I am often told I am lucky to be able to stay at home with my baby, and don't get me wrong, I am very grateful to have this opportunity. I can only imagine what it might be like for a single mom who has no choice but to send her baby to a day care and work full time just to keep a roof over their heads. However, most people seem to assume that staying at home is only a luxury for the privileged upper-middle class or better. They are shocked to learn that my husband only makes $23k/yr before taxes. It's incomprehensible to them that we would *choose* to have me stay at home and live in poverty.
Well, maybe "choose" is a little bit of a strong word, in all fairness, because as we're now scraping the bottom of the barrel and looking to the next school year as when I will need to go back to work, I have applied for dozens of jobs and haven't gotten a single call back yet. Not even for an initial round of interviews--nada. It's still only early spring and I do have a semi-solid temporary fall employment prospect to fall back on if all else fails (plus I could always join substitute teacher lists), but the fact is, permanent full-time positions aren't growing on trees, even for experienced teachers with advanced degrees looking at all arenas: public, private, and post-secondary schools.
That said, I could never imagine not staying at home in my baby's first year, even in the face of severe poverty, unless I had literally exhausted all other possible options. Yes that includes social welfare help. I don't give a damn if people say that that's leeching off the system. Why should the *lifelong* benefits of natural parenting be reserved only for those fortunate enough never to have to ask the government for help? I hear many AP folks argue that AP can still be followed with a working mom, and I wholeheartedly agree that this is true after about 12-24 months depending on the child. But babies less than a year old have a strong preference for close attachment and need frequent non-solid-food nourishment. Maybe to a certain degree you can closely replicate a natural parenting lifestyle if you are working in that first year, but let's cut the pc smokescreen and be honest for a minute. Is pumped breastmilk in a bottle really equal to nursing at the breast? Can a binky truly be a stand in for the comfort from "non-nutritive" suckling? Can the working poor usually afford to find a caregiver dedicated to upholding AP values? Is an attentive day care a genuine replacement for a parent? Are those daily walks in a stroller pushed by an early childhood educator as good as being worn in a sling or other baby carrier? Is responding as soon as possible to each (of numerous) baby's needs really as nurturing as immediate response by a parent who only has her own child(ren) to care for? Can a really sweet babysitter really be as intuitively connected to a baby's needs as a mother who follows her instincts? Can the snuggles in the evenings and weekends make up for the lack of bonding during the weekdays?
Let's be real. We can do things to get as close as possible to a natural state, but nothing in human biology is in line with mama and baby being separated for 40 hrs/week while baby is cared for alongside other infants. Just look at our closest animal relatives. A baby gorilla was recently born across the river from me at the local zoo. That mama gorilla won't even let caretakers come near her baby yet, much less relinquish him to any other would-be caregiver for any amount of time. We are not much different from other primates in our evolutionary expectations. We are born to be carried in arms during infancy, and to nurse frequently, and to only gradually begin to explore our world independently, unlike other mammals that are born being able to walk, trot, and/or gallop.
Are those other primate mothers lazy leeches? No. With babe in arm, the seek out food. They multitask, keeping a cautious eye out for predators or other dangers. They earn their keep and then some. If we human mothers were only granted the chance to similarly multitask and not be separated from our babies, it would be a win-win-win-win scenario. Mothers could pursue their careers outside the home, employers wouldn't have to worry about long maternity leaves, babies could get optimal nourishing, and society could stop whining about the lazy leechers. If it were plausible for me to bring my baby to work with me (and by that I mean in a sling or in the same room as me where I can respond to him immediately, not on-site childcare provided by someone else), I'd have already gone back to work (assuming I could have found gainful employment).
But instead I am on WIC and foodstamps. And I have sacrificed obscene amounts of money to be home with my babies over the years. I sat down and calculated a rough estimate of what my earnings would have added up to if I had continued teaching in the district I was employed by when I was pregnant with my first. I'd have earned, cumulatively about $400,000 since my first child's birth. Instead, I took a year off with her, only to find before I could start a new school year teaching, that I was pregnant with her sister, so I did some substitute teaching that school year, earning a few thousand dollars, followed by another year off with another babe. Did some more subbing the following year, and started going back to school to pursue astrophysics. But before I could finish, my husband and I divorced. I knew if I could just get through the undergraduate program I could start earning money as a graduate student researcher, so I went into debt to finish up. This far undid the earnings from subbing, putting me about $50k in the hole instead (since I was also living on loan money). Then there were a couple years of graduate school and child support which got me about $27k/yr. And now I'm at home again. So effectively, I've earned a total of about $2,000 since my first child was born. And that's not even bringing up the fact that, had I been employed in the position I gave up when she was born, I'd have been able to pay down my educational debt instead of "in-school" deferring it and adding to it. So the way I see it I gave up well over $400,000 to be at home with my babies. Was it really worth it?
Yes. I have looked back on my life and asked myself if I could trade what I have now for all those lost earnings and lost future potential earnings (since I'm a less-experienced and thus lower-on-the-totem-pole teacher that I would have been). The answer remains a definite no, no matter how I look at it.
Critics might still argue the label leech on the logic of poor family planning. But I doubt those critics saw a 99% effective IUD fail them and result in an unplanned pregnancy. Shit can happen and not everyone is ok with having an abortion. (This isn't a prolife argument, just a statement that some moms could never choose abortion, even if they respect the choice others may have made differently). Furthermore, many poor folks don't have a shining ray of light at the end of the tunnel. They see no end in sight to their poverty, no matter how hard they work. Should only the privileged in our society have the right to procreate? I believe that line of thinking is dangerous, elitist, and wrong. And I also believe it's inaccurate and equally-elitist to claim that hard work is the answer. Some are lucky to have their hard work rewarded by society. Others break their backs in fruitless hard work and scrape by living paycheck to paycheck.
Furthermore we are not all dealt the same cards. Some of us graduate from high schools with 90% of graduates going on to post-secondary schools, while others of us have to struggle to avoid drugs, gangs, and violence in our schools. How can students possibly be expected to concentrate on attaining the same level of academic achievement when they are dodging bullets from drivebys and may be forced to work as many hours as possible as a teen in order to help out their single mom, whose husband just went to jail? I personally don't belong to either of these extremes, but I appreciate that I had a better hand dealt to me than some and worse than others... And even with a decent hand, things can go wrong...
Well so what? Humans are adaptable creatures and many babies in day care turn out perfectly fine. It's giving them love that matters. Besides why should women feel they *have* to stay at home? I'm not arguing that they should! Indeed, mothers decidedly should NOT feel they have to stay at home to be a good mom. Everyone has to do what's right for their family. But the point is that, we shouldn't be asked to rear our young in a biologically unnatural way unless we want to. And we shouldn't be told that this unnatural way is equivalent. And it shouldn't be unfairly demanded that poor families be subject to this unnatural way if they disagree with it as being what's right for their family. We should *all* be given the right not to be separated from our babies for at least a year. AND the stay-at-home vs. work-outside-the-home choice should also not be a choice forced on any mom of an infant. There should be the very logical choice instead to multitask with baby, just as other primates do.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Religious Discrimination as a Case Study for Tolerance and Scientific Literacy (Part Two)
To be fair, maybe science should stay out of religion, as religion should stay out of science. All I meant to justify in the end of the preceding post is this: one can always use facts to justify opinions but you can't use opinions to justify facts, so if science is akin to facts and religion is akin to opinions, you can see why I object more strongly to bringing religion into science than vice versa. Still this might be an oversimplification. After all I think the term "truth" is the key here, and may be more apt than "fact" or "opinion." Science isn't all facts and religion isn't all opinions (though for someone like me, it is difficult to find anything I consider to be factual in most religions--still I'll assume for sake of argument that factual information does exist in religion). Both seek truths of some kind. So perhaps we should just keep these sort of truths separate entirely since they use very different methods for uncovering their respective truths and require very different modes of mental processing (faith and belief vs. skepticism and proof).
This then just gets back to my assertion that it is often difficult to keep such realms compartmentalized. I admit that I personally could not do it. At first when learning basic science it was enough to simply address the areas in which my religious teachings seemed to conflict with science. In doing so, I took the Garden of Eden to be a figurative creation story. After all, surely the Bible has passages that no one takes literally (certain diet restrictions or harsh punishments), and there are even parts of the Bible that contradict other parts (I've read the whole thing). So it made sense to me that the creation story was symbolic and that the Big Bang and evolution were the actual tools god used to create the earth and man from seemingly nothing.
But the more I embraced the scientific way of seeking truth, the more untenable the religious way seemed to me, and I'm betting my story is not at all uncommon. Fortunately, the devout need not become a scientist and can remain in the stage I was in when religion and basic science coexisted in my modes of thinking, maintaining religiosity and scientific literacy. And if the devout is very deliberate, careful, and willing, he/she can maintain that compartmentalization while going on to pursue science more seriously. But this is not an easy task. And if folks like me are incapable of leaving the sacred immune to skepticism, it is quite conceivable that this often works in the reverse.
Indeed as an example, there is a certain professor in a certain department that I happened to be in as a graduate student who thinks other scientists loathe him because he is religious. Sadly, he doesn't see that those of us who do not respect him as a scientist could care less what his religious beliefs are, EXCEPT that he brings his religion into science. This is especially enraging because as a scientific "expert" he speaks with "authority" and tries to make the case for belief in the supernatural as being necessary to explain scientific phenomenon. Not only is this a departure from the scientific method, but because of his credentials, the average person is likely to think this man's unscientific conclusions represent science in general. I won't go into the sexist interactions I personally had with this professor, but suffice it to say that his perception that people do not like him due to his religious beliefs is far from true. There are valid reasons people avoid him.
Similarly it is also highly suspect when a religious school decides they only want religious scientists working for them. It wreaks of an agenda. An agenda that is also not scientific. For if you are truly teaching science, you cannot bring religious belief into it, as I have already argued. Otherwise, you might be teaching your sincere beliefs but you are not teaching science. And the logic can't work both ways. For example many Christians claim that their religion is separate from their science. And for some this is totally true--they rise to the challenge and keep religion out of science and vice versa. I have many scientific friends who are very religious and admirably keep those two spheres apart from one another in their thinking. But if this can be done, then could you not just make sure that anyone who teaches science in your faculty is doing the same with their beliefs, be they Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Agnostic, Atheist, Wiccan, Pagan or whatever? If science has no place for religious beliefs in its teachings then what should it matter what the teacher's beliefs are, so long as they aren't being brought into the classroom and as a consequence, destroying the science. And if you argue that religion needs to be brought into science then: a. you are not really teaching science but rather an unscientific pseudoscience, and b. you should not be surprised, then, if the scientists you train fall under heavy criticism for their departure from the scientific method via the introduction of religious belief into their science. You can't have it both ways: Again I repeat, if you are teaching true science then a person's religious beliefs shouldn't matter as long as they can keep them out of their science and if you bring your religious beliefs into your science, you are necessarily betraying the scientific method.
With this in mind, we get to the crux of the issue. It would be completely reasonable for a religious school to ensure that its science faculty are not stepping outside science and teaching a belief system counter to their sacred beliefs. It would be appropriate to question candidates, therefore, as to their beliefs and how they might handle potential questions from students regarding matters of the divine. For example, if I was given this chance, I would tell the school officials that I respect their beliefs totally and that I would sign an oath if they wished, promising that I would never speak against those beliefs. I might even be willing to say something like this (as a stopgap in response to a student's repeated questioning), "the _____ denomination of the Christian religion teaches this: _____" and commit to learning some canned responses to common questions. That way I completely circumvent speaking on my own beliefs and align my response with the beliefs of the school. Most of the time; however, I would find it most appropriate to say something like "questions of religious belief fall outside my curriculum as a scientist. I recommend you speak with [insert religious mentor's name] for questions regarding religion." Since I do not have particular beliefs in the supernatural, it would be quite easy indeed for me to keep religion out of science even though I couldn't do the reverse with my own beliefs. But to refuse to even consider candidates like myself is something I find highly offensive (again, imagine the reverse situation), and makes me also question what they consider to be science if they believe it necessary for science faculty to have a particular religious belief in order to adequately teach science. And then this question ripples down the line of consequences: if it's suspect whether or not they are teaching true science then is it suspect that their science majors have a true understanding of science? And if growing numbers of science majors have an inadequate understanding of science, then how can we hope to spread scientific literacy in our culture?
Finally, you may wonder, if I am such a staunch atheist, why would I want to even teach in a religious school. The fact is that, in addition to financial pressure to find employment, there are certain things I like about religious schools. First, they tend to be smaller and more personable than huge universities. My first bachelor's degree (in music) was earned at one such college and I really loved that faculty made personal connections with your students. Education in such an environment is more efficient and effective. Second, I think it's important that religious folks have some basic understanding of *true* science (ie. NOT the pseudo-science taught when religion is brought into science). As an atheist I think I am in a unique position not to allow supernatural beliefs to be inserted into my scientific teachings, thus I would be able to give my students a true scientific experience. There is a growing problem of scientific illiteracy in our nation and we are falling behind in the STEM areas compared to other nations. I do not aim to try to destroy religious belief, only to outreach to those most in need in order to get them basic scientific proficiency. What they do with their religious beliefs is up to them, as it should be. They can reconcile any differences on a basic level as I once did, they can keep religious questions completely separate, or they can find themselves unable to resist questioning their religious assumptions. Religious school officials can teach what they feel to be important in regards to religion, but certainly they cannot hope to have their teachings stick if they are externally applied without internal faith. Whatever spiritual route students choose ought to be up to them, but I certainly do not mean to steer them in any particular direction, nor should this be the agenda of any scientist of any faith. I would like the chance to teach students about objective scientific truths, but I have no desire or will to teach them anything about religious truths. That is the job of the religious leaders, faculty whose expertise lie in religion, and ultimately their own hearts. And isn't that the essence of the ideal science faculty candidate?
This then just gets back to my assertion that it is often difficult to keep such realms compartmentalized. I admit that I personally could not do it. At first when learning basic science it was enough to simply address the areas in which my religious teachings seemed to conflict with science. In doing so, I took the Garden of Eden to be a figurative creation story. After all, surely the Bible has passages that no one takes literally (certain diet restrictions or harsh punishments), and there are even parts of the Bible that contradict other parts (I've read the whole thing). So it made sense to me that the creation story was symbolic and that the Big Bang and evolution were the actual tools god used to create the earth and man from seemingly nothing.
But the more I embraced the scientific way of seeking truth, the more untenable the religious way seemed to me, and I'm betting my story is not at all uncommon. Fortunately, the devout need not become a scientist and can remain in the stage I was in when religion and basic science coexisted in my modes of thinking, maintaining religiosity and scientific literacy. And if the devout is very deliberate, careful, and willing, he/she can maintain that compartmentalization while going on to pursue science more seriously. But this is not an easy task. And if folks like me are incapable of leaving the sacred immune to skepticism, it is quite conceivable that this often works in the reverse.
Indeed as an example, there is a certain professor in a certain department that I happened to be in as a graduate student who thinks other scientists loathe him because he is religious. Sadly, he doesn't see that those of us who do not respect him as a scientist could care less what his religious beliefs are, EXCEPT that he brings his religion into science. This is especially enraging because as a scientific "expert" he speaks with "authority" and tries to make the case for belief in the supernatural as being necessary to explain scientific phenomenon. Not only is this a departure from the scientific method, but because of his credentials, the average person is likely to think this man's unscientific conclusions represent science in general. I won't go into the sexist interactions I personally had with this professor, but suffice it to say that his perception that people do not like him due to his religious beliefs is far from true. There are valid reasons people avoid him.
Similarly it is also highly suspect when a religious school decides they only want religious scientists working for them. It wreaks of an agenda. An agenda that is also not scientific. For if you are truly teaching science, you cannot bring religious belief into it, as I have already argued. Otherwise, you might be teaching your sincere beliefs but you are not teaching science. And the logic can't work both ways. For example many Christians claim that their religion is separate from their science. And for some this is totally true--they rise to the challenge and keep religion out of science and vice versa. I have many scientific friends who are very religious and admirably keep those two spheres apart from one another in their thinking. But if this can be done, then could you not just make sure that anyone who teaches science in your faculty is doing the same with their beliefs, be they Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Agnostic, Atheist, Wiccan, Pagan or whatever? If science has no place for religious beliefs in its teachings then what should it matter what the teacher's beliefs are, so long as they aren't being brought into the classroom and as a consequence, destroying the science. And if you argue that religion needs to be brought into science then: a. you are not really teaching science but rather an unscientific pseudoscience, and b. you should not be surprised, then, if the scientists you train fall under heavy criticism for their departure from the scientific method via the introduction of religious belief into their science. You can't have it both ways: Again I repeat, if you are teaching true science then a person's religious beliefs shouldn't matter as long as they can keep them out of their science and if you bring your religious beliefs into your science, you are necessarily betraying the scientific method.
With this in mind, we get to the crux of the issue. It would be completely reasonable for a religious school to ensure that its science faculty are not stepping outside science and teaching a belief system counter to their sacred beliefs. It would be appropriate to question candidates, therefore, as to their beliefs and how they might handle potential questions from students regarding matters of the divine. For example, if I was given this chance, I would tell the school officials that I respect their beliefs totally and that I would sign an oath if they wished, promising that I would never speak against those beliefs. I might even be willing to say something like this (as a stopgap in response to a student's repeated questioning), "the _____ denomination of the Christian religion teaches this: _____" and commit to learning some canned responses to common questions. That way I completely circumvent speaking on my own beliefs and align my response with the beliefs of the school. Most of the time; however, I would find it most appropriate to say something like "questions of religious belief fall outside my curriculum as a scientist. I recommend you speak with [insert religious mentor's name] for questions regarding religion." Since I do not have particular beliefs in the supernatural, it would be quite easy indeed for me to keep religion out of science even though I couldn't do the reverse with my own beliefs. But to refuse to even consider candidates like myself is something I find highly offensive (again, imagine the reverse situation), and makes me also question what they consider to be science if they believe it necessary for science faculty to have a particular religious belief in order to adequately teach science. And then this question ripples down the line of consequences: if it's suspect whether or not they are teaching true science then is it suspect that their science majors have a true understanding of science? And if growing numbers of science majors have an inadequate understanding of science, then how can we hope to spread scientific literacy in our culture?
Finally, you may wonder, if I am such a staunch atheist, why would I want to even teach in a religious school. The fact is that, in addition to financial pressure to find employment, there are certain things I like about religious schools. First, they tend to be smaller and more personable than huge universities. My first bachelor's degree (in music) was earned at one such college and I really loved that faculty made personal connections with your students. Education in such an environment is more efficient and effective. Second, I think it's important that religious folks have some basic understanding of *true* science (ie. NOT the pseudo-science taught when religion is brought into science). As an atheist I think I am in a unique position not to allow supernatural beliefs to be inserted into my scientific teachings, thus I would be able to give my students a true scientific experience. There is a growing problem of scientific illiteracy in our nation and we are falling behind in the STEM areas compared to other nations. I do not aim to try to destroy religious belief, only to outreach to those most in need in order to get them basic scientific proficiency. What they do with their religious beliefs is up to them, as it should be. They can reconcile any differences on a basic level as I once did, they can keep religious questions completely separate, or they can find themselves unable to resist questioning their religious assumptions. Religious school officials can teach what they feel to be important in regards to religion, but certainly they cannot hope to have their teachings stick if they are externally applied without internal faith. Whatever spiritual route students choose ought to be up to them, but I certainly do not mean to steer them in any particular direction, nor should this be the agenda of any scientist of any faith. I would like the chance to teach students about objective scientific truths, but I have no desire or will to teach them anything about religious truths. That is the job of the religious leaders, faculty whose expertise lie in religion, and ultimately their own hearts. And isn't that the essence of the ideal science faculty candidate?
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