Apt. 11D

The Nanny State

In the The Nanny Diaries: A Novel, the tyrannical mother imposes stringent rules on the nanny on what she is allowed to feed her son. No sugar, no hot dogs, everything fresh and home made. It's time consuming work, complains the nanny and if the mother was watching her kid all day, there's no way that she wouldn't sneak off to McDonalds once every couple weeks.

Well, life imitates art, and the Times has an article on food regulations and the nanny.

“It’s not unusual for parents to make a huge list of what is and isn’t allowed,” said Genevieve Thiers, who is the founder and chief executive of Sittercity.com, which matches more than 150,000 baby sitters with parents. Her site receives so many queries about food, she said, that she is preparing to post an online worksheet on which parents can specify diet preferences.

Parents are more aware of dietary concerns that they were years ago, and this food scrunity is just part of the movement towards more intense parenting that affects all aspects of child rearing.

Nannies, meanwhile, find it demeaning “when parents are overly scrupulous,” said Julia Wrigley, a professor of sociology at the City University of New York Graduate Center, because they are implying that the sitters do not know or care enough to feed children properly. “The deeper emotional issue is how much judgment and authority the caregiver can exercise,” she said.

Sitters can hear a parent’s dietary requests as criticism of her education level, cultural traditions and personal eating habits, and as harbingers of extra work.

As more women work, the rules of childcare are increasingly up for debate. How much should you regard nannies as professionals and allow them the freedom to make about decisions about food and discipline? Should nannies be paid more as the responsibilites increase? Isn't parental oversight a good thing for the kids who really don't need to have a constant diet of fries and treats? Most people were not raised by nannies and have no traditions or rules of conduct to fall back on.

I admit that these debates make me very nervous. When I've dropped my kid off a sitter's house, my philosophy is that it's her house, her rules. I never step into these matters. If I am unhappy, I find someone else who is more in line with my thinking. However, if I have a sitter at my house, I have some rules here. I usually feel sorry for anybody watching my crazy kids, so I make the rules very light, like don't let them play in traffic. I don't make them impose the TV and computer rules. But then again, I never have anyone here for a full day, five days a week.

More On Local Politics

In addition to work and the kids, I've become embroiled in local politics in the past couple months. On Tuesday night, I was at a Planning Board meeting until 11:30; I was up for hours later, too juiced up to sleep. Before that meeting, I had written letters to the local newspapers, roped in reporters, shot off e-mails to the town council, created a local blog, and hosted a party for the neighbors. I googled words like "legal non-complying property" and "variance standards." Obsession is a dangerous thing.

The details of the case are too dull for this general interest blog, but may I just engage in a little flag waving. Sure, there have been a lot of frustrations along the way. Getting really busy people to show up at boring meetings is difficult. Being bullied and lied to by thugs hired by the developer has been enraging.

However, I've enjoyed this process more than I could have imagined. There's a real hands-on, getting-dirty aspect to local politics that you never experience at the state or national level. You get to go face to face with your opponent and demand answers. People are less polished and motives more obvious. Instead of playing the role of impartial academic studying events from afar, I'm right there in the thick of things getting hugs from the mayor and showing diagrams to the Planning Board. I've also made a lot of new friends. I'm more likely to show up at town events and schmooze.

I'm not sure if we're going to make a difference. Deals may have been cut in backrooms long ago. But I do love a good fight.

Spreadin' Love

A somewhat surprising article by Fred Hess about the lack of alternatives to public schools and the failure of charter schools and vouchers to bring about something new. Hess says that not enough has been done to nurture entrepreneurship.

Lexus Lanes

We're in the midst of some family drama at the moment, so forgive the sparse posting this week.

Loren sent me a fascinating article this summer by Benjamin Ross in Dissent about ideology and traffic. Who knew that there was a politics of traffic? Really fun piece and worth checking out in full, but today I'm just pulling out one concept in the article, one that generated some debate around here:

This is especially true of the latest fad among the free marketeers, what are known as express toll lanes. These are pay lanes added to existing highways that currently don't charge tolls. Toll rates vary from hour to hour, increased at times of heavy traffic in such a way that the toll lanes never back up. The main advantage of this procedure is that the driver who pays the toll is guaranteed a fast trip; on the busy suburban highways where these lanes are under consideration, there is so much traffic that simply widening the road would not get rid of congestion. Proponents argue that express toll lanes give the consumer more choice than building additional free lanes — when you need to get somewhere in a hurry, you pay the toll; when your time is less valuable, you don't.

Express toll lanes were quickly dubbed "Lexus lanes." Their promoters indignantly reject this appellation, claiming that the lanes benefit all income groups. But a 1999 survey of drivers on the first such project in the United States, SR 91 between Riverside and Orange counties in southern California, showed that drivers with incomes above $100,000 were about four times as likely than those who earn less than $40,000 to have used the toll lanes on their last trip on the highway....

These survey results suggest that the "Lexus lanes" moniker is well deserved. Who uses pay lanes is mostly determined by income. For most of the people in the free lanes, consumer sovereignty is a fiction. They haven't made a voluntary decision that their time isn't worth the price of a quicker commute. They are sitting in traffic jams because the toll exceeds what they can afford to pay.

OK, who likes Lexus lanes?

Spreadin' Love

James Wolcott scores the cover of the New Republic. He reviews the Flanagan, Hirshman, and Steiner book in his essay, "Meox Mix." He makes some good points, while missing some of the most important ones.

Weekend Journal

The mute kid got tossed out of another program last week.

Two nervous teachers politely suggested that their daycare might not be a good fit for Ian. They actually didn't have a problem with the fact that he was mute. That might have even been an asset. The problem was that he has weak muscle control in his hands, and he can't work on worksheets independently. With 22 four year olds in a room all day, the teacher and her assistant must move the kids from worksheet to worksheet all day. They spent a lot of time coloring in the natural resources of the state of New Mexico. Ian can't color on his own or grip a pencil. He really wants to play with the toys instead. There isn't enough staff to tailor the work to meet his needs or to help him with pencil grip. If he gets up to play with the trains, all the children want to play with the toys. Mass rioting ensues. It's just easier to boot out Ian.

One Web Day

Just a short post today. The other posts from the week are still gathering excellent comments, so I want to keep those threads going.

Maria Farrell notifies me that it is OneWebDay, “the one day a year when we all – everyone around the physical globe – can celebrate the Web and what it means to us as individuals, organizations, and communities”. She relates how the internet has helped her maintain her connections with her old family and friends though they are an ocean away.

The Internet has meant that I've been able to maintain professional dialogues with colleagues, during a period when I've been home with two snotty-nosed kids. It has empowered me by putting me in contact with other parents with many of the same concerns that range from big issues like equity in marriage to little ones like good books for little kids. I've met people from different backgrounds and locations that have challenged my world view. As I get more involved in local politics, it has given me access to new information and a means to broadcast information to others. (I have a local blog, too.) As a parent of a disabled child, I have new access to scientific research and legal policy.

On the downside, I read less novels, and my house is dirtier.

Question of the Day How has the Internet affected your life?

Teaching Teachers

Arthur Levine, the former president of Teachers College at Columbia University just issued a report about the state of teacher education programs in our country. He found that:

More than half of teacher education graduates come from programs that have low admission and graduation standards, said Levine, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. The faculty members who teach the future teachers are sometimes years removed from being in a classroom other than their own, and graduates often emerge ill-prepared to start their teaching careers, according to the report.

In “Educating School Teachers,” the second in a four-part series of policy papers on the education of future educators, Levine describes teacher education as a “chaotic” field largely lacking in uniform standards and accountability.

He referred to education schools as "cash cows" and called for education schools to adopt a five-year model in which students major as an undergraduate in a discipline other than education and finish with a yearlong master’s degree in education.

Nature v. Nuture. Does it Matter?

I've been chatting via e-mail with readers about the nature v. nurture argument and for the sake of simplifying the discussion, I'm posting the chat in the blog.

Without a background in biology or anthropology, I can't add much to the discussion about why men and women are different. So, instead I ask, does it matter why men and women are different? If Brooks and crew are right, that genetics helps determine personality, does it take us to places that we don't want to go? TJ says yes. Genetics can be used to rationalize all sorts of inequalities. The world has been predestined to be run by men and the home front by women. And I agree with him. Yes, I can see how the genetics argument can take us places that I don't want to go. I definitely think that Brooks was going there. Genetics has be used throughout history to justify all sorts of other inequities about race and class. Phrenology was used to explain "deficiencies" in certain ethnic groups.

However, I think that why were are different can be a huge distraction and that the thing to do as progressives is to move beyond this discussion to figure out how to lessen these inequities with smart educational programs and smart social policy. Genetics doesn't have to mean destiny. For example, if little girls are more likely to be obedient, a trait that serves them well in school, but not in the larger world, then we need to teach them to break rules. Nurture can overcome genetic tendencies.

The Tip Jar at Starbucks

After I survive the morning rush to get the kids off to school in time, I sometimes run into Starbucks to grab a coffee and to work on my laptop for an hour. As I'm paying the guy $1.50 for a plain cup of coffee, I look over at the tip cup next to register. Do I dump the 50 change in the cup? Gotta help the minimum wage slaves. But am I just enabling Starbucks to keep underpaying their employees? And I already paid $1.50 for a stupid cup of coffee. Haven't I helped out Starbucks enough? Besides should you tip people who just pushed a button for coffee? It's not like a lot of effort went into that.

The cup is stuffed. Looks like they've gotten a good haul already. A girl who works there told me that each employee rakes in an extra 80 bucks a week from the tip jar.

Now, it's way too early for a moral dilemma like this, and I get kinda grouchy for having to feel guilt so early in the morning. So, I turn to the guidance of the blogosphere. Tip or no tip.