Thanks, Ada January 11, 2008
Thanks to Babble Editor Ada Calhoun for pointing to my recent essay in her AOL blog today.
An acceptable and particularly mean cultural prejudice January 10, 2008
Denver mothers who are enrolled in high school are asking for a modest four weeks of approved maternity leave from classes, and all hell is breaking loose over their request. The topic has bloggers and pundits buzzing, with most folks nastily wagging their fingers at the idea that “teen mothers” should get a few weeks to rest their bodies and bond with their babies after giving birth. After all, the reasoning goes, if we “reward” teenage moms with four weeks of no homework, it will surely encourage more 16 year old girls to get knocked up.
Are they NUTS?
First of all, it’s only humane that any woman, of any age, who has just given birth should get a few weeks to physically recover from birth. And the idea that four weeks at home with a newborn baby is some kind of incentive for any teenage girl to get pregnant is just… well…
I wrote an essay about this topic a while back for Metro Pulse. It pretty much encapsulates my thoughts on the topic of teenage motherhood, so I’ll copy it here rather than repeating myself.
IN DEFENSE OF THE PREGNANT PROM QUEEN
by Katie Allison Granju
A few months ago I read an article about a high school in Florida that included a section in its yearbook featuring the students at the school who are also parents. Controversy erupted as many in the community objected vociferously to this supposed glorification of “teen pregnancy.”
I, on the other hand, found it a nice way to honor the accomplishments of this high school’s student-parents. As anyone who has attended school of any kind while a parent will tell you, parenting as a student is damned hard work. I know because I had my first baby while in college and my second baby while in grad school. Juggling baby, bills, and books was mind-numbingly difficult, even with significant family help. So I feel confident in suggesting that the young women who are mothers and students at that high school are pulling off something far more challenging—and certainly more important—than the girls on the cheerleading squad.
Additionally, I worked for two years in the early ’90s as a counselor in a Knoxville-area residential facility for teenagers in foster care and their babies. It was and is a unique program that allows these young mothers to remain with their own children rather than separating them by sending the mother and her child to two separate foster homes. I watched these young women bond with and care for their babies, and I observed the way they were treated with utter disdain by many teachers, employers, and the community at large. That experience opened my eyes to the fact that modern American attitudes toward mothers under the age of 20 constitute a particularly nasty but acceptable cultural prejudice.
Why is a 17-year-old woman with a baby automatically seen as some kind of social disease, but a 22-year-old mother is not? These are not “teen mothers,” any more than African American women are “black mothers” or women who work full time are “day care mothers.” They are just mothers, like all the rest of us; giving birth to and trying to raise our children as well as we can. Imagine the outcry if the media began referring to the many 45-year-old women who spend tens of thousands of dollars on fertility treatments, only to end up paying a much younger woman to actually provide a viable uterus or eggs, as “vanity mothers,” or “elderly mothers,” or “crone mothers.” I don’t think this would go over too well.
While there are certain parenting practices that are acknowledged as universally harmful to children, such as physical or emotional abuse, or neglect, the converse is not necessarily true. There are many ways to be a good mother, or as Bruno Bettelheim put it, “a good enough mother.” By most people’s standards, I was in no way fit or ready to be a mother on that day in 1991 when my baby was placed in my arms for the first time. We were too young, we were too poor, we hadn’t completed our education, our relationship was brand new and pretty unstable…. But because my son’s father and I were lucky enough to be surrounded by people who both offered support and believed in our abilities as parents, we were able to rise to the challenge.
Most teenage girls who become pregnant did not intend to do so. According to a review of American teen pregnancy statistics from the journal Family Planning Perspectives, a large percentage of the fathers of babies born to teenagers are men over the age of 20. Many have exerted some sort of coercion or control over the mothers in question. And many teenage mothers find that parenthood makes pursuing their goals of higher education or career growth extremely difficult.
The answers to these important issues are to not condemn and stigmatize mothers who are teens, but instead to work toward a society where every woman, young and old, has access to health education and health care, as well as the confidence and right to control her own body. And our schools must accommodate the fact that some students are parents, and offer the same flexibility that mothers who work have begun demanding of employers in recent years. Parenthood shouldn’t automatically signal an end to educational opportunities for young women.
There is nothing inherently shameful about young motherhood. It isn’t a dirty secret of some kind. We should resist our cultural inclination to turn mothers who are teenagers into pariahs. Age alone does not define a woman’s ability to nurture and guide her child.
Copyright Katie Allison Granju - All Rights Reserved
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Now, having said this, I certainly hope that all my children - my two sons and my two daughters - wait until they are well beyond teenagehood to have babies. And if any of them became parents as teenagers, I would be worried and upset and cpncerned about them, just as any mother would. But I wouldn’t consider it the end of the world and I wouldn’t try to punish them by making pregnancy and parenting as difficult as possible for them. Instead, I’d try to support and guide them so they could be the best parents they could be, and still complete their educations and maybe even have some fun once in a while.
Teenage parents are people too, you know.
the baby who ate knoxville January 8, 2008
C. is HUUUUUGE.
She weighs about 18 lbs now (she’s 5 months old) and is one of those babies who just looks large - big and blond and blue eyed. I think she’s a throwback to my big, blond Swedish forebears, the Johansens. Plus, since we use cloth diapers, she has that big, round bum that you only get with a cloth-diapered baby. She also has back fat spilling over the back of her diaper. And she chortles.
She’s delicious.
I have been letting her suck food (like mashed potatoes) off my fingers for several weeks now, but now we’ve started letting her have some food on a spoon and….she devours it. She opens her mouth like a little bird and begs for more. She screeches if we don’t get the food into her mouth fast enough. Sweet potatoes are her fave so far, so I have taken to calling her Sweet Potato. It’s still an irregular thing. She gets some “real” food if we think about it or if she happens to be eyeing something on our plates, but she really likes her food.
Anyway, she is growing so fast that she has few clothes that fit. She is in 12 month size everything. She lives in little zipper-ey, footed suits from Children’s Place (no socks to lose, easy for Jon to put on and off of her, no matchy-matchy stuff for him to figure out 
So I just noticed our fave baby outfit is hcurrently
majorly on sale for $4.89 each so I’m stocking up on the 12 and 18 month sizes.
my parenting do-over January 7, 2008
I have an essay at Babble today about getting a parenting do-over.
(I am aware this makes me both petty and vain, but I really do hope that no one thinks the woman with the baby in the photo illustrating the essay is me. I mean, Babble always has all these photos of impossibly hip and attractive people illustrating their content, but not so much this time. I mean, umm, I’m sure that woman in the photo is actually very attractive in person, so perhaps that’s just not her most flattering photo… I think I’ll just shut up now )
in recent weeks January 5, 2008
I haven’t blogged as much lately about my three eldest kids. That’s because due to our relatively new schedule where they spend one full week with their dad followed by one full week with me, combined with the way our holiday schedule fell this year, they’ve actually been staying with their father more than with me in recent weeks. Next year, I’ll have more holiday time with them.
I know they have a great time with their dad and he loves having them, but I sure do miss them. I am still adjusting to having them gone fully half the time, and with the addition of extra time away this month, it’s been hard. Jon misses them, too and while I know that C is still too young to actually miss anyone, she surely does seem to light up when one of her older siblings comes into her line of vision.
Happily, they will be home with me for several days this week before heading back over to their other home. We will celebrate E’s 10th birthday with a smaller family bash (he had a slumber party at his Dad’s) and I’ll bask in just having them here. The house seems so much more alive when everyone is at home. When they aren’t here, I miss hearing them playing loud music or shooting nerf darts in their bedrooms. I even miss hearing H wander around the house plucking incessantly at his unplugged electric bass.
Having grown up in a boisterous and big family, I function better when the activity level is a bit higher. Yes, I need breaks, but I like a house filled with people and music and activity.
I think I’ll have a hard time when they all grow up and move out for good.
sickly baby January 4, 2008
C. was very fussy all day yesterday (I was off, at home with her) and I didn’t realize until evening that she felt terrible. Her little cheeks kept getting rosier and rosier - Jon and I even commented on it - until I suddenly had an “aha” moment and realized she must be developing a fever, which she was.
We had a difficult night. Unhappy baby. Fever, Sleeplessness. Baby tylenol, She wanted to nurse but it hurt to nurse. I suspect an ear infection, so she’ll go to Dr. Glover later today. Luckily, Jon was able to stay home with her today.
I had forgotten how pitiful it is when an infant feels that bad. You want so much to be able to explain to her WHY she is feeling bad, but all she knows is that she hurts and no one she trusts to make her feel better seems to be making her feel better.
The problem(s) with spanking kids January 3, 2008
There’s an essay in Babble today from a father who vowed never to spank but broke that vow.
I doubt there is a parent on the planet who hasn’t lost it and smacked their kid. I know I have. I once smacked preschooler J. on the lower back (I was aiming for her bum), and I have grabbed my kids too harshly on more than one occasion.
I have also gone out in my yard and walked in circles to keep from beating the tar out of them, and I’ve cried into my pillow to stop myself from hollering unspeakable things at them. I’ve called my sister and asked her if I could say to her the things I felt like saying to my teenage son.
But despite my numerous failures as a mother - and there are lots - I continue to be happy with my conscious decision to leave spanking out of my bag of chosen parenting tricks.
I am sure C will test my patience in all kinds of new ways, and I’ll have to come up with new strategies for parenting her. But I still won’t be hitting her.
Here’s something I wrote about it. It’s an essay that serves as the opening for Hilary Flower’s wonderful book, Gentle Discipline.
The Discipline of Gentle Discipline
by Katie Allison Granju
Sometimes, I really, really feel like hitting my kids.
There, I’ve said it out loud.
It’s not something I felt comfortable telling people in my earliest years as a mother. I was afraid that my occasional urges to grab, scream at, shake or whack my children meant that there was something wrong with me. I was afraid these urges meant that I could never be the kind of gentle, attached mother I wanted to be. And mostly, I was afraid I might lose control and actually do the things I sometimes felt like doing.
Now that I’ve got some parenting experience under my belt –my children are 13, 9 and 6 years old - I am less afraid of the powerful and angry feelings each of them can sometimes evoke in me. I am also less afraid to admit those feelings. I have come to discover that virtually all mothers, including the ones whose mothering I most admire, sometimes feel the urge to smack one of their kids upside the head, or at least turn them over their knee.
The problem is that far too many people give in to those urges, and that as a culture, we continue to believe that “spanking” - our benign-sounding euphemism for hitting children - continues to enjoy widespread acceptance as an effective and humane way of guiding children.
But spanking isn’t effective or humane. Study after study has demonstrated that parents who spank do not raise healthier, more productive, or more mentally sound adults than those who do not. In fact, the opposite is more often true. Yet many otherwise thoughtful and loving parents continue to buy into the myth that spanking offers important benefits, and that it’s an inevitable part of parenting.
I knew before I gave birth for the first time that I didn’t want to use corporal punishment to guide my kids, but when I would tell people this, they would respond with, “Oh, you say that now!” with a knowing grin, assuming that I would eventually give up on this ridiculous idea of gentle discipline. But I didn’t give up on it.
I readily admit that I have not been perfect in my goal of gentle discipline. I have screamed at, threatened, and come very close to hitting my children on more than one occasion, but these behaviors have never found a permanent place in my parenting toolbox.
I will never forget the one time I did totally lose it and hit one of my children. It happened when my daughter was about three years old and had decided she would no longer wear clothing. At all. Ever.
We were late for some event and I had gotten her completely dressed, but when I went to scoop her up and dash out the door, she was stripped back down to her underwear. At this point, I snapped and smacked her on her rear end. Except I missed her very small bottom and my hand instead landed on her lower back, where it left a red, hand-shaped mark.
She stared at me in horror, having never been struck in her life. I stared back in equal horror. Then she said to me in a small, quavering voice I will never forget, “Mama, why did you hit me?” I burst into tears and held her and rocked her and assured her that I was very, very sorry and that she could trust me to never hit her again. I told her that it was never okay for anyone to strike her.
That night, as I tried to fall asleep, I couldn’t get the incident out of my mind. I realized that I certainly did not want my daughter to grow up believing that sometimes, under the “right” circumstances, she deserved to be hit by the people she loves. I reaffirmed my vow to myself that I would raise my children without violence.
Despite several near-misses over the years - times when I have had to leave the room, scream into a pillow, or take deep breaths and count to ten to avoid lashing out at my children - it’s a vow I have managed to keep. And wonder of wonder, it’s working.
My children are polite, well-behaved (most of the time), thoughtful people. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding, and when people compliment me on the kids’ behavior, I always make a point to say that I don’t spank them. And on the days when one of them is making me feel like sticking my head in the oven, I find that it helps for me to vent to friends who have children even older than mine - parents who also avoid physical punishment - so these mothers and fathers can remind me how well their kids have turned out,without spankings or other harsh disciplinary methods.
This is why I recommend that parents of very young children who want to avoid punitive and physical discipline methods spend time around parents of older children who hold the same views. On the days when your toddler is making you insane and you feel ready to pull out the wooden spoon for a few swats on a diapered bottom, it helps to see the end product of gentle discipline: kids who behave well because they trust and believe in their parents’ guidance, not because they are afraid they will be slapped, spanked or worse.
As for whether spanking is a humane method of discipline, it is not. The fact that so many parents continue to employ corporal punishment doesn’t make it any more humane. After all, it wasn’t so many decades ago that many people believed that, should a husband feel it necessary, he had the right to strike his wife.
One of these days, our attitudes about hitting kids, the most vulnerable members of our families, will similarly evolve so that we will look back on the practice of “spankings” as another form of domestic violence. These are strong words, but I believe them.
Getting through the days, the weeks and eventually, the years of parenting without using physical discipline is, in itself a discipline. I find that having made the promise to myself that I will not resort to hitting provides me with the parenting “North Star” I can use to re-orient myself when I feel angriest. And I have also found that when I am feeling most out-of-control in my parenting, it’s a signal to me that something else is going on in my life, something that needs some of my attention and reflection.
In picking up this important book by Hilary Flower, you have taken a first step in finding your own parenting “true north. In it, you will find many specific ideas and strategies for raising healthy, happy, well-behaved children using gentle discipline that really works.
And remember, on the really hard days, there’s always the tried and true method of finding a place in your home where no one can hear you, closing the door, and screaming at the top of your lungs until the urge to throttle your child passes, at least for the moment.
Copyright Katie Allison Granju — 2004 — All Rights Reserved
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And here’s a wonderful essay my friend Jeannie Ouellette wrote on the same topic. A quote:
That’s the thing about being fully committed to not hitting your children (or any other family member, for that matter) — it completely clarifies your position and your priorities. Despite all your other failings and fits of temper, whatever they may be, you will not deliberately cause your children physical discomfort or pain, and you will not perpetuate violence as a solution. As much as it challenges you to find other, more effective approaches to guiding your children, it frees you from the tyranny of decisions about when violence is justified, and how much violence is appropriate.
When I look at my daughter playing in the room beside me, I know that hitting her purposefully as a response to unacceptable behavior is a ludicrous concept, and one that she herself, having never been stricken in the name of justice, and having heard her entire life that hitting is wrong, would recognize as inherently unjust. I wish every child could grow up with an intact sense of physical integrity and dignity.
Tennessee parents have pretty great taste in baby naming January 2, 2008
The list of top baby names in Tennessee has been released:
They are-
Girls : Madison, Emma, Emily, Addison, Abigail, Hannah, Ava, Chloe, Isabella, Anna
Boys: William, Jacob, Ethan, James, Joshua, Christopher, Jackson, Michael, Noah, John
These are all lovely, quite traditional/classic names that will stand the test of time. They won’t scream out “2007″ like some names would (”Nevaeh,” anyone?).
Madison used to sound rather trendy but has become a modern classic, I think. And while Addison’s sudden surge in popularity is certainly due to “Grey’s Anatomy,” it’s a solid, old name with a very cute nickname (”Addie”). One of my best girlfriends in highschool was named Addison.
Interestingly, the top names nationally for a boy or a girl last year, the very pretty “Sophia” and the Celtic Aiden, didn’t even make the top 10 in the Volunteer state.
Check out the Baby Name Wizard’s predictions for names on the rise for the coming year (the commenters below her post also have lots of suggestions for what’s hot/not in baby naming). The Wizard has a pretty great track record. She picked Addison as last year’s name to watch.
a piece of baby gear i should’ve bought (and may still)
With C., we have the same sleeping set-up I had with E (even the exact same baby bed). We have a mini-crib set up right next to my side of the bed - pushed up right next to me. So C. starts the night in her little bed and then I pull her into bed with us when she wakes to eat. We have a bedrail attached to my side of the bed. So she’s right there close at hand. But the bedrail and the lip of cribrail mean that when she just needs to be patted back to sleep, I cannot just reach over and pat her; I have to raise up and lean over the two rails and pat her or readjust her blanket. Not too comfy for moi.
My sister got one of the Arms Reach co-sleepers for her new baby and she loves it. These were just coming out the last time I had a baby ten years ago and they looked great, but I figured the set-up I had last time would work just as well with baby C. But now that I see how much easier and nicer the co-sleeper that actually attaches to the bed is, I covet one. I may actually get one still and I will definitely be getting one if we do decide to have another baby.
sleep “problems” in babies & young children
If, as this author suggests, nearly half of all babies and toddlers wake during the night, why is she defining it as a “problem” instead of simply as something nearly half of all infants do as a normal part of being a baby primate?
I would suggest the latter.
I’d say nearly half of all adults wake at some point during the night, too.
tummy time
C. hates tummy time. Every time I put her on her belly, she tries to flip over or push up for just a few seconds before crying hysterically. And when I have her play on her back, she makes little to no effort to flip over (although Jon says she tries to flip overs ometimes when she is with him - but I’ve yet to see it). Her cousin Nancy Catherine is 4 weeks younger and is already flipiing over like a little fish. I’ve been actively taunting C. with this info (I’m KIDDING, people!) to try to encourage her to roll over, but so far she doesn’t seem to be a very competitive baby.
car seat dumbness December 31, 2007
You know, it’s been a long time since I had a baby in a car seat - almost 10 years. Since E was little, car seats have gotten a lot better and a lot more complicated. Lots more choices are available, too.
Since birth, C. has been unhappilly (she hates the carseat) ensconced in a Graco Snugride. Now, though, she weighs 17 pounds and is getting ready to sit up on her own. I am wondering if it’s time to move up to one of the convertible carseats that will then last her through toddlerhood. How do you know when it’s time?
And if I need to upgrade, which seat is best? We need one that’e easy to move among three different cars (mine, Jon’s and his mother’s). Or maybe we’re gonna have to pay gazillions of dollars for three separate carseats? (The Snugride is easy because you can just move it among bases that stay attached in each separate car.)
Arrrgghhhh!
All carseat enlightenment welcome.
how do you entertain a 5 month old baby?
Jon wants to know.
It’s true that C. is suddenly more aware of the world around her, yet she’s still largely unable to make her body do what she would like it to do. She can’t yet roll over or sit up or even reliably connect hand-to-toy-to-mouth without assistance. But she’s sure she wants to do these things and frankly, it’s making her more than a little annoyed.
baby phat December 30, 2007
C. has turned into a rather deliciously fat baby. We think she now weighs just under 17 lbs, which puts her in the 90th percentile for weight. I’m not sure how long she is. She’s definitely grown a lot since her 16 week checkup last month, when she was in the 25th percentile for height, but I suspect that proportionally, she’s still short and fat with a giant, round head.
I’ve never had a chubby baby before, so I’m loving all the yummy rolls of baby fat. She has six chins and rolls of fat on her rolls of fat. It’s very cute. She still looks bald, although she actually has quite a lot of hair. It’s just so blond that you can’t see it unless you look closely. And she has big, gorgeous blue eyes.
Last night we ate supper at the house of some friends. Another couple was there with their baby boy, born the same week as C. He weighed 2 lbs more than she did at birth, but now C. looks like she could - and might - eat him for lunch. She looked like a giantess infant next to this teensy (adorable) little guy. Her head is twice the size of his.
It’s hard to believe that this baby:
has grown into this baby:
so quickly!
She is now eating some mashed up table food and a little baby food. Just little tastes here and there, but she’s loving the stuff and I can see her eating more “real” food in the next few weeks. My girl loves to eat. I suspect she’d take on a plate of home fries with gusto if given the chance.
how i met your father December 28, 2007
So someday, when C. asks how I met her father, I can point her to this, a post (like the one below) on my blog, dated 1/23/2006 in which I asked blog readers to tell me who they were. One of the comments in reply was this one:
knoxjon Says: January 23rd, 2006 at 10:03 pm e
Well, Katie, since you keep asking….
I’m knoxjon/jah/Jon/…. I’ve been reading your blog for a few months now as part of my campaign to spend every waking moment on the internet instead of doing the work I’m supposed to be doing. I’m just glad that there’s good stuff to waste my time on.
So now that we’ve formally met, we can share a beer sometime. I’ll be the one who is a Darby Conley cartoon character.
That was Jon.
And we went and had a beer. It was fun.
