...ture of my work permits flexibility and the ability to work from home, and I had a portion of a book advance. But that advance—meant to stretch over a year—was quickly lost to diapers and onesies and devices designed to suck snot from tiny human noses. I started writing journalism again—in a frenzied, desperate way—about six weeks after I had my daughter, but I was not really back in gear for three months and not earning anything like what I had be...
Maternity Leave Policies in America Hurt Working Moms | The New Republic
9 years
Likely a reference to the Swedish baby device, NoseFrida:
Those prime childbearing years—mid-twenties to early forties—overlap precisely with prime professional years. This is when employees are most attractive to new employers, when they should be able to zip up ladders with the most alacrity. But for women who feel they might want to have a baby, hesitation can e...
Maternity Leave Policies in America Hurt Working Moms | The New Republic
9 years
...ve, and with them, any promise of being able to take time off after a baby. The Family and Medical Leave Act, currently the only federal leave protection available to American workers who have babies, does not require that an employer pay a new mother for a single day of leave; it merely protects her job for twelve weeks of unpaid leave, and then, only if she has worked at her company for at least a year. So, in many states, if you take a new job and then, two months later,...
Maternity Leave Policies in America Hurt Working Moms | The New Republic
9 years
Jen Carnig pumps breast milk in the office where she works as communications director of a civil rights advocacy organization. Her children attend a day care center, while Carnig and her husband work full time. The cost of child care is among her family's biggest expenses.
Maternity Leave Policies in America Hurt Working Moms | The New Republic
9 years
...rns about the investigation’s many missteps and how these characters are adrift in their own versions of grief and bewilderment, each supplying further insight into that brutal yet enigmatic evening. Along the way, Blackwood captures the former small-town feel of Austin: the glow of the scattered moon towers, the persistent cries of grackles, the pecan trees releasing hard-shelled fruit onto a car’s roof.
Scott Blackwood’s ‘See How Small’ - NYTimes.com
9 years
Pecan sap on car
Grackle in mid-call
Familiar images for anyone who has ever lived in Austin–and both the author Blackwood and the reviewer Walsh have–though I don’t know that Austin’s growth form small town to technopolis has done away with any of the three–lamenting so much is a repeated refrain for Austin writers.
Even a good number of the city’s moon towers–late 19th century urban lighting using carbon arc lamps–remain and were made nationally famous in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused when Matthew Mcconaughey calls from the window of his car:
“Party at the moontower, everyone’s going to be there.”
And I was glad for an ethnographic antidote to the ubiquity of developmental psychologists, whose advice often lacks a vital cultural perspective. Case in point: When my wife and I were sleeplessly losing our wits, we read through advice books on infant sleep, none of which mentioned that s...
The Only Baby Book You’ll Ever Need - NYTimes.com
9 years
...of which mentioned that sleeping for eight uninterrupted hours in a bed in separate rooms is a distinct cultural anomaly. For most cultures, sleep is social. Around the world, people sleep in groups; with animals; in briefer chunks of time; without coverings.
The Only Baby Book You’ll Ever Need - NYTimes.com
9 years
9 years
...at makes you seem like a visitor to your own culture. In the first year of my son’s life, I found myself pondering things like baby rattles. Where do they come from? Why do we give rattles to babies? Are there cultures where babies don’t get rattles? (Indeed, there are.)
The Only Baby Book You’ll Ever Need - NYTimes.com
9 years
But all cultures have Sophie le giraffe, right?
9 years
When you’re a first-time parent, something perverse happens that makes you seem like a visitor to your own culture. In the first year of my son’s life, I found myself pondering things like baby rattles. Where do they come from? Why do we give rattles to babies? Are there cultures where babies don’t get rattles? (I...
The Only Baby Book You’ll Ever Need - NYTimes.com
9 years
...history and his own fieldwork in seven countries. He’s not explicitly writing for parents. Yet through factoids and analysis, he demonstrates something that American parents desperately need to hear: Children are raised in all sorts of ways, and they all turn out just fine.
The Only Baby Book You’ll Ever Need - NYTimes.com
9 years
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