The Middle Ages

  You know middle age has hit solidly when three women -- two just that side of the half century mark, one  rapidly approaching (that would be me) -- gather at scrumptious Zahav,  look at the menu and immediately squint and grumble about eyesight or lack of. Quickly, the menu waltz ensues. That's when you stretch to arm's length, then inch back and forth, struggling for a distance that encourages visual acuity. It would not pass muster with Bruno.
  This being a stylish place, the light is low, akin to the depths of the mine that recently entrapped those Chileans.  Reading glasses, wonderful instruments of comfort for the over-the-hill crowd, have been forgotten, as usual. One friend hasn't succumbed to the glasses yet, but still can't decipher the minuscule -- is that agate type? -- print. The other is on her way to trifocals (who knew what fun awaits?) but doesn't have the right pair. I don't remember the details. Memory goes around now too.
  So, my only chance at satisfying my appetite is a single tea candle at the table, the only source of wattage. I pick it up and hold its flickering flame to the menu, so close that I'm in danger of starting a three-alarm blaze. Is that beef or peas? We each call out words we think we can see and prices that we hope we're misreading. And so it goes for many minutes, long enough that our waiter checks in twice and a twentysomething maitre d approaches. He inquires about our evening and then proffers a small black tube. With a click, it provides a shining beacon. A flashlight! We have no shame. We all exclaim in delight. My friend grabs it. We are ecstatic. We pass it from one to the other, its powerful beam dancing across exotic ingredients.
  When you're middle aged, a girls night out is all about the quality of the conversation, the food and the flashlight.

The Cost of Motherhood

Sociologists Find Lowest-Paid Women Suffer Most From Motherhood Penalty

Released: 10/5/2010 1:00 PM EDT
Source: American Sociological Association (ASA)

Newswise — In a study of earnings inequality among white women, researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst find that having children reduces women’s earnings, even among workers with comparable qualifications, experience, work hours and jobs. While women at all income levels suffer negative earnings consequences from having children, the lowest-paid women lose the most from motherhood. This earnings penalty ranges from 15 percent per child among low-wage workers to about 4 percent among the highly paid. The findings are published in the October 2010 issue of the American Sociological Review.

The research was conducted by Michelle J. Budig, a professor of sociology at UMass Amherst and Melissa J. Hodges, a graduate student in sociology at the university. It focuses on the motherhood wage penalty – meaning how much less women with more children earn relative to similar women with no children, or with fewer children.

Budig says although there hasn’t been a lot of scientific study of the work-family issues involved in this wage gap, ordinary working women deal with it on a daily basis and are acutely aware of it.

Budig and Hodges find low-paid women lose proportionately the most earnings for having children, though almost all earners experience significant motherhood penalties. They also find that different processes create the motherhood penalty at different earnings levels. That mothers work less and may accept lower earnings for more family-friendly jobs partially explains the penalty among low-wage workers. Also, that mothers have less experience due to interruptions for childbearing, explains some of the penalty among the highly paid. But a significant motherhood penalty persists even in estimates that account for these differences, the researchers say.

The authors show that estimates of “average” motherhood penalties obscure the compounded disadvantage low-paid mothers face, as well as differences in the processes that produce the penalty. For example, low-wage workers, who are less likely to have leave benefits, may be more likely to quit their jobs when child care demands escalate, thus losing wages through high job turnover. In contrast, high-paid workers with greater access to employer benefits may be better able to maintain connections to employers during childbearing.

And it’s only at the very highest level of incomes for married women that the penalty disappears or even reverts to a benefit, the researchers say.

“Based on our findings, the typical full-time female worker earned $1,100 less per child in 2009. This wage penalty for motherhood increases with each additional child and doesn't go away as kids get older. In fact, the penalty grows in size as children age and is a permanent penalty,” Budig says. “The motherhood penalty is strongly linked to the gender pay gap, which hasn't budged in size since the late 1990s. Policies aimed at reducing the motherhood penalty should have significant effects on the overall pay difference between men and women with equivalent qualifications and who work in similar jobs."

Using data from the 1979 to 2004 waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth from the Bureau of Labor Statistics at the U.S. Department of Labor, researchers tested whether the size of the motherhood penalty, and the processes creating it, differ among white women who are low, middle, and high earners.

For the study, Budig says their definition of top earning women, the upper 10 percent, encompasses those who earn about $60,000 or more in annual salary.

In order to mitigate the effects of the motherhood penalty, Budig and Hodges recommend several policy changes. These include expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income families, along with expanded benefits for child care and early childhood education.

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Just Say No!

  I'm not the R&R type as anyone who knows me well realizes pretty quickly. I hate to sit around. At the last family gathering, I was antsy before we even arrived. I wanted to know what we would be doing. The bossband explained patiently that most of the family enjoys sitting around and reminiscing and talking to each other -- for hours on end. How is that possible? Well,  I wouldn't let up. I wanted to go to the mall, at least. I was dependent on someone to drive me there. I finally got my way -- even inspired a couple of other relatives to leave the house. (BTW, I found a fabulous sweater at Free People.)
  So when I retired a few months ago, I clearly was not going to really lead a life of retirement, as in rest. I immediately signed up for everything -- neighborhood board,  school PTA, freelance assignments. Ask, and I shall say yes was my motto.
  Until this month. When my editor at the Inquirer sent me an email with a cool assignment, I knew I had to force myself to say the word: No. It was like a drug addict turning down a hit. But I'm now working -- both for pay and not -- so much, that the resident teen constantly reminds me that I'm supposed to be retired. I'm staying up way too late. I'm missing my exercise classes. I haven't been to the mall in forever. Which might be a good thing, in a certain person's opinion. And, of course, the last time I blogged, it was another season.
  So I had to do it. I said no to the assignment, explaining I couldn't take on anything new til October. It felt good, after the initial shock of turning down something that I would have liked to do. I don't like to miss out on things. But I'm headed right back to Stressville. So as soon as I finish the 2,000 word magazine story on an Updike friend, and the marketing view book for a university, and the newsletter for school, and the lawn check for the neighborhood, I plan to take a break, as I told my mother-in-law recently.
  "How long?" she wondered.
  I quickly answered: "For a week." Seven days of nothing (whatever will I do with myself?), and I'll be ready to go, go, go.

Empty Nest Musings

  A former colleague mused recently about the emptying of her nest, though she didn't care for the term empty-nester. It's a lovely piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Read it.
  I've got four years to go, but the impending end of a phase -- official momhood -- is never far from my mind. I think of it as the approach of my second retirement, when all the time consumed by mom stuff will no longer beckon - at least not until Thanksgiving break and winter recess. I'm not necessarily sad. It seems rather exciting to finally see the fruit of so many years of labor. But it will certainly be different. Even one child gives a house an energy, a noisy bustle that nothing else can replace.

  Of course, if he goes to a college nearby, perhaps the rhythm won't be all that different. I went to the University of Kentucky, in my hometown of Lexington. I lived on campus that first year. Technically, my parents had emptied the nest. But they were both professors at UK, so I saw them often -- even tried to get homework help with an essay I waited til the last minute to write, until Mom, in her white lab coat, said, "Sorry, it's all on you now." (Her actual words, though, were tinged with a great deal more annoyance that I, now a full-fledged college student, would really expect her to break from her research to edit an English paper.) Weekends always meant a 15-minute drive home to wash the week's worth of dirty clothes, eat a home-cooked meal and hang out for a while in my old room before going out with friends. Those early years of college  felt more like a series of long sleepovers, with family never far.

   I never really felt I left home until my junior year in college, when I had an internship at the Detroit Free Press. My mom drove me to that bleak city and deposited me there one May. As she drove away, I never felt so lonely. I think my mother had it easier. She had a home and a busy job to occupy her. By then, I had been in college for three years, so she and my dad were used to my absence from the home front. This internship didn't change much for them. Or so it seemed to me.
  I, on the other hand, had to find my way by public transportation to downtown Detroit. For a Bluegrass girl, that was huge. I had never ridden a bus before, certainly not by myself. I had to buy groceries -- no campus cafeteria. I used to walk with a wire cart to the nearby market, passing through neighborhoods still deciding which way they were headed on the socio-economic scale. My roommate, another intern, was not exactly friendly.
  But just as my parents had adjusted to the new tempo at home, I too came to at least like my time in Detroit -- new friends, new cuisines, new experiences -- if not the commute to work. I was OK. I had survived this appetizer to independence.
   Four years from now, it will be my turn to launch a child. I think he'll be OK. And I will be too.

Work, Part II: Unpaid, Is Volunteering Anti-Feminist?

  When I left work, priority No. 1 was to volunteer more at my son's school. It didn't take long -- all of a couple of weeks -- before the PTA moms homed in on me. Now that I wasn't working, how about taking on the newsletter and publicity for the various parent activities and fundraisers?
  I was all smiles on the way to the volunteer altar.
  Sunday, I worked on cutting and pasting copy for four hours straight. I was still in my pajamas at lunch time -- which caught the attention of the resident teen, who makes sure to remind me whenever I grumble about stuff I have to do that I'm supposed to be retired. It took two additional hours after dinner to fine tune the newsletter. The next day, I worked three more hours to make sure everything looked just right in the template and proofed it. The bossband was holding his tongue, but he clearly does not see the value in this endeavor. Then the next four days demanded innumerable emails and adjustments to confirm the format was set up properly. Finally, the newsletter went out -- two days late because of technology issues.

  What did I get out of it? Certainly not monetary compensation. I'm not working for pay, I'm working for free. When I told a friend that editing the newsletter was like a job, she winced. She questioned giving hours to a project that went unpaid. It was the feminist in her, I think. Why is it that we women are so willing to spend oodles of time for schools, religious organizations, community groups, extracurriculars, you name it, for zilch pay? The minute a well-educated, professional quits the workforce, or goes part time, or sometimes even if she's still doing her 40 hours, she's called upon to help out at school and usually says yes. Women warned me about this when I said I was leaving the workforce. Men certainly do their share on the athletic fields, but the vast majority of school support comes from women -- often in activities that do not involve direct involvement with their children.
  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the volunteer rate in 2009 in the United States was 30.1 percent for women and 23.3 percent for men. Those 35 to 54 years old are most likely to volunteer, and the higher the educational level, the higher the volunteer rate. In other words, highly educated women in the prime career years are giving time and talent to keep religious, educational and  youth services -- the top three organizations that get the most volunteer hours -- running successfully.
  What's the reward? Not money and definitely not admiration from the bossband, who thinks way too much time goes the way of the school newsletter. And he never really cared for his own Sunday mornings spent in hard labor over the Little League fields. It isn't bonding with my child -- unless you count the pleas for help with Word template issues and the irritated, "Mom!" as in how clueless can you be. And it isn't a Mother Theresa moment, either. While the newsletter is most certainly helpful, it's not saving the world or any one person.
  The satisfaction comes down to a job well done. It's my own little -- and we do mean little -- newspaper that's visually pleasing (when the pictures align with the text) and full of important information for the school community. The unsolicited compliments make the good girl in me beam. I'm helping my son's school succeed. And I'm keeping my writing skills sharp and even gaining some new tricks of the trade as far as editing and mastering that monster known as Word.
  Of course, that's part of the problem. Even in the workplace, compliments too often take the place of raises or bonuses. Women, too often, get sucked into giving away their skills for low wages or free. And ultimately, doesn't that devalue the work of women, especially in a culture where skill is rewarded in dollar and cents?
  I have to admit that my friend's unhappiness with my volunteer work has me thinking. And I don't see an easy solution.
  I'd love to ponder more, but I've got to go. Deadline for the next issue is three days away.

Work, Part I: Paid

  Last week was busy, busy.
  I had an 1,800-word magazine story due on the business of fashion. I spent the better part of a week logging nearly full-time hours on interviews of academics and fashion industry insiders. Then another two full days to write and rewrite.
  It almost felt like work, work. Which wasn't necessarily a bad thing, even for a LOL who has grown accustomed to a relaxed pace of freelancing. I was doing what I like doing best -- writing. And this time, I was getting a decent wage, which made it worth the effort but also added to the pressure. By the end of the week, the tension had built. Down time was next to nil. I had to skip exercise classes, and clean clothes were sparse.  Back came the perils of journalism -- writer's block when faced with thinking of a lead, self-doubt over whether my editor would like the story and anxiety about meeting deadline. Why, I wondered, had I taken on the assignment?
  I think it's all part of the process. It wouldn't be the same rush if not for all the worries along the way. Those restless nights inevitably deliver a good start by morning, and somehow, deadline gets met (almost) always. Self-doubt is a little harder to overcome. But that, too, is usually vanquished.
  But the biggest payoff is more intangible. It comes with the filing of the story. It's a high, simple as that. As deadline approaches, the adrenaline pumps at full throttle, and I know I'm close to the finish line with a solid product. I imagine it is the same pleasure that a craftsman must get from a finely turned cabinet or a mechanic from a rebuilt engine. A job is done and done well, and now what's left is only the anticipation of seeing the story in print and hearing from readers.

I'm an editor, mid-80s. Gotta love those glasses!

  The feelings haven't changed much since the Fall of 1980, when I got my first assignment from the  Kentucky Kernel at the University of Kentucky. I was incredibly shy -- still am, in lots of ways. The thought of picking up the phone and dialing (this was the days of rotary phones) a complete stranger, and a professor at that, was nearly paralyzing.  I still remember the topic:  It was a feature on a restaurant run by home-ec students. With lots of urging from my mother, I made that first call to set up an interview, after picking up and putting down the handset a dozen times. In the end, I was more scared of disappointing Mom than flubbing my call. In the face-to-face interview, I stammered through a series of questions from a prepared list. The professor was kind and patient. Then I stayed up all-night banging out copy on a blue, electric typewriter. When I handed in the pages, I was queasy but also thrilled, as if I'd just climbed off a roller-coaster and survived. A couple of days later, the story ran on the front page of the Kernel, pretty much the way I had written it. The fee was around $5. That day, I asked for another assignment.
  It was the beginning of my love affair with journalism.

Howling Over these Exam Howlers

  I've had my share of verbal missteps. Ying yang for yin yang. Click for clique. And now that I'm blogging with no copy editors (not appreciated enough when my copy regularly passed through their hands), I'm sure I'll continue to make my share of blunders in print.
  Still, I laughed heartily at these examination howlers out of the UK, as picked up in a report on Inside High Education's Website. Here's a sample:

British Exam Howlers

One student has inadvertently invented a new name for the phenomenon: "Confusionism."

In fact, the third-year student had intended to refer to the system of philosophical and ethical teachings founded by the Chinese philosopher Confucius.

Proving that they are just as fallible as all those to have gone before them, students' comical cock-ups have been revealed in entries to Times Higher Education's "exam howlers" competition 2010.

Thank you to Michael Gold, senior lecturer in employment relations at Royal Holloway, University of London, for sending in the Confucianism error.

Many of this year's entries have a medical theme. John Lee, head of undergraduate studies in nursing and midwifery at the University of Dundee, was told that "Vagina Henderson" was one of the first modern nurses of the 20th century (her name, of course, was Virginia).

Along the same lines, Anthony Pinching, interim dean of medicine and associate dean of the Cornwall Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry Knowledge Spa, was informed by a student that HIV was discovered by Galileo (rather than Robert Gallo). And Mary Williams, senior lecturer in journalism at the University of Portsmouth, enjoyed a feature by a journalism student on "complimentary" medicine. "I quite liked the idea of picking up a pill and it saying nice things to you to make you feel better," Williams said. She also appreciated a fashion article that described the subject's sense of style as very "sheikh."

Also on a medical theme, a student who was asked to define otitis media - a medical condition known as "glue ear" -- informed Liz Morrish, principal lecturer in linguistics at Nottingham Trent University, that it was "a text specially designed for people who are otistic."

To read more, click on British Exam Howlers.