The One and Done Club

My friend recently started a blog, oneanddone.ca; a rumination about having one child. Many of her thoughts are also my thoughts and since we decided ("at this time") to also only have one, I've been thinking incessantly about this change of mind and what it will mean for our family. And when friends ask "why" I find myself scrambling to somehow justify this "lesser" family style. Why is it something that needs to be justified? What makes it less noble, somehow, than having multiple? The less-than-understanding nods of "oh yeah..." when I try to explain it to a stranger, and the, "you'll see," sighs from moms of multiples... So this weekend after reading some very compelling articles, one interesting fact is dominating my obsession with understanding this in context of what seems to me to be a cultural no-no (despite the rise of single child families). Lauren Sandler writes in the Times:

"The image of the lonely only — or at least the legitimizing of that idea — was the work of one man, Granville Stanley Hall. About 120 years ago, Hall established one of the first American psychology-research labs and was a leader of the child-study movement. A national network of study groups called Hall Clubs existed to spread his teachings. But what he is most known for today is supervising the 1896 study "Of Peculiar and Exceptional Children," which described a series of only-child oddballs as permanent misfits. Hall — and every other fledgling psychologist — knew close to nothing about credible research practices. Yet for decades, academics and advice columnists alike disseminated his conclusion that an only child could not be expected to go through life with the same capacity for adjustment that children with siblings possessed. "Being an only child is a disease in itself," he claimed." Via

Holy shit! What?! All this futile explanation and my own questioning that it's the right choice for our family and all because of one man who claimed that being an only child is a disease in itself!? A little more reading and I find that not only did he believe in separating boys and girls for learning (i.e. training for motherhood and household leaders), but "h[]e predicted that the American emphasis on individual human right and dignity would lead to a fall that he analogized to the sinking of Atlantis" and that:

Hall argued that child development recapitulates his highly racialized conception of the history of human evolutionary development. He characterized pre-adolescent children as savages and therefore rationalized that reasoning was a waste of time with children. He believed that children must simply be led to fear God, love country and develop a strong body. As the child burns out the vestiges of evil in his nature, he needs a good dose of authoritarian discipline, including corporal punishment.[3] He believed that adolescents were characterized by more altruistic natures and that high schools should indoctrinate students into selfless ideals of service, patriotism, body culture, military discipline, love of authority, awe of nature and devotion to the state and well being of others.[7] Hall consistently argued against intellectual attainment at all levels of public education. Open discussion and critical opinions were not to be tolerated. Students needed indoctrination to save them from the individualism that was so damaging to the progress of American culture.

Via I'm shocked and amazed by this and need to spend some time processing that his ideas about single-child families have maintained their grip to our collective thought and captured the pure imagination of us all. Because these ideas about only-children are truly that. Imagination from Bad Science.

What the Douche?

Compliments of a friend's email forward, here is a horrifying product from the 50s-60s, "Vagasan", a powder (what!?) douching product (via Madame Talbot) with these lovely ingredients:

Carbolic Acid 1/8 of 1% in mixed usable solution (Phenol, also known as carbolic acid, is a toxic, white crystalline solid with a sweet tarry odor, commonly referred to as a "hospital smell". During the 1880s Diphtheria was treated by Phenol Douches.)

Boric Acid A boric acid douche used to be the most commonly recommended means of addressing vaginal yeast.

Alum (think of pickeling alum)

Methyl Salicylate is a wintergreen-scented chemical found in many over-the-counter products, including muscle ache creams.

and Oil of Peppermint

Oh my godde. Acid and Pickling do not create word associations for vagina!! More on douching.

Catalogue of the Catalogued

This is a great site featuring books found in existing libraries that shouldn't be. Upon first finding this site via metafilter, this is my favourite book so far: Moving through Pregnancy. Be sure to click the vacuum photo and view the description of Judith's tedious workout (but great posture!)!

There's also this book and this book and this book and this book and so many more!

Dark Matter & Ceiling Shatter

New Scientiest writer Anil Ananthaswamy interviews the first woman to head a particle physics experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland. Fabiola Gianotti, also an artist and musician, says:

CERN is such a rich environment: there are people from all over the world, young students work with established scientists and Nobel prizewinners. So geographical origin, age and gender make no difference here. I don't feel there is anything special about a woman leading a big scientific project. On the other hand, I hope that as a woman scientist who has achieved a level of visibility in a big experiment like ATLAS, I can be an encouragement to young women who are thinking of a scientific career.

Indeed, Ms. Gianotti is an inspiration to women in science, particularly physics, and as previously noted in "Written Word for Nerd", Natalie Angier reports that 26 percent of full professors in the life sciences are women, but in physics, 6 percent. She continues:

For many female physicists, the mystery of women’s slow progress through their ranks is nearly as baffling as the research mysteries they confront in the lab. Of course, only 6 percent of physics professors are female; only 4 to 6 percent of the matter in the universe is visible. “Sound familiar?” Evalyn Gates, the assistant director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, said wryly.

You can read the entire interview here!

Written Word for Nerd

Natalie Angier writes an important article on the new USA Administration's potential impact on women in science, In ‘Geek Chic’ and Obama, New Hope for Lifting Women in Science. An excerpt:

Surveying outcomes for 160,000 Ph.D. recipients across the United States, the researchers determined that 70 percent of male tenured professors were married with children, compared with only 44 percent of their tenured female colleagues. Twelve years or more after receiving their doctorates, tenured women were more than twice as likely as tenured men to be single and significantly more likely to be divorced. And lest all of this look like “personal choice,” when the researchers asked 8,700 faculty members in the University of California system about family and work issues, nearly 40 percent of the women agreed with the statement, “I had fewer children than I wanted,” compared with less than 20 percent of the men. The take-home message, Dr. Mason said in a telephone interview, is, “Men can have it all, but women can’t.”

Check out the work the Rosalind Franklin Society is doing for women in science.