Why Swords Are Good For Boys – And Girls Too

Yesterday, I got a message at work from my third child's nursery school: "Your son is making play weapons at school - light sabers, swords and shields. These are not appropriate for nursery school play. Please work with him to understand that these are not ok toys."

This is my third child, and second boy so I've been through this before. When my older son was in pre-school, one teacher told me his George Washington picture book was verboten -- he shouldn't bring this book to school because stories of war were not welcome in the classroom. (How this teacher explained why we're no longer a British colony, I just don't know.)

At our house, we've developed a pretty good arsenal. Sword fighting is a daily occurrence, as is wrestling, light saber fighting and even nerf guns. The kids love them, and all of the research I have done indicates that there is no harm in allowing these to be used in a "nice" way. Some of the research even shows that boys get demoralized when they are told that the toys they enjoy for their make believe play are "bad".

I am far more worried about girl cattiness in nursery school than I am boy make-believe weapon play. Those little boys who make guns out of bread: they seem to become CEOs of companies. Watching my older son play with water shooters in the pool with 10 other young boys shows me that they are learning to work together, form teams, develop strategy and importantly, have a really good time with each other. These are skills that should serve them well going forward. What types of activities do young girls do that work on these same skills?

I think schools should spend less energy criticizing boy play, and more energy helping girls to learn to participate. I would love my daughter to participate in sword fights with her friends, like my son does on play dates, rather than do art projects. I think it would be wonderful to watch a group of neighborhood girls stage a large water pistol engagement, rather than sit by the pool and chat. I believe these interactions help boys learn to relate to each other in a way that enables their success later on. I certainly wish I had learned to spar in sword fights - this could have been very useful in my first few years working in the corporate world.

By Joanna Strober

Find Happiness in Strong Moments, not Balance

As an uncoordinated person, the word “balance” makes me uneasy -- I envision standing on one foot and falling over.

This week, The Huffington Post says that if we want more happiness we should stop striving for balance and seek something else instead: "Strong moments” -- those great surges of positive emotion when you hug your kid, make your spouse smile, have an epiphany, win one at work.

This is a great antidote to the unhelpful idea that more choice is making women less happy (raised most recently by Maureen Dowd). What is making women less happy is a failure to say NO to some of those choices. To say “I do not want to do that” and cross the undesirables off the schedule. See our BlogHer video for more.

We women need to grasp what men seem understand more naturally - that’s it’s really better for everyone if we are honest with ourselves. That it’s OK to say: “Of the 5 things my kids want to do, I like to do 2 -- the other 3 drive me nuts,” and then act on that realization and do the 2 you like knowing your genuine enjoyment is good for your kids. Or, “I have 6 meetings on my schedule next week. How many really make a difference? How many can I decline?”

Researching Getting to 50/50, we read fascinating research that says even today's thoroughly modern women lack the same sense of “entitlement” that men have. Women do not feel as entitled to do what we want and to say what matters (e.g. that conference/trip/fundraiser is a complete waste of time).

Carmen, a mother and doctor at a big university hospital told us how she struggled for years to find a mix of work and family that made her happy. Cutting her time at work didn’t help if it meant that Carmen’s average hour at the office was more dreary. So she negotiated with her boss and rearranged her job - to spend more time on patients who needed her skill set and less on work she felt did not matter. With more strong moments in her work day, “I’ve been so happy” Carmen told us.

Jennifer Aaker, a professor at Standford’s Graduate School of Business, is doing great work on the nature of happiness and the many ways we define it -- and can cultivate more of it. Aaker points out that how you perceive your access to free time is a big issue in whether you report feeling happy.

How to expand your free time - actual or perceived? Believing that your spouse has your back helps a lot, sensing that if you can’t get to X or Y, you can count on your partner.

And so does what Aaker calls “filtering.” Sifting through the day and looking for “doubles, triples and home-runs” -- activities that let you simultaneously engage two or more priorities in your life: Jogging with your spouse, community work that welcomes the whole family, colleagues who do playdates.

So I’m looking for a parent-child yoga class in hopes of getting limber and engaging my daughter’s love of the tree pose -- she’s better at “balance”.

By Sharon Meers

Sex, Love and Labor Statistics

On NPR this week, I was asked if there’s any good in the new statistics showing that women now outnumber men in the work force. Maybe. If it lets us embrace women as breadwinners, I said, that would be healthy. Even healthier: If men do their part at home and free women to keep the kinds of jobs that pay well. Listen

But, like many things, this all comes down to love and sex. Some people get uneasy when women make more money and men do more childcare. Why is that? I’m guessing it’s the same reason that, until we wrote our book, I’d never heard these two facts:

1) Growing your earnings power helps you get -- and stay -- married if you are a woman.

2) When husbands do more at home, couples have more sex.

(For details on point #2, see http://gettingto5050.com/book.htm)

Let’s shake off our male-female identity angst so we weather the downturn more happily and set up for a better future.

Two career bets are safer than one. Dual-career men and women can each be more agile, less vulnerable members of the labor force. A wife who can keep the family afloat gives a downsized husband better options – to find the right next job, change careers, start his own business.

And when a man values his wife's career, he’s more willing to step up and do his part at ho, me. When a mom values her husband as an equally qualified parent, she’s more likely to step aside and let him do things his own way (and dad’s more apt to enjoy parenting).

We need to move from women having more jobs to women having better jobs – because female earnings matter to families not just in a recession but in the recovery too.

We’re fooling ourselves if we think we have free labor markets when “girl-jobs” (less pay, some time for kids) and “boy jobs” (more pay, no time for kids) persist. We’ll all enjoy more prosperity when the best person for the job can both win the post and keep it -- whether man or woman, dad or mom.

By Sharon Meers