After reading Elrena Evans?s thoughtful Her.meneutics post, ?Should You Let Your Baby ?Cry It Out?? A Christian Response,? it was clear that Evans and I absolutely agree on one thing: unfortunately the so-called ?Mommy Wars? are alive and well. I firmly support Evans?s decision to parent the way that works best for her family. But in a spirit of peace rather than war, I want to offer a different perspective on the cry-it-out controversy.
There are two camps that use the term ?crying it out,? and it?s essential to distinguish between the two. One approach imposes a strict parent-driven feeding and sleeping schedule upon very young infants. The medical community by and large opposes this approach, due to the risk of stress and malnourishment for infants (see American Academy of Pediatrics abstract and article) and because of the profound discouragement it creates for many new moms. So let me be clear: When I?m talking about ?crying it out,? I?m not referring to this approach. But there?s a second approach to letting kids ?cry it out? that?s worked well for my family. The AAP advises that a parent ?respond promptly to your infant whenever she cries during the first few months.? When an infant younger than 4 months is crying, it?s usually because she needs something. Parents ought to always do their best to respond to these cries. However, around the 4-month mark, parents can discern between a cry expressing real need (?I?m hurt! I?m hungry! I need to be changed!?) and a cry of protest (?I don?t want to be in this bed! I want your constant attention!?). I believe there?s some latitude in how we respond to protest cries.
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When Jay-Z and wife Beyonce welcomed their first child, daughter Blue Ivy Carter, into the world on January 7, Jay-Z joined the ranks of hip-hop dads that include T.I. and Fat Joe. Just two days after Blue Ivy?s arrival, the proud papa released a new single, ?Glory, Featuring Blue Ivy Carter,? making the baby?babbling alongside her dad?the youngest person ever credited on the U.S. Billboard charts. Jay-Z sings,
The most amazing feeling I feel Words can't describe the feeling, for real Baby I'll paint the sky blue My most greatest creation was you.
As the final notes of ?Glory? fade out, we hear Blue Ivy Carter?s newborn cries and coos. For older listeners, the sounds will recall Stevie Wonder?s 1976 hit ?Isn?t She Lovely?? featuring Wonder?s own infant daughter Aisha. It would all be very heartwarming were it not for the recent brouhaha in response to a January 13 post from WENN, announcing that Jay-Z had written a poem for Ivy Blue in which he denounced the sexism?namely using the word ?b----? to refer to women?prevalent in so many of his lyrics. What the mighty Oprah Winfrey had failed to do in 2010, when she challenged Jay-Z on his derogatory sexist language when he appeared on her show, a tiny little baby had, reportedly, done. WENN claims Jay-Z penned these paternal words for his offspring: "Before I got in the game, made a change, and got rich/I didn?t think hard about using the word bitch/I rapped, I flipped it, I sold it, I lived it/Now with my daughter in this world I curse those that give it." It?s the kind of redemptive story that those of us who do not know even one single Jay-Z lyric desperately want to be true.
Monica Holmes had the prettiest hair of any girl in the fifth grade. Her chestnut locks flowed effortlessly down her back, while my delicate, thin hair broke off around my shoulders. Even so, I didn?t envy her hair; I begrudged her braggadocio. No matter the context?recess, lunch, or a bathroom break?Monica couldn?t say enough about her hair to anyone who would listen. ?I just love my dark-brown, beautiful hair. Don?t you too??
By Christmas, I?d had enough. In the seat behind Monica during the annual showing of A Charlie Brown Christmas, in the darkened multi-purpose room, I stealthily stuck a big wad of pink Bubble-Yum gum in a wide swath of Monica Holmes?s dark-brown, beautiful hair. It wasn?t one of my finer moments. But lest you think my preadolescent behavior was an anomaly, a recent study from the University of Ottawa suggests otherwise. Intrasexual competition is widely demonstrated among males, so researchers Tracy Vaillancourt and A. Sharma wanted to know whether or not intrasexual competition existed among women, often believed to be nurturing, communicative, and more likely to rule by consensus. ?I was convinced,? stated Vaillancourt, ?having lived my life as a woman, that we?re not as pleasant as some people make us out to be.?
To all the single ladies: Last week Groupon offered a ticket to lasting love (at a 76% discount!) by way of your own personal ?boudoir photo shoot.? The ad proclaims:
The great Romantic painters had the same goal?to craft an image so beautiful that it would come to life and marry them. Increase your chances of turning images into love using the modern version of painting, photography . . . The sample photo suggests that the way to transform ?images into love? to is throw on some kitschy lingerie, splay yourself in the most awkward position imaginable on a bed, and fork over $95.00 for the picture. The image might have gone from G-rated to R-rated, but the sentiment in this marketing campaign is strikingly similar to those of the conduct books popular around the eighteenth century. Such literature offered young ladies not only moral and domestic instruction, but also tips on how to attract the best husband. If you?ve read any Jane Austen, then you?ve encountered her satirical treatment of these works: priggish Mr. Collins reads passages from one popular conduct book to the captive Bennet girls, and the heroine of Emma tries to make a love-match by painting an ?enhanced? portrait of her friend in hopes a gentleman will fall in love with the woman in the painting.
Crystal Paine is not your average mommy blogger. She doesn?t tell you about her day or post picture-perfect images of her lifestyle for you to envy. The homeschooling mom of three based in Kansas wants to help you make ends meet, to use many pieces of information to make choices about everyday purchases. With 4 million pageviews a month, she operates one of the most well-known coupon-clipping blogs in the country, and her new book, The Money Saving Mom?s Budget (Gallery Books), wraps all of her practices up in one place.
Paine told Her.meneutics that her blogging began as any other site back in 2004. ?I mentioned that I spent $17 on groceries that week, and people started asking, ?How on earth did you do that?? ? she said.
She created an online course that taught some basic strategies, such as how to create a meal plan and how to combine the manufacturers? and store?s coupons for a double deal. ?People were saying, ?I need more practical information. I need you to break it down: what should I buy at the store this week? The goal was finding practical ways to save on groceries,? she said. So her blog turned into a mix of posts, including daily deals on products, tips for managing money, and ways to live more simply.
Paine, who attends an independent Baptist church with Southern Baptist leanings, sees her blog as a different kind of ministry model, one that helps people get down to the nitty-gritty details about their finances.
?I try not to use ?Christianese? so someone who is unchurched can?t catch on,? she said, noting that she points to her faith in various posts. ?I see it as though I?m digging a well. I?m providing people help with food and clothing, helping them get out of debt, and then they?re open to hearing the gospel.?
On the surface, most of Paine?s posts show you how to get free samples, save a few bucks, or organize your life. But she says her readers glean bigger principles.
?Wanna grab a burrito 2nite?? The melody of the Atlanta symphony?s instruments flowed through the auditorium. I didn?t have high expectations for dating at 23, but a text containing the word burrito wasn?t exactly what I had in mind (and with 1 hour notice). I liked him, but couldn?t escape the mental picture of showing up in a swanky outfit to an establishment where my entrance would be announced in a jubilee of ?Welcome to Moe?s!?
The resounding question I hear from many single women today is: ?Where have all the good men gone?? Recently, several articles and statistics have shown that women are making history with career achievements, while men in increasing numbers are seemingly living in a prolonged state of adolescence, sitting back with their buddies and playing video games. Cultural observers note that men are not finding compelling reasons to grow up and marry. The former cultural standards of marriage for sex and children have changed drastically in the past 50 years as one-night stands are celebrated and single parenthood accepted. And women are only fueling this behavior by excusing it. The charged response to my husband?s blog post ?Real Men Don?t Text?revealed women?s frustration with text messages, video games, and guys who still act like frat boys. Women posted the link on Facebook and wrote things like ?Can I get an a-men?? ?Men! Read This!? Others wrote in with stories about men who had asked them out through text, broke up with them through text, and asked them to have sex through text. Men were challenged to ?grow a pair, pick up your Bible, turn off the video game, and pursue a woman.? But an interesting perspective arose from the clamor of ?Amens!? Several men said that while ?real men don?t text,? real women don?t text back. They knew, from experience, that a woman wasn?t worth pursuing if she engaged in a text relationship.
When Psychology Today ran an article titled ?Dangers of ?Crying it Out,?? my response was, perhaps predictably, jaded. I read the article, then clicked over to one of my ?Birth Clubs? on BabyCenter to watch the ensuing fun while I nursed my seven-month-old. It took a while for the drama to start?when I landed on the page, everyone was up in arms about extended-rear-facing versus forward-facing car seats?but before my daughter had finished nursing, someone had linked to the Psychology Today article. And the insults and name-calling began.
In case anyone is curious, the Mommy Wars are alive and well. ?Dangers of ?Crying it Out? ? didn't cover any earth-shattering territory. Written by Notre Dame psychologist Darcia Narvaez, the article described the psychological harm done by leaving an infant to cry to teach ?self-soothing.? Mommy War veterans will recognize many of Narvaez's points as reminiscent of Penelope Leach's headline-making arguments of 2010, and William Sears's headline-making arguments that date back a lot longer. Their conclusion: Leaving a baby to ?cry it out? increases their stress hormone cortisol, which can be toxic to the developing neurons in baby's brain. ?Crying it out? can also undermine trust, impair self-regulation, and threaten lifelong health. Narvaez credits behaviorist John Watson with launching the ?crusade against affection? in his 1928 book Psychological Care of Infant and Child. So far-reaching were Watson's anti-affection endeavors that a government pamphlet from that time instructed new mothers to ?stop [holding the baby] immediately if her arms feel tired,? as ?the baby is never to inconvenience the adult.? (As the mother of four, I find the idea of a baby never inconveniencing an adult hilarious.)
When award-winning nonprofit leader Faith Huckel moved to New York City in 2003, she expected her time there to shape her career, but she thought that impact would come more from the social work graduate program she was entering than events at the United Nations headquarters nearby.
Then, just weeks into her studies, President George W. Bush addressed the UN, concluding a speech focused on the Middle East with a discussion of human trafficking, which he called a ?modern-day form of slavery.? Four months later, The New York Times Magazine ran an 8,500-word cover story on sex trafficking in America that launched thousands of shocked conversations. Speaking to me recently, Huckel recalled the typical reaction to the report: ?What? This is happening here? No. Come on. That?s crazy.? But, for her, she said, curiosity became an ?obsession.? During previous social work in Philadelphia, Huckel, 33, had already seen the connection between poverty and commercial sex. ?No one wakes up as a little girl one day and says, ?I think I?m going to be a prostitute. That?s a great career for myself,? ? she said. ?Because of poverty, of gender oppression, of life situations and circumstances of being coerced, oftentimes forced, you are then forced into prostitution.? Yet, like many Americans at the time, Huckel was stunned by what she learned about the scale of sex trafficking. ?The more and more that I learned, the more broken I became for wanting to do something about this,? she said.
In 1997, Mary Belenky, Blythe Clinchy, Nancy Goldberger, and Jill Tarule published an important book titled Women?s Ways of Knowing, in which they explored how women understand themselves, their minds, and their relationship to knowledge, and considered whether the cognitive process of knowing is different between the genders.
From their research, the authors discerned five relationships to knowledge, the most basic being ?Silence.? ?Silent women? were often stranded in an elementary stage of knowing, having no personal voice with which to reflect on knowledge. Without a voice to represent their own perspectives of the world, these women were virtually dependent on the opinions of others. Studies like this one demonstrate the power of having a voice. Expressing one?s self and feeling heard are uniquely human activities that give us confidence to grow and create. We see this human need even in Scripture, including in the psalmist?s statement, ?There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard? (19:3). The power of voice also composes the premise of Jim Henderson?s new book, The Resignation of Eve: What if Adam?s Rib Is No Longer Willing to be the Church?s Backbone? (BarnaBooks). Picking up on Barna Group?s recent findings about women exiting the church, Henderson (pastor, author of Jim and Casper Go to Church) brings the statistics to life with flesh-and-blood stories of evangelical women.
On the shelf of your church?s bookstore, Are You Waiting for ?The One?? (InterVarsity), by Dwight N. and Margaret Kim Peterson, might look like any other Christian book on dating and marriage. Look a little harder.
The new book, subtitled ?Cultivating Realistic, Positive Expectations for Christian Marriage,? is refreshingly different, captured in those two words realistic and positive. Instead of hard-and-fast statements about the One Best Biblical Way to Do Relationships, the Petersons offer a gentle, reasoned approach that allows room for Christian singles and couples to discover, within the context of faith, what works best in their own unique relationships. The couple says the book was born out of a course they've taught for years at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pennsylvania. And they say the course has been as much of an education for them as for their students. ?Neither of us was really familiar with the large collection of Christian marriage literature out there,? Dwight, a professor of New Testament at Eastern, recently told me. When students started bringing in popular Christian relationship books for the couple to look at, ?we were sort of . . .? ?Aghast,? supplies Margaret, an associate professor of theology. ?Disappointed,? Dwight adds, ?at their lack of depth and wisdom.? Many of the books, written by young Christian leaders who knew firsthand the contours of the current dating scene, tended to apply a ?black and white, there must be an answer to everything? mindset that can lead to problems down the road, says Margaret.
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