The XX Factor: What women really think.

More Kids Equals More Happiness?

A post from DoubleX writer Bonnie Rochman:

Well, fire up your engines, ladies, because now there’s a new bit of research supporting a third conclusion: that being married with children is the key to happiness. In contrast to previous research that indicates an inverse relationship between satisfaction and number of children, this particular study, which tracked 10,000 British households over 15 years, found that the more kids you have, the happier you are. I think that would come as news to those parents who’ve decided to raise a singleton because they also want to have a life of their own ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)

Sesame Street Turns 40, and My Kids Aren't Staying Tuned

A post from DoubleX writer KJ Dell'Antonia:

I admit it--I wanted my kids to watch Sesame Street because I knew it was at worst harmless, and at best educational--although I've never believed watching TV could make kids smarter, I'm willing to accept that it can teach them to recognize a rectangle. But from the first, it held little interest for them. My oldest preferred Baby Einstein,  although with proper maneuvering, I could get in a shower during "Elmo's World"--although not necessarily without tears. He moved on to Blue's Clues, his younger sisters both preferred Dora, and his little brother remains a fan of Little Einsteins. I kept trying, but if Sesame Street was playing, they gradually drifted away. (Not that that's a bad thing, but presumably some children actually watch the show) ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)

The Cute-ocalypse is Coming

Like Lauren, I enjoyed Jim Windolf's insightful attack on cute culture, but I find the otters-holding-hands/Iraq War connection to be a bit of a stretch. Windolf suggests that we're asking for forgiveness through penitential offerings of cuteness, but it's not my impression that most Americans think we need to be forgiven. Maybe popular cuteness is intended "as some sort of correction" to our new status as invaders, but that presupposes a level of remorse I don't really see. Which is not to say cuteness and politics never meet; they certainly do in Japan. Here's Prince Pickles, the rosy-cheeked mascot of Japan's Defense Forces ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)

The Dangers of the Cute-R-Net

A post from DoubleX writer Lauren Bans:

Several times a week I walk by the marketing section of my office and see a group of grown men and women in their business-casual attire standing over someone’s computer screen giggling and cooing. Almost daily, I get an e-mail entitled, “SO CUTE I WANTZ TO DIE” or “AHHHHHHZZ! CUTEGASM!” along with a link for, say, a YouTube video of a sweet-faced pug so fat it can’t roll over, or a 4-year-old performing the Single Ladies dance. Most of these videos live up to the adorability claims of their “z”-infested titles. (Apparently bad grammar signifies something is SO cute it’s made one functionally retarded.) Though, admittedly, in order to enjoy the slew of children-dancing-to-Beyonce-videos I’ve been sent, I have to actively forget the gross reality that there are parents behind the camera who have trained their kids to be delightfully adorable circus monkeys for the Internet masses ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)

Polygamists are Packrats

A post from DoubleX writer Sonia Smith:

What have I learned over the past week watching polygamist Raymond Merril Jessop’s trial in the sleepy west Texas ranching town of Eldorado? Members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints save everything. And now, with the first criminal prosecution of an FLDS leader in Texas, this tendency to hoard every little scrap has come back to bite them. In trying to prove Jessop impregnated his 16-year-old “spiritual” wife in November 2004 at the sect’s Yearning for Zion Ranch, the prosecution is relying heavily on documents seized during last year’s raid. And there are a lot of them ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)

In A Long-Term Relationship, Do Women Lose Their Sex Drive More Quickly Than Men?

A post from DoubleX Desire Lab blogger Daniel Bergner:

There’s a theory that has some currency among sex researchers and therapists: that, over time in monogamous relationships, women lose desire more than men do. Not much data exists; I’m aware of only one large study on this subject. But the thought is that women’s libidos need more spark in order to ignite, and so women are particularly susceptible to losing desire as they remain with the same partner. It’s an idea that runs somewhat counter to the assumption that female desire tends to depend a great deal on the depth of relationships, on intimacy ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX).

We Shouldn't Judge Abby Johnson Yet, We Need to Know More

Amanda,

Pagans Were the Real Winners in Last Night's Election

Women and Virginia Governor-Elect Robert McDonnell

The turning point for the Virginia governor’s race came in August, when the Washington Post published a copy of Republican Robert McDonnell’s master's thesis, in which he argued that working women were detrimental to America, among other retrograde points. McDonnell’s genius in the campaign was to instantly focus the debate on whether or not he thinks women should be able to work (which, of course, he does) and thus obscure every other way in which his policies are, in fact, retrograde and bad for women.

McDonnell quickly quashed worries about him with these two videos, one of his daughter, who had served in Iraq, and the other of women state officials who had worked for him or were appointed by him. Unlike in the attack videos made by his opponent Creigh Deeds, these women were actual people who gave their names and occupations. The point conveyed, effectively, was that of course McDonnell appreciates working women. But it’s a pretty fringe right-wing minority these days who doesn’t. Among even the most conservative Christians, the argument is over whether women should work when their children are very young, not whether they should work at all ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX).

Even The Very Worst Prosecutors Can't Be Sued, For Good Reason

A post from DoubleX writer K.J. Dell'Antonia:

Supreme Court followers (and NPR listeners) heard an outrageous story today—that of an innocent man who spent more than two decades in prison for a murder he didn't commit before evidence of the apparent gross racism and misconduct of the police and prosecutors who put him there was uncovered. It's hard not to crave justice for this man—but what seems just for him will make justice less likely for everyone else.

Lawyers for Terry Harrison have argued that although it's long been clear that prosecutors cannot be sued for doing their job—for actually prosecuting a defendant for a crime—there is no immunity for investigative activity. Harrison claims he can sue his prosecutors for their participation in what was at best a botched investigation and at worst an outright conspiracy to arrest the wrong person for the crime. In other words, he's not suing them for prosecuting his trial, he's suing them for helping to put him in a position to be tried in the first place ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX).

"Precious" Gets A Few Things Wrong

A post from DoubleX writer Beth Fertig:

In the new movie Precious, Clareece Precious Jones is beaten by her mother and raped so often by her father that she’s pregnant with his second child. She’s also illiterate.

I’ve spent the past three years profiling illiterate young adults, and I decided to take two of them to a preview screening. Yamilka and her brother, Alejandro, now 26 and 24, are Dominican immigrants. They’d gotten all the way to high school without learning to read. After a hearing officer ruled in 2005 that New York City had violated a federal law that’s supposed to protect them because they are students with disabilities, the siblings received a combined total of more than $250,000 in private tutoring.

Yamilka and Alejandro expected the movie to get the Hollywood treatment. And they were fine with some of that, so long as they found it generally believable. Yamilka—who was overweight and self-conscious in school—related to the way Precious sat in the back of her class in junior high. “I didn’t want people to notice me, to notice something was wrong.” When she saw Precious guessing her way through a multiple choice test, Yamilka said she had done the same thing ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX).

Maine Voters Rejected Gay Marriage

When the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage in 2003, the polls showed disapproval by a margin of 53 percent to 35 percent. After the ruling went into effect, legislators geared up to reverse it by amending the state constitution. But two years later, the poll numbers had flipped, and the backlash never came. That's because reversing the court's ruling was a long process, not a quick and hasty ballot initiative like the one that Maine passed in Tuesday's election. In Maine, the law passed last May and never even went into effect ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX).

Fishy Story From Former Director of Planned Parenthood

A post from DoubleX writer Amanda Marcotte:

I'm sorry, Rachael, but this story you linked about Abby Johnson's sudden conversion from a Planned Parenthood director to an anti-choice fanatic has more holes in it than a piece of Swiss cheese after being used for target practice. Johnson's story fits way too neatly into a bunch of easily disproven anti-choice myths, the main one being that all it takes is one glance at an ultrasound to cause someone to "realize" that hey! abortion removes a fetus from your uterus. Pro-choicers already know that. Johnson seems to be selling a story that's a tad too pat, too close to what anti-choicers want to hear.

After all, your average person in the United States has seen probably hundreds of sonograms in their lives, and most of them show a fetus at gestational age well beyond the point that most women get elective abortions. If you compare the ultrasound taken prior to an elective abortion, the feeling is actually one of being underwhelmed, because there's not much there compared to the ones we're used to seeing. The anti-choice sentimental devices rely therefore on ignorance more than illumination—their own mistaken understanding of what goes on in an abortion clinic ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX).

In Support of a More Stringent Use of the Term ‘Douchebag’

A post from DoubleX writer Lauren Bans:

There’s a funny spoof video up on Boing Boing framed as a PSA of sorts in support of douchebag solidarity. It features a handful of self-pegged douchebags, one pumping iron at the gym, another riffing for the amusement of drink-dangling babes at a bar, all waxing on about the persecution of the douches: “For too long you’ve told us to shut the fuck up ... that people who are different from me matter.” But because I evidently cannot take a joke (and this may in fact make me a douchebag according to the video’s standards) my first thought was: This is a grossly incorrect use of the word “douchebag” ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)

The Obamas Do Not Have a Post-Feminist Marriage

Just one small response to Hanna's excellent observations in today’s DoubleX discussion of an alternate universe in which Hillary had become President: I can't resist disagreeing with her that the Obama marriage is post-feminist. I don't think any marriage where one spouse is gone out of the house to the extent that he was, and one spouse is left to raise the small children and hold down the fort, and, oh yes, make the money necessary for the mortgage payment, can be described as post-feminist. At least not in the ideal sense. It may be a post-feminist marriage in the sense that it's what a lot of women in her generation have struggled with—albeit an extreme version—but it's not post-feminist in the sense that it's the kind of set-up one would aspire to ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)

1950s Dating Horrors

Hanna, I am the product of the “simpler” '50s dating culture. My parents were young, hot for each other, met their families' requirements of looks (her) and potential earning capacity (him), and married at ages 19 and 20. Their union produced four children, lasted 20 years, and was a nightmare for all concerned. So I do not share David Brooks’ nostalgia for a time when dating had ‘guardrails.' I dated for decades in the pre-cell phone era, and it wasn’t technology that gave me an ironic, contingent feeling about my adventures. One of my male friends once said to me, “Sometimes I think you deliberately go on bad dates just so you have a story to tell” ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)

A Defense of "Cougar Town"

You Can't Wish the Crazy Away

A post from DoubleX writer Amanda Marcotte:

I usually love Charles Pierce's writing, but this recent piece in which he tries to pin some of the blame for the surge in right wing paranoia simply fails to make its point, and veers ever so slightly into the victim-blaming arena. It's tempting to suggest that if Obama made better choices, especially with regard to his appointments, then this whole right-wing freak-out wouldn't be so bad, but it simply isn't true ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)

What if women had gone to space first?

A post from the DoubleX staff:

According to a recent issue of Wired magazine, women performed just as well as men in late 1950s astronaut training tests. What if a woman had been the first American in space? ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)

Do Women Really Ask for Raises Less Often Than Men?

A guest post from DoubleX intern Danny Townsend:

In the New York Times last week, Joanne Lipman declared that women's progress has stalled because "we've focused primarily on numbers at the expense of attitudes." She tells one story with a precise tally: "In my time as an editor," she writes, "many, many men have come through my door asking for a raise or demanding a promotion. Guess how many women have ever asked me for a promotion? I'll tell you. Exactly ... zero." Reluctance to ask for a raise is, in Lipman's eyes, a problem of the prevalence of trying to be a "passive 'good girl'" ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)