Domestically Disturbed

This morning, I sat on the hardwood floor between Toddler and Baby, brokering peace negotiations between the pajama-clad girls who are many long months away from receiving their Masters in Sharing. Mission accomplished. Within a few moments, Toddler was playing with her Mama Tape Measure and Baby was playing with her Baby Tape Measure. And I had a few fleeting, but delicious moments to go online before Baby pulled up on my back and yanked out a massive fistful of my hair. Maybe she wanted me to get off my computer. Or, maybe she's envious because she's bald.

Anyway, before snapping my laptop shut and giving my girls the absolute, unmarred attention they deserve, I was able to read this article. It's the latest entry in Judith Warner's NYT blog Domestic Disturbances. And I was sufficiently disturbed (in the best possible way) to forgo that much-needed shower and read it over a few times, read all of the comments it elicited, and then write my own comment. In that little comment box, I wrote one of my Insecurely Yours letters. I thanked Judith for her brave words, for speaking up, for defending those of us here on ILI and beyond who are educated and interested and insecure. If you are curious, you can read my letter below.

Now, off to analyze my infant-induced hair loss and take that much-needed shower. In case you are interested, while I am showering, I will be giving myself a very articulate pep-talk to prepare myself for the attacks I fear are headed my way. And if there is time left over, I will contemplate the symbolism of those tape measure "toys" with which my girls love to play. Cheerio.

Dear Judith,

Thank you. For daring to lift that proverbial lid on our society’s simmering stew of resentment of women with “major educations,” of women who are intellectually-curious and interested, of women who are unwilling to stay mum behind a lipstick smile just because their lives are charmed in some way.

In writing this post and triggering the comments that precede mine - many of which are unnecessarily snarky and collectively serve as a prime example of the very resentment you explore — you cast a light on profound and provocative topics of education and wealth and social perceptions. Many of your readers are missing the point here - and maybe willfully so. Patently, your article is not about the law of child endangerment, or what it means to be a responsible mother. Nor is your article truly about this one woman, a professor in Montana.

Rather, your article (bravely) points to an arguably wider phenomenon, namely our culture’s apparent desire to put a muzzle on women who are affluent and educated. There does seem to be a belief that because these women enjoy noteworthy privileges of elite educations and financial freedom, they should keep quiet. Often, it seems that acceptable stories - of struggle, of adversity, of that enigmatic “real world” that we all live in — can only be voiced by members of the more “normal” species of women. I recently started a blog called Ivy League Insecurities in an effort to give these women a voice, to combat the societal message to stay mum and enjoy my “good” life and I have been criticized and - shocker - told to keep quiet, that my story is not a story worth hearing, that my insecurities are inauthentic because of my objectively “privileged” life.

So as one of the well-educated women you write about who is simply unwilling to stay mute, I applaud you for writing this and for welcoming and weathering the very predictable and revealing maelstrom it has triggered.

Insecurely yours,

Aidan Donnelley Rowley

Itty-Bitty Ivy Leaguers?

I'll give you a moment to stop laughing. (Or crying.)

And calm down. I don't know this little pint-sized prepster to the left. Though he does look suspiciously like a few of the frat guys with whom I went to college. You know - the ones who lived in casually rumpled button downs and creased khakis and sported that stiff side part that screamed: I'm kind of somebody.

Anyway, the rumor is that getting one's two-year-old into a Manhattan preschool these days is statistically as or more difficult than securing admission to an Ivy League school. So, what does this mean? 

Parental panic of epic proportions.

A wonderful new documentary Nursery University offers an anxiety-inducing and eye-opening behind-the scenes-tour of the Manhattan preschool admissions process. It follows a handful of diverse families from that fateful and frenzied Tuesday after Labor Day through the March madness of acceptances and rejections and wait-lists to the final decisions about where the itty-bitty intellectuals will do very important things like paint popsicle sticks and build blocks. The film gives us a compelling peek inside select City schools including Mandell, Epiphany, City & Country, and Chelsea Day.

Personally, I loved the film. Why?

Because the subject matter was eerily familiar. The rainbow classrooms and highly-insecure/highly-invested moms and dads (yup, including Husband and me). The tours and toddler interviews, the application essays and yes, early admissions! Not only did I just go through this nutty nursery process for Toddler, but I actually recognized many of the nervous parental "extras" in some of the scenes. 

Because it was an endearingly honest portrayal of a socially and economically complex system where some families founder and some flourish. 

And, most of all, because the film, like the very process it illuminates, underscores just how rabidly we parents care about our babies. (Because, let's be honest here. They are babies.) Because this is not just about crafting kids' resumes before they can hold a pencil. This is not just about flashing ahead to a fabulously promising future for our progeny. This is not just about breeding sweater-vest-sporting itty-bitty Ivy Leaguers. No.

And maybe I am a bit spoiled or jaded or sheltered or too loyal to my hometown. Or, most likely, all of these things.  But I think that if you look closely at this film and the families it follows, it is as much about the precious and precarious present moment we have no choice but to occupy and wanting what's best for our babies. And going for it. Even if that entails weathering a wonderfully wacky process.

Are You Paying The Price?

Last night, I did something I haven't done in a while: I read for pleasure.  And, no, it wasn't a juicy novel or a trashy magazine or a blogger's guide.  It was Little Sister's college paper. Wherein she explored Darwin's attitudes on slavery and abolition.  And it was good.  And she is a smarty pants.  And reading the paper made me homesick for feverish intellectual debate and discovery.  And oddly, I even found myself missing footnotes. 

So, since the babes were napping and I was craving a bit of intellectual back-and-forth, I just stopped by one of my favorite cyberspace haunts - NYT's Motherlode - and jumped into the latest debate/discussion.  Today, Belkin, eloquent and straightforward as ever, raises a perennial and perennially provocative question: do we women pay a calculable economic price for becoming mothers?  And, to the extent that we do, is this society's problem or ultimately a matter of personal choice?

As you can imagine, things got feisty.  And fast.  

And as I read all of the comments, I felt my pulse quicken, and the ideas multiplying.  I got that old school adrenaline rush that I used to enjoy when riled up in a Yale seminar when I would shoot a sweaty palm up in the air and wait my turn.  And though there was no prof there to call on me, I made my comment.  I talked about something the other kids in the class seemed to be ignoring (and now that I think about it that something was a bit off topic, but oh well): biology.  That, like it or not, men and women are biologically different and that while these differences certainly do not justify the inequities inherent in this modern world, they at least inform them.  That we are so quick to point fingers at men and each other and economic systems, but that perhaps it would behoove us to look at our biological roots too.

Anyway, I think my brilliant sister and her well-crafted paper got me thinking.  About big ideas.  About Darwin.  About the fact that I can be both a harried/happy mother and a student of life.  About the unrivaled joys of impassioned democratic debate.  About the limitless and lingering questions we must continue to ask ourselves and each other. 

A few of these questions:

Do you feel like you have paid a price (economic and other) by becoming a mother?

Do you think that anything can be done to level that proverbial playing field?  To ensure that men and women reap equal economic rewards for their work? Or is this a pipe dream?

Do you think the gender debate has gotten so loud that it is falling on deaf ears these days?

Do you sometimes want to go back to college like I do?

What's So Great About The Ivy League Anyway?

Everything.  And nothing.

Everything. In my humble or elitist opinion (take your pick), a good education is both very costly and utterly priceless.  Maybe I am an odd bird, but I loved school.  I loved Dalton.  (And, yes, it is part of the Ivy Preparatory School League in athletics; why would I make that up?)  And I loved Yale.  And I loved Columbia. Yes, these happen to be Ivy League schools, but any good school (and there are so many) will do.  Some of the smartest, best people I know did not go to an Ivy (hello, Dear Husband).  And some of the most maladjusted, lost, and sad people I know did go to an Ivy (not dumb, will not name names).

If you are lucky, an Ivy might teach you:

1. How to write.

2. How to read.

3. How to think.

4. How to tailgate.

5. How to craft a resume.

6. How to schmooze.

7. How to BS artfully.

8. How to drink coffee.

9. How to drink beer.

10. How to hide your deepest insecurities.

Nothing.  It is a myth that an elite education is the ticket to utopia, to happiness.  There are things for which no league can prepare you.  Important things. One such thing? Life. 

No school will teach you:

1. How to take a risk or take a compliment.

2. How to laugh loudly or love deeply.

3. How to find truth or a good man.

4. How to have a happy birthday or a happy marriage.

5. How to birth a baby or a book.

6. How to survive a bad breakup or a brutal hangover.

7. How to toilet train a toddler or train the toddler within.

8. How to let a child separate or watch a parent die.

9. How to handle vicious criticism in life or on a blog.

10. How to stop lying and start living.

When Practicality Runs Amok

"Graduate education is the Detroit of higher learning," declares Columbia University's Religion Department Chairman Mark C. Taylor in his NYT Op-Ed End The University As We Know It.  In this provocative piece, Taylor bemoans the impracticality of the contemporary mass-production university model, noting that it produces a product (smart, specialized souls who are candidates for teaching posts that don't exist) for which there is no market and burnishes skills for which there is dwindling demand.  Furthermore, Taylor highlights that this inefficient system costs us (sometimes in excess of $100K in loans).

Taylor offers six steps to begin the reinvention of the wheel of graduate education.  These steps are intriguing, often insightful, approaches to shifting away from an entrenched status quo of professor-cloning and complacency.  I particularly like the advice that Taylor gives his students: "Do not do what I do; rather, take whatever I have to offer and do with it what I could never imagine doing and then come back and tell me about it.” 

Now my admittedly emotional response to Taylor's practical prescriptions:

(1) Yes, the bottom line is always beckoning.  But aren't there some things -- like passionate academic inquiry, however obscure -- that are priceless? And should remain so?

(2) People have never gone to graduate school for practical reasons.  They are not under the illusion that there will be a bevy of teaching spots to pick from at the other end.  They devote years to studying their subjects because they feel they have no other choice, they are passionate, they often wouldn't be happy doing anything else.

(3) A precious few of us spend our days thinking creatively.  Overhauling the university system, making it more streamlined and efficient and collaborative, might very well stifle the little inventive thought that is going on.

(4) Perhaps we should focus our attention on the arguably more practical forms of higher education.  The ones that produce "products" for which there is a "market" and "skills" for which there is consistent "demand."  You know -- the systems that are spewing out dozens of corporate lawyers and plastic surgeons and investment bankers?  Now, I'm not sure who's to blame for this fierce financial crisis, but I'm pretty sure that grad students studying the nooks and crannies of literature and philosophy and history didn't sink the ship. 

(5) I know this is a bad economy.  I know that we are becoming accustomed to conceiving of almost everything in terms of the Market Metaphor.  But we are not talking about Detroit.  We are not talking about assembly lines and cars.  We are talking about people.  And ideas.

(6) Professor Taylor is a smart and accomplished soul who has enjoyed the freedoms and inefficiencies of the very system he now attacks.  Or, more fairly, re-imagines.  Now I hate cliches (almost as much as I hate practicality), but I can't resist: What happened to not biting the hand that feeds you?  Okay, maybe he's just nibbling.  But still.