emma_in_dream (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
emma_in_dream) wrote2012-10-14 11:03 am
emma_in_dream) wrote2012-10-14 11:03 am
Jessica Valenti, *Why Have Kids?* (2012)
You may know Valenti as one of the originators of the popular site http://feministing.com/.
She has recently had a baby, an emergency c-section of a premmie, and she has written a book about parenting in modern America. My hat is off to anyone who can manage a newborn and a new book.
*Why Have Kids?* covers a lot of ground, child birth, feeding, maternity leave, working patterns, use of child care, family types, choices to remain child-free. With a heap of issues like this - issues which people feel passionately about - I would doubt anyone would read it and agree with every word.
I find her section on breast feeding off-putting, mostly because she relies on anecdotal evidence about babies who nearly starved or who did actually die. Um, pretty unusual. Also, she talks about the pressure that breast feeding advocates put on new mothers, which is probably accurate, but does not spend equal time on the massive structural, society-wide issues impeding breast feeding.
On the other hand, I was nodding along to her introduction, especially when she wrote:
We're scared to death thanks to the media - telling us about strollers that will slice your kid's finger off, or ad campaigns likening co-sleeping to letting your baby sleep in bed with a butcher knife. But the reality is that American kids are more likely to go without health insurance than to be kidnapped. They're more likely to get a serious illness than be abused by a child care worker or left in a hot car. We focus on the absurd, rather than the everyday, because the mundane is to real - too out of control - to face.
After all, having a critically ill baby never crossed my mind - even though one in six babies in the United States is born prematurely. I was much more concerned about finding baby clothes that weren't so girly as to offend my feminist sensibilities.... [I]t never entered my mind that I would get anything but a big, fat, healthy baby. I was naive, yes, but, like most parents, I was just being self-protective. Because like it or not, becoming a parent is a life or death situation. And the terrifying reality is that from the moment are children are born there's always a chance they could be taken away from us. I don't know about you, but worrying about BPA-free pacifiers seems a hell of a lot more sanity saving.
Her point, as I take it, is that our attention as parents is constantly being directed to small issues which we can fix as individuals. But we do not concentrate on the big picture because it is too massive and seems impossible to address. Also, no working together. Most parenting choices are positioned as individual choices - shall I vaccinate my kids? is that best for them? - and the wider issues - like herd immunity - are ignored.
And likewise I enjoyed a parenting book which puts the possibility of having a sick kid up-front instead of tucking it away in a separate chapter at the back (as in *What to Expect*).
She has recently had a baby, an emergency c-section of a premmie, and she has written a book about parenting in modern America. My hat is off to anyone who can manage a newborn and a new book.
*Why Have Kids?* covers a lot of ground, child birth, feeding, maternity leave, working patterns, use of child care, family types, choices to remain child-free. With a heap of issues like this - issues which people feel passionately about - I would doubt anyone would read it and agree with every word.
I find her section on breast feeding off-putting, mostly because she relies on anecdotal evidence about babies who nearly starved or who did actually die. Um, pretty unusual. Also, she talks about the pressure that breast feeding advocates put on new mothers, which is probably accurate, but does not spend equal time on the massive structural, society-wide issues impeding breast feeding.
On the other hand, I was nodding along to her introduction, especially when she wrote:
We're scared to death thanks to the media - telling us about strollers that will slice your kid's finger off, or ad campaigns likening co-sleeping to letting your baby sleep in bed with a butcher knife. But the reality is that American kids are more likely to go without health insurance than to be kidnapped. They're more likely to get a serious illness than be abused by a child care worker or left in a hot car. We focus on the absurd, rather than the everyday, because the mundane is to real - too out of control - to face.
After all, having a critically ill baby never crossed my mind - even though one in six babies in the United States is born prematurely. I was much more concerned about finding baby clothes that weren't so girly as to offend my feminist sensibilities.... [I]t never entered my mind that I would get anything but a big, fat, healthy baby. I was naive, yes, but, like most parents, I was just being self-protective. Because like it or not, becoming a parent is a life or death situation. And the terrifying reality is that from the moment are children are born there's always a chance they could be taken away from us. I don't know about you, but worrying about BPA-free pacifiers seems a hell of a lot more sanity saving.
Her point, as I take it, is that our attention as parents is constantly being directed to small issues which we can fix as individuals. But we do not concentrate on the big picture because it is too massive and seems impossible to address. Also, no working together. Most parenting choices are positioned as individual choices - shall I vaccinate my kids? is that best for them? - and the wider issues - like herd immunity - are ignored.
And likewise I enjoyed a parenting book which puts the possibility of having a sick kid up-front instead of tucking it away in a separate chapter at the back (as in *What to Expect*).