Reading Rainbow

By Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser

Isn’t it true that sometimes the obvious is just so, well, obvious? A study reported upon in the New York Times found that test scores are declining because kids are spending less time reading for pleasure.

Oh, you mean the whole teaching to the test might not be the right approach to obtaining better test scores? Really?

I think this is worth writing about for a few reasons: one, we’re so revved up, so filled with buttons and gadgets that do things we can do without buttons and gadgets that we forget—old-fashioned or just plain old as I may sound—the beauty of the simpler, quieter, more time-consuming ways. Why do we have games and movies on telephones anyway? But more to the point, why do we give our kids unfettered access to these gadgets and then wonder why they aren’t reading more? We could be giving them more books!

Think I’m just being paranoid? Here are some stats from a Henry J.Kaiser Foundation study: “Children six and under spend an average of two hours a day using screen media (1:58), about the same amount of time they spend playing outside (2:01), and well over the amount they spend reading or being read to (39 minutes). Forty-three percent of those under two watch TV every day, and 26% have a TV in their bedroom (the American Academy of Pediatrics “urges parents to avoid television for children under 2 years old”). In any given day, two-thirds (68%) of children under two will use a screen media, for an average of just over two hours (2:05) According to the study, children who have a TV in their bedroom or who live in “heavy” TV households spend significantly more time watching than other children do, and less time reading or playing outside. Those with a TV in their room spend an average of 22 minutes more a day watching TV and videos than other children do. Those living in “heavy” TV households are more likely to watch every day (77% v. 56%), and to watch for longer when they do watch (an average of 34 minutes more a day). They are also less likely to read every day (59% v. 68%), and spend less time reading when they do read (6 minutes less a day). In fact, they are less likely than other children to be able to read at all (34% of children ages 4-6 from “heavy” TV households can read, compared to 56% of other children that age).”

Reassuringly, reading does continue to factor into young children’s lives significantly, the study finds, with nearly eight in ten children six and under reading or being read to in a given day; those, who read spend an average of 49 minutes doing so (although 83% will use screen media, for an average of 2 hours 22 minutes).

There is nothing better than having your child not want to put a book down. Okay, when it’s bedtime, that’s not always so fun. But in general, it’s a great thing to love to read. Maybe, these studies just remind us that we want to encourage—assist, seduce, provide models for—our children to become deliciously lost in books on a regular basis and we want to demand that our schools, day care centers, after school programs pay attention to the power of reading.

Another Blanket (Yawn)

By Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser

Latest from the nursing-mothers-are-legally-protected-to-breastfeed-in-public front:
this law is unfamiliar to the manager of a Kentucky Applebee’s. A story that ran in the Lexington Herald describes the dispute between a breastfeeding mom and the restaurant manager. Asked to cover up and offered a blanket to do so, little separates this seemingly ubiquitous story from being like the others. (And maybe that’s the point: even once protected by law, it’s such a hidden one that no one feels compelled to follow it). The nursing mom, Brooke Ryan, however, had a copy of the law in hand, pointing out to those in charge that she was within her rights to breastfeed in public—and without a blanket. In going public, Ryan compared her situation to Rosa Parks’ on the bus, except with a blanket.

A discreet breastfeeding mom (and we who have done it for years believe women if they say they are discreet) isn’t a public eyesore. Whether Ryan’s actions were staged, it matters not. While the nod to Parks might seem extreme, an articulate woman like Ryan demanded a simple, and I think fitting thing from Applebee’s: an apology.

Meantime, the June story is resurfacing now because on September 8th, a series of Nurse-Ins are being scheduled at Applebee’s restaurants around the country.

These stories don’t make big headlines necessarily beyond the local angles. Perhaps, though, on a national stage, it’s our duty in supporting women’s experiences from being invisible to keep taking note.

Watching the Post Reveal a Breastfeeding Campaign Gone Lame

By Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser

It’s only a conspiracy theory if they’re NOT out to get you.

This could apply to breastfeeding advocates. A recent story in the Washington Post revealed that with help from a former head to the Republican National Committee turned lobbyist, formula companies were successful in getting political appointees from the Department of Health and Human Services to tone down their pro-breastfeeding campaigns. Rather than depict the ills of formula with asthma inhalers and insulin syringes, the ads instead showed more “friendly” images of
dandelions and cherry-topped ice cream scoops to show how breastfeeding can help stem childhood obesity.

Representative Henry Waxman, investigating the matter in the wake of former Surgeon General Richard Carmona’s claims that the White House pressured him to make certain policies, called the softening of the breastfeeding campaign ads a “credible allegation of public interference” with potential “serious health consequences.” The US breastfeeding rate did not increase with the kinder, gentler ad campaign and lags well behind Europe. While the original ads were to scare women into breastfeeding, the final product became ads that tried to encourage women into breastfeeding by extolling its benefits, an approach the company hired to consult on the campaign predicted would be unsuccessful, and, not incidentally, was unsuccessful.

The Post article chronicles how formula companies were able to assert themselves such that HHS officials tried to “be fair” to the companies, rather than press hard for public health concerns. This story has made its way across the blogosphere. While some newspapers, including the Kansas City Star, picked up the Post story, other outlets have yet toreport upon it. Breaking just before Labor Day (no pun intended), the jury’s out about whether the story will travel further. Its narrative echoes other complaints about public health, but also management writ larger (think, Katrina, Iraq, oil drilling). My question: will the story follow in those footsteps of mismanagement due to pandering to big business or will the story not be as prominently featured because breastfeeding seems to be shunted to “women’s” issues rather than a national concern (even if the public health implications might loom
large).

(Real) Kids Really Do Say the Darndest Things

By Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser

Sometimes, the beauty of how children’s minds work (at least brilliant ones like those belonging to my kids) is just perfect. Case in point: my nine-year-old son Lucien told my husband this fact (well, this construction of truth): Don Imus is gay. “Where’d you get that?” asked Hosie (my spouse/his dad).

“Don Imus hates women,” replied Lucien. “So he must be gay.”

Okay, I know, I know, hating women does not equal loving men, etc. However... Well, just pass it on.

A Post-Valentine’s Reflection

By Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser

Winter, in Northampton, Massachusetts, really started on Valentine’s morning with a snowy, sleety dump. That same morning, a man dropped off an arrangement of flowers just inside our mudroom door. Now, this is not an unexpected occurrence on this particular day, especially given that my dear husband is out of town for work. So, I stepped into the mudroom and bent down to pick up the flowers. What was unexpected was the background noise. My kids were protesting, quite loudly: “Don’t touch that! We don’t know that man! What if it’s a bomb?”

It took many assurances from me—papa always sends flowers on Valentine’s Day if he’s gone, we get flowers there all the time, Harrison’s mom works at that store and probably made the arrangement—to quell their fears. For just a moment after the scare, they did literally stop and smell the roses.

What ran through my mind was this: the incalculably high number of hidden costs exacted by this so-called “War on Terror.” I felt like shaking a hand toward those who have lead the charge to twist horrific acts of violence on 9-11 into a larger conspiracy that has wrought so much more bloodshed and violence and fear than those who dreamed up the hijack suicide missions could ever have imagined possible. Some observers now deem civil war too simplistic and even too mild a term to describe the seemingly intractable violence in Iraq (and beyond). From the reality on the ground to the palpable sense of unease experienced by those at a very, very far remove from any actual violence, assurances from our leaders that our actions are rendering the world a safer place—for Iraqi or American citizens—seem nothing short of magical thinking, and that’s a generous interpretation.

Meantime, by Cupid’s big day, smack in the middle of February, the sun was already shining longer—on sunny days—and in so doing, nudging our minds toward spring. Winter barely began at the point we often first believe it’ll soon be over. The recent report issued by the United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change constitutes as definitive a declaration as scientists ever make that the earth is
warming and that humans are responsible for this detrimental development. Their urging that we humans reform our habits and reprioritize so that we save our species and other species and the planet could not be more clearly exhorted or more simply put. If we wanted something to fear, we’ve got it. And yet, without bloodshed, we
can—as many already are—start to repair these wrongs, and thus slowly allay these fears.

My middle son, Lucien, sees the connection clearly: saving the environment and peace do go together, hand-in-hand. He often draws posters about saving the earth. If not invariably then frequently a peace sign or a phrase about stopping the war makes its way to the same page. His desires for a clean earth and a friendly one are rooted in
love. He’s funny and warm and eager to relish what is good in this world. Although he thinks, more than most eight-year-olds perhaps, about the world’s hardships, such as war or poverty or pollution, what’s clear when he’s drawing is that hope trumps fear. His desire to make change comes from the simple fact that he trusts most people are
good and want the best for each other. Save for potential bombs, that is. Certainly, when I experience my own waves of fear—about the terrible toll of war or degradation to our planet—I try to remember that hope is more durable than fear and if love doesn’t quite conquer all, it certainly conquers much more than hate or revenge ever could.

Bad Guy and the Good ‘Ol Boys Who Love to Hate Them

Check out Bad Guy and the Good ‘Ol Boys Who Love to Hate Them In Memory of Molly Ivins in the Berkeley Daily Planet by (our very own) Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser.

Honoring Molly

By Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser

If someone asked me when I was a little girl what I wanted to be when I grew up, I wouldn’t have answered “kick-ass op-ed writer.” In fact, I wanted to teach deaf people, and my grandmother, Helen Buttenwieser, herself a pioneering lawyer, told me I was too young to know what I wanted to do. Given that she’d done something outrageous in terms of career, you’d think she’d have wanted to encourage her granddaughters (in fact, although liberal, she didn’t consider herself a feminist). I
must have been about eight at the time. I’d read all about Helen Keller, and darn it, I knew. It turned out that a couple of years later I learned sign language and that I spent much of middle school and high school volunteering at the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf. I think I actually did what I set out to do.

A couple of years back, a flurry of media frenzy over the paucity of female op-ed writers kicked up. By then, I’d begun to write some opinion pieces of my own, and I took those columns—and the numbers themselves, which were in the first two months of 2005, 19.5 percent of op-ed pieces at the Los Angeles Times written by women, 16.9 percent at the New York Times and 10.4 percent at The Washington Post—as a
challenge, a call to pen-mightier-than-sword arms. That, I thought to myself, is what I want to do; I want to do my part to raise the number of women op-ed writers, at least by one.

I came to this goal honestly. Besides wanting to teach the deaf, as a child I loved to make up stories and to read stories. Writer flitted in and out of favor as potential work. And political activism was in my blood. I organized from forever: shows with the cousins, children’s rights initiatives in elementary school, everything from protests to a support group for children of divorce to blood drives in high school, reproductive rights work in college and throughout my twenties, and on... The writer and the organizer/activist come together into one when writing opinion pieces.

The opinionated women writers I most admire are those who bring themselves into their work, melding belief and voice and life experience, including Anna Quindlen, Ellen Goodman, Katha Pollitt, and of course Molly Ivins.

Losing Molly Ivins is to hear only silence where once was a booming voice, one that championed women and peace and justice and common sense and salty wisdom and never ignored the power of humor to help call it like you see it. The world’s just not as good without her. But she inspired many of us, and with our unique voices—mine’s less salty—I believe that she encouraged us to assert our strong female voices. I certainly feel additional urgency to use mine.

EC: It Isn't Just For Women Anymore (Exactly)

By Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser

When I was an undergrad interested in women’s health care, my end-of-semester project for biology class was to study sperm. My friend (and lab partner) and I had solid reasoningsa for this: the kind of revolutionaries we wanted to be in the women’s health field were ones who created a viable male contraceptive (besides condoms, which we knew from experience males did not particularly like). This project, by the way, dates me because it was just at the early cusp of the AIDS epidemic back when sexually transmitted diseases basically meant gonorrhea, syphilis and herpes. Anyway, the point was that almost all research was going into new contraceptives for women (the sponge, for example), and some of it felt invasive or scary to us, personally. Certain IUD’s were facing recall. Depo-Provera and other long-acting drug fixes weren’t necessarily safe, but were being pushed and the pill had undergone some serious refining from its early days when the hormonal doses were way too high and had caused many problems. We noticed that female contraceptives had a way of being pushed before they were well tested, but that male contraceptives didn’t seem to reach the widespread testing phase. Obviously, we understood that like with condoms, compliance was an issue that worried those in public health; men, given their inability to get pregnant, perhaps would be less responsible than women about using contraceptives.

These days, condoms are, at least in theory, critical for both males and females.

Interestingly, now that Emergency Contraceptives (EC or Plan B, or the Morning After Pill) are going to become available over the counter in pharmacies (including, after a lawsuit, Wal-Mart), both women and men can buy them. The barrier now isn’t gender but age: you have to be eighteen to purchase EC (see this article in Women's ENews). Having said that, boyfriends, sisters, brothers or mothers can now obtain EC for women under eighteen (as long as they have picture ID). The other barriers may be cost (Medicaid won’t cover over-the-counter drugs), and ensuring that all pharmacists provide it (although now chains will, what about individual pharmacists at independent pharmacies?).

While more types of female contraceptives are widely available, no significant gains have been made in creating or marketing male contraceptives. And the rate for unintended pregnancy rate in the US remains high: forty-nine percent in 2001.

Oh So Pretty

By Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser

I once read that the best thing you could do for little girls is to refrain from commenting about how they look. At first blush, this might seem extreme. Stop for a moment and think about it; for many girls, how they look is not only the first thing people comment upon but the thing people comment upon most frequently. When you see a little girl, does something along the lines of “she’s pretty” or “what a cute pair of shoes” pop out of your (generally feminist) mouth? Once I started to notice what popped out of my (generally feminist) mouth, I realized that commenting upon clothing or hair is a pretty obvious icebreaker, in large part because so many girls are not so much dressed as decorated, coifed, and heavily accessorized. Unless they choose boys’ clothing (picture wide corduroy and khaki, loads of orange, dinosaurs, American ball sports, and some camouflage), girls these days aren’t left much choice. Peruse a children’s clothing catalogue and you’ll see a very pink and lavender, ruffled, flowered, flounced, cutesy selection of clothing replete with everything that supposedly characterizes girls: lollipops (sugar), sassy cuts like bell bottoms or midriff baring shirts or bikinis (spice), and horses, kittens, ballet dancers (everything nice). This point was driven home to me last year when my son, Remy, then three and I attended a fourth birthday party for his friend, Annie. Annie received not one, not two, but three purses. She also got jewelry and hair holders. The toys were limited to horses (which she loves), some dress up items, and collectibles. We brought books. No one gave her anything to do: no balls or puzzles or building toys or even art projects. I guess you could sum it up as pretty is as pretty does (or in this case, doesn’t).

Remy’s fourth birthday party loot, by contrast, included art supplies, building toys, a science experiment of a rocket that blasts off for real, a bicycle bell... You get the picture: active boys get active toys.

Ezekiel, now eleven, wanted long hair from the time he was in preschool. His younger brothers followed suit. Having been mistaken for girls for so long I can’t remember their gender being considered obvious, one thing that has been proven again and again; people do comment on pretty overwhelmingly as the icebreaker. They declare the boys, “sweet,” “adorable,” or in England this past summer, “darling.” Even on a beach vacation while wearing swim trunks, gender confusion persists. As girls, my kids are not only affirmed for being pretty but for being nice, friendly, good with younger children... Maybe boys identified as boys would be affirmed for these qualities. Often, after a person apologizes for seeing boy as girl, shifts in language define my child as “handsome,” “strong featured,” or “energetic.”

In actual fact, my kids are sweet, adorable, darling, handsome, strong featured and energetic. While I don’t think of them as extreme examples of gender neutrality, in an age attached to gender stereotyping, they really are. So, a challenge: next time you are about to make a pretty-based comment to a little girl, keep your (generally feminist) mouth shut for a moment. Then, see what else you might find to say.


Also by Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser,

Princesses Gone Wild