Friday, November 09, 2007 - Posts
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Rachael, isn’t part of the issue that white-collar jobs tend to accommodate pumping and breastfeeding more than blue-collar or service industry jobs do? This piece, for instance, paints a stark contrast between female Starbucks execs who get to use a lovely “Lactation Room,” and women working behind café counters who have to pump in bathrooms during quickie breaks. Anything that makes it easier for women to pump at work (or during their medical boards!) seems like a good idea to me – and not paternalistic.
Meanwhile, speaking of Emily’s great piece, I wanted to mention another mind-bending example of how environment can influence gene expression. This one comes from a UC Davis psychologist named Brian Trainor, who’s done fascinating work on the relationship between estrogen and aggressive behavior in mice. Last year, Trainor found that estrogen can have completely opposite effects on aggression depending on the length of daylight. Specifically, the hormone made mice less aggressive when daylight hours were kept long, simulating summer. But it made them more aggressive when daylight hours were short, simulating winter. (The pathways involved were probably different, too.) No one knows whether similar effects will be found in humans. But isn’t it wild to imagine estrogen making us docile in summer and assertive in winter, too?
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Emily, I noticed while reading your piece on breast-feeding and IQ that you touched on a point that has always been mind-boggling for me:
Previous studies have also linked breast-feeding to higher IQ, but they generally haven't ruled out the fact that breast-fed kids are also more likely to come from wealthier and better-educated families than formula-fed babies. [italics mine]
You've written on this topic frequently, so I wonder if in your research you've seen anything that explains why mothers who are less well-off are more likely to use formula. It seems like a contradiction to me. I nursed both my sons for all the reasons you cite--it's nurturing, it's practical, it's portable!--but also for the fact that it's just plain cheaper.
I realize that WIC lessens the financial burden of formula to some extent. But WIC also tries to promote breast-feeding and rewards moms who make that choice. And, while breast-feeding might not offer an IQ boost for everyone, it still seems that in almost all cases the pros outweigh the cons. Should we be doing more to encourage low-income moms to breast-feed, or is that paternalistic?
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Today's Washington Post review of the new Robert Redford movie Lions for Lambs calls it "strangely inert'' and says its take of the war on terror "plays too often like a college colloquium, with one extended scene of a classroom debate suffering from all the sleep-inducing effects of the real thing.'' Not only that, it accuses the film of "ambiguity.'' Ouch. But is it really such a bad thing to walk out of a political movie without a headache from repeated blows to the brain? I saw a screening last night with my movie-crazy 11-year-old son—who, needless to say, does not go for "inert''—and his only criticism was that they should have shot it on film. "A great movie,'' he thought. And for better or worse, not exactly My Dinner With Andre.
My only quibble was with the particulars of the spanking the movie gives the Judy Miller stand-in, played by Meryl Streep, for the media's role in selling the war in Iraq. OK, whuppin' deserved, but not in the way it's set up. Streep's veteran reporter is torn over whether to make what she sees as the clear moral choice—refusing to broadcast an exclusive about a new American military initiative in Afghanistan altogether, or maybe breaking the story with the crawl line, "In another breathtakingly bad idea from our government today ... '' Or, she could do the wrong thing by just reporting the story. No ambiguity there, but also no relation to the many ethical choices reporters actually face. Still, this is no polemic; it's a love note to our troops, a movie with lots of heart but no pat answers, and one that might even jump-start some of those uncomfortable political discussions we tend to shy away from.
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