Image by peasap via Flickr

This is the story in France right now, with the BBC reporting there are already 40 journalists in the tiny rural town of Villers-au-Tertre, near the Belgian border.

The woman, a nurse in her 40s who has two daughters and grand-children, confessed to killing eight of her own babies between 1989 and 1996, but only two corpses have been found at their current home. Police suspect she might have brought the other corpses with her when they moved in.

The woman, mordbidly obese, managed to keep every pregnancy secret from her husband.

Not sure if this story is more a cautionary tale against morbid obesity or abortion versus infanticide.

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• French couple questioned over deaths of eight babies (telegraph.co.uk)

The daughter of a judicial candidate in Oklahoma has taken out an ad telling citizens “Do not vote for my Dad!”

Ouch!

Jan Schill, 31, and her husband paid for the quarter-page ad that included a picture of her family and a list of all the times her father, John Mantooth, had been sued.  It included the address of a website the couple started detailing Mantooth’s legal history.

The father and daughter both admit they’ve never had a good relationship, starting, Mantooth says, after his divorce from Schill’s mother decades ago. But the candidate for judge in McClain County said he also sees a little political maneuvering. Schill’s husband’s former law partner is one of Mantooth’s opponents, Greg Dixon.

Dixon isn’t very pleased with family matters intruding on his campaign. Here’s what he told the Associated Press:

“Unequivocally, absolutely not,” he said. “I don’t want to be affiliated with that website or that ad. I don’t want to use it as a platform in my political campaign.”

Awkward!

Every political family has someone, huh?

(Hat tip: Puck Daddy.)

Image by halfmortimer via Flickr

A Salt Lake City mom is pregnant with two babies, only they’re not twins. They don’t even have the same due date. The expectant mom, Angie Cromar has two uteruses, a rare condition known as uterus didelphys. She got pregnant with one and then a couple of weeks later with another.

It’s happy news for the 34-year-old and baffling news for her doctors. The chance of her getting pregnant in both uteruses was one in five million. Only 100 such cases of a double pregnancy like Cromar’s are known.

Cromar and her husband already have three children under 8 years old so she was aware of her rare condition. She also knows that this pregnancy isn’t without its risks. The babies could be born at a low birth weight or prematurely. But so far, so good. The fetuses are around 20-weeks along (give or take a week, right?) and they are developing normally.

The Cromars found out about this extremely unusual pregnancy when she went in for an ultrasound. The techs saw one fetus that was five weeks and one day along and then noticed the second, which was more like six weeks and a day.

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It’s not just sports. Look at the advertisements in any metro area child-focused magazine, and you’ll see plenty of preschools, camps, tutors, coaches and party clowns who sell, implicitly, the promise that time and (lots of) money spent with them will send your little brat on the primrose path to Harvard. Meanwhile, if you don’t shake out all your loose change to pay for these services — well, let’s not even think about that, though let’s remind you that all of your neighbors’ 3-year-olds are getting their Harvard applications under way while you refuse to spend $2,000 on a party clown that speaks English, French, Farsi and Klingon.

So if you’re planning to scam someone out of thousands of dollars, and you don’t know how to execute a pigeon drop on an old lady, desperate, worried parents are a great target. Such as, parents in South Dakota worried that their kids, what with being in South Dakota, were never going to be found by Major League Baseball scouts.

A group of those parents is claiming they were scammed out tens of thousands of dollars by a man who said he was putting together a select team that, thanks to his major-league connections, would give their kids wide exposure to people who could put them on the fast track to Harvard, er, the major leagues. Media reports put the money lost at anywhere from $25,000 to $33,000, though I suspect that’s a bit low. A baseball camp organizer said he lost $18,500, and individual parents report paying — in cash — up to $6,300 for the travel team that never was.

What’s not low is the sense of betrayal, anger and gullibility shown by these parents, and the waste of time for children who were pulled off of other travel teams for the alleged elite of the elites, Team South Dakota.

The complaints, including a lawsuit filed by the guy running the baseball camp, are against Jason Anderson, the alleged mastermind behind Team South Dakota. Even before the complaints against him started, there were other complaints — namely, that his travel team was gutting well-established summer leagues. But who could argue against a guy who said he was a former minor-league baseball player, in the Angels’ system, and could bring Rickey Henderson to town for a camp?

What is readily apparent is that the parents (and the camp organizer) were so in love with the idea of South Dakota’s own ass-kicking, big-time youth operation that they blindly handed over money without asking who was this guy parachuting into the Black Hills with promise of future baseball stardom. Anderson has not responded to any allegations, including one I’m going to make: That he might not the person he says he is. I base this on the fact I’ve combed the Internet and cannot find a Jason Anderson who played in the Angels’ system. I can find Jason Andersons who have played for other teams, but not a Jason Anderson who played for the Angels. (Inside Dakota Sports reported July 16 that Rapid City, S.D., police have opened a criminal investigation, and that Anderson has warrants out for his arrest in Panama City, Fla., and Monroe, Mich., on fraud and forgery charges. As of now, Anderson is nowhere to be found.)

So what you get are heartbreaking stories about a mom bringing her kid and her family to a park for a tournament, and finding out they were the only ones there.

On the other hand, my heart breaks less because the parents let their fear (of their kids being left behind) and greed (this guy is our ticket to stardom!) overwhelm their good judgment. If you want to spend thousands of dollars for your 9-year-old to play travel baseball, there are plenty of outfits whose only fraud is promising you that they can make your kid a major-leaguer. At least they’ll offer actual practices and tournaments. Best you put your fear and greed in check before draining your bank account for the promise of sports stardom. Otherwise, you may well just hire that multilingual party clown.

(Hat tip to SportsJournalists.com for alerting me to this story.)

On the other hand, if there is no other mechanism to punish coaches who intentionally call on their players to hurt the opponent in the name of competition, in flagrant violation of the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, then a lawsuit there must be. In the major leagues, players and managers get kicked out games and fined for throwing at players, so why should there be no repercussions in youth baseball?

So often, a violent act such as intentionally throwing at a batter begets more violence.

The situation: Michael Connick, 13, was trying to bunt with the bases loaded in a 13-and-under game in the travel Great Lakes Baseball League, which covers Northeast Ohio. What’s not in dispute is that the first pitch to Michael was way high and inside, and on the second, he was hit by the pitch, breaking his left hand. What is in dispute is whether the opposing coach ordered the pitcher to hit him intentionally.

From the News-Herald in Willoughby, Ohio:

Tom Connick, who also is an attorney [note to lawyer haters -- not just an attorney, but a trial lawyer], filed a lawsuit this week in Lake County Common Pleas Court claiming Scott Barber, an assistant coach for the Titans, committed assault and battery against his son during the game at Haven’s Baseball Complex in Jefferson Township.

According to the suit, Barber ordered his pitcher on the mound to “throw at” Connick’s son, which resulted in the boy “severely” breaking his left hand.

“Immediately after (Michael) fell to the ground, and while writhing in pain, defendant Barber again yelled from the dugout, ‘Good!,’ thus confirming and ratifying his order to ‘throw at’ and intentionally and recklessly … hit the plaintiff,” Tom Connick stated in the suit.

Connick claims that even after Michael left the field for the hospital, Barber encouraged other reckless and/or negligent physical play, including instructions to run over players on the opposing team.

How did Connick know this, given neither he nor his wife were at the game? I’m not sure. The story doesn’t explain. I presume the other parents on his team angrily and breathlessly told him what they saw happen on that fateful June 24. And then Connick responded by suing the coach and the league, which he said failed to discipline Barber, even though state youth baseball rules say intentionally throwing at a batter is illegal.

Connick and his wife, Corrina, are seeking more than $25,000 in damages, lost wages and attorney’s fees [Note: I presume lost wages are for Connick missing work, not because Michael already has a job. Or maybe he's mowing lawns for pay already].

In addition, they want Judge Richard L. Collins Jr. to ban Barber from coaching or participating in any youth sports for at least 15 years.

Michael’s father … stressed that his family is not suing for the money.

“Anything he gets will go toward his medical bills, then a college fund through probate court,” Connick said. “I’m a lawyer, but I’m also Michael’s father. I don’t want people thinking I’m some scumbag attorney.”

Too late! From “The Slapper,” run just as it was typed, in the Herald’s comment section:

There are risks in every sport, and if the parents don’t like it, then too bad. It’s people like this attorney that give try to live through their children. People like this ruin it for everyone. Everything is a law suit. Quite being a cry baby and deal with the fact that your poor little baby got hit by a ball. If he doesn’t know how to get out of the way, then maybe he shouldn’t be trying to bunt. I feel bad for the kid, but there are a lot of hurdles throughout life that everyone has to deal with. Keep parents like this off the baseball fields. They’d be safer in the library. I would hate to see this kid play football, and the coach say sack him. This attorney would be suing for that!!! “

Although to be fair, plenty of commenters showed support for the lawyer, given all of the out-of-control behavior from coaches they said they’ve witnessed. Also to be fair, Barber — varsity baseball and golf coach, as well as seventh-grade boys baseball coach, at Jefferson Area Junior-Senior High in Ashtabula County, Ohio — has not responded to the allegations, and the league backs up him as a good and decent coach.

One question I’ve seen from some commenters is, why didn’t the umpire say anything after the first pitch? First, the umpires for these events are low-paid drudge workers, so they’re not necessarily training their ears to know if something scurrilous is going on. Second, with it being 13-and-under baseball, no umpire would believe a pitcher has enough control to throw at a batter, accurately, especially twice in a row.

Third, these low-paid drudge workers want to get home without fighting with anyone, so they may take the path of least resistance — which means not throwing out a coach who obviously is doing wrong. The other day my daughter’s 10-and-under travel softball team was called out for not touching the plate, not because the ump saw she didn’t touch the plate, but because my daughter’s team was up 10-0, the other coach was screaming (as he had all game), and as the ump told my daughter’s coach, “I just wanted to shut him up.” (The lost run turned out not to be an issue, but my daughter’s coach was a bit perturbed that he essentially was penalized for being a nice guy. To digress, this call had the effect of teaching the girls to make sure they hit the plate. My daughter touched it twice the other day when she scored, just to be careful.)

I have no sympathy for any coach who tells anyone to hurt someone intentionally. It’s one thing to hurt players if everyone is playing hard — say, a collision at the plate between the catcher legitimately trying to block it and the runner legitimately trying to score. But if this coach really was demanding his pitcher throw at another player, and the league and his club fail to take any action, then I don’t blame Tom Connick for doing what he knows, and suing the bastards into compliance.

Even those who don’t care much for trial attorneys might agree that a few lawsuits might dial down the number of grown-up coaches who seem to get their competitive jollies over telling one kid to hurt another.

Image via Wikipedia

Here’s a novel educational theory, espoused by an outgoing high-ranking official in British education:

Ms Atkins argued that poor teachers should not be sacked, as schools “need to reflect society”.

She told The Sunday Times: “It’s about learning how to identify good role models. One really good thing about primary school is that every kid learns how to deal with a really —- teacher.”

She continued: “I would not remove every single useless teacher because every grown-up in a workplace needs to learn to deal with the moron who sits four desks down without lamping them and to deal with authority that’s useless.

“I’d like to keep the number low, but if every primary school has one pretty naff teacher, this helps kids realise that even if you know the quality of authority is not good, you have to learn how to play it.”

I see her point. There are few things more demoralizing, after years of hard working studying and prepping and interning for the glamorous world of work than discovering that the “real world” offers some of the stupidest people you’ve ever met — and some of them are your bosses.

Maybe it’s not such a bad idea to learn early of their existence and how to deke around their insanity.

Or — is this woman nuts?

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I’d like to thank True/Slant for providing me with a wonderful opportunity over the past 11 months. A year ago, I never would have imagined having a blog to my name, sharing my ideas and opinions with strangers across the Internet. I’m grateful to Katie Drummond, who was open to my pitch for The Report Card and helped me get on my feet early on, never getting annoyed despite my barrage of questions. Thanks also to Coates Bateman and Michael Roston, who provided me with feedback, story ideas, and encouragement.

Most of all, thanks to everyone who took time to read this page, especially family members, friends, and other T/S contributors who came regularly to the page in the beginning when I didn’t know what I was doing. I also appreciate those readers who took the time to add their comments at the end of my posts, helping me and other readers deepen our understanding of issues.

I’m not sure what exactly happens on August 1–if this page ceases to exist entirely, or if my posts will still be available–so if you’re interested in revisiting any favorite columns I’ve included an index below. Enjoy, and au revoir!

Quotations

Week of October 12, 2009

Week of October 19, 2009

Week of October 26, 2009

Week of November 2, 2009

Week of November 11, 2009

Week of November 22, 2009

February 9, 2010

The education quotation of the year (seven months early)

My Reading List

September Edition

February Edition

Education Reform

Just released: 2009 PDK/Gallup Poll

Wanted: Education reform…Reward: $$$

In defense of No Child Left Behind

Why Obama and Arne will get their way with teachers’ unions

The NCLB limbo: How low can states go?

Blow the whole thing up and start from scratch! (Or not)

National education standards are here, and it’s about time

The continued vilification of No Child Left Behind

How should Obama fix No Child Left Behind?

Urban Education

Update on the Harlem Children’s Zone

Vexing questions about math scores in Detroit

Kansas City’s cutbacks are a warning to the entire country

Urban education as you’ve never seen it

High school hell, from a student’s perspective

Chicago

What Chicago gangs and Al-Qaeda have in common

Can anything be done about gang violence in Chicago?

Preventing violence in Chicago schools: A video update

Literacy/Early Childhood Education

Lunches and literacy: America’s stubborn insistence on paying to fix problems rather than prevent them

The latest national security threat? Inadequate early childhood education

The lesson Haiti should teach us about funding preschool

Why our future national security depends on funding Yemeni and American schools

Elementary School

Is elementary school what America does best?

Are America’s elementary schools getting it wrong?

Putting recess before lunch (How did we manage to do this backward for so long?)

College

Convincing high school students to give it the old college try

What the heck are these kids thinking?

A Florida State University scandal that actually matters

Do U.S. colleges lack confidence in the country’s K-12 students and teachers?

The Harvard you don’t know

The conversation you and your 18-year-old need to have over the holidays

17 things high school grads need to consider before leaving for college

What’s the point of our universities?

Hail to the Victors Valiant!

The promise and pitfalls of community colleges

Should college students be allowed to carry guns on campus?

High school seniors, cell phones, and the art of waiting

Was Chris Rock wrong about community college?

Wait a second…Now kids don’t need to go to college?

What should happen to college kids who are illegal immigrants?

Should plumbers and hairdressers go to college?

Teachers

Can NFL film study help teachers improve?

The illogical argument against teacher merit pay

Why too many unsuccessful students become teachers

Why teachers will never make as much money as lawyers

Who has the tougher job–teachers or lawyers?

NYC decides paying teachers to not teach is a bad idea

A few words from Dennis Miller on teacher-student sex

Letter to an unemployed teacher

Parenting

Obama talks about Malia’s test scores

A program for better parenting (and why conservatives oppose it)

Who’s responsible–parents or schools?

There’s no compromising with Obama on this issue

The young parents’ guide to teaching kids to read

Is it good parenting to encourage your kid to drop out of high school?

Race

A short history of the term “achievement gap” (or is it “gaps”?)

Parenting, race, and student performance in school

College degrees don’t prevent racial discrimination

Is affirmative action making a comeback in California?

Class

Should we expect schools to equalize our society?

Should schools mix rich and poor kids for the greater good? (part 2)

Should schools mix rich and poor kids for the greater good? (part 4)

Columns for GOOD (the website “for people who give a damn”)

Sandra Bullock’s new movie and a call to volunteerism

The ABCs of struggling schools

A tutor for every child–pipe dream or possibility?

When is it too early to say, “Your child is failing”?

Media/Technology

PBS airing special on school principals

Building a windmill in Africa, MacGyver style

The Simpsons takes on education

A “Supreme” (and educational!) new computer game

Arne Duncan on The Colbert Report

Google for Educators: Free stuff for students, teachers, and parents

How did everything about the world change in 6 years?

PBS news resource for teens

A last-minute Christmas gift that will help teachers, kids, and your karma

Should college professors be allowed to digitally rewrite textbooks?

Why every parent should watch Adam Sandler’s new movie

The Report Card

Introduction to The Report Card

The Report Card: 100 Days In

The Report Card’s best month yet!

Personal Favorites

Pink is for boys, blue is for girls

Your child’s test scores aren’t as good as they look

Can 36 hours on campus change a high schooler’s life?

The real reason Americans complain about taxes

Rush Limbaugh mocks, demeans NJ students protesting teacher cuts

Other

Could charter schools use a little bureaucracy?

England’s education bureaucracy

My wish for 2010: That we get our facts straight!

Why home schooling may harm our democracy

Do schools teach a “true” version of American history?

Is it possible to teach non-partisan, non-ideological history?

Does volunteering mean you care about your community?

Teach For America versus bad journalism

Coming soon: computer engineer Barbie

The best investment in education: A class of one

Mad at Texas? No worries…it’s California to the rescue!

Do America’s students deserve a bailout?

McGahey drowned July 7 off Navarre Beach, Fla., while trying to save his 11-year-old son and three of his other Locust Grove Razorback charges from drowning themselves. His death came on the second day of the July 6-11 USSSA baseball AA-level (rec league, restricted rosters or drafted players) World Series in Pace, Fla.

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

On [July 13], members of the [11]-and-under Locust Grove Razorbacks, dressed in uniform, will attend the McDonough man’s funeral in the town where he lived. McGahey was their assistant coach. …

McGahey had jumped in with the boys flailing away in water over their heads. One of them was his son, Noah, 11, one of the team’s best players. The rescue became more difficult the farther the older McGahey went out. …

Two other dads found Darin McGahey, pulled him to the beach barely conscious and frantically administered CPR. Other parents did their best to shield Noah McGahey and half-brother, Austin, 15, who had tagged along on the Florida road trip, from the horror. …

Family members remained in a state of shock, over how something so well intentioned as a baseball trip could turn out so numbing. McGahey left behind his wife of 12 years, Ann Hightower, and three sons, including Dustin McGahey, 17.

“It hasn’t hit them yet,” said Jeff McGahey, 38, the man’s brother.

The children who McGahey tried to save are all right. They found shelter on a  sand bar.

Image via Wikipedia

Has it come to this? Should parents plan for LDLs along with the ABC’s?

The American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended that young children and teens with a family history of high cholesterol, premature hearth disease and diabetes be screened as young as 2. But a new study published in the most recent issue of Pediatrics says most people don’t have an accurate understanding of what their family’s health history is.

Instead, researchers are recommending all kids be screened. In the study, 20,000 5th-graders in West Virginia were screened through blood tests and family history. Of those, 71 percent met the guidelines based on family history. But nearly 10 percent of those who didn’t know their family history tested for high cholesterol, some of whom required immediate treatment.

Health screening, especially for children, is a great idea. Cost, however, could limit who would get tested, though overweight, obesity, and high diabetes are found in all sectors.

Should cholesterol tests be routinely screened for in young children?

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Image by peasap via Flickr

The endless drama of modern urban parenthood continues as the blogosphere dissects a New York magazine article about why so many parents are miserable:

Somewhere along the line, having a baby has stopped being an inevitable part of the life cycle and started to be one of those things-to-do-before-you-die, like climbing Machu Picchu or running a marathon. Basic aspects of the mothering experience, like labor and breast-feeding, took on a spiritual significance. Now, as we prepare to make the many sacrifices necessary to become parents, we anticipate nothing less than enlightenment in return.

But being a parent isn’t about getting a happy ending. There is no ending. As soon as your child is born, the profound truth hits you: this is forever. And yet, if New York magazine is to be believed, modern parents never stop obsessing about whether they’re doing everything they can to make their children the most accomplished little people they can possibly be. It’s as if they’re expecting to cross a finish line any day and be showered with confetti. And in the meantime, they don’t realize that they’re missing out.

If you’re having a baby for reasons of self-gratification, of course you’re going to be miserable. Becoming a parent is less about enriching your life than it is about up-ending it entirely to make room for another human being. And that’s what Senior’s article is missing: the fact that children are people, and having a child is about forging a relationship. Take this quote from a sociologist Senior interviewed about why parents are so disgruntled: “Middle-class parents spend much more time talking to children, answering questions with questions, and treating each child’s thought as a special contribution. And this is very tiring work.” Funny, that doesn’t sound like work; that sounds like having a conversation. The true reward of parenting isn’t looking back with nostalgia, as Senior concludes; it’s getting to watch a baby turn into a fully realized person. It’s hearing the thoughts and opinions of somebody who didn’t exist until you brought them into the world. It’s a humbling, daunting, awesome experience — and it’s hard enough without the added pressure of making every moment enriching and significant.

I chose not to have kids, thereby placing myself — and my partner, who feels the same — into a distinct minority, about 20 percent of the population.

You won’t hear us hand-wringing endlessly about ohmygod, my career. I am so tired! It’s so hard! OMG! Or, the aging, ill distant parents — plus the career/job/school/whatever. A life decently lived is, de facto filled with responsibility to and for the health and happiness of other people, not just getting and spending.

Which can be hard and endless and filled with ambivalence, along with love — for work or your Mom. Not just your offspring.

You want kids? Have ‘em. You don’t want them — don’t.

But spare us the endless narcissism of questioning and second-guessing your reproductive choices.

Of course having and raising healthy, responsible children is a shitload of work.

Who told you otherwise?

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But what I find most interesting is the issue of students who are illegal immigrants. Recent stories in the Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and Boston Globe have focused on this group of children–brought to the United States by their parents, successfully integrating into American society, in part through attending grade school and/or high school here, and preparing for, attending, or graduating from college.

Below is an interview with Eric Balderas, the nearly-deported Harvard student who was profiled in the Boston Globe story mentioned above:

So, what should be done about children who are here illegally but want to take advantage of America’s higher education system? Call me simplistic, but I don’t think you can blame–or punish–kids for their parents’ actions. Imagine that an eight-year-old child is taken by his parents across the border illegally, a thousand miles away from the place where he grew up, and then spends the next ten years of his life living in North Carolina. He attends school, learns English, makes friends, and eventually graduates near the top of his high school class. Is it fair to prevent him from attending the country’s colleges and universities, or to withhold financial aid from that student? We need talented, driven people to become leaders and innovators in our country, and we cannot afford to turn away young people who have those qualities just because their parents made an illegal decision.

However, a lawsuit over a school’s role in a lost swimming scholarship has emerged in the St. Louis area that, if the parents’ allegations are true, makes me think: Yeah, I’d be suing their asses off, too.

And I would hire Al Pacino from “And Justice for All” as my lawyer, for the drama.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Peter and Marzie McCoy of Wildwood, Mo., are suing their local school district after their daughter, a state championship swimmer, briefly lost her scholarship to Colorado State University after it reviewed a recommendation form filled out by a Lafayette High School counselor that was less than flattering. In theory, everybody followed procedure. The problem was, say that parents, that the counselor filling out the form had never met their daughter. From the July 9 Post-Dispatch:

The recommendation form, signed by Lafayette High School counselor Beth Brasel, said that Shannon McCoy was “below average” in five personal traits including initiative, character, integrity and leadership.

The McCoys said that the description of their daughter was “grossly inaccurate” and that Brasel had never met Shannon before the form was filled out.

Rockwood spokeswoman Kim Cranston said it was the district’s understanding that the recommendation form had nothing to do with the rescinding of McCoy’s scholarship, based on their contact with a Colorado State University admissions officer.

A message left Thursday for the admissions officer was not returned. [Brasel was also not available for comment.]

Predictably, many of the comments left by readers paint the parents (and their daughter, with her mere 3.0 grade-point average in an age of grade inflation) as spoiled brats, especially because they’re not dropping the lawsuit even after Colorado State, after the parents’ appealed, gave the scholarship back. At 80 percent of out-of-state tuition, room and board, that scholarship money is no small potatoes. Here is a comment by someone called cardsphan:

Cry me a river Parents. Way to teach your daughter to be a spoiled brat. What parents, teach their kids that if something goes wrong just sue for money to make it better. Did you ever think that maybe your daughter didn’t deserve a scholarship? I had one for athletics out of Marquette HS but i also had a 3.6 GPA. A 3.0 is not hard to get in HS, maybe the girl was to much into swimming and not her grades. IM JUST SAYIN

Given that grammar, I can believe a 3.6 GPA would be related to grade inflation.

As usual when these stories hit the local press, there is a lot we don’t know. We don’t know why that particular counselor filled out the form, and why she filled it out as she did. Did she really know Shannon McCoy? Had she heard stuff from other people? Had the parents and the school clashed in the past? Over what?

Until court papers are filed in response, we won’t know the school’s side of the story. Maybe Peter and Marzie McCoy are big pains in the ass who are doing their daughter a disservice. Or, maybe they do need to advocate for their daughter — and others in a similar situation — against an idiotic and possibly vindictive school bureaucracy.

The point is, we don’t know. And the other point is, until we do, we can’t make snap judgments about the parents — or the school, for that matter. But what I do feel confident saying is that it is NEVER wrong for a parent to speak out and least ask what is going on, or ask why something happened the way it happened.

There is a time and place for parents to advocate for their child, and parents deserve answers to their questions. On the other hand, parents need to approach these issues in as reasonable a manner possible, which admittedly can be difficult when you see your own child getting hurt. I am of a belief that reasonable people can reach reasonable conclusions. And, yes, sometimes that means parents finding out the hard truth that their kid is an asshole.

However, if that’s not the case here, if the school cavalierly and/or maliciously filled out a form in a way that screwed up a huge opportunity for Shannon McCoy — well, I hope the parents get every dime they’re asking for. I would want to, in that situation.

Image by infomatique via Flickr

So I’ve been thinking a lot about Jennifer Senior’s story about parenting in this week’s New York Magazine. “All Joy and No Fun,” it’s called. It’s about how an overwhelming majority of scientific studies on the topic conclude that having children makes people less happy—a “finding duplicated over and over,” Senior writes, “despite the fact that most parents find it to be wrong”—and the resultant question of why we keep doing it. I liked a lot about it. It’s the cover story, and the cover line is “I love my children. I hate my life.” This is a sentiment I can very much relate to, even though I have just one child.

The story presents plentiful evidence and anecdotes detailing the misery of parenthood: the endless work, the stress on the marriage, the loss of freedom, the destruction of social life. (I would add something that the story elides—the great, ever-present fear, which I’ve mentioned before.) It investigates the ways in which parenthood has changed over the past 30 years and examines the differences between our notions of happiness and joy and purpose and reward. Senior ends with the thought that retrospective appreciation of the positive aspects of raising children outweighs moment-to-moment happiness or the lack thereof—even if this amounts to a sort of delusion:

“It’s a lovely magic trick of the memory, this gilding of hard time. Perhaps it’s just the necessary alchemy we need to keep the species going. But for parents, this sleight of the mind and spell on the heart is the very definition of enchantment.”

Hmm. I don’t know that this jibes so well with my personal experience. I don’t think I’ve found parenthood enchanting. Debilitating seems like a better word. Even in retrospect; my memories are not so halcyon. Those first three years? Amazingly horrible. (The kid is five; and it must be said, it’s been much less horrible lately.) Indeed, the question of why people continue to do it is a very interesting one to me. And the question of, Is it worth it? Would I recommend it to someone who asked? This is complicated and difficult and probably impossible to confidently answer, really, due to the non-existence of time travel or the ability to know the outcome of paths not chosen. I mean, of course there are lots of wonderful things about parenthood. I’ll start off with this: I love my kid and I am very happy that he exists. So in that way, because his existence would be impossible without my being a parent, it’s hard to say that the endeavor is not worth it. I do not regret his existence. But if I’m to be honest with myself, and with this hypothetical person asking me a question, I do think I am, all things considered, less happy than I was before becoming a parent. I miss the freedom of childless adulthood—being able to do pretty much whatever I wanted to do whenever I wanted to do it. That was a great source of happiness to me. Gone. And the abundance of uninterrupted time with my wife. And I miss relaxation—the fullest state of which, I think I have probably said goodbye to forever. These are important things. I go a good ways with hedonism. And I’m not entirely sure I’d like to argue that the happiest life is not the best one to lead. Removing the kid’s existence from the equation, which we should try to do, especially if we’re considering the recommendation to the hypothetical prospective mother or father, I’m hard pressed to say that parenthood is worth its attendant and enormous hardship and sacrifice.

But still, I think, I say it. The reason why might get both over-worded and kind of fruity, but I’ll try to express it anyway. And it does have to do with some of the semantic distinctions Senior raised in the New York article. It relies on the idea that richness of experience, or something vague like meaning, might be more important than happiness. It is: parenthood is worth it because of the knowledge it bestows. I don’t mean the everyday learning about life or whatever that takes place along with, and very often because of, the aforementioned hardship and sacrifice. Much of this, I think, we could learn other ways. (Bootcamp, maybe. Or prison.) Rather, for me, the most profound and enlightening moment of parenthood remains the very first one. The very first time I looked at the kid, thirty seconds after he was born, lying on the tray of the scale in the delivery room. In the crazy sense of connection I felt with him, a more tangible sense of connection than I’d ever felt with anything before—one that came as a result of the understanding, or the feeble attempt thereof, that this tiny breathing human shape, this thing lying in front of me, outside of me, was in fact made half out of me—I had as close to what I’d describe as an out-of-body experience as I’ve ever had, best comparable to a zoom-lens perspective effect in a movie, or, really, psychedelic drugs. Later that night, talking to my friend Dave, who’d had his first kid five years before, and two more since, I struggled for words to describe it. Dave laughed.

“It’s like walking through a door, right?” he said. “And suddenly there’s this whole other world you never even knew existed.”

And that’s what it is, with that first moment of parenthood, my world got immeasurably bigger. My outer world and my inner world and this weird new emotional bridge between the two. It was the very definition of mind-expanding. And this type of knowledge, which I don’t know of any of any other way to acquire, has great value to me. It is different from joy or happiness, but it is still something that is very good. It’s worth it.

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I’ve spent the last week at the annual conference of the International Time Use Research Association.  You laugh, but this year’s conference is in Paris. Win!

I’m typing this up from a computer lab at Sciences Po (an elite French university that has educated most of the country’s presidents but  doesn’t believe in air conditioning). Also, the keyboard is silly.

Time– it may very well be our most important and, uniquely, most equally distributed resource. Of course, how we spend it is another matter. The economists, sociologists, and developmental psychologists here have disected time use up the wazoo and here are some highlights:

Mothers still do about three times as much housework as fathers: In the United States, Liana Sayer (Ohio State) found that mothers do about 2.5 hours of housework per day while fathers do about 45 minutes. Other researchers used fancy models to confirm that when women marry and when they transition to parenthood, they increase the amount of time they spend on housework significantly. Men reduce the amount of time they spend doing housework at both transitions. Gents: 1, Ladies: 0.

Highly educated women compensate for smartness by throwing themselves into housework: Martine Dribe, of Lund University, found that even in egalitarian Sweden when highly educated women have children they increase the amount of housework and childcare that they do more than less educated women and far more than their male partners. This is especially the case for women who have higher degrees than their men-folk. Though economists like to predict that the partner with the highest earning potential will be the one to continue working more and pass on the housework, it doesn’t play out that way. Non-traditional women apparently try to compensate for being smart and awesome by taking on traditional roles to the extreme. Female absurdity knows no bounds.

Lots of TV watching isn’t necessarily bad for kids, as long they don’t have a TV in their room and especially if they watch TV with their parents: This comes from Australian data and links to outcomes in literacy and school performance. Now watch Law & Order.

Instead of learning the value of a dollar, encourage your kids to learn the value of pi: My own little contribution (with Suzanne Bianchi) compared the time use of immigrant and native-born teenagers in the U.S. We found that immigrants work less (about 3.5 hours less per week than native-born American teens) and study significantly more (again a difference of about 3.5 hours per week.) While there may be somthing uniquely American about encouraging your children to hold down a part-time job during high school–that good old Protestant work ethic–our findings suggest that one way immmigrants achieve better upward educational mobility than Americans who have parents with equally low education levels is by eshewing burger flipping to hit the books. Even though their parents might need the financial help just as much, if not more, than working class native-born American parents, there may be a value placed on education in immigrant families that really pays off.

And now, I’m on vacation! Best use of time ever.

- Liz

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Two alarmist teen tales making the recent media rounds gave me quite a chuckle. A weary chuckle, you could even say. In one corner, we have the (now widely ridiculed) FOX Cleveland piece on the possible emerging “trend” of nutmeg huffing among America’s youth. And in the other, we have The Early Show by way of The Washington Post reporting speculating on the increasing popularity of Twilight-inspired biting as a means of showing affection among middle-schoolers. At least the WaPo had the decency to end their headline with a question mark.

The cultural touchpoints may have changed, but the idea of being on edge about the goings-on of our country’s young adults  isn’t unique to the current crop of youth (Have we agreed on calling them Gen Z? Has snot-nosed brats been roundly rejected?), obviously. Long before we had Oprah and Dr. Phil episodes devoted to the perils of sexting, the shock of faux pregnancy pacts and the hidden messages in jelly bracelets, heck, even before Nancy Reagan’s exhortation to just say no, there was the cinematic gem that is Reefer Madness. Clutching our pearls and imploring others to please think of the children never goes out of style.

The media’s appetite for questionably-researched trend pieces aside (it is summer after all), I can’t help but wonder why we’re so inclined to believe the worst (or at least most scandalous) about “kids today” and their intentions. Is it a product of casting our collective memory back (and I’m still pretty young, so mine doesn’t go back that far) to our own youths, thinking of what we got up to (or would have gotten up to), adding in a dose of  To Catch a Predator, a splash of scantily-clad Miley Cyrus and a rarely-admitted lingering paranoia about the reach of technology to come up with a worst case scenario? Is it a function of a parental protective instinct? Are we jealous of their relatively responsibility-free existence and want to convince ourselves that being young is no longer all that it’s cracked up to be?

Maybe it’s simply a fact of human nature that once we pass out of one experience or life stage, our memories of its immediacy, its joys and pains tend to fade, so that we are able to let it go in order to move on to whatever the next challenge or stage throws at us (cue Springsteen’s Glory Days for those who can’t let it drop). Certainly, it explains why folks willingly repeat the miracle of childbirth. And as our memories fade, we conveniently forget that while the social and historical context for today’s youth may not mirror our own, issues of sex, belonging, peer pressure, testing boundaries and forming identities are timeless and the evolving means by which youth confront them are as alluringly dangerous and head-shakingly dumb in hindsight as they’ve ever been.

Yeah, as dumb as sniffing pie spice even.

Cover of Larry Rivers: Art and the Artist

Who has control of the pictures from childhood once the subjects of those pictures are grown adults? It’s not a terribly relevant question for most of us — Mom wants them? She can have them!

But it’s relevant for Emma Tamburlini, the 43-year-old daughter of now deceased proto-pop artist Larry Rivers. Among the questionable gems in Rivers’ collection of photos and film are various interviews with his daughters about their breasts. The New York Times has a story in the Arts section today about the daughter’s desire to get rid of them.

Tamburlini said she was pressured from the age of 11 to do the interviews — naked or without a shirt on, of course — and she would like the film destroyed. When she protested, she was told she was a bad girl. This led to problems in her life and having the films “out there in the world” makes it harder for her to recover.

New York University purchased the film from the Larry Rivers Foundation. NYU has assured Tamburlini that the films won’t be available to the public until both she and her sister, Gwynne Rivers, have died.

But is that good enough? Do the sisters get any say over the photos and films?

Here’s what Rivers’ Foundation director David Joel says:

“I can’t be the person who says this stays and this goes,” he said. “My job is to protect the material.”

Fair enough. Only here’s what NYU’s dean of Libraries, Carol Mandel says:

“If the extent of the restriction currently planned should be greater, we can have conversations with all the interested parties about the handling of this material going forward,” she said.

The story goes on to illustrate another conundrum: people place different values on these things. Some might call Rivers’ work child porn — which Tambrulini seems surprised hasn’t happened yet — while others say it’s no big deal.

So who should make the call? NYU or Tambrulini and her sister? What about those embarrassing pics of you in a tub? Or with your first wife that your mother refuses to take out of the family photo albums? They’re her property. But aren’t they yours too?

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• Child porn or coming-of-age film? (salon.com)

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A mother on a three-year family bike trip from Alaska to Argentina is defending her family from the criticism that she’s endangering her sons’ lives in order to live out her own perverted dreams.

Writing for Salon, Nancy Sathre-Vogel argues that her boys could opt out of the trip at any time, that it’s often the young teens who keep the family going, who want to push to finish the trip and also break a world record.

Unlike the Sunderlands, the California family famous for sending off their minor children to sail in small boats around the world — solo — Sathre-Vogel says theirs is a family trip, all of them in it together. They home school the boys, having packed learning materials which apparently get refreshed from time to time.

They’re down in South America somewhere, headed to the very tip of the continent. They started in the very north of Alaska and have been through all seasons, all kinds of weather and many a personal challenge. And they keep going. She has blogged about their travels at familyonbikes.org.

It’s hard to see how anyone could get incensed about their trip. Some critics say that the parents are foisting their dreams on to the boys. That they’ve kept them from their friends and secure and predictable living arrangements, which amounts to some kind of cruelty. I think they’ve given the boys an incredible adventure, kept them from the crappy years of middle school, taught them how to take care of themselves, work as a team, survive without TV, push themselves physically, and how others who don’t have the luxury — the smarts, the money, the ambition — to take off on a three-year bike trip live.

How could they do this to their kids? How could they not!

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• Roadschooling Children Take Advantage of World For Learning (jaysdad.com)

via Flickr”]

Image by christine [cbszeto

All Natasha Wilson and her husband wanted was a boy and a girl. Things were going according to plan for the Buffalo, N.Y., couple several years ago when she gave birth to their first, a son.

Wilson got pregnant again — this time with twins. Two more boys. What the heck, they thought, lets give it another go and see if we can have a girl.

Third pregnancy? Triplets. And guess what?

Three boys.

Natasha Wilson tells KABC News that all the kids — what are they up to, six? — were conceived without fertility drugs and treatments.

No word on whether they’ll stop or try again for a girl. Quadruplet girls would sort of even things out. Then again, they’re still trying to scare up a couple of extra cribs for the triplets. Her husband, the father of all these kids, is out of work.

Maybe they could consult with this incredible mother of triplets for some advice.

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• Twins! Triplets! Baby Animal Photos With Double (Triple) the Cuteness (Slideshow) (treehugger.com)
• Parents of first sextuplets born in England for 17 years ‘praying for a miracle’ (telegraph.co.uk)

Sandler and the rest of his crew–Chris Rock, Kevin James, David Spade, and Rob Schneider–are in their mid-40s, which means they grew up in the 1970s and were full-fledged adults before ever coming into contact with cell phones, e-mail, and digital cable. This is reflected in their characters, who reminisce about playing outdoors as kids–as opposed to their own children, who seem happy only when viewing some kind of entertainment on a screen.

One of the friends with whom I saw Grown Ups blamed this on the fictional parents in the movie. If they saw so much value in being outdoors and playing with friends, she reasoned, they should have just raised their children with that in mind.

I agree with her, but I think that’s going to require a shift in how parents operate. My mom and dad are about a decade older than Sandler and company, and I’ve spoken quite a bit with them and their parents about what life was like when they grew up in the 1960s. The message I’ve gotten is that parents of that time basically threw their kids outside after school and during the summer, telling them to be home for dinner. This meant that groups of kids spent hours and hours playing outside in the park or the woods, making up games, and otherwise filling time creatively. There was little thought among parents about the positive or negative effects of doing this; it simply was how things were done across American society. There were tons of kids around most neighborhoods, most moms were home all day, parents didn’t fear that their children would be kidnapped if unsupervised, and children didn’t have that many competing entertainment options inside of their homes. In retrospect, it seems that this type of parenting worked out pretty well, but it wasn’t necessarily done because adults spent time considering if it was the best way to raise kids.

Today, technology is ubiquitous, and children spend about eight hours per day engaged with various forms of entertainment media. That is the new norm across society, which means that if adults take the same approach as their parents and grandparents–going with the flow and doing what other parents are doing, without much thought about the effects of how kids are spending their time–they likely will end up like the characters in Grown Ups: wondering why their children reject non-technology-driven activities.

Many parents I’ve spoken with over the years don’t have a particular plan for parenting as their children grow up, saying, “Kids will be kids.” That’s true to some extent, but a more complete version probably would be, “Kids will be certain types of kids based on the society/time period in which they grow up, the other kids with whom they spend time, and how parents mediate these two influences.” If one accepts this premise, then it is clear that parents today have to put in a lot more effort if they want their kids to grow up (at least to some extent) like they did–engaging with friends, exercising, and seeing sunlight, grass, and trees more than sitting in front of entertainment media. The plot of Grown Ups is a good starting point for this potential parenting shift, asking moms and dads:

1) What kind of kids do you want your kids to be?

2) What are you going to do about it?