Thanks for the link. I think it's kind of strange that they start out talking about women, but then most of the data is about mothers. Women without kids (and women with grown kids) work too, and presumably they were included in the original "what if" thread, given that it didn't specify "mothers." Also: it makes me completely furious that they're using the phrase "children raised in daycare centers." Last I checked, unless we're talking about orphanages, children are raised in families who use daycare centers for childcare.

We're also denying women access to education? :glare: Something I left out of my original assessment: The divorce rate would plummet, not because marriages are happier but because women can't afford to leave. Many women who are being abused, or whose kids are being abused, wind up staying in the abusive situation because they can't support themselves if they leave. (It's safer to keep your kids in an abusive household than it used to be, because remember? No more social workers.) Their kids grow up thinking it's normal for a man to hit a woman, or for a married couple to have screaming fights all the time, or for a married couple to barely speak at all. Some women are able to get out of a bad marriage by latching on to a different male provider, but the odds are they won't be taking their kids with them.

:D Go right ahead.

Thanks! I'm a research psychologist.

The GDP would plummet. The US would drop many immigration barriers in a desperate attempt to prop up the economy and fill huge gaps in the workforce. Tax revenues plunge at the same time that there is a massive increase in the need for public assistance. Female-headed families become hungry and homeless in droves, and unfortunately there are very few social workers or professionally-run charities to assist them because the women who dominate those professions have all gone home. Your husband will almost certainly get a big raise, but he'll also almost certainly be pressured to put in 80-hour weeks as his company tries to function with so many fewer workers. Don't expect to see him much. Don't expect his increased wage to improve your family's standard of living, either - in such a dramatic labor shortage, wages for jobs like supermarket checker and gas station attendant will have to go through the roof if those positions are to be filled, and so the prices of basic goods and services will skyrocket. Lots of US jobs will simply move overseas where there is plenty of cheap labor. Hospitals are plunged into chaos with virtually no nurses; all elective procedures and routine care will need to be canceled while nursing training programs are hastily set up to train some of the new male immigrants in nursing. The death rate for hospital patients soars. Because things like mammograms, Pap smears, and colonoscopies are halted due to the need to prioritize on emergency medical services, the cancer rate climbs. If you have a relative in the hospital, be prepared to go and stay with that person yourself 24/7 to provide personal care, prepare and serve meals, administer meds according to the doctor's instructions, etc. If you need to go into the hospital and don't have someone able to sit with you, I hope you survive. There are no more midwives. Your options: unassisted childbirth at home or a virtually unattended (no L&D nurses) hospital birth in a criminally understaffed facility. Maternal and neonatal death rates soar. At first it seems that elementary schools will have to close, but then they triple or quadruple class sizes so that male middle school and high school teachers can be spread out to cover all the grades. Parent volunteers fill in as best they can. Special needs students suffer the most; the vast majority of OTs, speech therapists, etc. are women, and those aren't jobs that can be taken over by volunteers. By the time everything shakes out and we return to some degree of economic stability, 30% of American workers are permanent residents or new citizens born in a foreign country. The huge influx of immigrants is hard to assimilate; they're so critically needed that they must be welcomed, but U.S. culture returns to the atmosphere of New York City in 1900. Language barriers and lack of experience continue to depress the economy. There are nurses in the hospitals again, but they only speak rudimentary English and most of them are brand new. So the death rate doesn't exactly go back down again. And, by the way: women who wanted to work and/or needed to work will not universally find joy in being a stay-at-home wife and mother. Especially not given the increased economic stress caused by soaring prices and the increased workload caused by the scarcity of service workers. "Just for fun?" It would be a social and economic nightmare. An utter nightmare.

Useless? Useless?! Take a look at this photo caption and tell me the Oxford comma is useless: http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/012652.html#012652 (For those who don't care to click through, it's a picture of Merle Haggard captioned: "The documentary was filmed over two years. Among those interviewed were his two ex-wives, Kris Kristofferson and Robert Duvall.")

For much of my marriage, if I wanted a birthday cake I had to make it myself. A couple of years ago I thought about how long it would be before my daughter was old enough to make one, and then I sat my husband down and said, "You have an engineering degree. You are fully capable of following the directions on the back of a cake mix box." And hey! It turned out he was! He gets totally nervous about it, but once a year he makes me a cake. (And the questions he asks are really funny.) Do you make your own cake? Does it matter to you if you have to make your own cake or not? Just curious.

We had New Orleans barbecued shrimp, which aren't so much "barbecued" as they are baked in a rich, buttery, spicy sauce. They are wonderful. On the side I served a sliced-up baguette (to soak up the sauce) and a salad with red leaf lettuce, cucumbers, red peppers, and carrots.

I do something very similar, but without the oil. I make a sort of paste of garlic, rosemary, and kosher salt, rub it into the meat, and roast at 375 for about 40 minutes a pound. This is a big favorite at our house.

Remember the three little words that mean so much: "You were right."

Yep. Their post history is... illuminating.

Why hello there, OP. I see from your post history that you rarely waste time in threads that aren't incredibly contentious. How's the homeschooling going?

I believe my direct quote was, "Hey, you're off the hook for ideas for my birthday. Cryoburn is out and so is All Clear." The problem is the WAITING. If I ask him to give me my present early, my 5yo is absolutely going to notice and remember.

Lois McMaster Bujold's new book Cryoburn is out. I've been waiting for the next book in this series for eight years. Connie Willis's new book All Clear is out. It's the sequel to Blackout, which was fantastic and which ended on a cliffhanger. My birthday is on Tuesday. My husband knows how much I want to read these books. There's no way I can legitimately buy them for myself four days before my birthday. HOW am I going to make it until Tuesday?! Knowing that these books are out there, calling to me from the Barnes & Noble that is even within walking distance of our house, begging me to read them? Please send help.

:iagree:It's never too early to start teaching this lesson. It's awesome that they love her so much - so how does *she* want them to express that love?

My kids are adored by the staff at our neighborhood sushi bar. I haven't let the 20-month-old try raw fish yet, but he scarfs down salmon eggs (ikura) like there's no tomorrow. The 5-year-old eats everything we let her have, raw or not, and is waiting for her 6th birthday, when I'll rescind my "nothing on the high-mercury list" rule. (I'm waiting for the 20-month-old to wean, so that I can eat from the high-mercury list too!)

I like Vicks Vapo Steam in a hot-mist vaporizer. It really seems to help with night time coughing. So does elevating the head of the bed. But given what you describe, I'd consider a trip to the doctor. This sounds severe enough to be worth a check - she might need to be prescribed a nebulizer.

As far as I can tell, it has to do with the idea of precedence. At the time, there were elaborate rules about who should be introduced to whom (always present a younger person to an older, a man to a woman, etc.), who should have the best place at the table and be served first, who should be the first to acknowledge another if they met in the street, even who should go first through a doorway. The whole social structure was set up so that you knew where you belonged in the hierarchy of courtesy. Have you read Pride and Prejudice? When Lydia Bennett comes home after her elopement and forced marriage, and they're getting ready to sit down at table, she tells Jane "I must take your place now, because I am a married woman." Jane used to have the most honored place among the daughters because she was the eldest, and now Lydia claims it because the hierarchy placed a married daughter (especially a new bride) above a single one. The order mattered, and was a very serious thing. So when Washington says: "If anyone far surpasses others, either in age, estate, or merit, yet would give place to a meaner than himself in his own lodging or elsewhere, the one ought not to except it. So he on the other part should not use much earnestness nor offer it above once or twice." "Give place" means "give precedence." He means that if there is someone who would normally be the obvious receipient of the best place, and he offers it to a "lesser" person because that person is a guest in his home, or out of courtesy in some other setting, that person should not accept the best place/treatment. So, for example, picture a father and his teenaged daughter visiting their wealthy, dignified, and distinguished elderly grandmother. The grandmother says to the granddaughter, "Dear, you take the seat closest to the fire and go in first to dinner, because you're my guest." Washington is saying that the granddaughter ought properly to say "Oh no, Grandmama, I wouldn't dream of taking your place." And Grandmama ought not to push the issue. It isn't anything about accepting gifts or other things from an older person. It's about accepting precedence, which is hard for most of us to get because we live in such an equalitarian society.

Oh, yeah! Thank heavens for OWL. My husband and I are co-teachers for the grade 7-9 class, so we've had plenty of opportunity explaining things to kids of the opposite sex. Although I'm sure our own kids will feel different. My parents gave us booklets called "A Doctor Talks to Five- to Eight-Year-Olds" and "A Doctor Talks to Nine- to Twelve-Year-Olds." They were exactly like they sound like they would be: extremely clear and biological, with no information whatsoever on emotions or decision-making. My parents also did a great job of covering... the biology. I love that OWL puts equal weight on the physical, the emotional, the relational, and the ethical/justice aspects of sex.

:iagree: How nice that I don't have to type out a whole post, since Farrar did it for me.

The "products" part of the discussion reminds me of my older brother calling me on his cell phone from the drugstore aisle, right after his first child was born. He'd been sent out to buy postpartum supplies, had NO IDEA what to get, and I guess didn't want to admit it in front of his wife and in-laws. I'm not a fan of having a Big Talk; I'd rather introduce the information bit by bit over time, as it comes up in context or conversation. If I do at some point decide that I need to sit my daughter down for a Big Talk to ensure that everything has been covered, then yes, I would certainly want my husband to be there too. He's a very involved, hands-on father, and I don't want to give either him or her the impression that that should end when she hits puberty.

My Tennessee husband told me that you can say absolutely anything about a person, no matter how awful, as long as you either precede or follow it with "bless your heart." I have not yet had the guts to try this out on my MIL.

Laurie Keller's Scrambled States of America had the same effect on my five year old. Not only did she learn all the states, she developed strong opinions about their personalities.

We skipped Reception here, and so far no earthquakes or plagues of locusts.

:iagree:Follow-up questions wouldn't bother me. A follow-up attempt to convert me would, but it doesn't sound like you're planning to go in that direction.