Czech, Please

The background one needs for this joke is:

1) Mrs. G's first name is Susan; and

2) The Gruntleds still haven't forgiven Neville Chamberlain for selling out Czechoslovakia.

I sent this message to our eldest daughter:

"I am going to take Mom to the Czech Republic. They have the best Sue datin' land."


I cc'ed Mrs. G., and waited for her to open email. I knew she had opened this message when a belly laugh emanated from her corner of the bedroom.

She forwarded the message to her relatives.

Daughter #1 replied: "Feel the inter-state GROAN. Don't just hear it, FEEL it."

My father-in-law replied: "Very possibly the worst pun I have ever heard or read (or smelled)."

Older Fathers Increase the Risk of Autistic Kids

A new large-scale study in California found that father's age, more than mother's age, increases the risk of having an autistic child. The core finding:

The new study suggested that when the father was over 40 and the mother under 30, the increased risk was especially pronounced — 59 percent greater than for younger men.

Why Men Are More Likely to Do the Driving

Eric Morris wrote a Freakonomics blogpost about why men are more likely to drive when a couple travels together. It drew such a disparate and impassioned response that he wrote another. The core finding is this:

The 2001 National Household Transportation Survey ... showed that, on a typical day, when household members shared a car men were more than three times more likely to be the driver as opposed to a passenger.

This an issue in our family. There are three female drivers in the Gruntled family now, and they all almost always prefer that I drive. I always ask Mrs. G. (we were trained as '70s feminists in gender power, after all) and she almost always asks me to drive.

I can think of two reasons for the gender imbalance in who drives, both well rooted in sex differences.

First, men as a group find spatial problems easier to solve. So if we are taking a trip that might include parallel parking, the ladies in our family would rather that I handled it. This varies quite a bit from individual to individual, so your mileage may vary. Still, the sex difference in handling spacial issues is well-attested, so it should show up as a tipping factor in some driving decisions.

Second, women like to look at their conversation partner when talking, whereas men often do not. If she is driving and talking to him, she may often turn to look at him to see his reactions. Taking her eye off the road while driving is scary to both of them. On the other hand, if he is driving and talking to her, she can look at his face without danger, while he will be much less tempted to swivel to look at her at each turn in the dialogue.

Centre Seminars: Coffee Houses, Part 1 and 2

Centre College has launched a web seminar series. This gives me another chance to talk about coffee houses and public life. The first two episodes have been posted on YouTube. I am pleased to share them.

The Tebow Ad Was Charming

The Super Bowl ad that succeeded in getting the most publicity was the Focus on the Family spot with college football star Tim Tebow and his mother. Pam Tebow was a missionary in the Philippines when she was pregnant with the Tebow's fifth child. She was so ill from a tropical disease and the treatment for it that doctors told her to have an abortion. Pam and her husband rejected that option. After a difficult pregnancy, they had their "miracle baby," who has gone on to obviously glowing health. At the end of the ad, Tim Tebow humorously tackles his mother, which lets her say, smiling, "you gotta be tough."

I can't find a direct link to the ad, but if you go to the Focus on the Family site and click on "The Tebow Story," a link to "Watch the Tebow spots" will appear immediately.

The actual ad that they made is charming. It is very low key. It says nothing about abortion, or even the medical difficulty that Pam Tebow and her family went through.

The controversy, though seems to have brought out the irrational in some people. Before the ad aired, tens of thousands of emails were solicited objecting to it, by people who had not seen it. Terry O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women, went so far as to say that "I am blown away at the celebration of the violence against women in it." Alterian SM2, a company that tracks social media content about Super Bowl ads, said that before the ad aired, negative comments far outweighed positive. After people had actually seen the ad, though, most people liked it.

Responsible Fathers in Super Bowl Ads

The ads in the Super Bowl had a strong discourse about masculinity for married fathers. Some, such as the Dodge Charger ad, saw marriage and fatherhood as an imposition - worthwhile, but making a man deserving of masculine compensation in the form of a muscle car.

Others, though, took a more positive view of marriage and fatherhood, more as a challenging adventure. The Google ad, "Parisian Love," did this cleverly, through a series of queries that implied the life course of a man from pre-courtship to wedding and child.

My favorite ad was for Dove. The galloping romp through a man's life from boyhood to responsible, happy marriage and fatherhood is charming. I was particularly interested to note that they suggest having three kids, rather than the customary two of earlier ads. And the conclusion is that married fatherhood is not an imposition, but a great life.

I personally am not interested in the product, but I like this development in the Zeitgeist.

Beyond Rebuilding 4

Reply to "Overcoming the Presbyterian Power Trap: Toward an Authentic Multicultural Witness in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)" by J. Herbert Nelson II.

This is the fourth in a series of responses to the five articles in Beyond Rebuilding, which were written in answer to my Rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment.

Like Rev. Nelson I want the leadership of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to be made of men and women drawn from all the classes, ethnicities, and cultural groups of America. I have every confidence that if the church seeks leaders who are faithful, loyal, and thoughtful Presbyterians, such a mixture will naturally emerge. We may differ on whether that is happening fast enough, and on whether the season of affirmative action is still needed, or whether the need has passed.

On a larger question, though, I think Rev. Nelson and I may disagree. Neither of us wrote specifically enough in our short essays to settle the point, so I don't want to be too definitive here. I would welcome further dialogue on these points.

I agree with Rev. Nelson that the leadership of the church should have a multicultural background. I do not agree that what the church should be seeking is a multicultural future. The church, like any viable institution, has and constantly recreates its own culture. The culture of the Presbyterian Church should be Presbyterian. This has a definite meaning for our polity, as the name presbyterian suggests. It also has a strong foundation, and is supposed to have clear limits, in our confessional constitution. The Presbyterian Establishment should be able to bring in people from all backgrounds and shape them into Presbyterians.

The content of Presbyterian culture is not rigid or fixed, as the church's changed culture about women in leadership and racial exclusion shows. Leading the discussion about whether and how to change while still being true to the theological convictions of the church is what an establishment is for. But I contend that the aim of a Presbyterian establishment is not to produce a multicultural witness, but to be a group with a multicultural background that gives a Presbyterian witness.

Doppleganger

It was doppleganger week on Facebook recently. I remarked that I couldn't think of a famous person I looked like. This prompted some helpful suggestions.

Several suggested actor Victor French, best known as Mr. Edwards on "Little House on the Prairie."

Ulysses S. Grant got a vote, representing the greatest age of beards in U.S. history.

A sociologically informed friend suggested a young Max Weber (though I think I have a shaky claim on looking like the "young" anything).

One friend made the wonderful suggestion of "santa, pre-realization of true calling."

Finally, we come to Mrs. G.'s suggestion:

What Do Republicans Believe About Sex Roles?

The Daily Kos commissioned a poll by non-partisan independent pollster Research 2000 of over 2,000 self-identified Republicans.

On the whole, these are quite conservative people. Take, for example, these answers:

Should same-sex couples be allowed to marry? No 77%

Do you consider abortion to be murder? Yes 76%

Should contraceptive use be outlawed? Yes 31%

Do you you believe that the only way for an individual to go to heaven is through Jesus Christ, or can one make it to heaven through another faith? Christ 67%


So it was particularly interesting to me to see the answers to these questions about men's and women's roles. The questions were

Should women work outside the home?

Are marriages equal partnerships, or are men the leaders of their households?

What do you think this group of Republicans will say?



Should women work outside the home? Yes 86%

Are marriages equal partnerships, or are men the leaders of their households? Equal 76%

I believe these core objectives of seventies feminism have been achieved.

The Internet vs. the Second Shift

Virginia Heffernan makes a semi-serious claim in the New York Times Magazine that women have benefited more than men from telecommuting. She says that the WAHM - work-at-home mom - is the most valuable of all the motherhood and (or vs.) career options. She even offers telecommuting as a cure for the second shift. The internet is the real technological development that saved women from being tied to the home, because it lets them work from it.

"Marriage Benefit Imbalance" - Beating a Horse that Refuses to Die

Elizabeth Gilbert wrote a successful book justifying her divorce, Eat, Pray, Love. Having written about how terrible marriage is for women, she had to write a new book, Committed, to justify her second marriage. Family scholars have been worked up about this book because Gilbert claims that sociologists take as a fact “the ‘Marriage Benefit Imbalance’—a tidy name for an almost freakishly doleful conclusion: that women generally lose in the exchange of marriage vows, while men win big.”

Not true. Family sociologists now show the many ways that marriage benefits women as well as men. Gilbert reaches back to some of the most discredited findings in family sociology to support her conclusion. She cites Jesse Bernard's claim that marriage makes women depressed in the book Bernard wrote to justify her divorce.

What is most striking to me about Gilbert's ambition in her new book is that she misses the main point of marriage as a social institution: to protect and raise children.

90% Egg Loss By 30

A new British study found that, on average, women had lost about 90% of their egg-producing capacity by 30, and had lost about 97% by age 40.

This is in addition to earlier findings that the remaining eggs are more likely to be damaged the older they are.

A Decent Case for Orphanages

Richard McKenzie makes a pretty good case for orphanages in the Wall Street Journal. He does, though, mix together the dire need in Africa, where there are many actual orphans, with the case of American foster children, few of whom have actually lost both parents.

There are half a million children in foster care in the U.S. I think some tens of thousands of them could be better served by a permanent home in an orphanage than in a series of temporary foster placements.

Beyond Rebuilding 3

Reply to "Rebuilding - Or Building Up? An Alternative View of the Church and Its Future" by Cynthia Holder Rich.

This is the third in a series of responses to the five articles in Beyond Rebuilding, which were written in answer to my Rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment.

Prof. Rich approaches my argument through empirical research on assessment, which I appreciate. She considers E. Digby Baltzell's account of how an establishment assimilates talented outsiders as the just way to build up and renew the leadership of society, which is foundational to my analysis. (She puts a [sic] after "assimilation" for reasons not clear to me - if you read this Prof. Rich I would welcome a clarification). She cites the evangelization of Madagascar as an example of the bad things that can happen for a church that seeks to include only the powerful. I applaud and agree with all of these elements of Prof. Rich's argument.

I think she errs, though, in thinking that I am arguing that the leadership of the Presbyterian Church should include only the powerful. She writes "But being in power (or to use Weston's term, authority) ... raises issues when we try to follow Jesus." Power is not the same as authority.

The leadership of the Presbyterian Church has so little power to make anyone do anything that the idea is chucklesome. But we do recognize that some people have natural gifts for leadership because they understand what would build up the church and the world, they have the energy and dedication to turn that understanding into reality, and they teach with authority. That is why we follow them. That is why in a well-functioning organization, we draw them into positions with bigger responsibilities, broader scope, and larger numbers of people they are responsible for leading. In order to compensate for the demands of these bigger jobs, we pay them somewhat more, we give them what little power there is in a voluntary organization, and, most especially, we pay them with honor.

One of the ways that Presbyterian Church leaders do the work of building up the church is by drawing people to their congregations. That is a by-product of their authority. They have no power to make anyone come to church. A well-functioning denomination would honor and reward leaders capable of building up little congregations into big ones. And big congregations would be smart to call people who had shown a capacity to lead large, complex congregations. A well-functioning denomination would draw upon the skills of those who lead large congregations to be among the leaders of the even larger and more complex bodies of the church. The leaders of large congregations would not, of course, be the only leaders of the denomination, but they do form a natural body of the people most likely to have the relevant skills.

Prof. Rich cites studies of successful racial-ethnic congregations as producing leaders different from those found in the establishment of 50 years ago. My point, and Baltzell's, is that a smart denomination would include the leaders of the most successful of those congregations in the establishment of the entire denomination. It does the denomination no good, and it certainly does those successful leaders no good, to dismantle the establishment.

Prof. Rich rightly notes that authority is a snare to pride. She claims to "speak 'as one without authority.'" Yet she backs her claims with her experience as a seminary professor and her mastery of relevant research. That is a claim of authority. She has a vision for the church. Asking others to follow that vision is also a claim of authority. Authority is not an oppressive thing. Authority is a tool that any institution needs if it is going to do its job. And any large organization - a denomination of millions of people - needs an established body of authoritative leaders working together if it is going to do its job. A Presbyterian Establishment includes all the authoritative leaders who are good at doing the job of the Presbyterian Church.

Puddle

Snowy Saturdays need a bit of wholesome charm. This comes from one of my favorite gruntled sites, It Made My Day:

All the Mom’s were forcing their kids around the big puddle in front of the playground. One mom led her son right into the middle and they both started jumping up and down and splashing each other. IMMD

Tories Are Right: Marriage is What Makes for Stability

The British Conservative Party has proposed pro-marriage tax breaks, like those used in other European countries. The Labour Party says it is not marriage that makes for family stability, so no such breaks are needed.

New research on British families, though, shows clearly that marriage itself is the key factor in family stability. One new headline number: of cohabiting couples with children, only 3% are still together when the child is 15.

Educated and Uneducated Women Want the Same Number of Children, But Uneducated Have More Unintended Kids

Less educated women have more kids than more educated women do. A standard explanation is that less educated women want more kids, or that they would have a lower cost in lost opportunities to do other things if they did have kids.

Kelly Musick and colleagues report in the current Social Forces that both groups of women want the same number of children. However, educated women are better at sticking to their plans. The less education a woman has, the more likely she is to have unintended pregnancies.

The sociologists distinguish among intended, mistimed, and unwanted pregnancies. Mistimed means "I wanted to get pregnant in the future, but not when I did get pregnant"; unwanted means "I did not want to get pregnant at all, but I did." Both of the latter are "unintended."

The core finding is this:

What education mainly deters is unintended births. ... The least educated white women are predicted to have .86 times as many intended, 3.02 times as many mistimed, and 6.68 times as many unwanted births as their counterparts who have graduated from college. [The comparable numbers for black women are 1.36, 1.69, and 7.33]

Dating By Contrasting DNA

A new dating service uses your DNA to find potential mates with contrasting immune systems. People with contrasting immune systems find themselves mysteriously attracted to one another.

The contrast is useful for your potential children.

The obvious next test: to see if contrasting immune system matches and eHarmony, etc., personality matches coincide.

Leaders Choose Themselves

I have written about how leaders for the Presbyterian Church can form an establishment, which can be a great resource for the whole denomination. This has led some critics to say that when nominating committees choose leaders, they should not choose powerful people, but a representative group. Which led me to clarify a thought: leaders are not chosen; leaders choose themselves.

Max Weber devotes much fruitful thought to how a charismatic leader draws a following. The followers see a special quality in the leader. Weber says science cannot tell whether the special quality is really in the person, or is in the followers. In either case, leaders are not chosen because they are already powerful, influential, or authoritative. Leaders acquire power, influence, and authority because others follow them.

The crucial issue, then, is what potential leaders actually do that makes them worthy of following - or not. Leaders lead. If others follow, then that is what makes them leaders. If no one follows, then in the great market of authority, they failed to find their market.

Which leads to a further thought. The idea that leaders are chosen because they have been good members of the group - that they are leaders because a nominating committee elevated them for past service to the group - strikes me as a feminine way of thinking about what leadership is. The leader is the servant who is lifted up for doing what the group already does. My idea of leadership, therefore, seems to me more masculine: the leader is the one who has a vision of what new thing the group needs to do.

When I think of it that way, every organization needs both kinds of leaders.

Beyond Rebuilding 2

Reply to "What Can the Presbyterian Church Do to Turn Around Its Long Decline?" by Rev. Carol Howard Merritt

This is the second in a series of responses to the five articles in Beyond Rebuilding, which were written in answer to my Rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment.

My primary focus is rebuilding a structure of authority within the church so that we can actually solve some of the denomination’s endemic conflicts. The main job of an establishment is to articulate a coherent vision for the whole organization and stick relentlessly to the practical steps needed to realize it. After more than a generation of drift and decline, the Presbyterian Church (USA) has forgotten that problems actually can be solved, and that healthy organizations grow.

Carol Merritt approaches the problem of decline in the PC (USA) as a pastor, which is appropriate; that is her job. She wants to evangelize young people and build new churches, with which I entirely agree. She wants to focus on choosing leaders in her congregation who are an ethnically diverse group of young men and women interested in spiritual traditions and social justice ministries. This is the niche of Western Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC, of which she is the pastor. I think her approach is a sensible strategy for her congregation.

I do not think it is a sensible strategy for the entire denomination.

Merritt takes it for granted that the niche of the entire Presbyterian Church is to draw people like her - “writing as a woman who grew up a conservative Baptist and converted to Presbyterianism.” Her strategy for contextual evangelism is “in this particular time we can especially minister to those who are leaving politically conservative evangelical megachurches.”

Yet when we look at the entire denomination, the politically conservative evangelical churches, mega- or wishing to be mega-, have been the main sources of growth in the whole denomination. We have been driving out evangelicals – that is, people who actually evangelize – faster than we have been growing them. In the past decade, we have been driving out entire congregations of evangelicals and conservative proponents of Reformed spiritual traditions.

The core of Generation X, who count as “young” in the PC (USA) though some are now in their 40s, are famously concerned with rebuilding basic institutions, most especially strong marriages and strong families. Churches that have approached social justice by promoting strong marriages and clear standards of childrearing have been the most successful at evangelizing the younger generations. This includes churches that encourage people to have more children, a strategy Merritt dismisses as unrealistic.

The way we find leaders for the whole denomination is not simply like finding committee members in a local church. The establishment is not a bureaucratic structure that a nominating committee chooses. An establishment is not made by choosing “those with the most authority, influence, and power in our society.” An establishment is not chosen at all. An establishment, if there is to be one, comes from the people of the denomination recognizing the influence, granting the power, and accepting the authority of those in the church who have made themselves its best leaders and most effective guides. The problem for the church is finding such leaders and not hampering them with counter-productive bureaucratic structures.