After work today, I met my husband and daughter at the park and on first look I thought she’d left the house wearing only a shirt! When I asked where her pants were she assured me that she had shorts on under the shirt (which barely covered her bottom).

She knew I wasn’t pleased, though, and on the way home we talked about the need for wearing something on the bottom that’s longer than the top; but, she still had to get in a couple of comments about how her outfit was “stylish” and I wasn’t letting her be “stylish.”

Parent challenge of the day … how to tell a seven-year-old the difference between stylish, sexy and slutty?

The timing was interesting as earlier in the day I’d read a post on GamePolitics.com about a report out of the UK by Dr. Linda Papadpoulos (”glamorous psychologist forever popping up on daytime television“) in which they said she noted: “High street stores sell video games where the player can beat up prostitutes with bats and steal from them in order to facilitate game progression,” leading to the following “clear” message to girls that this type of media portrays, as interpreted by the doctor, “… young girls should do whatever it takes to be desired. For boys the message is just as clear: be hyper-masculine and relate to girls as objects.”

Games were actually only a portion of the media examined. Dr. Papadopoulos talks about the impacts of the Internet in this video.

One of the key recommendations in the report included ensuring that music videos featuring sexual posing or sexually suggestive lyrics are broadcast only after the “watershed” (which means 9:00 p.m until 5:30 a.m.).

Here in the U.S., I know sexual content can be found on our television at earlier hours than that. “Two and a Half Men” on at 8:00 p.m. in my time zone, for example, has plotlines that frequently revolve around the character Charlie’s womanizing sex life.

We do our best to avoid these shows (thank goodness my girl and I both like Food Network), but it’s impossible for me to shield her from sexual themes and images all the time.

So, how do you discuss what is appropriately stylish for a nearly tween girl to wear?

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who wanted to work on a Navy submarine when she grew up.

“I’m sorry,” said her mother. “But that’s a man’s job. Women aren’t allowed to work on submarines. Maybe you could be an astronaut, or a firefighter, or a scientist instead?”

But that was yesterday. Today, the U.S. Navy announced that it is ready to lift the ban on women in submarines and that the modifications necessary for the subs to accommodate both sexes are a factor, but “not insurmountable.”

Kudos to the U.S. Navy. As a mother of daughters, I celebrate every time a hurdle is kicked down that might block their way in the future. Now, when we tell our daughters that they can be anything they want to be, we’re one step closer to actually meaning it. As long as they don’t say “Priest.”

I’m one of those children of the 70s/80s who grew up thinking I should “bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan,” and never let my man forget he’s a man. We were supposed to strive to be “Supermoms” who were able to do it all.

And, according to the recent Advertising Age white paper “The New Female Consumer: The Rise of the Real Mom,” most of us do “do it all.” Their research showed that “…women with children still handle the bulk of the household and child-care responsibilities, the so-called ’second shift’ — whether they are working full time, staying at home or something in between.”

This is in an age when the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports both parents were employed in 62 percent of the 24.6 million families made up of a married couple with children under 18. And, in the 2006-2007 academic year, the U.S. Department of Education noted women earned a majority of higher-education degrees.

The full report embedded here is filled with many more such statistics, including a 48-year comparison on education, purchasing power, and wages. But, the “real mom” to which its title makes reference is what they are really making a case for in the paper.

They posit that “the second half of this decade has brought a backlash against the mythical Supermom — that hyperactive type-A personality who whips up perfect cookies and perfect children — and an embrace of the likable, more relatable real mom, who doesn’t obsess over the little things.”

The case is made that millennial women (born between 1980 and 1995) are leading this change in attitude. They are apparently not as “conflicted” as my generation — Generation X. While I grew up being told I was equal to men, what I saw was my own mother doing an unequal amount of work to keep our family running - that “second shift” we women are apparently still working.

“[Millennials] grew up with seeing a lot of moms working, being outside the home a lot, and decided ‘Hey, this isn’t what I want,’” Aliza Freud, founder and CEO of SheSpeaks said in the AdAge report. “So they may be at peace more with their not working or working.”

Nearly have of the women surveyed for the report said finding balance between family and career is “a joke” for working women and I will certainly agree with that. The tagline for this blog used to say that it wasn’t about balance, but about juggling.

As one journalist put it: “While no longer striving to be supermoms doing everything for everyone, mothers are looking toward being pragmatic and good enough, and making a real impact in the areas that matter most for them and their children.”

This AdAge report implies that marketers should help empower women to delegate responsibilities to spouses, children and even brands so that they will have “more time to be who they want to be.”

As Carroll Trosclair on Suite101.com rightly points out, “marketers have been helping women delegate work to products, services and brands for decades. But delegating work to husbands and children may be a new and controversial challenge for advertisers.”

Interesting Side Note:
While researching for this post, I came across a blog that mentions one of the ways information was gathered for the whitepaper. Kitchen Table Conversations, “a new user-generated video research service revolutionizing how qualitative research is conducted” was used to gather information on grocery shopping habits. If you’re interested in qualitative research methods, check it out.

I love Lucy.

Not that Lucy. The eponymous ditzy redhead character portrayed by Lucille Ball could hardly be more different than the Lucy I’m talking about: Lucy Stone, the first recorded American woman to retain her own name after marriage.

Actually, I don’t really love this Lucy, who died 116 years ago today.

Lucy Stone, the first American woman to use a maiden name after marriage. Image: Wikipedia

Rather,  as another married woman who’s demurred from adopting a husband’s name, I hold an abiding respect and appreciation for her. And as name pioneers go, I flatter myself as a kind of 21st century cousin.

When my daughter was born a year ago, my husband and I gave her my last name. Her four-year-old brother, meanwhile, has his last name. They each have the other parent’s last name as their middle moniker. So we parents, Cari Noga and Mike Henderson, have as offspring Owen Noga Henderson and Audrey Henderson Noga.

It’s different, to be sure. We’ve fielded some flak over it, mostly well-meaning inquiries about whether we’d considered that this might confuse the kids – and, to my ears, implying that’s exactly what we’d be doing.

Au contraire, I say. Indeed, it deviates from the U.S. norm. But if the kids are raised with this as their norm, there’s no place to sow confusion.  That question is also cloaked in the patriarchal stereotypes we’re trying to shrug off. No one objected that our son would be confused because he and I didn’t share a name. So why should our daughter feel confused about not sharing one with her dad?

After a year of living with it and writing about it (my personal blog explores the anomaly of having two kids with the same, married parents but different last names. OK, and a cute-kid picture now and then. I’m only human.) I’m ready to take the next step: advocacy for name choice equality. As this Salon article from 2000 puts it, why should a baby get the father’s last name? At the very least, can we think about why it’s the automatic choice for almost everyone? Other than that it’s expected and easy, there’s no real reason.

Admittedly, it’s uphill trudging. The most generous estimates I’ve seen say that only 10 percent of American women keep their names upon marrying, making for a small pool to persuade.  But the importance of the advocacy piece was reinforced for me this summer.

In August, researchers from Indiana University and the University of Utah presented to the American Sociological Association their findings that 71 percent of Americans they surveyed believe it’s better for women to change their surname upon marriage. In addition, fully half supported government regulation requiring name change. (See UPI piece and Times of India story.)

“It was a little shocking to see,” said Laura Hamilton, one of the study authors and a Ph.D candidate at Indiana. (Read more about the study, “Mapping Gender Attitudes with Views Toward Marital Name Change” and my interview with Hamilton on my personal blog.)

Shocking, indeed, are such value judgments about what should be a woman’s private, individual choice. It’s also evidence how hard it is, even 116 years after Lucy Stone, to swim against the tide.

But, like Nemo, I’ll just keep swimming. After all, while patriarchal tradition has prevailed the last few centuries in most of the Western world, it isn’t this way everywhere. When I first broached this idea to my husband, he started doing genealogical research and found that ancient Scots – a dominant strain in his ancestry – gave daughters their mothers’ names, while sons received their fathers’. Some Native American tribes and Jewish denominations, to name some found right here in the U.S.A., practice matrilineal traditions, where one’s lineage is traced through the mother.

Let me talk about my husband’s reaction to the idea more. He’s an open-minded guy, but I wondered if this would just be too far out there.
Initially, he did hesitate, because he wanted our kids to share a last name. But I asked him to keep thinking about it. As he did, I got more invested in the idea for what I think it teaches both our kids.

We’re providing a crystal clear, living lesson of what we believe about family: Mom and dad are equally important influences in their lives.

So, from my cyber-soapbox, I make my pitch to you. Think about it a matrilineal name. Talk about it with your husband. (Or, husbands, with your wives.) Block out tradition, the questions from family members, all the white noise that obscures what really matters. Then, just do it.

Since President Obama was named the Nobel Peace Prize winner last week, vats of ink, servers full of pixels and hours of airtime have been expended debating whether he deserved it, especially in light of the long careers of his fellow nominees.

It's lonely out here.

No one has mentioned my nominee, however: Lisa Snyder, a mom from Middleville, Michigan. Snyder watches her neighbors’ kids for about a half-hour each morning, filling in the gap between when their parents must leave for work and the arrival of the school bus, which stops in front of her house.

Admittedly, I’d never heard of Snyder until two weeks ago. Her 15 minutes of fame came up because someone reported her neighborliness to Michigan authorities as running an illegal daycare. Rightfully, the media coverage has taken a tone of aghast incredulity, and it looks like the law here in Michigan will be amended.

And yes, I’m being facetious about Snyder as a Peace Prize contender. But not a lot. Lately I’ve often found myself in a state of mind I’ve dubbed the “back 40 blues.” Everyone knows the beautiful proverb turned hackneyed political cliché: “It takes a village to raise a child.” My personal adaptation adds a coda: “It takes a village to raise a child – and I’m living on the back 40.”

Most of the back 40 blues trace back to having a second child, as I wrote on my personal blog last week. In a way I didn’t anticipate, the demands of two vs. one completely drain the reserve energy, patience and time I used to rely upon when everyday issues and inconveniences cropped up.

In other words, I’m far less able to cope with disruptions to daily routine – illness, car problems, daycare holidays – at precisely the same time the odds of such disruptions have doubled.

Look in the mirror, right? We didn’t have to have a second child. True. But that easy blame-guilt response doesn’t feel fair. I compare myself to my mom. She didn’t work out of the home when my brother and I were as young as my kids. But when we were in elementary school, she took a part-time teaching job three days a week – the same kind of schedule as my part-time community college PR gig.

Maybe she just handled it better. (She was, after all, almost 15 years younger than me at this stage of motherhood.) Or maybe it’s because, on our same block, she had three peer moms, all raising kids in about the same age range. A posse of Lisa Snyders, if you will. The kids were all friends. The moms shared toolbox and cupboard inventories without hesitation. Most importantly, they backstopped each other when it came to pinch child care and errand-running. Maybe my perspective’s skewed by green-colored glasses, but they all helped make everyone’s lives run more smoothly – dare I say peacefully?

I look at my block. The house next door was foreclosed on over a year ago and has been vacant for more than 18 months. On the other side, our elderly neighbors spend half the year at their second home. Though we’ve lived here six years, we have barely a nodding acquaintance with the rest of the block, which offers only one other home with kids. Several rentals, with their short-term occupants, challenge any efforts to develop my own backstop.

Beyond the block, I do have local in-laws half the year. But a cancer recurrence this spring effectively quarantined my mother-in-law in the village. Babysitters? Our most reliable moved out of the area in June, leaving us with one in the stable.

So what to do about it all? One of the ideas I didn’t get around to executing this summer was to host a block party, to allow all the neighbors to at least meet each other. Granted, it’s a big step from sharing hot dogs together to the communal snow shoveling, car pooling and backup child care that I envision.

But the Nobel committee said Obama, despite lacking a long list of accomplishments, deserved the award for inspiring a world vision of peace. Likewise,  Snyder inspires me. The back 40 could get annexed to the village. So on behalf of Michigan moms, I’m awarding Lisa Snyder a Block Peace Prize. And if she wants to move up north, the house next door is a steal.

Image credit: www.oklo.org

Have you been so bad as to read “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” or “To Kill a Mockingbird“? Harbor a secret copy of Judy Blume’s “Forever” in your closet? Let your impressionable children read a Harry Potter book? Or, heaven forbid, read a picture book about two male penguins who adopt an egg to your poor preschooler?!

You, my friend, are in serious trouble. You have been the unwitting participant or enabler of reading a book that has been banned.

And this week you are encouraged to celebrate it!

Yes, this is Banned Books Week - a national celebration of the freedom to read.

According to BannedBooksWeek.org, “It was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. More than a thousand books have been challenged since 1982. The challenges have occurred in every state and in hundreds of communities. Click here to see a map of book bans and challenges in the US from 2007 to 2009.”

That penguin book for preschoolers? “And Tango Makes Three,” by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell is once again one of the 10 most-challenged titles over the past year. Why? Reasons cited are: anti-ethnic, anti-family, homosexuality, religious viewpoint, and unsuited to age group.

The 2009 celebration of Banned Books Week is being held from September 26 through October 3, but you can be a rebel all year round - now go read something someone doesn’t want you to read!

(And if you really want to cause trouble, check out these other ideas for marking the week.)

Last year I read “Bridge to Terabithia” and loved it. Haven’t decided what to read this year yet, but open to suggestions…

Related articles by Zemanta

• Banned Books Week (huffingtonpost.com)
• Read, Speak, Know: Banned Books Week 2009 (califmom.com)
• Mapping Banned Books in the U.S. (mediabistro.com)
• Celebrate Banned Books! (bilerico.com)

“I think the big brown guy is going to win,” my girl said the other night as we watched Shaquille O’Neil take on Oscar de la Hoya in the boxing ring on his “Shaq Vs.” show.

She’s just turned seven and still refers to people’s skin color in the same way she might describe a crayon; and while I think that is rather adorable, I do sometimes wonder how long others will think it is cute. At what age do we need to teach our children to use descriptions like African-American and Asian-American? And how do we teach them when to use Latino vs. Hispanic? Or the difference in Native-American and Indian (as in our across the street neighbors from India)?

I know that my own insecurities and fears of saying the wrong thing make me unsure of how to proceed in this area, and it turns out I’m not alone.  Here in my own town, The University of Texas has been studying Caucasian (white?) children’s racial attitudes, and it appears that I’m not the only one who has problems discussing race with their kids.

According to Newsweek, the researcher was “taken aback—these families volunteered knowing full well it was a study of children’s racial attitudes. Yet once they were aware that the study required talking openly about race, they started dropping out.”

According to one blogger on the National Post Comment section, that “confirms what many people probably already thought: white children in Austin, Texas are racist.”

Wow!

That’s exactly the sort of thing I fear that keeps me from being comfortable discussing race with my daughter - doing it wrong and risking being pegged racist. But, the study indicates that not calling attention to racial differences does not mean our children will grow up to be colorblind, no matter how much we wish it.

Those families that did follow through with the study and talked openly about interracial friendship showed a dramatic improvement in their children’s racial attitudes. So, how do those of us not getting scripts from a university handle it?

I’ve asked the question among some of my white girlfriends before, and none of them seemed to know how to do it either. Often it seems something easier left to the school system to try to broach, but I’m not sure that’s really what I want to do.

My girl’s Daisy Girl Scout troop had a session on diversity last year, in which one of our African-American moms talked about race - but, even that was again in the context of crayons and how a picture looks so much better when it has more than one color.

This UT study indicates that sort of wishy-washy description doesn’t really cut it for what I ultimately want to accomplish. Turns out my pride in the diversity of that same Daisy troop doesn’t mean it is going to teach those girls to be colorblind either. Another UT researcher in that same Newsweek story says of desegregation in schools:

“It’s an enormous step backward to increase social segregation,” she says. However, she also admitted that “in the end, I was disappointed with the amount of evidence social psychology could muster [to support it]. Going to integrated schools gives you just as many chances to learn stereotypes as to unlearn them.”

So what is a parent to do? It would appear, much like preparing for “the talk” about sex, we also need to plan for more talk about race. I’m going to try to be honest with my girl and admit that I don’t really know when it is appropriate to use the terms Hispanic, Latino or Mexican-American. I won’t plan a big sit-down conversation, but rather will look for ways to weave it in when opportunity presents itself (much the same way I’m approaching discussions of sex at this point). But, I better prepare myself.

Better me talking to her about race than these guys.

Have you discussed race with your child? What tips can you share to help me and others prepare? Do I need to correct my daughter when she equally uses “brown” as a descriptor for African-Americans, Indian-Americans and Mexican-Americans?

This post was originally published on Writing Roads, but then I got to thinking…what about my daughter? She’s three. Do I want her to grow up in a world where Angelina Jolie is touted as an acceptable feminist icon? Hell no. Do I want my son, also 3, thinking this is the epitome of being a worthwhile woman and what he should desire? Hell no - again. So, I’m posting it here as well…

Dear Naomi Wolf,

I’m really a fan of your work. So I’m quite confused by the article you wrote about Angelina Jolie in Harper’s Bazaar where you declared her the new feminist icon.

One of your reasons? Because she had escaped the Madonna/Whore debacle. Interesting? Did she really? Was she ever a shoe-in for the Madonna? There isn’t enough ‘orphan’ in China to cover those tattoos. Sorry. (I have three tattoos myself, I love tattoos, but the Madonna - last time I checked - had none.)

Escape the image of the Whore? Um. Last time I checked she had an affair with a married man and then told everyone about it in a magazine. You wrote, ’she managed the almost unheard-of task of turning the home-wrecker label into a wholesome, family-friendly triumph.’ …………….. Sorry for the pause. I was busy. Throwing up.

Is this a joke? Who decided that she triumphed and who the hell called it wholesome? I think what she did was horrid and unforgivable. I’ve never caught her face on the front of the tabloids and thought anything but, ‘Ew.’ She did something wrong. She hurt at least one person, badly. And because the media decided to spin it one particular way, she triumphed? Naomi, you say it yourself: Maddox was photographed playing squeaky clean football with Brad Pitt, the father figure, and by Annie Liebovitz loving his mother. This was not a triumph - but a well-played, well-moneyed PR stunt.

I don’t care how much good she does in the world, you can’t really erase that, can you??? Maybe you can note her change or congratulate her for doing good things - but call a spade a spade. I beg you.

Then, you claim that because Santa Angelina (as Perez likes to call her) got her pilot’s license, she’s chosen “the classic metaphor for choosing your own direction.” Oh? What about a race car driver like Danica Patrick? What about Secretary of State like Hilary Clinton (I mean, she travels all over the world!)? What about an artist? What about a writer? I can think of dozens of professions that involve choosing your own direction. Boldly, even.

You also declare that ’she took for her own pleasure the male seen as the most desired of the tribe, Brad Pitt.’ Not to me. I’m a George Clooney kind of a girl. And there’s something so barbaric in your word choice…but I get that you meant to do that. You want us to see her as the cavewoman clubbing the man and dragging him back to her cave. You succeeded, I just don’t find that alluring, praise-worthy or as a desirable behavior.

Maybe this is my favorite part of your article:

“Yes, she is conventionally beautiful: Bosomy and wasp-waisted, with that curtain of hair and those crazy pillowy lips, she is an obvious male sex fantasy.”

Hello? Naomi? Are you even in there??? You, yes YOU, the one that wrote The Beauty Myth. On what planet is Angelina Jolie ‘conventionally beautiful’??? Her boobs are huge. She looks anorexic - whether she is or isn’t, her bones poke out and there is no meat on her. She’s 34 years old, has carried three children in her womb and her stomach is non-existent and those boobs stand up without stretch marks so far as we can see. Her lips are, as you say, pillows - meaning overstuffed (and I’m sure they’re natural, they do seem to exist in her childhood photos). BUT MOST WOMEN DON’T LOOK LIKE THAT.

If I remember correctly, you wanted to liberate us from thinking we needed to idolize that male, sexualized, impossible to attain ideal! Just because some women, or the majority according to your poll, think she’s hot doesn’t make it okay. Why do you think they find her attractive? Doesn’t this beauty myth play a role. Wasn’t your theory that women are pressured into taking on this idealized concept of the female body? By men?

I read your book a long time ago, when it came out in 1991. And it meant so much to me. So much - as a woman who was struggling with an eating disorder, who had just found herself plopped in an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog masquerading as a private, New England college, who went on to struggle and survive, who was proudly among the first small group of women to graduate with a Women’s Studies major.

So, my feminst icon? Well, she used to look a little bit like Gloria Steinem, Alice Walker, Billie Jean King, Sylvia Boorstein and my fourth grade teacher, Holly Tetlow, all rolled into one. But the more I read your article, the more I realized that my icon is so much more. She’s new women I meet doing amazing things, female authors that are writing their hearts out, mothers that survive the loss of a child, girls finding their voices, she’s my friends, she’s my family. And she’s me - on my good days and on my bad ones.

We are more universal. We’re a grab bag, really. As diverse as our needs and wants on any given day. But, bottomline, my icon is real. She’s here.

Live and let live. I don’t know Angelina Jolie and I don’t pretend to just becuase I can read about her life in People magazine. But, I do know my icons, idols, role models and fantasies…and they look, act and exist nothing like Angelina Jolie.