I had one of those rare opportunities to meet a living legend last night: Jane Fonda. When I told my dad, earlier in the day, that I’d be meeting her, he excitedly reminded me that he’d taken part in the Concerned Officers Movement, a non-sanctioned network of commissioned officers, including some psychiatrists, when he was in the Navy during Vietnam. I grew up with his stories about his visits to the ships, his work in the hospital, and how he was able to really help some of the sailors, and I felt proud.

Sitting in a room full of women listening to Jane Fonda read from her memoir (My Life So Far) and then field questions about life, hope, and activism, I felt pride in a woman I had no claim to feel so personally proud of. But proud is what I felt. Proud, perhaps, just to know that there are humans like her. And wishing that this current war had a Jane Fonda, too. (Jodie Evans, of CodePink, was among those at the event, and I salute her here as well.)

And just a note to Girl Sailor, my blogging connection to the military and to the brave and heartfelt perspective of a female soldier: I feel proud of you too.

Ok, am signing off, before I get too verklempt here this morning. But I’ll just say this: it’s so easy to get hardened in this crazy faraway town called NYC, and listening to Jane opens that part of your heart that lets a lot of feeling in, and makes you want to change the world. Again and again and again.

For Purse Pundit’s take on the evening, click here. And gratitude to the WMC for facilitating the evening.

And the Depressing Fact of the Day award goes to this:

As reported in the LA Times on Monday, Rapists in the Rank, women serving in the U.S. military are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq.

WTF. I have nothing more to say.

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Last week was Jewesses Who Rock (literally) Week on Jewess Blog. Check it out! And speaking of, this week marks the 113th anniversary — (“centennial + bat mitzvah!”) — of the launch issue of The American Jewess, the first English-language publication directed to American Jewish women. Writes Rebecca Honig Friedman with backup from the Jewish Women’s Archive Staff:

I had big fun meeting Nancy Gruver (pictured left) this weekend, at the WAM! conference. Nancy is the genius behind the print mag New Moon: The Magazine for Girls and Their Dreams–which has recently relaunched as New Moon Girl Media, “an international girls’ empowerment company dedicated to bringing girls’ voices to the world.”

As my gal Julia Barry (of In Her Image fame) tells me, they’ve now launched a growth plan to reach a wider age-range and global demographic of girls, which includes LunaVida, an online club for girls aged 8-12, and orb28.com, the web community for and by girls aged 13-15+. These are girl-only, ad-free environments where girls can be themselves, share their creativity, connect with other girls, and get accurate information on issues they care about. Meanwhile, for grown-up girls (and grown-up boys), founder Nancy hosts a blog on the site called the Parent’s/Adult Blog.

Congrats to all over there, and how wonderful it’s been watching New Moon grow from sliver to full moon. I remember when the magazine first pubbed in the early ’90s, and how tempted I was to quit what I was doing and go work for ya’ll.

(PS. We’re experiencing minor font difficulty over here–should be back to normal soon! – GWP)

So here’s an email I received yesterday that made me laugh–and then made me want to cry. Read it, and you’ll see what I mean. (Picture sold separately.)

A BREAKTHROUGH FOR WORKING PARENTS!!!

At last, working parents can stop feeling guilty and start enjoying their family lives without giving up their jobs:

*A pregnant woman can now take leave from work six weeks before her baby is due and stay out ten weeks after the birth, all at full pay, with return to her job guaranteed.

*Fathers can take up to 11 days off after the birth of a baby, also at full pay. The parents can then share up to three years of leave time without risk of losing their jobs, and will receive a stipend if they are staying home with two or more children.

* Family-friendly policies don’t stop after parents go back to work. Work hours are now set at 35 hours per week, and all workers receive twelve national holidays and five paid weeks of vacation

* A national preschool program is available to all children ages 3-5. It requires teachers have a master’s degree and pays those teachers a living wage.

IS AMERICA A GREAT PLACE FOR FAMILIES OR WHAT?

APRIL FOOL! Those benefits are available to families in France, not the U.S.

-In Belgium, working women are entitled to four weeks maternity leave at 82 percent of their salary, and 11 more weeks at 74 percent. Belgian workers are entitled to 20 days paid vacation time and 10 national holidays. They also get up to 10 days of fully-paid leave each year to care for sick family members.

-Canada offers Employment Insurance for both maternity and paternity leave, allowing a couple to take up to 50 weeks leave, which can be divided between mother and father, at 55 percent of pay, up to a maximum of $435 per week. In addition, Canada’s Universal Child Care Benefit pays families $100 per month for each child under age six.

BACK TO REALITY

So what’s the real story about the U.S.?

* Of the 20 richest countries in the world, only Australia and the U.S. have no national law requiring paid maternity leave. Parents are eligible for only twelve weeks unpaid leave, the shortest amount of leave time of all Western industrialized countries. Furthermore, employees are not guaranteed unpaid leave unless their employer has over 50 workers within 75 miles of the parent’s worksite and the employee has worked for the company for at least 12 months. Of workers eligible for leave who do not take it, 78 percent say that is because they can’t afford to take time off without any pay.

*The U.S. is the only Western industrialized nation that does not mandate paid vacations. On average, we work nearly nine full weeks longer per year than our peers in Western Europe.

This funny yet sad wake up call brought to you by my friends at the Council on Contemporary Families.

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Here’s a recap of the intergenerational feminist panel I spoke on last week at The New School, organized by Ann Snitow. (Thank you, Kristen, for that incredibly thoughtful write-up!)

Check out the guest blog Debbie and I did for our favorite gal, Marci Alboher, who runs the Shifting Careers blog over at The New York Times. An excerpt:

DS: I’m noticing that the younger women in our audiences frequently talk about a lack of mentoring at nonprofit organizations. The older women we talk to—the college professors, the nonprofit execs—tell us younger women expect too much from them. Why do you think there seems to be such a disconnect in expectations at this point in time?

CM: I think we were a generation told, “You can be anything!” and we mistranslated it as “I have to be everything.” Our outlandish expectations of our mentors are just a reflection of our outlandish expectation of ourselves. The hardest thing is to find balance between going for your wildest dreams and having reasonable, healthy goals. Any advice?

An often savvy reporter, Sharon Jayson, had an interesting piece in USA Today last week (March 25), which comes to my attention today courtesy of CCF. In “Boomers’ Hope: That the ‘kids’ are all right”, Jayson documents that a growing number of baby boomer parents are worried that their young adult children are lacking direction and motivation – and they may just stay that way. From the CCF summary:

These young adults aren’t slackers; they often have jobs to pay the rent and are seemingly on their own. But these parents worry that the close relationships they’ve cultivated with their children may have stifled their self-sufficiency. Others think young people may be caught in a vicious cycle, created by economics and fueled by parents. Having options is something young people expect, according to Richard Sweeney of the New Jersey Institute of Technology, who conducts young adult focus groups for colleges and corporations. “The bigger the choice, the more likely they are to postpone,” he said. “They don’t want to make a bad choice.” Having too many options – and the “anything is possible” mantra boomers inculcated in their children – may have backfired for some young adults, agreed Barry Schwartz, a psychology professor at Swarthmore College and author of “The Paradox of Choice.” “I think this is a major problem – this inability of people to pull the trigger because they’re worried there might be something better around the corner.”

I totally hear this from the late-twenties and thirty-something folks I’m interviewing for my next book. But I have to question these assumptions a bit. I’m the kid of Boomers and was massively indecisive in college, but grew out of it in my early twenties, only to hit a bout of indecision mid-grad school (to the tune of “should I stay or should I go”) in my late twenties. My thirties have been filled with growing certainty. I think decisiveness comes with age.

But regardless, what’s the alternative? I think about this as I begin to shift from thinking of myself as the daughter to myself as the parent. How do next-generation parents instill the dream of anything-is-possible with the reality that one must choose?

It all reminds me of this image I once read in a Sylvia Plath novel–that of a young girl sitting under a tree full of ripe fruit, starving. Which all, of course, comes back to a certain book we all know now called Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters. (Just had to throw that in…)

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Just wanted to share a bit more about a new 2-session workshop I’m teaching this month with fellow writer Alissa Quart. There are still a few slots open, so if you are interested, please either shoot me an email (girlwpen@yahoo.com) or simply register this week, over at the Woodhull site! I’m really excited for this one. Here’s the description:

FINDING YOUR SUBJECT, FINDING YOUR VOICE
A Seminar in Personal Nonfiction
April 13 11am -3pm, April 17th 6-9pm
NYC – locale TBD

So many of us want to put our ideas or personal experiences down on paper, but don’t know how to find our medium or shape our raw material into stories. In two intensive sessions, we will seek to find the topic, style and genre for that which we most wish to express. We will start by asking ourselves questions about what we have experienced in our lives. What’s notable about us and what are we experts in? What are our motives for writing? What specific goal are we hoping to achieve by writing about our lives? After taking a hard look at our interests, work and life experiences, we will figure out whether they will intersect with an audience, what sort of audience, and how to position our ideas and ourselves in order to reach that audience. With this accomplished, we will build out our best article, essay, blog, or book ideas. By the end of the class, each student will have either a story pitch, an outline for a short article or an oped, a start on a personal essay, or an idea for a book or a blog. These written frames will serve as the culmination of our in-class exercises, group conversations, and at-home writing in between the two sessions.

In order to get a better sense of voice, story and topic in non-fiction, we will read a selection of modern essay writers (among them Joan Didion’s Goodbye To All That, a selection from Alexandra Fuller’s Don’t Let’s Go To The Dogs Tonight, Mary McCarthy, Luc Sante and Jonathan Lethem). In order to get a better sense of blog personae, content, and voice, we will look together at range of blogs with strong personal voices and discuss. For those who decide to create their own blogs as a means of personal expression, we will create them on-site, along with names and domains, learning about blog style, purpose, and community along the way. We will discuss how blog writing differs and overlaps with more traditional forms of personal writing as well.

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Two quick links to share this morning:

A guest post I wrote with Courtney for Marci Alboher’s New York Times blog, Shifting Careers, titled “Notes from an Intergenerational Conversation.” Court and I chew over how generational issues are affecting women at work. We hit on topics from fashion to mentoring and “entitlement.” Comments over there most welcome!

And a recap of the intergenerational feminist panel I spoke on last week at The New School, organized by Ann Snitow. (Thank you, Kristen, for that incredibly thoughtful write-up.)