Required Reading for Toyota Owners!

My mom owns a Prius so you can imagine how nervous the story of the runaway Prius in San Diego made me :-0

We also own a Toyota and while it hasn't shown up on any of the recall lists so far, we keep hearing rumors that the true problem may date back well before 2004 when we bought our car.

If you or anybody you know drive a Toyota, make sure you read this article on how to stop your car in the event the throttle gets stuck.

Tell CBS You Support Focus on the Family Tim Tebow Ad!

As you probably already know, CBS has come under fire from pro-abortion groups for agreeing to run a Focus on the Family ad during next week's Super Bowl featuring the story of homeschool graduate and Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow. Tebow's mother had received pressure from her doctor to abort but her Christian faith led her to continue her pregnancy. It's a heartwarming story, and one so compelling that it's really frightened the pro-abortion lobby.

The folks over at Catholicvote.org have put together a petition to CBS in support of their decision to run the ad. Please consider signing it to let the network know you stand with the Tebows and Focus on the Family in defense of those innocent unborn babies whose very lives are at stake.

Would You Give Contraceptives to Your 14 Year Old Daughter?

Remember all that controversy a few years back over the New York Times article "Truly, Madly, Guiltily" by novelist Ayelet Waldman? In it, Ms. Waldman admitted that she'd rather all 4 of her kids die than her husband:

"What if, God forbid, someone were to snatch one of my children? God forbid. I imagine what it would feel like to lose one or even all of them. I imagine myself consumed, destroyed by the pain. And yet, in these imaginings, there is always a future beyond the child's death. Because if I were to lose one of my children, God forbid, even if I lost all my children, God forbid, I would still have him, my husband. But my imagination simply fails me when I try to picture a future beyond my husband's death."

The whole piece came off as rather creepy to me. I love my DH but I'm not obsessed with him the way Ms. Waldman seems to be with hers. My whole identity is not so wrapped up in our marriage that I would not be able to function should God forbid it end. Would I be devastated? Absolutely. Can I "imagine no joy without [him]" as Ms. Waldman puts it? The truth is that I believe I would be able to work through my grief in time; while I would certainly miss him, I'd still be able to find joy in other parts of my life. God has given me many blessings. The loss of one, even of a major one like my marriage, would not end my ability to appreciate the remaining ones. In fact, I would likely come to treasure them even more.

Anyways, Ms. Waldman has a new provocative piece on NPR.org and linked to by Lisa Belkin's New York Times "Motherlode" blog. In the piece, she relates how she decided to place a stash of prophylactics she'd received as a freebie in her kids' bathroom (her oldest is a 14 year old girl):

"I was about to throw them away, but after an internal debate that seemed at once to encompass every attitude, preconception, goal and belief I have about parenting, I took the bag and put it on the very top shelf of the cupboard in the kids' bathroom."

I had friends growing up whose parents put them on the Pill at 16 and allowed them to stay out all night with their boyfriends. They were clearly given the impression that teen sex was okay; not surprisingly they lost their virginity on the early side and had a high number of partners as teens. They are now in their early 30's and still single.

Compare their outcome with those of my friends whose parents held more conservative beliefs about teen sexuality. They were virgins at high school graduation and while most of them did not wait all the way until marriage, they tended to have few or even only a single partner. The majority of them are now married or engaged.

These are anecdotes, but research findings back up the notion that a lower number of premarital sex partners leads to better marital outcomes. People who marry their first sexual partners are less likely to cheat than those who have multiple partners before marriage. Also, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control, women having no non-marital sexual partners had an 81% chance at a stable marriage. By contrast, when a woman had just one non-marital sexual partner that chance dropped to 54%. If a woman had five sexual partners outside of marriage she has only 30% chance of a stable marriage.

Which would you want for your daughter(s)- promiscuity as a teen or a better chance at a happy marriage when she's an adult?

Is the New "Tween Dora" a Sell-Out?

Like many moms, I was a bit concerned when I read a few weeks ago that Mattel was going to be introducing a middle school aged version of Dora the Explorer. My 6 year old, Miss Scarlet, is a big Dora fan (though since we do not have cable/satellite her exposure is limited to books and the occasional DVD). As far as kids' entertainment goes, Dora is one of the better options in my book. She's kind, resourceful, brave, encourages kids to explore nature, and even teaches a few words of Spanish.

When I first heard of the "Tween Dora", I was afraid that she might resemble those awful Bratz dolls with too much makeup and too little clothing. A sexually provocative Dora would be about as welcome at our house as the infestation of 50,000 Africanized honeybees we heard about on NPR last week.

Today, I received an email from the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood asking me to sign a petition to Mattel against "Tween Dora". This petition reads in part:

"We know that if the original Dora grew up, she wouldn't be a fashion icon or a shopaholic. She'd develop her map reading skills and imagine the places she could go. She'd capitalize on those problem solving skills to design new ways to bring fresh water to communities in need around the world. Maybe she'd become a world class runner or follow her love of animals and become a wildlife preservationist or biologist. We'll never know because the only way a girl can grow up in tween town, is to narrow that symphony of choices to one note. It's such a sell out of Dora, of all girls. "

I agree that the original Dora would grow up to be clever, imaginative, and want to use her talents to solve problems and give back to the community. But why does that mean she can't also enjoy fun girlie-girl stuff like fashion? Why does she need to be androgynous to be smart and successful in a career? Why can't "Tween Dora" like exploring AND shopping? Why, four decades after feminism was supposed to free women from gender-based stereotypes to make their own decisions are we still perpetuating the false dichotomy between brains & beauty?

Now that the look of "Tween Dora" has been revealed, I'm relieved to see that it's fairly innocuous. I'm not thrilled about the pierced ears and makeup, but they're on the subtle side. Her figure is slender, but not anorexic-looking nor Barbie's extreme hourglass. Her outfit is age-appropriate and I personally think it's cute.
I don't see this new "Tween Dora" as necessarily being a sell-out of everything that the original Dora stood for. She does have a more overtly feminine appearance than her preschool counterpart, but so what?

I had a pixie cut & tomboyish clothes as a preschooler and then wore my hair long and cute feminine-looking outfits when I got older and more into fashion. But I still was into science and speaking my mind and wanting to make this world a better place. The outside might look a bit different, but inside I was still the same person. I liked going to the mall to pick out a new lip gloss one day and playing hockey with my brothers the next.

Why can't "Tween Dora" be similarly multifaceted?

The Case Against Breastfeeding or For Selfishness?

There are some fantastic comments over at Lisa Belkin's New York Times "Motherlode" blog about Hanna Rosin's anti-breastfeeding rant in the current issue of The Atlantic.

While I agree with Ms. Rosin that the scientific case for breastfeeding isn’t remotely as strong as “lactivists” would have us believe, I was extremely turned off by the selfish attitude so pervasive throughout her article. What her entire argument boiled down to is that moms should not feed their children the way God (or Nature if one prefers) intends because nursing requires the mom put her child’s needs ahead of her own desires. Hello, that’s called parenting! All the reasons Ms. Rosin gives for not breastfeeding are selfish ones- mom’s career, mom’s desire not to be “tied down”, mom’s discomfort with nursing in public (just wear a nursing top & coverup/blanket if modesty is a concern), mom’s desire to alternate night feedings with dad so she can sleep better, whine, whine, whine. It’s all about what SHE wants and not what’s best for the baby.

The most outrageous part of the article to me is that Ms. Rosin spins her anti-breastfeeding position as the "feminist" one. What ever happened to trusting womens' bodies to nourish their babies being the feminist position?

Here's an excellent comment on the NYT blog signed "MJ":

"Like many women my age, I blame the previous generation’s feminist movement’s focus on having everything for men and women be exactly the same. News flash–men and women are NOT biologically the same! We carry the babies, we nurse the babies, we are the mommies. My husband and I have what I call a more enlightened equal marriage. Instead of trying to divide every task exactly down the middle, like the author’s Canadian friend seemed to be doing, we realize that we have different abilities/strengths and divide the housework and childcare duties according to those. Yes, I feed the baby during the night, but that’s because I have the boobs! It’s ludicrous to think that men and women are exactly the same. We need society to realize this, and provide the kind of support for families that women are crying out for–laws mandating that employers provide maternity leave and the support new moms need when they return to the workplace. When you feed your baby formula solely because it is more convenient, you are giving up the fight for the rest of us. We need to stick together and demand that society supports us in our choice to breastfeed!"

Poster "Amanda" added:

"It’s articles like these that make me wonder whether or not I want to be affiliated with the feminist movement. I am empowered by the ability to create, grow, and feed another human being– not brought down by it as Rosin suggests. As others have said, I cannot understand why people are so hell bent on men and women being the same. We are different and I wish the feminist movement would focus more on those differences. Why should I be eager to make myself more like a man? Shouldn’t we celebrate the things that make us WOMEN?

For those who think that breastfeeding causes an imbalance in your marriage– you probably have problems that go far beyond breastfeeding. If your husband can’t pick up the slack in other places, then that’s something formula feeding cannot solve."

Here's another good comment signed"Soon to be Mother Mary":

"Rosin’s article is an example of the growing backlash against women who choose a more traditional approach to motherhood. Her response, 'We are in a time of incredibly intensive parenting,' 'Why now, when women have less time and more opportunity than ever before? You would think some other form of parenting would be thriving now.' is indicative of the disconnect between the two groups. As a woman who has taken up the banner of pregnancy and motherhood rights, I’ve discovered that more traditional feminists view me and my compatriots as confused at best and turncoats at worst. They don’t understand why, when we could be out there making money, we quit our jobs, clip coupons, and raise our children. Because of this, we have a situation where traditional feminist organizations like NOW will only lend token support to the issues of pregnancy rights.

The problem I had with Rosin’s article was that she attempts to do exactly what she accuses the lactivists of doing. Where they have tried to guilt her into breastfeeding, she tries to make them out to be air-head fad followers."

And here's a man who gets it, "Josh Hill":

"The notion that breast feeding is some kind of sexist plot to manipulate women into changing diapers is beyond ridiculous, almost a satire of 60’s era radical feminist chic. Men don’t breast feed because they don’t make milk. Evolution has equipped the sexes to have specialized roles in the raising of offspring. Her acquaintance should be glad she doesn’t have to sit on eggs.

I’m glad to express my support to those women who make the sacrifices necessary to breast feed. And at the same time, I unequivocally condemn those who make life hard for them, and those who, lacking a sound medical or economic reason, are too narcissistic to do the best thing for their children. The state of our knowledge may one day change, but as far as we can tell from the current evidence, they might as well drink or smoke during pregnancy."

Amen to that!

Heart-Warming Link

Earlier this afternoon, the baby was asleep in my arms and I was sipping tea and flipping through this week's edition of the Archdiocese newspaper. I came across the following column by Ginny Kubitz Moyer (who blogs over at "Mary & Me"). Maybe it's just the wacky post-partum hormones, but it brought me to tears.

"it's not really the clothes I want to keep forever. It's this age, the beautiful baby months when Luke smiles his gummy smile, learns to hold his rattle, and laughs with the glee of the very new.

I love it, this sweet time when he fits perfectly against my shoulder, when his little body smells of warmth and sleep and babyhood.

No, I can't make the earth, or time, stand still.

But, like all moms, I'd give anything to try."

Beautiful!

Memo to Facebook: Moms Nursing Their Babies are Not "Obscene"

I'm a fairly modest person and when I'm nursing a baby, I personally prefer to look for a place where I can have some privacy if we're away from home. But I strongly support the right of other moms to nurse in public if they so desire. God designed a woman's body to feed her child, and it's not at all obscene for her to do so. Just because I personally feel more comfortable with a higher degree of privacy when I'm nursing does not mean that other women should be required to do the same.

I was therefore appalled to discover via Lisa Belkin's "Motherlode" blog on the New York Times that Facebook considers pictures of moms nursing their babies to be "obscene". Several moms have apparently had the site censor photos of them nursing.

A spokesman for Facebook told Ms. Belkin:

"[Nursing] is a natural and beautiful act and we’re very glad to know that it is so important to some mothers to share this experience with others on Facebook. We take no action on the vast majority of [nursing] photos because they follow the site’s Terms of Use. Photos containing a fully exposed [bosom] do violate those Terms and may be removed. These policies are designed to ensure Facebook remains a safe, secure and trusted environment for all users, including the many children (over the age of 13) who use the site. The photos we act upon are almost exclusively brought to our attention by other users who complain."

Facebook allows all kinds of highly provocative photos that I find distasteful and not particularly appropriate for minors. But a mother feeding her child? That's not obscenity, people!

On December 27th, there's going to be a virtual "nurse-in" on Facebook to protest the policy. Anyone can participate, whether they're a nursing mom or not. All supporters have to do is to change their profile photo to a picture of a nursing mom and to and to change their status to the sentence, “Hey Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!”

I don't have any photos of me nursing, and wouldn't really feel comfortable posting them to Facebook if I did, so I'm thinking of using Our Lady of La Leche. And nobody could reasonably complain that that is "obscene"...

Judith Warner Completely Missed the Point

The other day Judith Warner, author of Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, wrote a blog post for the New York Times on feeling surprisingly sympathetic toward Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin entitled "Poor Sarah".

Ms. Warner's discussion is full of the typical elitist snobbery towards Mrs. Palin- at one point the author dismisses the governor as "a moose-killing Alaska frontierswoman with her five kids, five colleges, and pastoral protection from witchcraft" - and reiterates the Democratic party line of attack on her that she's allegedly "out of her league".

Am I a particularly big fan of Gov. Palin? No. Do I have concerns about her relative inexperience? Yes, but I have even bigger concerns about Sen. Obama's lack of experience. I would much rather see a young, relatively inexperienced politician as second in line to be the president than actually being president. The learning curve is much steeper and the stakes are much higher for the actor in the spotlight than for his/her understudy.

But what really caught my eye in Ms. Warner's blog post was her discussion of one of my favorite movies from the past few years, Legally Blonde. The movie is an adaptation of a semi-autobiographical novel written by a woman who was a sorority girl at party school Arizona State before deciding to attend Stanford Law School. Like the heroine of Legally Blonde, Elle Woods, the author felt out-of-place with her designer wardrobe and pink accessories and was subject to snobbery from the other students. She found solace in writing long letters to her friends back home skewering her classmates, which ultimately became the basis for her novel.

In the movie, Elle discovers to the surprise of everyone around her that there's much more to her than just a pretty face. She receives a near-perfect score on the Law School Admissions Test and once she decides to get serious about her law school coursework, she starts acing them. At the end of the movie, she has solved a big murder case through her quick wits and has graduated with honors from Harvard.

I've always felt a kinship with Elle Woods as someone whose abilities often get underestimated simply based on my appearance. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard the back-handed compliment, "Wow, you're a LOT smarter than you look!" I could buy myself a pair of Manolo Blahniks. Like Elle, I've overheard myself being dismissed by one of my female classmates as a "walking Barbie" because I'm cute, blonde, and a bit of a girlie-girl. Yes, I was in a sorority and do like shopping, but that doesn't make me dumb. In this day and age, I resent the implication that women are still supposed to choose between being pretty and being smart.

In Ms. Warner's NYT blog post, she completely misses the whole point of Legally Blonde. She sees Elle as an "imposter", who hides the fact that she's "not the intellectual equal of her peers" behind a mask of self-confidence and "dressing up in a nice suit". Ms. Warner tells her daughter after they watch the movie together that (emphasis in the original):

"You can’t accomplish anything worthwhile in life just by being pretty and cute and clever. You have to do the work."

Which is *EXACTLY* the message Elle learns! She's spent her whole life up until law school merely getting by on her looks and aspiring to be a socialite trophy wife like her mom. She finally gets fed up with being treated as inferior by her snobby classmates and sets out to prove to them that she's just as competant as they are. How does she accomplish this task? BY DOING THE WORK! The whole point of the movie is that Elle *IS* the intellectual equal of her peers in spite of her designer suit and pink scented accessories. How did Ms. Warner manage to miss that?

StoryCorps Project Coming to S.F.!

I don't know about you, but I'm a big fan of the Friday segments on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" program featuring personal vignettes from everyday Americans recorded as part of the StoryCorps oral history project. If you're unfamiliar with these, you can listen to a sample of them here.

I was very excited, therefore, to learn that the recently opened Contemporary Jewish Museum here in San Francisco has been selected as the very first museum in the U.S. to host a StoryCorps recording booth. On Thursdays and Sundays from October 12, 2008 through October 11, 2009, the StoryCorps project will be offering appointments for recording sessions to visitors. For more info, click here.

My mom's coming to visit in January to help out after the arrival of our new baby. I'm probably not going to feel up to participating in the project myself but I'd love to get the chance for my mom and my uncle to reminisce about my late grandmother, who was quite a remarkable woman :-)

Fear and Loathing About Homeschooling

Abigail Esman is a single, childless Jewish-American expat freelance journalist living in the Netherlands. Based on a misleading New York Times article on Muslims homeschooling (the Deputy Headmistress over at "The Common Room" had an excellent debunking of it) and glancing at the website of one private Islamic school in Washington state offering an Independent Study Program she is now calling for homeschooling to be banned.

"The truth is that ideally, I'd see an end to all home schooling."

Sounds like Ms. Esman is of the same opinion as the German government and the Second Appellate Court of California. All of whom seem motivated by fear and stereotypes rather than actual knowledge about homeschooling.

Ms. Esman claims that the curricula offered by the "ArabesQ Islamic Academy" neglects literature, poetry, and the arts but their website clearly states that literature and fine arts are included in their unit studies. Also, it's been my observation that the typical homeschooling family has a huge collection of books available for their children to read outside of whatever curriculum (if any) they use. I'm not currently using a formal reading curriculum in our homeschool but my DD is an avid reader nonetheless.

Ms. Esman also criticizes the ArabesQ program for not offering any religious studies aside from Islam. That's the equivalent of criticizing Abeka or Bob Jones for only teaching Evangelical Protestant Christianity and Seton for only teaching Catholicism. Parents who buy a faith-based curriculum are doing so because they want their children taught in accordance with their worldview. Secularist liberals may bemoan the lack of cultural relativism of the government-run school curriculum- Ms. Esman writes that she wants children's education to provide:

"options, not indoctrination; insight, not propaganda."

Except that the government-run schools are guilty of the *exact same thing*, only different dogma. In preaching cultural relativism, "tolerance" for alternative lifestyles, only one belief about of the origins of life, and often presenting an overly negative view of Christianity, Western Civilization, and America, the government-run schools engage in indoctrination of their students into what Bill O'Reilly calls "secular progressivism".

Islamic parents have as much right to teach their children their worldview as Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and so on. Ms. Esman and other critics of homeschooling such as Prof. Rob Reich of Stanford may want to deprive parents of that right but they're going to have one heck of a fight on their hands if they try!

Ms. Esman is afraid that Muslim homeschooling is an indication of "horrifying abuse" but provides no actual evidence to back up her claim. She points to a mention in the NYT article that the homeschooled Muslim girls help out with the housework and typically have arranged marriages soon after completing their education. Neither of which are necessarily signs of child abuse. It may be politically incorrect to assign chores along traditional gender lines, but not abusive. Also, just because a marriage is arranged doesn't automatically mean that the young woman is being forced into it under threat of violence. I remember reading in my college psychology textbook that people in arranged marriages are actually *happier* on average several years in than those who married for love because they tend to have more in common (opposites initially attract but they struggle to make a marriage work in the long run).

Ms. Esman claims that some NGO attorney told her about "honor killings" in the U.S. I found a trio of horrifying tragedies (an incident where two girls died in Texas this year, one in Arizona in 2004, and one in Chicago in 2000) but none of them were among homeschoolers and sadly domestic violence is not uncommon. I couldn't find any statistics to suggest that Muslim-American women are at any significantly higher risk of being killed by a family member than non-Muslims of similar age and income level. Also I couldn't find any evidence to suggest that homeschoolers of any faith are at any higher risk than non-homeschoolers of similar age and income level.

Ms. Esman fears that homeschooled Muslims are:

"potential radicals in the making, and easy targets for recruiters for jihad."

John Walker Lindh, the American caught working with the Taliban, was homeschooled. However, he came from a very different background than the families profiled in the NYT article. He was your stereotypical rich Californian kid with overly permissive divorced parents willing to indulge his "self-discovery" even if that meant studying in a madrassah in Pakistan. So I'm not sure what anyone aside from Ms. Walker and Mr. Lindh could've done to prevent his jihad. Certainly one should not use "Taliban Johnny" as a reason to clamp down on Muslim homeschooling.

Islamofascism is a very real threat to the U.S., but homeschooling isn't the problem.

My Ideal Car for a First Date

I'm not single, but if I were, I would not be all that impressed if my date drove one of CNN's "Great Cars for First Dates." Honestly, most of the single guys I know who drive Mercedes, Audis, and Porsches are, to put it mildly, jerks. Some are rich, some are just in debt up the wazoo, but all tend to value style over substance.

If you want to impress me, show up in one of these babies:

Renters Beware!

There's an article in today's New York Times that's anxiety-provoking for those of us who rent a house or condo. It's entitled "As Owners Feel Mortgage Pain, So Do Renters" and it discusses how the current mortgage foreclosure crisis is hurting renters in many areas. Nationwide, 1 in 8 homes foreclosed upon are renter-occupied, and here in California, the number is nearly 1 in 4. Banks typically evict the tenants upon foreclosure so that they can quickly sell the house at auction. California state law provides a 30-day notice to tenants, but in other places it can be as short as 72 hours! :-0

Can you imagine what these poor families must be going through? Here they are, paying their rent in a timely fashion, completely unaware that their landlord/lady has not been paying his/her mortgage on the place. Then boom, they get hit with a notice to leave in a mere 3 days.

The House of Representatives on Thursday passed a bill that would require landlords to provide their tenants a 90 day notice prior to foreclosures. Then, the new owners (typically the bank) would have to continue existing leases for 6 months. Tenants without leases would have 90 days to leave. The Senate is considering a similar bill introduced by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT). The banking industry opposes these bills, and the White House has released a statement critical of them.

I'm unfamiliar with all the details of these bills so I can't say whether or not I'm in favor of them as currently written. But I definitely feel that tenants deserve greater protection than current laws provide them!

The tenants are innocent victims of foreclosure since they played no role in the mortgages in question. The banks may have been stupid in approving loans that never should've been made and the landlords may have been stupid in obtaining mortgages they couldn't afford. The tenants on the other hand did nothing wrong. Our legal system should give them a greater amount of time before they get kicked out onto the street as the result of a mistake that other parties made :-(

Who's Promoting "Patently False" Information?

I don't understand what it is about the idea of promoting abstinence for *CHILDREN* that provokes such rage in certain liberals. Regardless of one's beliefs about whether or not adults should reserve sexual activity for marriage, there really ought to be widespread agreement that it is extremely risky behavior for teens. One does not need to base a pro-teen abstinence argument on traditional Judeo-Christian morality (though of course many people, myself included, feel those reasons are also very important).

The New York Times has an op-ed attack piece on abstinence-only sex ed today by an Amanda Robb. Ms. Robb is the niece of Dr. Bart Slepian, an abortionist murdered in his home in 1998. James Kopp, an anti-abortion activist, was convicted but serious questions remain about whether he is in fact the true culprit. Certainly, the mainstream pro-Life movement does not condone murder and we believe that prayers and peaceful activism are what's needed to end the evils of abortion, not further violence. Ms. Robb is understandably hurt and angry about her uncle's murder, and she has apparently decided to vent her bitterness by attacking proponents of traditional sexual morality.

Ms. Robb's NYT op-ed piece laments President Bush's recent veto of the bill that would expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program. She notes that the Federal government spends $200 million per year funding abstinence-only sex ed programs. By her calculation, if that money were redirected towards funding S-CHIP, it would be enough to cover 150,000 children annually. However, one could also fund S-CHIP by cutting any number of different programs. For example:

• The $25 *BILLION* the Federal government spends on farm subsidies every year, two-thirds of which go to the wealthiest 10% of agribusinesses.
• The $10.8 *BILLION* spent on defense "pork" projects.
  
• The $2 *BILLION* spent subsidizing healthcare to the wealthiest 5% of senior citizens to the same extent as other seniors.

I could go on, but you get the point. The funding of S-CHIP is a red herring; what Ms. Robb truly objects to is the existence of abstinence-only sex ed programs.

She criticizes them as "shame-provoking" (is that a bad thing?), "ineffective", and "dangerous". She references the one highly-publicized but also problematic Mathematica study critical of abstinence-only sex ed and ignores 30 others that demonstrated positive findings. A summary of some of these can be found here.

Ms. Robb attributes the decline in teen pregnancy rates over the past decade as due mainly to increased contraceptive use, while in actuality two-thirds of it is due to less sexual activity among unmarried teen girls.

She notes that diagnoses of chlamydia and gonorrhea in teens are on the rise. However, since fewer teens are sexually active and those that are have fewer partners on average, this is likely due to a greater percentage of cases being diagnosed and treated. Simple urine tests are now in widespread use rather than the traditional cervical swab requiring a pelvic exam.

Ms. Robb also alleges that abstinence-only programs teach "patently false" information about contraceptive failure rates. According to the pro-contraceptive organization the Guttmacher Institute, the condom has a typical failure rate of 15%. For teens, the typical failure rate is nearly 19%. How, then, can she assert that "the chances of getting pregnant with a condom are 1 in 6" is untrue? She may very well want it to be untrue, but that doesn't change the numbers.

Shame on the New York Times for yet again printing such a biased piece of rubbish!

Interesting Question: What is "Middle Class"?

There's an interesting article today on MSNBC.com entitled "Who or what is the middle class?" Just about everyone I know considers themselves to be "middle class" whether they have modest incomes or ones that would place them in the top 5% of all American households. Our first year of marriage we had a combined income of roughly $35k/yr; we felt broke but still middle class. It helped that we lived in military housing, received free healthcare, and resided in an area with a low cost of living (Kentucky). Last year, we had an income that was significantly higher but we still feel a bit squeezed. We now pay over $35k/yr just for rent, utilities, healthcare, and student loan repayments.

To be fair, we do have quite a bit nicer lifestyle now than we did 8 years ago. We rent a 3 BR 2 1/2 BA townhouse rather than a teeny 1 BR 1 BA apartment. Instead of a 12 year old car with zero frills and 150,000 miles on it, we now drive a 3 1/2 year old car that has automatic shifting, power windows & doors, power steering, cruise control, a CD player, and 60,000 miles on it. We have a high-speed Internet connection instead of dial-up. We both have cell phones. We have an electric dryer & I no longer have to hang up our laundry on a clothesline. However, we still can't afford what I would consider to be an "affluent" lifestyle.

Buying a home here on the Peninsula is totally out of the question as our housing costs would almost triple. We can't afford private school tuition, which is a major factor in our decision to homeschool. We share 1 economy car. Our vacations are to visit relatives or local national parks like Yosemite. We don't wear designer clothes unless it's a gift or I can find a super bargain at the local consignment shop. We don't own fancy electronic gadgets or appliances. Not that I want a BMW, plasma screen TV, or Manolo Blahnik shoes, but it would be nice to have the option to buy a home, send our kids to a good school, and see the world.

The Inescapability of Toxic Pop Culture

Dr. Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, professor of history at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Social Science, wrote an essay entitled "Socializing Children in a Culture of Obscenity" for the book Kid Stuff: Marketing Sex & Violence to America's Children. In it, Dr. Lasch-Quinn discusses the difficulties modern parents have in raising their children amid what she terms "the culture of obscenity":

"By obscenity here, I mean not only what is considered adult-rated sexual material, but also a kind of fundamental offensiveness, vulgarity, indecency, perversity, and vacuity on our part as a nation, generation, or civilization. Often having little to do with sexuality itself, this kind of obscenity bears on nearly all realms of society. It is rooted in a radically antisocial ethos premised on the right to individual fulfillment at all costs and is fed by the belief that appeals to morality have no standing because they are all relative and subjective."

Unfortunately, this type of toxicity has so thoroughly permeated today's society that it is virtually inescapable. As Dr. Lasch-Quinn writes:

"Critics of this culture have used tactics resting on the ways parents can take responsibility over what their children hear and see: the V-chip, ratings systems, magazines that guide parents through the thicket of the popular culture, and even home-schooling. Those parents most cognizant of their own responsibilities, however, are often the ones who also recognize the limits of their ability to monitor a whole culture...Even when vigilantly controlling what their children witness, parents often face the reality that their fellow parents are not nearly as concerned as they are- if they are even concerned at all."

I experienced this type of frustration with the inescapability of toxic pop culture earlier this week at park day. This month, our local homeschool support group is meeting at a park in one of the towns considered to be among the "nicest" in our area. It has a median household income of $125k, 80% of the residents hold bachelor's degrees or higher, and homes are priced well over $1 million. The public schools have standardized test scores in the top 10% in all of California, and among the highest in the county. I'm saying this to show that this is not some ghetto neighborhood but on the contrary, one that is generally thought to be highly desirable.

Anyways, I got to park day on the later side because of DS' afternoon nap. The local public schools had obviously already let out for the day and the playground was very crowded. There was a group of girls who looked to be about 8 or 9 but dressed as if they were college coeds. Spaghetti-strap tees low cut across their nonexistent chests paired with a miniskirt (no leggings underneath), rhinestone-encrusted jeans, or yoga pants with words emblazoned across the derrière. They were practicing a provocative dance to some pop song I'd never personally heard before but which included the word "booty" and the phrase "lose your inhibitions" in its chorus.

I found this disturbing to say the least. It's bad enough to see that type of routine from the Raiders Girls or other pro sports cheerleaders but at least those are adult women! These were prepubescent girls :-(

Meanwhile, their homeschooled counterparts were all dressed age-appropriately (most in cute flowery sundresses) and playing some elaborate "let's pretend" game. That's the type of behavior I remember from when I was growing up BTW.

I wondered what kind of parents would allow their young daughters to engage in this type of behavior and I soon found out. DS wanted to go in the toddler swings and standing right next to them was a gaggle of moms. Like their daughters, these 40something women were dressed like teen party queens. In the quarter of an hour I stood there pushing DS in the swing, these moms engaged in one of the most insipid conversations I've ever heard. Every single remark coming out of their overly made up mouths was totally materialistic, narcissistic, and utterly vapid. They did not *ONCE* talk about their children- it was all about *THEMSELVES*: their luxury travel, their wine club memberships, their horseback riding lessons, their TIVO's and high-def televisions, and so on. During the whole time I was there, they did not pay even the slightest bit of attention to their children except when one of the girls came over to let the moms know the girls were going to the restroom.

I feel so sorry for the children of such obviously self-absorbed women. Clearly many members of the "Me Generation" are having difficulty providing the kind of moral guidance their children so desperately need. Because of them, those of us involved parents who *DO* care about the negative influences of the toxic pop culture are having a harder and harder time shielding our children. It's not enough to unplug the television, turn off the radio, and homeschool our kids. As Dr. Lasch-Quinn notes:

"In everyday life, images of commodities jarringly appear in places hitherto understood to be noncommercial. The particular content of these images disturbs older aesthetic expectations, such as an oversized picture of a reclining, bikini-clad woman with head thrown back in ecstasy taking up the whole side of a city bus."

Or prepubescent girls shaking their miniskirted "booty" provocatively on the local playground.

I'm not sure what the solution is to these huge problems of toxic pop culture and overly permissive parenting. We can, and should, limit media exposure. Many Christian homeschoolers decide to associate primarily with those espousing similar values. While I can certainly understand their reasoning for this, that's not something I personally feel comfortable doing. It just doesn't seem to be in the spirit of Christ's calling us to be the "salt and light" to have a religious litmus test for one's friends.

"Spin" and the SAT Scores Decline

The College Board has released a report on the 2007 scores on the SAT. Scores declined for the second consecutive year, with a 1 point drop in "critical reading" (formerly known as the verbal section) and a 3 point drop in math. The "spin" the College Board is giving these dismal results is that the drop is the natural result of a more diverse group of test-takers.

It is true that African-Americans, Latinos, and Asian-Americans now represent 39% of test-takers, an all-time high, though only up 1% from the 2006. However, Asians held steady on the math section from 2006 and gained 4 points on the verbal. Mexican-Americans gained 1 point on both the math & verbal sections. Other Hispanics held steady on the math and gained 1 point on the verbal. African-Americans held steady on the math section.

The demographic group with the largest decline in math scores? Non-Latino whites! They experienced a drop of 2 points from 2006. Given that non-Latino whites represent 61% of the test pool, their decline is the single largest factor in the overall decline of SAT math scores.

Minorities are getting a bum rap for the decline in SAT scores, and I'm disappointed that the elite media is buying into the College Board "spin". It took me less than 5 minutes to analyze the numbers for myself and see that what the College Board PR folks are saying is a fat, steaming load of excrement.

Whose Fault is it That Teen Sex Rates Have Stopped Declining?

Just as the debate heats up in Congress over funding for abstinence-only sex ed programs, the Washington Post has an article entitled "Teen Sex Rates Stop Falling, Data Show".

According to a new Centers for Disease Control analysis requested by the WP, the percentage of teenagers having sex began to plateau in 2001 after falling steadily for more than a decade.

John Santelli of Columbia University found similar results in his research, comparing the trends between 1991-1997 and from 1999-2005. "It seems clear that the trend seems to be faltering in the most recent period of time," he told the WP.

Dr. Santelli is among the many in the WP article insinuating that abstinence-only sex ed programs are failures:

"At a certain point, it becomes really hard to change basic human behaviors. I think what we're seeing is the limits of the emphasis on abstinence as the primary message."

The WP article notes that 2001, the year that teen sex rates began to plateau, was also the year that the Bush administration began its push for expansion of abstinence-only programs. There is only one brief mention in the WP article of cultural factors:

"Teenagers today live in an MTV-driven culture and are bombarded by sexual messages that say it is normative for them to get involved sexually," said Charmaine Yoest of the Family Research Council. "We need a message that sexual experimentation as a teenager is unhealthy."

It is clear that pop culture has become even more oversexualized in the past decade, and the message has been aimed at a much younger audience than in previous years. This has been epitomized by the "Bratz" dolls, which debuted in 2001. Is it any wonder that the generation raised on Bratz dolls and idolization of "party girls" like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton is having difficulty rejecting the societal glorification of casual sex?

Also, there is NO discussion in the entire article about parental attitudes towards teen sex. Since teen sex rates rose dramatically in the 1970's and 1980's, it stands to reason that the parents of today's teens are much more likely to have had teen sex themselves than the parents of earlier generations. Are the Baby Boomer parents of today's teens more permissive towards teen sex as a result?

Research has shown that teens whose parents clearly convey their disapproval of teen sex are significantly more likely to remain virgins at age 18 than those whose parents do not. Are fewer of today's teens receiving that message than in the past?

I did a Google search, and was unable to find any research on whether parental attitude towards teen sex has become more permissive. Anecdotally, it seems like it has. Wendy Shalit profiles several young women whose moms put pressure on them to be more sexual in her book Girls Gone Mild. The attitude I've personally encountered among many Baby Boomers takes it for granted that teens will have sex.

This WP article is so typical of the bias against traditional values in the elite media. If it were clearly labeled an op-ed piece, it would be okay for the author to "spin" the data to support his argument against abstinence-only sex ed programs. However, this article was in the national news section! Whatever happened to objectivity, to providing a "fair and balanced" look at things?

Who is truly at fault that teen sex rates have stopped falling- abstinence-only sex ed programs or permissive parents & an oversexualized pop culture? Common sense would place the blame on the latter!

Father Z. 1, Boston Globe 0

Father Zuhlsdorf over at "What Does the Prayer Really Say?" has an excellent critique of today's Boston Globe op-ed by Prof. Frank Flinn of Washington University.

To put it bluntly, Father Z. kicks Prof. Flinn's cafeteria-loving fanny!

Want to Keep Students From Fleeing Government Schools? How About Less PR and Actually Fixing Their Problems!

The Palm Beach [FL] Post has an article in today's paper about how the county school district is planning a series of public service announcements touting its schools. This is the result of an unanticipated enrollment drop of more than 3200 students this past school year.

The ads show that public schools are "meeting the needs of our children," said Judith Garcia, manager of The Education Network (a local cable channel that is producing the ads). She said they "help people understand that the school district can be more tailored to what their specific interests and talents are."

This statement appears to be contradicted by one of the main reasons the article cites for the drop in enrollment: the exploding popularity of "other education options - including home schooling, private schools and charter schools."

If the Palm Beach County district schools were actually meeting the needs of the children living there, parents wouldn't be making the big financial sacrifice to privately or home school them.

Here's an idea: how about spending a little less time and effort doing PR and a little more on actually fixing the problems that are causing families to flee traditional public schools??????

Is Solitary Play with Virtual Dolls Replacing Peer Bonding Over Real Ones?

MC Milker over at "The Not Quite Crunchy Parent" recently wrote a very thought-provoking post called "The Avatar next door – Virtual worlds, Electronic Pets and kids". It discusses a recent article in The New York Times article entitled "Doll Web Sites Drive Girls to Stay Home and Play". Apparently, the popularity of "virtual world" websites aimed at children and young adolescents is booming. According to the NYT:

"Hitwise, a traffic measurement firm, says visits to a group of seven virtual-world sites aimed at children and teenagers grew 68 percent in the year ended April 28. Visits to the sites surge during summer vacation and other times when school is out. Gartner Research estimates that virtual-world sites have attracted 20 million users, with those aimed at younger people growing especially quickly."

These websites allow children to create, dress, and accessorize virtual dolls and other animated creatures such as penguins. Some of these websites are free, while others charge a monthly subscription fee (typically around $6-8). They have names like Cartoon Doll Emporium, Stardoll, WeeWorld, Webkinz, and so on.

I can certainly see the appeal of these types of sites. My 4 1/2 year old DD and I had fun creating my Yahoo! avatar. Were I to permit it, I'm sure she could easily amuse herself for hours on end playing with virtual dolls. However, I tend to agree with Dr. Sherry Turkle, the child psychologist from MIT quoted in the NYT article:

"If you’re lucky enough to have a kid next door- I’d have a play date instead of letting your kid sit at the computer."

MC Milker of the NQCP blog also worries about the impact these types of virtual experiences have on children's development, particularly on learning how to interact with others. She points out that up to 93% of interpersonal communication is determined by non-verbal cues, which is noticeably absent from online interactions. In a post I wrote a couple months ago about educational software, I discussed Dr. Jane Healy's excellent book Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect Our Children's Minds and What to Do About It. Dr. Healy talks at length in the book about the risks of inappropriate computer use by children, including the potential to create social awkwardness so severe it mimics autism.

I have fond memories of countless hours spent playing with my friends using our Cabbage Patch and American Girl dolls. DH and my brothers have similar memories of bonding with their friends over He-Man and Transformers action figures. Not only did we learn valuable lessons about getting along with others, but the open-ended nature of the toys fostered creativity. Whereas a virtual doll can only be used in a few proscribed ways, a real doll can be used in any way the child imagines.

While MC Milker currently does not allow her DS to watch TV or use the computer, she worries about the influence his peers will have on him once he begins school in the fall. She writes:

"Maintaining a TV free household will keep some temptations at bay but, the impact of peer interactions and remains to be seen. Raising a child out of step with the conversations of their peers is a challenge I dread but know I will face in the name of raising a human being, in the old fashioned sense of the word."

She has reason to be concerned about negative influences on her DS from his classmates. This month's edition of the Bay Area Parents Paper features a humor column by Gregory Keer called "Dad: The Video Game". Mr. Keer laments how despite his early efforts to limit screen time, his 9 year old DS has now become an "electronic junkie":

"Benjamin rarely watched TV until he was 2, then got 30 minutes of daily screen time (with more on days when my wife and I passed out on the couch) until he was in first grade. That's when peer influence kicked in and he came home from playdates naming anime cartoons and video-game characters about which we were oblivious....[I]n Benjamin's second-grade year, another child's father explained that he bought his kid a PlayStation to keep him on the social curve of the rest of his friends. So, that holiday season, we purchased a GameCube system....Benjamin has built an arsenal of techno toys that he lords over with the command of an evil genius- that GameCube, the Nintendo DS, the Tamagotchi, the old laptop computer and the TV."

What will be the impact on society of a generation who spent so much of their childhood alone in front of a screen rather than playing with their friends?

A recent study done by Duke University sociologist Dr. Lynn Smith-Lovin found that Americans are far more socially isolated today than they were two decades ago. This problem is likely to get worse unless parents take active measures to limit children's screen time and facilitate more face-to-face interaction with peers.