when not to talk politics

Saturday night baby bunky when to the babysitter while partner and I went to his co-workers martini party. As I  was driving that night the partner was able to drink a few martinis. After comming back to the city after hanging out in townhouse/condo land in the suburbs, we went to a small n'hood 3.2 bar. (If you are not from MN, we have some interesting liquor laws. 3.2 bars sell only 3.2 beer, which is not as strong as normal beer. This is what you can buy at the gas stations here). We also found the one bar in Minneapolis that seems to be resisting the smoking ban.

The partner and I were sitting by the jukebox when a man came over and started to play music. The man started to talk about politics with us. I ignored the conversation becaue my rule is no politics discussions at the bar or while drinking (especially with strangers… this rule can be broken with good friends). The partner discussed with him for awhile, while I tried to distract him back towards a lighter conversation about the music in the jukebox (hey we don't get out together very often!).

<>The thing is when this guy was talking about politics, which I disagreed with everything he had to say, I just bit my tongue and smiled (refer back to my rule above). But this left me wondering how many times do lonely people strike up a conversation in the bar about politics and someone just politely agrees with them to avoid confrotation? Does the person think this person truly agrees with them?  

super-mom expectations?

<>Though I would like to avoid all the media frenzy over "Tom-Kat's" baby, I couldn't avoid it in the past two days when the tv has been on. On the one hand Tom's involvement could be praised as an involved father, but on the other hand all this discussion over the silent birth and his ideas on child birth have irked me a bit.

<>As every baby is different, I think most births are different. But I do believe that it is really difficult to plan your birth out all the way because things can change. Furthermore, I also think it is very difficult to know exactly what you want before it happens, especially if it is your first time. As social scientists we know we can "predict" to an extent about life, but also as people who live real life, we know things can "deviate from the norm."

<><>But as a gender scholar and someone who has experienced giving birth, what gets me the most about his comments are that he's so convinced that he is right because of his Church of Scientology beliefs. Remember his fight with Brooke Shields about post-patrtum depression?

<><>Would I be more willing to accpet his ideas if he was a woman who had experienced child birth? Probably. At the least, I think I would be willing to listen to his ideals more after experiencing the birth with his partner.

<><>A friend told me that the nurses at the hospital told her it was ok to take pain meds during the birth because they were made for a reason. And I wonder sometimes if this desire to have a "natural" birth or to have it exactly one way or another relates to ideals about being a supermom? And I wonder if these same supermom expectations have some sort of affect on post-partum depression. I'm sure there is a study somewhere on this, but interestingly enough I was reading an article from Gender and Society about breast feeding and LLL in regards to being a good mom this week.

As we are always asked about our research, why does this all matter? I think it is so important because having children is real and the supermom expectations have been documented to have an affect on women's self-esteem.