all the little babies

As all three of my readers (hello, friends!) are already aware, someone in my family (we'll call her Hannah) has been trying to get pregnant for a couple years without success. She has done IUIs, she has done multiple egg retrievals for IVF. The only time she actually got pregnant was the old fashioned way, with her now ex-boyfriend. She lost that baby. She is still trying, now single. 

This situation is complicated for me and I have a lot of feelings about it, none of which are helpful since my feelings make no difference to Hannah. But the saga has given me a lot of opportunities to think about what it means to create a human being. Making a person (twice!) will forever be the coolest thing I've done. The fact that people create other people all the time doesn't make it any less amazing to me.

And for being the coolest thing I have ever done it was astonishingly simple. I had sex, and then nine-ish months and some physical discomfort later, I had a baby. I didn't track anything or eat anything or prepare myself in any way for the important business of conception. 

And I did absolutely nothing to make the baby. The feet and the eyes and the brain were created without my knowledge or input! To this day I look at my children and I am amazed. Where did they come from? It can't possibly be me. I didn't even try. 

My experience, which is how most people in the world are made, seems to be the antithesis of fertility treatments. People try and try and try for years. This is obviously deeply unfair. Why should it be so easy for me and so difficult for Hannah? 

Freddie DeBoer recently wrote about his own experience with fertility treatments and I was struck by his description of how it changed his views on abortion: 

"Before [IVF] I saw abortion rights as merely a matter of individual autonomy, which of course is still the core issue; the only question one must answer, to know where they stand on abortion, is “Who owns the human body?” But now I also think that abortion is, ultimately, a reflection of nature, of the nature God made. It’s a reminder that there is something fickle at the heart of our most basic animal reality, and the chaos of human desires is not some unfortunate mistake but rather a reflection of the fact that we are nature and are in nature."

I disagree with this — while abortion may mimic miscarriages in nature, it is not the same or morally equivalent. But do agree that there is something deeply fickle at the heart of our most basic animal reality. We don't like to think about this too much because it means we are less in control that we think. Most of the reason I hated being pregnant was that it made me feel like an animal, and I was right — pregnancy is an essential animal experience. No reason is required. 

Of course, until recently, there was little remedy for nature. If you had sex and didn't make a baby, there was no baby. If you had sex and did make a baby, there was a baby. Now we can get rid of babies we don't want and create those we do. I don't know what to think about this. I don't think it's simply good or bad. But I do think it will get easier. Perhaps Aldous Huxley was right and our grandchildren will be created and gestated in a lab. 

I think Hannah will be able to get what she wants eventually, even if she ends up pregnant with a baby who is entirely unrelated to her. I wonder if that reflection of nature will satisfy her human desires? 

the tyranny of niceness

My department is the only one on campus that has a DEI staff person. Most departments can't afford them, so they typically work in school-level offices and central administrative units. Alas, my department is the biggest on campus so we have our very own assistant director of DEI. 

There have been DEI staff at every job I've had since I left grad school, and they've mostly been very nice — good ambassadors for their mandate of belonging. One has a Ph.D. in psychology and was previously a therapist, which fits well since DEI on campus is a deeply therapeutic exercise. They want people to feel included, they want people to feel they belong. Kumbaya.

Personally, I think DEI practices are antithetical to the actual business of a university, where we exclude people by design based on the quality of their academic work. Should we give everyone who does excellent work an equal shot? Yes! Does that mean we can discriminate based on race or gender? No! Discrimination is distasteful and, you know, illegal.

But I try and get along with my colleagues and I know most people here don't agree me about DEI. In all my previous jobs, I have worked very well with the DEI staff. They are nice people who need to pay their mortgages and I don't get any say in what they do so we all muddle along. 

The exception is my current job, where the DEI person — let's call her Tina — is, frankly, scary. 

Tina has a doctorate in education, and she will tell you she has a doctorate in education during every interaction she has with you. It's also in her email signature. (As far as I know, she's not aware that I have a Ph.D.) 

She is belligerent in emails but will be very sweet to your face. Every compliment is somehow also a backhanded criticism. ("The website looks good. Wasn't it supposed to be ready a year ago?"). I had a virtual meeting with her and the chair of the department in which some minor issue was decided in my favor and she exited the meeting immediately without saying goodbye. 

Were she given the power to do so, I'm certain she would fire me. 

I just had to sit through an hour-long DEI session led by her, where she first told us about her Ed.D. and then told us the department needs to admit more Black and Latinx students. Then she went through all the DEI initiatives supported by the department, before asking us to chat with each other about how we can support diversity in our roles. "What power to do we have," she asked, "to make others feel as though they belong? What's our sphere of influence?" 

Everyone of course fell over themselves to agree with Tina, to point out how great her work is, to come up with innovative ideas about how they can be nice and kind to everyone who they cross paths with. To be a safe space for anyone who needs it.

I'll admit, I was fascinated by this performance. Why exactly do we have any responsibility to fix people's feelings? Tina, for example, is never satisfied — is this somehow my responsibility? Are anyone's feelings my problem at work? I am not a therapist. If a graduate student isn't getting along with their adviser, isn't that something they should talk about with their adviser? Apparently, this is not inclusive. 

And of course there was no mention of other views. The legality of the assertion that we need to admit more Black and Latinx students was never questioned. The fact that most people in the department are not white, but Asian, was also conveniently not mentioned. Everyone agreed that we need to support each other, to be kind, to belong. Welcome to a world of endless meetings, where everyone's voice is heard, no decisions are made, but lots of cookies are served. 

I understand many people do not enjoy being the visible outlier in a classroom. I have been in lots of classrooms where I was the only woman. But I have never felt more uncomfortable at work or in school than I did at this DEI training. 

Notes on the election

I am not pleased about the outcome of the election, but it is what is and I am not surprised. My post from four years ago still rings entirely true.

I am surprised by how much other people are surprised, though. A friend I haven't seen in ages wrote to me to ask if I was doing ok despite the obvious and overwhelming racism and sexism now running rampant. I was somewhat stumped on how to reply. 

If I were being honest, I'd tell her that I'm doing amazing. This is the best time to be alive in the whole history of the planet, and this is one of the best countries to live in! It's definitely the best time and place to be a woman, the best time and place to be a (quasi) Jew, the best time and place to be someone who likes to read indoors with central heating. So, yeah, I'm doing ok, thanks.  

Do I like Trump? Absolutely not. I am as Democratic as you can get — I've never voted for a Republican in my life. And yet, unlike most people who have never voted for a Republican, I know lots of people who have. I know people who voted for Trump. And I understand why they did it! I know they aren't racist or sexist. 

But if, like my friend, you don't know any conservatives and only read the New York Times, it would be very hard to know what Trump voters are talking about. It might even be easy to dismiss them all as fascists. 

I'm trying to be sympathetic to this view of the world, but honestly I find it very tedious. How can you be so uninterested in why millions of your fellow citizens freely voted for a man you think is a demagogue? Why aren't you curious about their decision, considering it will determine the future of the country you profess to care so much about? Why don't you want to take their opinions seriously, so you can win them over next time? 

Really, how is it that Democrats are so uninterested in winning elections? If you want to win an election you always need to convince people who don't already agree with you. You need to make a case that speaks to people outside your party. If you insist that anyone who disagrees with you is a racist, sexist, and fascist, how exactly does that help?? 

Again, I'm very much not a fan! Trump is a raving nincompoop and I dislike him intensely. But telling everyone who doesn't like Democratic policies that they have to vote for a Democratic candidate because otherwise they are racist, sexist and fascist is pretty much the worst campaign strategy ever. 

Is no one in the Democratic Party friends with a Republican? Do they not talk to anyone who disagrees with them? They should probably look into that before 2028. 

The news cycle

Sometime around 2018, I stopped reading the news. This was kind of a big deal, because I was raised in a family where not reading the news is a kind of heresy. Being informed was our version of being godly. I am amazed to remember that not very long ago I had the Sunday New York Times delivered in print (!) to my house. 

My father always told me that his father, who is credited with getting the family out of Germany, read the newspaper every day. Being informed about the Nazis gave him insight others didn't have, I was told. Reading the newspaper could save your life.

This is not true, of course. No amount of newspaper reading could have saved my grandfather's life, especially since newspapers in Germany in the late 1930s were not reporting the news. What saved my grandfather's life was that he married my grandmother, and she had a distant cousin living in Ohio. That cousin talked the Fleischmann family (of margarine riches) into sponsoring my grandparents. They left Germany in August 1939, less than a month before the invasion of Poland. No one else on either side of the family survived. 

I have no doubt my grandfather enjoyed reading the paper — he had three kids and got up at 4am every day to bake bread. Thirty minutes of quiet reading time every day was probably lovely. (I'm guessing. He died many years before I was born.)

Anyway, while my Opa John may have disapproved, I've been a lot happier since I stopped reading the news. It's been very freeing. The best part is when anyone tries to engage me on some topic of current events or policy, I can quite honestly say that I don't know much about it. People sometimes bloviate past this statement but in general my sheer ignorance on, say, the rate of immigration, takes the wind out of their sails.

I'm surprised at how much I haven't missed, honestly. I read articles people occasionally send me and Josh tells me breaking news, like when Trump got shot. I've never felt embarrassingly uninformed in polite company, though I did only recently learn who was running for Senate in my state. 

Though, come to think of it, I do now read the hyper parochial news religiously. I am extremely well informed on the 10th anniversary of a nearby crepe restaurant and the contentious local effort to turn a caution sign at a busy crosswalk into a traffic signal (the township wants it, the borough does not!). I find this kind of news extremely useful. I knew that a Cava was opening near me at least 2 months before anyone else. This is the kind of news I can use. 

in which i am old

I had a favorite teacher in college. I took a class with him winter of my sophomore year where we read Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. It was awesome. Then I took his class on Machiavelli, then his class on the Roman Republic, and then he "advised" a thesis I wrote on the Florentine Histories.  Advised is in quotes there because he didn't really give me any feedback — a wonderful grad student patiently did that — but he was still technically my adviser. 

I did not exactly like this professor. In order to like him I would have had to overcome my fear of speaking to him. (I was shy.) But I was definitely a fangirl. I never wanted to email him but I also really wanted an excuse to email him, if you know what I mean. 

I was 19 when I took a class with him the first time and he was a distinguished older guy, which is how I still think of him. He wore nice suits to class and had gray mixed in to his hair. I considered him entirely middle aged, and I still think of him as being middle aged.

It was today when I realized that he was 38 when I took that class with him. And I am now 39. 

the baby turns one!

The baby is turning one on Wednesday. I don't feel like this year was short, but the days (and nights) were definitely long. 

Two kids has been a much higher degree of difficulty than one. I'm still not quite used to it. Maybe it's because my second one arrived just as my first was turning into a feral three year old? The house is just so loud now, and there so many butts to wipe! And it feels like someone is always crying. (I really hate the crying.)

The baby is seriously adorable, though — way cuter now than he was as a newborn. Big blue eyes, sandy colored hair, and he makes the cutest babbling sounds. He's very expressive. When someone he likes walks in the room he will kick his feet and wave his arms and yell something that sounds like, "hi!" He absolutely loves the dog and his big brother and is constantly laughing at them, but hasn't figured out how to play with them yet.  

In the past month he's become easily scared by things, which is not something I remember from the last time I had a one year old. He has decided, for example, that he is absolutely terrified of the bath. He used to love it, but now screams his head off if I try to put him in there. To wash his hair (which often has food in it now) I have to hold him like a football and put his head under the sink faucet. He also hates this, but less than going in the bath. He has serious stranger danger, too, and will scream his head off if you try and hand him over to someone he doesn't know. 

He is crawling everywhere and can move quite fast. He's standing and cruising along furniture but isn't quite walking yet — I'm guessing he'll walk in a couple months. It's amazing how much they change in a year! 

And now that I know how annoying two and three year olds are, I'm trying to fully appreciate how how sweet and happy one year olds can be. I guess I should take this approach to my almost four year old as well! I just don't know yet how annoying five and six year olds are.

10 years, doctorally

Next Tuesday marks the 10th anniversary of my dissertation defense. I find myself uncharacteristically verklempt about this. I think it's because, contrary to popular experience, grad school was one of the happiest periods of my life. 

It sounds super cheesy, but grad school was really fun. Not all of it (not the paycheck!) but intellectually I really miss having half a dozen people around all the time who want to talk to me very intensely about super esoteric stuff. I miss being able to mention Plato in casual conversation. Turns out, most people don't appreciate a casual Plato mention. 

I think part of me is also sad because I didn't expect to never work in political theory again. It's not that my academic training hasn't been useful — it has, both personally and professionally — but I thought I'd be able to do something for work that was at least adjacent to political theory. Looking back now that was a very silly expectation! Work that is adjacent to political theory is political (even at a university) and I don't like politics. 

And on the other hand, I have no regrets about leaving academia. And no regrets about getting a PhD. So I'll try to be grateful for the lack of regrets. I would also say that I'll attempt to find more friends who want to talk to me about Plato, but that seems like it would severely limit my options and I don't have many friends as it is. 

partnership

"Is there any word more anaphrodisiac than partner? ...There is nothing that makes me want to have sex less than calling someone my partner. Partner evokes filing cabinets, Excel spreadsheets, and the kind of people who despite procreating together, owning property together, and constantly swapping bodily fluids still will not get married because they’re “enlightened” — a “modern” family.

...Now, before gay couples had the ability to get married, their use of partner was completely understandable. A less infantile version of boyfriend/girlfriend was necessary, something that would show seriousness of commitment. But must this term now balloon out to be used by everyone, and replace terms that denote romance or some inkling of sexuality, rather than corporate-speak? I don’t want a corporate relationship. I’d rather have desires than goals."

 

Against Partnership — Emma Collins

8 months + McDaycare

The baby crawls now! It's an army crawl and appears to take a great amount of effort, but he's getting where he needs to go. And where he needs to go is always, always over to his brother so he can try to grab whatever toy he's playing with. 

Despite being a younger sibling, I never appreciated how different it is to be the second kid until I had one myself. Gabriel reads Jonah's books, he plays with Jonah's toys, he watches Jonah's shows. He has skipped right over almost all the baby things. When you're second, you live in your sibling's world right away. They're very cute together. Gabriel loves Jonah so much and laughs at anything he does. Jonah lays down next to Gabriel on the floor and crawls with him.

When Jonah was eight months old we were just moving to Princeton. The previous couple months had been super stressful — we had been kicked out of our rental house in Michigan and I got a new job and we had to find somewhere to live on extremely short notice. Seems insane I was doing all that with a baby! Very grateful we're not in a similar situation now. 

I remember that the first thing I did after accepting my job at Princeton, even before signing a lease, was secure a daycare spot. I remember being so relieved when I found a place that would take Jonah on the date I needed. I was thinking about that when I read this essay in The Point, where the author seems to think that daycares are even worse than McDonalds: "A Big Mac tastes the same from Orlando to Omaha, but fast-food chain equivalents of McDaycare vary dramatically." 

I have a feeling the writer hasn't been to McDonald's in a while. Possibly ever. But she's not wrong — not all daycares are alike. The first daycare I took Jonah to was insane about covid — they made me wear gloves to drop off my baby, even though I wasn't allowed to enter the building. Every time I handed him over I wondered if they knew that he was a human being and not a piece of sanitized plastic.

But the McDaycare my kids go to now is very nice. The same ladies who take care of Gabriel took care of Jonah when he started. I may be raising them in a "collective" but everyone on staff knows my children's names. The teachers get paid vacation and sick time, and I get to have reliable childcare every day except for some federal holidays. When we are not all struck down by norovirus, it works. 

The writer of this essay seems to live in New York City, where apparently McDaycare costs more than double what I pay. This sucks for her, but I bet her rent is double what I paid, too. New York is expensive: is this breaking news? And like all essays about childcare, hers throws a lot of stones ("We were just back from the better part of a year abroad that had spared us the rigged American childcare market") but provides no actual solutions.

Actually, that's not true. Her solution is that instead of making baby Big Macs, you should consider parenting her way: with a part-time Portuguese nanny. This would be lovely, really, if only my work were part-time and my house did not double as my husband's office. Basically, it would work great if my life were entirely different. 

I love reading parenting essays, though, because everyone who writes them seems to think that parenting is somehow a shared experience. It's not. It's shared in the same way as, say, puberty. We've all been through puberty, and the steps were similar, but the actual experience is singular. No two puberties/parentings are really the same. All we can do is trade stories and commiserate. 

 So here is my parenting essay/haiku: If you love your child and do your best to keep them safe, you are doing a great job. Congratulations. 

4.5 months

Baby updates: we have a rolling boy! He started going from belly to back a couple weeks ago and then on Monday he just decided it was time to start rolling back to front. So he did! Now he's obsessed with rolling and hates being held or put in any kind of contraption. He just wants to be on the floor, rolling free. Even when he should be sleeping (sigh). Amazing how these transitions just click one minute and then you have a baby who won't stop moving. 

I'm slightly dazed by this development, actually, because Jonah didn't start rolling until he was almost 8 months old. Looking back on it now, that is sort of incredible! For 8 months I could just set him down and be confident he wouldn't move — how amazing! Not going to have this luxury with Gabriel, alas. But on the plus side the doctor won't be vaguely concerned about motor delays this time. Though I'm sure they'll find something else to worry about. 

I'm back at work and generally happy about it, apart from the regular annoyances of working with other humans. I think I'd be able to withstand the day-to-day annoyances with more grace if I was getting more sleep — Gabriel may have mastered rolling but he's not quite mastered sleeping. Last month was awful. Last night was also awful. He's started slowly improving but it's not consistent enough to be of much help. I hate this part of parenthood. Sleep deprivation is torture. 

The baby sleep accounts on instagram are stalking me. I'm trying to ignore them! I still think it's quite cruel to promise a sleep deprived person that if they just figure out their baby's nap schedule everything will fall into place. That's telling someone if they learn to fly they'll get places faster. No shit! If I knew my baby's perfect nap schedule and actually had the power to execute it I'm sure my life would be perfect. Unfortunately, I live in the real world where my baby goes to daycare and I'm thrilled if he sleeps for 40 minutes at a stretch.