Work it, baby? Literally? Huggies ad needs a rethink

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A handy guide to student loan resources

President Obama wants to overhaul the way student loans are made.   This is good news as the default rate on student loans climbs and many students are scratching their heads, trying to figure out how and whether to pay for college at a time when lenders don't want to lend.  If Obama succeeds, more loans will be made directly by the Federal government, eliminating the notorious middlemen that seem to exist only to make a profit for themselves. 

 

In the meantime, the Consumerist offers this handy guide to student loan resources, a big help to anyone trying to finance their own future.

 

 

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Since when did "brightest" mean "richest?"

Judith Warner's column is bang-on target today. She questions the ever more-frequent use of the phrase "best and brightest" to describe those who work on Wall Street, rather than, say, top physicists or human rights workers or third-grade teachers. The "best" in American culture is increasingly equated with the "richest" or "most expensive" rather than "most creative" or "most daring" or "most humane."

Warner: "A nice triple usage by Forbes.com columnist Susan Lee, in a piece on the proposed $500,000 compensation cap for top management, was typical: “This produced outraged shrieks from Wall Street that any pay cut would cause the best and brightest to head for the exits,” she wrote. “… But the big flaw here is that the best and brightest have nowhere to go … unless the best and the brightest want jobs as home-care attendants or third-grade teachers, there’s no place to jump.”

When was it, exactly, that the titans of Wall Street, among their many other perks and privileges, got to be crowned with the title of “best and brightest”?

Certainly not in the early 19th century, when Percy Bysshe Shelley, in his love poem “The Invitation,” called, “Best and brightest, come away!” Nor in the early 20th century, when “The Education of Henry Adams” featured a sad, exalted tribute to the geologist Clarence King as the “best and brightest man of his generation.”

The ability to make big bucks wasn’t the chief characteristic of the “best and brightest,” “each new man more brilliant than the last,” whom David Halberstam described in the 1972 book that brought the phrase into our common parlance. His “best and brightest” were ultimately no better than ours; their “arrogance and hubris” led us into the debacle of Vietnam. But they did at least embody a different order of aspiration. They “wrote books and won prizes (even the president had won a Pulitzer prize), climbed mountains to clear their minds. Many of them read poetry and some were said to be able to quote it.”"

So, maybe the Kennedy-era "best and brightest" got up to a bunch of stuff that wasn't that great, or that bright. But the point is that there was once a time when young people aspired to do something other than make big fat heaps of money. Many still do. But maybe there need to be more, and maybe our culture should stop elevating the wealthy over the interesting, the well-read, creative and original. As Warner notes, we once again have a "book-writing president;" maybe our values are about to shift a little...

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Blog: A healthy kiddie-cuisine cookbook that works

The Ethicurean's tagline is Chew the Right Thing.

On Monday the Ethicurean reviewed "Real Food for Healthy Kids" by Tanya Wenmen Steel and Tracey Seaman:

"The book offers plenty of for-scratch alternatives to kids’ menu items — Mega Mac n’ Cheese, Quick Chick Parm, Not-Your-Basic Turkey Burger — as well as some forays into more exotic fare, like Asian Noodle Coconut Soup, Tzatziki, Mango Lassi, Indian-Spiced Spinach, and Thai Green Curry. There are suggestions for healthier kids’ lunches, notes on table etiquette, tips for baby’s first foods, and information on kids’ nutritional needs. With this book in hand, novice chefs can learn the basics — like making a pot of rice, poaching an egg, and baking with yeast — and start to feel a little more confident in the kitchen, prouder as they plunk down healthy meals for their kids.

Even parents who are comfortable in the kitchen will find some good recipes. The Green and Bean Enchiladas, made with spinach and pinto beans, were happily consumed by everyone in the house. The Creamed Spinach was comforting and hearty and would satisfy even the most dedicated Boston Market zealot. The Peanut Butter Blondies, made with whole wheat flour and a touch of chocolate chips, make a terrific treat for the non-allergic. I didn’t quite understand what the Warm Strawberry Smoothie was supposed to accomplish —and more important, neither did the kids — but for us, that’s been the only obvious misstep."

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Nobody Expects the Environmental Inquisition

Fox News - the network that brought us the “terrorist fist bump” would now like us to consider the fact that we are for all intents and purposes, brainwashing our children and turning them into the Environmental Inquisition.

The students at Western Avenue Elementary School in Flossmoor, IL have been learning how to be responsible citizens of the world by taking part in “National Green Week.” Why? Well, as Victoria Walters, President of the Green Education Foundation says, “It’s important to start creating habits now, while children are young because it can add up over a lifetime to make huge monumental consequences to the environment.”

Oddly enough, not everyone thinks being this responsible is a good idea. Fox reports that critics claim this is tantamount to "environmental religion" because the beliefs are being forced on the kids. They quote the people at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, “a non-profit public policy organization dedicated to advancing the principles of free enterprise and limited government” say this: "I think children should not be forced to take one set of values over another," Logomasini said. "This isn't simply about controlling litter, like we had in the '70s. It's more about recycling, living organically- it's a lifestyle choice that is being forced on students whether they like it or not, whether parents like it or not." (read the article here: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,489591,00.html )

Living organically and recycling is a “lifestyle choice that is being forced on students?” According to the CEI, absolutely. They also say this: “In any case, single-serving plastic water bottles amount to just 0.3 percent of the nation’s solid waste.” (http://cei.org/issue-analysis/2009/02/17/bottled-water-and-overflowing-nanny-state) But, over time won’t that 0.3 percent add up exponentially? Don’t worry, the CEI assures us that: “In a hundred years, we could probably mine the old waste if we needed it! Researchers at the University of Arizona showed back in the 1990s that landfills preserved the waste so well that they found perfectly intact 20-plus year old newspapers, hot dogs, and even lettuce!” (http://cei.org/articles/whole-truth-about-plastic-bags)

Don’t worry, indeed. Isn’t that what got us here? If the thought of a 20-year-old hot dog pulled from a landfill is supposed to engender excitement, we should all be very worried.

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Blog: Save Dora from "Tween" sexuality/consumerism

Packaging Girlhood is an excellent blog for any parent of young girls concerned about the widespread commercial sexualization of girls. Commercial and media messages bombard girls with the impression that their primary role should be that of sex object and shopaholic in a sort of Sex & the City World for the younger set, minus the irony and wit.

Now Viacom, which owns Dora the Explorer, wants to take Dora out of her explorer gear and put her in a cute pink miniskirt for the coveted "tween" market. Packaging Girlhood is launching a campaign to stop Viacom:

"In Packaging Girlhood, we wrote extensively about Dora the Explorer as one of the best role models in girls' early worlds. She wears (or used to, anyway) shorts. She has a sidekick monkey. She has a map and a compass and a backpack! She solves problems and explores the world in Spanish and English. Her motto is "Let's go!" and it could never be construed in that wink, wink kind of way. But those adventuresome folks who created Dora no longer own her. She's owned by Viacom who can sell the rights to her to the highest bidder. That's right. The highest bidder. A bunch of greedy corporate execs own her and can use her image, re-MAKE her image, in any way they see fit to make money. But we know the truth. If the original Dora grew up, she wouldn't be a fashion icon or a shopaholic. She'd develop her map reading skills and imagine the places she could go. She’d capitalize on those problem solving skills to design new ways to bring fresh water to communities in need around the world. Maybe she’d become a world class runner or follow her love of animals and become a wildlife preservationist or biologist. We’ll never know because the only way a girl can grow up in tween town, is to narrow that symphony of choices to one note. It's such a sell out of Dora, of all girls. That’s why we’re starting a campaign! Join us and Hardy Girls Healthy Women for Let’s Go: No Makeover for Dora. Help us tell the execs at Viacom to “Let GO” of Dora. Either let her live on as her wonderful self, or create a pre-teen doll that is true to who she was as a child!"

Visit Packaging Girlhood for more information on the campaign.

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TV won't make your baby an Einstein, but maybe a thug

A new study published in Pediatrics says that watching television has absolutely no cognitive or language benefits for babies. The study, performed by Marie Evans Schmidt of Children's Hospital in Boston, found that babies who watched an average of 1.2 hours of TV a day, including "educational" videos that are supposed to improve a child's cognition and vocabulary, did no better on cognitive and language skills tests than did babies who watched no television. Far more important was the level of the mother's education and income, which predicts the amount of time she spends talking to and reading to her child.

But while TV watching will not help a child's development, it could do harm: 2007 study by Dr. Dimitri Christakis of the Seattle Children's Hospital Research Institute and Andrew Metzkoff of the University of Washington's Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences found that "While appropriate television viewing at the right age can be helpful for both children and parents, excessive viewing before age 3 has been shown to be associated with problems of attention control, aggressive behavior and poor cognitive development. Early television viewing has exploded in recent years, and is one of the major public health issues facing American children."

These findings are important because of the recent flood of DVDs claiming to make children smarter. Parents of all educational backgrounds want to do what's best for their children, and many, believing the claims of these commercial products, plunk their kids down in front of TVs for hours each day. But TV is no match for interaction with parents and other children when it comes to developing brains.

So how much TV should a little one watch? From Time: "What I tell parents is 'Ask yourself why you're having your baby watch TV,'" says Christakis. "If you absolutely need a break to take a shower or make dinner, then the risks are quite low. But if you are doing it because you think it's actually good for your child's brain, then you need to rethink that because there is no evidence of benefit, and certainly a risk of harm at high viewing levels."

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Get those kids in the kitchen!

Chef and food writer Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall discusses the benefits of teaching children to cook from an early age:

""I'm booorrrrred."

When I was a kid, this baleful entreaty was initially met by my mother with all kinds of helpful suggestions about paints or Lego or jigsaws. Somehow they never quite did it for me. But she struck a rich vein the first time she said, "Why don't we do some cooking?" Standing on a stool at the kitchen table, I was able, with guidance, to conduct my own orchestra of whisks and bowls, eggs and flour, butter, sugar and cocoa, and compose my own Great Mess Indeed."

Getting kids into the kitchen is, arguably, not going to result in less work for the supervising parent than if he'd just cooked the food himself. But it has many benefits, including: getting a picky eater to take an active role in her diet, teaching kids about nutrition, chemistry, and math, building confidence and problem-solving skills, and, of course, spending quality, screen-free time together.

Not to mention the fact that cooking skills will go a long way toward improving your kid's quality of life, health, and budget once they've left home.

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Only Nazis would teach children about climate change

Glenn Beck's head exploded on Friday, as he declared that Al Gore is building a "Nazi youth movement" in America by "indoctrinating" kids about climate change. Apparently, even calling it "climate change" rather than using the old, less-accurate "global warming" is some kind of insidious brainwashing ploy:

"So last night, I told you we were on the road to socialism...well, tonight...some may believe we're on the road to the Hitler Youth...

I want to play the voice of Al Gore. He is speaking to a bunch of teens and pre-teens at a youth convention on global warming, or, as he's calling it now, "climate change." [voice of Gore] "There are some things about our world that you know that older people don't know." Yeah...

What is the point of all this? Well, as I see it, as a father of four, you're probably a little like me. You're working hard to raise your kids right and it seems like everything's stacked against you. In many cases, both you and your spouses are working and some are working two jobs. You get home, and you're tired, man, you've been dealing with a screaming boss all day, an economy that's falling apart. Everyone's freaking out wondering if they're even gonna have a job next week, and you've got a government that's out of control, you're looking at the TV and you're like, "what the hell are they doing now?" And you're doing it all without any help. In fact, I think you're doing it AGAINST everything that's been "set up" to make your life oh-so-easy. And NOW you've got a former Vice President of the United States and a Nobel Prize Winner looking your kids in the eye and telling them, "You know what? you know things that your dad doesn't." Well, try to beat THAT, Mom and Dad."

So Beck is not only a champion against socialism, he's also protecting America from National Socialism: Basically, Beck's "argument," if we can call it that, is that while hard-working Americans only care about saving their jobs, Al Gore is out to brainwash their children into...what? He went on to play more of Al Gore's comments, in which Gore compared his childhood experience with the Civil Rights Movement to the climate-change movement and encouraged children to ask tough questions of their parents. It's unclear what, exactly, Beck finds dangerous in Gore's pitch to youth. Mostly, he seems to be defending a father's right to come home from work, put his feet up, watch Fox News and not be pestered by his know-it-all kids and their uncomfortable questions. Well done, Glenn Beck. Way to stick up for a parent's right to stifle their children's curiosity and budding sense of personal responsibility.

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Parenthood the key to happy marriage? It depends.

Whether parenthood makes marriage partners more or less happy depends entirely on how they go about becoming and being parents. Agreeing on whether and when to have children, and having a plan for how to care for for them, are important ingredients for a happy marriage, writes Stephanie Coontz in today's NY Times.

Coontz writes:

" Over the past two decades, however, many researchers have concluded that three’s a crowd when it comes to marital satisfaction. More than 25 separate studies have established that marital quality drops, often quite steeply, after the transition to parenthood. And forget the “empty nest” syndrome: when the children leave home, couples report an increase in marital happiness.

But does the arrival of children doom couples to a less satisfying marriage? Not necessarily. Two researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, Philip and Carolyn Cowan, report in a forthcoming briefing paper for the Council on Contemporary Families that most studies finding a large drop in marital quality after childbirth do not consider the very different routes that couples travel toward parenthood.

Some couples plan the conception and discuss how they want to conduct their relationship after the baby is born. Others disagree about whether or when to conceive, with one partner giving in for the sake of the relationship. And sometimes, both partners are ambivalent.

The Cowans found that the average drop in marital satisfaction was almost entirely accounted for by the couples who slid into being parents, disagreed over it or were ambivalent about it. Couples who planned or equally welcomed the conception were likely to maintain or even increase their marital satisfaction after the child was born.

Marital quality also tends to decline when parents backslide into more traditional gender roles. Once a child arrives, lack of paid parental leave often leads the wife to quit her job and the husband to work more. This produces discontent on both sides. The wife resents her husband’s lack of involvement in child care and housework. The husband resents his wife’s ingratitude for the long hours he works to support the family."

It seems that "lack of parental leave" is also a key factor in couples' unhappiness in parenthood. I would also add "lack of affordable childcare" to the mix. Often a couple has no choice but for one partner, usually the wife, to leave work entirely in order to provide care for the children, as paying for childcare will eat up so much of the couple's income it becomes untenable for both partners to work outside the home. If young, modern couples had more latitude in their childcare and work arrangements, they would be far less likely to "backslide into traditional gender roles," I suspect.

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