Saturday, March 20, 2004

500,000 Women Die in Childbirth in the Third World Terror of Childbirth. A local proverb in Chad: A woman who is pregnant has one foot in the grave. By Nicholas Kristof. [New York Times: Opinion] Over 500,000 third world women die in pregnancy and childbirth each year. The world needs a massive war on maternal mortality. Instead, we act as if the lives of illiterate, poor women and their children don't matter. President Bush has cut off $34 million in aid to the UN Population Fund which trains local midwives.  If you want to get involved, contact the Averting Maternal Death and Disability program at Columbia University (www.amdd.hs.columbia.edu) and 34 Million Friends of U.N.F.P.A. (www.unfpa.org/support/friends/34million.htm).  Don't miss this harrowing column. 9:41:31 PM    comment [] My First Look at My Oldest Daughter, 1973 3:41:04 PM    comment [] Confused Feminist Has a Baby Leaving law school was a turning point.  After a year of soul-searching journal writing, I realized that I had been denying the emotional, nurturant, sensitive side of my nature,  never considering careers like psychology or social work.  In the jargon of early consciousness-raising groups, I was male identified.  I got very involved in the feminist movement in New York City and stopped trying to imitate my brothers.  A few months later a good friend got pregnant and I found myself intensely involved in her pregnancy.  For the first time I wanted to have a baby.  I questioned my motives, wondering if I was merely postponing the inevitable return to grad school. I assured myself I would go back to work when the baby was a few months old.    I got pregnant the first month we tried, and I loved being pregnant.   Nothing prepared me for drowning in an overwhelming surge of love, tenderness, protectiveness the minute I looked into my new daughter's bright eager eyes.  I had never believed in the myths of fulfilling motherhood, and yet mothering young children was the most fascinating, creative job of my life. 1:00:22 PM    comment [] Confused Feminist in Love I read the Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan when I was a freshman in college. I attended Fordham University, planning to become a college professor of political science. Fordham had just begun to admit women, and I was often the only girl in my political science class. Being the only girl and the best student in a class was heaven. I met Chris, my future first husband, in my junior year . It is a family joke that I was first attracted to him when I heard his SAT scores. Chris found my intellectuality and my femininity equally attractive, and for the first time reconciling the two seemed possible. Just to be sure, I insisted he read Simone DeBeauvoir's The Second Sex before we got engaged. What a self-righteous little prig I was ! Chris, a year behind me in college, planned to be a physics professor. When I applied to grad schools, I looked for places equally strong in both physics and political science, figuring a year's separation would make us surer about marriage. If I had known myself better, I would have applied to grad schools in New York City. I went to Stanford University in California, 3000 miles away from my  love. I hated grad school, was miserable without Chris, and left after two months. I returned to NY, got married , and slowly worked my way up in New York City book publishing. I was never wildly enthusiastic about editing social science and psychiatry books. It resembled grad school, abstract, intellectual, remote from people. In 1971 I attended Columbia Law School, hating it even more than grad school. 12:53:30 PM    comment [] Confused Feminist as a Girl Growing up with five younger brothers marked me for life. For a good 16 years I was taller and stronger and smarter. Looking at old pictures that show me towering over my brothers, I mourn loss opportunities for cutting them down to size:) I recall asking the nun preparing us for Holy Communion why the boys went up to the altar first. "Because they are closer to God since they can be priests," was her reply. At that moment I became a feminist. I confess I was less interested in solidarity with women than in besting men. I felt outraged when my brother could be an altar boy and I couldn't even though my Latin was infinitely better. My immediate neighborhood had no girls to play with, only boys, so I coped by becoming a tomboy, passionately interested in baseball. My brothers used to challenge their friends to ask me a baseball question I couldn't answer. My family always encouraged academic achievement. I was a shy intellectual in high school; my friends hung out at the high school newspaper and the debate club. None of us dated. I concluded that smart girls didn't attract men unless they deliberately played dumb, something I refused to do. Besides my ideal male was Jack Kennedy. 12:35:06 PM    comment []

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