Tag Archives: parenting

Heads Up: Upcoming Parental Leave

If you’ve seen me waddle onto stage lately, you’ve probably guessed that I’m either growing a baby or an alien. I’m hoping for the former, although contemporary imaging technologies still do make me wonder. If all goes well, I will give birth in late January or early February. Although I don’t publicly talk much about my son, this will be #2 for me and so I have both a vague sense of what I’m in for and no clue at all. I avoid parenting advice like the plague so I’m mostly plugging my ears and singing “la-la-la-la” whenever anyone tells me what I’m in for. I don’t know, no one knows, and I’m not going to pretend like anything I imagine now will determine how I will feel come this baby’s arrival.

What I do know is that I don’t want to leave any collaborator or partner in the lurch since there’s a pretty good chance that I’ll be relatively out of commission (a.k.a. loopy as all getup) for a bit. I will most likely turn off my email firehose and give collaborators alternate channels for contacting me. I do know that I’m not taking on additional speaking gigs, writing responsibilities, scholarly commitments, or other non-critical tasks. I also know that I’m going to do everything possible to make sure that Data & Society is in good hands and will continue to grow while I wade through the insane mysteries of biology. If you want to stay in touch with everything happening at D&S, please make sure to sign up for our newsletter! (You may even catch me sneaking into our events with a baby.)

As an employee of Microsoft Research who is running an independent research institute, I have a ridiculous amount of flexibility in how I navigate my parental leave. I thank my lucky stars for this privilege on a regular basis, especially in a society where we force parents (and especially mothers) into impossible trade-offs. What this means in practice for me is that I refuse to commit to exactly how I’m going to navigate parental leave once #2 arrives. Last time, I penned an essay “Choosing the ‘Right’ Maternity Leave Plan” to express my uncertainty. What I learned last time is that the flexibility to be able to work when it made sense and not work when I’d been up all night made me more happy and sane than creating rigid leave plans. I’m fully aware of just how fortunate I am to be able to make these determinations and how utterly unfair it is that others can’t. I’m also aware of just how much I love what I do for work and, in spite of folks telling me that work wouldn’t matter as much after having a child, I’ve found that having and loving a child has made me love what I do professionally all the more. I will continue to be passionately engaged in my work, even as I spend time welcoming a new member of my family to this earth.

I don’t know what the new year has in store for me, but I do know that I don’t want anyone who needs something from me to feel blindsided. If you need something from me, now is the time to holler and I will do my best. I’m excited that my family is growing and I’m also ecstatic that I’ve been able to build a non-profit startup this year. It’s been a crazy year and I expect that 2015 will be no different.

Parentology: The first parenting book I actually liked

As a researcher and parent, I quickly learned that I have no patience for parenting books. When I got pregnant, I started trying to read parenting books and I threw more than my fair share of them across the room. I either get angry at the presentation of the science or annoyed at the dryness of the writing. Worse, the prescriptions make me furious because anyone who tells you that there’s a formula to parenting is lying. My hatred of parenting books was really disappointing because I didn’t want to have to do a literature review whenever I wanted to know what research said about XYZ. I actually want to understand what the science says about key issues of child development, childrearing, and parenting. But I can’t stomach the tone of what I normally encounter.

So when I learned that Dalton Conley was writing a book on parenting, my eyebrows went up. I’ve always been a huge fan of his self-deprecating autobiographical book Honky because it does such a fantastic job of showcasing research on race and class. This made me wonder what he was going to do with a book on parenting.

Conley did not disappoint. His new book Parentology is the first parenting book that I’ve read that I actually enjoyed and am actively recommending to others. Conley’s willingness to detail his own failings, neuroses, and foolish logic (and to smack himself upside the head with research data in the process) showcases the trials and tribulations of parenting. Even experts make a mess of everything, but watching them do so so spectacularly lets us all off the hook. If you read this book, you will learn a lot about parenting, even if it doesn’t present the material in a how-to fashion. Instead, this book highlights the chaos that ensues when you try to implement science on the ground. Needless to say, hilarity ensues.

If you need some comedy relief, pick up this book. It’s a fantastic traversal of contemporary research presented in a fashion that will have you rolling on the floor laughing. Lesson #1: If you buy your children pet guinea pigs to increase their exposure to allergens, make sure that they’re unable to mate.

Choosing the “Right” Maternity Leave Plan

As I prepare to go on parental leave, I’ve been forced to contend with countless well-intended people telling me how to “do it right” (or tsk tsking me as though I’m already “doing it wrong”). I’m a lot better at keeping my Bad Attitude Bear self at bay these days, but I’m still stunned by the barrage of conflicting and condescending advice that my bulging tummy elicits. Even after decades of forging my own path and managing to make things work, I apparently cannot be entrusted to find a way to have a child and be a researcher. And yowsers does my “play it by ear” approach raise everyone’s hackles.

I am the first to admit that I have zero clue of how I will feel after I deliver my child. I don’t know how my body will react to childbirth. I don’t know how I will feel about spending all day with a newborn. I don’t know how easy or hard things like nursing or sleep will be. The one thing that I know for certain is that there is tremendous variation among parents and children and that nothing is predictable. Yet, this doesn’t stop people from projecting onto me how I should feel afterwards. As a researcher, I very much appreciate their diverse experiences, pleasures, and challenges and so I try not to bristle at the universalizing that unfolds from that.

Part of what makes hearing everyone’s commentary hard to stomach is that I feel super fortunate to have a level of flexibility that few people I know have. At Microsoft, I have phenomenal benefits that allow me to take many weeks – actually months – of leave. My boss at Microsoft Research is one of the most supportive people that I know. And I’ve worked hard to close out group projects and otherwise eliminate dependencies so that I could take leave without impacting others. I’ve planned for uncertainty and I feel like I have tremendous flexibility. So I feel safe and comfortable waiting to see how things unfold.

But my refusal to commit to exactly how I will do maternity leave doesn’t stop folks from being opinionated. I may be back on email within a week or two. I may not be. I may be back to working on research puzzles that tickle my brain in short order. I may not be. I happen to love my research and nothing gives me greater joy that having thought provoking conversations and thinking through ideas. But if I suggest that I may engage in any act that someone else calls “work,” I’m condemned for being a workaholic who will be a bad mother. Given my profession, I usually get some crass comment comparing me to Marissa Mayer. Or I get an eyeroll or a condescending chortle followed by a series of remarks about how childbirth will change my priorities, my values, and every aspect of my life. In other words, what I hear over and over again is that my identity as researcher will be wholly incompatible with my identity as mother and I should be prepared to give up the former because the latter is clearly better.

What’s with this incessant judgmentalness? Why does it make people feel better to project their values and anxieties onto others? And what happened to a feminism that was about “choice” rather than about “doing it right”?

I hate that the logic of assessment and evaluation has pervaded our society so extensively than people feel the need to proselytize a rubric for things like childrearing and maternity leave. There’s no single right path, no perfect decision. When we set mothers up for someone’s fantasy of an ideal, everyone loses, including the child.

I wish more new mothers out there had even a fraction of the choices that I have. I wish more companies would work with their employees to help them create a flexible schedule because so much is unknown. I wish more bosses would be so supportive and willing to juggle things to find a way to make things work regardless of what happens. In other words, I wish that we had a remotely sane work culture. I’m lucky enough to be a part of one but that’s so rare.

At the same time, I also wish that those of us who are fortunate enough to be able to make choices wouldn’t have to face such oppressive condescension and critique from those who feel as though, because our system is fundamentally flawed and unjust, anyone with freedom and flexibility should be choosing to completely walk away from work in order to be a “good” mother. I hate that it’s all black-or-white, work or don’t work, mother or employee. This sets everyone up to fail and be miserable in the process. Few people live such a polarized binary life.

Rather than going to extremes around all things parenting, I really wish that we could truly enable people to have choices. Not faux choices where they’re pressured by bosses or colleagues to continue working even though they technically have leave. Nor the kind of situation where they’re pressured by friends or family or society to behave in a prescribed way. But true choice where they can work out what’s right for them and their families and balance what matters. I realize that we’re a long way from this pipe dream, but I can’t help but think that we collectively undermine choice whenever we condemn those who have choice for making choices that differ from our own.

More selfishly, I wish people would just be supportive of me playing things by ear because who knows what the upcoming weeks and months have to offer. I, for one, am looking forward to finding out.

Image from Flickr by Joe Green

Originally posted to LinkedIn. More comments reside there.

Heads Up: Parenting Leave Coming Up

I’m a big believer in taking breaks from work, research, and my mediated life to travel, trek, and explore. Years ago, I implemented email sabbaticals to give myself space to take time off without being overwhelmed by the ongoing flow of emails and expectations. I documented the process because too many people assumed that I just disappeared, unannounced, leaving my colleagues and friends in a lurch. Actually, email sabbaticals are a process because they have stages where I make sure that everyone who depends on me is taken care of before I disappear into the void. I typically announce them to colleagues 3-6 months ahead of time and give a public warning 6 weeks ahead of time. And then I have a process upon return where I check in with folks. When I disappear, my goal is to never leave people that depend on me faltering. This isn’t a perfect process, but I’ve found that letting people know well ahead of time guarantees that I finish out projects and account for commitments before taking time off without the lingering stress of unfinished business.

Normally, when I plan on taking a massive break, I know the dates well ahead of time and can help everyone plan and prepare. I’m now facing a different dilemma. I know that sometime in the next n weeks, I’m going to take some serious time off. The problem is that I’m not quite sure exactly when that will occur nor am I exactly sure how long I will be gone or how much I will want to be off email. Y’see, rather than taking a vacation this summer, I’m planning on having a baby.

As folks who have seen me in recent months know, I’m pregnant, due August 3. I look pretty silly, particularly given that I’m a klutz and managed to obtain a lisfranc injury on top of my bulging belly which means that I look like a whale on a scooter. But I’m still chugging along, finishing out writing projects (the book is in copyediting right now!) and starting new ones (nom nom trouble). I’m planning on taking parental leave when the kiddo arrives, but I’m not yet sure how long I’ll want to be focused solely on being a parent. Given my love of research, I expect that I’ll ease back in to email and projects throughout the fall. And I plan to start traveling again with a spectacular book tour when the book launches in early 2014. But I also know that I’m entering a world of uncertainty.

I don’t intend to detail my life as a mother on this blog because, frankly, I don’t want to. But I do want to give y’all a heads up that I intend to disappear for a bit when the time comes. So if there are things you need from me this summer or early fall, perhaps ping me sooner rather than later. And please understand that when I do get to finally meet the kiddo, I will probably be pretty inattentive to email and the internets for a while. I suspect that this will look and feel differently than my email sabbaticals, but I still don’t want to leave people in a lurch. So I wanted to give y’all a heads up.

A new adventure awaits!  Thanks for your patience!

Three conversations for parents: navigating networked publics

This post was originally written for A Platform For Good.org, a new site dedicated to creating opportunities for young people and adults to engage with technology in a healthy way.

Parenting is hard. Many parents find parenting in an era of social media to be confusing, in part because they must advise their children to make sense of spaces that they don’t understand themselves. It’s easy to be afraid of what’s new, but by focusing on technology, parents often lose track of the underlying social issues that their children are trying to navigate.

In many ways, the advice that children need to negotiate networked publics parallels advice that parents have always given when their children encounter public spaces. To address online safety concerns, parents need to help build resilience generally. With that in mind, I encourage parents who are concerned about online safety issues to initiate three important conversations with their children:

Public-ness. Hanging out online is a lot like socializing in any other public space. Youth may be there to socialize with their peers, but teachers and other adults may also be present. What makes the internet especially tricky is that youth leave traces that may be viewed by people at a different time. As a girl, my mother taught me that I need to put my best foot forward whenever I was in public. For today’s youth, that public is the internet. In order to help youth navigate networked spaces, parents need to talk with their children about unexpected and invisible audiences. How might what you write be interpreted by someone other than your friends? What happens when what you say is taken out of context? Rather than focusing on what’s right and wrong, it’s important to begin a conversation about what it means to engage publicly in a networked society.

Empathy. People often say or do mean things when they themselves are hurting. They lash out at others to get attention. Some do so anonymously because they want to see how their actions might prompt others to respond. All too often, we focus on helping youth address bullying by blaming the people engaged in meanness and cruelty, but developing empathy broadly from an early age is one of the best ways to address cyberbullying. Rather than blaming technology or blaming mean people, help everyone develop respect for others.

Sex and Sexuality. Many parents struggle with the birds and bees conversation, preferring to avoid the topic altogether or hope that offering a book will do. Unfortunately, some of the trickiest issues online – including sexting and pornography – often stem from the interplay of sex and sexuality. A conversation about sex and sexuality in a networked world needs to include a variety of issues, including navigating desire and respect, the importance of trust and the potential for trust to be violated, the desire to be loved and the potential consequences of falling in love. It never was simply about pregnancy and STDs, but networked technologies highlight how important it is that we go beyond those topics in our contemporary birds and bees talk.

The networked society that we live in today may feel radically different, but many youth are struggling with the things they’ve always struggled with.They’re trying to figure out who they are and how they fit into the bigger world. They want to hang out with friends, but they’re also trying to figure out the status games of their peers. All of this is playing out through social media. Parents are in a unique position to help young people navigate this networked world, but they need not fear the technology. Instead, parents should start having key conversations with their children to help them develop strategies for coming of age in a networked world.

Facebook & helicopter parenting

I recently received an email from a teen that I speak with that piqued my interest. I thought I’d share it with you:

My friend (17 yo girl) isn’t allowed on Facebook because she has helicopter parents.  She has one anyway under a pseudonym. She is also battling depression and has been going through many therapists. When I saw her a few days ago, she excitedly told me about how great her new therapist was. Her therapist lets her go on Facebook during the sessions.  While she uses Facebook, the therapist watches her use the site.  They have discussions around her photos and her friend’s status updates.  Apparently this is how the majority of her therapy sessions begin. This friend is prone to exaggeration, but the way she told the story passed my personal bullshit filter.

I regularly hear parents talk about how they want to keep their kids off of Facebook for any number of reasons. It kills me to hear this because they don’t understand that their pushing their kids to choose between social status and parental obedience. I don’t know whether or not this story is true, but it wouldn’t surprise me. I’ve watched too many teens be pushed into a corner by over-protective parents who think that they’re doing the right thing for their kids. But there’s nothing like social ostracization to increase depression. And I’ve heard too many stories from teens’ therapists about how parents are often a huge part of the problem.

If you’re a parent, please think twice before you get all control-freak on your teen kids. They need space to engage with friends in a healthy manner. And regardless of how you grew up, that means the Internet today. Exclusion isn’t a solution.