Sunday, August 30, 2020

Why Don't I Want to Put My Baby Boy in a Dress?

A baby-sized pink dress. Image source.

Wrote this when I was 24 weeks pregnant


In a previous post I talked about how in China they're not allowed to tell us the baby's gender until the baby is born. But I also heard that most international hospitals will tell you anyway. And then Hendrix and I went for our 2nd-trimester anatomy scan ultrasound and there was, ahem, some STRONG HINTING that it's a boy.

I'm convinced it's a boy. Hendrix, on the other hand, lacks confidence in our ability to correctly interpret the strong hinting, and insists we "don't know" what kind of genitals our baby has. At any rate, I'm committed to not telling anyone anyway. As I said in my previous post about the baby's gender, I'm really uncomfortable with people putting all these gendered expectations on my child before they're even born. Let them wait until the birth, and then they can bring their inevitable gendered expectations.

So anyway. One fun thing that happens when you're pregnant is people give you all kinds of baby clothes. So I'm looking through this huge pile of baby clothes that friends gave me, and there are a few dresses. Super frilly pink and purple dresses. And my feelings are "uh it's too bad we can't use this because our baby is a boy" and then "okay why do I think boys can't wear dresses, isn't that a bunch of patriarchal bullshit? what's wrong with me?"

Sooooo ... like how should I think about this?

Well let's back up and talk about baby clothes as a concept. This seems to be an entirely different thing than non-baby clothes. Because the baby isn't able to make choices about what they want to wear. They don't "want" anything; they don't have preferences about their clothes. They just need to be not hot or cold or too tight or scratching their skin. But babies don't know or care about the cultural significance of different colors or patterns or whatever. They don't know about gender or gender expression.

So really, baby clothes have nothing to do with the baby's preferences. Instead, it's the parents' preferences. Which makes this such a fundamentally different thing than what clothes mean for everyone else. For anyone over the age of, uh, 3 maybe (???), they choose their own clothes as a way of expressing their personality- and that includes gender expression. But babies don't.

Furthermore, it seems like the gendering of baby clothes is mostly a way for the parent to communicate to other people what their baby's gender is. Because newborn boys and girls look the same. You can't tell their gender from looking at their face or how long their hair is or anything like that. I think this must be the explanation for why baby clothes in stores are so extremely gendered. I was in the US for a bit during the first trimester and when I went to shop for baby clothes I was just *shocked* at how over-the-top it was ... like everything "for girls" was obnoxiously pink and said "daddy's little princess" ...

But it must be because baby boys and girls look the same, and people get nervous if they can't tell what some random stranger's gender is, so therefore you have to make it really really obvious with your baby's clothing.

I, of course, think the whole thing is ridiculous. And I don't care if people think my baby is a girl, when he's really a boy... like, Baby doesn't understand gender, so why does it matter?

But. Does that mean I'm gonna put him in a dress? ... It really bothers me that I'll have to make decisions for him about his gender expression.

Gender is a social construct. What that means in this case is that the idea "boys can't wear dresses" is a cultural norm with no absolute objective reason why it "must" be true. If you look at different cultures around the world or different time periods in history, there are examples where men wore clothes that we might call "dresses," and everyone thought it was completely normal. So I might argue that in an ideal world, nobody would think it was weird for a boy to wear a dress, and therefore I'm totally gonna have my baby boy wear dresses sometimes.

But no. It's a social construct, but it's still very real. If my little boy wears a dress, and then people tell him he's doing something wrong, their criticism is real and his feelings about that are real. (This would not be when he's a baby; this would be when he's old enough to understand that people are criticizing him.) In an ideal world, people should accept it, but we're not in an ideal world, and we have to acknowledge that reality and manage it in practical ways.

Like how a woman might tell a creepy guy "I have a boyfriend" even if she doesn't have a boyfriend, in order to get him to leave her alone. In an ideal world, he should leave her alone simply because she has the right to be left alone if she wants, but that's not the world we live in. It sucks, but sometimes you have to invent an imaginary man, for your own safety.

And so I don't want to put my boy in a dress. Of course, if he says he wants to wear a dress, then I support that 100%. But if he doesn't state any preference- or maybe when he's too little to care- then I don't think I'll put him in the dress. Because yes, people *should* accept it if a boy wears a dress, and people *shouldn't* make fun of him, but that's not the world we live in. To even understand what's happening, my baby would need a whole lot of cultural and historical background information. He would need to understand why "gender is a social construct." I can't just throw him into that if he's not able to understand it. All he'll know is "Mommy is a feminist and now people are mocking me and it feels bad"- and those feelings are real and I care about that. So if he doesn't state a preference, then I won't put him in a dress.

I guess? I mean, if he's only like 1 month old then he doesn't care.

I'm thinking about when I was a little kid, and adults would tell me "it's great to see a girl winning awards in math" and I hated that. I was good at math because I'm good at math, and it has nothing to do with gender. Now that I'm an adult and a feminist and a woman working as an engineer, I understand where they were coming from when they said that, but as a little kid I didn't have any of the historical background information to understand it. As a little kid I didn't experience sexism in that way; my parents and teachers encouraged me to follow my interests in math and science, this felt completely normal and natural to me, and it bothered me so much when people would bring up gender, as if there was something *weird* about girls being good at math and science.

My point is, as adults we take for granted that everyone knows society has certain opinions and values, and then we communicate our own opinions and values by using those societal norms as a reference point when we state what we believe. But little kids are too young to even know what the societal norm is- because it's not obvious or objectively true. It's a social construct. You need years of experience living in the culture in order to understand it- and then you end up internalizing it without ever realizing it doesn't have to be this way. So when we tell kids "I think XYZ" what we're really saying is "I don't agree with societal norm ABC and instead I believe XYZ." And for a kid who isn't even familiar with societal norm ABC, it sounds completely bizarre for someone just to come out of nowhere and be like "I think XYZ."

It's like if I, an American living in China, told Chinese people "Here are a bunch of reasons I'm really glad I didn't change my last name when I got married." In China, there's no tradition about women changing their last name when they get married. It just doesn't exist, and people don't think about it, and it would come across as really odd for me to have so many *feelings* about *not* changing my name, because why on earth would someone change their name anyway?

(I'm trying to figure out how to teach my kid- who, by the way, is mixed-race and will grow up as an immigrant no matter where we live- what a cultural norm is, meanwhile conservatives seem to think it's impossible to explain to their kids that gay people exist...)

So back to the question of dresses... My current thinking is that, when my kid is old enough to have preferences about clothes, I can take him shopping and we'll go to the "boys" section first, because I guess he would want to wear stuff similar to other boys. But also I'll tell him we can totally look in the "girls" section too. Really there's no such thing as "boys clothes" and "girls clothes." The store labels them that way, but that's just their opinion; it doesn't mean you have to follow it. Wear whatever you want.

But honestly, the issue of "yes, boys CAN wear dresses" is probably not that important in terms of how I raise this kid. He can live his whole life never wearing a dress and never wearing anything from the "girls" section, and there wouldn't be anything harmful about that at all. (Though I do think it's important that men are educated enough about women's clothes to know that the pockets are useless, the sizes don't make sense, high heels are not comfortable, and so on- just some basic facts that are obvious to all women. Men should know those things because this is the reality that half the population lives with every day.) "Boys can wear dresses" isn't the hill I want to die on, so to speak.

What's actually important is teaching him how to take care of his mental and emotional health. This is an area where societal norms about being "manly" are really harmful to men. Men are taught that they shouldn't be "emotional". They shouldn't cry. They shouldn't go to therapy. Women typically have a bunch of friends that they can talk to about personal problems, and get support, but men aren't "supposed" to do that. So this is what I'm most concerned about, when raising a boy. If he stays within the gender binary in terms of clothing choices, well, whatever, that won't harm him. But the mental and emotional health stuff, that's actually important.

So. I guess the point is, I totally support my boy if he wants to wear "girl" clothes, because I don't believe there's such a thing as "boy clothes" and "girl clothes" anyway. But I won't push him to do that; I'll treat "boy clothes" as the default for him, because I don't want people to make fun of him. Is that the correct, "feminist" way to approach this? I don't know.


I guess I can post a bit of an update to this; I wrote the above post when I was pregnant, but now I have months of experience buying clothes for this child and dressing him. Basically we dress him in blue a lot. Like we're basically completely following the stereotypical "boy" baby clothes. Oh, wait actually he does have 1 pink t-shirt which is COMPLETELY ADORABLE and I love when he wears it. And he wore a lot of "gender neutral" [whatever that means] stuff when he was a newborn, because I didn't tell anyone the gender before he was born, so they gave us "gender neutral" baby clothes.

But basically this is much less of a big deal than I thought when I was pregnant. We kind of just have a certain gender expression in mind, subconsciously, and we dress him in clothes consistent with that. And it's not really a big deal. Definitely when he's older, he can choose to wear whatever he wants (as long as it's appropriate for the weather). But for now, we choose, and I guess we just chose to dress him in blue and there's not anything wrong with that.


On Not Knowing the Baby's Gender

Friday, August 28, 2020


Some posts related to Jerry Falwell Jr.:

1. Jerry Falwell Jr. Is Stepping Back From Liberty University After A Photo Of Him With His Pants Unzipped (posted August 7) How will I explain this to my children.

2. Jerry Falwell and the Pool Boy (posted August 26)

3. ‘Keanu hands’ should be taught in seminary (posted August 19) "The best way to avoid being accused of doing anything creepy is to make sure you don’t do anything creepy."

4. And this tweet:


1. Real Examples to Puzzle Over: the Natural vs. Designed Checklist (posted August 4) Cool! This is part of a blog series responding to creationist Jim Wallace's checklist for deciding whether something is natural or designed. The checklist is kind of a joke, basically all the criteria are super-vague and opinion-based things like "it's unlikely to come about naturally." The article I've linked here talks about, if you wanted to make such a checklist which was actually useful, you would need to test it out on some tricky examples- and offers a list of tricky examples.

3. White Jesus ain’t Jesus. White ‘God’ ain’t God. (posted July 30) "That’s a very specific God. And it’s a very different God from the God we were taught to worship and honor and obey when we stood and recited “the Ten Commandments” back in Sunday school and VBS and Bible class at Timothy."

4. If You Cared About Children (posted August 24) "So. A movement to improve the lives of children might start by tackling child poverty. What’s next?"

5. 'Black Panther' star Chadwick Boseman has died (posted August 29) Oh wow. This is very shocking and sad.

Chadwick Boseman as the character T'Challa (Black Panther) in "Avengers: Infinity War." Image source.

Saturday, August 22, 2020

On Not Knowing the Baby's Gender

Two sleeping babies. One is wrapped in a pink blanket, one is wrapped in a blue blanket. Image source.
I recently announced the birth of my perfect son, Square Root. Here's something I wrote when I was 18 weeks pregnant.


I always thought it was strange that, when people announce the birth of their baby, they always include these pieces of information:
  1. Name- first, middle, and last
  2. Gender
  3. Weight in pounds and ounces
Isn't that weird, that it's always THESE EXACT things? It's not even like these are particularly important things to know about a person. Like, middle name, and weight in ounces? Do those really matter? Why are these insignificant bits of information treated with such seriousness as they are passed around from one person to another, as news of this baby's birth spreads?

And then I realized, it's because there is literally no other information available about this person. In the entire world, in the sum of all knowledge that we could possibly have access to, there is NOTHING. We literally know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about this person- except their name (first, middle, and last), gender, and weight (pounds and ounces).

(If they're born with any health problems, there's that too. But if they're healthy then there's really not much to say about that either.)

People are so happy about the baby finally coming into the world, and they want to get to know this baby. So they latch on to the the only tiny pieces of information available, and treat those things as very important. 

I get it now, because I'm pregnant and I love my baby so much, but I haven't even met them yet. It's such a weird thing, to love someone that I don't even know. How is that even possible?

(And now I want to cry for some reason, probably hormones.)

I also felt very weird, when I was in the US earlier in my pregnancy, and my mom took me shopping to get some clothes for the baby. All the clothes were so cute, but ... how can I shop for clothes for someone when I don't even know them? I don't know what Baby will like. It was such a weird experience, and I felt so stuck, no idea how to make a decision. I think I only picked out 1 thing, and my mom picked the rest. (Mom says that babies don't have preferences about their clothes, you just dress them in whatever and it's fine. She says it doesn't make sense to be like "but I don't know what Baby would want." I guess that's true.)

I'm so excited about having this baby, so eager to finally meet them and love them. I don't know anything about what kind of person they are, and I wish I did. I want it so bad. And so at first I wished I could find out their gender.

Hendrix told me that in China, doctors are not allowed to tell you the baby's gender, until the baby is born. (I guess it's to prevent sex-selective abortions.) So we're just not going to know. (Though I have heard rumors that some international hospitals will tell you anyway? So we'll see.) [Update: Yes, in China there are ways of getting around the rules. There are ways of getting an ultrasound technician to spill the beans.]

(I'm using the term "gender" in this post, but remember that genitals aren't the same thing as gender, and trans people exist. I'm thinking the way to do Baby's gender is just go with the one they're assigned based on their genitals, and then if a few years later, the kid says actually they are a different gender, then we support and accept that.)

Then I realized, when I was imagining my baby being a girl or boy, I started with the gender and constructed a whole imaginary person from it. Oh, if it's a girl, we're going to watch Disney princess movies, and she'll wear pink dresses. And she'll be like me, an engineer, and we'll build legos together. If it's a boy... okay I don't really know anything about boys, I don't have any brothers. But if it's a boy that will also be great.

I don't think it's a good thing, to have all these expectations for my child, when I haven't even met them yet. Especially if those expectations are based on their gender. Of course I want to allow my kid to be interested in whatever they're interested in. I don't want anyone to limit them. Especially based on gender. But at the same time, it's understandable that I would make up these imaginary scenarios. I love this baby so much but I don't even know them. I wish so much that I just knew something about them. ... so I want to just make something up.

And all of this reinforces the idea that you know, maybe it's a good thing we can't find out the gender until the baby is born. I don't want people putting all kinds of gendered expectations on my child before the child has even taken their first breath. The world will put so many gendered expectations on them as soon as they're born- but not before, not if I have anything to say about it.

So those are my feelings on my not-born-yet baby's gender. I want them to be free to have whatever interests they have, and wear whatever they want. But the world will try to limit them. Even I find I have a desire to make up an imaginary personality for them, just because I'm so eager to have this baby. And because of that, I think it's good that no one will know my baby's gender until they're born.


Monday, August 17, 2020

2020 Reader Survey Wrap-up

A painting showing several diplodocus around a little pond. Image source.

Thank you so much to all the readers that took my 2020 Reader Survey. I really appreciate all the nice comments. 

This year is a weird year for my blog because I have a baby now and, uh, he is very high-maintenance. I can't keep a blogging schedule, but I'm trying my best to at least post *something* sort-of regularly. I actually have a whole bunch of posts that are mostly written but just need some little edits. My opinions about pregnancy and such. So, yes, EVENTUALLY I will get those all posted.

Also I continue to have a ton of opinions about everything, so yes I have lots I want to blog about. Eventually.

Anyway. Thanks again for taking the survey. Here are a few of the best comments. These made me smile~

  • For the question that asked "What topics or posts have been your favorite or least favorite? What do you want to read more of?" somebody just wrote "Sex". Lol I am asexual, like what do I know? But I guess they are interested in my asexual perspective on it. I got a lot of comments on the survey about how people like my asexuality posts. Like it seems like I have way more asexual readers than I thought. :)
  • "Your posts looking at Christianity through the lenses of the marvel movies and other nerdy properties posts have been my favorite." Awww thanks~ I definitely want to write more of these.
  • Surprisingly, nobody put "athiest" [ie, spelled wrong] as their religion. On all my annual blog surveys I make the "religion" question open-ended so people can type in whatever they want, and usually I get many creative misspellings of both "atheist" and "Christian." But this year everyone spelled their religion correctly??? How did that happen?
  • I asked about y'all's favorite dinosaurs, and lolololol I'm so glad I did:
    • "Brontosaurus but it doesn’t exist. I hold it in my heart like Pluto being a planet."
    • "The one from Meet the Robinsons (or Brontosaurus)"
    • 2 people like diplodocus, which surprised me because I don't even remember what that is. I certainly couldn't pick it out of a lineup.
    • Another person answered "archelon" and I had never heard of that, but apparently it's the largest turtle that's ever existed, so, hey I learned something new.
Thanks everyone~ hope you are all staying socially distanced and healthy <3

Saturday, August 15, 2020

Taking My Kid To Church: Cute Sunday School Crafts About Biblical Genocide

Noah's ark craft with paper cutouts of animals. Image source.

Part of the Taking My Kid To Church blog series

Okay so what do I do if I take little Square Root to visit some church, and I put him in Sunday School, and he comes back with some adorable little Noah's ark he made?

I mean, ewwwww that's horrifying. "Noah's ark" is a story about a monstrous god who believes that everyone in the entire world is so evil they all deserve to die- except 8 people. This god proceeds to ACTUALLY DO IT- to commit genocide on a horrifying, worldwide scale, drowning all the people and animals except the ones on the ark. And we're supposed to believe this god is the good guy of the story. We're supposed to believe that yes, it's true, all those people actually were so evil that they deserved to die. Entire societies, entire cultures, where every single member of society- men, women, and children- deserves the death penalty. Yeah, we don't know any of them, but I'm sure the person who KILLED THEM ALL is an unbiased source who can totally be trusted to tell us what those "evil" people were like. Sure.


But "Noah's ark" is a staple of children's bible books and Sunday School lessons. Because it's so cute! Look, 2 of each animal! On a boat! And there's a dove! And a rainbow! Awwwwww adorable!

I've said this many times before: The criteria for picking bible stories to teach to children is NOT "which stories are the best ones for communicating what we believe and what the bible is about?" Nope. And the criteria is NOT "which stories are appropriate for children- without violence and sex?" Nope. Nothing like that at all. Here is the unifying thread that runs through all the stories you find in children's bibles: "which stories have cool imagery?" 

That's it. That's the whole thing. Talking donkey? Yep put that in a Sunday School lesson. Coat of many colors? Ooh that's cool, let's make a coloring page for the kids. Swallowed by a whale? Nice! 3 men walking around in a furnace? Sweet!

All the Old Testament prophets who warned people to turn from their sin? Uh, boring! Paul's letters? Eh not much to see here. Sermon on the Mount? Let's skip the Beatitudes but I think we can salvage something from the "look at the lilies of the field, not even Solomon was dressed like them" bit.

But anyway let's get back on topic. What do I do if Square Root brings home a cute little ark that he colored himself? (Or anything related to an Old Testament account of violence and genocide- the plagues of Egypt, Joshua and Jericho, David and Goliath, etc.)

Well, I think that's horrifying. But Square Root doesn't know any of this background. And it wouldn't be fair to him if I was suddenly all negative about the fun he had in Sunday School class. He'd feel like he had done something wrong by participating and having a good time- but in reality it's not his fault, how could he have known? Should he just sit alone and side-eye the Sunday School teachers when everyone else is playing a game or making a craft, just in case Mommy later tells him that ACTUALLY that game/craft was BAD?

Here's the key, though: These biblical stories of genocide are only bad if people actually believe the entire story really happened. And maybe that's not an assumption that Square Root has. Maybe he is able to just enjoy the cute animals while not thinking too much about the rest of the story- and if we recognize that it's not a true story, then we can enjoy the good parts and ignore the bad parts, saying "you're reading too much into it" or "this is where the metaphor breaks down" or whatever. Just like one could make the case that the world of Harry Potter is horrifying because wizards are so behind technologically and their Hogwarts education leaves out A LOT of subjects... but people would tell you those things don't matter because that wasn't the point of the story.

Soooooooo... what then? He shows me his animals-two-by-two coloring page and I say "this is great, also good thing this isn't a true story because that would be terrible"? Uhhh.

I guess when he's really little, he's not thinking about whether it's a true story or not, so I shouldn't make any negative comments about it then. He can just enjoy the nice parts. And then when he gets old enough to have the "some people think this is a true story, wouldn't that be terrible though" conversation, then we do that.

Uh but what if the Sunday School teachers already told him it's a true story? Oh geez. Like should I just NEVER let him attend any Sunday School lesson that *might* present biblical genocide in a positive way? I mean... like on the one hand, yes, because that's HORRIFYING and should not be made into a cute little lesson for children, but on the other hand, no I don't want to isolate him from this stuff. It's part of our society, he needs to know how to handle it in a healthy way. Right?

Of course I am not going to regularly attend a church that teaches its children that biblical genocide was a good thing. Like, that's one of my NON-NEGOTIABLE criteria if I want to find a church. So maybe I'm being ridiculous even thinking about this hypothetical. Why would I put Square Root in that environment anyway? Why would I put myself in that environment? If we could just not, then let's just not.

Sooooooo... okay... So if, on occasion, my child encounters some Christian presenting the story of Noah's ark in a positive way, I won't worry too much about it. And when he's old enough, we can have the conversation about "good thing these stories didn't really happen, because look at all the genocide, that's awful!" 

But... in the introduction post for this series  I made a big deal about distinguishing between "religion" and "morality" and how I'm not going to try to make him believe certain religious beliefs... well "Noah's ark is not a true story" is a religious belief [according to how I defined "religion" in that post]. What I actually want to get at is "never trust anyone (even God) who tells you an entire demographic of people are all so evil they deserve to die." That's morality. That's something all decent people should agree on regardless of religion.

But isn't it easier to just say "this is not a true story" than to answer awkward questions about how God could really think that everyone in the world (except 8 people) deserves to die, and why nice church people are presenting that as a positive thing...?

Well that's all I got for now. I'm not sure how exactly to handle it, but I'm not worried. I don't think Square Root is at risk for internalizing this stuff the way I did. He'll be fine.


If Thanos Tells You To Build An Ark, You Say No
Noah's Evangelism
Blaming the Biblical Victim (And More Horrifying Implications of Scripture)

Sunday, August 9, 2020

Paperwork for My Immigrant Baby

The photo page of a baby's US passport. Image source.

I wrote this when I was 27 weeks pregnant, but now I have even more feelings about it, now that the US consulate in Chengdu has closed. (In retaliation for the US government forcing the Chinese consulate in Houston to close, because of political reasons I didn't totally follow.) Closed as in, permanently closed- they had to pack up everything and move out, and Chinese authorities took control of the building. It's so NOT COOL how the US president is playing around with provoking China for political reasons, because this stuff affects the actual lives of actual Americans who live in China. When my son was born, I had to take him to the US consulate in Shanghai to apply for his US citizenship and US passport. There must be pregnant American women in Chengdu who are now faced with the problem of how to get their baby's passport and proof of US citizenship. This stuff affects real people. 

Vote. Vote Trump out.


I'm a US citizen, my husband is a Chinese citizen, and we live in Shanghai, China. So... what kind of citizenship will our baby have?

Well from the US side, baby can be a US citizen because I am. We just need to fill out form "FS-240 Consular Report of Birth Abroad of a Citizen of the United States of America (CRBA)" and baby will get a US passport.

From the China side: Well China doesn't do dual citizenship. But since baby's daddy is Chinese, China considers baby to be a Chinese citizen. So... they're both... but you can't be both... so... how does that work?

Long-term, we want to move to the US, and baby would be better off being a US citizen than a Chinese citizen. But we can't just say "no thank you" to the Chinese citizenship; baby gets it automatically, and it seems to me like it's going to be way more trouble than it's worth.

Because, get this: Baby will not be eligible to get a Chinese visa in their US passport. Because, the reasoning goes, you are a Chinese citizen, it doesn't make sense to issue a Chinese visa. But... when you enter or leave the country, you have to show a Chinese passport or a Chinese visa. Baby can't get a Chinese passport because they'll already have a US passport and you can't have both. So how is this supposed to work?

Well. Instead of a Chinese visa, you apply for an "entry-exit document." This is valid for 3 months and allows you to leave and re-enter China 1 time.

Or, if you're outside of China, you can go to a Chinese embassy and apply for a "travel document", which is valid for 2 years and allows you to enter and leave China as many times as you want.

From the research I've done so far, it seems like it's more of a pain to get these "entry-exit documents" or "travel documents" than it would be to get a visa. Like, both of the parents and the baby have to be present at the immigration office... whereas for a visa, anyone can take your documents and just drop them off there for you.

So let's say we don't want to do all that, and we want to just renounce the Chinese citizenship instead. Wow, yes, that would be much easier, then baby is just a regular US citizen and we don't have to be confused about which rules apply in this *gray area*.

Well... renouncing Chinese citizenship is also a huge pain. I haven't done research to find out what documents we need, but I know we would have to go to my husband's hometown (can't do it in Shanghai because he's not from here) and probably in each city the rules are different (because China), and apparently it can take up to 2 years.

Anyway, Hendrix and I are going to have to figure all this stuff out, for our baby. Baby is too little to understand any of it; we have to do all the work. And we're going to do it, and be successful, and baby won't have to worry about any of this, everything will be fine.

But... our poor child, who needs all this paperwork and bureaucracy, just because they are born as an immigrant. Our little baby, who just wants to live and grow and learn how to be a person, a little bundle of love who doesn't know anything about countries and borders and governments and passports.

Why is everything so complicated, just because baby is born in an immigrant family? I want to say "it's not fair" but I guess it would be more accurate to call this an example of privilege. If you are born as a citizen of the country you live in, and your parents are also citizens, then all of this is easy. I never even had a passport until I was in college; I never needed one before. But here in China we have immigrant moms with their immigrant babies, asking each other "how do I get my baby to open his eyes so we can take a good enough passport photo?" And trying to figure out what paperwork they need so they can take their child to another country to see their grandparents for the first time. And asking each other if it's a good idea to take a 6-week-old baby on a 12-hour flight. All things that you would never even think about if you're a citizen and everyone in your family is a citizen. That's privilege.

We'll handle it. We'll figure everything out. But it kind of sucks how hard this is going to be, just because we are an immigrant family.


This Is the Stuff That Happens to Us Immigrants
Feminism 101: Privilege

Saturday, August 8, 2020

Donate to Protect Our Right to Vote

Image from "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith." Obi-Wan says to Anakin, "Anakin, my allegiance is the the Republic, to democracy!" Image source.

I am highly concerned about this year's presidential election. I'm concerned about how the president is already trying to discredit it. I'm concerned about keeping voters safe from COVID-19. I'm concerned about voter suppression.

This election is a really big deal. It is absolutely essential that we get Trump out of office. 

So. Here are 2 organizations that are working to protect Americans' right to vote, and make sure the election is fair. If you are able, please donate or volunteer to help them.

Sunday, August 2, 2020

We Hired a Nanny

A Chinese ayi and two white children cooking together. Image source.
So when I was pregnant, my mother-in-law came to live with us, because this is basically what you do in China. The grandma takes care of the child while the parents are at work.

I have heard of daycares in Shanghai, but seems like this is very rare. And when the child is 3, they go to kindergarten (in China the term "kindergarten" is used for what we would call both "preschool" and "kindergarten" in the US- 3 years long, from ages 3 to 5) which is for the full day, so I guess that's kind of like daycare. But younger than that, it's not very common to put the kid in daycare.

So basically, the other option besides the grandparents doing childcare (or being a stay-at-home parent) is to hire a nanny. In China a nanny is called an "ayi"- and actually "ayi" 阿姨 has a lot of meanings. A dictionary will probably tell you it means "aunt" but oh wow what a bad translation. Sure, sometimes it means aunt- but family vocabulary in Chinese is complicated, there are different words for if it's a relative on your mom's side or dad's side, if they're older or younger, if they're your parent's sibling or in-law, birth order, etc- so in practical terms, most aunts actually are NOT "ayi." Sure, some are. But most aren't.

And most of the time when you say "ayi" it should very much NOT be translated as "aunt." It's often just used as a friendly term of address for any random stranger who's a woman your parents' age. (Oh wow, this confused me SO MUCH when I first came to China- I had Chinese friends talking about "aunts" and "uncles" who weren't actually their aunts or uncles, and I thought maybe it's like, sometimes you have a friend of the family who's so close and involved in your family's life that basically you do think of her as an aunt even though she's not technically biologically related... lol, no. No, nope. Nope, that is not what "ayi" means. It's literally just any stranger off the street.)

And "ayi" sometimes means a woman who works as a cleaner- like in the office building where I work, if someone says "I asked the ayi..." everyone knows they mean the cleaning lady. And it can mean a domestic worker like a maid or nanny. People talk about "we're going to hire an ayi" and you understand they are talking about hiring someone to do housework or cooking or childcare.

So anyway. My mother-in-law watches the baby when we're at work. But recently she's been having some health problems, so we decided to hire an ayi to help.

There are ayis who specifically work with international families, and expat moms have social media groups where they post ayi recommendations or search for an ayi to hire. So that's what I did, and I found several ayis to interview.

Even though they work for international, English-speaking families, most of these ayis don't speak English. (I'm talking specifically about Chinese women working as ayis- but Filipino ayis are also a thing, and there is a market for them because they speak English. However, as far as I know it's illegal for Filipinos to work as ayis in China.) In their letters of recommendation, the expat moms say "she doesn't speak English but we had no problem communicating with WeChat translate." That makes me wonder, why would you choose to work in a job where you and your boss literally don't speak the same language? I guess it's because they can get paid more than if they worked for Chinese families. Still, it doesn't really seem like an ideal job situation.

And this whole process really makes it obvious how there are very unequal economic classes of people, and it's effed-up. Like, how could it possibly make sense to hire *another person* to spend her entire day watching *my child* while I spend my entire day at my own job? Well, obviously the reason it makes sense is that my salary is MASSIVELY HIGHER than what I pay the ayi. And isn't that messed-up? That's extremely messed-up. Nobody "deserves" to have a salary twice as high as another person, if both of them work hard at what they do.

We rely on the ayi, but no matter how good she is, we'll never pay her a good salary like what I'm paid. Because if it cost us that much, then instead of having an ayi, me or my husband would quit our job. (Or, actually the math is a little more complicated than that, because you have to take into account the long-term effect on my career if I stayed home for a few years, and we could have a whole discussion about how women's careers aren't valued as much, and people think the wife has to quit her job and stay home because "that's how the math works out", but that's a separate topic, we won't get into that.)

I guess I'm extremely privileged... when I was little and I heard about economic classes, I thought that was just like back in medieval times when there were kings and peasants, and nowadays it's not like that. Well, it's like that. I have a good education in a field that society values, and so my options for jobs and my salary range are completely different than, for example, the options available for a woman who works hard as an ayi. And we can't move from one level to another. We're stuck in our own economic classes, and that's the way it is. (Actually as an immigrant I am not able to get a "low skilled" job in China- work visas are only available for jobs that you can't easily find a Chinese person to do.)

Also, many of the ayis we interviewed told us about "I worked for a family with 3 kids", "I worked for a family with 5 kids", etc. Again, this is messed-up, because China still has a two-child policy (the one-child policy was changed in 2016). So you have these Chinese ayis taking care of 3 kids for a foreign family, when they're not even allowed to have 3 kids of their own. (Note: When I say "this is messed-up", I don't mean the ayi did anything wrong, or the foreign parents with 3 kids did anything wrong. I mean it exposes the reality of the world itself being messed-up.)

Also, who watches the ayi's child? (I say "child" instead of "children" because even though the one-child policy isn't in effect any more, more families still only have 1 child because of financial reasons.) Some ayis send their own kid back to their hometown for the grandparents to raise; that's seen as normal in China. Isn't that messed-up, that they're watching someone else's kids, when for financial reasons they're not even able to watch their own kid.

Another aspect of this is how the expat ayi market has been severely impacted by COVID19. In March, China closed the border. International people are not allowed to enter the country, because of COVID19. In the months since then, the rules have been changing, and gradually there are more and more exceptions- so yes, they are letting some international people in, but you have to jump through hoops.

So there are lots of international families who left China back in February or March to get away from the pandemic, and now are stuck in other countries. And their ayis are still here in China, trying to find new jobs now- but it's not a good market for the ayis. Actually most of the ayis we interviewed told us this same story- their current employer is stuck overseas somewhere.

So... this is the world we live in, and it's not fair. But still we hire an ayi and participate in the system. Like, it's not like *not* hiring an ayi is going to help address the economic inequalities of the world.

And also, I'm not like, "ah I feel bad for the ayi so I won't hold them to a high standard"- no, we're talking about finding someone to care for my child, who is the most perfect and precious thing in the world- well, in my world, not ayi's world, and isn't it messed-up that it makes financial sense for someone who doesn't love him to be the one who takes care of him. Actually the first ayi we hired didn't really seem to be, shall we say, interested in doing a good job, so after a few days we told her it wasn't working out, and we found a different ayi. So yes, this is my precious child we're talking about, and I'm going to make sure we get the right person to take care of him.

So. Going through the process of hiring an ayi has been a lesson in class inequality and how effed-up that is. But there's not really anything we can do about it. This is the world we live in, and we are in need of this service and there are ayis providing the service. The system is effed-up, but within the context of this effed-up system, it makes perfect sense for us to hire an ayi, so that's what we're doing. My point isn't that ayi employers (like me) are doing a bad thing. It's the entire system that's messed-up.

Saturday, August 1, 2020

What I Wish I'd Known About Breastfeeding

Exasperated little blonde girl meme, with the text: "How much milk does your baby drink? Idk a boobfull?" Image source.
I have a baby now, and for the first 6 months of his life, before he started eating solid food, I exclusively breastfed him. I'm really happy with it; turns out I really love breastfeeding.

But in the beginning, there were definitely things that I had a messed-up perspective on. So I'm writing this post about it.

So, some background about my views on breastfeeding, before I got pregnant:
  • My mom breastfed me and my siblings, so I always believed that's what you "should" do, and that's what I wanted to do for my hypothetical future babies. 
  • However, whenever I read an article that mentioned breastfeeding, it was always about "hey don't shame moms who feed their baby formula, it's so terrible how we're making women compete with each other and feel like they're not good enough moms, don't say 'breast is best' because there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU if you feed your baby formula, you are NOT a failure" and "breastfeeding is SO HARD, physically and emotionally."
So overall, I wanted to breastfeed my baby, but felt extremely skittish about "shaming" the idea of giving a baby formula. 

When I was pregnant, sometimes friends asked me "are you going to breastfeed?" and I answered "I hope I can." Because I thought, even though I really want to exclusively breastfeed, well, everyone keeps saying how breastfeeding is "so hard," so ... well maybe I just can't.

"I hope I can." Fully open to the possibility that, hey, maybe I just can't, and oh well, then I'll give the baby formula. I now see that this "I hope I can" attitude was all kinds of wrong. Believing that it was all out of my control and hey, if it didn't work out, well, *shrug*. No. Instead of "I hope I can", I should have been educating myself about how to breastfeed successfully.

(Really, it reminds me a lot of how, when I started studying Chinese, everyone was like "learning Chinese is SO HARD" and so I actually literally believed that maybe, as a white person, I'd just never be able to, no matter how hard I worked. Maybe I "just can't." Umm, spoiler: I am fluent in Chinese now.)

During the pregnancy, I read the book "What to Expect When You're Expecting" [affiliate link] (which was very useful for me, but I'll warn you that it's extremely heteronormative and cisnormative). It had a lot of information about how breastfeeding is the best source of nutrition for babies, how it's good for their immune system, and gives all kind of other benefits. About studies that showed breastfed babies went on to live healthier lives than formula-fed babies.

And I was very surprised. I didn't know that before- I thought it was the same. I thought with modern technology, surely we've developed baby formula that's just as good as breast milk. Well, no, we haven't. (And after Square Root was born, I learned a lot more about the differences between formula-fed and breastfed babies- for a lot of our "what's normal" questions, there are actually 2 different answers: what's normal for breastfed babies and what's normal for formula-fed babies. About their poop- what it looks like, how often. About how often they eat. About weight gain. About whether or not they are likely to be constipated, or overfed. It's like there are 2 different types of babies. No, formula is not "the same" at all- formula is not as good for babies as breast milk.)

I'd read articles about "hey don't shame moms who don't breastfeed" so I thought it didn't matter one way or the other. But I don't want to get up and wash bottles in the middle of the night, so I hope I can breastfeed.

Yeah, I literally didn't know breastfeeding was way better for baby's health than formula-feeding. I'd heard too much rhetoric about "it's okay to not breastfeed, you're not a bad mom", so I thought it was the same.

Perhaps this is a more accurate way of putting it: If your only consideration is what the baby eats, then breast milk is SO MUCH better than formula. Formula is fine, but breast milk is just WAY BETTER. But there are other factors that should be considered too: like mom's mental health. If breastfeeding and pumping is taking a huge toll on you, that matters, and maybe it would be good to give your baby formula instead. And also: mom's pumping schedule. If you have to go to work, and your job doesn't allow you to take breaks and pump milk, then the breastfeeding is just not going to work. You can't make enough milk to exclusively breastfeed, while also going 8+ hours without getting the milk out. Your boobs will be giant and hard as rocks, oww. If you're in that situation, breastfeeding is just not workable. Don't feel bad about that; formula is fine.

Anyway, back to me when I was pregnant. Friends and family recommended that if I wanted to breastfeed, I should go to a class on it, or go to La Leche League meetings, or join social media groups where people discussed breastfeeding. I was like "Why? Like, what's there to learn, doesn't the baby just suck your boob? Seems pretty straightforward... how can there be a whole class on it?" But people told me, no actually it's not that straightforward. Sometimes there are problems. You have to learn how to do it, it doesn't *just happen*.

So I did. I read a lot of articles about how to have a successful breastfeeding relationship, and I joined a social media support group for breastfeeding. I'm so glad I did. I learned about how to teach your boobs how much milk to make. I learned about how you shouldn't pump until your baby is maybe 4-6 weeks old, because you want to establish your supply before you start pumping. I learned that a lot of people worry their baby isn't eating enough- because you can't see how much the baby is eating- but actually a lot of the signs that make people worry are completely normal and do NOT mean you have to give your baby formula. I learned about blocked ducts and mastitis and how to avoid them. I learned about a lot of the common misconceptions about breastfeeding.

So basically I knew what I'd do once the baby was born.

My husband, on the other hand... So when we were putting together our list of things to buy to get ready for the baby, my husband (Hendrix) said we should buy a can of formula, "as a backup." And I was concerned- if we have formula, then are people going to try to pressure me to give it to the baby, so we "don't waste it" or some nonsense like that? Hendrix reassured me that that wouldn't happen. So we bought the formula.

At our prenatal appointments, the nurses told us "Our hospital supports breastfeeding, so we don't provide formula. If you want to give your baby formula, you have to bring your own." I'm very glad I gave birth at a hospital that explicitly supports breastfeeding; apparently in China a lot of hospitals pressure you to give your baby formula. Which I think has a lot to do with formula companies trying to make money.

The issue, though, was that I was coming from a background of "breastfeeding is normal, and I've done a lot of reading and I know what I need to do in order to make breastfeeding work" but Hendrix and his mom (who lives with us) were coming from a background of "giving the baby formula is normal, of course you need to have formula as a backup in case the mom doesn't have enough milk." It was like my mother-in-law 100% expected that I wouldn't "have enough milk" and we would give the baby formula. (Apparently this "you don't have enough milk" is an extremely common misconception in China- the reality is that it's extremely rare that you're just biologically unable to produce enough milk.)

So we packed up our hospital bag, and Hendrix said we have to bring the can of formula. I was uneasy about that, but we brought it "as a backup." And looking back on it now, I wish I had communicated with my husband better about this.

Fast-forward to the day the baby was born. I breastfed him immediately after he popped out and the nurses wiped him off and weighed him. And that day, I breastfed him a bunch of times, and it went well.

And then that night, he was crying and he wouldn't sleep. And my mother-in-law was saying he's hungry and I don't have enough milk, and my husband was worried and wanted to give him formula, and I said no. I said no, but I felt so scared and weak. I'd just given birth 24 hours before and I couldn't even stand up without help. And everyone was speaking Chinese- and I can speak Chinese, but not about something as complicated as this... and I didn't even know what to say anyway. Just thinking that if we give him formula now, that means we're giving up on the whole breastfeeding thing, giving up on it so fast. I wanted to breastfeed until the baby is at least 1 year old, and we're just gonna give up on it now, 1 day in, because I'm too weak to stop it. I know what to do, I did the research and my husband and mother-in-law didn't, but here we are at 2 am and they just keep telling me "he's hungry" and I don't know what to say.

All I could do was tell my husband "this is really important to me." And keep trying to feed the baby, keep putting him on my boobs and hope something was coming out. And eventually the baby fell asleep, and we got through the night. Without giving him formula.

Looking back on it now, I wish I had discussed this with my husband more beforehand. Not just "I want to breastfeed" because we did discuss that- but "we need to do x, y, and z, and here are the reasons why." I now see that it wasn't enough that I knew what to do- I needed to make sure my husband knew too. Because he loves the baby too, and if he thought the baby was hungry and needed it, it's understandable that he might have fought me and insisted on giving our baby formula, and unknowingly screwed up my milk supply. (Like, it's not the end of the world if you give the baby formula at the beginning- you can still exclusively breastfeed, but it's harder; you've dug yourself into a hole.)

When you give birth, you NEED to have someone with you who knows what you want and fully supports you. Your partner, a family member, a doula, someone. Someone who can stand up for you, because you'll be in pain and full of hormones, and you might not be able to stand up for yourself.

I wish I had thought more about the reasons that one might choose to give their baby formula. Because I now see that there are lots of good reasons. But "the mom is right here and wants to breastfeed the baby, but her husband's family is telling her 'no, you can't, you don't have enough milk'" is NOT one of them. That's effed-up. And I still feel bad about having been in that situation, even though in the end I "won." And I feel bad thinking about other moms who did get pressured into giving their baby formula when that's not what they wanted.

And I wish I could have viewed the formula as a tool that is possibly useful to me in some situations. But I didn't- I just had this very emotional "formula is bad" feeling about it. But now I see that formula could have been a very useful tool for me, for situations where I had to go out and leave the baby with my mother-in-law, and there wasn't enough pumped breast milk in the fridge. See, that's what we should have used the formula can for. As a backup for if I'm PHYSICALLY NOT THERE and baby needs to eat.

After that first night, though, things have gone very well with the breastfeeding. I love it because it's such a beautiful, loving bond with my baby, and it's so convenient. (I don't like pumping milk at work though... that's a pain, but I have to do it.)

We do a disservice by putting so much emphasis on "you're not a failure if you give your baby formula" without also providing the education and support that is needed to successfully breastfeed. I wish people could just see it for what it is: here are the advantages, here is the work you have to do, here are the things you'll need to buy, here is the knowledge you need for if you run into problems. (And same for formula-feeding or mixed-feeding: here are the advantages, here is the work you have to do, etc.) But there's this fear that the entire topic of breastfeeding is so emotionally-charged and tied to people's identity of being a "good mom", so we can't discuss it in an objective, informative way.

Let me sum it up like this: If you're pregnant and you're wondering if you'll breastfeed or not, first of all, know that it is your decision and it is a very personal decision. Next, I strongly recommend you research the options- exclusive breastfeeding, formula, or mixed-feeding. Learn about how they each work in practical terms and how much work each of them would end up being for you. Learn about the benefits of breastfeeding for the baby's health. Decide what you want to do- and if you want to exclusively breastfeed, don't phrase it like "I hope I can, but eh I understand if it doesn't work out". No, that's ridiculous to have that kind of defeatist attitude when your baby isn't even born yet. Do your research, arm yourself with information, communicate with your partner, and be confident.



Breastfeeding resources: