Barely promoted

Noted

You've seen this study discussed, I'm sure. Children who spend more than 10 hours per week in daycare for a year before kindergarten are more likely to be "disruptive" in elementary school. Miss T.? Forty, forty-five hours. A-yup. I could go look the real thing up, see how many variables they looked at to find one with significance to trumpet, but no.

And it turns out that the median income of white families raising a toddler in Manhattan right now is $284,208. Of course it's a self-selected group—those who have chosen to stay, who can afford the space in particular—but still, it's an astonishing figure. A sharp reminder that for academics, there are some benefits to living out in the boonies after ll.

EDITED TO ADD: In a comment, Meg suggested Emily Bazelon's Slate piece, which both references the original study (I could just click for the full pdf, but I might have Granolan to thank for that) and gives further information on the study and the instruments it used.

Still, the study's results, properly explained, do not suggest that kids who spent a year or two in day care when they are 3 and 4—or, in my opinion at least, kids who go to excellent day care for longer periods—will talk back to their teachers and throw more than their share of spitballs when they get older. These kids will behave themselves just fine. As long as their parents don't screw them up.

I would say that this comes as a relief, since each of my own two sons spent (or in 4-year-old Simon's case is spending) four years in day care before kindergarten. Except that I stopped taking the bad rap on day care personally a long time ago.

I've noticed that I only feel, hmmm, safe reading a lot of this mommy-wars crap when the author displays her or his ''street cred" somewhere along the way, as Bazelon does above. Not good.

Are we not reaching up?

Laura points out a new redoubt of Linda Hirschman's, while the Chronicle posts a piece on the long-term career consequences of women taking part-time positions that avoids insult only by what appears to be extreme institutional naivete:

Institutions such as the Ohio State University, the University of California, and Wellesley College have responded to those problems with a "half-time tenure track." That system allows caregivers to avoid the long hours of ideal workers while still producing high-quality research and teaching. Enhanced child-care support, parental leave options, and research grants for those with caring responsibilities could also help.

All of those options would make the tenure track more viable for many women who now believe -- on reasonable grounds -- that a tenure-track career is inconsistent with a meaningful and full family life. Universities could hire and retain many of the talented people currently now relegated to the mommy track of contingent status.

Not that I don't think a half-time tenure track isn't a great idea. (That's sort of what working at a liberal arts college, instead of a research institution, was for me^*.) But I bet all those departments living off adjuncts for budgetary reasons will go run right out and hire them permanently, as soon as there's an option that the adjuncts find attractive enough!

^* Edited to add: yes, of course those of us at little colleges work our butts off. I'm not meaning to say that we don't. The teaching load, the expectations of teaching quality and student contact, and the lack of graduate student lackeys all conspire to fill up time. However, I didn't need to do multiple years of high-stress post-doc to get this job. I got tenure with published output one-third the weight and one-fifteenth the impact of what I'd have needed at a Big Name University.

And, much as I might wish that right now, I could work half-time (and I do wish that), the employment and geographic security are both excellent excellent things to have as we try to raise Miss T. I can't imagine pulling it all off pre-tenure, while trying to write a real book (or two), or to build up a real reputation.

A rhetorical question...

... at least for those of us out in the boonies:

Trader Joe's, or Whole Foods?

Speaking up

I just spoke at a faculty meeting for the first time. (This is my ninth year at Granolan.)

My point was politely ignored, and I was on the losing side of the ensuing vote, but a crusty near-emeritus introduced himself and shook my hand heartily—"That's what we meant!"—on the way out.

Fledglings

STUDENT A: Is being courted aggressively by half the top-10 programs in ergonomics. The large impersonal programs are e-mailing me daily, imploring that I advise him to attend. The smaller ones are phoning him directly. He's stayed with faculty on those visits.

Meanwhile his senior paper is growing into something publishable. Other faculty tell he what a joy he is in class. He's remained charming and graceful in the midst of all the attention, although he's stopped smoking, gotten a decent haircut, and is standing up a little straighter. I've seen younger ergo majors listening in awe as he declaims. I watch wistfully, remembering my own moment in the sun.

Remember how so many people in the humanities used to say that strong students should be discouraged from going to graduate school, that the odds were too high against them? Ergonomics doesn't have that sort of crunch, but still I know that he's got bad black moments ahead of him, wherever he goes. Grad school is hard (and you can't even go shopping, at least not very often).

But I think he'll make it through. Thrive, eventually. And several prominent institutions appear to agree.

STUDENT B: Has been rejected from all the top-10, and nearly all of the top-50, programs she's applied to. I'd noticed her growing tension at our weekly meetings; today she finally told me how bleak the admissions picture really is.

Her project is still scattered and unclear. No real writing is done, and we're still hashing out even the sparsest of outlines. Interlibrary loan lets her down three times a week. She cancels meetings at the last minute. There's a new haircolor every week, but not in a fun way.

We've talked about her options for next year. She thinks she can make it in this field; so do I actually, and I think there are solid reasons her application file would look very different next year.

Guess which student's parents will be coming to see me next week.

Oh no...

... I've started my very own knit blog.

Don't worry. Safely segregated from this one. If you don't care, just don't click.

New

There's an outside world out there! She hangs onto the stroller and pouts, or pulls up by the back door and excitedly points at her coat hanging on a hook. So we take her outside.

She hates falling. But we took her to the playground at the school on the next block and she loves the slides. At full speed, too.

She read a book to me the other day. Held it up for me to see, and pointed out everything she names in it. Ball! Bow-wow!

She grabs two things at once in one hand. Two shoes, or two necklaces. Two-ness is important. One toe gets kissed? So must the other.

The world's not that small

So today I was planning to make a passing reference during class to this whole six-degrees-of-whatever phenomenon. (Isn't it sad that these folks have only raised $200K or so, after the amount of spam they sent out on Kevin's behalf? And sixdegrees.com has evaporated into a placeholder.)

I figured I should look up the original Milgram paper. Well, Travers and Milgram, actually.

And for a moment, when the Google list first came up, I misread Travers as Trivers. Both at Harvard in the 60's, right? which made it seem extra not-implausible. Boy, would those have been some late-night discussions, huh?

--------------------

Noted on Trivers's website, in a description of preliminary results on a study of bodily symmetry:

... Jamiacan children resemble British adults: women tend to cradle their babies on the left side if their ears are more symmetrical (but not other body parts) while men show no cradlng bias.

Too weird! I've always held Miss T. on the right, which is really sort of inconvenient, since I'm right-handed. And my ears are significantly asymmetric, enough so that it matters for fitting my glasses.

The plot thickens

First of all, Miss T. went on several lurching laps around the house this weekend, all on her own.

Second of all, Miss T.'s pediatrician is entirely unconcerned with how she's doing. And he was a bit baffled at what, exactly, Box-o-Tots was asking for. "You want a note saying what?" He wrote something brief and utterly neutral: "It is fine for Tabitha Maple to stay in the infant room."

We brought it to the director's office. She said it wasn't good enough.

Then, she said that we could write our own letter, asking for whatever we wanted to be done. "The teachers told me that you were very concerned, and were talking about keeping her in the infant room for maybe another 2 or 3 months?"

Um, that was strange to hear. Since keeping her in the infant room was, as far as I can tell, the teachers' idea... so they told us it was coming from the director, and apparently told the director it was coming from us!

So I'll write a note asking that she start transitioning in about two weeks, after Beaker gets back from his next business trip. Which is what we want to happen.

What if...

What if IVF worked, say, 90 or 95 or even 98 percent of the time? How would it be different?

(Would they charge more? Would you pay more?)

_________________________

A friend recently went through her first IVF cycle. She's youngish, and they didn't give her too many drugs, and all the stats along the way were just peachy. Except, you know, it didn't work in the end.

She was surprised at how easy it was to actually cycle—and she held together remarkably well for the news of the negative—but then totally lost it after the follow-up conversation with her doctor, which might best be summarized as "Let's do again—the sooner the better!" An entirely optimistic call, from a doctor who's not shy about sharing bad news. But it scrambled her view of what happens next.

The randomness at the heart of it is what hurts, in the end. Not knowing why. Not knowing what will happen. Not knowing what will happen, even if you do exactly the same thing over again. But really— should you do it again? And, if so, why should anyone ever ever stop?

I could warn her about physical side effects. Your next cycle might be funny. Extra long, or extra short. Don't worry about that. But I don't know that there's any way to communicate in advance that it's the black hole of medical ignorance at the core of the process that makes it hurt. You don't know what it's like to make five-figure bets on what you want most in the world, until you do it.

(And what would it be like to not even be able to make those bets? Or to not have to? But that's a whole other rant.)

____________________________

Anyone else notice that Julia Indichova had a little letter in the Times today, in response to the positive-thinking-catfight article last week?

Never underestimate the power of collective denial. The half-truths of “The Secret” appeal to the lowest common denominator within each of us. Its success is a reflection of our sense of powerlessness, our wish to be saved by someone else’s magical formula. Your article is most useful in mirroring that the “rescuer” is often just another imperfect human with a hefty marketing budget.

The secret to a better, more fruitful life is equally accessible to all, if only we’re willing to do what it takes.

So, as long as you do you very own positive thinking, well, that's different? Uh-huh.