Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 17 Editor's Choice: 4
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Meanwhile, in the rest of the world
[Read the article: Bring your infant to work?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Most lives don’t fit into neat boxes labelled "home" and "work," and the lives of new babies and their parents don’t fit into boxes at all. Anything that acknowledges that is bound to be useful and good for most (though not all) moms. My hunch is it will be good for businesses too: a happy, unstressed employee is a productive employee, and an employee that’s likely to stay.
But, really -- what a bandaid this is.
Listen: I'm one member of a four person communications team for a large university. We're all women in our thirties, as it happens. And, as it further happens, a co-worker and I have both had babies in the last six months, and the team leader is pregnant. Team member number four is getting married this summer, so it's possible we could be four for four this year. The university promises to get someone in here to test the water.
I came back to work when my daughter was three months old. The other two team members will both be taking the standard fully-paid year-long leave. And I guarantee you, neither university nor the universe will collapse.
This is because we are in Canada. Babies rolling around on office floors in an historical home in Austin is nice. A truly progressive, government-mandated parental leave policy is better.
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Two possible subtexts
[Read the article: Tag me with a spoon]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Bridesmaids: If you ever hope to get married and thus become a complete woman who need never wear seafoam again, you can't afford to let any aspect of your appearance slip.
It's not enough to diet and wax, pluck and corset. You must now also tape.
Bridesmaids: There's a chance you might be able to return that awful thing. Don't cut out the tags. They dangle? Hide them with this.
I sincerely hope it's the latter -- the truly awful marketese makes it hard to tell. There's verbiage there you could cut back with hedge clippers.
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Stupid way to catch the real bad guys.
[Read the article: They called me a child pornographer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]>Emily if it's possible to catch the real abusers, like her father, and spare the falsely accused, like the writer and like her.
Perhaps, if we use resources wisely. That’s what angers me about this story: the sheer stupidity of it.
Some lifeguard, some drug store clerk makes a just-in-case call. And that’s fine; he’s playing it safe, he’s saying “well, it’s probably nothing, but what if….?” But why isn’t there someone on the other end of that call? A real expert, who knows what pornography looks like, knows what patterns it follows. What’s the usual sexual play and what’s creepy re-enactment of abuse. Who can look at these photos and the hundreds of other photos like them, and pick out the one case where a child may really be in trouble. Focus the resources on that child, and let the ninety-nine other families pee on fires in peace.
It’s analogous to the arguments about racial profiling to stop skyjacking. Yes, it’s discriminatory and unjust. Yes, it builds mistrust between authorities very groups that authorities must work with most closely. Yes, it fuels the anger of the very groups whose anger can most hurt us. Those reasons should all give us pause.
But here’s another reason not to do it: it doesn’t work.
We shouldn’t grill every “young man of Middle-Eastern appearance” before he gets on an airplane, and we shouldn’t cross question every parent who takes nudie pictures of their kid. Because it doesn’t work.
We should put those resources into real experts and proven strategies. Child abuse and pornography are real; child protection services are overwhelmed. They don’t need this, any more than falsely accused parents do.
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Depression and kids *can* mix.
[Read the article: I suspect my wife's "miscarriage" was not spontaneous]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Laurel (and others) are too quick to sound off whether one should be pregnant while on Paxil, or for that matter while depressed.
Respectfully, they should be more circumspect. Depression is a serious illness, and can be life-long. It is also highly treatable, and can be managed with medications, among other things. While obviously getting pregnant, or raising a family, can complicate one’s depression, having depression does not by itself mean you have to be childless. And going off depression meds is not always necessary, or smart.
I have moderately severe depression, and have taken Paxil to control it for about five years. I also have a happy, healthy infant daughter. My doctor and my midwife and I discussed going off my meds while pregnant – and in the end decided not to. The risks of discontinuation to me (symptoms returning) and to the baby (depressed moms are bad for kids) outweighed the risk of the drug doing her harm in uetero.
Paxil is a FDA class C drug – which means animal studies hint there may be problems, but human studies do not exist. For reference, that makes it more dangerous than Tylenol but less dangerous than Aspirin. Xanax is more dangerous to fetuses. Safefetus.com is a treasure trove of info on stuff like this.
Of course, none of this is really applicable to LW’s situation. I’m asymptomatic, and his wife is (it sounds like?) still trying to control her illness. My pregnancy was planned, and hers was not. I wanted the baby, and she did not. But still – it might be good for everyone to hear that depression and kids can mix.
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You know
[Read the article: Bush: We have to destroy Lebanon in order to save it]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I just love a journalist who can use "Manichean" in a sentence.