The American Sociological Association Annual Election

I just spent close to an hour voting in the annual ASA election. I take all voting seriously as a general rule, so I never just choose people that I know and like, unless I can't make a distinction between candidates using another criteria.

For the national-level elections, my reasoning goes a little like this:

1. My first criterion (and I will not budge on this): I do not vote for people who do not take the time to write a personal statement. I don't care how well I know you, how much I admire your body of scholarship, teaching, or service record, or whether you're kind of cute in your picture. I figure that if you don't have the time to sit down and tell the electorate why you think you would make a good candidate (in several sentences - I'm not looking for a speech), then I should give my vote to somebody who does take the time to do so.
2. This does not mean that I vote for everybody who writes a personal statement. The statement earns you my attention, but then I actually take the time to read what you wrote. If you write something vague (e.g., "I want to increase diversity within the ASA.") I'm less likely to take you seriously than if you write something with more substance (e.g., "I am concerned that the leadership in ASA has represented 4-yr., doctoral granting institutions, and that the voices of ASA members at liberal arts, community colleges, and non-academic institutions are getting lost. I hope to use my position to increase institutional diversity within the ASA.").

My reasoning differs for the section-level elections. For the section-level elections, only institutional affiliation, educational credentials, publications, and service are included - that means there's no personal statement (or picture). I find this much trickier. Here's a snapshot of this process, but this is less a "first/second" list than a "conglomeration of things I look at" list:

1. Fortunately, I am more likely to be familiar with the scholarly work cited by the section candidates than national candidates, so sometimes I'm able to discern between people based on first-hand experience with their work.
2. Educational credentials by themselves don't tend to impress me, but I am impressed when somebody has won teaching or research awards, especially for certain positions.
3. As a last resort, when I know absolutely nothing about the candidates in question, I resort to looking at research and professional accomplishments and choosing the candidate who I think is doing interesting work. This is not my preferred method, but it's the best one I have in extreme situations.

In the end, a lot of this process ends up being subjective. The ASA is a large organization, and it's impossible to have first-hand knowledge of all nominees. How do you choose your ASA representatives?

Why I'm No Longer a Fundamentalist Christian - Part III

Reason #2 - The Music

This post is not intended to bash Christian music - Christian music, like all musical genres, is filled with the talented and the not-so-talented. There was a time when I exclusively listened to Christian music, and I will always have a soft spot in my heart for Jars of Clay, Amy Grant, and Michael W. Smith. Like it or not, music heard during certain time periods has a visceral way of connecting us to memories, as I was strongly reminded of this last weekend when I ran across this song by Audio Adrenaline while searching around the radio dial. If you're not familiar with this song, be careful before you look it up on YouTube - it's quite catchy.

Song Lyrics

What this post is about is cultural control, and the possibility that before condemning culture, perhaps we should know more about it. In eighth grade, my teachers at the Christian school began a program to control the popular culture that we students consumed. The following anecdote describes this program well.

One day, we were "treated" to a movie, a movie that described a lot of the popular music at the time as "satanic." The movie went through bands systematically, starting (as I remember) with heavy metal (Guns N' Roses, Alice in Chains (my husband disputes whether Alice in Chains is heavy metal, with good reason), Metallica, etc.), and ending with The Beatles' infamous satanic message in Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds that can only be heard if you play the song backwards! With each band, much was made of the symbolism they chose to use (skeletons and fire were the worst offenders), and sometimes the lyrics they sang were also targeted. The movie itself was problematic, but it's not the crux of this story.

The day after watching this movie, we had our usual prayer time at the beginning of Bible class. Before praying, it was customary for students to share if they had a "praise" or a "concern" that they wished somebody else in the class to pray about on their behalf. I remember quite clearly when one of the most popular students in class stated a "praise" that he had. The day before, he had gone home after school and thrown away all of his Metallica cds. At this news, many of my classmates made noises of assent. In that environment, such behavior was clearly praise-worthy.

Fast forward ten years to the beginning of graduate school (almost 10 years ago now)...now, no longer a Christian, I had just met the man that I eventually married, whose favorite band of all-time happened to be Metallica. GASP! My gut reaction upon learning this was a mixture of awe, horror, and incredulity. The man that I liked so much could not possibly like such an awful musical group, could he?

Well, it turns out that some of Metallica's lyrics are actually quite socially conscious, as can be seen in the lyrics below:

Song Lyrics

My mind was blown. I had shaken off the ideology of Christianity, but it shocked me to find I still had such a strong emotional reaction to non-Christian cultural products. To be fair, I don't find heavy metal music particularly pleasing to listen to (and still don't choose to listen to it to relax), but I was concerned that I equated Metallica with evil on an emotional level, rather than forming my own opinion of their lyrics separate from their sound. What a lasting impression a movie I had watched in 8th grade, and the actions of a fellow student, had years later. The implications of this for fundamentalist Christians trying to communicate with "others" seem stark. If I, as a "reformed" fundamentalist Christian, was still so emotionally invested in the cultural message, it seems hard to believe that somebody still steeped in the emotional appeal would be able to get beyond the emotion to have rational discussion. But this is something to think about another day.

In retrospect, I think that the movie we watched in 8th grade used words like "satanic" and "evil" to get us to blindly buy into the notion that certain cultural content was simply unacceptable. I wonder, though, whether the creators of the film were really concerned with music like Metallica's being satanic, or whether they were more concerned with getting us to avoid lyrics like the following:

Song Lyrics

Cher - The Perfect End to the Week

"If I Could Turn Back Time" is playing on my earbuds and I'm packing up to go home for the weekend. The energy of the song fits my ebullience at leaving the office, although I'm really ready to go forward right now, not back. Hello weekend!

Cherish

From the ages of 5-18, I was a devoted pianist. Although I primarily played classical music, I also was interested in popular music, and would often ask my piano teacher to find sheet music for particular songs. This sometimes resulted in misunderstandings, as in the following account.

One day I asked my teacher to find me the music for the song Cherish. I did not specify the artist, but I was thinking of this.*

Not this.

I remember being very disappointed at receiving The Association's version, but we got it worked out eventually.

*In retrospect, this video of Madonna's seems quite sweet and innocent, especially in contrast to other videos** released during that time period. Also, I love how the person who posted this video comments that it's from the 1989 "Like a Player" album. Nice!

**We didn't have MTV until I was 16, so I had to catch glimpses of videos at my neighbor's house. Since I blushed just listening to the lyrics of Simon and Garfunkel's Cecilia, it shouldn't surprise anyone that these videos made me decidedly uncomfortable.

Breathe, Practicing Idealist, Breathe

On Friday (after my students' exam had begun) -
Student: "Dear professor - I am home sick. Can I take the exam on Monday?"
Me: "Yes. Let me know when you would like to take it. You can take it any time between 11 and 4."

On Saturday - NOTHING

On Sunday - NOTHING

On Monday during class -
Student: "Can I take the exam at 4:00?"
Me: "Yes."

On Monday at 4:30 -
Me: "Dear Student, you are now past the time you said you would be here to take the exam. You MUST make it up on Wednesday between 11 and 4, or I will not allow you to make it up."

On Tuesday - NOTHING

Today, after failing to show up for class -
Student: "I'm sorry I wasn't in class. Can I take the test at 4?"
Me: "Yes, but I'm leaving at 5:00."

Today at 4:30 -
Student: "I'm here to take the test. I'll take it until you have to leave at 5:00."

Me: "No, I'll give you full time to take the exam, but we need to talk when you're finished."

Grrr....

All the good boys, baby they're in grad school...

My husband and I recently purchased the latest Vienna Teng album, Inland Territory.* We listened to the entire album on our way to go apple picking this past weekend, and one song in particular caught our attention.

Grandmother Song relates a message from grandmother to granddaughter about love, life, and generally making use of the advantages females have now that they did not have in the past. Two lines were particularly amusing to us:

All the good boys, baby they're in grad school

Followed several stanzas later by:

How you gonna raise a family when you're on the road

With some tattooed boy with a guitar

When we figured out what she was saying, we erupted in laughter. The song hits very close to my early experiences in graduate school, tempted by the "boy with a guitar," but knowing deep down that the good boy (the best boy) was right next to me in graduate school. I'm so glad I figured that one out.

*Teng is amazing pianist, in addition to being an excellent vocalist.

A Typical Stats Situation for Me

"Ignoring the more technical definition, Rubin (1996) states the following main

conditions. The multiple imputations are said to be proper if:

1. MI estimates bQMI are asymptotically normal with mean bQ and a consistent variance–covariance estimate B.

2. The within-imputation variance estimateW is a consistent estimate of the variance–covariance estimate U with variability of a lower order than Var(bQMI)."

-Stata Help Manual

Oh yes!!! That's right! I forgot that Rubin ignored the more technical definition. Silly me!

Why I'm No Longer a Fundamentalist Christian - Part II

Reason #1 - The Fear Factor

In my last post, I introduced the social context (a private evangelical Christian school) in which I first learned about fundamentalist Christianity. In this post, I am going to describe and analyze my conversion experience. This post will likely be quite serious, but my next post will probably be about music, so the heaviness should lift a little.

As I mentioned in my last post, not only did the curriculum at my new school contain Bible classes, we also had Chapel once a week, which functioned much like a normal Christian church experience. In addition to these formalized opportunities to learn about Christianity (which included watching this movie* about the rapture, complete with people-less lawnmowers driving into hedges, electric razors spinning in sinks, and people being guillotined in the middle of a thunder storm), there were also numerous informal opportunities that reinforced the underlying message that god was to be our "all in all," from saying grace before our lunch, to discussions of the books we were reading in our spare time, to random comments that Mormons and Catholics were not "true" Christians. The school functioned much as a total institution, and this was especially true for those students whose parents also believed the message being spread by the school.

My parents did not believe. And neither did I...at first.

As you may expect, this caused me a great deal of cognitive dissonance. The authority figures and my peers at school were teaching me things that my parents (also authority figures) did not believe. And perhaps I would never have decided to convert if I had merely noticed the difference of opinion, but for the fact that the influences from the Christian school had one tool that my parents did not have: fear.

Think about this for a minute. There's no long-term penalty for not believing in evolution. Darwin is not invoked as a deity who will smite the unbeliever. People do not have to believe in the wonder and pragmatics of the scientific method to hold a job.** On the other extreme, one could even live their whole life believing that we all descended from an ancient race of super-people, without having to fear anything but occasional ridicule.

But that's not the reality for fundamentalist Christians (and please remember I'm talking about my experience with fundamentalist Christianity, not more liberal varieties). The penalties for non-belief were explicitly clear, and I was frightened of the consequences. To put this another way, at my young age of 12, burning in hell just did not seem like the best choice.

I decided to convert. To my credit (if I'm correctly remembering), I did not convert until Christmas break of my first semester at the school. This means that I did think about this decision for several months, and I remember speaking about it with both my parents and my Bible teacher (although mostly my parents).

So on a cold, dark Northern California evening, right before dinner, I sat down in my closet with the light off and prayed for Jesus to come into my heart and "save" me. Given that I was 12, I think the best interpretation of this event was that I wanted to be saved from eternally burning to death (i.e., I was motivated by fear). But at that moment, and in the many years that followed, I believed in the larger story, that Jesus was a real person who came to earth and died for my sins through his great love for me, and that the only way to get to heaven was through having Jesus live in my heart, not merely by living a good life (the whole concept is described nicely here).

Right after this experience, I went sobbing into the kitchen to find my mom, who was quite concerned at my tears and wanted an explanation. And I told her that I was crying because I was going to go heaven and she and my father were going to go to hell (I wasn't worried about my sister, because she also went to the Christian school, and I was pretty sure she was "saved" already). To this day, I am ashamed of myself for saying those words.

I could analyze my conversion to Christianity in a variety of ways. I've dabbled enough in sociological explanations of conversion to realize that the two variables most likely to predict conversion were present for me: 1) I had intensive interaction with fundamentalist Christians at my school, and 2) I had affective attachments to many of the people at my school, both with friends and faculty (in addition, my best friend at the time, whom I had met at the public school two years earlier, was a fundamentalist Christian). In other words, the social context was ripe for conversion. But this is an incomplete answer to why I converted. I can recognize that the social context was ripe, but my personal analysis always comes back to the "fear factor."

I was not lead to convert through messages of god's love alone, or even through messages of how to live a good life, but also through fear. And although I bought into the love message for a long time (long after I had discarded almost everything else I had formerly believed to be true, and was still clinging to a dying identity), I was always afraid: afraid of not being nice enough to others, afraid of going to hell, afraid somebody would find out that evolution just made a lot more sense to me than young-earth creationism,*** etc.

I suppose when I finally de-converted (the last vestiges held on until I was 19, and a sophomore in college), I had gained enough wisdom to realize that not only did I not believe in the need to be converted, but that living life through fear is no way to live, that any loving god who existed would not want me living life with such a debilitating weight on my shoulders. And I have never looked back.

*My husband now has this movie on our Netflix cue. If, and when, it ever becomes available, he will likely be watching it alone. Once was enough for me.

**For a mind-blowing experience, try to envision a presidential race in the U.S. between an atheist and a Christian (any variety, even Mormon or Catholic - shocking, I know). Despite our claims to want to have church and state separate, we are not always good at practicing what we preach. Hm...

***In 8th grade I was required to write a report debunking Neanderthal Man. I cringe thinking about it now. My husband desperately wants to read it; yes, he is fascinated by my experiences of the fundamentalist Christian school - he became an avowed atheist around the same time I became an avowed Christian.

Dr. Idealist

I recently decided that it's time to stop encouraging my students to call me by my first name.

This really has nothing to do with them, it's more about my need to self-identify as a non-student now. I don't think I was quite ready to do this last year, because I still felt like an impostor. But going to the ASA meetings helped change this - I sat in panels, actively thought about the research, and felt qualified enough to make substantive comments about the work. While I did all of this before, I didn't feel as confident in my knowledge, nor in my wisdom to know when to correctly apply my knowledge (or to keep my mouth shut when I really know nothing!!!).*

So now I'm answering emails with Dr. Idealist, rather than Practicing.*** It feels weird, but after awhile it will start to feel normal, as I ossify into my professional identity more and more, and leave behind the student identity I cherished for 83% of my life.

*To be fair to myself, I always was "wise" enough to keep my mouth shut, because I did believe I knew nothing, which I guess made me unwise because I didn't speak up when I should have? Now, I am starting to realize the differences between what I really do know something about (and speak up about it!), and the vastly wider area of stuff that I still know nothing about.**

**I love the ridiculousness of the wording in that previous footnote. It makes me happy sometimes to write convoluted language.

***Note: I would much prefer signing Professor to Dr., but since I'm still a postdoc, it's not really the right term. Dr. does seem awkward, though.

America

What a wonderful reminder this cartoon/article* in the New York Times is this morning, as I prepare for my first day of Race and Ethnicity, which starts in 30 minutes.

*The illustrations and dialogue are beautiful. I encourage you to check it out!

Edward Kennedy

Edward Kennedy died last night. Despite his many flaws, he always fought for those less fortunate, and for that I will be eternally grateful.

In December, while receiving an honorary degree at Harvard, he stated, “We know the future will outlast all of us, but I believe that all of us will live on in the future we make,” he said. “I have lived a blessed time.”

These is certainly a sentiment worth remembering, as I will be on Friday as I start teaching again.

Goodbye, Senator, and thank you.

Why I'm No Longer a Fundamentalist Christian - Part I: The Beginning

Awhile ago I decided to start writing a series of posts detailing serious and not-so-serious reasons why I am no longer a fundamentalist Christian. I hope this will not simply be an exercise of self-analysis, but will also speak to larger issues of extremism, conformity, and identity processes, among other sociology-related topics.

So, to start, I will tell you the context in which I came to be a fundamentalist Christian, which seems a necessary background to the objective of explaining why I am no longer a fundamentalist Christian. I blame it on sixth grade, but I don't want to get too ahead of myself.

I did not grow up particularly religious. Although my mother occasionally took me and my little sister to church, it was always to liberal congregations (i.e., Congregational, Unitarian, United Methodist, Presbyterian).* And her main reason for taking us to church was not because she was worried about our souls going to eternal damnation if we weren't "saved," but because she thought that Christianity had some good lessons to teach (seriously, who doesn't think The Golden Rule is useful both individually and socially?).

My mother herself would probably be classified as agnostic, but this is somewhat tricky. The last time we talked about this, she believed that a man named Jesus lived (or at least someone thought he did), and he did good works. But she has never believed Jesus was the son of god, or that people have to take Jesus into their hearts to be saved from the fiery pits of Hell. And I'm not sure she even believes that there is a god anymore, but I think she did when we were little.** So I'll classify her as agnostic for lack of a better category.

My father, who grew up an actively participating Quaker (so active that he was able to legitimately claim alternative service status during the Vietnam War - he served as a hospital orderly), has been a self-proclaimed agnostic as long as I can remember. I'm not really sure why he stopped believing in god (if he ever did), but I think his young-adult experiences turned him away from any sort of organized religion - add to this that he is a medical doctor and scientist at heart. My father seems content in his agnosticism, and has never done anything I've seen to try to get beyond not knowing; it just doesn't seem to be an important enterprise for him.

As you can see, I did not grow up highly religious, or highly spiritual for that matter. I did grow up learning the value of curiosity and education.

But sixth grade was BAD,*** and my sister was also not having the time of her life in public school. Living in a relatively rural location, my parents had one option - a private, fundamentalist Christian school. I think they reasoned that the potential benefits outweighed the potential costs. After all, wouldn't Christian children be nicer than public school children? In addition, they let us make our own decision about which school to attend. And we wanted to go to the private school.****

So we matriculated into a school where Bible class became integrated into our daily curriculum, along with Math, Science, Language Arts, and Social Studies. Into a school where most of the children believed in a different reality from our previous reality, a reality that included Evil and Good constantly warring against one another - there was never any room for grey. And, lo and behold, we both eventually bought into it. But that is a post for another day.

*All four of these congregations range from fairly to extremely liberal in California. United Methodism in Georgia is a much different animal, as I will probably discuss in a future post.

**It's funny how a bunch of adverse conditions that never seem to relent can make one question their faith in a loving god who is watching out for each of us. Hmm...

***In retrospect, I have come to understand that middle school is bad for everybody, regardless of where you fall on the stratification hierarchy, but how was I supposed to understand that then? I just knew that every day hurt emotionally.

****I truly think this was a big mistake on my parents' part, although I am quite cognizant that they were doing the best they could. But think about it...my sister and I were 9 and 11 - hardly old enough to make what would become a very huge decision in our lives.

Should we be asking students for their opinions?

I'm using a new reader this fall, and it has helpful "Questions to Consider" at the beginning of every reading. I LOVE this kind of thing, but I'm finding that most of the questions ask students for their opinions, rather than to recall information from the reading, or apply the information to another domain, etc. My main concern is that sociology (especially classes focusing on inequality) is often about showing students where their opinions end and good science begins, so I typically shy away from such opinion-based questions. Sometimes I will start with opinion questions, but I quickly steer the discussion towards empirically-based assertions (or try to).

I'd be curious to know what other teachers do. Do you start with opinion-based questions? Do you avoid them at all costs? And, if you do use opinion-based questions, how do you steer your students towards thinking about the sociology behind the topic at hand?

The Problem with Chex Mix

The problem with Chex Mix is that although it may contain 60% less fat than potato chips, it still contains fat, and is still not the most healthy food around.

Back in the day (college), I was way more strict with myself about food. I wouldn't buy chips (although I did go through a pita chip phase during grad school). I would limit myself to one sweet thing a day. This lasted until a very stressful phase in grad school where I dropped to 124 lbs., and my doctor commanded me to eat more per day (this is when the pita chip obsession began - also my love of bagels with a TON of cream cheese on them). I ended up gaining back the weight, due to my wonderful husband's love, not the food. But I never went back to my strict policies with myself.

Which is unfortunate, because, while at a game night two weekends ago, the hosts offered us Chex Mix. Never before have I enjoyed Chex Mix so much. And now a bag of it is sitting in the pantry, calling to me, singing me its siren snacking song.

Must...have...willpower.

Props to Avril Lavigne and Howie Day

...and a shout out to minor contributions from Dave Matthews' Band, Keane, and Billy Joel for helping me complete two successful months on the elliptical machine 3X/week for 30 minutes at a time.

After the asthma nightmare that lasted for months last summer and fall, I'm happy to be back doing more than walking the dog around our hilly neighborhood. And my lungs are feeling healthy and strong.

Woo-hoo health! And bring on the pollen!!!

Equality

This morning my husband and I were talking about the CA supreme court's decision yesterday to uphold the legal status of marriage as a union between a man and a woman. And then the topic shifted to gay marriage more generally.

We both agree that gay marriage should be legal as marriage between a man and a woman is legal, but for slightly different reasons. His philosophy is that a plethora of issues should be legal unless there's a compelling reason for them not to be. Thus, since he can't see how letting two men or two women marry would hurt society, he is not opposed to gay marriage. In contrast, he would be opposed to marriage between adults and children, because there's a compelling argument that such an arrangement would cause undue harm to the children in question. For me, it's about equality; if I get the right to marry the person of my choosing (who happens to be straight), then I believe everyone else should get the right to marry the person of their choosing. Our arguments are very similar, and obviously come to the same conclusion. Additionally, I don't think either of our arguments are necessarily tied directly to the issue of gay marriage. For my husband, if actions are not hurting society, then they should be legal (whatever those actions are); for me, if I'm legally allowed to do something (whatever that something is), then others should also have the right.

I think opponents of gay marriage are also seeing a larger picture behind this particular issue. Their arguments may revolve around the definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman, but the driving force of such sentiment is about god's will. So again, the particular issue doesn't matter (it could be gay marriage, abortion, etc.), but whether the outcome fits within god's will does.

As someone who grew up in California, and attended a fundamentalist Christian school for two years while I lived there, I am not surprised that there is so much disagreement about gay rights in the state. Not all Californians are the same. There's extremely liberal regions in CA, and extremely conservative regions. It's a huge state, and there's bound to be severe disagreements.

What strikes me as more interesting than debates within CA are the three states where gay marriage has been legalized: Maine, Vermont, and Iowa (please correct me if my information is incomplete). We're not talking about states with large urban centers (traditional hotbeds of liberalism)...we're talking about states with large rural populations. So what is going on here?

My first response was to claim something about the culture of the Northeast (where quite a few other states have given legal rights to same-sex civil unions). Perhaps the ideals of two important religious traditions in the Northeast (Quakerism and Unitarian Universalism) supporting equal rights for all people have infused the general culture to a great enough extent that the populations are willing to push for equal marriage rights. But this leaves me not understanding Iowa. I confess I haven't spent much time in the Midwest, but I was somewhat shocked when Iowa legalized gay marriage. Is there a similar tradition (perhaps based on religion, or otherwise) of equal rights in Iowa? Or is Iowa the outlier to the pattern we've seen in the Northeast (and to a limited extent in the Northwest)? What do you think?

Growth

I have always believed that the person you marry should challenge you to be your best self, and to grow and change when necessary.

Through knowing my husband for the past eight years, there are numerous ways I have grown, but today I'm reminded of how my views of the military have changed.

I grew up hearing stories about the huge fights my mother and father used to have with her family about the Vietnam War. My mother and my father, who grew up Quaker and did alternative service during Vietnam, did not believe in the war. In contrast, Uncle Jack (my mother's oldest brother), had enlisted in the Navy when he was 17 (I'm not sure how), had served in WWII, and was then serving in Vietnam. My Uncle Sonny (my mother's middle brother) had served in Korea as a radio technician, and my Uncle Jim (her younger brother) was drafted to serve in Vietnam as an airplane mechanic.

Although I knew that all three of my uncles had been in the military, I always leaned more towards my father's views of war. In fact, since I didn't believe in war as a good outcome to conflict, it didn't occur to me to think of the soldiers as separate from war, until I met my husband.

My husband, who has no family members in the military, but whose best friend was in the Marine Corps for quite a few years, has a tremendous sense of gratitude for the service of military personnel. This gratitude may be the result of growing up male and being a history buff, both of which have exposed him to the awful realities of war. Whatever the source of his gratitude, my husband has helped me to separate the wars from the individuals, and that has helped me to grow.

I still do not fundamentally believe in war as a solution to political problems (although I do realize its necessity, from time to time), I have come to have a deep appreciation for the men and women who serve in the armed forces. I may not understand why they choose to join the military, or endorse their beliefs (especially the ones who join because they want to further god's will), but they all put their lives on the line for their country, and for that I have immense respect.

On Saturday, my husband and I shook hands with two veterans collecting donations for the Veterans of Foreign Wars Foundation. I'll admit, it was hard for me to step beyond my revulsion for war and thank them, but it was worth it.

Pride

Today was the last day of class, and my students applauded at the very end.*

It's a good day.

*I must say thank you to my husband for not telling me, "I told you so" when I recounted this story to him earlier. I've been stressing all semester about whether I was teaching a good class or not, and he's had the unenviable job of reassuring me. Well, apparently he was right that I'm a good teacher (or else I'm really good at fooling my class ; ).

Spousal Social Capital

Today, after reading/editing/commenting on the fifth of the papers my husband has written this year, I realized what a benefit it is to him to have a sociologist for a wife (and for me to have a sociologist for a husband, of course ; ).

Not only can we assess the quality of each other's arguments, in addition to the regular editing tasks (watching for logical organization, comma splices, etc.), but having each other as spouses mean that we have an automatic confidant in the workplace.*

With only my own experience to go on, I'm prepared to say that our mutual career is an incredible asset professionally. And I'm wondering if such "spousal social capital" in the workplace will only become more common as more women have entered, and continue to enter, the workforce.

*Of course, this benefit has also sometimes taken the form of a curse. I remember a specific time period (around completing my dissertation), when I tried to forbid the discussion of sociology outside our department. Not only did this not work very well at all, it caused a bit of friction, since both of our identities are highly tied to being a sociologist, and of course you want to share important things with your spouse. Good times!

Family-Friendly Company

NPR today has a story about family-friendly companies that are allowing parents to bring their young babies (up to six months old) to work.

The companies are finding that women come back to work earlier, which is useful, since approximately 1/4 of women quit their jobs when they have a baby. And the women feel a lot less stress because they don't have to leave their babies at such a young age.

The number of companies allowing this is small (approximately 140 in the U.S.), but the idealist in me has high hopes for the spread of the idea.

You can find the story here.