Girls, girls, girls

My thoughts are pretty chaotic right now, which is making it hard to write a pithy blog post. But I want to share some of the things that have been kicking around the last couple of days, and they do all seem to hit on a common theme.

1) At work right now they’re in the middle of interviews to fill a vacancy. After the hiring committee meets with the candidates, the rest of us staff have been meeting with the prospectives in a less formal, less interview-like session. Yesterday it hit me: the hiring committee is all men, and the staff at the get-to-know-you meeting are all women. It’s bad enough that I’m the first female in the 33-year history of the place to sit on the Editorial Board, and these job candidates are getting the same message on their first visit: men in power, women in supporting roles. Depressing.

2) The sudden upsurge in new babies (my new niece, Frantix’s recent arrival) and the “On Balance” blog at the Washington Post have me thinking about breastfeeding. (I’m not linking to “On Balance”, by the way, because I think it’s actually very lame; you can track it down yourself if you’re really interested.) I am truly appalled sometimes at the virulent militancy of pro-breastfeeding people. Let women make their own damn choices, all right? Formula isn’t paint thinner, for pity’s sake. And making specious arguments about cow’s milk not being meant for people, or implying that women who feed formula aren’t good mothers because they’re not sacrificing enough of themselves, is the exact kind of irrational nonsense that traps women in the same old stereotypes. Stop with the crazy talk and give me something reasonable we can discuss.

3) Along the same lines, the recent debates about working mothers (just Google “Linda Hirschman”) never ceases to amaze me. Reading anything written by Caitlin Flanagan or Sandra Tsing-Loh in the Atlantic makes me want to tear my hair out, they’re so righteous and so fond of ad hominem. Has anyone else ever noticed that this debate in particular seems to demand that every participant hold up her own life for scrutiny? Do we ask politicians to have opinions only on matters with personal relevance? (On the other side of that coin, it never fails to irritate me when a politician takes up a cause only after being affected by it personally. To quote Meadow Soprano, “Self-involved much?”) Is it so implausible to think that we could discuss the truly difficult issue of balancing work and the rest of one’s life in a rational and less personal manner? Besides, I wonder whether the working-mother question is more of an economic issue than a social one. Health care in the U.S. is almost entirely dependent on full-time employment, which means that in a domestic partnership you need to have at least one person working those 40 hours per week. If we could sever health care from employment, you could have each partner working 50%, or 75%, and strike a balance between work and family that fits your needs exactly. Never mind that revamping health care in the U.S. is probably harder than colonizing Jupiter.

The only thing I can conclude from all this is that I’m in dire need of a vacation. Fortunately, I have one coming up next week. Pundit fatigue is setting in...