How J. Lo’s Screaming Orgasm Redefines ‘Family’

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The Huffington Post
April 30, 2010

In J. Lo’s latest movie, The Back-up Plan, our intrepid, artificially inseminated heroine enjoys an onscreen orgasm sparked by a heady combo of some wet kissing and pregnancy hormones. As women with 27 combined months of pregnancy between us, we’re both a little skeptical (as is Mary Pols, the hilarious film reviewer).

But J. Lo’s spontaneous squealfest seems only slightly less plausible…and vastly less offensive…than her portrayal of the professional single mom by choice. J. Lo’s character quickly meets a man — phew! — but her single mom gal-pals are a parade of militant or earth-mother stereotypes. “Who wants to end up like that?” the movie seems to say.

Turns out, a growing number of moms in the U.S. do. The number of single moms by choice is expanding faster than a pair of maternity jeans. The number of babies born to single mothers by choice, like the one J. Lo plays, has grown a phenomenal 145 percent since 1980, according to journalist Emily Bazelon, writing in the New York Times Magazine. Today, a whopping 40 percent of U.S. babies are born to unmarried mothers. Plus, some 13,000 single women every year adopt children domestically, and that’s not counting international adoptions.

As we discuss in our new book, Influence: How Women’s Soaring Economic Power will Change Our World for the Better, the rise of the single mom is just one swell in the societal tsunami transforming families around the world. The shape of families is changing right before our eyes. In the US and elsewhere, the most basic unit of society — the traditional two parents plus 2.5 kids — has been replaced by a wide and colorful palette of choices: same sex couples, single parents, blended families, traditional families, four or even five generations living together — and every imaginable permutation of these options. And, like it or not, since 2007, American women are likely to spend more years of their lives single than married. Noah’s Ark, with its inhabitants paired up two-by-two, is sinking. And unless our workplaces, communities and governing bodies realize that, our ability to compete in a global economy will sink along with it.
Support for families — making sure that every family can afford high quality childcare, that every worker gets paid sick leave, that schools are safe and effective — is crucial if women and men are going to tap into our full economic potential. But we don’t have that kind of security in the U.S. Although family patterns have changed radically, most companies and legislatures act like every family is traditional — and that they all have a stay-at-home wife taking care of the kids, caring for ailing elders and doing the housework. This, in a country where 70 percent of children grow up live in a two-income household.
Other countries face the same challenges. But instead of ignoring these new challenges, they’re pioneering policies that support families even as they change. Compared to other industrialized nations, America falls flat on its face in terms of supporting families as they really exist. The United States ranks last in maternity leave, ranks 27th of 37 countries in public expenditures on childcare, and provides astonishingly little assistance for families caring for aging parents. Our nation has failed to recognize glaring truths: that hardly any kids today have a parent at home full-time, that affordable day care is as necessary and important as affordable health care, and that men and women in the workforce both have far more responsibilities outside work than ever before.

By failing to change our workplaces and policies in ways that help families, our country is threatening the well-being of kids in America. At the low end of the economic spectrum, hourly workers can lose their job if they take sick time with their kids. At the higher end, a corporate 24-7 work ethic forces parents — typically women — into more reasonable, but less prestigious, jobs. Saddest of all, without affordable, reliable childcare, single moms and their kids are far more likely to end up in poverty than any other group in America.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. In other industrialized nations, it’s not. In Sweden, about 55 percent of children are born to unmarried mothers, but these kids don’t end up poor. They’re just as likely as kids of married parents to live a decent life. That’s because Sweden supports ample, affordable, high quality childcare and provides strong social support for families of all kinds. So mothers and children who don’t fit the traditional mold can thrive just as well as those who do.

At home, we’re starting to see some bold communities and work-places adapt to the changing American families—making it easier for parents to be loving, caring parents and work to their full capacity. California is now the only state in the nation to offer paid parental leave when babies are born. Several states are offering universal preschool. More and more companies are offering at least a little paternity leave to dads…and gradually, brave and loving fathers are daring to take it, despite fears about derailing their careers.

We need more families, lawmakers and communities to stand up and fight for more family-friendly workplaces and policies. If more companies and communities catch on to the real economic payoff of supporting families—happier, more productive, more focused workers who can tap into their full potential—we’ll be more competitive in the global economy.

When more companies and communities finally come to their senses, we’ll all have something to get excited about.

Original URL:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maddy-dychtwald/how-j-los-screaming-orgas_b_557042.html

Must One Gender Rule the Other?

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The Huffington Post
April 23, 2010

Must One Gender Rule the Other?

Throughout the economic downturn, we’ve heard a lot about the “man-cession,” where men have lost more jobs than women. But there’s something bothersome about that term. It makes men sound like losers and women sound like winners in the worst economic slide in recent history. But that’s not really true: we’re all struggling. Men aren’t losing jobs because women are “winning”—but because they held more jobs in old economy fields like manufacturing that are going away. It’s not that women are winning; it’s that the economy is changing, to a world where education, relationship-building and collaboration matter more than physical strength.

Still, the media loves to portray things as black and white, win or lose. It’s simpler to think there’s a battle of the sexes than to think up an entirely new image for what’s going on. But does it have to be a war? Must one gender rule the other? Or can we imagine a better metaphor for what’s happening between the sexes right now? Can it be a scale, a teeter totter, a seesaw, where the goal for each sex is to balance, not defeat, the other? Idealistic? Maybe. Possible? Definitely.

It’s important to ask that question right now, because something entirely new is going on. For the first time ever, women represent half the workers in the United States. We don’t yet earn half the income—on average, women earn 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. But we’re reaching an economic tipping point, where women’s influence will start to change the way society does things.

As women become half the workforce and, eventually, earn half the income, how will we use our power? The evidence so far suggests we’ll change the metaphor—no more battle of the sexes, but a team effort, to create a partnership society. We don’t say this because we want it to be true (which we do), but because examples are all around us. As women have gained financial power, they’ve used that influence to reshape families, businesses and the marketplace. And, as we discuss in our new book,Influence: How Women’s Soaring Economic Power will Change Our World for the Better, those changes are helping men as much as women.

Take parenting. Back in 1973, Nixon vetoed a bill that would have funded high quality childcare for low and middle income families, saying it would “weaken the family” if more women went to work. Women went anyway—and our families are stronger. Divorce rates have dropped. Best of all, dads are taking on far more childcare duties than ever before, spending three times as many hours per week with their kids as dads did in 1960. And their kids are thriving. Study after study shows that kids with involved dads do better in school, are better behaved and have better social skills than kids with less involved dads.

What’s amazing here is that moms going to work didn’t hurt families, it helped them. It created a vacuum that sucked men back inside the home, where they became more involved fathers. Parenting is becoming a more equal partnership, and it’s helping everyone. This change is far from complete—women still do far more at home than men, on average. But all you have to do is visit your local Starbucks or grocery store any weekday afternoon, and you’ll almost always find a few dads carting around the kids while mom’s at work.

The partnership society helps our businesses, too. Studies tell us that among Fortune 500 companies, those with a greater number of women on their board showed a better return on equity than those with fewer women. That’s because groups with more diversity of all kinds tend to solve problems more creatively than more homogenous groups. Meanwhile, companies are finding that by reinventing work norms to fit the partnership society, where men and women contribute equally at work and at home, has measurable returns. When consulting firm Deloitte redesigned its career planning model and began to acknowledge that most careers for women and men are more like waves than ladders—with peaks of productivity and troughs when family takes precedence—career satisfaction of its employees rose 25 percent. That’s key in an industry that depends on attracting and keeping top talent.

Our information economy no longer depends on physical strength: It’s no longer the biggest Neanderthal with the rock who brings home the wooly mammoth. A knowledge-based economy doesn’t reward strength, it rewards smarts. And women who now equal or exceed the education levels of men in many countries, are poised to reap a massive benefit. The sooner we stop thinking about these changes as the triumph of one gender over the other, and start thinking about the partnership society, the happier our kids and our families will be.

Original URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maddy-dychtwald/business-women-must-one-g_b_549365.html

David Brooks Was Wrong on Sandra Bullock

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U.S. News and World Report

David Brooks Was Wrong on Sandra Bullock
By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street

I highly recommend a new blog I just stumbled onto by one Maddy Dychtwald who calls herself a demographer, author and keynote speaker (curious combination, that, but a good blog nonetheless) which tracks women’s progress and influence as women gain power and wealth in society and culture. Dychtwald writes about a New York Times Op-Ed column of last month, written by David Brooks and starts out by quoting from it:

“Two things happened to Sandra Bullock this month. First, she won an Academy Award for best actress. Then came the news reports claiming that her husband is an adulterous jerk. So the philosophic question of the day is: Would you take that as a deal? Would you exchange a tremendous professional triumph for a severe personal blow?” Dychtwald herself then adds:

Huh? Leaving aside the hoary assumption that women have to choose one of the other (which smacks of backlash, and raises the question—and why didn’t Brooks write about the “Tiger Woods Trade”?), here’s my philosophical question for Brooks: “Would you stay with an adulterous jerk if you had the money and power to leave and support yourself?”

While Brooks meanders off from that abysmal opening question into a rambling discussion of the value of success versus happiness, Dychtwald is correct in calling the columnist on his selection of a female subject about whom to pose that question. It’s ridiculously old-fashioned and chauvinist to the hilt. To me, Sandra Bullock is not someone who made a dumb deal with the devil. She’s a pretty good actress who has famously bad taste in men. She made no “deal” to trade success for a bad marriage. She just married the wrong guy. And Dychtwald is right to put a mirror to Brooks’ inept characterization of Bullock’s situation. I agree with Dychtwald when she concludes:

Sandra Bullock shouldn’t be the specter of what happens when a woman chooses a powerful career: She should be the poster child for what economic and social influence allow women to do. To support themselves and their families, to make the real Sandra Bullock trade—trading in a man who abuses your trust.

Original URL: http://www.usnews.com/blogs/erbe/2010/04/12/david-brooks-was-wrong-on-sandra-bullock.html