Despite my dismay about the kerfuffle over delaying routine mammograms for women in their 40s, I was feeling OK about the women's health amendment to the health care legislation that the Senate passed Thursday. Hey, it's Sen. Barbara Mikulski's idea, and the gals from Maine are for it. Plus, as Mikulski pointed out, the bill doesn't require mammograms for women in their 40s, it just makes them available to women whose doctors recommend the screeenings. And women in this age group who are at particular risk for breast cancer should still have mammograms, it seems from the evidence. Plus the women's health amendment provides for other kinds of preventive care, too, packaged for women. I mean, it's called the women's health amendment—who am I to argue with that?

But now I'm not so sure. Sen. Russ Feingold voted no because the amendment will add to the cost of the bill by about $1 billiion over 10 years. "We should make sure health plans cover women’s preventive care and screenings, but we should also find a way to pay for it, rather than adding that cost to the already mountainous public debt," Feingold said. Well, yes.

Then there's this piece from Barbara Ehrenreich that asks "Has feminism been replaced by the pink-ribbon breast cancer cult?" Ehrenreich closes with a call to arms:

What we really need is a new women’s health movement, one that’s sharp and skeptical enough to ask all the hard questions: What are the environmental (or possibly life-style) causes of the breast cancer epidemic? Why are existing treatments like chemotherapy so toxic and heavy-handed? And, if the old narrative of cancer’s progression from “early” to “late” stages no longer holds, what is the course of this disease (or diseases)? What we don’t need, no matter how pretty and pink, is a ladies’ auxiliary to the cancer-industrial complex.

 

Tags: Barbara Ehrenreich, barbara mikulski, breast cancer, mammograms, women's health amendment

Amanda, I don't think you can really make generalizations about all married people or the institution of companionate marriage from Elizabeth Weil's excellent piece. As commenter ockeghem wrote in response to your post, "It said nothing about anyone's marriage but Weil's." It was a singular account of one union, but one that confirmed a long-held belief of mine about relationships: Total honesty is for the birds. I don't always want to know what my fiance is thinking at every second, and he doesn't want to know everything I'm thinking, either. Weil and her husband re-hash a bunch of long-buried issues, and seem to find mostly pain, rather than revelation. This is not to say that we should keep Don Draperish secrets from our beloveds. I just never want to hear my future husband say about an ex-girlfriend, as Weil's husband said to her about a past lover, "We had this completely psychologically sadistic thing that was incredibly disturbing to me ... ."

Tags: companionate marriage, elizabeth weil, marriage improvement

Hanna, I agree that Elizabeth Weil's piece about putting her perfectly serviceable marriage through the therapy wringer was an interesting read, and it sure does tell us a lot about the modern companionate marriage. But for me, it worked mainly as a reminder of why I want to avoid the whole institution of marriage, even as I envy the goodies that it provides those who make the leap. (Insurance, respect from outsiders, the assurance that someone likes you enough to marry you.) Putting that much hard work into a relationship troubles me; can't any part of our lives be an escape from the relentless pressure to work hard and achieve some kind of outsider-defined perfection?

Call me a romantic, but I see romantic love as an opportunity to create something idiosyncratic, and the institution of marriage enforces conformity. That Weil struggled with the idea of what a "good" marriage is indicates this. God forbid it be something as simple as making you happy. Requirements like having the right amount of intimacy, the proper sex life, and the blissful acceptance of all parts of a person probably do kill plenty of marriages that would be perfectly happy if the participants in them had more realistic expectations.

Weil captures this problem perfectly when she addresses the onerous requirement of monogamy. Now, being an unmarried heathen, I tend to think of monogamy as we unmarried heathens practice it: You can't have sex with other people or even make out with them. But Weil points out that the marriage vows can be read as defining it widely:

We all shed what we told ourselves were tears of joy. Dan and I promised to forsake all others, and sexually we had. But we had not shed all attachments, naturally, and as we waded further into our project the question of allegiances became more pressing. Was our monogamy from the child’s or the mother’s perspective? Did my love for Dan — must my love for Dan — always come first?

And because of this need to "forsake all others", Weil's relationship with her mother—the closeness of it—becomes an issue. But should it have been? Why is there such an expectation that the person you share your bed and body with also be the source of all important emotional support? No wonder so many people have trouble distinguishing intimacy from codependency. And no wonder so many people cheat! The all-consuming American companionate marriage seems stifling, and the temptation to escape to where sex and intimacy don't come with a side dish of emotional vampirism looms large in our imagination.

I won't go cliché and suggest that a little mystery should be employed to keep sex hot. But honestly, being a little less than married can be a very good way to hold a relationship together. We seek out the companionship of others precisely because we become bored with ourselves; therefore, it seems like it's simply easier to have a relationship with someone who hasn't subsumed their individuality to a marriage. This "forsaking all others" business seems like the first path on the step of losing the very thing that made you enticing to your loved one in the first place, which is your own unique identity.

Tags: elizabeth weil, therapy

I think I have had it with treating like the Salahi affair like a national emergency. The grandstanding by various congressmen is getting preposterous and embarrassing. Republican Pete King of New York, always reliable for faked outrage and hyperbole, is talking about “stonewalling” and “imperiled security,” like this was Watergate here. Sanction a couple of Secret Service guys, reprimand the social secretary, and call it a day. But congressional hearings? Is there nothing else to discuss.

Today one of the cheerleaders at the Redskins reunion that Michaele Salahi crashed brought it home for me, with a lament straight out of Glee: “It’s really a privilege to wear the burgundy and gold,” she huffed to the Washington Post. “For her to get out there and think she can just shake her pompoms is upsetting!”

Upsetting indeed. Where’s Jane Lynch when you need her?

Tags: michaele salahi, Pete King and Salahis, Salahis, Salahis and congressional hearings, White House party crashers

At the New York Times’ Motherlode Blog, Lisa Belkin shares an e-mail from a reader named Amy, a stay-at-home mom of two kids who’s unhappy and wondering what to do.

My husband and I are 36. We have a 4-year-old and an 8-month old. We both put a lot of pressure on ourselves to be good at what we do. I’m a stay-at-home mom and he owns a production company. Lately, we feel like we are drowning under the rigors of raising a family in the New York area. Are we trying to get rich? Is that what we want? No, not really. But we do want to be able to afford private school, save for kids’ college education and for our retirement. So is that why we succumb to this life where we, as husband and wife, hardly have any time to spend together? Where we constantly feel like we are just trying to get through the day, through the week?

Amy’s story resonated with me. We’re about the same age. Our kids are about the same age. (I’ve got three; she’s got two.) My husband and I have gone through stretches where we saw each other for only an hour or so in the evenings before crashing on the couch. I’m not trying to raise my family in the expensive New York area, but you can live anywhere and feel the stress of trying to save for school and retirement. Amy said she was looking for advice from a “grown-up.” I don’t feel any more grown-up than she does, but I’ll try my best.

My first tip for Amy: It gets easier. It’s hard to believe when you’re in the thick of it, when you’re living what you describe as an “unwanted life” but soon your 4-year-old won’t be the needy creature who counts on you to do everything: tie his shoes, wipe his bottom, and put the straw in his juice box. When we went to our oldest son’s year-end soccer party, some parents (all of whom had older kids) chuckled as we struggled to find a place to plop the baby and make the 3-year-old eat his dinner and constantly jumped up and down while they relaxed. And that’s what they all said: It gets easier.

Should you move to a less expensive city? That’s a tough one. My husband and I moved from Seattle to Cincinnati after our first child was born, but the fact that it was cheaper was just a bonus. We really wanted to be closer to family. (When you go a year without going to a restaurant that doesn’t offer crayons with the menu, it’s time to move to closer to Grandma.) Do you have a support system where you are—parents and siblings? If so, it might be worth the expense to stay put. But if you’re moving closer to friends or family who could help out with the kids, that could help you get more quality time with your husband.

At least you and your husband are talking and are open about your unhappiness. It would be so much worse to stew in resentment. Since you have the dialogue going, you’ve opened the door to the conversations you need to have and the decisions you need to make. There’s an important truth in Dahlia Lithwick’s novel that’s running on Slate: You can do anything, but you can’t do everything. Do you need private elementary school? Or will a good private high school be enough? Can you carve out times for “date nights,” even if that sounds contrived and forced and not quite the same as lazy Saturday mornings going to brunch?

A few years ago, Emily Yoffe wrote a touching article about her journey from being happily childless to having a child. Here’s one passage that’s always stuck with me: “[Nonparents] seem stuck on the notion that being a parent means forever climbing a Mt. Everest of diapers. Diapers pass in a snap. It all goes so fast. When our daughter turned 6, my husband and I realized with a pang that we were already one-third of the way through the time she would live with us.” My oldest is now 6, and he seems to age years with every passing month. So even when I’m tired and cranky and wishing that I could have a whole morning to drink coffee and read the paper, I try to remember that those days will be here again all too soon, when the kids are off at college.

Tags: advice, Motherlode blog, parenting

Timothy Egan at the New York Times has been defending Amanda Knox, the American student who is accused of killing her study-abroad roommate in Perugia, for at least a year. By all legitimate accounts, the case against Knox is baseless. And yet the European tabloids have painted her as a Satanist/sex fiend who killed her roommate, Meredith Kercher, in a bizarre sex ritual. Besides Egan, not that many America journalists have expressed clear outrage. Why?

As Egan points out, "there is no physical evidence placing Amanda Knox at the blood-splattered crime scene, the room where the killing took place. Zero." In addition, there is "abundant evidence linking a drifter named Rudy Guede to the scene —blood, DNA, prints and his own admission." Guede has been convicted of killing Kercher, and yet Italian prosecutors continued the case against Knox based on a flimsy motive. They say she and her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, accidentally slit Meredith's throat in a sex game gone wrong. Neither Sollecito nor Knox has any prior history of criminal or sociopathic behavior. Not only that, but, according to ABC News, the prosecutors changed their mind in recent days about Knox's motive. Apparently she and Sollecito wanted to punish Kercher for being "prissy," and so they raped and killed her.

This sounds ludicrous. Amanda's life has been almost destroyed by this ongoing trial (as have the lives of her family members). So why aren't more American news outlets outraged by Amanda's imprisonment? Perhaps they've been swayed by prosecutorial lies and leaks, just like Italians have been. Egan writes:

I was in Italy last month, and found that public opinion had shifted somewhat. There was more skepticism about the case. Still, to many Italians, Amanda Knox is a spoiled, amoral American college girl who has not shown sufficient remorse for the death of her roommate. The narrative of the manipulative she-devil is widespread.

The rumors about Knox make her into an unsympathetic figure: Even though she didn't kill her roommate, people might think she was bringing home lots of men to her Perugian apartment and doing cartwheels at the police station. Perhaps the narrative of the "manipulative she-devil" is powerful enough to cross continents.

Tags: Amanda Knox, meredith kercher, perugia, timothy egan