Gender Inequality in Families: Women as the Cooking Apes (Second Chapter 12 post)

On a recent visit home, I watched a scene I have observed so many times before at mealtime.  After my family returned from an outing together (shopping, movie, etc.), my dad retired to the den to watch football or to do something on his computer while my mom automatically began preparing the evening meal.  There is never a discussion of who will prepare the food:  it is always my mom (with or without some help from me).  That’s just how it is.  I never really thought about it before, but in a strange coincidence, at the same time we read Chapter 12 on Sex and Gender inequality for Sociology, I also read a book related to the Human Evolution class I am also taking.  The book Richard Wrangham’s Catching Fire:  How Cooking Made Us Human.  In it, Wrangham sets forth his “cooking hypothesis” which stems from the idea that the control of fire and the cooking of food is what lead to the evolution of the modern human, both in terms of changes in the human body that were made possible by eating cooked foods (such as bigger brains), and changes in our behavior including the sexual division of labor and development of pair bonds.

Wrangham presents loads of evidence that suggests that man became “the cooking ape” beginning as early as the transformation from Homo habilis to Homo erectus beginning about 1.8 million years ago.  From a sociological standpoint, however, it is the behavioral changes this made possible that are most interesting.  After reading this book, I think that Wrangham should have said instead that “woman became the cooking ape.”

According to Wrangham, the harnessing of fire and the ability to cook led to the evolution of the sexual division of labor and pair bonding.  Once cooking reduced the amount of time necessary for chewing raw meat and tough plants, there was more time for hunting and gathering, which created the division of labor.  The male hunted while the female stayed behind to gather and cook.  Even if the hunt was not successful, the ability to eat cooking-softened gathered food would allow everyone to consume enough calories, but this depended on those staying behind to gather and cook other food, such as tubers and roots.  Cooked food plus more animal foods as a result of more hunting time (and less chewing time) created a division of labor.  Wrangham says that pair bonding was a natural outgrowth of this, because it solves the problem of who feeds whom:  The female stays behind and cooks and gathers while the males hunt.  The male protected the female from having someone stronger steal the food they have piled up waiting to be cooked, and in turn, the female provided a meal every night for their partner.  In other words, Wrangham’s idea is that pair bonding evolved in response not to mating competition but to competition for food. If the hunting was successful, the pair bond would share the food.  And thus it all began.

Interestingly, in the following quote, Wrangham acknowledges that this division of labor did not work out so well for the females in the long run:

The idea that cooking led to our pair-bonds suggests a worldwide irony.  Cooking brought huge nutritional benefits.  But for women, the adoption of cooking has also led to a major increase in their vulnerability to male authority.  Men were the greater beneficiaries.  Cooking freed women’s time and fed their children, but it also trapped women into a newly subservient role enforced by male-dominated culture.  Cooking created and perpetuated a novel system of male cultural superiority.  It is not a pretty picture.  (Wrangham, p. 177)

Wrangham goes on to devote an entire richly documented chapter to showing how the woman as the cooking ape model in a pair bond is nearly universal across time and place in most cultures since cooking began.  He observes that “while the arrangement is comfortable for both sexes, it is particularly convenient for the male” (Wrangham, p. 147). Newman says that “much of the inequality women face revolves around the traditional view of their family role” (Newman, p. 400).  It seems that role developed very early on, even before we became Homo sapiens, which makes changing this very “powerful and persuasive” aspect of  our sexist ideology a tall order indeed (Newman, p. 402).

Assignment 12: Using Science To Promote Sexism in Athletics

For a class I took last summer, I listened to a lecture Dr. Barbara Drinkwater presented in May 2009 to the American College of Sports Medicine entitled “The Evolution of the Female Athlete:  Myth versus Reality.”  This lecture details how “science” has been used, mostly by men, to keep women from pursuing and achieving their goals in the field of athletics.  It is a great example of sexism in our sports-crazed culture.  From a conflict perspective, it seems that men have dominated the sports world and have viewed the role of women in it as adoring spectators rather than as participants.  Attempts of women to break into this world have been thwarted by men using “scientific” reasons to prevent or discourage them, which are cloaked in the rubric of the structural functionalist:  that bodily differences explain gender inequality in sports, and keeping women off the courts and playing fields (at least at the highest levels) will effectively maintain societal stability by protecting their wombs for reproduction of the species.

(Note:  Although this lecture was once online, I couldn’t find a link to it to post here.  Luckily, I took quite a few notes while listening to this thought-provoking lecture, and this post is based on those notes.)

In her lecture, Dr. Drinkwater traced the modern history of women in sports, beginning in the late 1800s, focusing on myths versus realities, addressing three questions:  What obstacles did women face in their quest to become athletes?  Who helped them? Who hindered them?  In looking at these questions, Dr. Drinkwater demonstrated many ways in which “science” actually got in the way of the development of the athletic capabilities of a whole group of athletes, in this case women.  In most cases, scientific-sounding pronouncements that were just plain wrong were used to promote prejudice and discrimination against women who wanted to be athletes.  Here are some examples:

In the late 1800s, the social environment was not very hospitable to women.  In 1879, for example, a noted social psychologist, Gustave LeBon, wrote that women’s inferior intelligence is too obvious to be disputed, and women’s brains are closer to gorilla brains than to men’s brains.  A medical doctor of the time wrote that the average woman is “rather less intelligent” than man.  These “scientific-sounding” pronouncements must have been wrong, because in 1902, Marie Curie somehow managed to win the Nobel Prize in Physics with her supposedly inferior female brain.  In sports, in 1882, Maude Watson won the first women’s tennis singles title at Wimbledon, in the same year that a Florida newspaper reported that the articulation of the radius and ulna is imperfect in women, so that when the racquet hits the ball, it tends to knock it high in the air.  That article went on to pronounce that it was a “scientific fact that tennis is not a game for the human female.”  I wonder what Venus and Serena Williams would make of that?

 Other“scientific” pronouncements about the capabilities of women concerned the effect of intellectual activity on the female uterus.  In 1873, for example, a statement by a prominent professor at Harvard Medical School asserted that the rigors of higher education actually diverted blood from the woman’s uterus to her brain, making her irritable and infertile.  This kind of over-concern for the women’s uterus is a theme that continues even to this day with regard to females in athletics. 

Despite the efforts of male scientists to discourage them, however, women somehow managed to participate in sports in the late 1880s.  The first women’s lacrosse game was in 1886, and the first women’s tennis championship (France) was in 1887.  In 1888, the modern bicycle was invented, and Amelia Bloomer invented bloomers so that women could ride it.  Susan B. Anthony wrote in 1896 that bicycling did more to emancipate women than anything else because it gave women the feeling of freedom and self-reliance.  The invention of bloomers also allowed women to play baseball, first on bloomer girl baseball teams, and later just wearing what the men wore.  In 1896, women played basketball too, wearing those bloomers, in the first intercollegiate game between University of California Berkley and Stanford.

Despite this good start for intercollegiate competition for women, it was stifled with the help of “medical opinions” that focused on concerns with infertility effects of physical exertion, as well as “medical” assertions that if women competed in sports, they would somehow turn into men.  Other “scientific” evidence of the time asserted that women could not play strenuous sports because they breathed differently than men.  This idea was debunked by a female doctor in 1910 who pointed out that the constrictive clothing women wore when trying to compete in sports (such as whalebone corsets) is what caused women to breathe differently than the men when they were exerting themselves.

Pierre de Coubertin, the father of the modern Olympics, was openly hostile to participation by women in the Olympic Games.  In 1914 he said that participation in the Games by women would be impractical, uninteresting, and improper.  He limited their participation to just the floor exercises and required them to wear long skirts.  A few years later, Suzanne Lenglen won the French Open tennis championship in 1920 wearing a then-scandalous knee-length skirt and a sleeveless blouse, and in doing so, became the first female celebrity athlete.  It could be said that this is where the objectification of women in sports began.  Most female professional tennis players wear shorts, not skirts, for practice, and only wear the skirts and dresses in tournaments to please their sponsors.  The sponsors, of course, like their female tennis players dressed in the short skirts and skimpy dresses that appeal to the male audiences!  Talk about objectification!  As a tennis friend of mine once noted, if skirts really helped you play better tennis, don't you think men would have figured out a way by now to wear them too?

In the early 1900s, women wanted to compete in track and field as well in the so-called female sports, but the International Olympic Committee (IOC) turned them down.  A few French women decided to form their own international organization and put on the first international track and field competition for women.  Thousands watched it, leading the IOC to reconsider and allow women to have five track and field events in the 1928 Olympics.  Unfortunately, six of the nine runners in this distance event collapsed, leading to the conclusion that women were incapable of running this distance. Doctors of the time gave their "considered medial opinions" that women could not be endurance runners, and that distance running made women become "old too soon."  This myth persisted for over 30 years, and it was not until the 1960 Olympic Games that women were allowed to run races longer than 200 meters.

The 1920’s brought a return to the infertility theme, when a 1936 article in the Scientific American asserted that feminine muscular development interferes with motherhood.  There was absolutely no scientific research on women athletes to back this up, and almost no research of any kind was done on female athletes until the 1960s. 

Although the 1970’s were what Dr. Drinkwater called the golden era of female athletes with the passage of Title IX and Billie Jean King’s 1973 trouncing of Bobby Riggs, a 50-year-old man who bragged that he could beat any woman in tennis.  After King's resounding victory, a 1974 Sports Illustrated article acknowledged that the inequalities imposed on women in sport have been justified by misconceptions of the physiological differences, real or imagined, between the sexes. 

One such misconception, however, popped up in 1978, when a Chicago newspaper cited a gynecologist’s opinion that women should not engage in jogging because their uteruses can’t take the repeated impact caused by heels striking the ground.  It turned out that this doctor’s opinion was based on a sample of one!  Later that year, Little League Baseball banned girls and said in 1974 that girls can’t throw overhand because of differences in the structure of their pectoral muscles, and when they do throw overhand, it results in a lob.  Another doctor contradicted this, however, by pointing out that if girls throw differently, it is because they have not had the training, experience and practice that the boys have had.  This same doctor bravely noted that Little League Baseball had promoted a doctrine of male superiority that has no scientific basis in fact.  Little League Baseball stuck to its no-girls policy until the National Organization for Women filed suit against it and won in 1974.

In the 1980’s, a growing body of scientific research done of female athletes finally began to appear and showed that there was basically no difference between male and female athletes when training, conditioning and acclimatization are the same for both sexes.  Imagine that!

Dr. Drinkwater ended her lecture by noting that women athletes today owe a debt of gratitude not to the scientists and doctors, but to the brave women athletes who went ahead and followed their dreams despite all of the “scientific” noise to the contrary.  It was interesting to me to learn about the role that “science” and “medicine” have played to keep women from pursuing athletic endeavors.  It is important to remember the scientific-sounding pronouncements can so unquestioningly be used by those who want to promote a certain social agenda.  We all need to be reminded to look critically and carefully when “scientific” and “medical” claims are made to support exclusionary positions or decisions that seek to limit what certain groups can and cannot, or should or should not do.  A current example from professional tennis is a case in point.  In many tournaments, women still earn less prize money, and this is justified by the fact that their matches are the best of three sets, while the men's are best of five.  The idea that women tennis players are somehow physically incapable of going the distance in a five set match is ludicrous, yet that is the "scientific" reason given for the difference.  For this and other questions, we need to ask what evidence supports the proposition; do the best we can to determine the credibility of that evidence, and to look for and evaluate any evidence that may support a contrary position.  There steps were not followed in the cases of questionable science and medicine used to keep female athletes from pursuing their goals, as Dr. Drinkwater described.  I think this same caution applies not just to question involving athletic endeavors, but to activities in other spheres as well!

Assignment 11: Checking Boxes

            As I complete my applications to various graduate school programs, once again I encounter a question I recall seeing on every single college application I filled out four years ago—the race/ethnicity question.  Here it is again, on all the graduate school applications, including the one for Minnesota State University Mankato’s school counseling program:  “Please describe yourself (for statistical purposes only).”  Racial/ethnic choices are provided along with boxes to check.  The choices are American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or Other Pacific Islands, or a person having origins in any of the original people of Europe, the Middle East or North Africa. What box should I check?  The problem is that I don’t think that any of these choices clearly apply to me.  This particular application doesn’t even provide the box I usually check, “Other, please specify.”

Since checking “Other” is not an option, I suppose I could check the box for the original people of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa, but that category does not really describe my origins.  I am a Roma, commonly called Gypsy, from Romania.  My birth parents adopted me from an orphanage there when I was eight months old and brought me to the United States where I have lived a comfortable middle class existence in a white family.   In Romania, the Roma are an ethnic/racial minority that suffers much discrimination.  Although legally the Roma are supposed to enjoy full rights as Romanian citizens, many do not get the chance for even a basic education.  As someone who, I’m told, looks “ethnic,” I often get my picture taken whenever an organization or group wants to show its diversity.   When I tell people I am from Romania, I often hear “you don’t look like you are from Romania.”  People usually think I am from Latin America or India. 

I suppose I could check that “Asian” box, but this would require me to weigh in on the validity of recent DNA research that suggests that the Roma may have left the part of the world that is now India many centuries ago, for reasons history has lost and traveled to Romania and many other places around the world.  But when or how my ancestors got to Romania, and with whom they may have interbred along the way remains a mystery I will probably never solve.  It makes checking a box on an application a very complex question with no clear answer.

I miss that “Other” box, because it best describes my experiences with race and ethnicity in the American educational system.  In this country, I am an “Other.” The first time I remember feeling like an “Other” was when I was in the second grade.  Our teacher asked us to draw pictures of ourselves and our classmates.  My classmate Heather drew a picture of me and colored it with her black crayon.  Even at age seven, I realized that although my skin wasn’t black any more than Heather’s was white, I knew that I looked different from the rest.  I was not African-American, or Hispanic, or Asian or Native American, but even little Heather figured out that I looked different, and to her, that difference was racial, and to her seven-year-old way of thinking, that meant black.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with being black, but black doesn’t describe my color at all.  Nor does it describe the skin color of most African Americans.  I think Heather could have used some of these crayons, not found in my second grade classroom, but which are now widely available.

The kinds of discrimination I have experienced as a Roma in U.S. educational system are more personal than institutional, and they mostly involve people making assumptions about me and my background based on how I look.  Yes, I had that high school guidance counselor Newman described who tried to steer me away from the hard International Baccalaureate program, but I did not listen to her (Newman, p. 353).  I can also say that it is enlightening to be the target of personal discrimination based on looking like someone from another racial or ethnic group to which I don’t belong!  My experiences with that phenomenon must surely prove that race is a social construct and not a biological one!  I can relate to Newman’s assertion that racial categories are not natural biological groupings, but instead are the shared experience of identifying and being identified by others as members of a particular racial group, even when other people get it wrong (Newman, p. 340).

When I am lucky enough to have an “Other” box to check on a form, “please specify” becomes a tricky question too.  If I indicate “Roma,” not many people know what that means.   If I use the more commonly recognized term “Gypsy,” that term carries negative stereotypes having nothing to do with my life or the life of most Roma.  No, I don’t live in a caravan, pick pockets, or tell fortunes, and neither did anyone in my birth family, as far as I know.   Still, I can’t just ignore that question.  Although I didn’t grow up in the Roma culture and don’t really know much about it, I am proud to be a surviving member of an ethnic group that has endured centuries of struggle.  I am a survivor too - of malnutrition, poor medical care and neglect in my Romanian orphanage. 

            As I close my eyes and stab at a box on the MSU graduate school application, I have to wonder what difference it makes.  Why is this question even here?  The application says that the ethnic/racial information requested will not influence acceptance decisions.  According to Newman, a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling barred the use of race in school desegregation plans and the recent attacks on affirmative action described in our textbook have resulted in several states passing laws banning race-based affirmative action in college admissions as well as employment (Newman, p. 375-76).  MSU’s application says it collects this information "for statistical purposes."  But if the institution is not going to use the data to make decisions, what is it for?  If its purpose is really just statistical, I worry that by checking one of the available boxes, I might skew the count of a group to which I don’t belong.   If the school is trying to determine if there are underrepresented groups in its student population, my group, the Roma, are probably not even identified by anyone as an “underrepresented group” in education in the United States.  It is hard to find any information on how many of us there even are, let alone how many of us make it to college.

            In writing this comment, I wondered how others feel about not fitting cleanly into a box on a college or university application form.  It seems I am not alone.  Here are a couple of interesting links describing others’ experiences with checking boxes.   These two links are about Middle Eastern applicants who have pushed the California higher education system to include more boxes to distinguish among many subgroups:

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/mar/31/local/me-arab31

http://www.racialicious.com/2009/05/28/boxed-in-the-uc-system%E2%80%99s-ethnicity-representation/

The following link is about the challenges faced by biracial and multiracial college applicants to balance their desire to present a full picture of their ethnicity and still obtain whatever admission advantage that might apply to applicants who claim one of their ethnic/racial backgrounds.  It also presents a good discussion of the problems faced by colleges in sorting out the wide variety of racial/ethnicity considerations in their admission decisions.  It is not easy for anyone.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/us/14admissions.html?pagewanted=all

I hope to continue to learn more about my Roma background as I pursue my education in a master’s degree program.  I also want to learn more about the social causes and manifestations of racial and ethnic discrimination.  Perhaps in some small way I can use my education to help bring about the day when no one feels compelled to ask the ethnicity question because there remain no “underrepresented groups” left to self-identify.  Even better, maybe someday the United States will become the “post-racial” society Newman says some thought we might have entered after Barack Obama’s election where traditional racial categories no longer matter (Newman, p. 336).  Until then, however, you’ll find me struggling to check the right box!

Physical Anthropology’s View of Race as a Social Construct Rather than a Biological Category (Chapter 11 Second Post)

Newman says that “according to most people, race is a category of individuals labeled and treated as similar because of common inborn biological traits such as skin color, color and texture of hair, and shape of eyes, nose or head (p. 338).   Newman goes on to explain, however, that to sociologists, race is more meaningful as a social category than as a biological one.  Newman cites some evidence from biology that runs contrary to the idea that race is a valid way to categorize people from a biological perspective, including the facts that there is no gene that is found entirely in one form in one race and entirely in a different form in another race, and that no disease is found exclusively in one racial group (p. 339).  Instead of a biological classification system, Newman contends that race is a social construct composed of the characteristics a society chooses to use to differentiate one ethno-racial group from another.  These social ideas about race and ethnicity shape social rankings and determine access to resources (Newman, p. 339).

My human evolution class also considered the question of whether race is a biologically valid means of classifying humans.  The evidence as considered by the physical anthropologists, says that it is not.  Here are some of the findings from physical anthropology on this issue that go beyond those included in the Newman text:

 According to Larsen, race is a social construct and not a biologically valid means of classifying humans (Larsen, p. 125).  Larsen put it best this way: “Race is neither a useful nor an appropriate biological concept” (Larsen, p. 153).  The reasons why physical anthropologists do not view race as a biologically valid means of classifying humans are as follows: 

·         Traits such as human head shape are not static, but instead change over time, as shown by Franz Boas’ study of cephalic index in European immigrant parents and their American-born children (Larsen, p. 123).  Due probably to improved nutrition available to the immigrant children compared to the nutrition their parents received when they were young, the children’s head sizes were larger than their parents.  The differences had nothing to do with race.  Boas’ study showed that it’s just not valid to classify human variation typologically, and his findings led scientists to focus on biological processes (such as nutrition) instead of typologies to explain human variation (Larsen, p. 123).

·         Racial traits are not concordant, meaning that traits that have been used to classify humans on the basis of race don’t correlate with their distribution (Larsen, p. 124).  If race were a valid biological construct, then genetic diversity would be accounted for by them.  In the 1970’s, R.C. Lewontin proved this wrong by studying global genetic variation in blood groups, serum proteins and red blood cell enzyme variations, and finding that only about 5-10% of the variations were accounted for by “races” (Larsen, p. 123).  Most of the variation occurred across human populations without regard to any kind of racial classification (Larsen, p. 123-24).  According to Larsen, other scientific studies on a wide range of characteristics such as genetic traits and cranial morphology have also demonstrated that multiple traits don’t lead to clear racial classifications because they cut across human populations in different ways (Larsen, p. 124).  In fact, most of the genetic variation is found within groups, not between/among them (Larsen, p. 124).   What this means is that humans who are thought to be in the same “race” may actually differ more genetically from each other than they do from humans who are thought to be in a different “race”.  That shows that the concept of race as a means of explaining human variation is biologically invalid.

·         Human variation is clinal, not racial.  That means that human diversity tends to follow a geographic continuum (a “cline”) rather than a racial classification.  There is considerable evidence that so-called “racial traits” do not adequately divide people into groups.   Evidence for this is that frequencies in blood type B change gradually across the geography from East Asia to far Western Europe (Larsen, p. 124).  In addition, the frequency of hemoglobin S increases in areas where malaria is endemic but decreases in areas where it is not (Larsen, p. 124).  These traits are thus distributed by geography, not by racial typography.  Skin color is also a trait that is distributed continuously by the geographic continuum of latitude, and not by racial groups.  As C. Loring Brace explains, what this means is that if you walked from the top of the world to the equator, for example, you would not notice any visible boundaries between one “people” and another because the changes from place to place are very small and very gradual: While the people you saw at the top (Scandinavia, for instance) would look very different from the people you would see living at the equator, the people anywhere you stop along the journey would look more like each other than they would look like anyone else (Brace).  That is because in general, boys marry the girl next door, but next door goes on without regard to any kind of boundary across the world (Brace).  Clinal variation shows that while a trait can be more frequent in one geographic population over another one, it does not mean that trait can only be found in that population.  Clines are entirely independent from one another (Brace). 

·         It makes much more sense to explain human variation in terms of life history and the biology of growth and development than in terms of racial categories (Larsen, p. 125).  For example, human skin color variation is best explained as an environmental adaptation.  Although there is a certain level of skin pigmentation that is inherited, exposure to solar radiation can change skin color considerably (Larsen, p. 141).  When mapped, skin color varies from its darkest at the equator to its lightest at the poles to illustrate the point that the darkest skin is associated with the highest UV radiation while the lowest UV radiation is associated with the lightest skin (Larsen, p. 141).  Living at the equator exposes skin to the most direct and prolonged UV light year around, which causes the skin to produce more melanin, a brown pigment whose concentration level determines the darkness or lightness of the skin (Larsen, p. 141).  Melanin can be either an advantage or disadvantage: Too much melanin can interfere with vitamin D synthesis necessary to prevent rickets, but too little won’t protect skin from UV radiation (Larsen, p. 142) .  William Loomis’ theory is that as human ancestors moved out of Africa and to higher latitudes, natural selection favored alleles for light skin to bring about the proper balance between UV radiation protection (needed less at higher latitudes) and vitamin D synthesis necessary to prevent rickets (needed more at higher latitudes) (Larsen, p. 142).  This shows how skin color is an environmental adaptation and how the influence of nutrition and climate are important influences on the human phenotype.  Nutrition plays a role too, as vitamin D deficiency from not enough UV radiation can be made up for, as least partially by eating fatty fish such as salmon (Larsen, p. 142).  Another example showing the influence of climate on human phenotype is new research showing that folate acid deficiencies are linked with health issues resulting from DNA-related problems affecting cell division and homeostasis (Larsen, p. 42).  Since skin color and the production of melanin help to protect the body from losing too much folate acid, natural selection would have favored the dark skin allele where UV radiation is highest (Larsen, p. 142). 

Based on all of this evidence, physical anthropologists agree with the conclusion of sociologists that race is a social construct and not a valid biological means of classifying humans.  The physical anthropologists would conclude, as Newman does, that human variation is better explained in terms of life history and the biology of growth and development than in terms of racial categories (Newman, p. 339).

Works Cited

Larsen, C.S. (2011). Our Origins:  Discovery of Physical Anthropology. 2nd. ed. W.W. Norton & Co.: New York, N.Y.

Brace, C. L. (2000). Does Race Exist? An Antagonist’s Perspective. Nova Beta Evolution. PBS website. < http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/does-race-exist.html> Accessed November 19, 2011.

Newman, D. M. (2010).   Sociology:  Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life. 8^th ed. Pine Forge Press, Thousand Oaks, CA.

Update on U.S. Children in Poverty (Chapter 10 Second Post)

According to Newman, poverty has hit U.S. children especially hard, with children comprising about 25% of the U.S. population but around 35% of all Americans living in poverty (Newman, p. 315). For children under age six the situation is worse, with 20.8% (one in five) are living in poverty (Newman, p. 315).  In addition, Newman says that while 18% of U.S. children are poor, the percentages are higher for Latino and African American children, at 26.9% and 33.4%, respectively (Newman, p. 315).  Since Newman’s poverty statistics are based in part on data from 2008 and 2009, I decided to try to find out if the persisting economic downturn in the United States has made these statistics even worse since our book was published.  Here is what I was able to find out:

According to recent statistics, from 2009 to 2010, the number of U.S. children under age six living in poverty has increased from 20.8% to 25% (one in four), and the number of these young children in poverty has increased from 5.7 million to 5.9 million from 2009 to 2010. These statistics are based on a Huffington Post article by Jillian Berman you can read here:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/22/children-in-poverty-us_n_976868.html?view=print&comm_ref=false

The number of children in the U.S. in poverty has increased by 2.6 million since the recession began in 2008, and the 9.1% unemployment rate may have something to do with this increase (Berman).  The percentage of American kids with at least one unemployed or underemployed parent rose from 9.1% in 2007 to over 18% today (Berman). 

According to a New York Times article by Sabrina Tavernise, a recent Pew Hispanic Research Center study that analyzed U.S. Census Bureau statistics found that, for the first time, Hispanic children living in poverty in the U.S. outnumber the number of poor white kids.  There are now 6.1 million Hispanic children (35% of them) in poverty in our country compared to about 5 million non-Hispanic white children (12.4% of them) in poverty (Tavernise).  This is a 36% increase in the number of poor Hispanic children from 2007 to 2010.  Tavernise says that the recession is largely to blame for this increase because Hispanics were disproportionately employed in industries such as housing that experienced big declines in the recession.  The Hispanic unemployment rate went from 5.7% before the recession to 11 percent today.

According to Tavernise, the situation is even worse for African American children.  Their poverty rate climbed from 33.4% in 2008 to 39.1% in 2010, the largest percentage of all racial and ethnic groups in the U.S.  You can read Tavernise’s article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/29/us/hispanic-children-in-poverty-surpass-whites-study-finds.html?_r=2

These figures are based on the U.S. definition of poverty and do not include those who do not meet the definition but who are food insecure, who lack affordable housing, or who face other hardships affecting many more American children who are not officially defined as “poor.”  Is the United States becoming a nation of poor children?  Have a look at this graph from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and decide for yourself.

Child Poverty in the U.S. 2000-2010

If you are interested in additional current statistics on poverty in the U.S. as prepared and analyzed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, they are here: http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/11/ib.shtml

Assignment 10: My Turn: The “Middle Class” Subsistence Budget and the American Dream

An annual income of $57,432 for a family of four (two adults and two children) sounds like a solid middle class existence, doesn’t it?  Consider this hypothetical family who are not exactly living the “American Dream”: 

Our hypothetical family living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, consists of two parents who earn a total of $57,432 per year from jobs outside of the home.  Each parent works 40 hours a week, for 52 weeks each year.  One earns $20,000 annually and the other earns $37,432, before taxes.  They have two children, ages seven (in elementary school) and three (in full-time day care). 

This family literally has nothing, not one cent, left over after paying for a subsistence lifestyle that covers only their most basic needs.  To estimate what this family’s budget might look like, I used mostly estimates and assumptions  from the Jobs Now Coalition report which you can read here: http://www.jobsnowcoalition.org/reports/2010/cost-of-living2010.pdf.  I modified these estimates in a few places a bit by using other information I was able to find looking at various rental housing ads and day care information for Minneapolis. 

Our hypothetical family’s annual expenses are as follows:

Food:  This family cooks and eats all of its meals at home, and buys its groceries following the USDA “Thrifty” family food plan, the lowest cost family food plan for which the USDA calculates data.  Our hypothetical family’s monthly grocery bill is $572. 

Total annual food cost:  $6,864.

Housing:  This family’s housing expense is based on renting a two-bedroom apartment that is decent, safe, and sanitary rental housing of a modest (non-luxury) nature.  The costs include utilities of heat, water, electricity and gas, but not telephone service, which is included in the “clothing and other” category.  Our hypothetical family’s costs are based on the HUD fair market rent (FMR) at the 40^th percentile level, meaning that 60% of the rents in the area would be higher than this family’s housing.  Their monthly housing expense is $900.

Total annual housing cost:  $10,800.

Health Care:  This family’s health care expenses include insurance costs as well as out-of-pocket costs.  The deductible for the health insurance is assumed to be $1000 with a 20% copayment.  The budget for this family is a weighted average of costs of employee contributions under employer-sponsored insurance plans for family coverage and under private non-group coverage, plus average out-of-pocket costs for this sized family.  This family’s monthly health care cost is $569.  With two adults working, chances are better that at least one of them has employer-provided health insurance, and that the worker pays an average of about 25% of the premiums for the employer-sponsored health insurance policy, which would result in a lower monthly and annual cost.  If neither parent is able to cover the family under an employer-sponsored health policy, however, this family would have to purchase a non-group private health insurance policy at a considerably higher cost. 

Total annual health care cost:  $6,828.

Transportation:  In this family all workers drive to work and the costs of driving to work, school, church and grocery and other necessary family driving are included in the monthly estimate.  Costs of social/recreational uses of their car are not included.  Public transportation costs are not used in this budget because less than 5% of metropolitan area residents in Minnesota who work outside of the home get there by public transportation.  The assumptions for costs are for working five days/week for 50 weeks/year.  Average commuting distances are used for Hennepin County.  The transportation costs are determined using $.55/mile, the IRS reimbursement rate which is designed to account for all costs of maintaining and operation an automobile, including fuel, repair, depreciation and insurance.  It is assumed that this family travels about 1,250 miles per month, or about 15,000/year. 

Total annual transportation cost:  $8,292.

Child Care:  The three-year old goes to full-time day care, and the school-age child goes to after-school care for 3-4 hours each school day.  The school-age child also goes to full-time day care for 12 weeks in the summer when school is not in session.  This family’s child care expense for the three-year-old is an average of the costs of center-based child care expense and in-home day care in the metropolitan area.  Center-based care is generally more expensive than in-home day care, so this expense would be less if they can find acceptable home-based care, but more if they use a center.  The after-school and summer care for the seven-year-old is assumed to be provided by the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Department’s Rec-Plus program for school aged children.  This family’s monthly child care expense is $1,083.

Total annual child care cost:  $12,996.

Clothing and other necessities:  Included here are clothing, telephone service, household furnishings, cleaning and house maintenance supplies and personal care products, using averages for families with young children, and the lowest cost basic telephone service.  The averages for personal care items and clothing are adjusted downward by 50% to assure that only the most basic needs are included.  Minnesota sales tax is included on all items except clothing and shoes.  This family’s monthly expenses for clothing and other necessities is $316.

Total annual clothing and other necessities costs:  $3,792.

Net taxes:  This category includes the net effect of taxes and tax credits.  The taxes are payroll taxes (Social Security and Medicare) and federal and state income taxes, but not property taxes which are included in housing expense category, and sales taxes which are included in the costs for other categories.  This family’s net tax amount per month is $655.

Total annual tax costs:  $7,860.

Summary and grand totals:

Annual income: $57,432

Total expenses:  $57,432

What is not included in this budget:  There is no provision in this budget for education or training beyond high school, debt payments (such as for student loans), life insurance, retirement or other savings.  There is also no provision in this budget for saving for a down payment for a house.  No provision is made for any vacation expense, expense of owning pets, entertainment such as movies or sporting events, gifts of any kind (including birthdays and Christmas), or any restaurant meals.  There is no provision for fees for children to play sports or purchase any toys or sports equipment.  There is also no provision for any kind of big ticket items such as washing machines, televisions or computers.  There is nothing provided for high speed internet access, cell phone service, or cable or satellite television service.  This is a bare bones budget.

BUT WAIT!  This family’s budget is a whopping 256% of the 2011 United States poverty line which is now $22,350!  

Our textbook asks us to consider what sorts of items this family could cut out of its budget for it to be considered officially poor and eligible for certain government assistance programs.  The first place to start might be the second income (the lower one).  If one parent did not work outside the home, half of the income is lost, of course, but the family would save $12,996 annually on child care.  It would also save about $3,000 on transportation costs.  Interestingly, foregoing one income also saves considerably on taxes because of the interplay of tax brackets and low-income tax credits.  This family’s annual tax bill would drop from $7,860 to around $300.  Considering that in our hypothetical family, one parent earns only $20,000, so quitting this job actually saves them money!

Even after cutting all of these items out of the budget, this family is still a long way from the official poverty line, although they certainly are not living what you normally think of as a middle class life.  If this family’s income dropped and they had to make more cuts, they would be dangerous ones to make.  The family could chose to go without health insurance and to postpone necessary medical care for themselves and their children.  If both parents kept working and they still needed day care, they might decide to “get by” by leaving the older child alone in a latch-key situation during the school year, and by leaving him with a stay-home relative or neighbor in the summer.  These are not easy choices, as the quality of this kind of care (or no care at all in the case of latch key) may not adequately protect this young child.  This family could try to save some on transportation expenses by moving closer to work, but that might entail higher housing costs.  Another way to save on transportation would be to drive a cheaper, more fuel efficient car, but costs of trading one car for another usually involve spending money rather than saving it.  This family could move to lower cost housing that is likely to be in an area of the city with higher crime, with drugs and gang violence.  This family might scrimp on food and try to use food shelves to try to keep hunger at bay, at the cost of good nutrition for themselves and their children.  They could try to find used clothing and shoes for their growing children at garage sales or ask other family members for hand-me-downs, at the possible cost of their self-esteem and pride. 

The long-term impacts of this “subsistence budget” life on the children in this family are substantial.  If the family experiences any crisis that depletes their budget in any way, they risk not being able to pay their rent and eviction.  This family is one crisis away from homelessness.  Even without such a crisis, with no money for savings, there can be no saving for college for the kids.  Nor can there be any extras like music, dance, or tennis lessons.  Summer camps and enrichments programs are out of the question too.  If one of these children needs a private tutor to help with the math or reading, this family can’t afford it.  This family won’t be paying for SAT/ACT review courses or college application fees either.  If the children manage to get into college, it will likely be a community or less prestigious institution, and their chances of graduating are much less than children of more affluent families (Newman, p. 315).  Having less access to higher education also means less access to the better paying jobs for these children as well.

It must be emphasized that this family is working hard, and is not enjoying any vacations, entertainment, restaurant meals, computer or digital technology, or even any birthday parties for their kids.  Yet without better paying jobs, the American Dream seems to be just beyond their reach.

Assignment 9: Life Choices and Chances: How the Structure of the U.S. Educational System Has Impacted This Student

What impact has the structure of contemporary education in the United States had on my life?  This was my food for thought as I drove back to Hamline from my weekend road trip to Mankato.  As I dodged deer and hunters and kept my eyes on the road, I thought about this assignment.  It gave me a chance to take a broader view of my life as a student as shaped by the system.

A large part of the reason for my visit to Mankato was to visit the Minnesota State University campus and find out more about a graduate program in school counseling that I am considering for my master’s degree.  That I am contemplating graduate school instead of trying to enter the work force with a full-time job indicates that I am still “under the influence” of the structure of education in contemporary United States. My interest in graduate school is indicative of my cultural belief, and my parents’ cultural belief, that education is the principle means of financial success in our country (Newman, p. 361).  Interestingly, it now appears that more females than males my age share this cultural belief, as there is a larger percentage of women than men currently enrolled in U.S. undergraduate degree programs, as well as most masters degree programs.  Although the school counseling program at MSU enjoys a great reputation, I must admit that one of its appeals to me is that admission does not require the GRE exam if your college grades are high enough.  Since standardized tests are NOT my thing, this is good news for me.  Yet, my desire not to subject my future to another one of those hated events definitely narrows my school choices.  The admissions policies of the graduate school programs, factors outside of my control, are, as Newman says, “a reality that determines life chances and choices” (Newman, p. 262).

My graduate school plans and choices are just the latest in a long series of ways that the structure of contemporary education in the United States has impacted my student life.  I guess the first time the structure the education system affected my life was in my parents’ choice of my kindergarten.  Although we can see the neighborhood elementary school from our back porch, my parents did not send me to that school.  My parents say that this was not because of any concern they had with the quality of that school.  They actually liked that school and wanted me to attend it.  But in the year I began kindergarten, the Minneapolis school system had an extensive busing program intended to bring about racial balance in the schools throughout the city.  Although parents could request that their children attend neighborhood schools, there were no guarantees that these requests would be honored.  In our neighborhood, getting to go to the school down the street was the luck of the draw.  If you didn’t get drawn for that school, you got to ride a bus to a school in another part of the city.  My parents didn’t like that idea, so they enrolled me in a private school, which, ironically, involved a pretty long bus ride anyway.  Ironically, my parents learned several years later that I probably would have had no problem attending my neighborhood school for kindergarten if my parents had answered the question of my ethnicity differently.  You see, there was no box on the form that adequately described my ethnicity as a Roma.  The choices were White, African American, Hispanic, Native American, and Asian.  None of those boxes fit my status, so they just checked “White.”  Thus, my school experience began to be shaped by the structure of the education system, specifically, the racial integration policies of the school system.  Or perhaps it was just the lack of an “Other” box on the form. At any rate, my parents’ choice of my first school was definitely impacted by the decisions of the Minneapolis School Board related to achieving its school integration goals, as well as by the decisions of those who administered the school selection/assignment process and designed the forms.

I spent two years at my first private school, The International School of Minnesota.  Although that school provided daily Spanish or French starting in Kindergarten and daily physical education, art and music along with the usual academics, my parents decided it wasn’t a good fit for me after first grade.  That was because it also featured daily testing, beginning in the first grade, and it soon became clear that I didn’t thrive under that system.  My parents moved me to another private school for second grade.  My parents thought that school’s academics were a better fit for me, and it was also much closer to home.  Unfortunately, that school was on shaky financial ground, and it failed as I was finishing fourth grade.  While private schools give parents more choices for their children’s education, they don’t always work out for a variety of reasons.  They are part of the educational system too.  The decisions of the private schools I attended on matters ranging from curriculum to finances thus impacted my experience as an early elementary school student and became part of my educational past that I carry with me today.

Ironically, for fifth grade, I was finally able to attend the neighborhood public school my parents wanted for me in the first place.  Unfortunately, it had by then become a K-5 school, so I would only get one year there.  Although I knew many neighborhood kids who attended that school, I was something of an outsider because I was new to the school as a fifth grader.  Since I was new, I didn’t get put into any of the school’s enrichment programs either, a decision that, it turned out, would have an impact on my educational life that continued into my middle school years and beyond.  In middle school, students had electives, one of which was Spanish or French, and my parents were excited that I would finally have the chance to return to the Spanish I had begun to learn at International School.  Unfortunately, however, the middle school administration had a different idea.  The middle school’s language choices were Spanish and French, and the kids who had been in enrichment programs in elementary school got first choice.  By the time they got to me, French was all that was left, so French it was.  In Minneapolis schools, the Spanish program was far more popular, much bigger and much better organized than the French program, which seemed something of an afterthought. While there were several Spanish teachers and classes, there was just one French class, and most of the students, like me, were there because Spanish was full.  To make matters worse, my middle school French teacher had two babies in three years, so a good portion of the first three years of French was spent with substitute teachers who knew even less French than I did.  When we got to high school, the kids from my middle school French class were well behind those from the other schools, and most of us never caught up.  When the best French teacher (1/2 of the program) who moved to a different school when I was a sophomore was not replaced, I gave up on French.  I have always wished that I had been able to study Spanish as a young student, but the decisions of school administrators to place me in French instead of Spanish and not to offer additional Spanish classes in middle school despite the demand for them, continue to affect me to this day.  Someday I’ll try Rosetta Stone or Berlitz, to see if I can learn at least a little Spanish as an adult.

My middle school also had a pre-International Baccalaureate program, which any student could take.  I did, and it helped me get into a high school with an International Baccalaureate program later on.  When it was time to choose a high school program, Minneapolis gave students and their parents lots of choices.  I quickly narrowed it down to two programs in two schools:  An International Baccalaureate program at a school not far from my house, and a liberal arts program at a school across town.  It was necessary to apply to these programs, and you had to get in.  Admission to both of these programs was quite competitive, and I was worried about getting in (due to those darned standardized test scores again).  To my surprise, I was accepted into both programs.  Although high school acceptances in Minneapolis were supposed to be strictly one to a customer, I somehow got two.  This, it turns out, was unheard of, but it had to do with tennis, not academics.  As a tournament-level tennis player, I was sought by both schools for their tennis teams.  I ended up choosing the IB program closer to home.  My high school choice was in this way impacted by the actions of coaches and administrators who found ways around the system to accomplish their goals.

Once I got to high school, I discovered that being in the IB program afforded me a certain beneficial status.  As one of my freshman teachers said, "IB students don't need hall passes, but students in the school's other program (A&H) did."  The IB students were treated a lot better by the teachers and school administrators than were the students in the A&H program because the IB students were thought to be "students who wanted to learn" and the A&H students were thought to want to mess around all the time.  In my high school, IB was where you wanted to be.  It was like being in a higher social class. As an IB student, you were considered smarter and more focused, and you were challenged more. The IB program was both rigorous and stressful, with advanced classes, loads of homework, many papers, and , of course, those IB exams.  Although the IB diploma was out of my reach, the IB certificate and college credit for IB work I earned in that program undoubtedly helped me get numerous college acceptances and prepared me well for college work.  I am certain that it took a lot of creativity, initiative and determination for my high school to establish that program, the first of its kind in Minneapolis schools.  My education was clearly impacted by the people who worked so hard to convince the bureaucracy to establish this program at my high school.  The IB program is expensive for the high school to run, and in these days of budget cuts, is often a target for elimination, but I am thankful it was there for me and survives to this day.

My college applications and choices were also impacted by the structure of the educational system, especially two aspects of it:  standardized tests and college athletics.  For standardized tests, as I have mentioned (whined about?) many times, they are not my forte.  I have test anxiety and just don’t do well on those things.  My parents sent me to more than a couple of ACT review/test strategy classes, and I did everything I could to try to achieve an impressive score.  I took, re-took, re-took and re-took the ACT, but never achieved a particularly impressive result.  I met the requirements for admission at my chosen schools, but not their requirements for getting much in the way of financial aid.  My admission chances were again helped by my tennis skills which attracted the attention of several Division III coaches, and thankfully, my parents were able to come up with the tuition, so here I am.  While one might argue that sports ability shouldn’t have any impact on college admission decisions, it does, and I am glad it gave me the chances I have had to show what I can do in college.  There are those “chances and choices” Newman talks about again. Although my ACT results suggested mediocrity, my college grades are quite good, making me an exception, I guess, to the predictability value of standardized tests. 

So that’s my student life, as it has been impacted by the system so far.  As I contemplate my future, I hope that the lasting impact of the “chances and choices” the system has determined for me will continue to be, overall, positive.  I know the system has influenced my student life from the top down to a large extent, but I also think it is up to me to continue to try to make the most of it from the bottom up, and to try to do what I can to impact that system for others in my future as a school counselor.