Judging Mothers

A mother’s choice about whether to breast feed or bottle feed her infant may seem like a purely personal decision. In fact, for decades it has been an individual decision with wide-reaching social, economic and political ramifications. Issues have ranged from the economic interests of large baby formula manufacturers to the introduction of formula in developing countries where there are problems with its safe use to medical advice suggesting that breast milk is superior for babies and social disapproval of women who either don’t nurse their babies or who stop nursing before the recommended one-year mark.

In an opinion piece in today’s New York Times, author Alissa Quart discusses the fact that less than 50% of American babies are breast-fed for at least six months, despite a medical culture that sometimes portrays formula as “evil” and a competitive mothering society where women ask each other “How long did you go?” Quart opines that this is understandable, given the time-consuming nature of breast-feeding, and the demands of many women’s workplaces which offer little or no maternity leave, little on-site daycare, and not enough flexibility to allow women to either structure their hours to allow nursing, or to pump milk while at work for later use by a caregiver. She argues that this breast-feeding obsession is part of a social phenomenon that seeks to eliminate all risks to children, and that we need to allow women to make individual decisions without subjecting them to guilt trips.

In The Conflict: How Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women (newly released in an English edition), French sociologist Elisabeth Badinter argues that the aggressive push for breast-feeding engineered by doctors, governments, and private groups such as the international La Leche League, is a significant part of a larger social agenda to demand perfection in parenting and especially in mothering. This has huge social and economic ramifications, according to Badinter, because seeking mothering perfection along these lines precludes women from equal competition in many professions, and leaves them at a permanent economic disadvantage in the workplace.

So what relevance do these discussions have for a legal blog?

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Can Women Lawyers Have It All?

The July/August issue of The Atlantic features the article “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” by Anne-Marie Slaughter, a lawyer, Princeton professor and former director of policy planning at the U.S. State Department. Already the article has provoked a firestorm of controversy in print and online, as women and men weigh in on Slaughter’s bottom line: having it all in a rarified top tier job is not currently possible, but could be if we make some much needed changes to society and workplaces.

Slaughter begins the article by describing her own conflict between her dream foreign policy job with the State Department, and her then 14-year-old son who had been acting out at school back in Princeton, New Jersey. Slaughter was working in Washington D.C. during the week, leaving her husband in charge of their two boys; she would return home each weekend to be with the family. Although Slaughter had always assumed she would continue in such a dream job as long as her party was in power, she found that not only did her family need her at home, but she wanted to be there for them. Consequently, as soon as her two-year tenure at the State Department was over, she returned home to Princeton and resumed her work as a tenured professor.

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Missing Children

The New York Times has been abuzz of late with articles suggesting that a long-ago missing child case may have finally been solved. Thirty-three years ago, six-year-old Etan Patz disappeared while walking the 1½ blocks to his school bus stop. Acting on a tip in this now cold case, police investigators recently dug up a basement located on Etan’s route, looking for a body. They did not find one, but another tip led them to Pedro Hernandez, who has confessed to the boy’s killing, claiming he lured Etan into a bodega basement, strangled him, and put the body in a bag that he placed curbside with other trash. Mr. Hernandez has not been charged: his story is convincing, but he seems to have neither a motive nor a history of violence or pedophilia. It is well-known that some people will confess to horrible crimes that they did not commit, and indeed there have been other false “confessions” in this very case. Why is it that there is such intense interest in such an old case?

Missing child cases are undeniably tragic, and every decent citizen wants to see a world where things like this do not happen. We lawyers, though, especially those of us concerned with child protection, are charged with coming up with sensible policies to keep kids safe, and it is no easy task. Etan’s case is remembered and pursued more than three decades after his disappearance precisely because the case touched a nerve with the populace and led to policy and behavior changes both large and small. Some of these changes have been good, others are more questionable.

It is important to remember that most kids who are missing from home have not been abducted and harmed by strangers as Etan apparently was. The vast majority of missing juveniles were taken by other family members, often in conjunction with disputes over child custody after a parental divorce or separation. Other cases, especially those involving older juveniles, may involve a child running away or voluntarily leaving in the company of someone the parents consider risky or even dangerous (such as an older, drug-using friend). Reliable statistics are hard to come by, but one set of FBI statistics from the year 2000 indicated that only approximately 5% of child disappearances were likely stranger abductions or kidnappings.

Of course, even five percent is too many abducted children, and nightmare cases like Etan’s have led to prompt public notifications of missing children on radio and television, pictures of missing kids on milk cartons, and organizations devoted to helping missing kids and their families, such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. These are all good changes and, indeed, most children are eventually reunited with their families largely as a result of public awareness and coordinated law enforcement efforts.

There have been other changes in individual behavior, though, that have produced more mixed results. Parents have become much more fearful in the past few decades, and more watchful parenting is only sometimes a good thing. On the one hand, it is much less likely that a child will be abducted by a malevolent stranger if said child never leaves the house unattended by mom or dad. On the other hand, these same children will get less fresh air, exercise and peer social interaction than did children of prior times. While my similarly middle-aged friends and I remember walking home from school and riding bikes far and wide when we were kids, few parents today accord those privileges to their own offspring. If parents are at work during their children’s after school hours, kids either go to structured programs or remain at home doing homework, watching TV and playing video games. This introduces dangers of a different sort. Sedentary lifestyles and excessive screen time may be related to increasing rates of childhood obesity and its attendant health problems. Indeed, recent news reports have also discussed higher rates of diabetes in children and adolescents, a trend almost certainly due in part to changes in diet and exercise patterns among kids. It seems we have exchanged one dire risk for another.

Ultimately, we need to face the fact that there are oh-so-many things from which children need protection, and that neither laws nor individual parents can infallibly guarantee child safety in our dangerous world. It is hard being a parent, hard being a child, and impossible to come up with perfect child protection strategies. But of course, it is important that we all keep trying.

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