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650 lines
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<title>04 December, 2023</title>
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<title>Daily-Dose</title><meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" name="viewport"/><link href="styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="../styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><style>*{overflow-x:hidden;}</style><link href="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.css" rel="stylesheet"/><script src="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.js"></script></head>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="#from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-vox">From Vox</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</a></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>What Was the Point of George Santos?</strong> - Washington finally rediscovers how to give a grifting congressman the boot. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/what-was-the-point-of-george-santos">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Bidenomics Is a Political Bust for Biden</strong> - On the perils of running a feel-good tour of America when the country is down in the dumps. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/bidenomics-is-a-political-bust-for-biden">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Dead Children We Must See</strong> - It’s time for Americans to rethink their squeamishness about releasing the photos of the youngest victims of mass violence. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-dead-children-we-must-see">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Difference That Sandra Day O’Connor Made</strong> - The late Supreme Court Justice had a keen feeling for the real-world impact of the Court’s decisions. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/postscript/the-difference-that-sandra-day-oconnor-made">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Columbia Suspended Pro-Palestine Student Groups. The Faculty Revolted</strong> - Like other universities, the school has cracked down on activism among students, citing fears of antisemitism. Some professors think it’s gone too far. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/columbia-suspended-pro-palestine-student-groups-the-faculty-revolted">link</a></p></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><strong>How millennials learned to dread motherhood</strong> -
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<figure>
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<img alt="An illustration shows a woman looking off to the right. Beyond her right shoulder is a scene in yellow of her lovingly holding her baby. Beyond her left shoulder is a scene in blue of her, stressed and crying while holding a shrieking baby." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ES2blAWVaxgw9xCPUt1rvPE47YU=/240x0:1680x1080/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72928352/EleanorDavis_VOX_Motherhood.0.jpg"/>
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<figcaption>
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Eleanor Davis for Vox
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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To our generation, being a mom looks<strong> </strong>thankless, exhausting, and lonely. Can we change the story?
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8oSDT8">
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I had been seeing my boyfriend for about a year, and though things were going well, we never talked about our feelings on having children. I’m aware of the dating advice that says you’re supposed to broach that topic early on, but I didn’t know what I wanted, and I didn’t feel ready to talk about that fact.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rYs6rk">
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That is, until <em>Roe </em>v. <em>Wade</em><em> </em>was overturned, and I could no longer pretend that <em>Roe</em>’s gutting didn’t have real implications for us, or at least for me. So one night in the summer of 2022, I finally asked him where his head was at.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7jsdtU">
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He looked surprised, considering the question. “I think I’ve always wanted to be a father,” he said slowly, adding, “That doesn’t mean it’s a deal breaker, though.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rBAFNT">
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It was as diplomatic an answer as I could have hoped for — clear, honest, and with no ultimatum attached. Still, I felt nervous and even a bit lonely, because I am not someone who has dreamed of being a mother; I’ve never particularly liked babysitting or even being around little kids.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="G7kXkN">
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I’m not alone in struggling with the prospect of motherhood. Birthrates in America <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/1/5/22867184/us-census-population-growth-slowdown-migration-birth-death">have declined</a> across <a href="https://www.cato.org/blog/demographic-contributions-recent-us-fertility-decline#:~:text=Fertility%20also%20declined%20across%20racial,since%202007%20(Figure%202).">racial and ethnic groups</a> over the past 15 years, decreases driven not only by people having fewer children but also by those waiting to have any children at all, many deeply torn about the idea. The animated <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Fencesitter/">Fencesitter Reddit</a> stirs daily with prospective parents stressed over what they really want. One of the <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@yuniquethoughts/video/7132315615620058411?lang=en">most viral TikTok videos</a> last year, with millions of views and some 800,000 likes, is known simply as <a href="https://yuniquethoughtslist.wixsite.com/yuni-s-pros-and-cons/the-list">“The List,”</a> featuring hundreds of reasons to not have children. (Reasons included: urinary tract infections during and after pregnancy, back pain, nosebleeds, and #89, “could be the most miserable experience of your life.”)
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lZjFpw">
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Uncertainty is normal. Becoming a parent is a life-changing decision, after all. But this moment is unlike any women have faced before. Today, the question of whether to have kids generates anxiety far more intense than your garden-variety ambivalence. For too many, it inspires dread.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ImnZTN">
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I know some women who have decided to forgo motherhood altogether — not out of an empowered certainty that they want to remain child-free, but because the alternative seems impossibly daunting. Others are <a href="https://mattbruenig.com/2023/02/16/childlessness-did-not-cause-birth-rate-decline/">still choosing</a> motherhood, but with profound apprehension that it will require them to sacrifice everything that brings them pleasure.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jRcpwl">
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Meanwhile, the very idea of becoming a parent has grown more politically fraught. Republican politicians are doubling down on explicit endorsements of childbearing, the kind that Democrats increasingly see as at odds with reproductive freedom and valuing families of all kinds.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8NOsRX">
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On top of this, there is the well-documented aversion many millennials <a href="https://petedavis.org/dedicated/">feel about making any sort of commitment</a>, so conditioned are we to leave our personal and professional options open. One need not squint to see the connections to having kids — it’s the ultimate pledge, more enduring even than many marriages.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NzSOar">
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Does this pressure to stay nimble and untethered explain millennial mom dread? It certainly offers some insight. Yet clearly, something more is going on. How to explain why, in <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/08912432221114873">survey</a> <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/01/24/parenting-in-america-today/">after</a> <a href="https://docs.iza.org/dp10023.pdf">survey</a>, it is women with the most financial resources, and the highest levels of education, who report the most stress and unhappiness with motherhood? We hear often that the US is the <a href="https://news.web.baylor.edu/news/story/2021/united-states-ranks-lowest-overall-policies-aimed-helping-parents-support-children#:~:text=In%20a%20study%20of%20about,at%20helping%20parents%20support%20children.">least family-friendly country</a> in the industrialized world, but American women who describe the most dissatisfaction are also those most likely to work in jobs that <em>do </em>offer maternity leave, paid sick days, and remote-work flexibility. They’re most likely to have decent health insurance and the least likely to be raising a child on their own. Understanding what’s driving these feelings might be key to changing it — for me and millions of others.
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</p>
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<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="lsewud"/>
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<div>
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<figure class="e-image">
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<img alt="An illustrated woman peers into a crystal ball, which shows her holding a baby." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/luJY2zAyAe7Hkf9I3DUT9rCmZxQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25120826/Davis_VOX_Motherhood_Crystal_Ball.jpg"/>
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</figure>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uldjWN">
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As I let the conversation with my boyfriend simmer, I imagined raising a child together and felt surprised by how nice the thought felt. Though I still worried that I lacked a maternal instinct, I was overcome with a warm certainty that my partner would make a great dad. Starting a family also seemed intriguing amid the post-pandemic recognition that a devotion to work is definitely not what our short lives are all about.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5AoEQT">
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It didn’t take long for my fuzzy feelings to fade. My boyfriend may have been excited, but we all know men have less to lose. For at least the last decade, women my age have absorbed cultural messaging that motherhood is thankless and depleting, straining careers, health, and friendships, and destroying sex lives. Today, it’s genuinely difficult to find mainstream portrayals of moms who are not stressed to the brink, depressed, isolated, or increasingly resentful.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GFm0QF">
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In 2014, the heroine of Jenny Offil’s novel <em>Department of Speculation </em>drew praise for presenting “<a href="https://www.vogue.com/article/scenes-from-a-marriage-jenny-offill-on-modern-motherhood-dept-of-speculation-book">an unflinching” and “more honest”</a> portrait of modern motherhood, while author Sheila Heti made waves in 2018 with her bestselling <em>Motherhood</em>, narrated by a 36-year-old woman who fixates on the boredom and unhappiness of moms around her. “I feel like a draft dodger from the army in which so many of my friends are serving,” Heti’s protagonist muses.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ynvokq">
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Such portrayals, often written by and about by well-off, straight white women, are now more commonplace. When Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s 2019 novel <em>Fleishman Is in Trouble</em> was made into a popular Hulu miniseries, critics noted <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2023/02/the-fleishman-is-in-trouble-effect.html">the deep resonance</a> women felt for the show’s two leading moms. (“<em>Fleishman Is in Trouble</em> Knows Motherhood Is a Drag,” read one <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2022/12/fleishman-is-in-trouble-taffy-brodesser-akner-lizzy-caplan-interview.html">New York </a>magazine headline.) Meanwhile, Olivia Colman received an Oscar nomination for her performance in the 2021 film <em>Lost Daughter</em>, playing a professor who abandons her kids when the weight of motherhood overwhelms her. (Vulture later dubbed that year “<a href="https://www.vulture.com/2022/01/oscars-2022-your-guide-to-the-sad-moms-of-awards-season.html">the year of sad moms at the movies</a>.” )
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QgEsh5">
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Or survey recent titles of mainstream nonfiction on the topic: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Rage-Everyday-Crisis-Motherhood/dp/1541601300/ref=asc_df_1541601300/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=642097467538&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=13548323086036010023&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9007535&hvtargid=pla-1944731591962&psc=1"><em>Mom Rage</em></a><em>: The Everyday Crisis of Modern Motherhood</em>; <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Screaming-Inside-Unsustainability-American-Motherhood/dp/006307835X"><em>Screaming on the Inside</em></a><em>: The Unsustainability of American Motherhood</em>; <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/589989/ordinary-insanity-by-sarah-menkedick/"><em>Ordinary Insanity</em></a><em>: Fear and the Silent Crisis of Motherhood in America</em>; <a href="https://www.amazon.com/All-Rage-Mothers-Fathers-Partnership/dp/0062861441"><em>All the Rage</em></a><em>: Mothers, Fathers, and the Myth of Equal Partnership</em>. (These are also almost always written by white, middle-class authors.) And then there are the anxiety-inducing news stories, like “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” (<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-cant-have-it-all/309020/">2012</a>), “The Costs of Motherhood Are Rising, and Catching Women Off Guard” (<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/17/upshot/motherhood-rising-costs-surprise.html#:~:text=795-,The%20Costs%20of%20Motherhood%20Are%20Rising%2C%20and%20Catching%20Women%20Off,and%20parenting%2C%20new%20research%20shows.&text=An%20economic%20mystery%20of%20the,more%20women%20aren't%20working.">2018</a>), “Mothers All Over Are Losing It” (<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/opinion/covid-pandemic-mothers-parenting.html">2021</a>), and, of course, “These Mothers Were Exhausted, So They Met on a Field to Scream” (<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/23/us/mom-scream-massachusetts-pandemic.html">2022</a>).
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Z31LVl">
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Should we stumble across moms on Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok who <em>do</em> seem to be enjoying the experience of child-rearing, we’re taught to be very, very suspicious. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/how-the-mom-internet-became-a-spotless-sponsored-void/2018/01/26/072b46ac-01d6-11e8-bb03-722769454f82_story.html">Assume they’re “pitchwomen</a>.” Assume they’re ridiculously wealthy. Assume, as Times columnist Jessica Grose put it, that they’re mostly peddling <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/22/opinion/influencers-moms-parenting.html">“pernicious expectations.”</a>
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kpsqEW">
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Like so many women, I fervently consume this content, wanting both to set realistic expectations for myself and to learn in solidarity with those who are already moms.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="De06mZ">
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College-educated millennial women considering motherhood — and a growing number from Gen Z too — are now so well-versed in the statistics of modern maternal inequity that we can recite them as if we’d already experienced them ourselves. We can speak authoritatively about the burden of <a href="https://www.healthline.com/health/relationships/mental-load">“the mental load”</a> in heterosexual relationships, the chilling <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/pam.22436?af=R">costs of child care</a>, the staggering <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/3/17/23641598/maternal-mortality-pregnancy-sub-saharan-africa-who-cdc-report-womens-health">maternal mortality rates</a> for Black women. We can tell you that women spend twice as much time as men on average doing household chores after kids enter the picture, that marriages with kids tend to suffer. We’re so informed, frankly, that we find ourselves feeling less like empowered adults than like grimacing fortune-tellers peering into a crystal ball.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aStBQy">
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Previous generations “did not experience the same vocal outward world that we’re living in today where everybody is telling you it’s almost crazy for you to have children,” said Sherisa de Groot, founder of <a href="https://www.raisingmothers.com/">Raising Mothers</a>, a literary group focused on parents of color. “That it’s selfish for you to have children. That it’s almost, like, a morally wrong thing to do at this point, because look at the hell basket we’re living in.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GF3xJq">
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In her book <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250762290/motherbrain"><em>Mother Brain</em></a><em>, </em>journalist Chelsea Conaboy describes experts who long concealed challenging information from pregnant people and new moms to “protect” them. In some ways, we’re in the midst of a backlash to an earlier period that was <em>too </em>saccharine, <em>too </em>paternalistic.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eFt7fW">
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It’s not like we want to go back to the days when motherhood was sanitized, when the public heard virtually nothing about postpartum depression or <a href="https://www.aauw.org/issues/equity/motherhood/">motherhood penalties</a> at work. Or when women bore challenges in silence, never having the support that comes from bonding over shared struggle. Still, it is hard to shake the feeling that all these “honest and unflinching” portrayals are driving people like me away from having kids at all. Is it even possible anymore to find perspectives that are both credible and bright?
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</p>
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<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/hGAqe-AgHz6l5gW_FbFyFyodcXo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25120861/Davis_VOX_Motherhood_Queer.jpg"/>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="t4cP24">
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This year, I stumbled across <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/29/upshot/parenting-survey-research.html">a New York Times<em> </em>headline</a> that fit squarely into the “grim motherhood” genre: “How Parenting Today Is Different, and Harder.” Using a <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/01/24/parenting-in-america-today/">new national Pew survey</a>, the article reported that two-thirds of parents say parenting is harder than they expected, including one-third of mothers who say it’s a lot harder.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5VFbHX">
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But when I went<strong> </strong>to see <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/01/24/parenting-in-america-today/">the new Pew survey</a> for myself,<strong> </strong>it told a story fairly distinct from the one in the Times. Eighty percent of respondents actually described parenting as enjoyable all or most of the time, while 82 percent said it was rewarding all or most of the time. Low-income parents, and those who are Black or Hispanic, were most likely to rate it highly, but happiness crossed all racial and economic lines. Despite ubiquitous depictions of moms on the verge of collapse, only a third said parenting was stressful all or most of the time. The data was a far cry from a miserable portrait.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lR5uVZ">
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The more I scoured elsewhere, the more I discovered positive reasoning in favor of starting a family — stories that are just as important for prospective parents to have as they consider their options. This more shrouded information is fascinating, because millennial mom dread stems in part from feeling like things won’t work out.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="o4vghh">
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Research, like the Pew survey, can be framed in markedly different ways. For example, in 2021, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666915321001426#:~:text=Mothers'%20psychological%20wellbeing%20peaks%20from,to%20the%20post%2Dbirth%20period.&text=Over%20time%2C%20mother's%20psychological%20health,below%20that%20of%20childless%20women.">researchers concluded</a> that over time, the mental health of mothers drops below that of women who don’t have children. That’s a dispiriting finding, but the same study <em>also </em>concluded that both mothers and non-mothers overall “show evidence of good mental health.” Studies comparing happiness of parents and non-parents also <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24491021/">yield wildly</a> <a href="https://ipums.org/sites/www.ipums.org/files/negraia.pdf">different results</a>, because how we think about life satisfaction and daily well-being varies. Parenting during Covid-19 was extremely tough, for example, but it’s also true that mothers reported <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/motherhood-marriage-pandemic-covid-children/672563/">more satisfaction</a> with their lives during the pandemic than childless women of the same age.
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As Jennifer Senior notes in her book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/All-Joy-No-Fun-Parenthood/dp/B01L9E1R66"><em>All Joy and No Fun</em></a><em>, </em>“the idea that children give us structure, purpose, and stronger bonds to the world around us doesn’t always show up in social science data” because of how researchers craft questions. Senior cites one example: Many studies find single mothers, who typically have custody of their kids, are less happy than single fathers, but when one sociologist started asking about overall life purpose and meaning rather than just daily mood, parents with custody reported less depression than parents without.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2x4xbr">
|
||
Or take the division of household labor, often cited as a leading source for mom rage. Women partnered with men manage a disproportionate share of housework and child care on average, but averages can mask that social change <em>is</em> happening. The best surveys we have today show that <a href="http://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12959">roughly 20 percent</a> of American parents report being in genuinely egalitarian partnerships, and a majority of young people report strong <a href="https://news.utexas.edu/2015/01/20/majority-of-young-women-and-men-prefer-egalitarian-relationships-study-shows/">egalitarian preferences</a> around dividing work and family duties.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="T4BPID">
|
||
“I think of it as the ‘path of most resistance,’” sociologist Kathleen Gerson told me, in that it takes two people actively committed to equal partnerships, since our society is not designed to easily support them. Equitable arrangements are not a given, but they’re possible, and trending upward as hundreds of thousands of couples say they’re successfully forging one right now.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WWOxMY">
|
||
There’s also emerging neuroscience that suggests that the angst I felt about lacking a “maternal instinct” is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/26/opinion/sunday/maternal-instinct-myth.html">largely pseudoscientific sexism</a>, a fiction that helps fuel discrimination against same-sex couples, cements the idea that men are secondary to a child’s development, and makes women who can’t conceive naturally feel inferior.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UEit7f">
|
||
Parenting, neuroscientists say and our culture is often slow to echo, is a mix of skills and behaviors that can be learned and trained like any other. Look no further than children raised by single fathers, adoptive parents, gay male parents, and transgender parents. As Conaboy writes in her book, “Studies of fathers, including nonbiological fathers in same-sex couples, have found that the brains of men who are regularly engaged in caring for their children change in ways that are strikingly similar to gestational mothers.” That’s encouraging for those of us concerned that we might have been born without some essential mom gene. Good parenting is<em> </em>possible for anyone who’s willing to learn.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="4fM6kC"/>
|
||
<p class="p--has-dropcap" data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Ik8GRt">
|
||
The positive messages young women hear today about starting families come almost exclusively from the right. Democrats haven’t abandoned pro-family messages wholesale, but the rhetoric they use to muster support for family policies nearly always emphasizes crisis and precarity, not strength, stability, or happiness. “The way to get people to care, to get people to have the most attention, is to frame things as ‘people will die,’ or ‘this is an emergency,’” one progressive lawmaker from Minnesota told me. “You can’t just say it would improve people’s lives.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6jj3Sz">
|
||
Moreover, in response to attacks on abortion rights, most progressive politicians, writers, and activists stress the real risks of pregnancy and the toll of parenting that no one should be forced to experience against their will, rather than any upsides to having children. This makes sense, but the result is that for many, the very act of becoming pregnant sounds harrowing, and giving birth less a choice than a potential punishment.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lEAkiX">
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-float-right">
|
||
<aside id="X2S4oh">
|
||
<q>We know the value of independence and also long for a bit more interdependence</q>
|
||
</aside>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8Tm4w8">
|
||
Cultural conservatives have been banging their own drum, though with a vastly different message: that the sexual revolution was a mistake, that non-religious people aren’t happier in modern society, that women aren’t actually faring better with all this romantic and professional choice.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sYHBNm">
|
||
The time before birth control, before liberalized divorce laws, before women could pursue work outside the home, is not one most women are nostalgic for. But we <em>are </em>trying to figure out the ingredients to a meaningful life. We know the value of independence and also long for a bit more interdependence.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JKOkEJ">
|
||
Enter “tradwives” — short for “traditional wives” — a trend that picked up steam over the last half-decade, mostly on TikTok and Instagram, which depicts young moms expressing joy and contentment in caring for kids, a husband, and a house. Tradwives, who are mostly though not exclusively white, extol the safety of their contained worlds and portray liberal, professionally driven women as pitiful and lost. Of note are their almost leftist-sounding critiques of work and hustle culture. As Zoe Hu <a href="https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-agoraphobic-fantasy-of-tradlife/">writes in Dissent</a>, “The twist that makes tradlife a phenomenon of our times is that it also includes earnest criticisms of life under capitalism.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XUXbKw">
|
||
It’s not difficult to reject the tradwife, with her insistence that female dependency is the ideal social arrangement. Still, there’s something nice about these women’s rather untortured commitment to the people they love. It’s refreshing to see people <em>enjoying </em>caring for their family — even if, yes, we ought to remain vigilant about ulterior motives.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lYWC7R">
|
||
If the seeming winsomeness of “tradwives” offers appeal, so do its cousin trends on social media elevating ideas of self-care and the rejection of chaos and ambition: people “quiet quitting” their jobs, taking “hot girl walks” and living a “<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/softlife?lang=en">soft life</a>.” Many of these videos share the cozy aesthetic of the tradlife, only without the kids, the husband, and the religious doctrine.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="74Jp1t">
|
||
This isn’t the first time women have sought to reevaluate our society’s <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/religion-workism-making-americans-miserable/583441/">obsession with work</a>. In the early 2000s, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/26/magazine/the-opt-out-revolution.html">sparked by a buzzy New York Times essay</a>, heaps of cultural attention went toward analyzing white-collar women “opting out” of the workforce to raise kids. In 2004, <a href="https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,993641-2,00.html">Time magazine described</a> professional and managerial women “less willing to play the juggler’s game” and “more willing to sacrifice paychecks and prestige for time with their family.” In 2005, the editor of Cosmopolitan <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/magazine/whats-a-modern-girl-to-do.html">told Maureen Dowd that</a> “Women now don’t want to be in the grind. The baby boomers made the grind seem unappealing.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="whaTJw">
|
||
That polarizing conversation fueled the decade’s debates over feminism and parenting, but when the Great Recession hit, and millions encountered new bouts of financial insecurity, most women who’d left their jobs years earlier to raise kids <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/11/magazine/the-opt-out-generation-wants-back-in.html">found far more difficulty</a> rejoining the workforce than they anticipated. Some could only find part-time jobs, or roles that paid far less than they previously earned.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jyMsgh">
|
||
As the recovery inched forward, young millennials like me were reminded relentlessly of the harms, such as lower wages and higher health costs, that accompany <a href="https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/23921/412887-Consequences-of-Long-Term-Unemployment.PDF">spells of long-term unemployment</a>. The specter of another financial collapse still looms today over people considering parenthood, so conscious we are of how costly starting a family may be. While many of us share a weariness of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/26/business/against-hustle-culture-rise-and-grind-tgim.html">hustle culture</a>, and while skepticism of the rise-and-grind mentality is arguably even more pronounced post-pandemic, actually pulling back from the labor market seems outlandish and impractical.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NE15ZU">
|
||
What tradlife and these self-care trends seem to offer though, is something of a balm to the nagging questions that vex young women<em>. </em>We see people looking peaceful, happy, and satisfied in their beautifully curated, tidy lives. Watching these videos, we can contemplate the ease of such frictionless fantasies, that life would be better with no stressful commitments, or, in the case of tradwives, that throwing children into the mix of life won’t make things more challenging.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2VWRoh">
|
||
The fantasy is appealing because “it <em>is </em>harder today to have kids,” Barbara Risman, a sociologist and one of the country’s leading experts on gender inequality, told me. “It’s not in people’s heads. With <a href="https://www.vox.com/student-loan-debt">student loans</a>, the cost of <a href="https://www.vox.com/child-care">child care</a> and housing payments … this is really the first generation who go to public schools and still end up massively in debt.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6tdYb1">
|
||
So here we are, fumbling around, trying to figure out what’s next, what to do with all this <em>information </em>we have. And all this disillusionment. And all these warnings and cautionary tales.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="iC08Ro"/>
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/toTPfDzY3ZRudBQr2N0P14rrfAQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25120855/Davis_VOX_Motherhood_Work_Trad.jpg"/>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p class="p--has-dropcap" data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="K1kQXF">
|
||
A sampling of what we know: We know that mothers spend nearly twice as much time <a href="https://news.uci.edu/2016/09/28/todays-parents-spend-more-time-with-their-kids-than-moms-and-dads-did-50-years-ago/">on daily child care activities</a> as moms did 60 years ago, even though moms are far more likely now to be working outside the home. We know that this ratcheting up of “intensive” parenting is most acute <a href="https://childandfamilyblog.com/intensive-motherhood-mums-miserable/">among highly educated</a> women, and it’s these moms who are most likely to feel shame and anxiety about whether they’re doing a good job.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lxszNu">
|
||
But there’s a lot that’s positive, too. For example, most parenting choices you make <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/parenting-decisions-dont-trust-your-gut-book-excerpt/629734/">are not very high-stakes at all</a>. It’s <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/everybody-calm-down-about-breastfeeding/">not a huge deal</a> whether you breastfeed your child if you live in an area with decent water quality. <a href="https://bhavanalearninggroup.com/wp-content/uploads/Milkie_et_al-2015-Journal_of_Marriage_and_Family.pdf">Large-scale longitudinal research</a> has found that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/making-time-for-kids-study-says-quality-trumps-quantity/2015/03/28/10813192-d378-11e4-8fce-3941fc548f1c_story.html">quality of time</a> spent with children matters vastly more than quantity of time.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lhR6mo">
|
||
When I started asking women about their experiences as mothers, I was startled by the number who sheepishly admitted, and only after being pressed, that they had pretty equitable arrangements with their partners, and even loved being moms, but were unlikely to say any of that publicly. Doing so could seem insensitive to those whose experiences were not as positive, or those in more frustrating relationships. Some also worried that betraying too much enthusiasm for child-rearing could ossify essentialist tropes or detract from larger feminist goals.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TaVnsx">
|
||
But that conscientiousness — and occasional pessimism — is giving motherhood short shrift. “The pendulum on motherhood swung, and that was a necessary corrective to all these sugar-coated unrealistic fantasies, but we have gone too far,” Leslie Bennetts, a veteran journalist and author of 2007’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Feminine-Mistake-Are-Giving-Much/dp/1401303064"><em>The</em> <em>Feminine Mistake</em></a><em> </em>told me. In the book,<em> </em>Bennetts, now 74, observed that the mainstream media had long “harped endlessly on the downside” of juggling motherhood and work and rarely explored the rewards. This remains true 15 years later. “My entire friend group, we all raised great kids, but we’re not writing that because we don’t want to be insufferable,” she told me. “If we say anything about it, people hate you, and I understand that. There are cultural taboos against talking too much about it, and huge penalties for women bragging about anything.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="t5DV9S">
|
||
In other words, if joyful motherhood or equitable parenting is seen as a rare accomplishment these days, then, like many other small and large achievements, women learn to keep it to themselves.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="br6kVU">
|
||
Amplifying the voices of mothers of color — particularly those steeped in communities where raising kids has long been understood as a more collective, and even <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Revolutionary-Mothering-Love-Front-Lines/dp/1629631108/ref=asc_df_1629631108/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312734536225&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=14809934488101748370&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9061285&hvtargid=pla-450504000664&psc=1&mcid=d20a861ef6ff3432800a9c1ce3ee1ab7&gclid=CjwKCAiAmZGrBhAnEiwAo9qHiRecRcOTTPKYDFjSisVG997oBzMjkZ0lgyR6VGLUfuY8GfRuXQSu0BoCPlQQAvD_BwE">defiant</a>, act — could help change these dynamics. Having children has “helped to speed in the richness of my life,” de Groot, of Raising Mothers, told me. “Even if I’m not walking on money, I don’t need to be rich to feel rich… I believe in using a more radical approach, saying, ‘Yes, it’s hard, but it’s also beautiful.’”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eIkGXM">
|
||
There’s no question, too, that universal child care, paid sick leave, and paid parental leave would reduce the strain parents in the United States feel. But it’s clear that the culture fueling mom dread would not disappear simply by establishing better social assistance programs. Our culture’s valorization of busyness, of productivity, of optimizing, would still be here.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="d7CyL2">
|
||
Ann Burnett, a professor at North Dakota State University, has spent her career studying communication, and particularly how women talk about time. Studying what families highlight in their annual holiday cards, Burnett noticed how conveying how busy one’s life was had become something of a badge of honor.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Bmwjaj">
|
||
Rejecting this frenetic competition could come with social consequences, Burnett said. “I think if you hear a mom who says, ‘Well, I’m not stressed and life is good,’ that in general people say ‘Oh, my god, what is the matter with her?’” she told me. “You kind of have to march to your own drum and not be attentive to that.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6YWOcC">
|
||
It’s not always possible to change how we act, but it’s worth trying to do, to remember we still have agency in this world. In <em>The Feminine Mistake, </em>Bennetts asks a fellow journalist, Anna Quindlen, how she handles the guilt of managing her career with raising three children; Quindlen responds that she “doesn’t do guilt.” Bennetts’s reaction has stuck deeply with me since. “It didn’t occur to me back then,” she wrote, “that the refusal to feel guilt was a trait that could be cultivated, like patience or good manners or kindness.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="xi7x0x"/>
|
||
<p class="p--has-dropcap" data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3UMvbu">
|
||
We can’t grasp the quiet dread young women feel about becoming moms without talking about the difficult and contradictory expectations women face. Having a child is a gendered expectation in its own right, but it comes on top of a web of pressures that already feel quite overwhelming for most women to manage in their 20s and 30s. When sociologist Barbara Risman <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Where-Millennials-Will-Take-Generation/dp/0199324395#:~:text=Book%20details&text=Risman%20reveals%20the%20diverse%20strategies,how%20they%20might%20change%20it.">published the first in-depth study</a> of how millennials experience gender, she found they were being pulled in many demanding directions, charged with becoming career-focused and independent, thin and beautiful, warm and humble all at once.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Hgrqy6">
|
||
It’s not lost on me that my time thinking about motherhood anxiety has overlapped with the most aggressive attacks on abortion and transgender rights this country has ever seen. I’ve come to understand, surely belatedly but nevertheless more clearly, how interrelated these issues are, how <em>committed </em>some people remain in disciplining gender — and how the strength required to reject certain pressures of modern motherhood comes from the same wellspring as those rejecting the gender binary altogether.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CGfKEb">
|
||
The fact is, we can’t address the struggles of moms without tackling the outmoded but still powerful beliefs that men and women should not share in parenting equally, that women are better suited to raising children. Those ideas are rooted in the same thinking that motivated reversing <em>Roe </em>v. <em>Wade,</em> and that fuels efforts to deny gender-nonconforming people health care — the belief that such social inequality is <em>natural</em> and <em>right. </em>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sMPg2R">
|
||
Feminists <a href="http://www.mothersmovement.org/features/mhoodpapers/new_future/mmo_new_future.pdf">have made these connections before</a>, but they could stand to be reiterated today. I was struck reading sociologist <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691178851/making-motherhood-work">Caitlyn Collins’s work</a> that found that in Sweden, having an egalitarian relationship is central<em> </em>to the culture’s conception of good motherhood. “It was important to women that their kids felt equally connected to and reliant upon both parents,” Collins observed, noting that the parenting strategies deployed by Swedish mothers partnered with men looked similar to <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0891243215611370">those used by gay and lesbian parents</a> in the US.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YH867r">
|
||
Negotiating equity can be really hard. For those raising children in heterosexual relationships, it can be easier in many ways to blame the state for failing to provide certain support than it is to hold your only partner to account.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="z6l4n0">
|
||
One of the first major books to explore the topic of motherhood anxiety was Judith Warner’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Madness-Motherhood-Age-Anxiety/dp/1594481709"><em>Perfect Madness</em></a>, published in 2005. Though Warner acknowledged that fathers who skirted domestic duties contributed to maternal stress, she <a href="https://www.salon.com/2005/02/23/warner_12/">dismissed the idea</a> that getting men to do more was plausible, calling it “too late” and “largely a lost cause” for those in her Gen X cohort.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vx2MeH">
|
||
The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/09/us/linda-r-hirshman-dead.html">late philosopher</a> Linda Hirshman noted that despite Warner’s frank portrayals of difficult home lives for many mothers, all Warner really recommended were policies like flexible work options. “Why should the patriarchal workplace be bulldozed and the patriarchal family left untouched?” Hirshman asked in her <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/299484/get-to-work-by-linda-r-hirshman/">2006 book <em>Get to Work</em></a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-float-right">
|
||
<aside id="XlrZ1H">
|
||
<q>We can’t address the struggles of moms without tackling the powerful beliefs that men and women should not share in parenting equally</q>
|
||
</aside>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nfLfBl">
|
||
Some worry that encouraging women to bargain fairer arrangements with men amounts to undue pressure and even misplaced blame, especially since most women arrive in weaker economic positions. The concern is understandable, but we can’t ignore that it’s domestic inequality between partners — or the perception of it — that drives much of a mother’s emotional and romantic dissatisfaction, according to research. Couples who believe things are fair with respect to housework <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0265407511431182">feel happier</a> and <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704500604574485351638147312">have more sex</a>. Their marriages <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2010/07/01/gender-equality/">are more satisfying</a>. And, fair or not, it just doesn’t seem possible to really confront millennial mom dread without confronting these tricky interpersonal dynamics.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RIzpIn">
|
||
Just months before her death at 79, Hirshman told me she sees too many young women who believe their heterosexual marriages can be “power-free zones” that do not require ongoing bargaining. “That’s completely unrealistic and delusional,” Hirshman said. “Freedom is something women need to enforce every day.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GNaLud">
|
||
Sometimes ceding control of parenting or housework can be difficult for moms, even as they’re overwhelmed and want more help. Like men, many women have internalized ideas that they’re the ones most qualified in the domestic arena. In <em>All Joy and No Fun</em>, Senior encourages women to learn from the good fathers around them, who have the advantage of parenting with fewer expectations. “Good fathers tend to judge themselves less harshly, bring less anguished perfectionism to parenting their children…and…more aggressively protect their free time,” Senior writes. “None of this means they love their children any less than their wives do. None of this means they care any less about their children’s fates.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cc7FaD">
|
||
Bennetts, the author of <em>The Feminine Mistake</em>, told me the challenge is years of brainwashing. “We pay lip service to women’s empowerment but what we don’t tell them is, ‘Fuck the rules, you don’t have to obey the rules,’” she said. “We need to tell more women to throw the standards out the window.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3sHJQ9">
|
||
Might there be social penalties to embracing <a href="https://www.parentingforbrain.com/good-enough-parenting/">“good enough”</a> parenting, to rejecting some aspects of socially encouraged stress? Probably. Burnett, the University of North Dakota researcher, thinks it’s likely. And the nature of those penalties can differ depending on your race and class status, with low-income and nonwhite parents having to worry <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/08/when-misdiagnosis-child-abuse/615337/">far more about Child Protective Services</a> than side-eyed glares in the carpool line.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="IWlAkp"/>
|
||
<div class="p-fullbleed-block">
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/_-pPzEiI74hyxhMdN6qznEIGC8c=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25120832/Davis_VOX_Motherhood_Wall.jpg"/>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p class="p--has-dropcap" data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Pubblx">
|
||
This piece is not an effort to proselytize having kids, something I, too, am still figuring out. That’s a deeply personal decision. This is, rather, a case for optimism.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9Q8If3">
|
||
More <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2023/02/the-good-parts-of-parenting.html">moms themselves</a> have been <a href="https://twotruths.substack.com/">recognizing</a> that there is <a href="https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/08/mothers-mental-load-exhaustion-complaining.html">a need for</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/ENBrown/status/1638173160112787456">a course correction</a>, that there are risks to painting parenting with too broad and bleak a brush. And many smart, creative people have been <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/05/intensive-helicopter-parent-anxiety/629813/">thinking</a> <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2023/07/helicopter-parenting-child-autonomy-standards/674618/">more deeply</a> <a href="https://www.vox.com/23759898/kids-children-parenting-play-anxiety-mental-health">about practical ways</a> <a href="https://www.chamberofmothers.com/">to make motherhood</a> easier, to weaken its sticky, suffocating pressures. It’s not always easy to see, but things <em>are </em>changing, and can change further. We’re not glossing over anything by making that clear. In February, <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2023/02/embracing-mess-vs-cleanliness.html#:~:text=Good%20news%3A%20America%20has%20officially,hearts%20during%20the%20COVID%20lockdown.">The Cut<em> </em>declared</a> America finally in its “messy-house era” with even Marie Kondo (now a mother of three) having <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/2023/01/26/marie-kondo-kurashi-inner-calm/">abandoned her standard</a> for a meticulous home. In April, writer<strong> </strong>Rayne Fisher-Quann <a href="https://internetprincess.substack.com/p/no-good-alone">reflected on demands </a>she’s felt to self-optimize to the point where “controlled, placated solitude” became the only way to find peace. “Being alone is hard, to be sure, but it’s also deceptively easy — it requires nothing of us,” she writes. “People, on the other hand, challenge us. They infuse our life with stakes.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XlsUtF">
|
||
This gets at something else important. Amid efforts to reject untenable parenting expectations, we should resist pressure to reject the vital work that is nurturing other people. “It is an honor to care” for one’s family and community, writer Angela Garbes declared in her <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Labor-Mothering-Social-Change/dp/0062937367">2022 book <em>Essential Labor</em></a>. We can recognize that for millions of women, raising children has been a central source of identity and meaning, and we can name this without fear that it will somehow unravel decades of feminist progress, or that we’ll risk empowering “tradwives” for saying what countless people experience as wonderful and true. Seeking out a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/parenting/wp/2015/05/12/what-else-black-moms-know-how-to-parent-beyond-racial-stereotypes/">wider</a> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Single-Chance-Mothers-Choice-Parenthood/dp/0195341406">range</a> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mamas-What-Learned-About-Class/dp/0593240316">of voices</a>, <a href="https://almadiaeditorial.com/producto/mucha-madre/">from people</a> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Revolutionary-Mothering-Love-Front-Lines/dp/1629631108/ref=asc_df_1629631108/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312734536225&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=14809934488101748370&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9061285&hvtargid=pla-450504000664&psc=1&mcid=d20a861ef6ff3432800a9c1ce3ee1ab7&gclid=CjwKCAiAmZGrBhAnEiwAo9qHiRecRcOTTPKYDFjSisVG997oBzMjkZ0lgyR6VGLUfuY8GfRuXQSu0BoCPlQQAvD_BwE">of all races, cultures</a>, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Maid-Hard-Work-Mothers-Survive/dp/0316505110">and economic strata</a>, will help ensure that we understand the real diversity of motherhood experiences people share.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dWTFrP">
|
||
Crucially, none of these ideas change the need to pass more family-friendly policies in the United States, but we can advocate for them <a href="https://prospect.org/online-extras/fighting-apart-time-together/">from a more gender-neutral lens</a> and do so without worrying that discussing what’s good about parenting, what’s enjoyable, fun, manageable, and even improving, will somehow hurt the cause.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rmsYcu">
|
||
We should have the courage to reject the all-encompassing crisis frame — which frankly isn’t working, anyway. We can’t expect to fully eliminate dread <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Regretting-Motherhood-Study-Orna-Donath/dp/1623171377">or even regret</a> over having children. Rather, this is a gentle reminder that people can thrive doing the hard stuff, and we can build each other up without fear that we’ll sabotage prospects for bolder change. That’s a world that brings me hope. That’s a world I don’t dread.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div id="wr8RLh">
|
||
<div id="coral_thread">
|
||
|
||
</div></div></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li><strong>It’s okay to suck when you try something new</strong> -
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img alt="An illustration of a shadowed hand holding a blue tangled thread. Another shadowed hand holds a red thread neatly arranged in rows. " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/AXV9Ai-rBZc1mjEKjPQW5gpOcQU=/240x0:1680x1080/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72925705/EDIT_GettyImages_1466789163.0.png"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Getty Images
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
You don’t need to be good at a hobby to enjoy it.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aU74ET">
|
||
Allow me to list the short-lived pastimes I attempted and promptly deserted when I didn’t immediately excel: Pottery, softball, field hockey, surfing, violin, dance, designing novelty T-shirts, knitting, yoga, and, most recently, meditation. Easily embarrassed and uncomfortable asking for help, I’d rather drop a hobby than give myself time to improve. Mediocrity — or worse, actively sucking at something — feels gross.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KU5SHc">
|
||
“It shouldn’t,” says <a href="https://www.lse.ac.uk/PBS/People/Dr-Thomas-Curran">Thomas Curran</a>, an associate professor in the department of psychological and behavioral science at the London School of Economics and author of <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/447202/the-perfection-trap-by-curran-thomas/9781847943842"><em>The Perfection Trap</em></a>, “because that’s the normal and natural part of the learning process.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ehUhBB">
|
||
Babies and children suck at, well, everything, because each experience is novel and perfection is hardly expected of infants making their way in the world. Kids also (ideally) exist in supportive environments where failure is encouraged and adults are quick to offer support, both literally and emotionally. Not yet burdened with self-consciousness or perfectionism, children try, fail, and try again.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-float-right">
|
||
<div id="ed9zk2">
|
||
<div>
|
||
|
||
</div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cFPPnY">
|
||
Adults, on the other hand, are pressured to optimize their time and performance: <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/11/25/20975946/hobby-what-should-i-try-how-to">Side hustles replaced hobbies</a>, while <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/11/27/20975989/perfect-mental-health-perfectionism">social media perpetuates the myth of perfection</a>. Anything less than excellence can be seen as failure. If you’re at all like me, you protect yourself from this vulnerability and avoid pursuits that might show a lack of competence.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CJ78EG">
|
||
Although sucking feels uncomfortable, we shouldn’t shy away from activities we enjoy simply because we aren’t great at them. As the season for new habits and hobbies approaches, put your self-esteem to the side, experts say, and embrace the suck. “You can do something for beauty and pleasure,” says <a href="http://krinaldi.com/">Karen Rinaldi</a>, the author of <a href="https://suckatsomething.com/"><em>(It’s Great to) Suck at Something</em></a>, “that doesn’t suit your ego.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="puuNtZ">
|
||
If you enjoy it, it’s worth doing — even if you suck
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aiTRva">
|
||
Despite surfing for over two decades, Rinaldi says she didn’t catch her first wave until five years in. What kept her going was her joy in surfing. If you find delight and satisfaction in an endeavor, a lack of progress shouldn’t prevent you from continuing.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ot8Jgv">
|
||
Consider your motivations for picking up a new hobby, Curran says. Are you looking to project a certain image by learning to play guitar? Or do you have a passion for music? When you inevitably encounter hiccups in your burgeoning rock career, a genuine interest in the practice will be more motivating than how it looks to other people. “It shouldn’t really be about what’s the outcome,” Curran says. “What’s most important is you throwing yourself into the activity and you really engaging and embracing the learning process, the good and bad.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zVPE8X">
|
||
There’s freedom in openly sucking, unencumbered by others’ opinions. Very rarely are <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0022-3514.81.1.44">outsiders thinking about your failures</a> as much as you suspect they are, studies show. And if they are, they may offer support and assistance, Rinaldi says. “People are really generous, and they want to help you,” she says. Bullies and jerks will always exist, but don’t discount the kindness of others within the hobby’s community to come to your aid.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8kdBkb">
|
||
Partaking in an activity purely for the love of it helps you become less judgmental — of yourself as well as of others. “When you really are in the practice of sucking at something,” Rinaldi says, “it is very hard to look at other people around you and judge them.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="SvHXnK">
|
||
Just because you suck now doesn’t mean you’ll always be terrible
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PSajgA">
|
||
How you think about your abilities can affect your performance. There are two perspectives people take when it comes to success: <a href="https://hbr.org/2016/01/what-having-a-growth-mindset-actually-means">growth mindset and fixed mindset</a>. If you have a fixed mindset, you may believe you already possess all the skills and talent you will ever have and you may never improve regardless of your effort. Growth mindset is the belief that you can advance through hard work, support, and a different strategy. You may have a growth mindset in one area of your life (say, in regard to work tasks) but a fixed mindset in another (believing you aren’t creative). To foster a growth mindset, remind yourself that the first time you began any endeavor, you probably sucked, says <a href="https://www.dayagrant.com/">Daya Grant</a>, a certified mental performance consultant and neuroscientist. Then you got better.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="T1Hu8y">
|
||
As you learn and build skills, however slowly, celebrate those little wins, Grant says. Mastered a beginner stitch? Finally got your bread to rise after many attempts? Sketched a picture of your dog that actually resembles your dog? Take a moment to marvel at your improvements. “A win is a win is a win,” Grant says. “It doesn’t really matter to the brain how big or small it is.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qKJg3Q">
|
||
Set yourself up for these incremental successes by creating more “gentle environments” for hobbies, says <a href="https://psychology.yale.edu/people/julia-leonard">Julia Leonard</a>, an assistant professor of psychology at Yale University. In a performance-based culture where effort is praised but not actually rewarded (for example, you can study hard for an exam and still fail), give yourself permission to start a new activity not because you want to be the best, but because making progress is inherently satisfying. Handle your ego with kid gloves and encourage yourself the same way you would a child. “I have work showing little kids are way more optimistic about their abilities than older kids and adults,” Leonard says. “They’re in contexts that everyone is just cheering them on all the time because they’re just so excited about growth. That’s the mindset we need.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="oc82Ta">
|
||
Feeling challenged isn’t a weakness, it’s an opportunity
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xpth0V">
|
||
A common perfectionist tendency is avoiding potentially challenging activities out of a fear of being seen as incompetent or less-than, Curran says. “The first instinct is to not show vulnerability, just in case other people are there, they’re watching or waiting to pounce,” he says. “So we play it safe, don’t we? We stick to what we know. We stick to what we feel like we’re good at.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PG8GEr">
|
||
Discomfort when challenged is a <a href="https://www.vox.com/even-better/23785695/learn-something-new-every-day-retrieval-practice">sign of learning</a>, Grant says. But if you love the challenge, enjoy the struggle, or find the repeated attempts at success meditative, embrace the fact that you may be doing the thing, whether it’s karaoke or surfing, well enough.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7jAJhF">
|
||
This reminder is one I’ll take with me as I embark on future endeavors where I may lack natural ability. Catch me at a pottery wheel or in the solace of my bedroom strumming my guitar. Or don’t. The results may not be pretty — and I do not care.
|
||
</p></li>
|
||
<li><strong>Israel moves into southern Gaza after a week-long truce — and its goals are murkier than ever</strong> -
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img alt="The black outline of an armored vehicle or tank and several human figures is silhouetted against a hazy, yellowish sky." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/dzZ01RzXQr6-X-2hluEfw2JgrkE=/389x0:3500x2333/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72924622/1817397793.0.jpg"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Israeli soldiers stand on tanks and armored vehicles near the Gaza Strip border on December 2, 2023. Following the end of a week-long truce between Hamas and Israel, the IDF have stepped up military operations in southern Gaza. | Amir Levy/Getty Images
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Seven weeks into the war, 15,000 Palestinians have been killed, and there’s no end in sight.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CJnOrJ">
|
||
<a href="https://www.vox.com/israel">Israel</a> and <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/10/10/23911661/hamas-israel-war-gaza-palestine-explainer">Hamas</a> have resumed hostilities after a week-long pause — and now the fighting is moving into southern <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/11/20/18080046/gaza-palestine-israel">Gaza</a>, where most of the region’s more than 2 million residents are living in overcrowded conditions without adequate access to food, medicine, clean water, and other basic necessities.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1myMij">
|
||
What this means for the people of Gaza and the militant group Hamas is more open-ended death and destruction as Israel chases an ambiguous goal that may not have any realizable markers to define success. While Israel wants the complete destruction of Hamas, the US has signaled that removing senior leadership would be acceptable. Meanwhile, the devastation and death on the ground, especially without a political future for <a href="https://www.vox.com/palestine">Palestinians</a> — or a Palestinian state — virtually guarantees further radicalization.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bzDdqO">
|
||
Israel Defense Forces have killed at least 15,000 Palestinians in Gaza over the past two months of fighting, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and destroyed or damaged tens of thousands of buildings in the north during the military campaign there. But despite the destruction, it’s not clear to what extent the IDF’s campaign is effectively rooting out Hamas — or how much more devastation the campaign will cause.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IghBE5">
|
||
The pause in hostilities ended just before 7 am local time on Friday in Israel, when it was due to expire after two extensions, with both sides trading blame for breaking it. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67589259">According to the BBC</a>, the IDF reported it intercepted a rocket fired from Gaza around that time. Later, both sides accused each other of not abiding by the conditions of the pause, during which Hamas would exchange hostages it took October 7 for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TQUHbY">
|
||
During the pause, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/01/world/middleeast/palestinian-prisoners-released-gaza.html#:~:text=Israel%20released%20a%20total%20of,into%20fighting%20on%20Friday%20morning.">240 Palestinians </a>were released from Israeli jails, many of them minors and women, except for <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/01/world/middleeast/palestinian-prisoners-released-gaza.html#:~:text=The%20240%20Palestinian%20Prisoners%20and,led%20attack%20on%20Oct.%207.&text=Five%20of%20the%20detainees%20released%20were%2014%20years%20old.&text=The%20youngest%20girls%20were%2016%20and%2017%20years%20old.">64 18-year-old boys and one 19-year-old.</a> Hamas released 105 hostages, primarily Israelis but also Thai, Filipino, and Russian nationals, and an American child. The pause also briefly allowed for desperately needed humanitarian aid to come into southern Gaza, though the number of trucks allowed in is still a fraction of what came in before the war — 160 to 200 trucks per day over the course of the pause versus <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/11/1143347">500 per day before the conflict</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bE45Wz">
|
||
Now that the fighting has resumed, the Israeli military has <a href="http://reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-army-publishes-map-it-says-advises-gazans-safe-evacuation-areas-2023-12-01/">divided Gaza into small districts where civilians are to evacuate</a> if and when the IDF attacks the area they are located in. This comes after increasing pressure from the international community, and particularly from Israel’s ally the United States, that Israel must change its tactics and do everything in its power to minimize civilian deaths.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EYe9P7">
|
||
There is little indication thus far that Israel is taking those warnings to heart, though; since early Friday morning when the hostilities were resumed, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gaza-negotiators-try-get-israel-hamas-agree-extend-truce-again-2023-12-01/">Israel has bombed around 200 sites</a>, according to the IDF, while Gaza health officials said that around 700 people were killed during the renewed bombings. And given that there’s little information available about Israel’s success in its objective to degrade Hamas’s military capabilities and its governing power in Gaza, it’s difficult to see how the war ends.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="ppHeLv">
|
||
What we know about tactics in the north — and what it could tell us about the south
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="y5JOxY">
|
||
Most residents of northern Gaza have evacuated to the south — as have, presumably, many Hamas fighters. As a result, southern Gaza is overcrowded, and people are struggling to access basic necessities like water, food, and shelter.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FkRsQU">
|
||
The continued, widespread bombing of civilian buildings to get at the tunnels underneath, where Hamas protects fighters and its supplies, has already caused thousands of deaths, but <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2023/11/the-wests-incoherent-critique-of-israels-gaza-strategy.html">Raphael Cohen</a>, director of the strategy and doctrine program with RAND Project AIR FORCE, told Vox there’s no real alternative.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XRjWOJ">
|
||
“Israel’s been seized with the tunnel issue since Operation Protective Edge, so at least since 2014, at least the past decade, and has invested a lot of time and energy into … how you detect these things, but hasn’t figured out a foolproof way of finding them, particularly without being there on the ground,” he said. “There’s no silver bullet to detect them, and once you find them, then you have to destroy the tunnel, and there’s no clean way to do it.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="77yCgM">
|
||
But an investigation by the <a href="https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/">Israeli outlets +972 and Local Call</a> this week indicates that in northern Gaza, the IDF was far less precise in its operations than necessary to keep from harming civilians — backing up what <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/10/right-now-it-is-one-day-at-a-time-life-on-israels-frontline-with-gaza">Israeli officials</a> have already said about their approach being destructive rather than surgical. According to the investigation, based on interviews with current and former Israeli intelligence operatives, the military “has files on the vast majority of potential targets in Gaza — including homes — which stipulate the number of civilians who are likely to be killed in an attack on a particular target.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rU0ILD">
|
||
Some of those targets, which the military calls “power targets” are “not distinctly military in nature,” according to the investigation, and “include private residences as well as public buildings, infrastructure, and high-rise blocks.” The investigation found that the military has stepped up its attacks on power targets in the latest conflict, dubbed “Operation Swords of Iron.” That, in turn, has exponentially increased the number of civilian casualties, as has the use of artificial intelligence to generate Hamas targets, according to the report.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RGFhhL">
|
||
“When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed — that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target,” one source told the outlet. “We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gV0iFb">
|
||
The IDF has destroyed much of northern Gaza’s infrastructure — <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67565872">around 98,000 buildings </a>have been demolished or damaged in the north, according to a BBC review of satellite imagery. Throughout the region, about 60 percent of the housing stock has been damaged or destroyed, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/11/29/as-truce-holds-people-in-gaza-venture-out-to-survey-destruction">Al Jazeera</a> reported.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="q2hQjg">
|
||
But despite US officials’ urging to use smaller bombs and mitigate civilian risk, the US has sent Israel around 15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-sends-israel-2-000-pound-bunker-buster-bombs-for-gaza-war-82898638">according to reporting in the Wall Street Journal</a>, including the so-called “bunker buster” bomb, which holds 2,000 pounds of explosives and is meant to penetrate underground concrete structures like the tunnels Hamas uses to operate.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="q4kQWD">
|
||
However, the transfer of the bunker-busters and other large-scale munitions “seems inconsistent with reported exhortations from Secretary Blinken and others to use smaller-diameter bombs,” Brian Finucane, a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group and a former attorney-adviser at the US State Department, told the Journal.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lQBL06">
|
||
Using explosives in populated areas is extremely dangerous for civilians — the <a href="https://www.unocha.org/explosive-weapons-populated-areas">UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs</a> has found that 90 percent of casualties from explosives in populated areas are civilians. And because Palestinians in Gaza cannot feasibly go elsewhere, more civilian deaths and injuries are all but certain.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="NdnPd2">
|
||
What is Israel trying to accomplish — and is it working?
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sGUSGX">
|
||
As the IDF pushes into the south toward the cities of <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-offensive-crowded-south-gaza-will-put-civilians-crosshairs-2023-11-18/">Khan Younis and Rafah,</a> “it gets a lot more complicated,” Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Vox. “And it’s partly complicated by the fact that they haven’t scored a lot of victories in the north, either in terms of capturing people or revealing infrastructure. A lot of buildings have been destroyed and a lot of people have been displaced, but in terms of genuinely hurting Hamas, the Israelis are not able to point to a lot of successes, and that will lead people to focus on the humanitarian consequences rather than the embedded capabilities of Hamas.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oUPRny">
|
||
From the beginning of the war, Israel has said it intends to wipe out Hamas’s ability to operate militarily and to govern the Gaza Strip. But for all the destruction it’s wrought, it’s not clear how much progress the IDF is making, partly because Gaza is such a dangerous environment for journalists — making independent verification of the situation on the ground extremely difficult.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fk44OT">
|
||
Robert Blecher, director of the Future of Conflict program at International Crisis Group, told Vox that Israel could significantly degrade Hamas’s military capabilities “but not at a cost that would be humanly or politically acceptable.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8vpTLG">
|
||
The IDF has not been forthcoming about how many Hamas leaders are part of the death toll in Gaza. The IDF claims to have killed <a href="https://www.inss.org.il/publication/war-data/">approximately 4,000 Hamas fighters total as of November 19, including 68 “high-profile” Hamas operatives.</a> Some estimates are as high as 5,000, but the true number is unknown. <a href="https://idfspokesperson.substack.com/p/we-tried-to-tell-them-about-shifa">Three hundred suspected Hamas militants</a> have been taken into Israel for interrogation, according to IDF international spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht. The IDF claims to have destroyed about 400 tunnel shafts in northern Gaza as well.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MY68aY">
|
||
Amid such destruction, the three Hamas officials the IDF reportedly most desperately wants to kill are still at large. Killing those men, Michael Eisenstadt, director of the Military and Security Studies Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Reuters, could provide “a very clear, symbolic and substantive achievement” for Israel — but even achieving that goal would inflict devastating tolls. “What if they can’t get the guys? Do they keep fighting until they get them? … What if they just prove elusive?”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lZ3mx4">
|
||
Hamas, for its part, is not known for advanced military maneuvers, Blecher said. Primarily, their tactics are “hiding in tunnels and popping up behind forces after they advance,” picking off soldiers that way rather than inflicting mass casualties. However, according to the <a href="https://www.inss.org.il/publication/war-data/">Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University</a>, Hamas still has as many as 15,000 rockets, as well as the thousands of militants still alive.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SxiRgW">
|
||
“There’s not only the question of 30,000 militants in the Qassam Brigades, there is also the membership of the movement, which is at least an order of magnitude bigger, hundreds of thousands of people,” Blecher said. “That includes doctors, and lawyers, and professionals, and a whole bunch of civil society.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RFL9xL">
|
||
It will be impossible to eliminate Hamas’s ideological impact on Gaza, and the massive civilian death toll could lead to further radicalization, especially absent any conversation about a political future for Palestinians or a Palestinian state. That, according to Ami Ayalon, the former head of Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence service, is a massive failure of the entire project. “Now that it is obvious that the whole political concept and the policies that [were] led by <a href="https://www.vox.com/23910085/netanyahu-israel-right-hamas-gaza-war-history">Netanyahu</a> of managing the conflict — not to try to solve it — but managing, or the nonsense of shrinking the conflict collapsed,” he told the <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/missing-israeli-endgame-gaza-ayalon">Foreign Affairs</a> podcast. “So I think it is irresponsible for us to send our military, our people, to the battlefield without defining a political goal” that enables Israel and the Palestinian people to live in peace.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="w5p1U2">
|
||
But, as Alterman told Vox, Israel’s strategy for achieving military victory, whatever that looks like, is murky.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="A1hCJk">
|
||
“What does victory look like? To me that’s an important question, where Israelis have put forward some pretty maximalist ideas, but it’s unclear what the pathway looks like.”
|
||
</p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>How to make the most of your smartwatch when exercising</strong> - As more Indians become smartwatch owners, here are some points to keep in mind when working out or hitting the gym with your smart device</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Rinku is contender for T20 World Cup spot, but it’s too early: Ashish Nehra</strong> - The T20 World Cup will be played in the West Indies and the USA in June next year</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Any cricketer not inspired by Cummins is in wrong game: Ian Chappell</strong> - Cummins, in six months’ time, has retained the Ashes, won the World Test Championship and the biggest of them all — ODI World Cup in India.</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Jofra Archer set to miss IPL 2024 as ECB looks to manage his workload ahead of T20 World Cup</strong> - Archer has missed professional cricket for the majority of the year due to a reoccurring elbow injury</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Commanding Knight should score over his rivals in the Raja Narasimha Rao Memorial Cup</strong> -</p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Coimbatore District Police form special unit to deal with left wing extremism</strong> -</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Parliamentary proceedings | Rajya Sabha passes Post Office Bill to amend 125-year-old Indian Post Office Act</strong> - The bill seeks to empower the director general of postal services to frame regulations in respect of activities necessary to provide those services and fix the charges for such services</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ailing tusker found dead on Central Training College campus of CRPF near Coimbatore</strong> -</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Delayed start of winter session of Karnataka Legislative Assembly draws flak</strong> - While the session was scheduled to begin by 11 a.m., the House assembled only after a delay of one hour by 12 noon.</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>PM Modi unveils Shivaji Maharaj statue at Rajkot fort in Maharashtra</strong> - PM Modi paid homage to the rich maritime heritage of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj who constructed several coastal and sea forts</p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: Soldier tells BBC of front-line ‘hell’</strong> - A Ukrainian soldier on the east side of the Dnipro river tells the BBC about life on the front line.</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Paris attack near Eiffel Tower leaves one dead and two injured</strong> - The suspect tells police he was upset by “so many Muslims dying in Afghanistan and in Palestine”.</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: Russia accused of killing unarmed Ukrainian prisoners of war</strong> - Kyiv investigates a video said to show two surrendering Ukrainian soldiers being shot by Russians.</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Paris Olympics 2024: Locals ask if they’re worth the trouble</strong> - Metro tickets will cost more, rentals are soaring and Paris faces months of disruption.</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Russia LGBT: Police raid Moscow gay clubs, media say</strong> - The reported raids come a day after the country’s Supreme Court outlawed the “LGBT movement”.</p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Tensions rise between Targaryens in first teaser for House of the Dragon S2</strong> - “There is no war so hateful to the gods as a war between kin.” - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1988151">link</a></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>No further investments in Virgin Galactic, says Richard Branson</strong> - Branson’s business empire “no longer has the deepest pockets.” - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1988153">link</a></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>New algorithm finds lots of gene-editing enzymes in environmental DNA</strong> - Some are related to DNA-cutting enzymes. Others are a complete mystery. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1987932">link</a></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Porsche summons old-school cool with the 2024 911 Sport Classic</strong> - The limited-production model focuses on driver involvement, not performance stats. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1987979">link</a></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Roar of cicadas was so loud, it was picked up by fiber-optic cables</strong> - Brood X made itself known in a way that could change how we monitor insect populations. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1987931">link</a></p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Highland hospitality</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
|
||
<div class="md">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
A commercial traveller was driving through the Scottish Highlands when his car broke down.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
There was a cottage near by so he went up to it and knocked on the door.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
The door opened to reveal a burly Highlander.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
“My car has broken down,” said the traveller, “Do you know where I can spend the night?”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
“Why, right here of course!” said the Scot, “Come in and avail yourself of our world famous hospitality.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
The traveller duly entered the humble but cosy residence.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
“Jeannie,” shouted the host in the direction of the kitchen, and in response to his call his beautiful daughter appeared.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
“Jeannie, make a meal for the gentleman and remember to uphold our great tradition of Highland hospitality.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
The traveller was soon tucking into an appetising meal, the girl had indeed spared no effort to extend Highland hospitality to the quest.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
“And now,” said the Highlander, “I’m afraid I must go out and milk the cows, but just make yourself at home and take full advantage of our world famous Highland hospitality.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
No sooner had the door closed behind him than the traveller set about seducing the lovely daughter.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
In no time at all he had her on the floor and was on the job.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Suddenly the door opened and there stood the Highlander. He took one look at what was going on and his face turned purple with rage.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
He dropped his two buckets of milk with a crash and gave verbal vent to his wrath.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
“After all I have been saying about the Highland hospitality,” he roared, “Arch your back, woman, and take the poor man’s balls off the cold floor!”
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/harrygatto"> /u/harrygatto </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/18a9o22/highland_hospitality/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/18a9o22/highland_hospitality/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Three guys enter a restaurant</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
|
||
<div class="md">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
They heard that in this particular restaurant, the waiter would sing their customer a little song every time they give out their order.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Hearing this, the guys each make their order. Then, after waiting a while, the waiter arrives with one of the firest guy’s food and a little song to accompany it.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
“Hello fellow customer, to my humble store, be sure to give your finest tip to the man who pulled your pork~” He sang, before serving the man his pulled pork.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Then, after a few minutes the waiter returned with the second order.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
“Greeting dear customer, I’ll be sure to keep this brief, give your compliments to the men who roast your beef~” He sang, serving the man his roast beef.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
However, before the waiter could leave, he is stopped by the third man, who makes him a request.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
“Can you… cancel my order?” He asked.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
“Certainly, what did you order?” The waiter replied.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
“The pea soup.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/OthanUriel"> /u/OthanUriel </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/18abr6y/three_guys_enter_a_restaurant/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/18abr6y/three_guys_enter_a_restaurant/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Sex while camping</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
|
||
<div class="md">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
is fucking intense …
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
(German speaker, not really sure if this works…)
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/maobezw"> /u/maobezw </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/18ah56d/sex_while_camping/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/18ah56d/sex_while_camping/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>500 dollars</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
|
||
<div class="md">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Dave, Carl and Carl’s wife, sara were playing cards on Thursday morning. Dave’s card fell under the table and when he went down to get it, he saw that Sara was not wearing underwear.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Dave got back up and went to kitchen to get some refreshment. Sara followed her into the kitchen and asked, “did you like what you saw under there?”.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Shocked by her boldness, Dace hesitantly replied positively. Sara then said, “you can have it but it costs $500”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Dave agreed to pay that sum for it. Sara then said, “come by at my place at 2PM on Friday. Carl will be gone to play golf from 2 to 6”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
On the next day, Dave reached Carl and Sara’s house an hour later. He paid Sara the sum and they did the deed.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
At 6 PM, Carl returned home. His first words to Sara were, “did Dave come here this afternoon?”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Shocked Sara replied, “yes, he stayed for a few minutes.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Carl then asked, “so did he give you $500 then?”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Gulping Sara said, “ye…ah”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Then Carl said, “great. He came by golf club and borrowed $500 from me and said he would pay you back on his way home.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/BlackBerry_tekken"> /u/BlackBerry_tekken </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/189wh59/500_dollars/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/189wh59/500_dollars/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>What do a 9 volt battery and a butt hole have in common?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
|
||
<div class="md">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
You know you shouldn’t put your tongue on it but eventually you will.
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Gerry1of1"> /u/Gerry1of1 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/18a75gk/what_do_a_9_volt_battery_and_a_butt_hole_have_in/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/18a75gk/what_do_a_9_volt_battery_and_a_butt_hole_have_in/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
|
||
|
||
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