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Tammy Duckworth applauds new rule letting senators bring babies to work

Posted on April 19, 2018 by Viral News
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DTAG 6 TT DTAG 7 TT HTAG 1 TTCarrie Underwood required 40 stitches to her face after autumnHETAG 1 TT

Fox4 11: Carrie Underwood revealed on her blog that she required 40 to 50 sews on her face after falling outside her Nashville home in November.

Carrie Underwood posted the first close-up photo of her face Saturday night ahead of her performance at the Academy of Country Music Awards.

The country singer shared the photo hours after posting another distant photo of herself at rehearsal. Underwood’s Sunday performance will be her first public appearance since she suffered a nasty fall outside her Nashville home last November.

“Had a great rehearsal for the @acmawards! Can’t wait until tomorrow night! #CryPretty #ACMAwards, ” Underwood captioned the photo.

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Had a great rehearsal for the @acmawards! Can’t wait until tomorrow night! #CryPretty #ACMAwards

A post shared by Carrie Underwood (@ carrieunderwood) on Apr 14, 2018 at 6:23 pm PDT

Underwood had said the “freak random accident” left her “not quite appearing the same.” Saturday night’s photo, however, didn’t depict any visible scars or marks on the 35 -year-old’s face.

BTAG 2 TTATAG 7 TTCARRIE UNDERWOOD SAYS HER FACE IS HEALING ‘PRETTY NICELY, ‘ WRIST IS ‘ALMOST’ BACK TO NORMAL SINCE FALL

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ATAG 8 TTGetting ready for the weekend …# CryPretty #ACMawards @CALIAbyCarrie

A post shared by ATAG 9 TT Carrie Underwood (@ carrieunderwood) on Apr 13, 2018 at 7:15 pm PDT

The singer has been taunting her return to the spotlight since the start of the month. Underwood proved off her face in the first uncovered Instagram photo on April 4. The black and white picture only uncovered half of her face, though she has maintain most of her features below her nose under wraps since November.

She her fans an update last week, saying her wrist is almost back to normal and her face “has been mending pretty nicely” after receiving virtually 50 stitches from the fall.

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ATAG 10 TTA post shared by Carrie Underwood (@ carrieunderwood ) on Apr 4, 2018 at 8: 01 am PDT

“First off, physically, I’m doing pretty darn good these days! My wrist is almost back to normal, about 90% there…and the docs say that last 10% will come in time. And my face has been healing pretty nicely as well, ” Underwood wrote. “I definitely feel more like myself than I have in a while.”

BTAG 5 TTATAG 11 TTCARRIE UNDERWOOD SHARES ANOTHER DISTANT PHOTO OF FACE AHEAD OF ACM AWARDS

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RTAG 16 TT ATAG 12 TTGood morning! Just a couple of updates to share with you … smarturl.it/ o9yuge

RTAG 17 TTA post shared by ATAG 13 TT Carrie Underwood (@ carrieunderwood) on Apr 10, 2018 at 6:34 am PDT

RTAG 18 TTUnderwood said the healing process has stimulated her slow down — which she dubbed “forced relaxation” — and spend more time with her husband, Mike Fisher, and son, Isaiah. She called it a silver lining to the fall.

RTAG 19 TT“Sometimes I guess things happen in order to build us slow down. It also entails I’ve been home to support my favorite hockey player coming out of retirement! ” Underwood said, referring to Fisher’s return to the Nashville Predators.

RTAG 20 TTUnderwood is expected on Sunday night to perform her song “Cry Pretty, ” the single released last week off her upcoming album.

RTAG 21 TTAt this year’s award ceremony, the vocalist is nominated for two awards, Best Female Vocalist of the Year and Best Vocal Event of the year.

DTAG 24 TT RTAG 22 TTKatherine Lam is a breaking and trending news digital producer for Fox News. Follow her on Twitter at @bykatherinelam

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US senator, the first to give birth in office, says new regulation will assist drag institution into the 21 st century

The US Senate on Wednesday unanimously agreed to allow parents to bring their infants onto the chamber floor.

The rule change will allow Senator Tammy Duckworth, who this month became the first senator to give birth while in office, to nurse her newborn daughter on the Senate floor.

The resolution permits parents- mothers and parents- to bring children under the age of one into the chamber during referendums .. Previously, only senators and certain members of staff were allowed on the floor while the Senate conducted legislative business.

In a statement, Duckworth thanked her colleagues for helping drag the tradition-bound institution “into the 21st century”.

” I would like to thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, particularly those in leadership and on the Rules Committee, for helping bringing the Senate into the 21 st Century by recognizing that sometimes new mothers also have responsibilities at work ,” Duckworth told.

Tammy Duckworth (@ SenDuckworth)

By ensuring that no Senator will be prevented from performing their constitutional responsibilities simply because they have a young child, the Senate is leading by example& sending the important message that working parents everywhere deserve family-friendly workplace policies

April 18, 2018

She added:” These policies aren’t merely a women’s issue, they are a common-sense economic issue .”

Duckworth, 50, devoted birth to Maile Pearl Bowlsbey last Monday. She was already one of only 10 females to give birth while serving in Congress, having delivered her first born, Abigail, as a is part of the House of Representative in November 2014.

Her office has said she plans to take a 12 -week maternity leave, but will be present for important votes. The rule change will allow her to bring Maile onto the floor- and breastfeed her- during referendum series, which can take hours. It will also make it easier for the senator to be present for late-night or last-minute elections.

” Being a parent is a difficult job, and the Senate rules shouldn’t make it any harder ,” said the senate rules committee chairman, Roy Blunt, a Republican of Missouri.” I’m glad we were able to get this done to address the needs of parents in the Senate. I congratulate Sen Duckworth and their own families, and look forward to meeting her daughter .”

After announcing her pregnancy, Duckworth vowed to work with senators on both sides of the aisle to build the chamber more accommodate to mothers and parents. The House has long allowed lawmakers to bring their children on the Senate floor.

” I feel like the Senate is actually in the 19 th century as opposed to the 21 st somehow and that’s really unfortunate ,” the Illinois Democrat told the Guardian in an interview before the birth of her daughter.

” It’s a reflection of a real need for more women in leadership across our country, whether it’s legislatively or in boardrooms or the military .”

Make sure to visit: CapGeneration.com

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Posted in Viral | Tagged family, Gender, Parents and parenting, US news, US politics, US Senate, Women | Leave a reply

‘I felt I was being punished for pushing back’: pregnancy and #MeToo

Posted on March 18, 2018 by Viral News
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Pregnant females are still being patronised, blamed for our bodies failings, and made to feel guilty about our choices

I spent one third of 2015- about 120 days- on bed remainder. I moved only to visit a hospital or doctor’s office, where I was scrutinised and presented with a list of concrete and potential deficiencies. There was surely something wrong with my cervix, likely something wrong with my hormone levels, probably something wrong with my placenta, and perhaps something wrong with my baby’s heart. Every time I was investigated- which was constantly- a new potential problem surfaced. Having already lost two pregnancies, I was overcome by the looming prospect of cataclysm. I refused to prepare for anything more than a week in advance, as if hope were interchangeable with hubris and therefore deserving of punishment.

Throughout the pregnancy, I was grimly enthusiastic about suggestions, tests, and therapies- convinced that the more I suffered, the more likely I would be to bring a newborn home. I injected progesterone; sustained weekly ultrasounds; underwent a special MRI scan. I attended my appointments with the obstetrician, the maternal-foetal-medicine specialist and the foetal cardiologist. Most of all, I tried not to move. I believed that stillness might give me the best opportunity of giving birth to a healthy newborn. Also, a sense of self-preservation recommended me: if I were the most careful patient, then I would not have to blame myself were a tragedy to result. Lying flat at home, I was in a dull, perpetual panic.

That panic ended two years ago, replaced by the more welcome anxiety of how to care for a newborn. After so much dread , not a single could-go-wrong went wrong. I will never know if the precautions helped, or if everything was fine all along. My daughter, born healthy at full term, is a toddler now, and this, the spring of 2018, is the season of my fourth pregnancy.

Four pregnancies: two loss over two years, followed by one “girls “, followed by one baby, currently inside, who occupies a tentative place between a pregnancy and a living child. I assess her week by week: if she were born today, she may never take a breath; if she were born today, she would soon succumb; if she were born today, she might even live. Yet, for months, I’ve been seeing her face, formed and shifting, on a black-and-white screen, beamed out from within me. At the least, she is and has long been decidedly present.

As soon as my now-two-year-old daughter was placed, hollering, on my chest, the bitter struggle to have her receded in my mind. But now that battle has come back clearly, because it is repeating: specialists, scans, injections, constraints, doomsday scenarios, cautionary tales. But this new pregnancy, which began 18 months later, is occurring in a different decided, in the context of #MeToo. What once seemed like bad behaviour that girls were expected to bear has been revealed as oppressive, grotesque and often criminal. Pregnancy and birth experiences do not exist outside “the worlds largest” culture, but securely within, along an ugly, interminable continuum.

I entered my recent pregnancy, which began with my personal tradition of early bleeding and disarray, during the Trump presidency, a couple of months before the Harvey Weinstein allegations. My obstetrician, a feminist who skilfully guided me through my pregnancy in 2015, recommended that I find a specialist. She didn’t know much about him, except that he had a high success rate with complicated pregnancies. He utilized aggressive techniques, but she’d heard he saved babies.

I went to the expert for a series of intricate scans. I had 38 vials of blood taken at once; my limb operated out. The specialist diagnosed me with a mild clotting disorder. According to him, it meant that my placenta could be compromised; without therapy, it might not offer the baby enough nourishment. Or then again, it might, as it had before, with my daughter. That’s the tricky thing about pregnancy: nobody knows. If you weren’t so privileged, if the equipment weren’t so advanced, you are able never learn that something about you doesn’t fit the many textbook requirements, yet you may have a robust little newborn anyway. Or you might lose that baby and remain mystified as to why.

Once diagnosed, I was instructed to inject a blood thinner into my belly every day. I was also prescribed progesterone, though my levels were only on the lower end of “normal”, placed on pelvic rest- no sex for six months- and scanned every two weeks. I was still mobile, and could continue with my daily life, so I felt luck. Or that is what I told myself. To conceive my daughter, I’d spent years undergoing minor surgeries, miscarriages, fertility treatments. I figured any subsequent notion would be a similarly long, painful journey. Just in case, when I stopped breastfeeding, I visited my obstetrician to discuss birth control. Six weeks later, I was staring at a plus sign on a stick. My spouse and I had been sloppy just once, but as any moronic teen knows, once is enough.

The timing wasn’t ideal. Beneath a thick veneer of gratefulness, I felt a guilty, unspoken sadnes. In what I considered the selfish recesses of my mind, I longed to be free. The route to parenthood, as it unfolded, had been invasive and constant, shocking in its intensity, grief-inducing, medicalised and without pleasure until my girl was bear. Then I felt that I belonged to her. We were physically attached to each other, breathing the same pocket of air, and it had taken me more than a year to begin working in earnest again. After so long, I ultimately had autonomy over my own body- and then, before I knew it, someone was residing within me. But that tiny resident was the priority, I told myself. I wouldn’t dare tempt the universe with complaints.

At my 20 -week check, the ultrasound technician informed me that, while my baby was in perfect condition, my cervix – the portion of the uterus that stands between the newborn and the world – was shortening prematurely, the condition that had caused me much heartache two years earlier. The official diagnosis is” incompetent cervix “. In a “competent” female body, the cervix remains long and closed until full term, and then distends. But in an “incompetent” female body, the buffoonish cervix can abbreviate and open early, letting a baby to tumble out. The” incompetent cervix” joins a number of curious obstetric diagnosings: the” inhospitable uterus”,” hostile uterus”,” hostile cervical mucus”,” blighted ovum “. Meanwhile, humen experience” premature ejaculation” and not” inadequate testicles “; “erectile dysfunction”, but never a” futile penis “. They exhibit problems, but their anatomy is not defined as absence. Pregnant girls over 35 are of” advanced maternal age”, merely a slight improvement over the previous word, only recently defunct: “elderly”. Those who have suffered as a result more than two miscarriages are known as” habitual aborters “. We experience “spontaneous abortions”. A bad habit, that impetuous self-aborting: if only we had the self-control to stop.

The specialist entered the exam room and inspected the images of my bungling cervix. He would perform a cervical stitch the next day, in an emergency surgery. My obstetrician had performed a similar intervention during my prior pregnancy, but she wanted functional specialists to do it this time. Sitting on the examination table, I remembered my previous experience with bed rest. My obstetrician had steadfastly declined to order it, but another doctor had encouraged me to move very little and, frightened and vigilant, I decided to obey him. I recollected how, isolated and dull, I had worked half-heartedly on the edits of a book I’d spent four years researching and writing. Then, I had remained with my mother in a build with an elevator near the hospital. Now, I was living in a third-floor walk-up with a puppy, a toddler, a babysitter on the payroll and deadlines to gratify. The specialist appeared unmoved by the logistics of my life. I asked what I could expect in terms of physical activity and continuing with run. He did not answer, but told me to stay still for 24 hours.

The next day, I was wheeled into an operating room, where a male anaesthesiologist commented repeatedly on a tattoo on my back and then grappled, mumbling, to insert a needle into my spine, simply above my bare ass; general anaesthesia is bad for a baby, so I would be awake during the procedure. My feet and legs ran dead. I was manipulated into a most undignified stance, a sort of naked traction. A coterie of male medical professionals took to fixing my most intimate parts.

Later, my husband told me he knew how I must have felt. No, I told. Imagine that over the course of your lifetime a flock of people, many of them women, have prodded, inspected and peered at your nether region. Usually annually. Sometimes weekly and sometimes, while sighing in exasperation, shaking their heads in letdown, or nodding approvingly. Imagine, then, that for the second time in as many years a few cases of these women hung your legs up while you were fully conscious and sewed up your balls. My husband, a tint of pale grey, mumbled that I was right: he couldn’t relate.

As informed, I didn’t leave the house that week. I took a cocktail of drugs. They stimulated me sick, but, in agreement with the expert, they were good for my uterus. But they might be bad for the baby. But if I didn’t take them, and the newborn were born early, that would be worse for her: disabling, fatal. I stopped trying to assess the situation. I wondered if I would lose the baby because of either my flawed body or my poor selections or for no discernible reason at all. I also wondered about other things: if I would get to take a stroll, pursue a leading for a narrative, keep up contacts, honour contracts.

At my next appointment, I learned that the baby was prospering and the surgery had been successful. Nothing was insured- the situation could change mutely and abruptly- but this was good news. The specialist nodded and seemed satisfied as he inspected the ultrasound images of my insides- once rebellious, but now pliant and deferential. Before he left the room, I asked again about the restrictions on my job and movement.

” You care only about your work ,” he told, abruptly creating his voice.” You’re pressuring me .”

I am not a woman who shies away from conflict and have never once been mistaken for a people-pleaser. But had this interaction passed two years earlier, I would have experienced a furtive rush of fear, remain convinced that I was at the man’s mercy. For the sake of my baby, I would have told myself, I would do well to yield, to soothe him, to agree, to defuse- and then to go home and privately fury, feeling young and dumb and female. But now I assured the situation from the outside, through the lens of the feminist mutiny that saturated the news. From this view, a woman was sitting on the examination table, the specialist standing before her. He was up, she was down. He was the expert, she the civilian. He had recently been elbow-deep inside her. Each hour they met, only one of them was carrying a baby they could lose. And only one of them was wearing pants.

” I want to know how my medical situation will affect my professional life ,” I said , not sweetly, and appearing him straight in the eye.” You told me that we would assess it this week. I want to know what to expect .”

” What can you expect ?” he told, annoyed.” Fine, you can expect to be on bed remainder for the rest of this pregnancy .”

This was penalty, I felt, for pushing back: four months’ confinement.

Bed rest is not widespread protocol. It is, in fact, highly controversial. Some medical experts have deemed it ineffective, unsupported by data and risky: it can cause blood clots, muscle atrophy, depression, the loss of a job or fund. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists cautions against it in most cases. Many argue that it’s an old-fashioned recommendation constructed when the stubborn mystery of female biology asserts itself. Doctors and patients want a answer, and bed rest allows them to prescribe and undergo something, rather than face the disconcerting reality of the unknown.

Then again, millions of women and doctors across the world have sworn by bed rest for centuries. They consider it a tried-and-true technique to maintaining a baby in. They have watched it run. To give your child a better opportunity, you simply have to stop your life for a few months. Can you really defy? I knew about this dispute, so when the specialist insisted that bed remainder was imperative, I wanted him to justify himself. I reminded myself that if I felt inferior to this man, it was only because he wished it to be so , not because it was true. I asked again for him to explain his reasoning.

He took another tack.” I’ve had people disregard me and they lose a baby they’ve wanted for 10 years ,” he said.” Because of an preoccupation with work .”

A woman who wanted or needed to work, then, and in so doing defied his orders, could be said to have caused her baby’s death. It seemed to me that he chose to place blamed on that girl- to imply that she had caused her own loss, even when that loss may have been unavoidable. Though this man had made a successful business in women’s health, I understood then that he didn’t know a thing about the interior lives of women.

I left the clinic. I would have liked never to return. But here is the pregnant woman’s conundrum: we are not unto ourselves. We hold within us the start of other people; we’re supposed to preserve our own independent humanity while growing new, dependent humanity. It’s a hard balance to strike, and we’re led to believe any decision, blunder, slip-up of the mind, can have atrocious outcomes. We’re were supposed to subvert everything in our lives if necessary. Also, if not necessary.

The expectations placed upon females by the obstetric establishment- especially if our pregnancies don’t follow a perfect course, and often even when they do- are presented as normal. The field of obstetrics requires females to enter into an absurd realm, or perhaps to simply remain within the absurd realm in which we already exist. We’re are submitted to techniques that verge on Victorian: to remain prone, and in extreme cases tilted on a hospital bed at an angle for months at a time; to forgo work, pleasure, fund; to allow painful interventions and invasive procedures; to agree to major abdominal surgery. We’re told it’s for baby’s sake; anything other than blind adoption is selfish at best, murderous at worst.

There’s no easy alternative. Decades ago, a group of midwives, frustrated that pregnancy was treated as a condition and women as incapable children, made an empowering birth ideology, encouraging women to be confident about their bodies’ life-giving abilities. Their devoted following has morphed into a movement, itself sometimes restrictive and dogmatic, in which women are encouraged to forgo pain drug during labour- which doesn’t hurt, some adherents claim, but is simply a series of powerful sensations. By following this approach, the midwives claim, a woman and her child can avoid a host of devastating health ailments, maybe caused by hospital interventions. While this can result in positive, liberating birth experiences for some, it’s not a safe or reasonable alternative for others, especially those with high-risk pregnancies or those who don’t have access to properly trained midwives. Plus, some girls simply want the epidural.

Whatever approach you pick, there are rules, and any discrepancy can result in devastation. Pregnant girls can ruin everything by eating sushi, ricotta or beansprouts; drinking wine or coffee; utilizing toxic face cream; riding a bicycle; vacuuming; running a long shift; taking out the dog; sleeping on our backs; having sex; reaching climax. By caring for older kids or trying to make a living. By not having supportive partners, or enough fund for babysitters, or helpful relatives. We can ruin it by being black, sick, poor, or rural- all factors that make a pregnancy or labour more dangerous. By moving, or not moving, taking medicine, or refusing to take medicine. By giving birth in the hospital, or in the home. Stress is harmful. We should relax. A bath could help, but could also be perilous. I often wake at dawning, hand on belly, feeling my newborn switching. I don’t know how to do right by her.

So many doctors deal in the dread surrounding pregnancy. They can enforce terror upon their patients with their diagnosis, prognosis, protocols and regulations, handed down with meagre justification , no personalisation and little consideration for the intricacies of a woman’s life. They are part of a system that should be tipped towards supporting a woman during a hour of vulnerability, but instead removes her free will and holds her, while attaining her responsible for almost any tragedy that may befall her or her baby.

Women now make up more than half of obstetrician-gynaecologists, but the field was designed and dominated by men for centuries. I don’t need the expert to know what it is to give birth, to be a woman, a mother. I don’t need him to be relatable, comforting, permissive, protective- or a pal, a father, a god or savior. I do need him to recognise my humanity while dispensing his expertise. I expect him, and his contemporaries, to be honest about the mysteries of pregnancy and birth- honest with themselves and their patients.

For all the research and money poured into this realm of medicine, so much remains unknown, unknowable. One cannot compare two treatments of the same pregnancy , nor can one experiment on pregnant women. I cannot judge whether it is right, then, to approach complications in a pregnancy as aggressively as possible. I do know that medical limiteds can radically affect a woman’s life, and because of this, the choice of how to proceed should not be a doctor’s to enforce. A woman should be able to choose how to conduct herself, rather than do it under threat. She must not be asked to pay a ransom of her own motion and free will.

I went back to my obstetrician. After discussing my situation, she and I decided together that I would stop many of the specialist’s interventions. But I have still chosen to follow some of his recommendations. I administer my shootings. I limit my motions when I can. But I wonder: am I erring on the side of caution, or on the side of fear?

During my last pregnancy, I didn’t ruminate on how the way girls are treated during birth is linked to a culture idea that the female body is necessary subdued, immobilised and controlled, and if the owner of that body is good and magnanimous, if she is on her way to becoming a wonderful mom, she must capitulate to any demand placed upon her. I didn’t wonder why, if growing a newborn and dedicating her life is such a powerful act, the experience of doing so is profoundly disempowering. I didn’t ponder structures or systems. I just wanted to meet my daughter.

Times were different then, even though it wasn’t long ago. More women lived in a sort of collective refusal, accepting the unacceptable. I was different, too. I’m a mother now, and I could tell I’m thinking of my two-year-old, and of the very best world she deserves. But, actually, I’m thinking these days of what I deserve , not as a mom or a pregnant woman, but just as every human being, at once apart from all of that and closely one with it. I’m thinking of how I should be treated, for the person that I was before I got pregnant, and the person or persons I will be after I am pregnant. The person I have been all along.

* Commenting on this piece? If you would like your remark to be considered for inclusion on Weekend magazine’s letters page in print, please email weekend @theguardian. com, including your name and address( not for publication ).

Make sure to visit: CapGeneration.com

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Posted in Viral | Tagged family, Health & wellbeing, Life and style, MeToo movement, Parents and parenting, Pregnancy, World news | Leave a reply

My small penis has ruined my life

Posted on March 4, 2018 by Viral News
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Rather than blame your genitalia for everything thats gone wrong says Annalisa Barbieri, try to work out where the real problem lies

Back in my youth, my love life was a string of rejections, based on lack of confidence in my physical attributes( 6ft 4in, reasonably attractive, bright, humorous, caring, but with dangly bits a hamster would be worried about ). It was ego-bruising, getting giggled at. I’d avoid beach holidays, changing rooms and even ran away from uni to avoid the shame.

Moving back to the capital, a miracle happened: two women I’d become friends with decided to stay the night, on different days, the same weekend. Who was I to say no? They were lovely and I felt safe. And, amazingly, they wanted things to continue. It was the most wonderful hour- but after four years of a heart-wrenching triangle, it was over. I’d lied, cheated, oscillated and hurt everyone, until my self-respect, friends, undertaking and trust had faded. I wasn’t the same person I had been.

I got back along with one of the women but things weren’t the same. Now here I am, 30 years and a string of uninteresting undertakings afterward, in an unhappy marriage, retired, with dodgy health and my only positive memories being from 35 years ago. I’m in my 60 s, live in the sticks and am bored out of my mind. I’ve tried joining clubs and do volunteer work but it’s not giving me what I want or require( if merely I knew what that was ). Every night I pray that I don’t wake up, as I’ve not the guts to aim it all. What to do ?

Being chuckled at for something as fundamental as the size of your genitalia must have been traumatising. But I do wonder about the accuracy of your description( of your penis size )? After all, you shied away from situations that may have helped you see that genitalia come in all shapes and sizes, and for four years you had two women opposing over you.

There was a line in your letter that gave me intermission:” I felt safe .” I get the impression your life didn’t- doesn’t- feeling safe? If so, can you work out where that feeling comes from?

I am really interested in this “before” and then “after” day, and can’t fully understand how and why you were so different after the episode with the two women. Why was it so catastrophic? Mostly, I get this sense of you looking in at their own lives like someone watching a conveyor belt go by, powerless to take what you want.

I consulted psychoanalyst Susan Godsil. She was struck by how” your best memory was of something exciting but empty , not of building something in your life you can value “. Sometimes, it is the most ordinary things that provide the richest memories. But I get no sense of that with you. It’s all excitement or disaster.

Godsil wondered why you are living “in the sticks”? Is a move a possibility?” Maybe[ downsize] to a town/ city where you have more life, and people ?” she indicated.” Retiring is a challenging life stage and inevitably involves looking back over their own lives .”

But is your current depression and sense of your ageing and, as you see it, inadequate body influencing your view? Because when you’re depressed, it can colour how you look at things. So at the moment all you can see is the bad stuff.

I also wonder whether you aren’t blaming your penis for everything that has gone wrong in your life. If you could start to tackle the depression- by talking to someone- I think this may be of more use to you than are concerned about your” dangly bits “.

I am confused about whether your spouse is one of the two women you oscillated between all those years ago. Nevertheless, you have constructed a 30 -year partnership- is there nothing good about that? What does she believe? Is it fair- to either of you- not to talk about your relationship?

I think you should get your emotional health looked at: talk to your GP or find a counsellor, someone you can safely talk to, to try to undo some of your past and make sense of it. You say you don’t know what you want, but you do seem to know what you don’t want. Suppose about moving, if possible, to somewhere more vibrant. After all, all those years ago, when you moved to a city” a miracle happened “.

Don’t look too far ahead. This will stop you feeling overwhelmed and despairing. Being in yours 60 s isn’t that old. Isn’t it time you stopped being a passenger in your own life?

In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at befrienders.org . Campaign Against Living Miserably, thecalmzone.net

* Send your problem to annalisa.barbieri @mac. com. Annalisa regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.

Follow Annalisa on Twitter @AnnalisaB

Make sure to visit: CapGeneration.com

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Might as well do the white line: Liam Gallagher, still caning it at 45

Posted on January 17, 2018 by Viral News

The former Oasis singer admitted in an interview that he still takes medications. Which may make it a bit tricky to caution his children off them, he says

Liam Gallagher

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Might as well do the white line: Liam Gallagher, still caning it at 45

The former Oasis singer admitted in an interview that he still takes medications. Which may make it a little bit tricky to advise his children off them, he says

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Posted in Viral | Tagged Drugs, family, Liam Gallagher, Life and style, Music, Parents and parenting, Society

The question we came to dread: Are you going for a second child?

Posted on January 14, 2018 by Viral News

Why, when hearing my spouse and I have one child, do people ask about our plans for a second? Do they ever consider how intrusive and insensitive that question can be, that we have had multiple miscarriages?

My wife was talking to a mate in the hallway at work a week or so ago.

” Our son loves Blue Planet, it’s so funny. You know, even the scary bits? He loved it. And he’s only four .”

She is boasting, a tiny bit, but it’s true. He is an newborn Cousteau. I dream of diving with him one day. And even if she is boasting, it is just casual office chat; the kind we all fill our days with.

Then, a colleague from marketing walks past. Let’s call her Sarah. She overhears. Sidles up. Butts in.

Drops the bomb, eyebrows raised.” So, are you guys thinking about No 2 ?”

My wife winces, composes herself. Delivers what we have come to call: The Answer.” No, we’re not, actually. We’ve decided , now, that our family is the right size. Thanks .”

Just polite enough to suffice. But curt enough to shut things down. With that little verbal shove in the smaller of her back, Sarah walks off, face reddening with every step. Good.

My wife texts me.

Heart pounding. Someone just asked .

Who? Anyone that are important, or simply a random?

A random.

Did you give them The Answer?

Yeah.

Amazing. You OK?

Kinda.

Small talk over the biggest topic. How can people be so insensitive and intrusive? Because it seems that as soon as anyone detects out you have one child, they want to know when you plan to reproduce again. But they don’t hold where their clumsy terms will land. Sometimes, they land square in your face like a well-timed punch.

The answer, that I want to whisper into Sarah’s ear on my wife’s behalf is:” Actually, we’re not thinking about No 2 right now. We spent the last two years mourning Nos 2, 3 and 4. They never stimulated it. Fancy a casual chat about that, here in the hallway ?”

Then I would continue. I would spell it all out for her.

” Not sure we’ll ever get over No 4, Sarah. Some things change you, basically. That was one of them. Now, do you want to talk about our worst miscarriage, or the best one? The worst one was just a amaze abortion without anaesthesia. It shattered my wife like a champagne glass dashed on a slate floor.

” How about the one that happened while she was at work, panicking in white linen trousers? Appearing back now, that was actually the best one. She had to take a week and a half off to hemorrhage, mind. Or how about when she knew another had started as I was getting on a flight, but she remained quiet because she wanted me to finish the job that I had been working on for months?

” Sarah, come back. I’ve only just started. Do you want to hear about the style even dear, beloved friends, even my immediate family, pall, stutter and briskly change the subject the second I mention miscarriage? It is such a genteel, sidesaddling euphemism. Oops- miscarried! You ensure, miscarriage is birth and death wrapped up in one little bundle of misery.

” A good friend’s spouse who suffered equally said her womb felt like a graveyard. Dwell on that for as long as you can bear it. Pregnancy, Sarah, is quantum, unstable and mystifying. It’s a delight and a terror. A hope that can be crushed any second. It’s yes and no simultaneously. Fancy a Jaffa Cake ?”

That is what I would say.

Anyone who has one child and has not had a second, or any couple without children, may be going through what we were. They may be stuck at the blackjack table, playing the worst game ever: stick or twisting? To be or not to be? Do we keep trying to give our child a sibling until the eggs and our sanity have all gone?

Until we got The Answer to The Question, I expended the last two years looking at kids with brothers or sisters and felt a gnawing, impermissible resentment. Because to commit to having another child when you already have one is to know the difficulties of the first few years- the sleeplessness, the expenditure, the nappies, the hard physical graft, the fret and the exhilaration- and to embrace it. You have to want it so badly. And then you get it. And then it is taken from you by force.

After two years of trying, we reach a decision: we accept that we will have no more. I took a while to get there, but my spouse supported me, steadfast as structural steel, until I did. She astounded me with her strength, resolve and clear-sightedness. She worked it all out, logically, rationally, and emotionally. Some pain remained, of course, but we build the decision, together.

Then the real headwork begins. You have now made society’s last pariah: the only child. Lonely, selfish, maladjusted. Selfish mothers who wanted to stop at one. Selfish child who can’t share. Poor kid, all alone. Tell me you have never had these thoughts and I will gaze straight-out in your eyes and call you the liar that you are, because I have had them, too. It is the culture.

Lauren Sandler’s book One and Only– which deconstructs the myths and presumptions about “singletons” as she more kindly calls them- is an empowering source of comfort and knowledge. Such children, it turns out, are often gifted, generous, great at building friends and compassionate. That describes our son to the letter.

Sandler reads my intellect, though:” As mothers who choose to stop at one, we have to get used to the nagging help feeling that we are choosing for our children something they can never undo. We’re deciding not to know two kids splashing in the bath, playing in the pile of raked leaves, whispering under cover of darkness, teasing each other at the dinner table, holding hands at our funerals ,” she writes.

Who will hold our son’s hand? But you can’t think like that. Such thinking does not serve you, or your child, or your marriage.

There is light among the shade of course, looking back. The red dots on the calendar that entailed we had to have sex that week, every night. The limping in to run after marathon sessions as if we were adolescents who had just fulfilled. The lies you tell friends when they ask you out – you can’t say:” Sorry, can’t come to that gig, mate. My spouse and I have to fuck each other every night this week .” Well, you can, but only to certain mates. I’m not quite sure how Sarah would deal with it.

The Question hurls you, every time. It is meant well, sometimes, of course. But in my experience, it is nearly always thoughtless. Rebecca Solnit’s essential new feminist text, The Mother of All Questions, interrogates the idea that females should have children at all. She talks about her desire to be” genuinely rabbinical” in the face of hostile, shut questions. Solnit says she has developed a gnomic reply that turns the spotlight back on the questioner. When people ask her if she is planning to have children, she answers, with politeness:” Why are you asking me that question ?” I’m not sure Sarah, and the wider culture, could quite manage that yet. We require our own answer.

A few weeks before Sarah stopped my spouse in her tracks, I received in the post a rend of a tune by Kieran Hebden, AKA Four Tet. A relentless hard disco loop with an incessant, maddening vocal refrain:” I’ve got to find the answer to the question .” I laugh at the coincidence and listen to it for days.

Then, with no fanfare, I get the answer, in one of the most softly bizarre experiences of my life. One Friday a few weeks back, I get over the miscarriages and was at last able to write this piece. I felt as if I had somehow exorcised myself, in a moment of intense calm, a lambent, silent epiphany. I simply lay on the floor in our front room in silence for 45 minutes and did absolutely nothing. I was dispassionate, detached, and my intellect expanded. In that space, I accepted that the past two years of struggle are over. Our household is the right size, the right shape, and we love it as it is. We have not accepted second-best. We have not tried and failed. We have the greatest son I can imagine, I realise, wordlessly. He is more than enough.

As I am lying stunned, karma chameleoned there on the floor, my son arrives back from nursery with his mum and enters the room mutely, lies down with me, places his head on my shoulder, and remains there in peace for 10 minutes. He has never done this in his life. It is as if he knows.

” Want a snuggle ?” he asks.

We decide to honour the moment, and our decision, with a flame. To destroy, without indignation, the things that do not serve us, or that have held us back. Unabashed, we get the garden incinerator out on the night of the winter solstice, prepare ceremonial food and drink, and get the flames licking the sky.

With smiles on our faces and love in our hearts, we burn it all down- the whole sorry lot of it: the resentment of other households, the anxiety over what people think of our selections, the dread, frustration and fury of this godforsaken pair of years. We burn it to ash, and we will fertilise our garden with it. We will grow from here. We giggle and hurl whisky and fishbones on the flames.

We have decided , now, that our household is the right size, thanks.

There’s the answer.

Make sure to visit: CapGeneration.com

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Posted in Viral | Tagged family, Life and style, Parents and parenting, Pregnancy

Paddington 2 review Hugh Grant steals the show in sweet-natured and funny sequel

Posted on January 13, 2018 by Viral News

Grant is on top form as a cravat-wearing rogue who frames Paddington for steal in a follow-up that lives up to Michael Bonds evergreen original

This year’s Christmas treat has arrived early, and Paddington Bear has incidentally shown us that Blade Runner isn’t the only movie around capable of giving us an exciting and impressive sequel.

This is the follow-up to the first Paddington movie of 2014 and it’s a tremendously sweet-natured, charming, unassuming and above all funny cinema with a tale that merely rattles along, powered by a nonstop succession of Grade-A gags conjured up by screenwriters Paul King( who also directs ), Simon Farnaby and Jon Croker. Their screenplay perfectly catches the tone of the great master himself, Michael Bond, writer of the original volumes, who sadly died in June this year at persons under the age of 91, creative and productive to the end.

The film is pitched with insouciant ease and a lightness of touch at both children and adults without any self-conscious transformations in irony or tone: it’s humor with the citrus tang of top-quality thick-cut marmalade. There’s a sight-gag involving the spurious transgres of a valuable vase that I especially enjoyed. And although one could say its work on diversity is not complete, the movie has a fair bit of material- now more pertinent than ever- about the route a confident, happy nation greets immigrants. The day-glo primary coloured design dedicates the movie a storybook feel, at some places a little like Wes Anderson. The uproarious finale meanwhile has something of Mel Brooks.

It may be bad form to begin with any character other than the young ursine hero himself, but Hugh Grant entirely pinches this, with an outrageously scene-stealing turn as the appalling villain. He is an ageing, cravat-wearing actor named Phoenix Buchanan with a moderate career behind him, brooding about the working day get a one-man thesp spectacular in London’s West End but now reduced to doing Clement Freud-style dog food TV ads. The ironically named Phoenix has just moved into this elegant west London neighbourhood, which is more or less as it was when Hugh Grant was here for Richard Curtis’s Notting Hill in 1999: picturesque, and plainly has still not been the conserve of the super-rich. In fact the movie has lots of quaint English things, like St Paul’s Cathedral, steam trains, and even- astonishingly- more than one fully functioning red public payphone, which characters use instead of mobiles.( These olden-days touches will do no harm to Paddington 2′ s opportunities in foreign marketplaces .)

Meanwhile, the Brown family are tootling amiably along as ever. Ben Whishaw is excellent voicing Paddington himself: curious, puzzled, innocent, but with a clear sense of right and incorrect. Hugh Bonneville is the paterfamilias Mr Brown, disillusioned at not being promoted at work , now experiencing a midlife crisis and experimenting with yoga and moisturiser. Sally Hawkins is quietly excellent in the unpromising role of Mrs Brown, and the same runs for Julie Walters as the housekeeper Mrs Bird, a job description that announces, like nothing else, that Paddington originated in an Ealing Comedy age. Sanjeev Bhaskar is a forgetful neighbour and Richard Ayoade is an eccentric forensic scientist.

The unspeakable Phoenix steals a precious pop-up volume from Mr Gruber’s shop: a volume which contains coded clues to where a fabulous cache of gem may be found- and he frames Paddington for the crime. So poor Paddington goes to prison for something he didn’t do, but there find consolation in relationship with the prison’s hot-tempered cook, Knuckles, played by Brendan Gleeson. Together, they are to plan a daring escape and the show-stopping climax involves a daring dash to the west country from London’s eponymous railway station. It’s very silly, but very likeable, the various kinds of thing that appears easy, but really isn’t.

It’s another impressive jaunt for Paddington. I incidentally is considered that these novelists need to cracking on with creating a feature-length adaptation of Michael Bond’s other, more neglected meisterwerk, The Herbs, with Russell Crowe as Parsley and Maggie Smith as Lady Rosemary.

Make sure to visit: CapGeneration.com

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Posted in Viral | Tagged Ben Whishaw, Books, Culture, family, Film, Film adaptations, Hugh Grant, Julie Walters, Michael Bond, Paddington, Paddington 2, Richard Ayoade, Sally Hawkins

Seen Rain Man? That doesnt mean you know my autistic son

Posted on December 31, 2017 by Viral News

There are no typical autistic people, despite the savant stereotypes. My son is just himself: hes me, with a coating of autism

I am so looking forward to my trip-up with my son next week. First up is Cern, in Switzerland, where my son gets an hour on the Large Hadron Collider all to himself. On Tuesday, it’s off to the National Portrait Gallery in London, where an exhibition of his crayon selfies is on demonstrate( royal attendance is rumoured ). Wednesday he’s being filmed for the BBC completing a Rubik’s Cube with one hand.

Thursday, he’s on at the National Theatre, where he’ll recite the works of Shakespeare from memory. Friday, we’re off to Vegas to win a fortune at blackjack. I’ve bought the matching suits and sunglasses and, get this, he gets to fly the plane home himself.

It is a whirlwind being the father of an autistic child– especially one as multitalented as mine. Some autistic children only have one special talent.

OK, so this isn’t true. I am the parent of an autistic child, and the first question I’m always asked when the subject of my son comes up is: ” Does he have a special talent ?”~ ATAGEND because everyone has read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and insured Rain Man, and presume all autistic children have special powers.

The
The charm of special powers … Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise in Rain Man. Photo: Moviestore Collection/ Rex

My son doesn’t. He’s 16, is non-verbal and his life abilities are rudimentary. He’s on one part of the autistic spectrum. Rain Man sits somewhere else on a little bit made from celluloid.

I don’t expect the whole population to trawl through reams of data, instance analyzes and science newspapers on autism, but at least get to understand the basics. Let’s start with a simple question. Are all neurotypical people- those without a diagnosis of autism- the same? If your answer is yes, proceed directly to the nearest Borg recruiting office. If your answer is no, pat yourself on the back( although it doesn’t make you a genius ).

This is what it does to me- I can’t help it. I get facetious. When, for instance, we were calmly queueing to pay for some apples in Waitrose and my son decided to use them for baseball practice, pitching them wildly into the neighbouring McDonald’s, did anyone smile and think,” Oh, bless him, he’s autistic “? Or when we were wrestling on the floor as I tried to get him to stop attacking me, or when everyone’s food in a eatery is fair game- and I don’t merely entailed on our table- “were not receiving” applause , no One Show researchers begging me to bring him on for a demonstration or recreation of his baseball glories. And I’m not sure his naked trampolining is going to earn him an Olympic medal anytime soon.

Given that it’s simply bad form to tell a well-meaning stranger where to run, I have often resorted to being facetious. When my son was six, I took him to watch one of his older cousins paying football and two girls approached and began talking to him. Of course, they got properly cold-shouldered and inquired of me:” Why does he never say anything ?”

To which I replied:” He does, but only to very pretty daughters .”

But it’s not the way I’ve always dealt with it. As part of a dedicated team raising my son, explaining him to strangers has been exhausting.

So, most often over the last 16 years, I’ve been a model of polite solicitude. Like a strolling GP surgery pamphlet, I’ve divided my reactions into easily digested chunks, subheadings:” What is the Autistic Spectrum ?” and” About Diagnosis “. At other periods, I’ve countered pub banter with” No! Only because your boss is a rude, arrogant shit who won’t look you in the eye, doesn’t mean he’s autistic .” It sometimes feels like an endless battle.

This gets me so irritated because good info is out there in plain sight. On Twitter, on Facebook are millions of genuine first-hand experiences and real, of-the-moment findings. It is thus a 21 st-century species of ignorance, one that masquerades as inquisitiveness, to glean “knowledge” from media that is intended to entertain to form one’s opinion of autism. It is from the “well-drawn” character who fills us with wonder- whether it be standing next to Tom Cruise as he counts cards, or inducing us laugh with their complete lack of social understanding that “misunderstandings” can arise.

Plot devices and stereotypes are not real. You cannot reduce autism to genre conventions , because every person with an autism diagnosis is different. My son is me with a particularly tough veneer of autism: he’s a little bit lazy, determines most things hilarious and is given to bouts of self-injurious behaviour. But he’s not less than me- in any way. He’s not less.

And if you took the trouble to know him, you’d realise that in most routes he is more. That’s the kind of knowledge that everyone needs to have.

It hurts me to have to write this. I don’t like having to speak on his behalf, but he isn’t able to and I detest having to rely on supposition. It would be easier for me to state that he couldn’t care less. But I can’t say that because he can’t tell me. It hurts less when I can provide him with a blithe, devil-may-care attitude to other people’s opinions of him.

Am I overreacting and being chippy? My son’s also Jewish. Would it be OK if a stranger asked in polite conversation whether he was fond of fund? Or asked an equally ignorant is the issue of a Muslim father with regard to one of his children? Of course it would not.

The question,” Does he have a special talent ?” is not sinister in itself, but the ignorance behind it is, because it speaks of a world where just being human and getting by is not sufficient get noticed- a world where even the most vulnerable in national societies “re going to have to” aspire to Britain’s Got Talent to be seen of value.

Shtum by Jem Lester is published by Orion Paperbacks( PS8. 99 ). To buy a transcript for PS7. 64, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p& p over PS10, online orders merely. Telephone orders min. p& p of PS1. 99.

Make sure to visit: CapGeneration.com

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Posted in Viral | Tagged Autism, children, Culture, family, Film, Jem Lester, Life and style, Mental health, Parents and parenting, Society

These are my hardest moments as a mother. What are yours?

Posted on December 12, 2017 by Viral News

Cheeks burning while strangers judge your parenting abilities the child shrieking in the post office line we all have narratives of scarcely holding it together

A week ago, my five-year-old daughter depicted me a map.

It was early afternoon and I was in bed, fighting against a migraine and crossing my thumbs that my ridiculously expensive prescription drug would kick in soon. The migraine had begun early that morning and by the time I picked her up from kindergarten it was relentlessly hammering away at the right side of my skull; bringing with it the strong nausea and aversion to lighting, sound and reek it always does.

I lay down with a cold washcloth over my eyes, and my daughter busied herself with the intricate run of colouring, videotapeing and cutting newspaper into dozens of infinitesimally small pieces that are impossible to sweep up.

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I’d been in my room for perhaps half an hour when I heard the door swaying open and her footsteps pad over to the side of my bed. She tapped my shoulder and pulled the washcloth off my eyes.

” Mummy, I built you something ,” she said in an urgent whisper. I carried myself up to my elbows and took the paper she offered me, a strangely underwhelming thing made up of dotted lines and a few urgent scribbles.

” It’s a map ,” she explained.” It shows you what you need to do .”

Then, patiently, she pointed at one scribble and explained that this was me, in bed. She told me that I needed to get up and used her finger to trace the dotted line resulting from my bed to the second scribble- the stove, as it turns out.

” You need to attain me something to eat and then go here …”- her thumb traced the second dotted line all the way to its final destination-” to my room and read me narratives .”

All at once, this map became everything terrible and wonderful about being a parent.

It was the embodiment of a child’s singular, necessarily self-centered nature; concerned with having their own wants and needs met above all else. It was stark, embarrassing proof that my child felt she needed to draw me instructions for how to properly parent her- to remind me that she needed to eat lunch( of course she needed to eat lunch, how had I forgotten to prepare lunch ?) and wanted to have stories read to her instead of entertaining herself alone.

It was the frustrating result of the contradiction you get are applied to as a single mother, where no matter how much you love your life as two( or three or four) there are times when things just really would work better with another grownup around, somebody to picking her up from school and induce lunch and rub my back and persuade me to take a second pill if the first one hasn’t worked yet, for God’s sake.

I’ve been a single mother since just after my daughter’s second birthday, and this map isn’t the first failed parenting moment I wish could be erased from the registers of time.

There was the period of time when she was two and a half and she wouldn’t wear anything but a puppy attire and I just let her, because it was warm, and she was dressed, and who cares, really?

There was the time she fell down the steps of a stone terrace and sliced her teeth through her bottom lip while I stood just a few feet away, making sure a friend’s wobbly new-walking child didn’t fall.

There was the time that she wouldn’t stop talking during my little sister’s bridal and had to be removed from the ceremony by my brother, constructing the strangest-sounding monotonous groan as she was fireman-carried away under his arm.

For me, every single one of these moments comes down to me running out of something I desperately wish I had more of- period, patience, appreciation, awareness, premeditation, sleep. It’s hard being the only one to predict and remember and anticipate and discipline. Sometimes I would dedicate anything to be able to say to a partner,” Your turning” and check out.

Of course, parenting lows aren’t exclusively the outcomes of parenting solo, they’re the outcomes of parenting while working more than a full-time job, parenting while poor, parenting when your extended family lives a continent away rather than down the block.

Often, these low points are simply an expression of the results of parenting, period. This gig is hard, and it’s sometimes hard to talk about too because the cliches about motherhood are just as tired as we are.

We all have these moments. That’s the admission you pay to join the club of parenthood: the cheeks burning while strangers judge your parenting skills; the child shrieking in the post office line; you doing precisely the thing you judged other parents for in your pre-children life.

Share your story

We all have tales of scarcely holding our shit together( or losing it altogether) and I, for one, would love to hear yours. You can share your hardest moment as a mom through the secure form below( or here if you’re having trouble viewing it ). The Guardian will publish a selection of your narratives.

https://guardiannewsandmedia.formstack.com/forms/js.php/hardest_motherhood_moment
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Make sure to visit: CapGeneration.com

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Posted in Viral | Tagged children, family, Life and style, Parents and parenting, Women

The ‘masculine mystique’ why men can’t ditch the baggage of being a bloke

Posted on November 22, 2017 by Viral News

Far from espousing the school run, most men are still trapped by rigid cultural notions of being strong, dominant and successful. Is it leading to an epidemic of unhappiness similar to the one felt by Betty Friedans 50 s homemakers?

Back in the 90 s, it was all going to be so different. Not for our generation the lopsided approach of our parents, with their quaint postwar the idea of father-breadwinners and mother-homemakers. We would be equal; interchangeable. Our young lady would run companies, embassies, hospitals and schools, while our young men , no slouches themselves, would punctuate their careers with long, halcyon spells dandling newborns and teaching toddlers how to build tiny volcanoes out of vinegar and baking soda.

That equality would have formidable knock-on effects. The gender pay gap would constrict. Sexual harassment wouldn’t vanish, but decoupling professional power from gender would do a lot to erase it from the workplace.

A generation or so later, it is clear: this is the revolution that never happened, at the least not in the UK. The home-dad innovators among us who once flamed a trail , now look on aghast as successive waves of men scurry past and say:” Right. Back to run .”

What happened? Latest statistics for England demonstrate more than 80% of fathers still run full period, rising to virtually 85% for papas of very young children. This rate has hardly changed for 20 years. The ratio of part-timers has flatlined only above 6% throughout this decade( having risen through the 90 s and early 00 s ). Just 1.6% of men have given up run wholly to take care of the family home. New rights for fathers to share parental leave with moms have poor take-up rates.

chart

You can glimpse this paternity gap at 3.30 pm on weekday afternoons at school gates up and down the country. Far from being overrun with gaggles of enlightened humen in clothes covered with baby sick and badges saying ” World’s greatest dad”, the father quota is, in my own limited experience, disappointing. There are often more grandparents doing the pickup than dads.

At the same time, there is no deficit of surveys discovering legions of men saying they want to find more time for family life. So exactly what he stopping them?

In 1963, The Feminine Mystique, a seminal volume by Betty Friedan, helped launch the second wave of feminism by positing that American females faced” a problem that has no name “: they had basically become typecast as uber-feminine moms, home-makers, cake bakers and sexual slaves to their spouses. Forcing girls to live up to this idea of femininity left an entire generation depressed, frustrated or hooked on Valium.

The question is this: 50 years later, are humen facing their own” problem with no name”, a” masculine mystique” which imposes rigid culture notions of what it is to be male- superior, dominant, hierarchical, sexually assertive to the point of abuse- even though society is hollering out for manhood to be something very different?

Men who do change their working lives to accommodate their children generally say it can feel tough, lonely, incongruous, even emasculating. When, 15 years ago, I gave up run wholly for a year to do childcare, it took a while to get used to being the only daddy in the park; the strange human arguing with a difficult child outside the library on a damp Tuesday morning. People stared.

David
David Early and his son Jonah …’ There is a stigma when people see you doing a role that isn’t traditional .’

Little has changed. Father-of-two David Early, 31, from Glasgow, says he still feels in a minority when he is out and about with his toddlers.” When I’m with the children, and I have her in the sling and him in the buggy, I have people looking and thinking:’ What’s that guy doing with two children strapped to him ?'” says Early.” There is a stigma when people see you doing a role that isn’t traditional. It can impact on your professional life .”

For Early, it certainly did. When he asked for additional parental leave after his first child was bear, his directors for his data management task were not impressed. He eventually quit and detected work elsewhere to be able to balance his work and family in the way he wanted.

Paul Cudby, 36, was luckier. A business analyst for the National Grid in Leicestershire, he found his director more receptive, and worked out a highly flexible work pattern that leaves him free to do the afternoon school running before turning the laptop back on again in the evening.” There comes a few moments in every dad’s life when there’s a choice. You’ll find yourself missing something at home and the question is: what do you do about the emotional ache? Do you say:’ I’m just going to have to suck it up ,’ or do “theyre saying”:’ Something’s got to change ‘?

” I get plenty of little gibes about being a part-timer. They are well entailing, but I can understand how some people get offended. I think there possibly is a knock-on consequence on my career .”

And that’s just it- humen are finding out what girls have known for years: that parenting properly is necessarily upend your career. For many men, so thoroughly programmed to identify who they are with the work they do, this can seem like an existential threat.

Tormod
Tormod Sund …’ The traditional human … breadwinner … those various kinds of notions are rooted in the past. Photo: Mark Rice-Oxley for the Guardian

Tormod Sund, 42, is a parent, an anthropologist, a charity worker, a Norwegian and a Londoner- and has been the primary carer for his son for more than 10 years. He says he still feels like” a little bit of an oddity” in a society that still expects men to be alpha.

” The traditional man … breadwinner … those various kinds of ideas are rooted in the past, but you don’t get rid of them in one or two generations ,” Sund says.” Those notions are still quite strong socially .”

” When you satisfy new people, the first thing they ask is:’ What do you do ?’ I would say:’ I work from home .’ The notion of what is successful and normal if you’re a man is that you should have a career. It’s less acceptable for a man to say:’ I’m staying at home with the children .’ We work. Our identity is connected to that .”

The barriers are not just psychological. They are professional and fiscal as well. Jasmine Kelland, a human resource analyzes lecturer at Plymouth University, interviewed scores of fathers and managers, trying to find out more about the male reluctance to reduce hours. She found that of all the working permutations- part-time, full-time, humen, females- the part-time human was held in lowest consider on a range of metrics including proficiency, commitment and even ability.

” In the workplace, parents do not get as much supporting as mums ,” Kelland says.” When they say, for example, that they need time off because a child is unwell, organisations are less supportive. There are quite a lot of negative perceptions about fathers who want to work part-time .”

Dr Alpesh Maisuria has experienced this first-hand. The 37 -year-old London-based academic says that even in more “enlightened” parts of the economy, boss are not always understanding.” My value as a bloke in this country is to do with my productivity and output, much more than being a parent ,” he says.” I proposed to in many instances, even as an academic, the fact that I’m a parent might be a obstacle to my boss .”

The” part-time paternal penalty” is not just a British peculiarity. A 2013 US survey found that men who engaged in childcare risked a workplace backlash.” Men who lack complete focus on, and dedication to, their work and who do the low-status’ feminine’ run of childcare and housework are likely to be seen both as failed men and as bad workers ,” research reports found. At the other end of the scale, however, Sweden incentivises all parents to take at least three months paid paternity leave. The result has been a far more even-handed approach to” latte pappas “.

Dr
Dr Alpesh Maisuria …’ The fact that I’m a parent might be a hindrance to my boss .’ Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian

” When I take him out to playgroups or cafes in the UK, I’m usually the only bloke in there ,” says Maisuria.” In Sweden, you’ll find a whole loading of these blokes alongside you .”

There are, of course, financial considerations: a great many households won’t be able to afford to sacrifice even part of a father’s wage. With the gender pay gap persisting, the default stance tends to be humen working full-time while women do the childcare and perhaps work part-time.

” Involved fatherhood is quite a middle-class idea ,” says Dr Helen Norman at Manchester University’s school of social sciences.” It’s only really accessible to middle-class men who can afford to change the performance of their duties; the fathers on lower incomes don’t have that[ option ].”

A support worker with a housing association in the West Midlands, Richard Watkins, 32, ran all the hours he could, until separation from his partner and problems with their children forced a rethink. Now, his six-year-old son lives with him and Watkins felt he had to cut back his hours to nurture his child.” We came very close to relying on food banks ,” he says.” The only route I can survive doing this on my budget is to have it[ all] mapped out for the next two years .”

Ultimately, he says, he will have to go back to work full-time. Which is a shame. The benefits of full-on fathering- the dad dividend if you like- are both obvious and subtle. There are no end of advocates agitating for progress, from Fathers Network Scotland and its” Dad Up” campaign to Working Families and the Fatherhood Institute.

Martin Doyle, 37, a Bristol-based communications manager for Lloyds bank , noticed that, after “hes been gone” part-time, there was a big a difference in the son that he and his husband had adopted.” It’s been massively beneficial- our son is a lot more determined and a lot more relaxed than he was ,” he says.” His confidence has grown, his self-belief has grown. I’ve been able to be there to support him .”

Engaged parents can also liberate females to resume careers- indeed females will never get close to true equality until humen bend over backwards to meet them halfway. And according to Norman, there can be a positive effect on relationships, too: in households where humen do sole childcare a few times a week in the early years, this will have” a positive effect on the relationship over period”, she says.

But could it be that the biggest recipient of all would be men themselves?

From his office overlooking the Royal Festival Hall terrace in London, Ted Hodgkinson is putting the finishing touch to a celebration that is all about the male predicament.

The Being a Human celebration, running from 24 -2 6 November, aims to get under the skin of the masculine identity, prod it around a little, see if it falls apart. The furore over sexual harassment will tinge some segments, particularly a session called ” Standing Up for Her Rights “.

But the event aims to be far broader than a single news story. Novelists, performers and musicians, including Robert Webb, Alan Hollinghurst and Simon Amstell, will explore the relentless levels of expectation heaped on men and assess whether this is responsible for statistics that indicate it is truly dismal these days to have a Y chromosome.

Suicide is a predominantly male tragedy( a human takes their own lives every minute somewhere in the world ). Ditto gambling, drug overdoses, rough sleeping or merely disappearing. Rape, murder, terrorism, war, people trafficking and domestic violence cases: all are predominantly masculine disgraces. Wherever you go in the world, men always make up more than 90% of jail populations. Flick through today’s newspaper and the opportunities are it will be full of all the bad things that humen are doing. Of course, recent weeks have been dominated by sexual harassment, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. Mass shootings and sickening murders , not to mention terror attacks and the brutality of war.

Then there are our role model: misogynist presidents, groping politicians, narcissistic sports starrings, self-satisfied billionaires, airbrushed performers, heroic superheroes, alpha humen, all of them. Even the average shape of a man has changed in 20 years: firearms, pecs and necks wider than heads in some cases. There is no room for the winsome, the vulnerable, the uncertain.

I ask Hodgkinson if he guesses a” masculine mystique”- a cultural insistence on” strong, dominant, successful” kinds as the only valid show of manhood- is inducing us unhappy in the same style that the feminine mystique depressed women in the 50 s and 60 s.

” In one sense it seems as though men are holding all the cards ,” he says,” but the statistics prove otherwise: three out of four suicides are humen, 73% of adults who go missing are humen. They feel they have to walk out of their own lives for one reason or another. We have to look at what masculinity means to understand this. Often it equates demonstrating emotion with weakness. There is a bottling up of disgrace; not wanting to let people down .”

The good news is there is no shortfall of volumes, documentaries, artists working to challenge old patriarchal notions, from Professor Green’s acclaimed documentary about men and suicide to Grayson Perry’s 2016 volume The Descent of Man.( The downside: two-thirds of men say they don’t read much .)

” There is an awakening around these things. There is a shift there ,” says Hodgkinson.

Jonny Benjamin concurs. He became a mental health campaigner after contemplating his own suicide on Waterloo Bridge and being talked down by a stranger. He says he sees changes coming through in the new young generation.

Jonny
Jonny Benjamin …’ We need more sports superstars, more footballers to talk about their vulnerabilities .’ Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

” The good thing is that now it’s being questioned ,” he observes from his own work talking to young people about mental health.” There is work in schools challenging this whole kind of’ big-boys-don’t-cry’ position .”

Benjamin says it is notions of pride, disgrace and accolade that still do men such damage. Men need to know that it’s OK to show vulnerability, subjugate every now and then, lose, shout, express their emotional commotion. It’s not just women who suffer from comparing themselves to the perfection they see in the public space.

” We need more athletics superstars, more footballers to talk about their vulnerabilities ,” he says.” Just to say:’ I do struggle sometimes, I do get anxious. Life isn’t all money and autoes .'”

There are nascent campaigns calling for a more honest dialogue about the connection between maleness, depression and suicide, most notably the work done by the Campaign Against Living Miserably and the Movember foundation.

But will that ever build into a full-blown motion that reforms maleness from the inside and changes its relationship with the world? It’s hard to say. Thus far “masculinism” has shown itself principally in niche areas such as detention law or male victims of violence, or simply as strident misogynist voices pushing back at feminism.

And it’s hard to see how to make a movement when you are essentially still in control of much of society. As Sund says,” we are not a minority who the hell is oppressed in any shape or form, so it’s hard to find that moral space “.

The crisis of manhood, if it exists, is very different from that faced by women in the 50 s and 60 s. In some senses, it’s a mirror image. Women- some at least- were saying:” Some of us might want to work .” Men- some at least- are saying:” Some of us might want to work less .” Women were saying:” We want to be taken seriously in public life .” Men- some at least- are saying:” We want to be taken seriously in our private life .”

Both sexes are trying to live up to cultural projections rather than satisfy their own complex human needs. Man today may have greater selection than women did half a century ago, but that doesn’t make it easy.

Women had an oppression to rail against; the outcome was a broad awakening that would not be subdued. The “oppression” of men is far more subtle, even self-inflicted.

The awakening has barely begun.

Being a Human celebration runs from 24 -2 6 November at Southbank Centre. More info and tickets available here: southbankcentre.co.uk/ being-a-man

In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at http://www.befrienders.org .

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Babies may be able to link certain words and concepts, research suggests

Posted on November 21, 2017 by Viral News

Study indicates babies as young as six months old may realise certain words are pertained and that interaction with adults boosts understanding

Babies as young as six months old may have an inkling that certain words and concepts are related to each other, say scientists in research that sheds new light on how infants learn.

The study also found that newborns who were more often exposed to adults talking to them about items in their proximity did better at identifying a picture of an object when the item was said out loud.

” What this is saying is that it is always a good notion to talk to your child and to show interest in whatever they are interested in, and it looks like the more you do that, the better- set very simply ,” said Dr Elika Bergelson of Duke University in North Carolina, who co-authored the paper.

In the first part of the study, 51 healthy six-month old newborns took part in an eye-tracking experiment in the laboratory. Sitting on the lap of a parent, who was unable to see the computer screen, each infant’s gaze was recorded as they were presented two images on a grey background, for example “car” and “juice”.

The parent, prompted through a decide of headphones, uttered a sentence containing one of the items. The squad then tracked how long the newborns looked at the item that the mother had mentioned.

The trial was carried out 32 periods, with half of the instances showing pairs of items related to each other, such as juice and milk, and half the time presenting unrelated items such as auto and juice.

The results, published in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences, reveal that the newborns appeared more at the image of the item that was mentioned by the mother when the other item on the screen was unrelated to it.

” The logic is, if newborns look more at an image after it gets named than they did before they heard anything, they know[ something about] what the word entails ,” said Bergelson.

“[ The findings indicate] babies know something about how words and concepts are’ related’ or’ go together ‘: if they had no notion that milk and juice had anything to do with one another, they would have performed similarly with the two types of displays ,” she added.

In the second part of the study, the team investigated whether the babies’ overall success at looking at the correct word was linked to their home surrounding, by recording the interactions between the newborns and those around them using video and, more extensively, audio recordings. These were then analysed by researchers for mentions of any objects or things, such as a spoonful or starrings, and it was noted whether the items were likely present in front of the newborn at the time.

The results from 41 newborns, of whom 40 had both audio and video data, reveal that the more babies were spoken to about objects that were present, the very best they did overall at looking at the correct term in the lab experiments.

” Even though they are six months olds- they are not doing much yet-[ they should be treated] as real communicative partners ,” said Bergelson.

Marilyn Vihman, prof of linguistics at the University of York who was not involved in the study, described the research as excellent and greeted the move to conduct research in the home environment. But she stressed that the study did not mean that six-month old babies “know” that words are linked.

” All the food words come in the same meal-time situation, all the clothing words and body-part terms come in the same nappy-changing and clothes-changing situation. All those words are going to be related to each other in the child’s experience and they haven’t sorted them out yet ,” she said.

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