Search results for day care

Crossposted at Jezebel.

Robin E. sent us to a downright fascinating set of survey results.   Administered by a Christian website, the survey questions were submitted by “Christian girls” who wanted to know what “Christian guys” think is modest.  1,600 guys then answered the survey, offering both quantitative and qualitative answers.   Why would girls care what guys, as opposed to God, think?  Because Christian guys, their future husbands, are judging them on their modesty.  Ninety-five percent of them say that modesty is an important quality in their future wife (see the question in the upper left corner):

So, how do these “guys” define immodesty?  The most common theme was dressing to draw attention to the body instead of the heart or spirit.

Something that is immodest is something that is designed to arouse lust within me (male, age 24).

Something that is immodest is something that is unnaturally revealing (male, age 20).

Something immodest draws attention to a girl’s body (male, age 28).

Many of the guys stressed that they really wanted to interact with girls as people.  Borrowing language from feminism, they expressed a desire to think of a girl as a whole person, not just a hot body.

Something attractive draws you toward them. It makes you respect the person. Something immodest is usually unattractive. It makes you think less of that person, thinking of them as an object… (male, age 16).

My responsibility is to not treat women as objects for my satisfaction, even if they dress and act like it. It devalues them, and makes me a user of people… (male, age 26).

In a move that is in contrast to (most) feminist values, however, girls are supposed to help men treat them like people by not dressing like an object.  That is, by not dressing immodestly.

So what rules for girls did guys identify?

Well, first, guys largely agreed that revealing clothes were immodest (again, see the question in the upper left corner):

Halter tops and mini skirts, I suppose, are obvious candidates for immodesty.  There were lots more subtle rules, too, though with less agreement.

Forty-four percent of guys think that designs on the back pockets of jeans are immodest (19% aren’t sure):

A minority, 19 percent, think that shirts with pockets are immodest (25% aren’t sure):

Forty-eight percent think that purses should not be worn across the body (19% aren’t sure):

Thirty-nine percent oppose tights with designs (25% aren’t sure):

Forty-seven think that t-shirts with messages across the front improperly draw attention to breasts:

But being modest wasn’t simply a matter of clothes.  Guys defined immodesty, also, as an “attitude” or a “carelessness.”  Attaining modesty was also about how you use your body and the way you act, “sexually or otherwise.”

An immodest lady is loud, proud, and dresses in a way that communicates such an attitude (male, age 24).

Something becomes immodest when the person wearing it has an attitude of carelessness (male, age 17).

As one guy said:

If you are dressing to get attention from a guy, then anything you wear can be immodest (male, age 13; my emphasis).

Some examples of behavior the guys mostly agreed was immodest:

Immodesty, then, is not simply about being vigilant about your clothing (don’t wear a purse that falls diagonally across your body, don’t show your arms or your thighs), it’s a constant vigilance about how you display your body (don’t stretch, bend, or bounce).  “Clothing plays a part in modesty, but it is only a part,” an 18 year old male explains, “Any item of clothing can be immodest” (his emphasis).

In addition, these rules are potentially changing all the time.  A “technically modest” outfit, such as a school uniform, can suddenly have immodest connotations (so watch MTV, girls, to stay on top of these shifting meanings):

This is a great deal of self-monitoring for girls.  Not just when they shop, but when they get dressed, and all day as they move, and with constant re-evaluation of their clothes and how they fit.  But, the rationale is, they must be vigilant and obey these rules in order to protect guys from the power of all bodies (both their own sexiness, and men’s biological response to it).  Guys are burdened with lust, they insist.

A lot of the guys in this survey talked about temptation.  In some cases, the men would use very powerful words, such as this guy defining immodest:

Immodest:  Screams that her body is different than mine. Attempts to manipulate me. Forcefully offers to trade what I want (in the flesh) for what she wants: attention (male, age 30).

This language — suggesting that women’s bodies “scream” at him, attempt to control him, and “forcefully” tempt him — is reminiscent of Tim Beneke’s interviews with men about sexual violence in Men on Rape.  Michael Kimmel (summarizing Beneke in Guyland) discusses how lots of the terms used to describe a beautiful, sexy woman are metaphors for danger and violence: “ravishing,” “stunning,” bombshell,” “knockout,” “dressed to kill,” and  “femme fatale.”  “Women’s beauty,” Kimmel surmises, “is perceived as violence to men” (p. 229).

This is very much like the rationale for the burqa.  Women’s bodies incite men’s sexual desires, sometimes to violence; they must be kept hidden.

These Christian guys, however, did claim responsibility for their own thoughts, feelings, and actions.  When asked about their role in avoiding lust, many were adamant that it was their own responsibility.  Many felt that innocent, shameless, platonic interaction between men and women was a team effort:

Sisters in Christ, you really have no concept of the struggles that guys face on a daily basis. Please, please, please take a higher standard in the ways you dress. True, we men are responsible for our thoughts and actions before the Lord, but it is such a blessing when we know that we can spend time with our sisters in Christ, enjoying their fellowship without having to constantly be on guard against ungodly thoughts brought about by the inappropriate ways they sometimes dress. In 1 Corinthians 12 the apostle Paul presents believers as the members of one body – we have to work together. Every Christian has a special role to play in the body of Christ. That goal is to bring glory to the Savior through an obedient, unified body of believers – please don’t hurt that unity by dressing in ways that may tempt your brothers in Christ to stumble (male, age 24).

The asymmetry of this project, however, is striking.  The lust is men’s; the bodies are women’s.  It’s an asymmetry built right into the survey design. Modesty is something pertains to only girls and immodesty is something that guys get to define.  This may be even more pernicious than women’s constant self-monitoring.  It erases women’s own desires and the sex appeal of men’s bodies, leading women to spend all of their time thinking about what men want.  By the time they do have sex, and most of them will, they may be so alienated from their own sexual feelings that they won’t even be able to recognize them.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Two friends of mine recently had a baby and the hospital sent home all kinds of instructional packets, all of which included product sample, advertising materials, etc. One item they found was this advertisement for the U.S. Career Institute’s program to become a medical claims processor who works from home. The ad plays on the guilt mothers often still have about working outside the home:

I don’t have a problem, in and of itself, with suggesting that a job provides options for parents who want to be home full-time but also work. Given the fact that women still bear the primary responsibility for childcare even though most want or need to provide financial support to the family, I’m sure many women (and for that matter, a lot of men) would find them appealing (in theory, anyway; I have my doubts about a lot of the “work at home and make a gazillion dollars a week!” pitches, but I have no knowledge of this one in particular).

What bothers me is the way the ad is written to not just say, “Hey, if you are staying home with the kids but would like to work for pay as well, this is a great opportunity.” Instead, the blaring headline “I’m glad you work at home Mommy” ties into the idea that children desperately want their moms (but apparently not dads) to stay home with them, and moms who do so are being the best moms. Even among women who value their careers and always planned to return to the paid workforce, many are surprised by how much guilt they feel when they do so. They may feel guilty for leaving their child with another childcare provider, but if they actually look forward to going back to work and are excited or relieved to be there, they often feel guilty for that, too. This is a burden of guilt that new fathers do not generally share; while they may wish they could be home more with their children, they usually don’t express guilt for not doing so, largely because by working outside the home, they are actually fulfilling the normative role of what a good father does, whereas working outside the home, particularly when children are young, it incompatible with ideals of good mothering.

On the very bottom of pg. 2 it does say, “USCI is nationally accredited and approved for veterans’ education benefits!” That’s an interesting line, since the majority of people would would qualify for veterans’ educational benefits would be men (for instance, women currently make up only 15.5% of the U.S. Army). There are other elements on the brochure that seem gender-neutral — being your own boss, setting your own hours, increasing job opportunities in the field — but that line seems to be the one part that is more tailored to a male audience.

On an unrelated topic, I love the totally meaningless graph at the top right of the 2nd page: look! This one column is way bigger than the others! It is entirely lacking in any useful information — how are they defining “growth”? What is 0% referring to? What level of growth are we talking about here? For all we know, the health/medical services bar could indicated 0.000001% growth.

And just out of interest, do any of you have any experience with these types of jobs? Did it live up to the claims (particularly flexibility and the amount of money you can make)?

We recently introduced the idea of “astroturfing.” Coined to contrast with the idea of a “grassroots” movement (led and supported by “regular” people), an astroturf movement is one that looks like it’s grassroots, but is actually driven and funded by a corporation. But is it always easy to distinguish between astroturf and grass? F.T. Garcia sent in this confounding example.

The Wall Street Journal reports that some labor unions are hiring non-union workers to “staff” picket lines, usually at or near minimum wage.  In this picture, for example, employees-for-the-day protest on behalf of union workers for a union they do not belong to:

It turns out, protesting is costly.  Workers have to take time off of work, travel to the location of the protest, pay for parking, make sure someone is taking care of their kids, etc.  Plus it’s often hot and involves a lot of yelling and stomping. Accordingly, some unions decide that it’s easier and cheaper to hire protesters than it is to mobilize their own workers.

So, you tell me, astroturf or grassroots?

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Dimitriy T.M. let us know about the Bureau of Labor Statistics American Time Use Survey website, which has lots of fascinating information. The ATUS data for 2009 was just released but they don’t have charts available yet, so I’m presenting data from 2008 here.

This shows daily time spent in various activities for women who are married and have children under 6 living in the home, by their employment status:

They didn’t provide a similar breakdown for married men, oddly.

Hours spent daily on household chores, by sex (but not broken down by employment status):

The difference in hours spent on household activities is interesting, but since it’s not broken down by employment, and women are less likely to be employed full-time than men, it doesn’t really tell us to what degree this is women doing a “second shift” vs. household management as their primary activity, so that’s sort of annoying.

Volunteer activity by sex and age (notice that the columns represent the average daily % of the population who volunteered, not the number of hours they spent volunteering, and the data is an average for 2004-2008):

This isn’t surprising, given that social scientists have generally found that women do more volunteer work, more regularly, than men (again, I’d like to see this broken down by employment status).

It’s also interesting that men and women who volunteer tend to do different types of activities. As this graph shows, it mimics the indoor/outdoor household chores pattern we see in family life. Women are more likely to do food preparation, while men are more likely to do maintenance. Also, men seem somewhat more likely to have leadership positions or to attend skills-building activities, while women do organizational stuff:

For both men and women, volunteering is most common for those with school-aged children in the household, indicating that a lot of volunteering is probably for child-centered organizations such as sports teams and PTA meetings:

I was somewhat surprised by the relationship between volunteering and educational level. The percent of people who volunteer goes up with more education, but the hours spent volunteering per day goes down:

Though the daily difference isn’t huge (just a half hour less for those with a 4-year college degree and those with less than a high school degree), over the course of a month or year it would certainly add up.

If you go through the raw data files, I’m sure there are all types of interesting relationships that give more detailed information about sex, employment status, and time usage. A fun way to waste time if you ever need a procrastination tool.

The image above, of a bird rescued from the gulf and cleaned of oil, may ease the ache in our hearts, but research suggests that euthanizing the birds would be more humane.

Environmental biologist and expert on oil clean-up, Silvia Gaus, explained that:

Catching and cleaning oil-soaked birds oftentimes leads to fatal amounts of stress for the animals… Furthermore, forcing the birds to ingest coal solutions — or Pepto Bismol, as animal-rescue workers are doing along the Gulf Coast — in an attempt to prevent the poisonous effects of the oil is ineffective… The birds will eventually perish anyway from kidney and liver damage (paraphrased at Speigel).

Further, birds who are relocated are often so disoriented that they die anyway, not able to re-establish survival routines in their new environment.

Gaus claims that 99% of the rescued and cleaned birds will die, usually within about seven days, and it will be a more painful death that takes longer than if they’d just been left alone.  As a consequence, many recommend quick and painless euthanization.  A National Geographic article complicates the story, reporting that survival rates depend on characteristics of the spill, but still reports that scientists largely have little hope that many birds rescued from the Gulf will survive.  A better strategy for saving birds, they say, is trying to keep them out of the oil in the first place.

If cleaning birds is unlikely to save them, and euthanizing them ultimately more humane, why are we cleaning birds?

The obvious answer is that it is good for BP’s public relations.  We feel better when we see the shiny oil-free feathers; those images make us feel like there is hope for the animals caught in the spill.  It makes it look as if BP is really doing something good.  In this case, why would BP care if the de-oiling worked?  They benefit whether the birds die (a slower, more painful) death or not.  It costs about $700 to clean an oiled pelican, but that may be money well spent.

There may be an even more nefarious reason.  There are fines and penalties for killing wildlife that can be levied against corporations.  The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, for example, specifies that corporations can be fined up to $500,000 if responsible for the death of a brown pelican.  Perhaps if the bird dies after release, without direct evidence that its death was caused by oil ingestion (without an expensive autopsy), then BP will not be vulnerable to those fines.  Further, the total number of dead birds attributed to their spill be lower; those numbers, instead, will be in the column marked “saved.”

UPDATE: Jay Holcomb at the International Bird Rescue Research Center disagrees with Gaus and other pessimistic scientists.  (Thanks to Paul for the link.)  It may also be that techniques for cleaning the birds have improved over time.  So the 1% number is probably wrong, or at least needs to be qualified.  Still, I think BP’s interests still apply, but it’s overstating it to say that de-oiling is bad for birds.  Thanks to everyone in the comments who added contrasting information!

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Keeping a trend in perspective.

The sociologist down the hall pointed out that yesterday’s chart gave the impression of a whopping increase in TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) support for poor families. But I have been complaining since December 2008 that the welfare system is not responding adequately to the recession’s effects on poor single mothers and their children. I wrote then:

We now appear headed back toward a national increase in TANF cases. But the restrictive rules on work requirements and time limits are keeping many families that need assistance out of the program…. If the government can extend unemployment benefits during the crisis, why not impose a moratorium on booting people from TANF?

So it does seem contradictory that I would post a chart yesterday showing a huge increase in TANF family recipients, and continue the same complaint. So let me put it in better perspective. It’s a good lesson for me on the principles of graphing data, which I have made a point of picking on others for.

Height and width

There were two problems with yesterday’s chart. First, the vertical scale only ran from 1.6 million to 1.9 million families. Second, the horizontal scale only ran for 26 months. I’ll correct each aspect in turn to show their effects. Here’s yesterday’s chart:

It sure looks like a dramatic turnaround. And any turnaround is a big deal. I wrote last year:

What should be striking in this is that the rolls are increasing even as the punitive program rules continue to pull aid from families according to the draconian term limits dreamed up by Gingrich, ratified by Clinton and endorsed by Obama — 2 years continuous, 5 years lifetime in the program. The current stimulus package includes more money for TANF, to help cover an expected growth in families applying — but no rule change to permit families to keep their support in the absence of available jobs.

But, run the vertical axis down to zero, and the same trend is not so dramatic:

Now the big bounce since July 2008 is put in perspective. We’ve seen a 16% increase since that bottom point, but the response seems much more modest in light of the size and impact of the Great Recession we’ve come to know.

In fact, though, the longer-term view underscores how paltry that response has really been. Back the chart up to 1996, and you can see how small the increase has been compared with the pre-draconian reform period:

All three images are correct, but their emphasis is different. To me, the important take-home message from this trend is, “That’s it? The greatest economic recession since the Great Depression, and our welfare response was that measly uptick? Our system really is a shambles.”

One important issue remains, however, and that is some measure of the need for welfare. So consider the number of single-parent families below the poverty line, compared with the number of families receiving TANF (formerly AFDC):

Now the story is much more clear.

After welfare reform in 1996, the number of families receiving welfare was cut by half in just a few years. At the same time, however, the number in poverty dropped. Since then, as the number in poverty has increased, the number on welfare has not. The two trends appeared to be uncoupled through most of the 2000s. In the last year we’ve seen the first increase in TANF numbers since 1996, but nowhere near enough to meet the increase in poor single-parent families.*

It is still the case that, although the stimulus bill allocated more money to TANF, the punitive rules and term limits have not been changed. So the system does not address longer-term poverty — something we should expect to see much more of in the next few years.

*We don’t have the official 2009 poverty rates yet, since they are compiled from a survey done in March 2010, to be released this fall.

Philip Cohen, PhD, is a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he teaches classes in demography, social stratification, and the family.  You can visit him at his blog, Family Inequality, and see his previous posts on SocImages here, here, and here.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Penny R. and p.j. sent in a link to the American Able project. A description from the artist’s website:

‘American Able’ intends to, through spoof, reveal the ways in which women with disabilities are invisibilized in advertising and mass media. I chose American Apparel not just for their notable style, but also for their claims that many of their models are just ‘every day’ women… Women with disabilities go unrepresented…in most of popular culture. Rarely, if ever, are women with disabilities portrayed in anything other than an asexual manner, for ‘disabled’ bodies are largely perceived as ‘undesirable’…

Too often, the pervasive influence of imagery in mass media goes unexamined, consumed en masse by the public. However, this imagery has real, oppressive effects on people who are continuously ‘othered’ by society. The model, Jes Sachse, and I intend to reveal these stories by placing her in a position where women with disabilities are typically excluded.

The goal is admirable. Individuals with disabilities are routinely ignored in pop culture, and if depicted, they are often either mocked or are devoid of sexuality (notable examples being the documentary Murderball and the depiction of a character in a wheelchair on the TV show Friday Night Lights, though both focus solely on men with disabilities who generally have relationships with women who do not).

That said, it brings up the eternal question regarding artistic endeavors, particularly those aimed at undermining prejudices: does it work? The idea here is to show a woman with disabilities in sexualized contexts and use humor to counter popular conceptions of those with disabilities as asexual (and parody American Apparel in the process). As with any use of parody/irony/etc., it poses a dilemma. Will viewers get it? Will they grasp the intent and look at the images through that lens? Will it lead some people to question why they might find these photos shocking, why a woman with a disability shown in sexual situations would be surprising, or the reason for any discomfort they might feel when looking at them?

Or will people respond by ridiculing Jes, or even feeling disgusted? Will they look further into those feelings and why they might have them? Will it change anything?

And how do you decide if it’s worth it? If half of viewers engage in some introspection and examining of their own prejudices, and half don’t, is that a sufficient trade-off? If 90% of people ridiculed the images and it reinforced their belief that bodies of those with disabilities are undesirable, but 10% would think about how women with disabilities are de-sexualized, or that American Apparel presents a very narrow range of body types as “normal,” everyday women, would you feel that you had accomplished something significant? Is it the artist’s responsibility to care?

Similar questions have been posed about photos of individuals from Appalachia: do they humanize people often depicted as backward “hillbillies,” or do they actually reinforce perceptions that everyone living in the area is poor and rural?

How do you negotiate the use of art to make social statements (whether questioning prejudices, pointing out inequalities, or humanizing stigmatized groups), considering that once you put something out in the public domain, you have little control over how people interpret it and whether they take from it the opposite message you intended, perhaps even ridiculing your subjects as a result of your project?

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

Andrea t. B. sent in some photos released by Britney Spears from a series she did for Candies.  Below, you can see the images side-by-side, before and after retouching, and get a sense of just how impossibly perfect our physical role models are made to be:

(From the Daily Mail.)

Jessica Simpson also appears on the cover of May’s Marie Claire without makeup:

I spoke with a reporter at the Associated Press yesterday who asked me if releasing photos without retouching or being photographed with out makeup was a trend.

Gwen and I agreed that, yes, it is a trend… but only insofar as the rules against doing so are so powerful that even a handful of female celebrities going sans makeup or retouching makes it SO AMAZING.  In reality, what’s so amazing about this trend is that these women are choosing to release these photos.  Photos of Simpson and Spears looking less than perfect are all over the internet, thanks to paparazzi.  So it’s not as if un-retouched or unflattering pictures of these celebrities are anything new… it’s the voluntariness of the releases that is so fascinating.

The romantic might say that they really want to be role models for young girls.   The cynic, however (e.g., me and Gwen), might suggest that there are ways that the might benefit from the release of these images.  In both cases, this could be interpreted as an excellent career move.

Simpson has a new show, The Price of Beauty, questioning the cultural construction of beauty (with questionable success).  So her photo shoot is likely a way to gain publicity for her program.

Spears’ motivation is less clear.   On the one hand, she can claim the romantic narrative and gain the respect and admiration of (more) fans. On the other hand, some of the attention to those (often awful) paparazzi pictures may be displaced by these pictures.  The truth is that she has a lot more control over these non-retouched photos than she does the candid shots.  In the photos above, she has been made up by professional make up and hair artists and she is being shot by a professional photographer with perfect lighting and excellent instruction.  She is also having these photos taken at the height of her fitness when her career is back on track  instead of at a low point (psychologically, physically, and career-wise).  So, given that all those truly unflattering photos are out there, these really re-represent the “real” Spears.  They may draw just a bit of attention away from those images of her bald and attacking a car with an umbrella.

Of course, the motivations of Spears and Simpson, as well as the rationales of those in charge of their images, is left mysterious.  What do you think?  How much of this is about being an excellent role model?  What else might be driving their decisions to take the risk of appearing without make up or retouching?

More discussion and examples of re-touching can be found through our retouch tag.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.