability when heading off to college (if not before!).

Sharing germs

We share utensils, food, you name it with our kids all the time.  I’ve always assumed that we are absolutely sharing bacteria all the time and to think that sharing a fork somehow changes that is ridiculous.  I didn’t realize that members of the public health community had been advising otherwise for years.  Anyway good news (and of little surprise given what I’ve learned about bacteria over the years)– I’m right and they’re wrong.  The NYT story is about cleaning your kids pacifier with your mouth (something I never did– kids weren’t much into binkies, and if it was dirty I didn’t want it in my mouth), but general principles apply:

For years, health officials have told parents not to share utensils with their babies or clean their pacifiers by putting them in their mouths, arguing that the practice spreads harmful germs between parent and child. But new research may turn that thinking on its head.

In a study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, scientists report that infants whose parents sucked on their pacifiers to clean them developed fewer allergies than children whose parents typically rinsed or boiled them. They also had lower rates of eczema, fewer signs of asthma and smaller amounts of a type of white blood cell that rises in response to allergies and other disorders.

The findings add to growing evidence that some degree of exposure to germs at an early age benefits children, and that microbial deprivation might backfire, preventing the immune system from developing a tolerance to trivial threats.

The study, carried out in Sweden, could not prove that the pacifiers laden with parents’ saliva were the direct cause of the reduced allergies. The practice may be a marker for parents who are generally more relaxed about shielding their children from dirt and germs, said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious diseases expert at Vanderbilt University who was not involved in the research.

That “generally more relaxed about shielding their children from dirt and germs” certainly applies to me.  And ever-increasing evidence suggsts that it is actually good parenting.  The following was my favorite part:

But Dr. Joel Berg, president of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry, said those efforts are misguided, since parents are bound to spread germs simply by kissing their children and being around them. “This notion of not feeding your baby with your spoon or your fork is absurd because if the mom is in close proximity to the baby you can’t prevent that transmission,” he said. “There’s no evidence that you can avoid it. It’s impossible unless you wear a mask or you don’t touch the child, which isn’t realistic.”

I don’t quite want to say that’s just common sense, because I realize common sense can steer you wrong in cases like this, but it seems to be logical based on what we know about bacteria.  Anyway, shared food and utensils will continue in the Greene household.   Though, I should mention that despite our efforts of being lax, all the boys have very mild asthma and they all have hayfever to varying degrees.  In the end, genes will out.

Male babysitter

Enjoyed this essay in the Post earlier this week about society’s attitudes towards male babysitters.  I’ve got a lot of years to go before my kids are all grown (and with our age range, we could be lucky and have some grandkids before Sarah leaves the house), but I’ve thought about the fact that once the kids are all gone I’ll still want to be involved with kids.  They’re just so much fun.  But, sadly because they’re are a lot of bad men out there (even if they are a small minority), it certainly does lead to negative perceptions of the entire gender:

I wasn’t trying to be subversive when I hired a male babysitter this month. But it is apparently something that few parents would do.

Most are too spooked by Jerry Sandusky and the endless parade of other child molesters in the news. These creeps are almost always male, and they almost always find a way to work with kids. So parents aren’t being paranoid about the stranger danger that surround our kids. It’s a very real and totally frightening phenomenon.

Still, here’s what I’m wondering: Have our fears turned us into a bunch of sexists? …

When it comes to kids, we are pretty close to being a society that has demonized men. And this isn’t a totally unreasonable reaction. In one government study of sexual assaults on children, the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that 96 percent of the offenders they studied were male.

So, if you’re going to strap your child into that car seat even when you’re driving just a few blocks, why wouldn’t you look at that 96 percent statistic, remember what you saw on the evening news and say “no thank you” to a male babysitter? All it takes is one undetected pedophile to destroy a child’s life, right? …

I know the statistics. I spent nearly two decades at crime scenes and digging through documents in courts and social service agencies. I know what horrors men are statistically more likely to perpetrate…

Here is the real problem when we err on the side of statistics. By telling the millions of men that they cannot be trusted with children, we are reinforcing gender stereotypes at school, at home and at work.

If men can’t take care of kids, women have to do it. And that’s holding us back.

So tell me, would you hire a male babysitter?

Yes.  But, I posted this because I’m really intrigued by the larger point that this demonization of men is also bad for women.  But, there really are a lot more bad men out there.  Interesting conundrum.

Relationships vs. ambition

I think a lot about the topic of ambition, especially when I was recently at a political science conference.  In looking around those I know in the discipline, easily the biggest difference between those who publish the most and are at the most prestigious universities versus those in a more humble position (I’ll put myself somewhere in the middle) is not intellect, but ambition.  I had a great serendipitous discussion while there with an OSU professor I used to work for and he reflected on the fact that he really had accomplished quite a lot, but that his current family situation was not the greatest and perhaps the two were related.  As for me, I’ve always felt that NCSU is a perfect place because it is a solid program where I have good students and plenty of respect in and out of the profession, but allows for a much more reasonable work-life balance, i.e., lots more time with those four crazy kids, than if I were just a few miles down the road at Duke or UNC.  Anyway, very interesting piece in the Atlantic recently about the trade-offs between ambition and relationships:

The conflict between career ambition and relationships lies at the heart of many of our current cultural debates, including the ones sparked by high-powered women like Sheryl Sandberg and Anne Marie Slaughter. Ambition drives people forward; relationships and community, by imposing limits, hold people back. Which is more important? Just the other week, Slate ran a symposium that addressed this question, asking, “Does an Early Marriage Kill Your Potential To Achieve More in Life?” Ambition is deeply entrenched into the American personae, as Yale’s William Casey King argues in Ambition, A History: From Vice to Virtue­ – but what are its costs? …

When I asked about the connection between ambition and personal relationships, Kammeyer-Mueller said that while the more ambitious appeared to be happier, that their happiness could come at the expense of personal relationships. “Do these ambitious people have worse relationships? Are they ethical and nice to the people around them? What would they do to get ahead? These are the questions the future research needs to answer.”

Existing research by psychologist Tim Kasser can help address this issue. Kasser, the author of The High Price of Materialism, has shown that the pursuit of materialistic values like money, possessions, and social status-the fruits of career successes-leads to lower well-being and more distress in individuals. It is also damaging to relationships: “My colleagues and I have found,” Kasser writes, “that when people believe materialistic values are important, they…have poorer interpersonal relationships [and] contribute less to the community.” Such people are also more likely to objectify others, using them as means to achieve their own goals.

So if the pursuit of career success comes at the expense of social bonds, then an individual’s well-being could suffer. That’s because community is strongly connected to well-being.

In a similar vein, I also really enjoyed this take on Sheryl Sandberg from journalist Elsa Walsh.  Here’s what I think is the key bit:

And third, I have to wonder if Sandberg does not realize that she is going to die someday. There is so little life and pleasure in her book outside of work. Even sex is framed as something that men will get more of if they pitch in and help their working wives.

Success, particularly the kind Sandberg calls for, requires ever more time at the office, ever more travel. It requires always being available, always a click away. Sandberg is almost giddy when she describes getting up at 5 a.m. to answer e-mails before her children wake up and getting back on her computer once they are asleep.

“Facebook is available 24/7 and for the most part, so am I,” she writes. “The days when I even think of unplugging for a weekend or a vacation are long gone.”

Imagine what that life looks like to a child. Imagine what it looks like to yourself when you are 80.

That is not how I want my daughter to live, and it is not how I want to live.

Boom.  Now, I don’t want to judge Sandberg, because if she is happy with her life, than more power to her.  But I think Walsh’s idea of balance sound more like happiness to your typical human being.  I’m pretty sure I could be a Harvard Professor instead of an NC State professor if I had truly dedicated myself to that goal.  But I have no desire to be up two hours before my kids are so I can answer emails.  Nor to simply see way less of them.  I’ll take the trade.

School bus speed limits and child-safety fetishization

So, I got in the middle of an interesting discussion on FB the other night where it was mostly me against liberals.  Why?  A Republican NC legislator has proposed increasing the top speed for school buses to 55 from the current 45.  He was attacked as a child-endangering lunatic.   You know what is dangerous?  Having any vehicle travelling at 45 on the interstate while all the other vehicles are going 65 and above.  That’s dangerous.  Now, I’m absolutely sure that this legislator didn’t really research this and think it all the way through (he is an NC Republican already), but that doesn’t mean he’s not right.  Obviously, higher speeds can lead to more serious accidents but speed differentials are also more likely to lead to accidents– importantly, not just for the bus.  I’ve often seen dangerous driving on the highway because a single school bus is so much under the limit.

Anyway, I think this is part of a larger issue of the fetishization of school-kid safety.   I hate stopping behind buses at railroad crossings– yes, the bill from “I’m just a bill”!.  If my kids are safe for me to go through in my minivan, I assume they should be safe in a school bus.  I’m not aware of a rash of accidents because the lights didn’t flash and the crossarms didn’t come down.  Either these intersections are dangerous or they’re not.  There’s nothing inherently more dangerous about a school bus crossing railroad tracks.  Furthermore, your average left turn onto a moderately busy road without a traffic signal is surely substantially more dangerous than many a right on red would be.  Yet, the latter happens essentially all the time, while many a perfectly safe right on red is forbade by law.  God forbid we should change any of these things and endanger the children.

All that said, hey, I’m a data-driven guy and I do love the laboratory of federalism.  Neighboring states have higher speed limits for school buses.  Any evidence for more accidents and injuries from buses travelling at the top speed?  Or not?

The mother of all blog posts

Okay, this won’t be.  But it’s tempting.   Huge and hugely fascinating Pew report on how adults use their time– broken down by gender, marriage, and parental status.  I could choose at least a dozen really intriguing charts to show.  You should at least check out the overview.  This is the headline chart:

What I think is most interesting is the roughly equitable distribution between all forms of “work.”  And, of course, the fact that mens’ household work and parenting has increased dramatically (a very good thing) while women’s paid work has increased dramatically.  And to nobody’s surprise, women still bear most of the burden at home.  When you look at the context of all “work” though, it doesn’t seem so bad.  I have read a number of times about men having more leisure time, though, and you can see that in this table:

You know what, though?  They are getting more of a leisure bonus than the total division of work would suggest.  The conclusion?  Men’s greater leisure time comes, in large part, from sleeping less.  That seems fair.  Also, looks like I can expect my “total work time” to drop a good 14 hours/week in a mere 16 years when Sarah is 18.  Whoo-hoo.

Also plenty of charts showing that it is amazingly better to be a married mom than a single mom.  Damn, single moms have it tough.  I’ve been a little obsessed with happiness lately, so I did find this chart intriguing:

And, lastly, two more parent-related charts I cannot resist:

and

Apparently, life s a lot less rushed and a lot easier to find a balance when there’s not children in the home (though, as discussed earlier, not actually “happier”).

The actual data from this poll will be available in a year.  And they actually have a few political questions.  So, you better believe I’ll be coming back to it.

Get happy– have kids

Really enjoyed reading the latest research on parenthood and happiness from Sonja Lyubomirsky.  Actually came across this the same day I was doing my best to convince a friend he needs to reproduce.  (I would never do that with somebody who was firm in their commitment to not have children.  This friend was just really on the fence and, quite reasonably, apprehensive about all the changes it would bring to his life).  Anyway, here’s  a nice interview with the author that sums up the key points (bold emphases mine):

Children and happiness is actually a very complicated topic, so, of course, there are a lot of contradictory findings in the literature. Some studies show that parents are happier than non-parents, and some show that parents are less happy.

We just published a paper that has three different studies that show, in general, parents are somewhat happier, and they report more meaning in their lives. This is true as they go about their days and when they spend time with their children, as opposed to when they’re doing other things.

But, you know, after we published that paper we asked ourselves: Well, is the question whether parents are happier even a very meaningful question, because there’s so many different kinds of parents? Can you really lump together parents of newborns to parents of 30-year-olds?

I have these two great grad students, and they just wrote this really great review paper addressing that question. We looked at all the literature on parenting and happiness and we put it all together. Basically, we find that certain kinds of parents are happier: parents who are middle-aged and older, parents who are married, parents who have children in their custody, parents who have relatively trouble-free children—and fathers, actually. It turns out the happiness effect is much stronger for fathers as opposed to mothers.

So when you try to answer that question, you really have to look at the kind of parent, and the kind of child you have, and the age of the child, and the age of the parent. But I think one of the bottom lines from the research is that parents do report greater meaning and purpose in their life after they have children.

Well, I pretty much nail almost all those categories.  Damn do I fall short on that “relatively trouble-free children.”  Obviously, the gender effect is really quite interesting.  I suspect it’s because the benefits of parenthood are pretty similar for both men and women while women surely bear more of the costs.  Anyway, since I love the topic, I actually read most of the actual journal article.  It’s actually quite accessible.  It really is quite impressive that they look at the issue in a variety of ways with a variety of data that all lead to similar conclusions.  Time to put that “parents are less happy” line to bed.  Though, probably not so great to be a single mom.  Anyway, here’s a cool visual summary of some key findings from the piece:

 

So, some pretty compelling data.  I’ll be interested to see how often we keep hearing that parents are less happy.  Would actually also love to see some cross-national data on this.  So, you know what to do– reproduce.  (Unless, of course you are a young, single woman).

Colbert on Rubio

Not surprisingly, a damn funny take on Rubio’s water moment from Stephen Colbert.  The reason I feel compelled to share it, though, is it is actually the first Colbert clip my son David (13) has ever seen.  He loved it.  Clearly, I need to expose him to more.  And, on a semi-related note, really the best part of being a parent is sharing the love of something with a child.   We actually watched the Colbert clip because we had just been to see an author at a bookstore and he made a nice Rubio joke when reaching for his water– thus, necessitating my need to explain to David via youtube when arriving home.  And it was a great experience learning all about The Genius of Dogs together.  Sharing in great satire making fun of Republicans and sharing in an intellectual evening learning about dogs– a great night of parenthood.

(and p.s., annoying that there was no Hulu clip of just this part of the show, but love that Hulu lets you set customizable clips)

Work, marriage, and fatherhood

Had a really interesting conversation about that titular triumvirate with the director of NCSU’s Women’s Center and today I just came across this interesting research summary in the Atlantic.  Short version:  it’s good to me, i.e., be a married, working father who’s wife does not work full-time outside the home.  The details:

In the forthcoming paper in next month’s American Sociological Review, “A Reconsideration of the Fatherhood Premium: Marriage, Coresidence, Biology, and the Wages of Fathers,” Killewald shows that the wage gain does in fact exist, but that boost is not available to everyone.

Killewald found that married, biological fathers who live with their families are associated with a wage bonus of about four percent after they have kids. Unmarried fathers, fathers who do not live with their children, and stepfathers do not receive this premium.  [emphasis mine]

Wow.  Memo to the single men– put a ring on it.  So, what’ going on?

Killewald found that married fathers who lived with their biological children did not receive a statistically significant wage increase if their wives worked full-time. Men married to women who work less than full-time or who stay at home, however, are all but guaranteed the bonus. This may imply that diminished household responsibilities allow these men to fully devote themselves to their careers, making it possible to have a wife who does unpaid labor.

Well, the kids must be suffering from absent fathers who work to much– right?  Nope:

One might assume that an increased dedication to the workplace would mean that these fathers are spending less time at home, but research indicated that the men who had enjoyed the largest fatherhood premium also reported spending the most time with their kids. This is consistent with what we know about fathers who do not live with their children or non-biological fathers who are less engaged with the children they do live with: They spend less time together. While work and family often seem in conflict, men who fill the traditional role of provider do seem to be “having it all.”

Hey, look at me, I’ve got it all!  (Actually, I do, and I appreciate it very much.  But I still really miss my dog).

Earl Weaver on growing up

I used to be a huge Orioles fan back in my youth (not sure I could even name a single player now) and I have great affection for the first baseball manager I was actually aware of– the O’s Earl Weaver.  He died yesterday and Tom Boswell writes a great remembrance.  Anyway, I loved this part:

For Weaver, the strain of the game was his certainty that he was often one of the few adults in the room. “You must remember that anyone under 30 — especially a ballplayer — is an adolescent,” he once told me. “I never got close to being an adult until I was 32. Even though I was married and had a son at 20, I was a kid at 32, living at home with my parents. Sure, I was a manager then. That doesn’t mean you’re grown up.

“Until you’re the person that other people fall back on, until you’re the one that’s leaned on, not the person doing the leaning, you’re not an adult. You reach an age when suddenly you realize you have to be that person. Divorce did it to me. It could be elderly parents, children . . . anything. But one day you realize, ‘It’s me. I’ve got to be the rock.’ ”

Just love that definition of what it means to be a grown up.  Not perfect, but very true.  It means, it’s on you.  I think parenthood pretty much did that for me, but having a kid with a rare disease (at the age of 30) definitely cemented that, in my case.  And whatever was left to be done in that regard took place when my mom died of cancer.  Anyway, when you look at it this way, you can really understand how some people really never do grow up.

Dickerson on parenting

John Dickerson is pretty much my favorite political journalist.  Not as insightful or wonky as my favorite journalist/bloggers, but as a pure political journalist he’s far more thoughtful than most.  He’s also got a wide range of interests besides politics that he enjoys writing about from time to time.  Anyway, after being away from his family on the campaign trail for 16 months he polled his readers on what he should do to “return to normalcy.”  Overwhelming winner was re-connect with his children.  Dickerson seems like a very decent guy, so I’m sure he was going to do that anyway.  But since that was his assignment, he wrote a beautiful piece on watching your kids grow up.  Parents– read it.  Some of my favorite bits:

I’m flirting with becoming that tiresome guy you meet at weddings. He’s the guy that goes on about how quickly children grow up. No couple with kids is safe from his instruction: Cherish every moment with your children.

This lament is natural, but not helpful because, unless you are a total brute, the sense of loss is inevitable, no matter what kind of parent you are. If you neglect your kids, you look up and they have grown and you’ve missed it. If you are fully present in their lives, then when they’ve grown you lament the hole they’ve left in your life. Either way, you’ve done your job and now they’re off backpacking out of cellphone range or making girls with unruly hair laugh in coffee shops.

The answer has to be avoiding the lament and focusing on the product. Try to give your kids the benefit of your experience, love, and discipline—so that they can leave you strong. This also means giving them the example of what it looks like to enjoy your job so much that sometimes it takes you away from them. You hope they’ll have a job like that one day too. There’s got to be a way for the guy at the weddings to say something more like this to new parents. It would be more helpful. Still: I’m pretty much that guy…

Re-entry mostly teaches you what you already knew about parenting but forget every day because you’re greedy. Connecting with kids is like trying to connect with the Wi-Fi on the Amtrak train. The signal is mostly a trickle. Sometimes it doesn’t even exist. You’d like to fix it, but it’s not in your control. Their lives are moving along and you’re just a passenger. The best you can hope for is to enjoy the scenery and be ready when the signal gets strong. Then, you can get a pretty good download for a little while until the train moves to a new place.

No great thoughts from me.  Just a really thought-provoking, wonderfully-written meditation on parenthood.