This Birthday I Am Embracing My Curves

So the day I have been dreading for about five years is here: my 40th birthday.  I loved turning 30, but when I hit 35, found myself still single without children, it freaked me out.  I remember being 14, envisioning myself  at 40 years old as a US Senator, wife to an adoring, successful husband, and mom to three kids. 

I am none of those things.

I sweated my 39th birthday, which I blogged about here, as it was just a small one year away from the big one.  It's funny how much is still appropos and I am still working on the same stuff-- I've been going to Weight Watchers and steadily working out (down at least 35 pounds -- probably more from my birthday last year), I've been working Match.com like it's a second job (will be having my first second date with a nice guy next week) and am digging my job more than ever.  Pretty proud of the developments in the last year.

But I keep reflecting on that vision that I created for myself at the age of 14 and wonder why I have not met it, why do I not "have it all".  Of course, could be that at the age of 14 my world view was pretty narrow.  Recently, there have been numerous articles about women, never men, having it all. Perhaps the idea of having it all is more easily defined when you are 14 and don't really understand what that means in adult terms.   In a recent conversation with a close friend, we talked about how being a 40 year old woman in today's world, is different than being a 40 year old woman in the 80s. 

That seems to really be sticking with me.  When I was 14, I didn't think that my work would bring me to over a dozen countries or have me working on more than 15 campaigns with a 98% success rate.  When I was 14, I never thought I would be the leader of women's organizations who continue to point out the necessity of women's right to equal pay, health care and choice.  When I was 14, I didn't think I'd be able to put together a 40th birthday party invitation list that had over 100 friends on it, and that was keeping it small.  

Last night, as I tried on my birthday party dress and had a total melt-down my legs are not svelte gams that will turn heads, which of course meant I was completely unlovable.  The 14 year old me totally popped up again on the eve of my celebration and left me feeling bewildered as to why.  As I told a friend, I thought I would have it together by 40.  And now of course, I'm wondering what does it really mean to have it together.

As I walked by the mirror this morning, I made the concious decision to stop the hate.  Embrace my sausagey tree trunk legs, embrace my curves.  And as I re-read my 39th birthday blog post from last year, I realized that this life stuff is a process-- they don't call it your life's journey for nothing.

And once again reminded myself, it's all about what I am, not what I am not.

I'm saying it again, it's all about what I am, not what I am not.

Happy Birthday to me.

Obama order might help DCF fight against child sex slavery

Great story in the CT Mirror regarding new steps to stop child sex slavery.

http://ctmirror.org/blogs/obama-order-might-help-dcf-fight-against-child-sex-slavery


Tue, 09/25/2012 - 5:20pm
By Jacqueline Rabe Thomas

The Obama administration Tuesday morning issued an executive order stepping up enforcement against goverment contractors that do business overseas and engage in or fail to report knowledge of human trafficking.

The order prohibits companies under federal contract from using misleading ads and similar tactics to recruit and effectively enslave workers; and it forbids them from engaging in or failing to report instances of "procurement of commercial sex acts."

"Companies have to now take steps to ensure it's not happening on their watch," Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat and co-chairman of the U.S. Senate's Human Trafficking Caucus.

The order primarily addresses practices that exploit foreign laborers, but also intersects with one of the state Department of Children and Families' top priorities -- shutting down child sex slavery in Connecticut.

Blumenthal said he has no reason to believe that there are any Connecticut companies with federal contracts that have engaged in such activity, but these mandated reporting requirements aimed at both domestic and companies overseas receiving federal money will oblige them to inform the government when they do discover such incidents.

While a group of child advocates applauded the executive order at the state Capitol complex Tuesday, it is unclear how much impact it will have on efforts to shut off the international sex slavery spigot. DCF reports that it is aware of one child from another country being sold for sex in Connecticut, but fears many cases are going unreported.

"For every one we know about there are probably 100 [cases] we don't know about," Teresa Younger, executive director of the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women said Tuesday afternoon shortly after the executive order was released.

Blumenthal acknowledged the executive order only goes so far in addressing the overall problem of child sex slavery. In Connecticut, while DCF reports 100 children have been sold for sex in the last five years, only a handful of pimps have been prosecuted.

"Legislation is necessary. The president has gone as far as he can," said Blumenthal, noting his proposed bill would also impose criminal fines on government contractors that ignore sex and labor trafficking laws.

Conflicting bills approved by House and Senate committees have yet to be resolved. Gary Levvis, the coordinator of the University of Connecticut's Children's Rights Education Project told the state's sex trafficking task force earlier this year that the House bill focuses more on curbing domestic trafficking while the Senate bill aims more internationally.

Obama's order on Tuesday is strictly based on addressing labor and sex trafficking overseas by those who are working under a federal contracts.

"This is a zero-tolerance policy," Blumenthal said.

As far as curbing domestic sex trafficking goes, Younger said that she is working with state officials to come up with some solutions to boost enforcement and identification of victims.

The state Department of Children and Families launched earlier what they describe as a "frontal assault" on sex trafficking of children. The initiative includes training local police departments, school districts and hospital staff  to identify sexually exploited children. DCF is also asking police to treat child prostitutes they come across as victims, rather than criminals.

DCF Commissioner Joette Katz in a statement called the executive Order, "another weapon in the fight against human trafficking domestically and abroad... As DCF has experienced first-hand through our own anti-trafficking efforts, the number of children and families impacted by this crime often are invisible to the public. The signing of this Executive Order will call attention to and strengthen existing DCF efforts to combat the modern-day slavery of too many innocent victims."

"All glory comes from daring to begin."

(quote by Eugene F. Ware)

Today's blog post comes courtesy of my sister, Laura, who is a Health and Wellness Coordinator at the Wang YMCA of Chinatown in Boston, MA.  She took some time out of her schedule to give some advice and encouragement to those who want to start exercising and either have trouble getting started, or don't know what to do once they do start.

(PLUG: If you're in the Boston area and want a great trainer to help you out, I encourage you to visit the Wang YMCA and try to get in contact with her, or take one of her classes!)

"I just can’t seem to get started."

"I don’t know what to do once I get there."

These are two of the most common reasons for not exercising I hear when I first meet someone.  Yes, a gym can be intimidating and overwhelming. But with small goals and a handful of exercises, you can make a huge impact on your body and start to take control of yourself! 

You walk into the gym and don’t know what to do first.

Pick a machine that incorporates cardio movement (a treadmill, bicycle, elliptical, etc…) and press Quickstart (the green button).  From there, you can control every factor from speed and resistance to time.  It is the simplest way to get started and get yourself moving.  Learning different machines is great for variety, but if you are uncomfortable with that, just choose one and stick to it for a week or two.  From there, switch it up and try something new!

Strength training is a component of exercise many people forget about, also.  Between choosing exercises and making sure you have proper form, it can be a challenge.  Get the help from a trainer if necessary, or choose some strength machines and read the instructions labeled.  There are pictures highlighting which muscles are being used, and it will explain how to do the movement.  Plus, since it is a fixed form cable machine, it's pretty easy to pick up the correct motion.  But be careful, since there could still be error due to misuse of the machine.

From here, remember to stretch and always ask questions.  Trainers like to have people come up to them and give advice to those who need a jumpstart.  Watch them on the floors to see who you might respond well to and grab their attention.  They are willing to help!

Great CT Forum on Women's Issues

This past Saturday, the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women (PCSW) and Vision 2020 put on a great forum on a variety of women's issues.  Below is an article that covers the discussion of one of the panel discussions, in case you missed it.

Women Confront Retirement Security, Family Leave Issues


by Christine Stuart, CT News Junkie
Sep 17, 2012 5:30am


Women earn $2.4 trillion annually, but despite those gains women are at an increased risk of dying alone and in poverty, according to one financial planner.

Debra Clark, a certified financial planner with Hornor, Townsend, and Kent Inc., told a group of women gathered Saturday at the Legislative Office Building that they need to demand to be involved in the financial planning process.

Clark made her remarks during a panel discussion sponsored by the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women and Vision 2020.

She said women need to continue to fight for equal pay because it makes such a big difference, not only in their take home pay, but in their retirement planning.

An individual earning $50,000 a year, who is enrolled in a company retirement plan which is contributing 3 percent that’s a $1,500 contribution. If person across the hall is doing the same exact job and earning $30,000 that contribution drops to $900.

“That $600 difference may not sound like a lot but when you compound that over the course of 10, 20, 30, 40 years it amounts to thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Clark said.

She said women need to be comfortable making long-term financial decisions because it’s often their quality of life that suffers, if they don’t.

Sen. Toni Harp, who chairs the Appropriations Committee, said a lot of what the General Assembly does impacts the financial security of women.

"Women have got to be part of the political conversation,” Harp said. “Right now, we’re not.”

She said every year the legislature’s Permanent Commission on the Status of Women is threatened by budget cuts and wholesale elimination when they’re the ones lobbying on behalf of women’s issues at the state Capitol.

There are forces in state government that “think 77 percent is enough for you,” Harp told the women gathered for the day long session. “If you don’t think it’s enough then you have got to become activated and support those groups that support you.”

One of the issues the General Assembly faced this year was a proposal to increase the minimum wage.

“This is a women’s issue,” Harp said.

She said she understands women are busy with their multifaceted lives and often don’t know the issues that impact their lives, but she urged women to get involved. If they had maybe the disposition legislation would have been different.

The minimum wage increase died during the last legislative session when the state Senate refused to take it up.

Harp said 35.5 percent of Connecticut women ages 16 or older make the equivalent of a yearly minimum wage. Of those earning the minimum wage or below, 63 percent of all of them are women and 37 percent are men.

“Increasing the minimum wage is a significant issue for women, and yet you don’t really see us, except for the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women, championing that,” Harp said.

She said women often have very low salaries and have a hard time contributing to a retirement savings account, if they can afford to do that.

One woman in the audience wanted to know what the legislature is doing to address those caught up in the sandwich generation. The sandwich generation is still taking care of their adult children and their elderly parents at the same time. The woman said her employer has given her some flex time to use, but there are issues that come up quickly and not every employer is as generous as hers with their time.

“That is becoming a real drag on our retirement plans because we will miss time out of the workforce to care for our parents,” Clark said.

Natasha Pierre, policy and legislative director for the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women, said that’s one of the issues they plan to address this year.

The family care issue is an emerging issue for the commission. With Connecticut to become the first state in the nation to adopt Paid Sick day legislation, they’re looking to advance that legislation with Paid Family leave.

Pierre said it’s a difficult issue for the state because Connecticut doesn’t have a state disability program. Most disability insurance is purchased privately so there’s no public system for paid family leave and the state would be responsible for setting up a system for it.

She said they’re in the early stages of the conversation but were thinking about setting up some sort of employer-based system where an employee could pay into it and if you need it the money would be there.

Over the summer Pierre said she received calls on both ends of the spectrum for family leave, those who are caring for elderly parents and those who are new parents having their first child.

“The husbands are calling the office and saying, ‘My wife is going on leave so where’s the fund that she gets the money from?’,” Pierre said.

Pierre’s had to explain that Family Medical Leave Act just makes sure the woman gets her job back, it doesn’t pay for her maternity leave.

She said the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women is looking at paid family leave as a proposal, but aren’t sure how quickly they would be able to get legislation since they first need to come up with a system to finance it.

August Activist of the Month

CT NOW's August Activist of the Month

This past month CT NOW decided to honnor Margaret Middleton for her strong commitment to women's issues.  Margaret has always been a champion for veterans as co-founder and executive director of the Connecticut Veterans Legal Center.

Armed with the story of two women who were raped while in the military, Margaret urged U.S. Congress to make it easier for victims of sexual assault to get cleared for disability compensation by addressing the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs.

To read a recent article written about Margaret in the New Haven Independent please click here.

Book Review: The End of Men?

Battle Hymn of the Slacker Father

In the battle of the sexes, the losers have been middle-class families.

By Carol Tavris

Back In the 1970s—the olden days, when women were said to suffer a "fear of success" that was keeping them out of careers, and when there was no women's bathroom near the U.S. Senate chamber (it arrived in 1993; congresswomen in the House got theirs last year)—I interviewed the great anthropologist Marvin Harris. "Male supremacy," he said, "was just a phase in the evolution of culture." It would end in the 21st century, he predicted, because its two bolsters—women's inability to control fertility and the need for men's physical strength in war and work—would be gone.

The End of Men

By Hanna Rosin
Riverhead, 320 pages, $27.95

I never imagined, in that time before female generals and in vitro fertilization, that I would live to see his prediction fulfilled. But it is fast coming true, with a swiftness that can be hard to comprehend until someone makes us see the larger picture. That is what Hanna Rosin does in "The End of Men."

Anyone who has lived through decades of popular books about gender, arguing about "who started this," "who's worse off," who's up, who's down, who can have it all and who can have only 62% of it all (whatever "all" even means), may be amused by the melodramatic title. But this provocative book is not so much about the end of men but the end of male supremacy. In much of the world, from South America to South Korea, from Iceland to India, from villages to urban centers, in desperately poor countries as in affluent ones, what Iceland's prime minister, Johanna Sigurdardottir, calls "the age of testosterone" is ending.

Consider: In 2010, young American women had a median income higher than that of their male peers in 1,997 out of 2,000 metropolitan regions. In Brazil, one third of married women earn more than their husbands. Women are the majorities in colleges and professional schools on every continent except Africa; in Bahrain, Qatar and Guyana, women are 70% of college graduates. The more education and better jobs that women get, the more they narrow their marriage chances: They have to marry down, marry late, or not marry at all. Indeed, Ms. Rosin shows, the average age of marriage is rising: Even across Asia, it is now 32. Divorce rates are skyrocketing; births are declining and out-of-wedlock births increasing. The whole planet is becoming Sweden.

Ms. Rosin avoids the journalistic habit of doing "spotlight interviews" with individuals selected to support the writer's hypothesis, a practice she knows is misleading. Instead, her argument is based on substance and scholarship: She starts from data, then turn to interviews to illuminate the human effects of these world-wide changes. She spoke with demographers, social scientists, educators and gender-studies scholars. She traveled widely, examining the lives of rich and poor alike. She went to modest Midwestern universities and community colleges as well as to high-powered business schools. She went to Seoul, to see how in merely one generation South Korea has shifted from being "one of the most rigid patriarchal societies in the world" to a nation of "manic superwomen," where parents prefer daughters to sons. Everywhere she finds women improving their lives through education and determination, raising the bar for what they want from a man and not sticking with him if they don't get it.

Women's equality once seemed so elusive that few of its advocates paused to predict how men would respond if it actually arrived. Sure, some dinosaurs would sulk in their cave, some would respond with violence, some would daydream about a nonexistent past when women knew their place and a rape victim couldn't get pregnant. But, overall, surely, the march was steady onward, with men benefiting as much as women from women's higher status and education?

Ms. Rosin makes us face the uncomfortable evidence that many men are engaging in a sit-down strike. In macho cultures, such as those of Spain, men import poorer, more traditional women from other countries to marry. In Japan, Ms. Rosin reports, men are causing something of a national crisis because of their indifference to dating, marrying and even having sex.

Here in America, many men have dialed down their ambitions, and not simply in response to a loss of job opportunities. Although three-fourths of the jobs lost in the recent recession were in fields that are overwhelmingly male (including construction, manufacturing and finance), the same number of new ones emerged in health fields, service industries and teaching. Yet surprisingly few men are entering these areas or seeking the education they would need to do so. "Our vast and struggling middle class, where the disparities between men and women are the greatest," writes Ms. Rosin, "is slowly turning into a matriarchy, with men increasingly absent from the workforce and home, and as women make all the decisions."

The result, Ms. Rosin painstakingly shows, is virtually a reversal of the psychological landscape of the 1960s and 1970s. Then, men wondered why they should give up freedom and sex for marriage, child care and the burden of financial responsibility; now it is women asking that question. Then, men complained of clinging, freeloading wives; now Ms. Rosin hears repeatedly from women that, in the words of one executive, women should "be very careful about marrying freeloading, bloodsucking parasites." Then, it was women who tamped down their aspirations, knowing the objective unlikelihood of attaining them; now it's the men who have "fear of success" and a "why bother?" attitude. Then, if women had casual sex it was to keep the guy happy; now many have casual sex for their own pleasure and to keep from being derailed from their career goals with something "serious."

The great strength of Ms. Rosin's argument is that she shows how these changes in sex, love, ambition and work have little or nothing to do with hard-wired brain differences or supposed evolutionary destiny. They occur as a result of economic patterns, the unavailability of marriageable men, and a global transformation in the nature of work.

In tracing the big picture, Ms. Rosin inevitably omits considerable nuance and exceptions. Of course countless men are desperate to work and egalitarian marriages thrive all over the world. But in America, Ms. Rosin believes, such relationships are largely another perk of privilege; they mainly exist among the affluent 30% who have a college degree and whose division of earnings between husband and wife shift from 40-60 one year to 80-20 another, as both parties pursue their individual goals. Yet, she writes, even among men with egalitarian sympathies, many seem "haunted by the specter of a coming gender apocalypse." Why is that? she asks one young man. "It's because our team is losing," he said.

In that reply is the problem—and its solution. Ms. Rosin believes that the "end of men" can be averted if men "expand the range of options for what it means to be a man." The author provides heartening examples of couples and companies that are doing just that. (Even one oil drilling company she describes has transformed its work culture from having the "baddest roughnecks" around—and the worst safety record—to a culture of reciprocal help and cooperation.)

"Ultimately," Ms. Rosin says, "the desire for a deeper human connection always wins out, for both men and women." This great truth is often lost in the two predominant portrayals of men in contemporary popular culture: preposterously muscled action men who save the planet and childish, beer-drinking lads who just want to save themselves. Between the brawn of the past and the boy of today, we await the man of tomorrow. One who will realize that, for the well-being of all, men and women need to see themselves as being on the same team.

Gentlemen, start your engines.
—Ms. Tavris, a social psychologist, is the author of "The Mismeasure of Woman" and the co-author, with Elliot Aronson, of "Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me)."

A version of this article appeared September 8, 2012, on page C5 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Battle Hymn of the Slacker Father.

'My Friends Are Married' Tumblr Reveals Thoughts On Singlehood

I found this article interesting. I am recently single after a10 year on and off again relationship (back on for almost 5 years) and find it disheartning at times, while happy for them that all my friends are getting married and/or having children. They keep telling me to put myself out there and go on a few dates, but its only been 2.5 months and I am enjoying being single for now. I joined an online dating site and have some reservations and am interested in the Meet Up goups insted for a less imtinating way to meet new people. Anyway I found the below article great, because it makes me feel like I am not the only one going through this.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/11/my-friends-are-married-tumbler-singlehood_n_1874159.html?utm_hp_ref=women&ir=Women

The Huffington Post | By Katherine Bindley
Posted: 09/11/2012 3:39 pm
"My friends are getting married, and I'm just 25 and drunk."
So goes the theme of #myfriendsaremarried, a recently launched Tumblr that addresses many of the unfortunate situations, cliched advice, inappropriate questions and harsh judgements that single women sometimes face.

Oh, and the aforementioned scenarios are all addressed through hilarious GIFS.

Sure, this Tumblr may not be the first page to play around with the contrast between the lives of people getting married and those still enjoying singlehood -- there was a similarly named Facebook group created a while back -- but there's plenty of material to go around when it comes to some of the issues that single women encounter, such as arriving at a party only to learn its all couples, for example.

The Tumblr pokes fun at not only the well-meaning words that married friends tend to pass on to their single friends -- such as "you need to put yourself out there more" and "you'll find love when you stop looking" -- but also the subtle forms of admonishment that can come from those friends if you're, say, going out a lot, ending a relationship that isn't working, or having trouble moving on from an ex.

And in case the married friends of this Tumblr author have anything to say about her page, she already has a response: "Oh please. You guys love me. I keep it real and I'm hilarious."

A Book Review: 'Why Have Kids?'

JessicaValenti Asks ‘Why Have Kids?’ in New Book

Sep 5, 2012 4:45 AM EDT
by Jesse Ellison for TheDailyBeast.com

A provocative new book from feminist writer Jessica Valenti asks Why Have Kids? It’s a question Jesse Ellison has asked herself and she hoped Valenti would have answers.

(Page 1 of 2)

The title of Jessica Valenti’s new book Why Have Kids? has an undeniable appeal to women like me. Valenti, the founder of the website Feministing.com, has already skewered society’s emphasis on chastity in The Purity Myth, and analyzed and thoroughly debunked 50 different double standards in He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut. With her newest book, she aims to turn that critical eye towards motherhood, exploring the reality that being a parent is often more nuanced—with less joy, and more ambivalence—than society would have us believe, and, ostensibly, questioning why smart women would choose to have kids at all. When it comes to unpacking what it means to be female in America right now, she’s one of the smartest minds out there, and for those of us who are in our early 30s, relatively secure both professionally and financially, and yet ominously Without Child, this book is sure to beckon on the bookstore shelf.

While the conventional wisdom may have it that women—all women—want children, many of us, myself included, actually aren’t so sure about that. I love kids. When my 2^1/₂ -year-old niece reaches up to hold my hand, it brings me incomparable joy. But I also witnessed my own mother’s struggle as she juggled the demands of running a small business with those of raising me. And I’ve watched friends’ marriages tested, their careers derailed, their concerns over money and space and nannies and schedules skyrocket with the arrival of their children. I love children. I do. But I also don’t have any illusions about their being easy, and I don’t feel incomplete without them. If I end up not having any at all, that would be fine with me. I think. Right?

Deciding to be agnostic about child-bearing—deciding, like me, not to make procreation a priority—doesn’t mean becoming immune to the onslaught of messages about the importance of motherhood. We are, after all, in an election season in which access to reproductive rights is a topic more polarizing and vitriolic than at perhaps any time in recent history. Last week, Ann Romney extolled the virtues of motherhood at the Republican National Convention, calling mothers “the best of America.”

This is also the year in which we saw a nude, ostensibly pregnant 63-year-old on the cover of New York magazine, a 26-year-old blonde breast-feeding her nearly 4-year-old son on the cover of Time, and a baby in a briefcase on the cover of The Atlantic—meant to illustrate Anne-Marie Slaughter’s argument that women can’t, in fact, have it all. None of those options seem, to me, particularly appealing, but they reinforce the message that there’s little that women won’t do in pursuit of the motherhood ideal: Give birth as a grandma! Breastfeed till college! Quit your job at the State Department to raise a troublesome teen!

Between all of that—not to mention incessant questions from meddlesome aunts and uncles and wannabe grandparents—the cacophony of voices can seem deafening. It can get so loud that it becomes difficult to silence our self-doubt, impossible not to think, at least on some level, that when we’re 80 and alone, we’ll regret not making different choices, not having done everything possible to put these hotly debated uteruses of ours to good use. It’s enough to make you wonder whether not having children means missing out on the most essential part of the human experience, and whether failing to procreate makes you somehow less of a person.

Which is why it would be so nice to hear a smart young woman like Valenti wrestle with these questions, too. Would having children change her sense of self? Would a baby come in between her and her husband? Would her friendships suffer with motherhood? Would there be tension between her identity as a feminist and her identity as a mom? Would she, like studies have shown, be suddenly saddled with more housework, a lower salary, a husband who doesn’t pitch in quite so much at home? And if so, what would she do about it?

Valenti has helped us wade through the morass before. She’s an astute observer and critic of popular culture, and has, through both her books and her blog, helped thousands of girls and women understand how societal pressure can affect what we want—and, more importantly, what we think we want. In The Purity Myth, she drew clear and convincing parallels between Girls Gone Wild and chastity balls—weaving them together into a thoughtful exploration of America’s obsession with female sexuality, and how the emphasis on virginity can be just as disempowering as promiscuity. It helped many of us cast a more critical eye toward the messages—both quiet and loud—we receive every day.

When Valenti got married, she explained her decision to wear only a simple gold band thusly: “The only purpose of an engagement ring is to show you ‘belong’ to someone, and your man makes bank.” This is a woman, in other words, for whom the decision to be a mother can’t have been without its complications. And, in fact, Valenti does wage a persuasive argument against it. In the first half of the book, titled “Lies,” she outlines studies showing that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, having children generally makes people less happy, not more. She likewise challenges the notion that being a parent is both the hardest and most rewarding job in the world, saying that parents just choose to believe that it is, because, “the truth is just too damn depressing.”

Valenti urges those who do become parents not to engage in the so-called “mommy wars,” urging fathers and mothers alike to acknowledge the occasionally mind-numbing minutiae of child rearing and refrain from judgment when it comes to things like breast-feeding and the merits of staying at home with the kids versus handing them off to a nanny. And she shrewdly examines the inequity of the fact that mothers are held to such a higher bar than fathers. “When dads know these intimate details of their child’s life, they’re considered heroes,” she writes about taking care of day-to-day logistics like having enough sanitary wipes and making appointments with the pediatrician. “When moms do, it’s standard.”

The problem is, she never convincingly argues the opposite point, which means she never actually answers her question—or my own. There’s no doubting what decision she made; it’s right there in the subtitle: A New Mom Explores the Truth About Parenting and Happiness. What we don’t know is how she got there.

She outlines studies showing that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, having children generally makes people less happy, not more.

The ultimate conclusion that Valenti comes to goes like this: “The truth about parenting is that the reality of our lives needs to be enough.” This line is repeated both in the book’s conclusion and its promotional materials. But it doesn’t tell us anything about whether or not to have children. It doesn’t actually tell us much of anything at all.

It’s also a line, and a book, that makes me think about what my friends have described as a lack of mental clarity experienced during their own pregnancies, and a fuzziness of thought that comes from the lack of sleep after having given birth. It reminds me of my own ambivalence when it comes to having children. And it makes it hard not to think that the book would have been much more convincing if she’d been asking the question—Why Have Kids?—not as a new mom herself, but as a young woman trying to decide whether or not to become one.

 

Jesse Ellison is a staff writer and articles editor at Newsweek and The Daily Beast, covering social justice and women’s issues. A Front Page Award winner, she has discussed gender equality on CNN, WNYC, and at Princeton University. Find her on Tumblr.