children

Obama Administration Proposes Requirement That Child-Support Dollars Should Be Used to Support Children

Posted by figleaf | Tags:

Thu, 2011-02-24 09:22

Somehow I missed this, but Obama's proposed Department of Health and Human Services budget would provide money to states to pass through more child support payments directly to families: Many states take a big hunk off enforced child support payments to recoup the cost of enforcement. It's a draconian practice that is especially hard on low-income fathers and mothers. Fathers with low-paying jobs struggle to make the payments, and less of it goes to their children. That is, after all, against the whole point of child support.

Source: TAPPED

Considering what a contentious issue child support is, and what its actual intention is (hint: to provide support for children!), this proposal seems like an all-round laudable no-brainer of a great idea.

And since it is a good idea you can expect New Red Menace Republicans to shut down the government before allowing it to pass.

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Amanda Palmer on Rejecting the Impulse to Impose One's Own Preferences on One's Children's Appearance

Posted by figleaf | Tags:

Thu, 2011-01-27 20:45

Great quote from solo artist and Dresden Dolls co-founder Amanda Palmer in Spin magazine

"I've been really shocked and distressed to find out that 8- and 9-year-old girls are getting all their pubic hairs waxed off by their mothers," she says. "I think if I have any purpose at all, it's to stand up there and say, 'Oh, no, no, no, no, girls. You totally have a choice. You can wax it, you can shave it, you can grow it out, and this really is up to you.' That's the way that I feel about everything, that you just need to know there's a choice out there."

Adds Pope, the director: "On the surface, it's a song about girls growing out their pubes. Underneath that, however, is a call to everyone, woman and man alike, to discover the courage to be themselves. Whoever that may be."

Source: Spin

That sounds exactly right. I couldn't find the right post this morning but I remember Holly of The Pervocracy saying that for her the decision to remove her pubic hair signaled adulthood rather than pre-pubescence. There are obviously plenty of good cases for never fiddling with your body hair at all in adulthood but this isn't about that. Beyond basic sanitation whatever one's choice might be, as a child or an adult, it ought to be your choice and not your parents. And yeah, having your mom decide to wax you isn't as permanent as other decisions parents make: piercing ears, circumcision, or sex reassignment surgery come to mind, so if it's just getting waxed you can stop once you're out of the house. (Right, as if only permanent physical alterations leave mental scars.) So let's just add this to the list of things you should leave it to the child to decide. When he or she grows up.

(Note: based on conversation with teachers and other parents this is one of those areas where a) daughters are more subject to parental pressure and b) moms tend to bring more of that pressure to bear.)

Another note on the pubic hair, just to tease my friend Chingona, who's promised never to go easy on me about pubic hair pontificating: the real question to ask these days isn't so much why women are or aren't grooming their pubic hair. Instead it should be why men aren't doing it more -- after all the same esthetic, hygenic, and sensory arguments ought to apply both ways. Actually, technically, to the extent they apply at all they do apply both ways.

(Link to Palmer quote via SexIsNotTheEnemy)

Update: Palmer's assertion that mothers are waxing their 8-year-olds may be related to this article in The Frisky which reports spa owners in the Bay Area and NYC are trying to build a market for it. So with any luck it could be another one of those all sizzle, no steak stories like rainbow bracelets, vagazzling, or labiaplasty. (I gotta say, though, the telling line would be a spa owner in NYC who said "in 10 years, waxing children will be like taking them to the dentist or putting braces on their teeth." Um, yeah. Waxing? Braces tightening? What child could possibly object?

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Judge Walker's Ruling "Hiding in Plain Sight:" Undermining the Last Legs of Traditional Capital-P Patriarchy

Posted by figleaf | Tags:

Tue, 2010-08-17 10:01

Linda McClain of Feminist Law Professors continues a theme that’s been developing in light of the recent Prop 8 findings about marriage

I would like to invite the attention of feminist scholars and anyone else interested in the marriage debate to Judge Walker’s extensive findings of fact as well as his conclusions of law about the irrelevance of gender to marriage and parenthood.

...

To that end, Linda Greenhouse, an experienced analyst of the U.S. Supreme Court, posted (last week) an insightful commentary “Hiding in Plain Sight,” in which she praises Judge Walker for “his unveiling of a central hiding-in-plain-sight fact: the change in society’s expectations about what partnership in a marriage entails.”

...

Without making any predictions, she nonetheless takes the position that if Judge Walker’s opinion survives on appeal, it will be on the basis of his conclusion that to extend marriage to gay men and lesbians will not “redefine marriage,” since marriage has already undergone profound change “as the result of forces completely independent of federal judges.”

She said it here.

Continuing a theme she developed in a previous post (key point: whereas California once had myriad laws specifically related to the different sexes of married individuals it had repealed every one except the underlying requirement that there be two sexes in a marriage), McLain examines Judge Walker’s findings that outcomes for children of same-sex couples are no different than they are for opposite-sex couples.

The bottom line, though, is that Judge Walker’s ruling has basically validated Stephanie Coontz’s thesis in Marriage, a History, which was originally subtitled “From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage.” I’m pretty sure Coontz would say Walker’s ruling was the final blow against marriage as a key vehicle of the original Patriarchal patriarchy. Under capital-P Patriarchy, you may remember, marriage is not considered “a union between a man and a woman.” Instead it’s a union between families, generally arranged by the eldest living members of the respective families for the purpose of cementing economic, social, or political interests.

What makes McClain’s point about family law is that the Walker decision also suggests that the capital-P Patriarchal intention for children in real “traditional” heterosexual marriage — sealing the union with blood-relations — has been superseded by what modern opponents of same-sex marriage only imagine was the real intent: creating a safe, nurturing environment in which children can grow to adulthood.

All-round good stuff in that ruling. Although (update!) let’s hope they’re upheld on appeal!

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