Family

Egg hunts this weekend

Filed under: Family

When I was doing my weekly list of things to do over the weekend for Stephanie and Meredith's show on FM 107.1, I came across Minneapolis Parks' list of all the Easter egg hunts taking place in the city's parks. I picked out the ones happening this weekend; get your eggin' on after the jump.

EGG HUNTS IN MINNEAPOLIS PARKS THIS WEEKEND (COMPILED FROM HERE)
Audubon Park, 1320 29th Ave. NE – Bunny Brunch, Saturday, March 22, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Candy hunt, art projects, a visit from the Easter Bunny, refreshments. Joint party with Waite Park. $3; pre-register by March 20 by calling Audubon Park at 612-370-4910 or Waite Park at 612-370-4959.

Corcoran Park, 3334 20th Ave. S – Spring Egg Hunt, Saturday, March 22, 10 a.m.-noon. For more information call 612 370-4919.

Fuller Park, 4800 Grand Ave. S – Bunny Party, Saturday, March 22, 10-11:30 a.m. Egg hunt with prizes, petting zoo, entertainment, refreshments. $2 per person; register by March 20 by calling 612-370-4963. For more information call 612-370-4963.

Kenwood Park, 2101 W. Franklin Ave.
Spring Egg Hunt, Saturday, March 22, 10-11:30 a.m. Face painting, making rabbit ears, a visit from Peter Rabbit; refreshments. Free; register at the park or online at www.minneapolisparks.org by March 15. For more information call 612-370-4941.

Lyndale Farmstead Park, 3900 Bryant Ave. S – Egg Hunt, Saturday, March 22, 10 a.m.-noon. Egg hunt, petting zoo, basket-making, refreshments. $2 per child; register at the park. For more information call 612-370-4948.

Martin Luther King Park, 4055 Nicollet Ave. S – King Park Spring Fling, Thursday, March 20, 6-7:30 p.m.. Dinner, make bunny faces and ears, cookie decorating, egg coloring, prizes. Free; register for the dinner by March 18 online at www.minneapolisparks.org. For more information call 612-370-4908.

Morris Park, 5531 39th Ave. S – Egg Hunt Eggstravaganza, Saturday, March 22, 1-2 p.m. Craft project from 1-1:30, egg hunt starts at 1:30 p.m., treat bags, prizes for finding the golden egg. $2 per family. Pre-registration is required by March 20 online at www.minneapolisparks.org or at the park. For more information call 612 370-4934.

Sibley Park, 1900 E. 40th St. – Bunny Brunch and Egg Hunt, Saturday, March 22, 9:30 a.m.-noon. Brunch served from 10-11 a.m. featuring pancakes and sausage; coloring contest, face painting; egg hunt starts at 11:30 a.m. $3; for more information call 612-370-4954.

Waite Park, 1810 34th Ave. NE – Bunny Brunch, Saturday, March 22 10 a.m.-noon. Candy hunt, art projects, a visit from the Easter Bunny, refreshments. Event is at Audubon Park, 1320 29th Ave. NE. $3, pre-register by March 20 by calling Waite Park at 612-370-4959.or Audubon Park at, 612-370-4910. For more information call 612-370-4959.

Windom Park, 2251 Hayes St. NE – Egg Hunt and Bunny Party, Saturday, March 22, 10 a.m.-noon. Egg hunt, games, entertainment, treat bags for children 12 years and under, refreshments. Free; for more information call 612-370-4905.

Posted by Jeff Shaw at March 20, 2008 11:29 AM | Comments (0)

 

Only certain disabilities need apply

Filed under: Family

Minneapolis novelist Ann Bauer today has a column in the Washington Post describing her efforts to help her 19-year-old son, who is autistic, get a job. It's a fine, bittersweet commentary on trying to navigate life's milestones with a child whose world is ordered a little differently. In one of the most gut-twisting passages, Target rejects the young man because his handicap isn't "visible."

I took Andrew to Target, a company known for its history of working with disabled people. Only there's a catch: I was told when I called that their policy was to employ "visibly handicapped" workers. People in wheelchairs qualify, as do those with Down syndrome. My son, with his eccentricities and halting speech, does not. What's more, Target administers a computerized psychological screening test designed to eliminate people on the outer edges of the bell curve. People like Andrew....

...My son is one of many: Some time in the next decade, the Autism Society of America estimates, the number of people in this country who have autism will hit 4 million. I wonder if, when these children reach the age of 18, they too will be unemployable. Or if, perhaps, the work we're doing with Andrew now will mean a different experience for those who follow.

Read the whole thing here.

Posted by Beth Hawkins at October 30, 2006 2:35 PM | Comments (0)

 

Compare and contrast

Filed under: Family

Of nanny nutritionists and our collective disdain for generation next

One of the "most e-mailed" stories in today's New York Times is an examination of the tension parents and nannies must navigate over the provenance and nutritional sanctity of the little loveys' breakfast bowls and snack packs. The story feints at edginess, making cursory nods at the inevitable class elements and the fact that as cultural currency the topic is firmly wedged between right-thinking and hand-wringing.

Just a few years ago, giving lunch to a 1-year-old was a simple matter of popping open a jar of the Gerber mush du jour. But many parents now feed their children with the precision of chemists and the passion of Alice Waters, and expect sitters to do the same. Fruit juice, once a childhood mainstay, is now considered a sweet slosh of empty calories, and soft drinks are a potential firing offense....

The issue is a trying one even for those gifted in the delicate art of parent-nanny diplomacy. The conflicts are partly a result of the educational and economic divide that leaves many nannies less knowledgeable (or neurotic, take your pick) about nutrition than their employers. But it is also partly a struggle over the emotional issues involved in leaving a child in another person's care.

How precious.

It's been said that an outsider can tell ours is a polarized society simply by taking note of our embrace of the extreme. You know, Hummers and Mini Coopers, anorexic chic and Anna Nicole Smith, the "Left Behind" novels and "Deadwood." And the of-the-moment genre of family issues reportage of which this Times piece seems to be an outgrowth: Concern over the effect that trans-fats and high-fructose corn syrup are having on the underclass and how we might wean them from their Sunny D and microwave-ready egg sandwiches.

If you ask me, The Great Juice Box Conundrum, with its preoccupation with controlling every morsel consumed by one's singular, irreplaceable individual child, is a top-notch distraction from our wholesale inability to invest in children--plural and frequently unwashed. Today's not-so-frequently e-mailed news: The Economic Policy Institute says the number of children who have no health insurance last year grew for the first time in seven years.

Just in case my point's still unmade, let me take one more swing: These are children who cannot go to the doctor today for a chronic, life-threatening condition such as asthma or diabetes, children whose parents probably can only dream of making a forward-thinking nutritional investment in reducing their lifetime chances of suffering cancer. EPI says we can blame the profit-motive for this:

The rate of uninsured children in the United States has increased for the first time in seven years, from 10.8% in 2004 to 11.2% in 2005. From 2004 to 2005, the number of uninsured children grew by 361,000 to a total of 8.3 million uninsured children....

Children experienced declines in employer-provided health insurance coverage of 5.1 percentage points in the last five years. In 2000, 65.6% of children had employer-provided coverage, whereas in 2005 only 60.5% did. While the number of children insured by Medicaid or SCHIP increased from 2000 to 2004, 184,000 fewer children (nearly 1%) had Medicaid or SCHIP in 2005 than in 2004.

I have two kids who have become experts at thwarting virtually every anxiety-fueled food edict I've ever laid down. They get Capri Sun from grandpa, breakfast-hour candy from kids on the school bus, slimy, cheap goody bags from other daycare parents, and macaroni and cheese from me on those nights when Mom is worn down from a long day of keeping the health insurance card in her wallet active. And--and--this despite the fact that my older son goes to a school with one of those "evolved" food programs that eschews the processed and doctored. I'm here to tell you that children gravitate toward salt, sugar, and fat, their parents' ideologies notwithstanding.

I'll tell you what's popped up as much bigger problems than the methods used to farm their apples. The kids in my son's second-grade class who are still learning to tell time. The rumor floating around among us remaining tighty-whitey parents at his public school that the withdrawal of our even more uptight kin concentrated so many kids with behavioral diagnoses and learning disabilities in last year's class that more than 40 percent had special needs. The fact that our nearly wholesale retreat from public childcare assistance means my preschooler's cohorts cycle through the Starfish Room too quickly to acquire school readiness skills.

But hey, as a screen onto which to project our end-of-empire anxiety, nannies, who may be persuaded or coerced into making the switch to organic, certainly outweigh the conundrums of the nanny state.

Posted by Beth Hawkins at September 28, 2006 2:22 PM | Comments (2)

 

Daddies Dearest

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Father's day tribute breaks the Hallmark mold

H.J. Cummins' work/life column in today's Star Tribune is a short, sweet ode to the influence our fathers have on our career choices. This one actually broke me up, especially the bit about Ray Wells Jr., who, Cummins reports, "was 18 and a Golden Gloves boxer when his daughter, Tene, was born."

As far back as she can remember, Tene Wells had regular Saturday outings with her dad. Her mother put her in a dress and sent the two of them out, to leave her to clean the house in peace.

They would go where the men go, to bars and pool halls. Tene remembers feeling the men's respect for her father, which only later she learned had to do with his boxing, his strong sense of responsibility, and his speaking out for civil rights.

The column had me revisiting a couple of CP's greatest fatherhood stories: Britt Robson's grittily honest examination of his and his father's masculine bond; and Peter Scholtes' awesomely tender writings about his father, a priest who was active in the civil rights movement in Chicago. They're both poignant reads, well worth revisiting this weekend.

My own Dad? He's not nearly the cynic I am. Quite the opposite, he encouraged my brother and I to embrace our square-peg tendencies and to leap on even the most unconventional opportunities. And I dare say the impact of the early part of his career as a professor of sociology (he's no longer an academic) is evident in these pages.

Posted by Beth Hawkins at June 16, 2006 12:56 PM | Comments (0)

 

Caveat Preemptor

Filed under: Family

What the headline declares, the story takes away

The lead headline in today's Slate? "Feminism Makes You Unhappy: Here's the Proof." It's effective packaging, I'll grant you that. But the story debunks the headline, creating a sucker punch effect--and one I'm getting pretty sick of. The Underlying message: All of this wimmin's lib stuff is the social equivalent of margarine. It seemed like progress, but turned out to be misguided--and it really gums up the pipes.

At the start, the story at least jibes with the headline:

Last week, two sociologists at the University of Virginia published an exhaustive study of marital happiness among women that challenges this assumption. Stay-at-home wives, according to the authors, are more content than their working counterparts. And happiness, they found, has less to do with division of labor than with the level of commitment and "emotional work" men contribute (or are perceived to contribute). But the most interesting data may be that the women who strongly identify as progressive--the 15 percent who agree most with feminist ideals--have a harder time being happy than their peers, according to an analysis that has been provided exclusively to Slate. Feminist ideals, not domestic duties, seem to be what make wives morose. Progressive married women--who should be enjoying some or all of the fruits that Freidan lobbied for--are less happy, it would appear, than women who live as if Friedan never existed.

All of a sudden we can't seem to utter the f-word without name-checking Betty Friedan. Although until her recent death we couldn't seem to utter it at all, so maybe we should thank her, wherever she is, for the "news hook."

In any case, after several hundred words of caveats covering a vertiable ideological diaspora, the story debunks its own headline. First we are told that maybe it's not The Feminists (apparently all one species that can be tidily but irritatingly referred to on second reference as progressive) who have the problematic expectations, but "traditionalist" women.

Meanwhile, traditionalist women--a significant portion of whom are Christian--expect less emotional work from their husbands, Wilcox and Nock speculate, which makes it easier for them to shake off frustrations, and less likely to nag. Whether or not any of this is the case, we do know that traditional marriages have the advantage of offering clearly defined roles. And traditionalist wives have a peer group fundamentally in agreement about what it wants and expects from husbands, creating a built-in support system.

And then we hear that the study paid zero attention to half the participants of the marriages in question--the men.

Wilcox and Nock's study leaves husbands out of the picture. What we might wait for is a study that examines husbands' happiness--and tells us something about how they view male cultural scripts that remain comparatively stagnant. Maybe for them, too, clear (even rigid) expectations would correlate with marital happiness. Or maybe if it were an easier choice for them to spend more time with their children, or to turn down a prestigious office job because they want more freedom, everyone would be happier. In any case, the progressive lesson of the moment (or is it a traditionalist lesson?) is that it's time to focus less on "her" marriage--and to remember that sometimes the personal is just personal.

Let's sidestep the obvious questions about the usefulness of this kind of scholarship in an era where the vast majority of women have no choice but to work and ponder, for a moment, those expectations. In her landmark history of marriage, sociologist Stephanie Coontz also discovers a disconnect in terms of expectations--for both men and women. But instead of limiting the debate to the pros and cons of Friedan-style feminism, Coontz suggests that the sea change of the last 30 years has created opportunities for both genders and for straights and gays alike. Marriage won't ever be the same, it just might be better--for everyone.

The result was that people really could marry for love, completely for love, in a way they hadn't been. As late as the 1960s, two-thirds of women in college polls said they would marry a man they didn't love if he met all of their other criteria. And you could begin to expect higher things of marriage. As late as the 1970s, many women who were interviewed, working-class women, told reporters that their definition of a happy marriage was one where the husband didn't hit them. Now, in the last 20 years, of course, our expectations have grown much higher.

The result is that many marriages are happier than many couples I studied in the past would ever have dared to dream. But the very things that make marriage more intimate and more flexible have also made it more optional. And they've made people less willing to put up with a marriage that doesn't meet those aspirations.

Posted by Beth Hawkins at March 7, 2006 2:42 PM | Comments (0)

 

Suffer the Children

Filed under: Family

Yes, Virginia, it is cheaper to run a Romanian orphanage

I don't know whether to laugh or to weep over this morning's Star Tribune. The glimmer of good news? Tucked into the wimmin's pages is a report on the high, high cost of child care in Minnesota. According to a new report, child care eats 28 percent of a low-income family's paycheck; 40 percent, in the case of many single parents. For many households, lower and middle class, it's a larger expense than housing.

Minnesotans with infant children pay more, as a percentage of their incomes, for child care than anywhere in the country, according to the study. On average, single parents with median incomes pay $4 of every $10 they earn to afford child care for infants. Two-parent families pay $1.52 for every $10 they earn -- just ahead of Massachusetts, at $1.48 per $10 earned.

Those were just several of the findings in the study, dubbed "Breaking the Piggy Bank: Parents and the High Price of Child Care," released by the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies in Washington.

So I'm reading this, and for a few paragraphs I'm happy. Until I get to the "why" part of reporter Chris Serres' piece.

But while an increase in state funding might help working families, experts say it will do nothing to address the main cause of Minnesota's high day-care costs: Government regulation.

The state has strict rules governing the quality of care among providers. For instance, state law requires day-care centers to employ at least one licensed care provider for every seven toddlers and at least one for every four infants. In Georgia and South Carolina, by contrast, one provider can supervise as many as 16 children.

Am I the only one who worries that the Heritage Foundation has secretly laid down a series of hiring recommendations for American newspapers? And that newspapers are playing ball? It's amazing Serres wrote this, yes, but even more amazing it made it through what, knowing the Strib, was certainly an army of copy editors armed with those little hooked probes they come at you with at the dentist. Better Georgia's system, where one adult can "care for" 16 kids at one time? Stack the ankle-biters 'round the room like cord wood, 'cause government rules are always anti-business and in a free market, cheaper is always better.

Jim Koppel is the director of the Children's Defense Fund of Minnesota and possessed of more, er, self-possession than I on this topic. I called him this afternoon, and here's his take:

Quality is one of the few things we have left in the system. We've had more than $200 million in cuts to childcare programs, we've had reimbursement rates to providers frozen at 2001 levels, we have a wait list of nearly 5,000 families, we've dropped from fourth to 40th in the last four years, and more than 10,000 children have dropped out of subsidized care and we don't know where they are.

So if quality is all we have left, it's not only mandatory that we hang onto it, we need to use it as a starting point to rebuilding our system.

Posted by Beth Hawkins at February 14, 2006 12:41 PM | Comments (1)

 

It's the Jelly Residue

Filed under: Family

NOT the wholesale lack of societal support, or the cost of good daycare

A new study shows that parents are at greater risk for depression than non-parents, according to the heretofore undiscovered (by us anyhow) online publication LiveScience.com.

"Parents have more to worry about than other people do--that's the bottom line," said Florida State University professor Robin Simon. "And that worry does not diminish over time. Parents worry about their kids' emotional, social, physical and economic well-being. We worry about how they're getting along in the world."

Haven't we seen this particular bit of research replicated time and time again? And read credible explorations of its sister hypothesis, having children makes you more susceptible to financial ruin? Why are these stories always 300 words long--as if the children themselves were the agents of unpleasantness?

Apropos, I was talking yesterday to a local child development scholar who was ranting about something she called "the family bubble": The popular paradigm that holds that every family is an island onto itself and its inhabitants are solely responsible for the family's welfare. She was particularly irked that no matter what science--hard or soft--comes up with, our collective reponse is to immediately conclude that individual parents (read=mothers) need to change their ways.

A couple of years ago the Search Institute, a local nonprofit, published research showing that the strongest families aren't shy to ask for help--with the side benefit that kids are treated to productive relationships with outside adults. Yet the same study, done in conjunction with the YMCA, revealed that most families in fact very rarely reach out for support.

Why? My hunch: In an "Ownership Society," we're supposed to own our own problems, dontcha know. It frosts my kiester that it was Hillary who popularized that damned village business. (Empty platitudes from the nation's then-ranking working mother! Sisterhood my ass!) It doesn't take a village, it takes a body politic--and preferably one populated with generators of great ideas, not lame rhetoric.

Posted by Beth Hawkins at February 8, 2006 3:24 PM | Comments (0)