Single Working Womens Week – SWWAN

It’s that time again–and single U.S. women in droves (estimate is 20 million) did not vote in the 2004 elections. But the truth is, your voice matters. Think about this, single women who DID vote made up 22% of the voting population–ladies, that’s a lot of voting power! A quote from the president of NOW:

“Without our voices, so many of the issues that affect our families will not become a priority. Without our voices our perspective on how to solve some of our nation’s and our state’s most intractable problems will not be taken into account.”

Here’s a helpful hint from Missy, a SWWAN in Las Vegas:

“I just found a really great site that gives a good overview of issues/questions up for a vote this year! Just enter your zip and PRESTO – the issues are broken down and explained in non-legal-ese!! I thought I would pass it along – it really made me rethink a few issues that I thought – first blush – I understood!”

Like many people, you may feel uncomfortable because you don’t have a handle on the who/what/why of voting (you mean you don’t have time to study all 34 of the candidates running for those 6 judge positions?–of COURSE you don’t–you’re a single working woman!). This site can help, especially with issues. www.vote-smart.org

Let’s make it a grand SWWAN year at the polls.

Hard to believe this could be happening in our modern world of population explosions… The government of Taiwan is allocating a ton of money and lowering restrictions on paying maternity leaves to urge more women to have kids. Apparently the country’s birthrate has declined to 1.1 kids per mom, and that’s lower than surrounding countries. The article partly attributes this to the fact that there, too, more young people are choosing to remain single–the phenomenon is not confined to the U.S.

Like the forego-the-birth-control, “be fruitful and multiply” philosophy of the Orthodox Jewish religion which makes it a “mitzvah” (good deed) to have lots of kids, and of the Roman Catholics (well, at least what used to be–for decades a certain percentage of Catholics are known to go “priest shopping” to find one with an open mind about birth control), the fact that many groups believe they need to populate the world (in many cases, specifically with their own kind) isn’t going away anytime soon.

Whoa. You know how when something hits you between the eyes you open them a little wider. Saw a movie lasta night called Loverboy, starring Kevin Bacon (though you have to struggle to recognize his character, and this is his debut as a director), Matt Dillon, jeepers-Sandra-Bullock, and especially Kyra Sedgwick (the filmmaker adores her with the camera throughout the movie). Review here.

This is a film that addresses powerfully and directly some of the issues we wrote about in a recent post here surrounding young single women deciding to have babies on their own. It addresses some things almost no one wants to think about in regard to this phenomenon–like could single mothers who have babies on their own get inappropriately attached to those kids and in their possessiveness keep them from having wholly healthy experiences. And it juxtaposes this examination with a fairly hard-hitting look at the other messy issue we’ve recently talked about: how having two parents doesn’t mean you’re going to raise an emotionally healthy kid. After all, in this film the devoted/possessive single mom was raised by two parents who adored each other.

It’s not a great movie. It’s a bit too focused on “ain’t Kyra beautiful.” And it’s kind of tragic, especially the ending. But it looks at some tough issues that we’re probably going to see more often as women increasingly choose to remain single and also to seek motherhood–and by the way as more married women delay motherhood and end up going for in-vitro fertilization, which often results in a passionate attachment on both parents’ parts to the child that’s finally born. So if you don’t want to look at those kinds of issues, don’t see the film.

But I guess I’d say the same thing about Bridges of Madison County, which addresses uncomfortable issues surrounding love and marriage and infidelity.

In case we wanted to know, this study indicates that for guys who don’t smoke, who eat a healthy diet, and who exercise regularly, having two drinks of any kind of alcohol each day is consistent with a far lower incidence of heart attack than for guys who don’t drink or drink only half a drink a day. As always with medical studies, they’re not claiming causality, just association.

Still, it’s good news to know that enjoying alchohol in moderation might be not only mind-altering relaxing for the moment but actually good for you in the long run. Let’s hope they hurry up and confirm this for women.

But speaking of living longer, it’s our position here at SWWAN that when single working women’s position in society is elevated to its proper place, our generally higher rates of frequency of illness and earlier death will decrease significantly. And here’s a BBC report on a study that indicates social status and cohesiveness have a strong bearing on longevity. Notice Japan’s higher life expectancy (keeping mind, of course, that all these statistics are for men only…)

LIFE EXPECTANCY RATES
1. Japan 81.3
2. Sweden 79.9
3. Canada 79.2
4. Spain 79.1
5. Switzerland 79.0
5. Australia 79.0
7. Israel 78.9
8. Norway 78.7
8. France 78.7
10. Italy 78.6
15. UK 77.9
18. US 76.9
Source: UN Development Programme

And if you want more to read about social status and health (and how science works with alternative therapies), I love this book: Manifesto for a New Medicine, written by a physician who discovered through his own inability to be healed by western medicine that we in the west don’t know everything there is to be known about staying well and about healing–and we seriously underestimate the role of love and sharing.

It’s surprising to discover that you can change your attitude about something just from listening to a person speak at a public event. Liz Ryan, the founder and CEO of WorldWIT.org, an extraordinarily successful online community for women, inspired the heck out of me the other day when she spoke at a local workshop about how she got to where she is. And when I combed the website in detail, I found all of the writing so clear and honest and entertaining that I wanted to read everything!

Anyway, Liz writes and talks with passion and humor about her former life as a corporate HR exec (“I apologize to you right now for that,” she says as a deeply sincere aside) and her adventures since leaving that world. As we SWWANs know, we women are all about stories (our software to let you share yours here should be ready soon), and Liz and other WorldWIT bloggers and contributors have an endless supply to encourage and inspire every one of us. Particularly noted one today about gender pay equity–that is, how it doesn’t exist and what it really costs you over a lifetime (in case you need a hint: a LOT).

Thanks for the passion and the sharing and the joy, Liz and WorldWIT.

Kids who grew up with both parents working or with a single parent faced many struggles that kids in a financially-well-off home with two parents didn’t. Not to say that some of those kids don’t face unique challenges, too.

But you know, you can look at young grownups, one of whom was raised in a two-parent family and the other who was raised after the divorce, and you usually find they have their own unique hangups and issues. We can decry the end of the two-parent family–and I heaven knows it can be wonderful when you’ve got two emotionally healthy parents truly committed to using loving-but-with-clear-limits best practices in child rearing–but since when have we been producing flawless adults out of that arrangement? It just doesn’t happen, which says to me we’re barking up the wrong tree to assign blame to the single factor of the number of parents a kid is brought up with.

While “having it all” is a myth and always has been, it’s shortsighted to think that by an either/or equation we’ve exhausted the possibilities for finding better ways to raise kids to be healthy, happy, kind and caring adults.

A few statistics on how many of today’s young women are going to work, saving money, and then becoming moms.

Single working woman Janice Kopec has spent 20 years in business as a negotiator, manager, and administrator. Not long ago she saw a need and decided to start her own professional mediation services business. To prepare herself, this single working mom found time in addition to her job and family to undergo the rigorous training required, and she also got certified in managing workplace conflict. Jan, tell us how you managed that!?

Her company, Southwest Mediation Services, offers mediation as an alternative to litigation for parties involved in a dispute. The service uses a process by which a neutral third party, the mediator, works with both parties to negotiate mutually beneficial settlements.

Jan works with a team of other professionally trained mediators to help both individuals and organizations resolve conflicts. Their main focus is business but they also work in other areas: *School *Elder *Divorce & Custody *Family *Post-Decree *Business and *Healthcare. The company is located in the Cleveland, Ohio area but serves businesses and others throughout the country.

Jan and her team members are happy to come and speak to you and/or your organization about how mediation can save money, frustration, and relationships.

Call Jan at 440.478.4233 or email her.

Have seen this exact writeup in more than one place–can’t tell who wrote the original and who copied, but the books sound good so I’ll quote it all and give you links to both sources:

♦“The Complete Single Mother,” by Andrea Engber and Leah Klungness (Adams Media, $16.95), has been updated with a new chapter on raising children who have special needs.

The Q&A format and soothing tone resemble the extremely popular “What to Expect” series, but the authors don’t shy away from gritty topics that define the lives of as many as 9 million single mothers in the United States: finding a reputable attorney, financial issues, custody rights, Internet dangers, dealing with an ex-spouse’s family, as well as dating, sex and remarriage.

♦All mothers will get a laugh (and a reprieve from perfection) with “The Kid Turned Out Fine” (Adams Media, $14.95), edited by Paula Ford-Martin. Dozens of moms nationwide ’fess up to their biggest screw-ups, and some are howlers.

♦Wickedly funny Jenny McCarthy, author of the New York Times bestseller “Baby Laughs,” is back with a sequel, “Life Laughs: The Naked Truth About Motherhood, Marriage and Moving On,” (Dutton, $23.95).

Having given up the ridiculous notion of having it all, McCarthy talks about her painful divorce, sagging breasts, porn flicks, potty training and then ends with her favorite quotes from the Dalai Lama. It’s a kick.”

source 1, source 2

News like this is not good for people and other living things. North Korea has detonated a nuclear “test” as a deterrent to a U.S. attack.

I just finished watching the History channel’s story on how the atomic bomb was invented. Albert Einstein was talked into using his influence to convince President Roosevelt to urge U.S. scientists to create the technology before Germany did. After the war we found that Germany wasn’t even remotely close to getting it. And then it was too late–the Cold War was underway and kids in school were being taught to dive under their desks in the event of an attack (a ridiculously futile maneuver in the case of an atomic bomb).

Someone said the other day that the 20th century was the most violent in human history–World Wars I and II, Korea, Israel, Vietnam, and countless others. With this news, it’s looking like a new cold war is threatening to start off the 21st century. Let’s do all that we can to see that the 20th century keeps that dubious distinction.

The Indiana county where Purdue University is located is proposing to let voters register online and choose where they’d like to be able to vote–an innovation that’s likely to increase working women’s ability to vote by letting them vote where they work instead of having to squeeze it into an already jammed morning routine at home (pets, kids, chores, much-needed sleep, whatever).

A system like this has been in use for three years in Colorado with good results. Interestingly, this story in Indiana State University’s online student paper has its editorial board posing a question: why Purdue first? I wrote to the editor to ask if he’d mind sharing what he thought the answer might be. Rest of the story here.