Purposeful Conception

A while ago I got slammed by a commenter for not very eloquently discussing the notion that parents actually consider both the physical and social consequences of procreation. In the context of this blog, I was considering the degree to which lesbians are purposeful in conceiving (that's not to say that other couples are not or don't have to be purposeful, just that lesbians, by definition, are purposeful about procreation) and in that purposefulness, must consider the fact that their kids will face some degree of discrimination by the fact that their parents are gay.

Speaking of purposeful creations, check out the following story:

Copyright 2002 The Washington Post
The Washington Post

March 31, 2002 Sunday
Final Edition

SECTION: MAGAZINE; Pg. W22

LENGTH: 8647 words

HEADLINE: A World of Their Own;
In the eyes of his parents, if Gauvin Hughes McCullough turns out to be deaf, that will be just perfect

BYLINE: Liza Mundy

BODY:

As her baby begins to emerge after a day of labor, Sharon Duchesneau has a question for the midwife who is attending the birth. Asking it is not the easiest thing, just now. Sharon is deaf, and communicates using American Sign Language, and the combination of intense pain and the position she has sought to ease it -- kneeling, resting her weight on her hands -- makes signing somewhat hard. Even so, Sharon manages to sign something to Risa Shaw, a hearing friend who is present to interpret for the birth, which is taking place in a softly lit bedroom of Sharon's North Bethesda home.

"Sharon wants to know what color hair you see," Risa says to the midwife.

The midwife cannot tell because the baby is not - quite - visible. He bulges outward during contractions, then recedes when the contraction fades. But now comes another contraction and a scream from Sharon, and the midwife and her assistant call for Sharon to keep pushing but to keep it steady and controlled. They are accustomed to using their voices as a way of guiding women through this last excruciating phase; since Sharon can't hear them, all they can hope is that she doesn't close her eyes.

"Push through the pain!" shouts the midwife.

"Little bit!" shouts her assistant, as Risa frantically signs.

And suddenly the baby is out. One minute the baby wasn't here and now the baby is, hair brown, eyes blue, face gray with waxy vernix, body pulsing with life and vigor. A boy. "Is he okay?" signs Sharon, and the answer, to all appearances, is a resounding yes. There are the toes, the toenails, the fingers, the hands, the eyes, the eyelashes, the exquisite little-old-man's face, contorted in classic newborn outrage. The midwife lays the baby on Sharon and he bleats and hiccups and nuzzles her skin, the instinct to breast-feed strong.

"Did he cry?" signs Sharon, and the women say no, he cried remarkably little.

"His face looks smushed," Sharon signs, regarding him tenderly.

"It'll straighten out," says the midwife.

Presently the midwife takes the baby and performs the Apgar, the standard test of a newborn's condition, from which he emerges with an impressive score of nine out of a possible 10. "He's very calm," she notes as she weighs him (6 pounds 5 ounces), then lays him out to measure head and chest and length. She bicycles his legs to check the flexibility of his hips; examines his testicles to make sure they are descended; feels his vertebrae for gaps.

All in all, she pronounces the baby splendid. "Look how strong he is!" she says, pulling him gently up from the bed by his arms. Which means that it is, finally, possible to relax and savor his arrival. Everyone takes turns holding
him: Sharon; her longtime partner, Candace McCullough, who is also deaf, and will be the boy's adoptive mother; their good friend Jan DeLap, also deaf; Risa Shaw and another hearing friend, Juniper Sussman. Candy and Sharon's

5-year-old daughter, Jehanne, is brought in to admire him, but she is fast asleep and comically refuses to awaken, even when laid on the bed and prodded. Amid the oohing and aahing someone puts a cap on the baby; somebody else swaddles him in a blanket; somebody else brings a plate of turkey and stuffing for Sharon, who hasn't eaten on a day that's dedicated to feasting. Conceived by artificial insemination 38 weeks ago, this boy, Gauvin Hughes McCullough, has arrived two weeks ahead of schedule, on Thanksgiving Day.

"A turkey baby," signs Sharon, who is lying back against a bank of pillows, her dark thick hair spread against the light gray pillowcases.

"A turkey baster baby," jokes Candy, lying next to her.

"A perfect baby," says the midwife.

"A perfect baby," says the midwife's assistant.

But there is perfect and there is perfect. There is no way to know, yet, whether Gauvin Hughes McCullough is perfect in the specific way that Sharon and Candy would like him to be. Until he is old enough, two or three months from now, for a sophisticated audiology test, the women cannot be sure whether Gauvin is -- as they hope -- deaf.

Several months before his birth, Sharon and Candy -- both stylish and independent women in their mid-thirties, both college graduates, both holders of graduate degrees from Gallaudet University, both professionals in the mental health field -- sat in their kitchen trying to envision life if their son turned out not to be deaf. It was something they had a hard time getting their minds around. When they were looking for a donor to inseminate Sharon, one thing they knew was that they wanted a deaf donor. So they contacted a local sperm bank and asked whether the bank would provide one. The sperm bank said no; congenital deafness is precisely the sort of condition that, in the world of commercial reproductive technology, gets a would-be donor eliminated.

So Sharon and Candy asked a deaf friend to be the donor, and he agreed.

Though they have gone to all this trouble, Candy and Sharon take issue with the suggestion that they are "trying" to have a deaf baby. To put it this way, they worry, implies that they will not love their son if he can hear. And, they insist, they will. As Sharon puts it: "A hearing baby would be a blessing. A deaf baby would be a special blessing."

As Candy puts it: "I would say that we wanted to increase our chances of having a baby who is deaf."

It may seem a shocking undertaking: two parents trying to screen in a quality, deafness, at a time when many parents are using genetic testing to screen out as many disorders as science will permit. Down syndrome, cystic fibrosis, early-

onset Alzheimer's -- every day, it seems, there's news of yet another disorder that can be detected before birth and eliminated by abortion, manipulation of the embryo or, in the case of in vitro fertilization, destruction of an embryo. Though most deafness cannot be identified or treated in this way, it seems safe to say that when or if it can, many parents would seek to eliminate a disability that affects one out of 1,000 Americans.

As for actively trying to build a deaf baby: "I think all of us recognize that deaf children can have perfectly wonderful lives," says R. Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin. "The question is whether the parents have violated the sacred duty of parenthood, which is to maximize to some reasonable degree the advantages available to their children. I 'm loath to say it, but I think it's a shame to set limits on a child's potential."

In the deaf community, however, the arrival of a deaf baby has never evoked the feelings that it does among the hearing. To be sure, there are many deaf parents who feel their children will have an easier life if they are born hearing. "I know that my parents were disappointed that I was deaf, along with my brother, and I know I felt, just for a fleeting second, bad that my children were deaf," says Nancy Rarus, a staff member at the National Association of the Deaf. Emphasizing that she is speaking personally and not on behalf of the association, she adds, "I'm a social animal, and it's very difficult for me to talk to my neighbors. I wish I could walk up to somebody and ask for information. I've had a lot of arguments in the deaf community about that. People talk about, 'The sky's the limit,' but being deaf prevents you from getting there. You don't have as many choices."

"I can't understand," she says, "why anybody would want to bring a disabled child into the world."

Then again, Rarus points out, "there are many, many deaf people who specifically want deaf kids." This is true particularly now, particularly in Washington, home to Gallaudet, the world's only liberal arts university for the deaf, and the lively deaf intelligentsia it has nurtured. Since the 1980s, many members of the deaf community have been galvanized by the idea that deafness is not a medical disability, but a cultural identity. They call themselves Deaf, with a capital D, a community whose defining and unifying quality is American Sign Language (ASL), a fluent, sophisticated language that enables deaf people to communicate fully, essentially liberating them -- when they are among signers
-- from one of the most disabling aspects of being deaf.

Sharon and Candy share the fundamental view of this Deaf camp; they see deafness as an identity, not a medical affliction that needs to be fixed. Their effort -- to have a baby who belongs to what they see as their minority group -- is a natural outcome of the pride and self-acceptance the Deaf movement has brought to so many. It also would seem to put them at odds with the direction of reproductive technology in general, striving as it does, for a more perfect normalcy.

But the interesting thing is -- if one accepts their worldview, that a deaf baby could be desirable to some parents -- Sharon and Candy are squarely part of a broader trend in artificial reproduction. Because, at the same time that many would-be parents are screening out qualities they don't want, many are also selecting for qualities they do want. And in many cases, the aim is to produce not so much a superior baby as a specific baby. A white baby. A black baby. A boy. A girl. Or a baby that's been even more minutely imagined. Would-be parents can go on many fertility clinic Web sites and type in preferences for a sperm donor's weight, height, eye color, race, ancestry, complexion, hair color, even hair texture.

"In most cases," says Sean Tipton, spokesman for the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, "what the couples are interested in is someone who physically looks like them." In this sense Candy and Sharon are like many parents, hoping for a child who will be in their own image.

And yet, while deafness may be a culture, in this country it is also an official disability, recognized under the Americans With Disabilities Act. What about the obligation of parents to see that their child has a better life than they did?

Then again, what does a better life mean? Does it mean choosing a hearing donor so your baby, unlike you, might grow up hearing?

Does it mean giving birth to a deaf child, and raising it in a better environment than the one you experienced?

What if you believe you can be a better parent to a deaf child than to a hearing one?

"It would be nice to have a deaf child who is the same as us. I think that would be a wonderful experience. You know, if we can have that chance, why not take it?"

This is Sharon, seven months pregnant, dressed in black pants and a stretchy black shirt, sitting at their kitchen table on a sunny fall afternoon, Candy beside her. Jehanne, their daughter, who is also deaf, and was conceived with the same donor they've used this time, is at school. The family has been doing a lot of nesting in anticipation of the baby's arrival. The kitchen has been renovated, the back yard landscaped. Soon the women plan to rig a system in which the lights in the house will blink one rhythm if the TTY -- the telephonic device that deaf people type into -- is ringing; another rhythm when the front doorbell rings; another for the side door. They already have a light in the bedroom that will go on when the baby cries.

In one way, it's hard for Sharon and Candy to articulate why they want to increase their chances of having a deaf child. Because they don't view deafness as a disability, they don't see themselves as bringing a disabled child into the world. Rather, they see themselves as bringing a different sort of normal child into the world. Why not bring a deaf child into the world? What, exactly, is the problem? In their minds, they are no different from parents who try to have a girl. After all, girls can be discriminated against. Same with deaf people. Sharon and Candy have faced obstacles, but they've survived. More than that, they've prevailed to become productive, self-supporting professionals. "Some people look at it like, 'Oh my gosh, you shouldn't have a child who has a disability,' " signs Candy. "But, you know, black people have harder lives. Why shouldn't parents be able to go ahead and pick a black donor if that's what they want? They should have that option. They can feel related to that culture, bonded with that culture."

The words "bond" and "culture" say a lot; in effect, Sharon and Candy are a little like immigrant parents who, with a huge and dominant and somewhat alien culture just outside their door, want to ensure that their children will share their heritage, their culture, their life experience. If they are deaf and have a hearing child, that child will move in a world where the women cannot fully follow. For this reason they believe they can be better parents to a deaf child, if being a better parent means being better able to talk to your child, understand your child's emotions, guide your child's development, pay attention to your child's friendships. "If we have a hearing child and he visits a hearing friend, we'll be like, 'Who is the family?' " says Candy. "In the deaf community, if you don't know a family, you ask around. You get references. But with hearing families, we would have no idea."

They understand that hearing people may find this hard to accept. It would be odd, they agree, if a hearing parent preferred to have a deaf child. And if they themselves -- valuing sight -- were to have a blind child, well then, Candy acknowledges, they would probably try to have it fixed, if they could, like hearing parents who attempt to restore their child's hearing with cochlear implants. "I want to be the same as my child," says Candy. "I want the baby to enjoy what we enjoy."

Which is not to say that they aren't open to a hearing child. A hearing child would make life rich and interesting. It's just hard, before the fact, to know what it would be like. "He'd be the only hearing member of the family," Sharon points out, laughing. "Other than the cats."

"Did you weigh yourself?"

"What?"

"Did you weigh yourself?"

"Yes," says Sharon. It's a few weeks before the baby's birth, and Sharon has taken the Metro to Alexandria for a prenatal checkup. Wearing a long black skirt and loose maroon blouse, she has checked in at the BirthCare & Women's Health center and has been ushered into an examining room, where she now shifts, bulky, in her seat.

"How are you feeling?" the midwife asks.

"Tired today," says Sharon. Often, Sharon brings her hearing friend Risa Shaw to interpret at checkups, but today she's relying on her own ability to speak and read lips. Reading lips is something Sharon does remarkably well. She developed the skill on her own. Growing up, she was also enrolled in speech therapy, where a progression of therapists fitted her with hearing aids, shouted into her ear, sent her home to practice talking in front of a mirror because her "a" was too nasal, and generally instilled in her, she says now, a sense of constant failure. On one level, the therapy worked: When she speaks, she does so with fluency and precision.

But even the following small exchange shows what an inexact science lip-reading is. "This is our first visit?" the midwife says, looking at her chart.

"What?" Sharon replies, peering to follow the movement of her tongue and teeth and lips.

"This . . . is . . . my . . . first . . . visit . . . with . . . you," says the midwife, speaking more slowly.

"Oh," says Sharon, who has seen other midwives on previous visits. "Yes."

"Let's see -- we are at 36 weeks, huh? So today we need to do an internal exam and also do the culture for beta strep. You're having a home birth, right? So do you have the oxygen?"

"What?"

"The oxygen?"

"What?"

The midwife gestures to indicate an oxygen tank, one of the supplies they need to have on hand at home.

"No."

This gives some sense of what life has been like for Sharon, who was raised in what's known as the oralist tradition. Which is to say, she was raised to function in the hearing world as best she could, without exposure to sign language or to other deaf people, except her mother. Like her mother, Sharon was born with some residual hearing but experienced hearing loss to the point where, at 8 or so, she was severely deaf. Her father, Thomas, a professor of economics at the University of Maine, can hear, and so can her younger sister, Anne. In this family Sharon was referred to as "hearing impaired" or "hard of hearing," rather than "deaf." She attended public school in Bangor; there was a special classroom for deaf kids, and Sharon stayed as far away from it as possible.

"I find it very hard to say now," says Sharon. "Sometimes my speech therapist would want me to meet the other deaf children, and it was an embarrassment. I didn't want to be identified with them. I didn't want my friends to look at me as if I was different."

Those friendships were relatively easy when she was young, riding bikes and running around, but became much harder in adolescence, where so much of friendship is conducted verbally, in groups, which are impossible to lip-read. She got by. "I played field hockey, I did layout for the yearbook, it looked like I did fine, but inside I always felt there was something wrong with me. I remember someone would ask what kind of music I liked, and I didn't know what the cool answer would be. I used to make my sister write down the words to the most popular songs."

She grew up feeling that her sister was normal and that she was flawed, a feeling, she says, exacerbated by her father, who pushed her to speak. She knows he meant well, and Sharon functioned so ably, it's easy to see why his expectations for her were high. But those standards filled her with a desire to meet them and a chronic sense of falling short. "Once when I was 11 or 12, my family went to a restaurant to eat, and I wanted to have milk to drink, and I was trying to tell the waitress and she couldn't understand me. I think I tried maybe two or three times, and she kept looking at me like I was speaking Chinese. I looked at my father like: 'Help me out here.' And he was: 'Go ahead. Say it again.' "

Another time, she says, her father told her that if she ever had children, she should check with a geneticist to assess the risk that her baby, like her, would be deaf. "I felt put down, like it would be bad if my child was deaf, or it was a negative thing to bring a deaf child into the world," she says. "I took it personally."

And high school, compared with what came later, was easy. Having done well academically, Sharon enrolled at the University of Virginia. She tries to convey the numbing isolation of that experience; of being at a huge college full of strangers; being from out of state; being deaf; straining to catch names; feeling at sea in dorms or at parties; sitting at the front of big classes, tape-recording the lecture and then taking the tape to a special office to be typed, then returning, alone, to her room with a 30- or 40-page transcript. For a hearing person, perhaps the best analogy would be to imagine yourself in a foreign country where you understand the language only slightly; where comprehension will not get better no matter how hard you try. "I got," she says, "very tired of that."

She gravitated to a major in medical ethics, and in that department she met a professor who urged her to learn sign and meet some deaf people. Sharon resisted; he persisted, pointing out that if she learned sign, she could interview deaf people as part of her research. So she relented, went to Gallaudet for a summer of sign lessons, and realized that her professor's argument had been a ploy. "The first day I got there, I knew that it wasn't about taking it for school. It was for myself," she says. She returned to U-Va., graduated, got an internship in the bioethics department at the National Institutes of Health. But her heart and mind were in continuing her sign lessons and becoming part of the deaf community. The writer Oliver Sacks, in his book about deafness, Seeing Voices, has described American Sign Language, for deaf people encountering it for the first time, as coming home.

"It was the best time," she says. "There were so many wonderful things about it. About deaf people, about signing. People understood me. I didn't have to explain myself. I didn't have to fake it. It was a positive thing to be deaf at Gallaudet."

"That summer," she continues, beginning to weep, "really changed my life, my hopes and my dreams and my future. It changed everything."

"Before that," she says, "I couldn't think about the future. I felt so lost."

Some of this lostness had to do with her sexual identity. She had never dated men much, and at Gallaudet she became increasingly aware of herself as a lesbian. A fellow student recognized this, took her out to some bars, helped her come out. She went on to pursue a master's in the Gallaudet counseling department; it was during that period that she met Candy, a slender, vivacious woman with a taste for leather jackets and hip, flared trousers. At the time, Candy drove a Honda Prelude with a sound system that had -- deaf people experience music through vibrations -- really hot woofers.

Unlike Sharon, Candy had been brought up signing, the child of deaf parents, but that doesn't mean her upbringing was easier. Neither of her parents finished high school. Her father was a printer, the classic deaf profession; historically, to be deaf often meant to be relegated to industrial work -- factories and print shops being among the few places where it is an advantage not to hear. They lived in northern California, where for a while she was put in a special deaf classroom in an inner-city Oakland school, where signing was not permitted in class. Candy was so bright she worked through the entire third-grade math textbook in a weekend, but she felt the expectations of her were very low (some kids with deafness are also born with other disorders, so the range of abilities in a deaf classroom is very broad). She transferred to a special school for deaf kids, but -- finding that easy, too -- transferred again to a hearing high school, where she attended classes with an interpreter. But an interpreter can't help a high schooler make friends. No teenage conversation can survive the intrusion of third-party interpretation, and Candy, unlike Sharon, was not able to speak for herself. Profoundly deaf from birth, she had no residual hearing to help her figure out how a voice should sound. Even with speech therapy, she'd learned early on that hearing people could not understand her when she spoke. "So," she says now, "I stopped talking."

At lunch the interpreter would take a break, and Candy, unable to talk to anyone, would go to the library and do her homework. On weekends, she studied or worked at the library shelving books.

"I was the perfect student," she says, so from high school she went to the University of California at Berkeley. Like Sharon, she found college grindingly lonely. Her first year she met Ella Mae Lentz, a deaf poet who composes in ASL. Lentz suggested Candy transfer to Gallaudet. Like Sharon, Candy felt a deaf school would be academically inferior. But, Lentz pointed out, a crucial part of college is having friends. Candy had already come out as a lesbian; her mother was upset, so it occurred to Candy that 3,000 miles away might be a good place to be. So she transferred, and like Sharon, has never looked back. The women, who have been together for nearly 10 years, moved in with each other, then bought a house with their close friend Jan DeLap. At some point Sharon spoke of a dream she'd once had but dismissed: to have children. She assumed they couldn 't, not because they were deaf but because they were lesbians.

It is not Candy's nature to dismiss dreams. " 'Can't' isn't in my vocabulary, " she says. So they found a donor, a friend of Candy's who comes from five generations of deafness. In Sharon's family there are four generations on her mother's side. Once she was pregnant, a genetic counselor predicted that based on these family histories, there was a 50-50 chance her child would be deaf. Heads for a deaf child, tails for hearing.

The very first time -- with Jehanne -- the coin came up heads.

Candy usually signs with both hands, using facial expressions as well as signs. This is all part of ASL, a physical language that encompasses the whole body, from fingers to arms to eyebrows, and is noisy, too: There is lots of clapping and slapping in ASL, and in a really great conversation, it's always possible to knock your own eyeglasses off.

When she drives, though, Candy also signs one-handed, keeping the other hand on the wheel. Chatting with Sharon, she maneuvers her Volvo through Bethesda traffic and onto I-270, making her way north toward Frederick, home to the Maryland School for the Deaf. State residential schools have played a huge role in the development of America's deaf community. Historically, deaf children often left their homes as young as 5 and grew up in dorms with other deaf kids. This sometimes isolated them from their families but helped to create an intense sense of fellowship among the deaf population, a group that, though geographically spread out, is essentially a tribe, a small town, a family itself.

Now that people are more mobile, families with deaf children often relocate near a residential school for the deaf, where the young children are more likely to be day students. Jehanne is one; today she's waiting for them in a low corridor inside the elementary school building at MSD, petite, elfin, dimpled, with tousled brown hair and light brown, almost amber eyes. Essentially, the baby Sharon is carrying represents a second effort that they're making because the first was so successful. (Candy tried to have their second child, but a year of efforts didn't take.) At her own infant audiology test, Jehanne was diagnosed as profoundly deaf. In their baby book, under the section marked "first hearing test," Candy wrote, happily, "Oct. 11, 1996 -- no response at 95 decibels -- DEAF!"

This afternoon, Jehanne greets her mothers and begins immediately to sign. She has been signed to since birth and, unlike her mothers, has been educated from the start in sign. At 5 she is beginning to read English quite well; when they're riding in the car, she'll notice funny shop names, like Food Lion and Four Eyes. But she is also fluent in ASL, more fluent even than Sharon.

The women have arrived to visit Jehanne's kindergarten classroom, which in most ways is similar to that of any other Maryland public school; the kids are using flashcards to learn about opposites, conducting experiments to explore concepts like wet and dry, light and heavy. The classes are small, and teachers are mostly deaf, which is something new; years ago, even at MSD, deaf people weren't permitted to teach the young kids, because it was believed that sign would interfere with their learning to read. Now that's all changed. Sign is used to teach them reading. They learn science in sign; they sign while doing puzzles, or gluing and pasting, or coloring, or working in the computer lab.

There is a speech therapy class, but it's optional, and a far cry from the ones that Sharon and Candy remember, where laborious hours were spent blowing on feathers to see the difference between a "b" and a "p." In general, Sharon and Candy have tried not to make what they see as the mistakes their own parents did. Sharon, for example, resents having been made to wear hearing aids and denied the opportunity to learn sign, while Candy -- who really wanted to try a hearing aid when she was little -- was told by her father than she couldn't because it would be expensive and pointless, anyway. Trying to chart a middle course, they let Jehanne decide for herself whether she wanted to try a hearing aid; she did, one summer when attending camp at Gallaudet. It was hot pink. She wore it about a week.

Similarly, they left it up to her whether to take speech therapy; since she is much more profoundly deaf than Sharon, it is unlikely that she will ever have speech as clear as Sharon's. But she wanted to take the class; when they asked why, she told them that it was fun.

Now they understand why. When Jehanne and another friend are pulled out for speech class on this day, they make their way down the hall to a classroom where the children enact a mock Thanksgiving dinner. The teacher passes out plastic turkey and mashed potatoes and bread; as they pretend to eat, enjoying the role-playing, the teacher signs and speaks.

"Now we're going to do what with our napkins?" she says as the two girls look up at her. "Put it in our l-l-l-l-l-ap." She exaggerates the sound, so they can see how an "l" is made. The girls learn speech by watching her and then trying to imitate the tongue and lip movements they see. At such a young age, the sounds that emerge are vague and tentative.

"Now we need a knife," she says, and Jehanne makes a sound like "nuh."

"Knife."

"Nuh."

"Would you like some water?"

Jehanne makes a good-faith effort to say "yes, please," pursing her lips and wiggling her tongue to come out with a "pl."

Candy and Sharon watch intently, concerned not about Jehanne's speech but about the teacher's style of signing. At one point she tells Jehanne to lay out her napkin, but because the sign isn't the classic ASL sign, Jehanne looks at her blankly. "Oh well," says Sharon later. "It's good for her to know that not everybody is a fluent signer." They inspect the computer lab, chatting with the school webmaster, whom they know; he and his wife are the parents of one of Jehanne's classmates. For Sharon and Candy, one of the great advantages of having a deaf child is that it gives them a built-in social life. Like most parents, they socialize a lot with the parents of their children's friends, and at MSD, many of the parents are deaf. They also see the school as one way to ensure that Jehanne doesn't endure the loneliness and isolation that they did. By raising her among deaf children, they feel she's getting a much stronger start in life.

And they are every bit as ambitious for Jehanne as any parent would be for a child. Afterward, the women talk to the principal, who is also deaf. They tell her they are happy with the school, with a few caveats: They wish she had a little more self-directed time; they wish the weekly written reports were more detailed. Jehanne, who is clearly an outstanding student, is also just a tiny bit klutzy, no big deal, but even so they'd like to hear some details from the gym teacher. Her last report, for gym, was checked "needs improvement." "Needs improvement? What does that tell me?" signs Candy. "We've taken her to dance class, soccer; we swim each week, she does yoga! What more do you want us to do? " Laughing, Sharon and Candy talk about the fact that Jehanne is one of those kids who haven't figured out how to swing; she's still trying to get the pumping motion. It's an interesting moment. To most parents, hearing would seem a much more important ability, in the grand scheme of things, than pumping. But that's not how Candy and Sharon see it.

"She's a sweetheart," says the principal soothingly. "She's a role model. She 's in with such a nice group of friends." The principal has known most of these kids almost since the day they were born. At MSD, deaf infants qualify for a weekly morning class. When they are 2, they go to preschool. Their education -- with small classrooms, extra teachers, transportation -- is free, paid for with public funds.

So advantageous is MSD, in fact, that one of the things Candy and Sharon think about is how much more a hearing child would cost. If the baby is hearing, they'll have to pay for day care. For preschool. Even, if they find they don't agree with the teaching philosophy of the public schools, for private school. "It's awful to think that, but it'll be more expensive!" Sharon acknowledges.

But -- while deaf children do receive some financial advantages -- they point out that deaf children give back, in ways that are complex and impossible to predict. Take Candy and Sharon themselves: Both work at home as counselors, seeing deaf clients and, often, hearing family members. Not only do they provide the deaf with clear, accessible mental health care; Sharon also finds that hearing patients sometimes open up more for a therapist who is not herself "perfect." And hearing parents of deaf children are often "relieved to come and see a deaf therapist," Sharon finds. "They're like, 'Oh, you went to college! Oh, that means my children can do that!' They're afraid the child will be on the street selling pencils."

So sure, Jehanne's education may cost the public more. But deaf children, Sharon argues, make a society more diverse, and diversity makes a society more humane. Plenty of individuals and groups receive public support, and if you start saying which costs are legitimate and which aren't, well, they believe, it 's a slippery slope.

"Do you think this baby's hearing?" Candy asks Sharon, afterward, when they are having lunch in downtown Frederick.

"I don't know," says Sharon. "I can say that I hope the baby's deaf, but to say I feel it's deaf, no." They are talking about an old saying in the deaf
community: If the mother walks into a place with loud music, and the baby moves, the baby is hearing. "If you base it on that, I do think it's deaf," says Sharon.

"I just say to myself that the baby's deaf," Candy says. "I talk as if the baby's deaf. If the baby's hearing, I'll be shocked."

"You better be prepared," Sharon tells her. "With Jehanne, I prepared myself. It could happen." Thinking about it, she speculates: "A hearing child would force us to get out and find out what's out there for hearing children. Maybe that would be nice."

Candy looks at her, amazed.

"It's not that it's my preference," says Sharon. "But I'm trying to think of something positive."

Exactly two weeks after his birth, Gauvin (pronounced Go-VAHN, as in French) is sleeping in a Moses basket, luminous and pink and tiny. He continues to sleep, undisturbed, when Jan DeLap turns on the disposal and Candy loudly grates cheese with the salad shooter. But when Sharon begins to set the table, opening cupboards and clattering plates, he shifts, clenches his fists and stretches. Jehanne pretends to test his hearing, making a noise like buh-buh-buh, and he writhes a little. When she is relaxed and around people she loves -- as now -- Jehanne makes noises all the time, a low, constant, happy humming.

The more relaxed a deaf household is, the noisier it is. Around hearing people, deaf people are careful to control the sounds they make, but when they 're alone they can let go. When Sharon wants Candy, she calls her by stomping the floor. When the cats get on the table, Jan lets out a hair-raising whoop. It doesn't always work. One of the cats, they believe, is hard of hearing. The veterinarian disagrees. "He thought we were projecting," Sharon says.

Dinner tonight is burritos. Gauvin, who is turning out to be a very easy baby, is still sleeping, so they can eat uninterrupted and chat with Jehanne. In school, Jehanne's class is reading The Very Busy Spider, which involves animals saying "baaa" and "neigh" and "meow," sounds that none of the kids has heard. And so today, Jehanne tells them, they learned about animal sounds.

"What does a duck say?" asks Candy.

"Oink, oink," signs Jehanne.

"No!" signs Candy, amused. "Quack! Quack!"

"What does a rooster say?" she asks. Jehanne is stumped, and so, for a minute, is everybody else. "Oh yeah!" somebody remembers. "Cock-a-doodle-doo!"

After dinner, it's story time. The house is full of books. Downstairs are shelf after shelf of novels, nonfiction and clinical textbooks, even a shelf dedicated to the English language, everything from diction-aries of English usage to the Pocket Dictionary of American Slang. They are constantly buying books for Jehanne; tonight they're reading Elizabite: Adventures of a Carnivorous Plant and Blueberries for Sal.

Candy is tonight's designated reader. She signs the stories in ASL, sometimes with both hands, sometimes with one and using the other to point to the words. Candy is such a beautiful, vivid signer that the stories seem to possess her, and she them. Hands fluttering, face mobile and focused on Jehanne, Candy is Little Sal's mother putting berries in her tin pail, plink plank plunk; she is Mother Bear, separated from her cub; she is both of the babies, Little Sal and Little Bear, looking for their moms. Jehanne watches, rapt; Jan watches, rapt; Sharon, who is now breast-feeding Gauvin on a couch in the living room, watches, rapt. A deep contentment falls over the household. "And the bear went over and she heard the rumbling of Little Bear in the bushes, and she knew that it was her baby, and they went down the mountain, eating berries and storing them up for winter!" Candy finishes.

After Jehanne goes to bed, they take out an inking kit to record Gauvin's footprint in his baby book. Like most second babies, Gauvin doesn't have the extensive archives that his older sibling does. His baby book is still somewhat sparse, whereas Jehanne's is crammed full of tiny writing. Under "baby's first words," Candy noted that at about 11 months -- the time most babies would say their first word -- Jehanne signed "fan." Soon came "swing," and "more," and "light."

In the section where the parents are to write their aspirations for the baby, Candy wrote: "Jehanne can plan her own future. Seeing her happy is all that is important to us."

It is an open question, however, to what extent Jehanne can plan her own future. Candy and Sharon say that it will be okay with them if she goes to Gallaudet, but okay, too, if she wants to go to a hearing college. Though it would be harder for her to participate, say, in student government or athletics or dorm life, they think otherwise she would manage. And after that? The opportunities, they believe, are unlimited. Recently, though, Jehanne and Sharon were talking about astronauts, and Jehanne asked whether a deaf person can be an astronaut. Sharon was obliged to tell her no. Astronauts, she explained, need to communicate by radio. "That's not nice!" Jehanne said. "It's not nice that deaf people can't be astronauts!" Sharon told her maybe someday astronauts will be able to use video.

But with the exception of that -- and, probably, of the classic childhood ambition, president -- they do feel that Jehanne can be what she wants. She has electronic communications to help her;

e-mail has made a huge difference to deaf people. She'll have what they feel is the solid foundation of an education anchored by sign. They think she'll have what they never had: strong self-esteem, a powerful belief in herself. She'll have the considerable legal protection of the Americans With Disabilities Act, which forbids employment discrimination.

Not that the ADA can solve everything. Candy, who is in the final stages of getting her doctorate in psychology, needs to do a yearlong internship at a hospital or other workplace. She plans to counsel both deaf and hearing patients; plans, in short, to be a psychologist like any other. This means two things. It means an interpreter will need to be hired. It also means she is competing mostly with hearing applicants. When she sends off her resume, there is no indication she is deaf; at Gallaudet, most of the students in her graduate program are hearing people who plan to work with the deaf. But if she gets an interview, she has to e-mail the prospective employer, to discuss her need for an interpreter.

"If I go and they aren't interested," she says, "how do I know why? It's hard sometimes to know whether discrimination is taking place, or not."

"Some deaf people think it's a hard life," reflects Candy, whose grandfather wanted to be a pilot but was prevented by deafness. "But some people think the world is open."

"Did you ever want to be a policeman?" she asks Jan, whose father was a cop. Jan, who is 60, had a deaf mother but a hearing father, so she grew up around hearing relatives, and from them was exposed to music. When she was 7, she saw a movie about an opera singer. "I told my friends that I wanted to be an opera singer," Jan recalls. "My cousin was like, 'You can't be an opera singer. You're deaf!' I think that at that point I thought, 'I'm deaf now but maybe I can be hearing later.' "

"I remember wanting to be a lawyer," says Candy. "And then my teacher said that a deaf person can't do it. And later it wasn't my area of interest."

Now, Jan mentions, there are quite a few deaf lawyers. They have a friend who is one. In the courtroom she makes use of something called real-time captioning. There are technical advances every day. But technology doesn't help a deaf person who is standing next to a hearing person who can't sign. It will never completely bridge what is, still, an enormous gap. Jehanne has a neighbor she plays with, a hearing girl she's known almost since birth. The mothers agree that as they get older, it's getting harder and harder for the girls to communicate, and they get together less and less.

"What I wonder," Jan says at one point, "is whether they'll eliminate the deaf gene. Maybe they'll be able to pluck out the deaf gene. Maybe there will be no more deaf people."

They sit contemplating this. It isn't out of the question. Members of another disabled group were taken by surprise when the gene that causes their condition was discovered: Now, a child with achondroplasia, or disproportionately short arms and legs -- also known as dwarfism -- can be identified in utero. And, if the parents don't want a child with dwarfism, the fetus can be aborted. The community of "little people," which has its own association, its own Web site, a strong tradition in Hollywood, and a powerful fellowship, has been left contemplating its children destroyed, its numbers dwindling, its existing members consigned to a narrowing life of freakishness and isolation. Such a fate could -- it's possible -- befall the deaf. The situation illustrates how in this country, at this cultural moment, disabled people are exposed to two powerful but contradictory messages. One says: You are beautiful. You are empowered. The other says: You are deficient. You may be snuffed out.

"Maybe there will be no more deaf children," Jan says.

"Except," says Candy, "for those of us who choose to make more deaf children. "

As the weeks go by, Gauvin starts staying awake more. His eyes, blue and wide, start tracking more; he watches his mothers, and Jehanne, with an intensity that they believe is characteristic of deaf children. They sign to him in deaf "motherese"; like a hearing mother speaking in a high-pitched, singsong voice, they sign slowly, with exaggerated gestures. In mid-December they take him to Gallaudet for a show. In the auditorium there are people signing across the room, people signing from the floor to people in the balcony.

In this group Gauvin is admired like a crown prince. Friends, colleagues and former classmates come to peek inside the sling in which Sharon is carrying him, and, inevitably, to inquire whether he is deaf. "How many of you are deaf?" asks the emcee, and Jan -- half-joking, half-

serious -- motions to Sharon to raise Gauvin's hand.

There are many more admirers: In December the sperm donor comes for a visit, as he does about twice a year. Then, after Christmas, Sharon's father, Thomas, arrives. Sharon's mother died of breast cancer not long after Sharon graduated from U-Va., so he is here with the woman who is now his companion, Caroline Dane. Both of them are hearing. Also visiting are Candy's mother, Diana, who is deaf; Sharon's sister, Anne, who is hearing; Anne's boyfriend, Paul, who is hearing. That means there are four hearing people in the house and five deaf people. Plus Gauvin, whatever team he ends up on. Jehanne moves from one group to another, but usually gravitates toward people who are signing, because she has no way, save by gesturing, to communicate with her hearing relatives.

Sharon is the pivot point, the only one who can translate, which is exhausting for her. She has to keep lip-reading and talking and signing, almost simultaneously. When an interpreter arrives to interpret for this article, the entire group -- all 10 of them -- crowds into the living room and sits, talking intently, for two hours.

It is the first time they have been able to fully express themselves to one another, the first time Sharon has ever had someone to interpret a conversation with her own family. The first time she didn't have to strain to understand what her father said, or her sister. Much of it is funny and fond: It turns out that Thomas, cleaning out his attic, recently found some of the song lyrics that Anne transcribed for Sharon, back when both were girls. "You saved those?" says Sharon. "Why?" Then Anne remembers how she would interpret for Sharon on the phone.

"I remember when that boy asked you to the prom," says Anne, who is six years younger than Sharon, her hair lighter brown, her face illuminated by the same quizzical expressions, the same seriousness, the same faintly Gallic beauty.

"You interpreted that?" Sharon says, laughing.

"Yes!" says Anne, who also remembers that whenever Sharon didn't want to go out with a boy, Anne was the one who had to tell him.

"Do you remember that time we were having an argument, and I called you 'deaf '?" Anne says. "You weren't happy. A lot has changed."

Together, the sisters try to excavate some of their mother's history, find out why she never signed: Both Sharon and her mother struggled to lip-read each other, mother and daughter divided rather than united by deafness, their common bond. Eventually Sharon confronts her father with what she sees as the central mistake her parents made in her upbringing. "I can look back now," she signs, "and say that things would have been different if I had learned to sign, or been exposed to deaf culture. Growing up, if I got 60 percent of a conversation, I felt like that was good. Some of those behaviors are still with me. In groups of signers, they may be signing really fast and even if I'm not getting it all I'm like, 'This is good enough.' I still don't like asking people to repeat. I'm just used to not getting everything."

Later, sitting with her father, she asks, "Did you feel bad when I said that I wished it had been different when I was growing up?"

"No," says her father, a solid, deliberative man with glasses who has brought Jehanne a University of Maine sweat shirt. "We all think about that. We all feel that way about our parents."

In trying to know how to think about Sharon and Candy's endeavor, there are any number of opinions a person might have. Any number of abstract ideas a person might work through in, say, an ethics course. Are the women being selfish? Are they inflicting too much hardship on the child? How does one think of them compared with, say, a mother who has multiple embryos implanted in the course of fertility treatments, knowing that this raises the likelihood of multiple births and, with it, birth defects in some or all of the babies? Morally, how much difficulty can a parent impose on a child in order to satisfy the desire to have a child, or to have a certain kind of child?

A person can think about this, and think about it, but eventually will run up against the living, breathing fact of the child herself. How much difficulty have Sharon and Candy imposed on Jehanne? They haven't deafened her. They've given life to her. They've enabled her to exist. If they had used a hearing donor, they would have had a different child. That child would exist, but this one wouldn't. Jehanne can only exist as what she is: Jehanne, bright, funny, loving, loved, deaf.

And now what about Gauvin, who, at 3 months, already resembles his sister? He has the same elfin face shape, the same deep dimples when he smiles. On his head is a light fuzz of hair; bulkier now, alert and cheery, he's wearing gray overalls and groovy red leather sneakers. The question that will be answered this February afternoon, at Children's National Medical Center, is whether Gauvin, like Jehanne, is deaf. Whether the coin has landed on the same side twice.

By now, Gauvin has had an initial hearing screening, which he failed. They considered this good news, but not conclusive. From there he was referred to this one, which is more sophisticated. The preliminaries take awhile. Sharon lays Gauvin in a crib and a technician applies conductive paste at points around his head, then attaches electrodes to the paste. He needs to be asleep for the test, in which microphones will be placed in his ears and a clicking noise sent through the wires. Through the electrodes, a machine will monitor the brain response. If the waves are flat, there is no hearing. He stirs and cries, so Sharon breast-feeds him, wires dangling from his head, until he falls asleep. The technician slips the microphone in his ear, turns on the clicking noise -- up and up, louder and louder -- and the two women look at the computer screen.

Even at 95 decibels, a sound so loud that for hearing people it's literally painful, the line for the left ear is flat. But there is a marked difference in the right. For softer sounds the line is flat, but at 75 decibels there is a distinct wave. The technician goes to fetch the doctor, and the mothers contemplate their sleeping son, who, it appears, might be neither deaf nor hearing but somewhere in between.

The doctor, Ira Weiss, bustles in; he is a white-haired, stocky man, jovial and accustomed to all sorts of parents, hearing and deaf, happy and sobbing.

The technician points to the wave and suggests that perhaps it represents some noise that Gauvin himself was making. "No," says the doctor, "I think it's not just noise." Sharon looks up at Candy and lets out a little breath. The doctor disappears to get a printout of the results, then returns, reading it. Gauvin, he says, "has a profound hearing loss in his left ear and at least a severe hearing loss in his right ear."

"It does appear," he adds, "that his right ear has some residual hearing. There might be some usable hearing at this time. Given the mother's history, it will probably get worse over time. If you want to take advantage of it, you should take advantage of it now. Right now it's an ear that could be aided, to give him a head start on spoken English. Obviously, he's going to be a fluent signer."

At this stage, Weiss says later, a hearing parent would probably try a hearing aid, in the hope that with it, that right ear could hear something. Anything. A word, here and there. A loud vowel. Maybe just enough residual sound to help him lip-read. Maybe just enough to tell him when to turn his head to watch someone's lips. Hearing parents would do anything -- anything -- to nudge a child into the hearing world. Anything -- anything -- to make that child like them.

For a similar reason, Sharon and Candy make the opposite choice. If he wants a hearing aid later, they'll let him have a hearing aid later. They won't put one on him now. After all, they point out, Sharon's hearing loss as a child occurred at below 40 decibels, which meant that under certain conditions she could make out voices, unaided. Gauvin's, already, is far more severe than hers. Bundling Gauvin up against the cold, they make their way down the corridor, and into the car, and home, where they will tell Jehanne, and Jan, and friends, and family, a sizable group, really, that wants to know. He is not as profoundly deaf as Jehanne, but he is quite deaf. Deaf enough.

Liza Mundy is a Magazine staff writer. She will be fielding questions

Would You Jump Off A Bridge if Your Friend Was Doing It?

The other day 4of4 was over playing with the FYO.

I was working and BioMom was relaxing a bit and we were taking advantage of them off together playing. Not paying attention to what should have been a deafening silence.

When we got around to rounding them up for the next event of the day, they were curiously behind a closed door and unwilling to come out.

When we finally negotiated the door open, we found that they had been creating a very liquid concoction that consisted mainly of cat food and which was now all over their clothes and had seeped through the guest-room quilt, sheets, and mattress.

(exasperated) What happened here?

(panicked) It was 4of4's idea!!!!

You've made a huge mess! Do you think it was a good idea? Why didn't you do it in the bathroom or something?

No but it was 4of4's idea!!!

What if 4of4 jumped off a bridge, would you follow her?

But that's different! That's dangerous!!!

She definitely had a point. The only potentially dangerous consequence from their actions was dirty laundry and since she doesn't do the laundry, well . . .

Students for Academic Freedom?

The article from BioMom reminds me of this organization pointed out to me by a colleague (who happens to be a big lefty, but that's beside the point.

Check out the complaint from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

I am a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison taking a political science course entitled, "The Politics of Human Rights". From day one I decided to keep an open mind and give my professor, clearly far to the left, a chance to be fair. I received the syllabus and reading list and saw how we would soon have a series of lectures on US torture and Abu Ghraib. In addition, the class has periodically received emails from the professor telling us to read certain New York Times Op-Ed pieces all criticizing the Bush administration's record on human rights, policy toward Iran, and its stance on ignoring genocide. I am a very outspoken individual by nature and our class is designed to be partly lecture (40 min) and partly discussion (35 min) of a so-called "open and free" nature. . . . When he lectured on genocide, I asked him if he believed (in his expert, not personal opinion) that Saddam Hussein was genocidal. He asked offended by the question and refused to answer it. I asked him why, with his credentials, that he would answer such a decision, particularly in light of the mass graves seen by our fighting men/women in Iraq. He told me that my question was "off-topic" and "inappropriate" to the discussion.


I can just imagine the class discussion:

The professor wants to talk about the torture crimes that occurred at Abu Ghraib and a student says

"But what about Saddam Husain? You can't say that its not a good thing that we got rid of him!!"

The professor tries to politely steer the discussion back to, say, the topic and the student gets pissed and walks away thinking that the professor is a liberal freak-show who is not open to any other beliefs.

Nice.

I'd like to see the student evaluation from THAT kid.

Bitch.Ph.D. rants about being evaluated by children in this post which brings up a million issues that I will hopefully get to in later posts. But one that relates to the Students For Academic Freedom is that we are getting evaluated by kids who on average a) do not understand what it means to be educated, b) do not understand pedagogy, c) are not practiced in organizing their thoughts and separating out issues and (again, on average) d) do not WANT to become more educated/change/grow etc.

In summary, those evaluating us are resisting the very project they are evaluating.

Talk about bias.

"Academic Bill of Rights"

From BioMom:

Legislation would take away profs' alleged bully pulpits

Mark Brunswick, Star Tribune

A national movement that supporters say protects college students from indoctrination from professors but that opponents say stifles debate and promotes a conservative agenda made its way to Minnesota on Wednesday. Two legislators unveiled legislation that they called the "Academic Bill of Rights."

Sen. Michele Bachmann, R-Stillwater, [Blogeditor's note: Sen. Bachman is also behind the proposed constitutional amendment in Minnesota to permanently ban gay marriage] and Rep. Ray Vandeveer, R-Forest Lake, said their bill would require the state's publicly funded colleges and universities to adopt polices that would mandate that professors not use their classrooms to promote their personal political or ideological beliefs. It also says that students would not be punished for disagreeing with their instructors' politics.
While Bachmann, who has announced that she is a candidate for Congress, said the law would apply across the political spectrum, the focus nationally has been complaints from conservative students that left-wing professors have attempted to use their classrooms to indoctrinate young minds with liberal propaganda.

At a morning news conference, speakers included students and professors who talked of feeling punished for their conservative views. No speakers complained about conservative instructors.

Lawmakers in 21 other states have introduced similar bills, part of a national movement spearheaded by Students for Academic Freedom, a Washington-based student network founded by conservative activist David Horowitz.

Horowitz spoke at the news conference, saying that professors imposing their political ideologies on their students was unprofessional.

"You don't go into a doctor's office and expect to get a political lecture or see on his office door cartoons bashing John Kerry or bashing George Bush," he said.

Critics of such measures, including the American Association of University Professors, have said the bills could stifle debate and questioned whether its supporters had ulterior motives, such as wanting more conservative professors.

The AAUP website includes a strong statement opposing such legislation. "Proposed bills in a handful of state legislatures challenge this fundamental concept that higher education, in this society, is and should be free of government control or interference," it says.

Mark Brunswick is at

mbrunswick@startribune.com.

Bold mine. Sen. Bachmann is an idiot. From where does she hear that professors use their classrooms to promote their personal political or ideological beliefs? The students? Students who don't come to class or read the material? And they feel punished? I would guess that kids that get a lower grade do so because they aren't really THINKING. Not that they disagreed with the professor.

Toy Story

So in anticipation of the upcoming celebration of the FYO's next year on the planet, I ventured out to the ubiquitous Target in search of the perfect gift.

I didn't intend to be a raging feminist bitch about the whole thing. I just wanted to get her something that I, too, would be interested in. Not just dress-up princess clothing, a Princess and the Pauper dvd, or barbies. I had in mind some sort of girly-girl-friendly legos or playmobil stuff. That way we could not only be in fantasy land (o.k. you're the prince and I'm the princess and we're going to the ball!) but we could also DO something. BUILD something.

Anyway, I get there and there is not a single version of Legos or Playmobil that is even remotely girly-girl-friendly. That's not to say that there aren't cool, somewhat gender-neutral toys out there. For younger kids they have decent legos that would have been suitable. But for the five year old set, the playmobil sets are about pirates and adventures. They have snow-trekking adventures and adventures in search of dinosaur bones etc. But nothing that the FYO would be remotely interested in. Furthermore, even the adventure-sets included only male dolls doing the adventures!

Before changing my career to toy-developer to fill this obvious absence in the supply of toys where there is surely a demand, I checked it out on the Internet.

It turns out that you can order pink castles from both playmobil and lego. Apparently the demand doesn't exist here.

Cousin, It's Your Birthday, TODAY!

Every year for her birthday, Cousin's mom (who, incidently, she called by her first name, which is good news for the FYO and BioMom since they turned out relatively* normal) played one of those bendable 45-speed cereal box records for her. If I remember correctly, it was some space-dude who sang "[Cousin's name], it's your birthday . . . TODAY!"

I expect she'll even come home from work today to find that song on her message machine.

What is even cooler about the story is that Cousin's Mother-In-Law played the same record (but not with Cousin's name) for Cousin's husband for his birthday each year!

Happy Birthday, Cousin. Glad you've finally caught up with me (for at least another five months).

*I say relatively because they also have these wacky pet-names for each other as well. Often, I'll hear Cousin greet her mom with a "Hi Lez!" And let's just say that her mom's name is not 'Leslie.'I absolutely die over this. I "rolled in the aisles. [lauging] so hard [my] sides ache and [my] heart [goes] pitter pat." Thanks to Cut-rate Parisite for the tangible description of this sort of laugher.

An Evening with Father-Of-Four and Their Sidekick

On Saturday, BioMom and the FYO trekked down the alley for a night of debauchery with the bachelor-for-the-night Father-of-Four and their Sidekick (a friend of FO4's and best-friend of MO4's since elementary school).

It is always insane over there even if, as was the case that evening, two of the four were at friends' places for the evening, and our FYO LOVES it. Between the sheer number of mammals in the house (they also have a guinnea pig and a newly adopted puppy) and their magnanimous personalities, you can always expect a good time.

This evening was no disappointment, except for the fact that I was exhausted and called it relatively early only to fall asleep in front of How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog later at home.

Their Sidekick told a story about a recent attempt at putting 4of4 (our FYO's chronological counterpart) to bed. Apparently she had a marker and was unwilling to put it down for the night. Sidekick patiently took it from her hand, placed it on the bedside table, and drew a line in the sand:

If that marker moves between now and the morning, you will be in trouble.

4Of4 responds:

Bad [name of Sidekick]! Bad [name of Sidekick]!

4Of4 being especially haughty - much more so than our FYO - woke up with marker covering her exposed skin the next morning.

I don't know what the consequence was, but am glad that to this point, our FYO hasn't been willing to push the boundaries that far!

Cross-Sex Shifts

Check this out via Taggert at A Random Walk:

Gay men read maps like women

* 18:32 25 February 2005
* NewScientist.com news service
* Shaoni Bhattacharya

Gay men employ the same strategies for navigating as women - using landmarks to find their way around - a new study suggests.

But they also use the strategies typically used by straight men, such as using compass directions and distances. In contrast, gay women read maps just like straight women, reveals the study of 80 heterosexual and homosexual men and women.

"Gay men adopt male and female strategies. Therefore their brains are a sexual mosaic," explains Qazi Rahman, a psychobiologist who led the study at the University of East London, UK. "It's not simply that lesbians have men's brains and gay men have women's brains."

The stereotype that women are relatively poor map readers is borne out by a reasonable bulk of scientific literature, notes Rahman. "Men, particularly, excel at spatial navigation." The new study might help researchers understand how cognitive differences and sexual orientation develop in the womb, he says.

The results are "very intriguing" and provide "further insight into the origins of route-learning strategies, and the organisation of cognitive abilities in general" says Jean Choi at the University of Lethbridge, Canada, who researches spatial behaviour in humans.
Left at the church

Previous tests challenging men and women to make their way through virtual-reality mazes, or real-life scenarios, have shown that men tend to be speedier and use different strategies to women.

But Rahman points out this does not mean that all women are bad map readers, or that it is the mental strategy employed that makes the difference.

Women tend to navigate using landmarks. For example: "Turn left at the church and carry on past the corner shop." Rahman told New Scientist that "men rely more on the points of the compass; they have a better sense of north, south, east and west". They are also more likely to describe distances.
"Cross-sex shifts"

Rahman and his colleagues designed the study to test a theory that gay men and lesbian women might show "cross-sex shifts" in some cognitive abilities as well as in their sexual preferences.

The hypothesis is that homosexual people shift in the direction of the opposite sex in other aspects of their psychology other than sexual preference. That is, gay men may take on aspects of female psychology, and lesbians acquire aspects of male psychology.

Gay men did indeed show a "robust cross-sex shift" in the study, says Rahman. Volunteers were asked to look at a pictorial map and memorise four different routes for about a minute. They then had to recall the information as though they were giving a friend directions from one place to another.

"As we expected, straight men used more compass directions than gay men or women, and used distances as well. Women recalled significantly more landmarks," says Rahman. But gay men recalled more landmarks than straight men, as well as using typically male orientation strategies.
Verbal fluency

"The results support the notion that males' and females' cognitive abilities may be organised in different ways, and highlight the importance of accounting for sex-specific patterns of behaviour," Choi told New Scientist.

The difference between gay men and lesbian women might hint at differences in development, says Rahman. Previous work has shown that lesbians show little difference in their cognitive skills compared with straight women.

The only measure on which they appear to shift is on language production or verbal fluency, he adds. Like straight men, lesbians tend to be more sparing with words than straight women. Gay men, however, are inclined to speak as much as straight women.

"It might be that whatever causes sexual orientation and cognitive differences are uncoupled in lesbian development, while in gay men the two things could be tightly coupled," Rahman suggests.

Journal reference: Behavioral Neuroscience (vol 119, p 311)

For The Straight Folks Who Don't Mind Gays But Wish They Weren't So Blatant

O'Reilly's column and Cousin's comment reminds me of a poem by Pat Parker that I heard in college. Here it is, reprinted without permission:

FOR THE STRAIGHT FOLKS WHO DON'T MIND GAYS
BUT WISH THEY WEREN'T SO BLATANT

You know, some people got a lot of nerve.
Sometimes I don't believe the things I see and hear.

Have you met the woman who's shocked by two women kissing
and in the same breath, tells you she is pregnant? BUT gays,
shouldn't be so blatant.

Or this straight couple sits next to you in a movie and
you can't hear the dialogue because of the sound effects.
BUT gays shouldn't be so blatant.

And the woman in your office spends and entire lunch hour
talking about her new bikini drawers and how much
her husband likes them.
BUT gays shouldn't be so blatant.

Or the "hip" chick in your class rattling like a mile a minute
while you're trying to get stoned in the john, about the
camping trip she took with her musician boyfriend.
BUT gays shouldn't be so blatant.

You go in a public bathroom and all over the walls there's John
loves Mary, Janice digs Richard, Pepe loves Delores, etc., etc.
BUT gays shouldn't be so blatant.

Or your go to an amusement park and there's a tunnel of love
and pictures of straights painted on the front and grinning
couples are coming in and out.
BUT gays shouldn't be so blatant.

Fact is, blatant heterosexuals are all over the place.
Supermarkets, movies, on your job, in church, in books, on
television every day day and night, every place-even- in gay
bars and they want gay
men and woman to go and hide in the closet.

So to you straight folks I say, "Sure, I'll go if you go too"
BUT I'm polite so, after you.

I Finally Figured It Out

Bill O'Reilly's cheaky Maureen Dowdesque article via Cousin finally helped me to comprehend why we're all fired up about Buster and his gay-marriage-allowing-Vermont visit to the maple-sugar-loving-lesbian-household.

O'Reilly sets the stage for us:

For those of you unfamiliar with Buster, he is a curious rabbit that hops around on public TV introducing small children to the wonders of American life. In one of his adventures, Buster showed up in Vermont to check out the maple syrup industry, and wound up surrounded by a bunch of lesbians and their children. The connection between the syrup business and lesbians was never really explained, but Buster posed for a picture with the group, and looks very happy.

Then he sets up the drama for us. As I mentioned in my previous post, the new Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings "wasn't happy and fired off a letter to PBS saying that federal money should not be used to 'introduce this kind of subject matter to chilren.' Since the Public Broadcasting Service gets around $80 million dollars a year in taxpayer funds, that kind of letter gets PBS' attention fast."

Then Congressman Barney Frank stepped into the fray writing to Spellings: "You have said familiies should not have to deal with reality of the existence of same-sex couples, the strong implication is that this is something from which young children should be shielded."

O'Reilly:

Well, yeah, Barn, that's correct. Many Americans believe that little kids should have a childhood and not be subjected to any kind of sexuality. I don't want to be offensive here, but who in their right mind wants to explain Norma and Barbara's lifestyle to their four-year-old? Give the kids a break, okay?

It is well known that many in the communications business believe that a subliminal "gay is okay" message is imperative to foster tolerance in America. On paper, the theory looks good, and is good if the child is mature enough to process the situation. But introducing homosexuality into the little kid culture angers many Americans who believe sex in general is an inappropriate topic for small children, and that is a legitimate point of view whether Barney Frank or PBS likes it or not.



What Cousin pointed out to me, though, in an email is that we expose kids to sexuality every day.

O'Reilly points this out by saying that kids today are over-sexualized through the media etc. But this isn't Cousn's point. Her point is one that sexuality is everywhere. And not just the over-the-top media and advertising sex that O'Reilly is talking about. Kids are made aware of sexuality from cues galore from their parent's and friend's parents holding hands, to kissing a casual good-bye, to their friend's older siblings talking about their boyfriends and girlfriends. They are made aware of sexuality from nearly all the Disney shows on the planet.

The FYO regularly talks about falling in love at first sight and being wisked off to the palace for the glorious nuptial ball and her honeymoon in Florida (her place where all good things must exist because grandma and grandpa make their regular winter pilgrimage there).

So why do we make such a fuss of Buster?

Cousin asked "were the 'bunch of lesbians' in the show making out and doin' it while they made the syrup?? Let me know."

No. Of course, they weren't. As I mentioned in my previous post, were you not paying attention, you may not have even understood the subtext of the show. The point is, and thank you Cousin and O'Reilly for helping me to figure it out again, that we need good models of gay and lesbian folks that are just in the background. In our everyday life. So that it won't seem so strange and bizarre when kids do grow up and deal with the tough issues that society presents.

While O'Reilly's question is obvious and relatively correct -- no I don't want to explain every detail of the lesbian's lifestyle to even my FYO (see my story on Girls Can't Marry Girls in which I pose the difficulty of talking about the politics of marriage to the FYO)... No. But that's not the point. If our FYO, his FYO, the Cousin's 1 and 3YO's grow up with this issue on the normal radar then maybe we will have gotten a bit closer to a society that accepts people's choices.

God forbid O'Reilly's kid turns out to be gay him or herself. When, Bill, should your kid begin to be exposed to an image that makes him or her feel like it is o.k. to be him or herself?

Info About Local Showing of Buster

O.k. so I ultimately have to sell some advertising in exchange for having seen the show.

Here is some info about a local public showing of the Sugartime episode of Buster:

www.amazeworks.org

My reaction to the show?

What's the fuss? Why do we get all fired up over this?

It was great in the sense that the lesbian couple thing was in the background. I mean, that's the point, isn't it? That they are just another family. They were also Jewish and on the show they had a Sabbath dinner. In other words: there are lots of different kinds of families. Blah. Blah. Blah.

But my point about wondering what all the fuss is about, is that I can't figure out why people get so bothered by a show like this when the subtext of the lesbian parents is so insubstantial. I mean, you would almost have to have been looking for it to even notice it. At the beginning, Buster is told that he is going to spend time with a friend of his Mom's and her "partner" and their kids. This is the first innocuous hint of anything somewhat different.

Then, one of the real live kids shows Buster around their house. Again, everything is the same. At one point, she shows Buster some pictures and you see one picture of the lesbian couple together. Whoa. Revolutionary.

J.H.C. What's all the fuss?

Inspired by The Trixie Update

Here's a great picture of the FYO.

While Eavesdropping at the Coffee Shop One Day Part Deux

Today's eavesdropping session was particularly fruitful.

I walked into the back room of a local Caribou with every intention to read my HUGE article on assessing affirmative action.

As I entered the back room, a group looked up at me like I was intruding on some sort of private ritual.

Is this a private meeting? Am I interrupting?

We're just having a meeting.

A spirited discussion!

So, I settled down in the corner to read my article.

Turns out they were having a meeting about a much heralded showing of an episode of the cartoon Buster called "Sugartime" which is, ostensibly about getting the sugar out of maple trees, but the background is that Buster is visiting an "old friend" of his mom's who is a. . . you guessed it. . . a lesbian! with a *gasp* partner and *gasp* kids!!!

Here's one description:
"Sugartime" is about Buster's visit to northern Vermont. The program explores the wonders of Vermont - from sugar houses to dairy farms to nighttime bonfires. As with many episodes, the real children Buster meets introduce us to their family. In this case the children have two mothers. The parents' lives are included as a backdrop to the kids' lives.

PBS decided not to distribute the Postcards from Buster "Sugartime" episode because some of the topics raised on the program were of the nature that parents may prefer to discuss with their children at a time and manner of their choosing. The producer of the program, WGBH - TV in Boston, has made the episode available to stations wishing to air it.


People FLIPPED about this showing on t.v. in our area.

Apparently, there's been a lot of flack about PBS spending any money on the production of such a show:

Spellings, the new education secretary, denounced PBS for spending public money on an episode of Postcards from Buster that features a lesbian couple. The episode does not focus on the couple but on their maple sugaring in Vermont.

The Caribou Group invited me to watch this preview of the show, which I'm doing RIGHT NOW... AS. I. BLOG.

A WORLD PREMIER of BUSTER. . . AND, I get to avoid work! Win Win for me!

One More Great Comment on Summers

This from Colin Danby from a listserve that I frequent:

Re[garding] "socialization," *please* let's not lapse into the nature|nurture divide, with genetic predisposition playing the role of nature and socialization standing for nurture. As I argued a couple weeks ago, this simplistic split uncritically assumes that observed poor results for women genuinely reflect something women lack, and that this thing they lack is rooted in the past - at birth or in childhood. It's a way to pass the buck.

We need attention to current, active, ongoing institutional and social structure. This realm is inadequately represented by the term "discrimination," which too easily gets absorbed into a methodologically-individualist notion of mere "prejudice" as a personal taste. "Discrimination" is really a result, with no clearly-specified mechanism, and without elaboration people will fill in whatever
mechanism they choose to imagine. If you're a neoclassical economist that mechanism will be (has to be, I think) individual tastes. You can see that even in Summers' most recent statement, the most ample understanding of discrimination he can manage is that it might include both conscious and unconscious tastes.

(One of the malign consequences of naively using Summers' grid to fill in %s is that he has cleverly separated the phenomenon of people dropping out in their 20s-30s ((a) in my last msg) from that of discrimination ((e) in my last msg). Not only does one need a complete list of causal variables, which Summers' list is not, but one needs to consider interaction between them,)What the MIT study pointed to, and what even a few moments' reflection will suggest if you have ever hung out with natural scientists, is that there is a consequential layer of thick social interaction in the formation of a scientist, from mid-undergraduate work onward. The social structure of natural science is an odd hybrid of elite-recruitment (at each stage a few younger people are plucked out and encouraged and promoted) and feudalism (labs
with star senior scientists who get funds and support large numbers of junior colleagues, postdocs, and grad students, in exchange for a share of the credit for all their work).

If we start with a structural understanding of gender as functioning within ongoing social relations and interactions, we want to ask how these densely-social, face-to-face networks work. How do race, social class, and gender shape them? You can see this in econ: there have been places I've taught where the senior faculty were almost all men, and they just didn't hang out with women. The homosociality would be cemented through sports, or the odd dirty joke. Forming ties with senior
people is vital to getting advice and contacts, getting your papers commented on, learning of opportunities, getting good letters, and so forth. Here is where you want to look!

While our pasts are not irrelevant, anyone who supervises students knows that confidence and a willingness to work really hard are a lot more important. People can remake themselves, and often do.

More On The Summers Controversy

I just read what I consider to be just about the most intelligent comment on the subject.

Here is an exerpt from the New York Times review of Mommy Madness by Judith Shulevitz (20 FEB, 2005):

That a dearth of women in a particular field leads directly to doubt about their suitability for that field was made amply clear by the controversy last month over whether women lack the genetic capacity to succeed as professors of math and science. Maybe they do and maybe they don't, but you don't need genetics to explain why women might fail to rise to the top of a profession that requires an 80-hour workweek.

[Bold mine.]

Out of the Mouths of

The scene: BioMom is picking up a few extra Ovulation Predictor Kits at Walgreens and is accompanied by the FYO and her trusty Sidekick.

Sidekick: What's that?

FYO: Mommy's pee sticks.

On Women Bloggers

You'll note that I've included a list of women bloggers for your perusal.
This is a response to Kevin Drum's comments via Bitch.Ph.D.

While I sort of like the whole "are differences between men and women intrinsic, socialized, or whatever", I have to admit that Drum's speculation about his observation that either

(a) there are fewer female political bloggers and thus fewer in the top 30, or (b) there are plenty of women who blog about politics but they don't get a lot of traffic or links from high-traffic male bloggers.

is ridiculous.

He explains his observation buy guessing that

it's a bit of both, and the proximate reason is that men are more comfortable with the food fight nature of opinion writing - both writing it and reading it. Since I don't wish to suffer the fate of Larry Summers I'll refrain from speculating on deep causes - it might be social, cultural, genetic, or Martian mind rays for all I know - but I imagine that the fundamental viciousness and self aggrandizement inherent in opinion writing turns off a lot of women.

What he never does is reconsider his observation itself, and whether or not either a) he is biased or b) his sources (actually, the thorough researcher that he is, I must de-pluralize that and say "source") are (is) biased.

I am actually not of the mind that we need to have separate spaces for women (or any possibly discriminated against group formed either by choice or by birth). But I thought I'd highlight a few women bloggers just for the sake of exposing more of us.

This whole thing reminds me of a trip to the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival in my "I'm Here I'm Queer, Get Used To It" Phase. On one trip there was a huge protest about the festival's policy on only admitting what they referred to as "Womyn Born Womyn." In other words, they did not want pre- or post-op transsexuals (boys were only allowed to accompany their mom's up to a certain age). Anyway, the protesters had a sign that said something to the effect of "Honk if you support Transsexuals!"

HONK HONK HONK!

Its so ridic to respond to repression with more repression.

Sledding

I can't believe the FYO wants to go sledding tonight.

After school last night we met Sidekick and her dad at THE HILL.

The HILL's conditions reflected the fact that the entire neighborhood's parents had the day off due to the federal holiday. It was smooth, icy and the moguls, left behind by would-be snowboarders and teenagers reliving their childhoods on toboggans heavy with their weight, warranted a sign plastered with a huge black diamond.

On one run, the FYO and I crowded on to our little purple saucer (I note the color because it was obviously a point of discord for the FYO: But I want to ride on a pink one!). I was unable to steer effectively enough and, according to Sidekick's dad, we hit each and every bump at its peak.

There must be some mathematical model out there predicting larger ass-bruises when the tangency between snow saucers and snow moguls occurs at each curve's peak--that is, where each curve's first derivative is zero. Combine this with a little physics that predicts that the "load" will catch more "lift" if the saucer's peak hits the mogul's peak at their highest points and you've got one sore 35-year-old here.

The FYO's reaction upon reaching the bottom of the hill:

AGAIN!!!

The madness culminated with the FYO and sidekick heading down together after a guided push from Sidekick's dad toward what could only be referred to as a small, but insistent "ski-jump" in the middle hill.

As their little plastic toboggan raced toward the jump, my regret surfaced to Sidekick's Dad:

Oh my god! They're going to hit it!!

But it was too late.

They hit the jump, but not dead-on, which made it worse. As the little sled approached the left side of the jump, they twisted left. Soon we saw two distinct little bodies and their sled in the air -- none of which was touching any longer.

Then SMACK. They all landed.

Then a few pregnant seconds of quiet in the air.

Then Sidekick's wail.

This, on top of what must have felt to the FYO's like climbing Mt. Everest after each run, I can't believe she wants to go back.

Email from BioMom

[FYO] wants to go sledding tonight. I told her that was cool or we could go out to dinner. She wants to do both. I said we probably don't have time for both. Then she said, I don't like my bedtime, can we move it back to 11? I said no, then she said 10? I said no, then she said 9? I said no then she said 8? I said yes.

As BioMom is the quintessential negotiator, I'd say the FYO is following in her footsteps.

Note that her original bedtime is 8.

The 21st Century Guide to Dating: Subject? Maintenance

A friend of mine was out on a date last week. The date is a very candid physician and so they find themselves in strange but remarkably forward conversations.

Friend: Can I ask you a personal question?

Dr.Dude: Sure.

Friend: Do you do pap smears and everying?

Dr.Dude: Sure. Can I ask you a personal question?

Friend: Sure.

Dr.Dude: Do you maintain?


Me to Friend: What the eff does "maintain" mean?


I can just imagine the Match.Com ad:

GWM seeking GWM for casual dataing. I'm looking for an honest person who enjoys long walks and old movies, maintains, and loves Dostoevsky.

While Eavesdropping at the Coffee Shop One Day

I just heard this interaction between one Mom and her darling little probably 2 year old at the local coffee shop today:

Which one do you want? The brown one or the white one? [Referring to the sprinkle donut choices. Note that I could not hear what the little girl was saying at all so I'll represent her responses with ". . . " .]

. . .

Its Mommy's coffee.

. . .

It's not some fancy coffee treat. Its just coffee.

. . .

Do you want some?

. . .

[I then observe the woman pouring her coffee into the girl's sippy cup and the girl drinking out of it!?!]

On Blog Hilarity

Check out this hilarious post on The Rhetoric of Blog Humor via Bitch.Ph.D.

The King and the King

The other night at bedtime BioMom and I read a couple of books in a series to the FYO. The books were:

King & King by Linda de Haan & Stern Nijland, and their second book, King & King & Family.

They are lovely books. Basically, the story starts with a young prince who is to get married and take over the thrown from his exhausted Queen-Mum who is dreaming of retirement. In the search for the perfect future-queen, the prince's heart pitter-pats for one candidate's brother. And so the story goes.

What is nice about it is that a) the story is more like a fairy tale than other books with the gay-parent theme and b) it is just simply, sweet.

The famous Heather Has Two Mommies is written for an older kid, with small print and more words on the page. It covers the whole "there are lots of different families" angle. Other books for kids with the theme of gay parents approach what the author expects will be negative attitudes from the gay-parented kid's schoolmates. Picture a scene at school with a bunch of children in a room having a conversation about their families:

Where's your daddy?

or

That's not a family!

BioMom and I had not yet introduced this sort of literature to the FYO because it all seemed to assume some negativity -- before the fact. So we basically avoided it all until, we found King & King.

Anyway, we read the stories to the FYO and all was good. Off to bed.

Next night: BioMom revisits the stories. BioMom reported seeing the lightbulb over her head afterwards:

That just can't be!

What can't be?

The prince can't marry the prince. He has to marry the princess!

Again, the protests from BioMom:

But our friends MRM1 and MRM2 are married? And what about me and [blog author's first name]?

But [blog author's first name] is a boy!

No she isn't.

So, she struggles.

More More More on Getting What You Get

Regarding the commenter's comment....
Okay, okay, maybe the FYO won't be any more or less unique. And, sure, my comments about genes and selection were probably a bit creepy. Also, I'll concede the ineptness of comparing to an interracial couple and the inability to pass.

I think I am reacting to at least two things that I have observed:

1. I absolutely know that some people with health problems consider not having kids because of the (even minute) possibility of passing on the problem and

2. I am observing the FYO struggle with the fact that she has two moms.

I am not the wallowing type (regarding sexuality). And I think that I've made that point clear. I am, however, the observing type. I have observed:

1. people of all sexual orientations judge glbt people for bringing kids into the world for the reasons I've described and
2. gay parents act really weird about being gay parents, such as only having gay friends and feeling a strong need to expose their kids to gay parents etc. (see the Rainbow Familis Conference post).

That's the whole point of this blog. For better or for worse, I am attempting to document some of the differences, actual or perceived, in this sort of family. See this for a description of the blog.

You're probably right, that ultimately there isn't any difference (I made that point as well). But the question is there, and like the question "why climb Everest?", that's why I ask it: because its there.

The Economics of Food Stamps

So, my current students are now feeling the effects this new-found curiosity of the different effects of giving the poor food stamps versus a cash subsidy of some equivalent value (i.e. so my honest indigent can buy his beer). Their second problem set of the semester is now based on this case study of the Food Stamp Program, with the economic question:

Would a switch to a comparable cash subsidy increase the well-being of food stamp recipients? Would the recipients spend less on food and more on other goods?

Here is some interesting background for you:

The Food Stamp Program (FSP) provides nutrition assistance benefits to low-income households that can be used to purchase foods from authorized food retailers. When Congress created the FSP in the early 1960s, it envisioned a program to provide low-income Americans with access to a healthy, nutritious diet.

Nearly 11% of U.S. households worry about having enough money to buy food and 3.3% report that they suffer from inadequate food (Sullivan and Choi, 2002). Households that meet income, asset, and employment eligibility requirements receive coupons that can be used to purchase food from retail stores. The Food Stamps Program is one of the nation's largest social welfare programs. Initial data from 2004 shows that 23,854,000 people participated, receiving approximately $86 dollars per month. The program provided 24,627.8 million dollars in benefits and cost the federal, state, and local governments 27,151.4 million dollars.

Food Stamps can purchase only certain kinds of foods:

Households CAN use food stamp benefits to buy:
Foods for the household to eat, such as:
* breads and cereals;
* fruits and vegetables;
* meats, fish and poultry; and
* dairy products.
* Seeds and plants which produce food for the household to eat.
Households CANNOT use food stamp benefits to buy:
* Beer, wine, liquor, cigarettes or tobacco;
* Any nonfood items, such as:
* pet foods;
* soaps, paper products; and
* household supplies.
* Vitamins and medicines.
* Food that will be eaten in the store.
* Hot foods

In some areas, restaurants can be authorized to accept food stamp benefits from qualified homeless, elderly, or disabled people in exchange for low-cost meals. Food stamp benefits cannot be exchanged for cash.

Since the food stamp programs started in the early 1960s, economists, nutritionists, and policymakers have debated "cashing out" food stamps by providing checks or cash instead of coupons that can be spent only on food.

Legally, food stamps may not be sold, though a black market for them exists. Because of technological advances in electronic fund transfers, switching from food stamps to a cash program would lower administrative costs and reduce losses due to fraud and theft.

The question that economists ask about the program is:

"Would a switch to a comparable cash subsidy increase the well-being of food stamp recipients? Would the recipients spend less on food and more on other goods?"

In order to analyze this, we must identify the costs and benefits of offering food stamps versus the costs and benefits of offering cash transfers to the poor. According to the Food Stamp Nutrition Education Framework,

A USDA study from 2000 indicates many low-income adults do not know specific facts related to what types of dietary practices are healthful, such as what specific foods they should eat to maintain a healthy diet (Gleason and Olson, 2000). More recently, attention has focused on providing nutrition education and services to program participants to address the rising epidemic of overweight and obesity in America. Here, too, the need is great-for example, 65% of adults in America are overweight-putting them at risk for serious health problems including heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, and some cancers.

Low-income households have a higher prevalence of health conditions related to poor nutrition than households with higher incomes. Women with lower family income levels are 50% more likely to be obese than those with higher family incomes. And, while obesity rates have doubled in children and tripled in adolescents over the last two decades, they have increased the most among those in the lowest income levels, especially African American and Mexican American children (Ogden, Flegal, Carroll and Johnson, 2002; CDC, 2002).

Empirical Evidence

According to Franker (1990), an additional dollar of income causes an average low-income household to increase its food expenditures by $0.05 to $0.10, and an additional dollar of food stamps leads to a $0.20 to $0.45 increase in food expenditures.

Experiments by various researchers (Moffit, 1989; Fasciano, Hall, and Beebout, 1993; and Carlson, 1993) show that responses to trading food stamps for cash have had different effects by area and demographic group. In Puerto Rico, for example, giving cash instead of food stamps had no detectable effect. In 75% of studies in the U.S., researchers found that giving cash reduces household food expenditures, with magnitudes varying from the negligible to 17%. Three studies of the nutrition effects of substituting cash for food stamps found no effect in Alabama, a 5% drop in San Diego, and a 6% to 11% decline in nutrients in Washington State.
Other studies show significant declines in administrative costs due to fraud and theft by cashing out food stamps. In Alabama, for example, administrative costs fell from $2.05 to $1.03 per case per month.

Lastly, I should note that according to one study, 54% of families with children and incomes below the poverty line participated in the Food Stamp Program in 1999.


References
Centers for Disease Control. 2002. "Health, United States" National Center for Health Statistics.

Gleason, P, Rangarajan, Olson C. 2000. "Dietary Intake and Dietary Attitudes Among Food Stamp Participants and Other Low-Income Individuals." USDA.

Ogden, CL, Flegal, KM, Carroll, MD, and Johnson, CL. "Prevalence and trends in overweight among US children and adolescents, 1999-2000" JAMA 288: 1728-32.

Sullivan, Ashley F., and Eunyoung Choi. 2002. "Hunger and Food Insecurity in Fifty States: 1998-2000." Center on Hunger and Poverty, Brandeis University.

The Honest Indigent

I'm not sure what we want to do with this information, but it certainly corroborates my previous post.

Two issues are brought to the forefront:

1. Is it more efficient to transfer cash or goods in-kind to the homeless? Presumably this guy will trade in whatever he is given at whatever the discount, for beer, thereby reducing the initial value of an in-kind transfer.

2. Should the philanthropist necessarily get to define the choice set of the gift regardless of the recipient's preferences? In other words, is there a place for paternalism here? Does father know best?


Confession: I did give him money. I am not categorically against giving money to people who ask for it on the street. In this case, however, I felt like I owed him something for the picture.

On Getting What We Get

In response to the comment on the Non PC Ponderings blog, of course this is true. If anyone knows me personally, they know that my life is a prime example of one getting what they get.

For the gay parents though, there is a bit of a twist to this: we are CHOOSING to give kids a certain hand, if you will, in life. For better or for worse.

Most parents don't choose to have kids and divorce two years later forever forcing their kids to balance two worlds etc. etc.

Some parents choose to have kids and pass on incredibly intelligent or athletic genes.

Some people with genetic dysfunctions choose to not have kids because they would rather not pass on the potential genetic problem.

In this social experiment, we are actively choosing to have a kid KNOWING that they will experience some social repurcussions of our sexual preference/orientation. This is fascinating and I have seen many people (gay and straight) judge this choice. I am not analogizing this to a genetic disease, but to a social one. It is akin to a mixed race couple having kids and then facing racism

Of course, I think the FYO will be fine. More interesting even for this experience. But that does not negate the fact that it is a particularly unique and interesting social experiment.

More on Loss

BioMom brought up an interesting point this weekend in response to my Non-PC Pondering. She wonders why we are so defensive about acknowledging any sort of loss at all.

Furthermore, she wondered why we rush to the outcomes to prove that there isn't a loss.

This was a fascinating point. Even if we can prove that ACGPs are categorically performing as well as their heterosexually-oriented counterparts, does that necessarily mean that there is not a loss in experience for the FYO to not have a dad? BioMom even suggested that the experience of the loss itself might (will) transform her in some way, possibly a possitive way, but she may STILL experience the loss.

Why are we so afraid of acknowledging this?

It seems even more exaggerated in the case of two lesbian parents of boys. Although I think the boys will adjust fine (especially if they have adult male role models), one cannot ignore the loss.

One more thought experiment: the gay male parents. Now that I think about it, with all of our hangups as a society about motherhood, this must be what the Christian Right freaks about when they think of gay parents.

Getting Dooced

From today's Washington Post.

Is Sponge Bob Gay????

Thanks to HFRM#1 for the head's up:


Christians issue gay warning on SpongeBob video

and from Robot Johnny

My Favorite Hax Column

Hi Carolyn:
I believe in "the spark"; the spark is a good thing. But I must ask, by when should it happen? I do believe it has to happen at some point, but I am not sure, now that I am dating someone who is kind, thoughtful and shy, how long I should give it.
– Sparkless So Far

Dear Carolyn:
I am a guy in love with my roommate, also a guy. We've been friends for years and actually dated in the beginning. It was a short, hectic romance that did not end bitterly. We are both very mainstream, all-American guys. I think part of the fascination for me is that we make the quintessential gay suburban couple – busting the stereotypes. Now the tricky part: He may not feel the same way and I am petrified about trashing our friendship. I am twisted sick with not knowing if this could work out.
– Never Learning

Dear Carolyn:
I'm about to be married after a five-year courtship. My fiancee is wonderful and very pretty, but I'm not attracted to her right now. Is this just "marriage" come early or a sign of problems down the road?
– Maryland

Dear Carolyn:
What do you think about being friends with exes?
– Missouri

If "the one" is the mother of all romantic ideals, "the spark" is her beautiful, maddening, free-spirited sister with the infectious laugh who brings extravagant gifts for everyone and then goes off lemur-watching in Madagascar and doesn't send so much as a postcard until three years later when she blows in for another surprise 36-hour visit.

But isn't she great?

I can't conceive of a life commitment where there never was a spark. Imagine wondering, all your life, what you've missed? Even if it doesn't burn brightly ever after, the memory of it alone generates warmth and light.

But don't even try to plan around it. It happens, it doesn't happen, it's instant, it takes years, it makes a muttering dork of anyone who tries to outwit it. Some say if it isn't immediate, it'll never happen. Some say the immediate spark is the first to flame out. Some say it's overrated. I've given days, weeks, months full of profound and tortured thought to the elusive concept of spark, and I have come up with this:

Isn't it great?

These four letters, fresh off the forklift, suggest you guys haven't done a whole lot better in the profound-insights department. But I do see patterns, some basic properties of electricity:



1. Spark trumps logic. Quit thinking, "Sparkless" et al, and take each date on its own merits. Did you have fun? Yes/No. Do you want to see this person again? Yes/No. Do you want to date this person at the exclusion of all others? Yes/No. You don't work toward electricity, you just get hit by it, and you're not going to get hit by it if you're holed up with the first person who seemed sorta nice. You've got to be out in a field twirling your umbrella at storm clouds. Date! date! date! as many people as you can, offer to pay occasionally, keep your clothes on and see what crackles.

2. Spark trumps friendship. To Mr. "Never Learning" and the rest of you who are pining in private for your so-called pals: One more melodramatic refrain on preserving the friendship and I'm going to hurl on your violin. A "twisted sick" person who is using every ounce of self-control to suffer quietly through the motions of friendship because he's afraid that's the only way he can stay close enough to breathe the giddy air that surrounds his One True Love is not my idea of a friend. So out with it – say it, show it, whichever feels right. (Note to Never Learning: Please get your motives straight first.) And if you fail, take it like a man. That goes for women, too.

3. Love trumps spark. Lightning gets attention, but compatibility holds it. You know you're in crush when someone hangs on every word of your third retelling of the Great Show-and-Tell Incident of 1982. You know you're in love when, 10 years later, that same someone still thinks it's the funniest thing ever – and you haven't slept together in weeks. Electricity has to give way to staying devoted and staying interesting to each other, or it'll just snap away to nothing. "Maryland," are you still in love? Can you see life with anyone but your fiancee? Is this low-sex deal what she wants? Talk, think and decide what you want – together – or "down the road" will be off a cliff. Speaking of which . . .

4. Sparks die. Thus the romantic-cliche proximity of "rekindle" to the word "flame." But I have it on discouraging authority that when sparks go pft, they tend to stay there. That authority is a sex therapist friend who found that, couple after couple after couple, she was merely doing a volume business in helping people face the friendly, low-voltage truth known as "marriage." (Obviously, some marriages stay sparky – but if yours is one of them, I'll bet your friends don't want to hear about it.) The ones who grasp Rule No. 3 make it, she says, the others don't.

Which makes the phenomenon of The Friendly Ex all the more impressive. The Friendly Ex is the former lover, now buddy, who allegedly harbors the awe-inspiring, physics-defying, pft-proof spark that makes new girlfriends and boyfriends quake with jealousy and fear . . .

Because they just don't get it. Onetime couples who've lost the spark can make great, safe friends.

Onward to something else? Please?

A New Acronym

SGSE for Same Gender Spousal Equivalent

See today's column by Carolyn Hax of the Washington Post

Dear Carolyn:

My same-gender-spousal-equivalent (SGSE) and I have been together three years. We had a commitment ceremony last May and have been wearing rings on our left hands since then. My SGSE hasn't told his (Catholic) family about the "wedding," though they accept us, and we sleep together when we visit. SGSE is not out to Grandma, and she's old-fashioned, though he's her favorite grandchild.

On our latest visit to Grandma, SGSE's mother asked us to not wear our rings. I was incensed, and complied grudgingly. SGSE would not stand up to Mama, who is generally very sweet, and I've been mad ever since. I hate going back in the closet. I feel like I don't want to visit these people again. Was I wrong to swallow my convictions?

P.K.

If anyone's looking for reasons to support gay marriage, I can suggest four: "same," "gender," "spousal" and "equivalent."

Perhaps you did swallow your convictions on closeting. But you apparently did so to uphold your convictions on meeting family halfway, on keeping your symbolism and Grandma's feelings in perspective, on supporting your SBFTFTMCLMOMIMJ (spouse-but-for-the-fact-that-men-can't-legally-marry-other-men-in-most-jurisdictions).

You've won 98 out of 100 battles, real and potential and tough, with this family -- an average most straight couples quit hoping for. You were gracious in reflexively conceding this latest skirmish. Any hangover from that, you should discuss with your SBFTFTMCLMOMIMJ; don't take hostages out of spite.

Ghosts of Students Past

Today has been interesting. At one point I casually picked up the phone only to find a former student calling from Cairo. Incidently here's a link to his travel blog. Which hasn't been updated recently but is interesting nonetheless. I also finally got to reading an email from a former student who said:

I just thought of your class because yesterday was "homeless rememberance day" (or something of that nature...i usually accuse hallmark of trying to drum up sales w/ new holidays, but somehow I don't think they have a hand in this one!?!?!?). Anyway...I remember your question; do you buy the person a bananna or give them the dollar and let them (choose) buy the beer? The group that the article was about bought some care packages and handed them out to the local homeless.....wonder if the guy w/ a roll of toilet paper would have really rather had a beer????

Nice to know that my random musings affect people. Just to redeem myself slightly, the discussion was about how the government should deal with poverty and probably along the lines of the economists' concerns about giving food stamps versus cash transfers. Anyway, this line of thought was provoked by a discussion with a friend of mine who is Irish and a cultural studies professor at George Mason. Anyway, we were going to a movie and stalling for time at a gas station near the theater. Anyway, there was a homeless guy outside and I thought about giving him a banana from inside the store. She totally berated me and said I should just give him money instead.

Why should you decide the best way for him to use the money?

This is actually not obvious and quite interesting. On one hand, it is my money and I should have some say in what he does with it if I give it to him. Her point (I'm not sure if it is the "other hand") was all about thinking of it as "my" money. Instead, I should think about how it came to be my money and my (our) cultural issues about deservedness. This was fascinating to me and lead to a complete reinterpretation of the Irish in my mind. Anyway, she was saying, why should I consider myself to be more deserving of having a beer, say, rather than a banana, say, just because I had the kind of opportunities in my life that led me to have money and choices and he did not.

What an interesting reversal to the usual American line of thought: he obviously is a lazy %(*# and can't make the right decisions. I should give him a banana so that at least he gets something good in his body today. . . blah blah blah.

Anyway, that's where that came from, for better or for worse.

Non-P.C. Pondering

Last night the FYO was talking with BioMom about anything and everything. At one point she says

I wish I had three parents.

BioMom: Oh yeah? Why?

FYO: So I could have a dad too.

This is an evolution of such ponderings on behalf of the FYO. At one point, after hanging out with Sidekick, she said something to the effect of wishing she had a Dad. I responded by saying that I bet Sidekick wished she had a [insert blog author's first name]. The FYO quickly retracted her desire.

We respond with all of the things you're supposed to respond with when confronted with this question.

But you have TWO moms! How lucky are you?

Or:

Well, there are all sorts of families. Some people have one mom, other people have one dad, some people have adopted parents. . .

Etc.

The important thing is to not talk with her like there is some sort of loss.

But this point nags at me. Is there really no loss?

I just had lunch with a psychology professor here and talked with her about this issue. She said that the research she has read shows that most ACGPs grow up completely socially adjusted.

Yeah. But that doesn't really answer my question. I guess I want to know. I want some sort of measurement that could compare two well-adjusted two-parent families, one lesbian couple and one heterosexual couple. Can we measure a difference in the "outcome" of one kid having a dad and one kid not. Of course, I'd also like that experiment to have been conducted in a vacuum in which there was no social disapprobation associated with homosexuality.

The professor went on to tell me that some kids get angry when they find out how they were conceived but after that, there is no measurable difference between ACGP's and their heterosexually-parented counterparts. See this post for a link to all of the studies I know of which say the same thing.

But the question still nags. I'm sure its not PC to say this-or even think it for that matter-but isn't there still a loss from not having a Dad? Again, assuming a good, involved Dad. A Dad's Dad.

I can imagine some losses. What about some school dance where girls take their dads? Is there some benefit for a heterosexual girl to grow up with a male in the house? Would it give her an advantage in living with one when she becomes an adult? Is there some advantage to experiencing a man and a woman interacting? Can lesbian parents proxy this? If gender is a continuum, is the FYO experiencing enough gender diversity in a relatively more feminine BioMom and a relatively more masculine step-mom?

The jury's out, but the PC police will (I'm sure) be in (soon).

Development and One's Sense of Humor

It has been amazing watching the FYO begin to develop a sense of humor. Once in a while I'll hear her laughing hysterically out loud while watching cartoons or something.

Last night before bed, instead of our usual two books, the FYO wanted to do these kindergarten flash cards that she's had for a few years.

Incidently, its not that she's so brilliant. The kindergarten cards, in my opinion, are way too easy for most kindergarten-aged kids. They consist of fairly easy pictures depicting actions such as a mouse covering her eyes with a rabbit covering her ears and the caption asking something like Who can't see? Or recognizing letters of the alphabet, etc.

My evidence for their level of difficulty is two-fold:

a) the FYO knew all of the answers at age 3.5 without even warming up and
b) the first-grade cards are much more difficult, providing questions that demonstrate a huge cognitive leap relative to the kindergarten cards.

Anyway, the FYO wanted to "do" the easy cards last night so we indulged her.

When we got to one card that had a huge letter "Y" on it, and the question read:

What letter is this?

The FYO barked out:

Y!

To which I responded,

Not "why?" I'm asking you what letter that is!

She howled. And it went on and on like an Abbot and Costello skit with her giggling and me insisting that she was asking "Why?"

Priceless.

The Universality of Counting

I was recently at a coffee shop eavsdropping on a mother overseeing her two young boys. I thought that they were speaking French, but wasn't sure until I heard the mom say

Un!. . . Deux!!. . . Tois!!!. . .

With an increasing sense of purpose and intensity.

My giggle caught her eye and we had a moment of what I perceived as complete comprehension and sympathy.

When you think about it, the counting thing is really strange.

First, it is not associated with any negotiated bribe or demand. Its not (usually):

I'm going to count to three and if I get to three and your coat isn't on and you aren't heading toward the door, I'm gonna beat your %#(*&$!

Unless the lack of negotiation is based on some prior history, it seems to be a universal understanding that counting equals seriousness and is associated with some sort of punishment (perceived or real) at some point in the near (and fast approaching) future.

Even the number itself is not negotiated. Why is it assumed that three is the upper-limit? Why not four, or seven or ten?

Given all of this, why do kids fall for it, and why does it seem to be so universal? Why don't kids take context into consideration:

French kid's should-be rational thought: Dude. I'm in a coffee shop with tons of adults around me working and socializing, there are no other kids, and I know Mom's not ready to go. What's she gonna do? Spank me in public? Drag me to the car? Throw a glass of water at my face? Put me in time-out in the bathroom? Take away my already finished cocoa? What?

Second, the other weird thing about the counting is that it seems to be one of those inherent parenting techniques.

Witness myself. I am not a biological parent, and came on the scene at about 17 months. Out of nowhere, I hear myself saying (in a loud-pitched-demanding that is voice full of expectation and authority):

One!. . . Two!!. . .

It was as if my father had stepped into my body.

Of course, we all get it from our own parents. But I'm just surprised at how universal this strawman of a threat really is. Let's hope the FYO doesn't figure it out.

The Gay Hadj

So, to make up for forgetting our anniversary in December, I decided to get a head start in planning a surprise for Valentine's day.

Here was my plan: organize a sleepover for the FYO at HFRM#1's on Friday night and go out to eat at this restaurant that a quirky colleague of mine recomments, and then out for live music afterwards!

HFRM#1 and I made this whole plan where she would host FFFN at her house etc. etc. Our only concern was that BioMom would have an issue with not being able to control FFFN, and making sure that she actually comes home after work rather than her usual practice of having a few drinks with co-workers and showing up late for FFFN.

Oh, and included in my plan was this big buildup about how I don't have any plans for V-day. And that whatever we do must include the FYO.

This morning, however, BioMom foiled all of my plans.

Sweet woman that she is, after a fairly raucus evening at some friends house and two bottles of liquer later, she got up this morning, went out to get some coffee snack for me and the Sunday paper. Inside the paper she smuggled a Valentine's card for me which consisted of a flight itinerary for San Fransisco next weekend!!!

All of a sudden I'm all I'm Here I'm Queer Get Used to It!!!

We're heading to Gay Mecca!!!!

Diversity?

This is going to be another one of those "am I missing something or am I just homophobic?" posts.

Its choose-your-kindergarten-time of year around here so our neighborhood is buzzing. At least three local neighbor kids are going to school in the fall, and a few more the year after that so the stakes are high. The deal is, we don't have a neighborhood school, so we all go into this lottery.

Anyway, I got to talking with a neighborhood lesbian mom at preschool-drop-off this morning about it all.

Have you gone on any of the school tours? She asks.
We haven't. BioMom has been set on Catholic school for some time, hence the circle-tour of liberal catholic churches in the area. See also this post for background details.

The other mom then says something to the effect of being interested in other kinds of diversity (race, class etc.) intimating that the good schools in the area are lacking that.

It took me a bit to catch on. I think she meant that the gay/lesbian issue is one of diversity and that somehow the public schools have that figured out. But that by going to one of the good schools (which are about 2% poverty, and .0000002% African American) you sacrifice the "other kinds" of diversity.

I felt immediately defensive about this. It seems to me that the kid population in all schools will be (if statistics are correct) equally "diverse" when it comes to sexuality. Yes, it is possible that Catholic schools may be less likely to attract glbt staff than public schools (of course, that doesn't count the nuns or the priests. Let's just count the "out" folks). But more importantly, I guess I never really considered this aspect of diversity important enough to seek it out:

Can I ask, what percentage of your staff is gay or lesbian? Bisexual?

This is absolutely not to say that I don't want the FYO to have positive GLBT role models. It is, however, to say that that wasn't what I was looking for in a school.

On the sexuality front, all BioMom and I were looking for was a school that would accept her family and not make her feel like a freak.

On the diversity front: well, this is a rock and a hard place. And, again, I guess I must define diversity here. To me diversity is in part race and class. Sex/gender and sexuality possibly on a more secondary level. Furthermore, diversity is about having a diversity in thought, approaches to the world, and to teaching. More than diversity itself though, in terms of a school, I would appreciate the promotion of diversity in all its forms.

What is difficult though, is that diversity (defined on the simple demographic scaless of race and class) is nearly directly correlated (negatively) with test scores. There is certainly an argument to this: even though on average a school does bad, that doesn't mean your kid does bad.

But that's a hard vitamin to swallow when its your kid.

The Question We've Been Waiting For

Tonight at dinner with BioMom the FYO asked

Mom, does it take a man to raise me?

Biomom: Do you mean does it take a man to make you?

FYO: Yeah.

Biomom: Yeah. Where did you learn about that?

FYO: It was in a book that I read at school.

After that, the FYO abruptly changed the topic.

Sound Familiar?

U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote
Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror

by Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times

September 3, 1967WASHINGTON, Sept. 3-- United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.

According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.

....A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam. The election was the culmination of a constitutional development that began in January, 1966, to which President Johnson gave his personal commitment when he met Premier Ky and General Thieu, the chief of state, in Honolulu in February.

The purpose of the voting was to give legitimacy to the Saigon Government, which has been founded only on coups and power plays since November, 1963, when President Ngo Dinh Deim was overthrown by a military junta.

Thanks to Dr. Jodi Vandenberg-Daves and Daily Kos for the link.