...on the wall
Who's the fairest of them all?
Beyonce of course
She's on the cover
She sings, she dances
But above all....she's a MOTHER!!!!!
Showing posts with label Today Show. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Today Show. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Stress Management for Mommies
Is your blood pressure rising? Are you feeling dizzy? Is your heart palpatating? Are you irritable and yelling? Is your family walking on eggshells around you because you are a ticking time bomb?
If your answer is yes, you must be a MOM, so do yourself a favor and take a "Mommy Time Out". Practice deep breathing! Get yourself a "family stress box" (???) Get one of those squeezie stress balls to squeeze! Stick your IPod on and listen to some relaxing music. Journal your feelings! Get better about predicting those "nightmare moments" (i.e. mornings with your kids) and do a better job preparing for them! Work off the stress by exercising (but you'll have to do it WITH your kids, since you have no time to yourself).
I love the Today Show's "mommy spots" because they are frequently focused on how to make the drudgery of motherhood more bearable.
Psst - Today Show: how about this idea for a spot on motherhood:
OPT OUT
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Today Show Gets it Right for Once (mostly)
Looks like the Today Show is making some strides in addressing the issue of childfreedom in a more balanced manner than they have in the past. In this piece, the Today Show speaks with Lilit Marcus, a young childfree woman, psychiatrist Janet Taylor, Laura Scott, author of Two is Enough: A Couple's Guide to Living Childless by Choice and Sarah Brokaw, therapist and author of Fortytude: Making the Next Decades the Best Years of Your Life - Through the 40s, 50s and Beyond. The guests discuss the subject of women who choose not to have children.
There are a couple good things about this piece. First, the women discuss many of the negative stereotypes childfree women must endure, such as the assumptions that we are selfish, cold, heartless people who do not know our own minds (you know - we'll change our minds later about having kids). They also discuss the assumptions that all women should aspire to be moms, that motherhood is the one true path to adulthood, maturity, fulfilment and a purposeful life and agree that these assumptions are incorrect, and that there are many ways women can lead satisfying and fulfilling lives apart from having children.
Then there are the downsides:
1. I wish the message was conveyed that not only can childfreedom be equally as fulfilling as motherhood, but many childfree women feel it is more fulfilling and this is an important reason many women opt out of motherhood.
2. It is incorrect to say that all childfree women have doubts and second thoughts about their choice. Childfree women are no more unsure or doubtful about their life choice than mothers. In fact, while moms are flooding the internet with "I hate being a mom" and "I regret having kids" posts and discussions, one would be hard-pressed to find any "I hate being childfree" or "I regret not having kids" posts on the web. So which group is the unsure and regretful one? And why is it always assumed that the childfree woman is racked with doubt? Just another false stereotype about childfree women.
And do we really need the lonely, stark photos of empty playground swings accompanied by a shift in music from upbeat to creepy and forboding at the very moment the issue of childfree doubt arises? (reinforcing the message that childfree women might be making a big mistake).
3. While the negative stereotypes about childfree women were mentioned, such as selfishness, I wish the piece took the next step and discussed the truth about childfree women: that they are in fact often better able to live a more selfless and giving life thanks to the freedoms they are afforded by foregoing childrearing - more time to devote to their spouses, families and other personal relationships, more time to be involved in their communities, more time for volunteer and charity work, etc.
4. Ms. Brokaw's comment at the end of the piece about there being many ways a woman can relate to children without having to be a mom was well-meaning, but reinforces the stereotype that all women are maternal and have a need to express that instinct. In fact, while many childfree women (including me) consider themselves maternal and express that part of themselves in a variety of ways, there are also many childfree women who have chosen not to have kids precisely because they recognize that they are not maternal - and hurray for them for recognizing this! There are far too many non-maternal women who have no business being mothers, who go ahead and have children anyway because "it's just what you do" - and the children pay the price. Additionally, while many childfree women enjoy being around kids or working in careers which place them around children, there are plenty of childfree women who do not enjoy kids and have no interest in caretaking jobs such as social worker, teacher, nurse, doctor and so on. Not all women have a need to have children as an important part of their lives. However, I suspect this viewpoint (as well as the others I listed here) might be a bit too much for the Today Show's audience to digest.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
The Today Show Still Doesn't Get It
Well, looks like The Today Show is at it again - pedaling their pronatalist viewpoints. This time, Matt Lauer is giving the third degree to a young man, Toby Byrum, who has formalized his decision not to have children by having a vasectomy.
Watch Matt throw some of the tired old "bingoes" out to the happily childfree guy: "What about passing on your last name?" "What if you change your mind?" "Did you bank sperm as an escape hatch?" (the assumption, of course, being that Toby surely doesn't know his own mind and that his decision is a questionable one).
Of course, The Today Show wouldn't be The Today Show without an "expert" therapist chiming in with advice and warnings for the poor, confused souls who may be considering such a dubious life choice - insultingly suggesting they receive therapy to uproot the causes of their desire to not have children. Could it be anxiety? Baggage or emotional wounds from childhood? Suggesting, of course, that the young man's choice is pathological and we need to make sure he really knows his mind and is making his decision for sound reasons and not because he's psychologically fucked up.
What I would like to see - just once - are prospective PARENTS given the same third degree as happily childfree folks. When is somebody going to question the prospective PARENT about his reasons for wanting kids? When is somebody going to ask him if he has really thought his decision through carefully, and whether he has really considered all the ramifications of his life-altering decision? When is somebody going to question his potential regrets and what "escape hatches" he might employ if he later discovers he made the wrong choice and hates being a parent? After all, unlike a childfree person who can always adopt or become a foster parent down the road if he changes his mind, parenthood is irreversible, not to mention the fact that plenty of people are not happy being parents (although parenthood-glorifying venues like The Today Show would love us to believe otherwise). In fact, The Today Show itself has run more than one spot on research showing parents are less happy and have lower levels of marital satisfaction than the childfree and yet they continue to put well-adjusted, intelligent people like Toby Byrum on the defensive for an obviously well-thought out decision that brings fulfillment and happiness to his life.
To his credit, Toby handled himself GREAT - and as a fellow happily childfree person - he makes me proud for the way he represented the childfree so intelligently and thoughtfully on that silly show. Thankfully he steered completely clear of the self-depricating and apologetic statements we've come to expect from childfree folks on the hot seat ("I'm too selfish to have kids", "I wouldn't make a good parent", "I admire people who have kids - parenthood is the best job in the world - I am just not cut out for it").
AND once again, The Today Show has disappointed me with their narrow-minded lack of imagination when it comes to any life choice outside that espoused by their target middle-American mommy homemaker audience.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Casting Stones
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
The Today Show likes to talk about families, and babies, and pregnancy and parenting A LOT. They spend lots of air time promoting and glorifying parenthood - just one of the thousands of voices in the deafening chorus of media pronatalists singing the praises of having children and providing endless support and encouragement for people who choose that lifestyle. I challenge you to find one 30-minute slot on The Today Show in which you will not be subjected to a piece on motherhood, or babies, or parenting techniques, or infertility treatments, or mid-life mothering, or debates over innoculations, or child discipline, or child health issues and the list goes on adfinitum. The pro-parenthood propoganda never stops...EXCEPT when it comes to the Octomom. I guess even the parenthood-obsessed Today Show has to draw a line somewhere. Watch the above clip and listen to Dr. Almighty Snyderman (a Today Show regular) cast her judgment on Nadya Suleman, Suleman's doctors and our culture's obsession with multiple births and bad parenting, a.k.a. "bad parent porn."
I agree with Dr. Almighty, but here's the rub: The Today Show is one of the very outlets that relentlessly feeds our culture's breeding obsession, and fuels the attention-seeking, baby-obsessed psychosis of human breeding machines like Nadya Suleman. This in turn ramps up the demand for unethical doctors who will do whatever they can to service women like Octomom, yet now The Today Show stands in judgement of the very monster it helped to create.
The Today Show may cast all the stones it likes, but today I am casting some stones right back at it.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Today Show Hosts Experience Another Bout of Cognitive Dissonance
If you've ever taken a psychology class, you may have heard the term cognitive dissonance. Simply stated, it refers to an uneasy state of mind in which a person tries to maintain two contradicting ideas at the same time. Well, I had to laugh out loud at this example of cognitive dissonance on display on the Today Show when the hosts report on research which shows that married couples with children have lower levels of marital satisfaction. Watch how the hosts - who, in keeping with the pro-parenthood stance of the show, do their best to rationalize, justify and minimize the impact of this research. You can just feel their unease as they try to stomach this research which flies in the face of the pro-parenthood messages they are constantly pedaling.
This isn't the Today Show's first offense on this matter. Remember this?
While the Today Show does its best to poo-poo and pay minimal lip service to the research on the negative impact of children on marriage and on happiness, I am going to re-publish for you graduate level research which pays this subject the attention it deserves and doesn't soft-pedal on the issue of what children do to marriages and levels of personal happiness.
From No to Children, Yes to Childfreedom: Pronatalism and the Perceptions and Experiences of Childfree Women:
"The relational advantages of childfreedom are most pronounced in the area of marital satisfaction. Several studies have concluded that childfree marriages are happier than the marriages of parents. Crohan explored how styles of conflict resolution change for spouses after they become parents using data from the first and third waves of the First Years of Marriage Study conducted at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. Results showed that spouses who became parents report lower marital happiness and more frequent conflicts after the transition than before having children. White parents also reported higher marital tension.
Feldman studied intentional parents and childfree couples and found that while levels of marital satisfaction were similar, childfree couples have significantly more positive marital interactions for example, “having fun away from home”, “having a stimulating exchange of ideas”, “working together on a project” and “having sexual relations” more often. He found that childfree marriages are more interactive, with more conversations in the areas of “work”, “health”, “feelings”, “cultural” topics, “mutual friends”, “politics” and “sexual relations”. As would be expected, parents talked more frequently than nonparents about rearing children. Similarly, Somers, who conducted a study comparing childfree and parents, found the childfree groups scored higher on marital satisfaction and showed significantly higher levels of cohesion (working together, discussing and exchanging ideas) than parents. Additionally, the childfree showed higher levels of dyadic satisfaction (measured by the frequency of quarrels, threats of divorce) and scored higher on the life satisfaction scale than parents. Callan, who interviewed 60 mothers, 36 voluntarily childless wives and 53 infertile women noted that the childfree women reported more time with their husbands including higher levels of consensus and more exchanges of ideas.
Twenge, Campbell and Foster, who conducted a meta-analytic review on 97 articles containing 148 data points on parenthood and marital satisfaction, concluded that parents report lower marital satisfaction than non-parents and that there is a significant negative correlation between marital satisfaction and the number of children. The effect of parenthood on marital satisfaction is more negative among high socioeconomic groups, younger birth cohorts and in more recent years. The data suggest that role conflicts and restriction of freedom are responsible for this decrease in marital satisfaction.
Renne, who conducted a study on 4,452 married couples (including childless couples, couples rearing children, and couples with children no longer living at home), found that parenthood detracts from the morale and health of married persons, particularly among younger couples. Childless marriages were found to be happier, even among older couples and while childless marriages appeared to improve with time, the marriages of parent couples tended to deteriorate. Renne concluded that childless marriages are happier, regardless of the length of marriage or age of the couple.
Cowan and Cowan, authors of When Partners Become Parents: The Big Life Change for Couples, describe what happens to parents when they become parents. Upon having a child, the household tasks become more specialized and the division of labor with respect to child care falls more to the mother than the father. Their study, as well as a study by Pleck, indicate that husbands whose wives are employed do little more housework and caring for the children than husbands whose wives do not work outside the home.
'The most problematic issue for men and women in the early family years is who cares for the children. Neither the traditional male/female division nor the new egalitarian sharing arrangements stand out as ideal: Modern couples get penalized either way. When one parent brings home the bacon while the other stays home to look after the child, both can feel underappreciated and strapped economically, which burdens the marriage and the children. When both parents work outside the family, they tend to feel better about themselves and about their contributions to the family economy, but parents and children are breathless, often missing the opportunity for intimate moments.” (Cowan and Cowan, p. 203)'
In addition to having higher levels of marital satisfaction, childfree marriages tend to be more egalitarian with more freedom to modify conventional sex roles. Veevers explains that in ordinary families, “the coming of children tends to accentuate biological sex differences and to buttress conventional sex role expectations. The birth of a baby signals the beginning of a traditional division of labor with the woman taking on more of the childbearing chores, regardless of her employment status outside the home.” (p. 104). By comparison, childfree couples maintain roles which are interchangeable and more equal. Without the constraints of child care, childfree couples are better able to negotiate an equal partnership, especially since both partners are likely to work outside the home and are therefore likely to see themselves as equal contributors to the marriage."
__________________________________________________________
Another researcher, Harvard Psychologist Dan Gilbert, has also concluded that parenthood has a negative impact on happiness. The Sydney Morning Herald did an article on this aspect of his book which I previously posted here.
Happy reading!
This isn't the Today Show's first offense on this matter. Remember this?
While the Today Show does its best to poo-poo and pay minimal lip service to the research on the negative impact of children on marriage and on happiness, I am going to re-publish for you graduate level research which pays this subject the attention it deserves and doesn't soft-pedal on the issue of what children do to marriages and levels of personal happiness.
From No to Children, Yes to Childfreedom: Pronatalism and the Perceptions and Experiences of Childfree Women:
"The relational advantages of childfreedom are most pronounced in the area of marital satisfaction. Several studies have concluded that childfree marriages are happier than the marriages of parents. Crohan explored how styles of conflict resolution change for spouses after they become parents using data from the first and third waves of the First Years of Marriage Study conducted at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. Results showed that spouses who became parents report lower marital happiness and more frequent conflicts after the transition than before having children. White parents also reported higher marital tension.
Feldman studied intentional parents and childfree couples and found that while levels of marital satisfaction were similar, childfree couples have significantly more positive marital interactions for example, “having fun away from home”, “having a stimulating exchange of ideas”, “working together on a project” and “having sexual relations” more often. He found that childfree marriages are more interactive, with more conversations in the areas of “work”, “health”, “feelings”, “cultural” topics, “mutual friends”, “politics” and “sexual relations”. As would be expected, parents talked more frequently than nonparents about rearing children. Similarly, Somers, who conducted a study comparing childfree and parents, found the childfree groups scored higher on marital satisfaction and showed significantly higher levels of cohesion (working together, discussing and exchanging ideas) than parents. Additionally, the childfree showed higher levels of dyadic satisfaction (measured by the frequency of quarrels, threats of divorce) and scored higher on the life satisfaction scale than parents. Callan, who interviewed 60 mothers, 36 voluntarily childless wives and 53 infertile women noted that the childfree women reported more time with their husbands including higher levels of consensus and more exchanges of ideas.
Twenge, Campbell and Foster, who conducted a meta-analytic review on 97 articles containing 148 data points on parenthood and marital satisfaction, concluded that parents report lower marital satisfaction than non-parents and that there is a significant negative correlation between marital satisfaction and the number of children. The effect of parenthood on marital satisfaction is more negative among high socioeconomic groups, younger birth cohorts and in more recent years. The data suggest that role conflicts and restriction of freedom are responsible for this decrease in marital satisfaction.
Renne, who conducted a study on 4,452 married couples (including childless couples, couples rearing children, and couples with children no longer living at home), found that parenthood detracts from the morale and health of married persons, particularly among younger couples. Childless marriages were found to be happier, even among older couples and while childless marriages appeared to improve with time, the marriages of parent couples tended to deteriorate. Renne concluded that childless marriages are happier, regardless of the length of marriage or age of the couple.
Cowan and Cowan, authors of When Partners Become Parents: The Big Life Change for Couples, describe what happens to parents when they become parents. Upon having a child, the household tasks become more specialized and the division of labor with respect to child care falls more to the mother than the father. Their study, as well as a study by Pleck, indicate that husbands whose wives are employed do little more housework and caring for the children than husbands whose wives do not work outside the home.
'The most problematic issue for men and women in the early family years is who cares for the children. Neither the traditional male/female division nor the new egalitarian sharing arrangements stand out as ideal: Modern couples get penalized either way. When one parent brings home the bacon while the other stays home to look after the child, both can feel underappreciated and strapped economically, which burdens the marriage and the children. When both parents work outside the family, they tend to feel better about themselves and about their contributions to the family economy, but parents and children are breathless, often missing the opportunity for intimate moments.” (Cowan and Cowan, p. 203)'
In addition to having higher levels of marital satisfaction, childfree marriages tend to be more egalitarian with more freedom to modify conventional sex roles. Veevers explains that in ordinary families, “the coming of children tends to accentuate biological sex differences and to buttress conventional sex role expectations. The birth of a baby signals the beginning of a traditional division of labor with the woman taking on more of the childbearing chores, regardless of her employment status outside the home.” (p. 104). By comparison, childfree couples maintain roles which are interchangeable and more equal. Without the constraints of child care, childfree couples are better able to negotiate an equal partnership, especially since both partners are likely to work outside the home and are therefore likely to see themselves as equal contributors to the marriage."
__________________________________________________________
Another researcher, Harvard Psychologist Dan Gilbert, has also concluded that parenthood has a negative impact on happiness. The Sydney Morning Herald did an article on this aspect of his book which I previously posted here.
Happy reading!
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Praise and Criticism for the Today Show
Well, it looks like that Newsweek article I posted on here the other day has really been getting a lot of notice in the media. I couldn't believe my eyes this morning when the Today Show did a spot about it! For those of you who watch the Today Show, you know that they are very parent/family-oriented. In fact, that's the one thing I don't like about the Today Show. They do so many spots on parenting, always with a positive spin and always with this underlying assumption that all their viewers are MOMS. They almost never mention anything about people who choose not to have kids. So I was completely surprised when I saw the spot this morning featuring the author of the Newsweek article talking about how parents are not as happy as people without kids. For the Today Show, this is a real breakthrough!
Let's not get too carried away with our excitment, though. If you watch the clip, it is interesting to note that the Today Show still manages to keep the spot somewhat pronatalist. After a discussion of how people without kids are happier than parents, they make sure to point out that there are rewards of parenting that are so wonderful and indescribable, driving home the relentless message that it's so worth it.
The other interesting thing about this spot is that they chose to spend the last couple minutes of the spot discussing what parents can take away from these studies - ways that parents can make their lives HAPPIER. Given that the Newsweek article focused on studies concluding that childfree people are happier than parents, and given their discussion about the unfair prejudices CF individuals are subject to, they could have spent the last couple minutes of this spot discussing ways that people can be more supportive of those who choose not to have children, or ways we can encourage people to consider this happier lifestyle instead of pressuring people to choose the less-happy parenthood route. They could have illustrated the results of these studies by bringing in some happy CF people to talk about their happy lives, showing that yes indeed -there are fulfilling paths in life other than the sole parenthood path prescribed for everyone. Or, they could have offered advice for childfree people on how to deal with the pressures and prejudices we come up against every day in our culture. But nope. In true Today Show fashion, they managed to turn it around and orient it toward parents and families.
Anyway, it is worth watching and I'd love to read your comments.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Driven to Drink
The Today Show did an interesting (and I have to admit somewhat amusing) piece last week about the "dangers of drinking during the daytime". The interesting thing about this piece is that the focus was on MOTHERS drinking during the day and then driving their kids around while under the influence. Apparently this is some kind of growing trend. Does this surprise you? After all, we all know that a nice stiff drink is great for relieving stress and who the hell is more stressed out than MOTHERS? View the spot here.I take issue with one part of this piece. Notice that Matt Lauer makes a point to say that it's one thing for a man to go out to lunch and have a couple drinks with his coworkers and then drive back to the office, but it's another thing for MOTHERS - who are cheuffering kids around - to drink! Um, so to clarify, Matt, what you are saying is that the lives of the children in the back seat of the drunk mother's car are more valuable than the lives of innocent drivers sharing the road with the drunk office dude? Just another example of the media's contribution our child-centered culture - the "Baby on Board" mentality.
Check out the spot and let me know what you think.
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