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To the surprise of no one, South Korea’s Kim Yu-na takes home the gold in women’s figure skating. [New York Times]
But do her boobs hurt? [Gawker] ... (Read the rest of this post here.)
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According to new research in International Studies Quarterly, "members of households with girls tend to be less isolationist, more open to using military means to prosecute foreign policy, and more likely to feel that ongoing conflicts have been beneficial on net than are those who live with boys." Robert Urbatsch, a professor of political science at Iowa State, analyzed data on household composition and political opinions included in the 2004 National Election Study. Controlling for income, religiosity, and education, he found that people in households with girls (a proxy for "parents with daughters") had foreign policy views similar to those of people in households without children. In contrast, people in households with boys reported being significantly less hawkish and more isolationist than both groups—possibly because it is young men who are most likely to enlist. Parents of boys may find the prospect of war more personally threatening.
This seems like a good time to quote Plutarch's "Sayings of Spartan Women":
One woman sent forth her sons, five in number, to war, and, standing in the outskirts of the city, she awaited anxiously the outcome of the battle. And when someone arrived and, in answer to her inquiry, reported that all her sons had met death, she said, "I did not inquire about that, you vile varlet, but how fares our country?" And when he declared that it was victorious, "Then," she said, "I accept gladly also the death of my sons."
Would Spartans with daughters be more intense?
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Hello Yasmine, welcome to the meeting. I appreciate Hillary and Chelsea’s close relationship, but I don’t find it that unusual among the women in my circle to have strong, impressive, female offspring. We didn’t simply raise our daughters to be participants in the world. We conspired with them to take the world over. These young post-feminists were encouraged, applauded, educated, groomed and imbued with every opportunity we could offer, especially the ones their mothers missed out on. My adult daughter outpaced me years ago. I was a TV news producer for one of those ratings-driven network magazine shows that proliferated in the 1990s, and she, not long out of NYU, told me she wanted to make documentaries. I was flattered she wanted to follow in my shoes and offered at once to help her meet my colleagues. We were on the phone, but I could hear her eyes roll as she explained she wanted to make vérité features, not the correspondent-narrated consumer and medical alert pieces I labored over. A year or two later, she and another woman director had formed a production company and I, too tired for even one more “wheels up at 7 a.m.” breaking story, left the juggling act for more tranquil journalistic pursuits. Since then, I have watched the two women indefatigably create and innovate in a medium come into its own right along with them. The women of their generation are amazons but their mothers, Hillary included, are not at all surprised.