What do you mean, "middle-aged"?

[Stages of a Man's Life from the Cradle to the Grave, c. 1848]

Yesterday on Facebook I referred to my daughters, who are in their early forties, as middle-aged. One of their friends, who is 43, wrote, "Middle-aged???"

"For sure," I wrote back. "I know it hurts." But then I Googled middle age and discovered that its borders seem to be shifting. Once defined as ages 40 to 60, it is now often defined as ages 45 to 64 (though Merriam-Webster wants to have it both ways).

When I turned 40, everyone was talking about the midlife crisis, that scary feeling when people in the work force fear their careers may have peaked and when caregivers at home notice their nests are practically empty (except for all that stuff in the basement). Midlife hit at age 40 back then--a bit optimistic, perhaps, considering that U.S. life expectancy in 1988 was 74.9 years. Columnist Bob Greene may have been closer to the truth when he wrote that "middle age starts at 36."

American life expectancy has increased in the last 25 years: it's now 78.62 years. I suppose that makes the shift in middle-age limits understandable, especially since so many people nowadays seem to think adulthood doesn't begin until age 30. But still, isn't Bridget Jones a bit old to be having a midlife crisis at age 51? And what's with those Brits who, in a 2012 survey, thought middle age begins at age 55 or later? Brits do live longer than Americans, but only by a couple of years.

In her lively review of Patricia Cohen's In Our Prime: The Invention of Middle Age, Laura Shapiro suggests why the definition of middle age is so fluid:

Despite the fact that researchers have been studying middle age intensively for decades, the term itself seems to have no fixed definition. Nearly any span between 40 and dementia appears to qualify, depending in part on whether we’re talking about ourselves (“But I feel just the same as I did when I was 20”) or all those people who show up at our college reunions (“Everyone looks so old”).

This is probably why some people prefer a descriptive rather than a chronological view of middle age: see, for instance, Shelley Emling's article "40 Signs You Are Middle Aged." The list is amusing, but the really telling comment comes in her introduction, where she quotes Paul Keenan, head of communications for a healthcare provider. "People no longer see ‘middle age’ as a numerical milestone," he said. "I’m 54 myself, with the mind-set of a thirty-something--perhaps sometimes even that of a teenager!” If anything is a sure and certain indication of middle-age--or even old age--it's a remark like that.

Maybe it's because, at 65, I've just left the ranks of the middle-aged, but I don't see why people want to delay its onset. By the time you're middle-aged, you've probably finished your education and those painful first jobs. Chances are you're in a responsible position, earning more money than you were a decade or two ago. You're probably married. You very likely own a house. If you have children, they are becoming more independent. Your parents are probably still in reasonably good health.

At 40, you are well past the torments of adolescence and young adulthood, and you still have a long way to go before the serious trials of old age begin. You are at the midpoint of your allotted years and at the beginning of an excellent couple of decades. Why pretend to be young long past the time when anybody who is truly young would claim you?

Believe it or not, those truly young adults respect you. They think you may have learned something in the 15 or 20 years since you left college. At the same time, you're not in an entirely alien world like, say, their parents.

In 1935 Will Rogers starred in a movie called Life Begins at Forty. I suspect it still does.

J. Alfred Prufrock contemplates retirement

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.
 T.S. Eliot 

Wednesday is my husband's last day at the office.
We've been looking forward to this next phase of our lives for a long time. For some 25 years we've been sending a large percentage of our modest incomes to retirement accounts. We joke that our retirement plan is to live on so little that we won't miss it when it's gone.

For the last several months we've been crunching the numbers. When exactly should he retire? Would a reallocation of our retirement resources make them last longer? Which of our two highly professional, fee-based, but disagreeing financial advisers should we follow? When should we take Social Security? When can we start getting Medicare benefits? Which work-based health-insurance plan should we sign up for in order to stay covered until Medicare kicks in? Which of the many Medicare supplemental insurance plans is best? Which of the many insurance companies offering such plans is most likely to stay solvent and keep its rates low? Which Medicare Part D prescription drug plan will best suit our needs?

We've also been looking at lifestyle questions. Should we stay in the place that has been home for 25 years, or should we move to be closer to family? We know about living too far from our kids - 1100 miles from one daughter's family, 800 miles from the other's - but is it possible to live too close? If we move, how do we find good realtors, here and there? What do we need to do to get our place ready to sell? We already live in a townhouse - should we downsize even further? When thinking about a place to live, what factors are most important to us? Will we need a place without stairs?

And then there's the question everybody asks: What will you do in retirement?

"First," my husband says, "I'm going to clean the garage." I hope he's not joking.

MY BELOVED WORLD by Sonia Sotomayor

I was barely awake, and my mother was already screaming. I knew Papi would start yelling in a second. That much was routine, but the substance of their argument was new ...

Sonia was seven years old, and this time her parents were fighting over who was going to give her her newly prescribed daily insulin shot. For a moment she panicked: if giving her the shot was so hard for her parents, surely her grandmother would not be up to the task either--and she'd have to give up her weekly sleepovers at her grandmother's house, her "only escape from the gloom at home." The solution was simple: Sonia would learn to inject herself.

My Beloved World covers some 30 years of Justice Sotomayor's life, from her diabetes diagnosis at age 7 to her appointment as a district court judge at age 37. It is not an account of her more than 20 years on the bench, but rather the backstory of what she had to overcome in order to get there: an alcoholic father who died when she was only 9, a hard-working mother who was rarely at home, a Bronx neighborhood full of junkies and gangs, her inability to speak English fluently until she had been in an English-speaking school for several years, and a serious disease that she expected would kill her before she reached middle age.

How did a penniless Puerto Rican girl from the projects get accepted by Princeton (from which she graduated summa cum laude) and Yale (where she became an editor of the Yale Law Journal), land a couple of good jobs (in which she advanced rapidly), and eventually get appointed to a U.S. District Court, a U.S. Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court? Much of her success is due to her own  hard work, competitiveness, and will to succeed. Much is also due to her supportive family and friends. And a significant factor in her career success is the era in which she was born.

A few months before Sonia's 7th birthday, John F. Kennedy signed the executive order that created affirmative action. When she was 11 years old, Lyndon B. Johnson reaffirmed and strengthened the policy. When she was 13, affirmative action was expanded to include women. When she was 17, she was accepted to Princeton.

I had no need to apologize that the look-wider, search-more affirmative action that Princeton and Yale practiced had opened doors for me. That was its purpose: to create the conditions whereby students from disadvantaged backgrounds could be brought to the starting line of a race many were unaware was even being run. I had been admitted to the Ivy League through a special door, and I had more ground than most to make up before I was competing with my classmates on an equal footing. But I worked relentlessly to reach that point, and distinctions such as the Pyne Prize, Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude, and a spot on The Yale Law Journal were not given out like so many pats on the back to encourage mediocre students. These were achievements as real as those of anyone around me.

My Beloved World is not a political book. It gives little insight into Sotomayor's legal or judicial philosophy. But with its emphasis not only on success but also on the importance of hard work, of the support of family and friends, and of wide-open doors of opportunity for all, it may give an idea of what kind of justice Sotomajor is likely to be. Fortunately, the treatment for type 1 diabetes has come a long way since Sonia was 7 years old. She's 58 now, still giving herself injections, and likely to wear that black robe for many years to come.

Please hire me

[Working till she drops]

A couple of years ago my 40-something cardiologist earnestly told me that the Social Security/Medicare problem was a cinch to fix--all we had to do was increase the retirement age. Right, I thought - I'm in my 60s and facing open-heart surgery, but once I recover I can go pound the pavement. My cardiologist is not an economist, however, and he's a good doctor, so I held my peace.

Yesterday's New York Times ran an article by Economic Scene writer Eduardo Porter, who should know better. In "The Payoff in Delaying Retirement" Porter writes:

What if there were a way for the government to ease the strain that the aging place on the budget while actually increasing their income in retirement, at little or no cost to their benefits? A well-designed reform would even improve the nation’s rate of economic growth. The way to do it is simply to encourage older workers to spend a larger share of their increasing life spans in the work force.

 Sometimes solutions that look good on paper don't work so well in the real world.

First, most boomers are already planning to work until they drop, since they have saved practically nothing for retirement. I'm not sure they need any additional encouragement. What they need is reality therapy.

Second, over the last decade or so, a lot of companies have downsized. Their PR departments speak of this as right-sizing. What it means is that (a) fewer jobs are available; (b) older workers--the ones getting the bigger paychecks because of seniority--are in greatest peril of being laid off; and (c) the remaining jobs require much longer work days. Such policies, good as they may be for a business's bottom line, are not conducive toward extending one's working years.

Third, it's hard for laid-off older folks to get entry-level jobs. Not only are they overqualified (whatever that means), but the jobs just aren't there. Ask any recent grad.

Fourth, while some older people can work at full capacity well into their 70s and 80s, many cannot. However cheerfully chirpy AARP publications may be, 60 is not the new 40. Over 70% of Americans between ages 60 and 79 have some form of cardiovascular disease, for example, compared to fewer than 40% of people between ages 40 and 49 (see data here). For every person between ages 40 and 44 who is diagnosed with cancer, more than eight people between ages 65 and 69 are so diagnosed (see data here). And those who plan to die with their boots on should be aware that nearly 14% of people over 70 have Alzheimer's disease (see data here).

But let's neglect all those potential problems and stipulate that those of us who are capable of working really should be working, at least until--shall we say--age 70. OK, I'll offer myself as a test case. 

I am 64 years old. I have a solid work history with excellent recommendations, though I have not had a regular employer for some 13 years and my industry--book publishing--is in a hard place. With three master's degrees and a background in teaching as well as editing, writing, and management, I'm quite versatile. My health has been pretty good since my open-heart surgery a year and a half ago (I will require excellent medical insurance, however). I have an extended network of other aging publishing professionals.  

So keep me off Social Security and Medicare for another five years. Offer me a full-time job with a respectable salary and benefits.

Or isn't "encourag[ing] older workers to spend a larger share of their increasing life spans in the work force" quite as simple as Mr. Porter believes?

CALL THE MIDWIFE by Jennifer Worth

"Call the Midwife," a BBC miniseries about intrepid nuns and nurses in London's East End in the 1950s, was the UK's most popular TV show in 2012, with even more viewers than last year's wildly popular "Downton Abbey."

I had not heard of the TV show three weeks ago when, browsing in a Chicago bookstore, I noticed Jennifer Worth's memoir by the same name. Always on the lookout for cheerful stories, I jotted down its title so I'd remember to look for it at my public library.

The book did not disappoint.

In 1965, my parents and I spent a summer in Bracknell, a middle-class suburb about 35 miles west of central London. Some 10 years earlier, Jennifer Worth had been working as a midwife in the London Docklands, about 6 miles east of central London. Only 10 years and 40 miles separated my comfortable (even though it lacked central heating and had altogether too much cabbage) world from the world Jennifer served:

I often wondered how these women managed, with a family of up to thirteen or fourteen children in a small house, containing only two or three bedrooms. Some families of that size lived in the tenements, which often consisted of only two rooms and a tiny kitchen.... Washing machines were virtually unknown and tumble driers had not been invented.... Most houses had running cold water and a flushing lavatory in the yard outside.

It was an area of bombed-out ruins from World War II air raids. "Knifings were common. Street fights were common. Pub fights and brawls were an everyday event. In the small, overcrowded houses, domestic violence was expected." Certain streets were well known as centers of prostitution.

So why am I calling this book cheerful?

Because Jennifer tells so many stories about people who work hard, who love one another, who survive against incredible odds, who welcome new life, who do their best.

Because even her heart-breaking stories--the teen-aged Irish prostitute, the weird old crone who hangs around when babies are due--reveal sensitive humanity under the off-putting exteriors.

Because her nuns, from bawdy Sister Evangelina to spacey Sister Monica Joan, are a hoot.

Because she's so good at describing all her characters, most notably Camilla Fortescue-Cholmeley-Brown ("just call me Chummy"), drolly played by Miranda Hart in the TV series.

Because she included a 13-page appendix "On the difficulties of writing the Cockney dialect."

Because Jennifer's storytelling shows her living by the philosophy she says she learned from a dying nun: Accept life, the world, Spirit, God, call it what you will, and all else will follow.
_______________________________

 "Call the Midwife" is being shown on PBS stations Sunday evenings from September 30 to November 4, 2012. If you've missed some episodes, you can get them online until December 3. Here's a link to Episode 1.

Why old dogs NEED new tricks

"Retirement should involve re-tiring, or putting on new tires and doing even more than before."

--Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who gives credit for this thought to Rabbi Menachem Schneerson

A friend posted this on Facebook recently. He, like my husband and me, is rushing headlong toward what Social Security calls  "full (normal) retirement age." No doubt his mailbox, like ours, is regularly replenished with offers for hearing aids, Medigap insurance, and free lunches sponsored by financial planners. No doubt he too has seen those chirpy birthday cards asking "How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?" or assuring us that "Age is just a number" or, heaven help us, promising us that "The best is yet to be."

I suppose that depends on how you define "best."

Muffin and Tiggy contemplate retirement

In any case, let me tell you about my two little dogs, Mrs Tiggy-Winkle and Muffin. They do not know how old they are. For that matter, I don't know how old they are: both were young adults when they came to live with us 9 or 10 years ago. Both dogs need new tires, but since they don't know where to find them, the best is probably not yet to be.

Yesterday the three of us took a two-mile walk down the Prairie Path to Lincoln Marsh and back. We've been taking this walk for years, and we all love it. Sometimes we turn it into a three-mile walk by continuing to Jewell Road before turning around. Once this spring we turned right when we reached Jewell and walked four miles.

Except that yesterday afternoon, which was cool and pleasant, Muffin couldn't keep up. She didn't complain, but she started dragging behind Tiggy and me. She looked like she was working hard. Eventually I picked her up and carried her. Her heart was beating very fast.

Muffin looks great. Her health is good. She still enjoys a game of tug-a-toy with Tiggy, and she still wants to take walks. She's not an ancient dog, but she's nearing full retirement age. According to this chart that correlates a dog's age in human years with her size, she's probably between 60 and 68. In other words, she's my age.

I would like to point out that Rabbi Boteach, who believes in "doing more than before" in retirement, is 45 years old. When Robert Browning wrote "Grow old along with me! / The best is yet to be," he was, at most, 52. I don't know about you, but I'm tired of youngsters - or even rare oldsters, like my 91-year-old friend who cross-country skis around her 15-acre farm - setting the bar for the rest of us.

Fact: Muffin can't do today what she could do last year, and this is not because she's depressed or lazy or conforming to society's low expectations for aging dogs. It's because most dogs, like most people, quite naturally slow down as the years go by, and no matter how strenuous our denial, we will not be puppies again.

A lot of us silly boomers think we're going to reinvent old age (and why not? didn't we invent sex back in the 1960s?), when all we're really doing is lapsing into nostalgia. Afraid to enter a new phase of life, we double down on what we already know: overwork, multitasking, constant activity. Those were the days, my friend, / We thought they'd never end.

But maybe we should be thinking forward, not backward. Maybe we should be looking at new ways of living, ways we haven't yet had time to try, ways uniquely suited to people with more life experience than health and vigor.

For Muffin, whose life purpose is to sit on laps and hang around her peeps, the future looks bright. Especially if she can persuade me to buy her a doggy jogger...

MAD WOMEN by Jane Maas

"Was it really like that?"

As soon as people find out I actually worked at an advertising agency in the Mad Men era, they pepper me with questions. "Was there really that much drinking?" "Were women really treated that badly?" And then they lean in and ask confidentially: "Was there really that much sex?"

The answer is yes. And no. Mad Men gets a lot of things right, but it gets some things wrong, too. So I thought I'd give you a typical day in my life on Madison Avenue in 1967, three years after I began working at Ogilvy & Mather as a copywriter.

--from Chapter 1, "A Day on Madison Avenue, 1967"

If you enjoy Mad Men, you really should read Mad Women. 

From a lifetime on Madison Avenue, Jane Maas knows advertising better than anyone, and she cheerfully dishes about the agencies and individuals she worked with. Her portrayal of boozing, tomcatting, money-obsessed ad men is pretty close to what you see on the TV show, and often funnier.

Having been a teenager in the 60s, I especially appreciated her deft evocations of how it felt to be a female in those days. Uncomfortable, actually, what with girdles and garters, nylon stockings with seams, pointy bras, hats, and little white gloves. And uncomfortable in a more serious way, as women were patronized or ignored, passed over for promotion, paid considerably less than their male counterparts, constantly and thoughtlessly harassed, and fired if they got pregnant. (My first full-time job, in 1968, had a three-tiered pay scale: highest for married men, middle for single people, lowest for married women.)

Maas is now about 80, and she's seen a lot of changes in her industry and in women's lives. Though many of the changes are for the better, she's not sure that today's working women have it any easier than their foremothers. Maybe she's right--balancing work and family is extremely difficult in any era. Still, I wouldn't want to turn the clock back 50 years. Reading or watching TV shows about the 60s is fun. But being an ambitious working woman back then--or a traditional housewife, for that matter--was often fun only on TV.

Q. How can you get health insurance if you're an American with a pre-existing condition? A. Live long enough.

This Sunday is an important milestone for me. It's the day I no longer risk losing health insurance.

I left my last job-with-benefits when I was 51 years old. I'd been commuting an hour and a half each day, and I was worn out. My husband had excellent health insurance, and publishing jobs were plentiful.

Six weeks after my job ended, however, the dot-com bubble burst and jobs everywhere started to dry up. In 2003, I discovered I had a great big pre-existing condition - a defective heart valve and an aortic aneurysm that would eventually require surgery. I became uninsurable except through my husband's employer (and mine, should I ever find another job). And then in 2008, the year I turned 60, the whole economy tanked. I realized I was now entirely dependent on my husband's employer for health insurance, since I would probably never again have a job-with-benefits.

I got scared. What if my husband died? Through COBRA, I could extend his insurance for three years, as long as I was able to afford the $7500+ annual premium. But that might not take me all the way to Medicare. 

And what if he lost his job? The annual premium for the two of us would come to nearly $16,000, and the insurance would run out after 18 months.

Doesn't the Affordable Care Act mandate coverage for the formerly uninsurable? Yes indeed, but there's a catch. To be eligible for the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, you have to be not only uninsurable but also uninsured for at least six months before applying, and then there's a lapse of two to six weeks before the insurance becomes effective. Going without insurance for 6 1/2 to 8 months when your aneurysm is reaching the danger zone is not a great idea.

But hospital emergency rooms have to treat you, don't they? Right, but they don't do prevention. They would not repair an aneurysm before it burst, though they would try to save you after the damage was done. Trouble is, if you wait for surgery until after the aneurysm ruptures, you will probably die, most likely in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

Fortunately, my husband is alive and well and has a fine job with an employer who continues to provide excellent health insurance. Six months ago I had elective open-heart surgery, which means I am still totally uninsurable by pre-Affordable Health Care Act standards, but I am much less likely to die. And Sunday, I turn 63 1/2. If my husband lost his job today, COBRA would take us right up to Medicare. I can finally relax.

I am very much in favor of the Affordable Care Act, but it doesn't go nearly far enough. Repeal Obamacare? Only if our lawmakers make a serious study of why health care in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, etc. costs considerably less than equivalent health care in the United States; and why those countries are getting better results than we are - and why citizens of those countries never, ever have to worry about living with a major medical condition and no health insurance at all.

MADE IN DAGENHAM (DVD)

In 1968, 179 east London machinists walked off the job and changed history. The machinists weren't complaining about having to work long days in an airless room that quickly became unbearably hot. They objected to being classified as unskilled workers when  their work - making seat covers for Fords - required a great deal of skill. They also objected to being paid considerably less than fellow workers who were less skilled than they were. And they objected to, year after year, being patronized, lied to, and eventually ignored by union officials. The 179 machinists, of course, were women.


Made in Dagenham is funny, sassy, infuriating, and occasionally moving. Watch it for an evening's entertainment, or watch it to remember - or to learn - what life was like only 43 years ago. 1968 was the year when Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. It was the year of the Tet offensive and the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. Student protests, especially in France, were huge. The Beatles sang about Lady Madonna ("wonder how she manages to feed the rest?"). They might well wonder - women earned less than 60% of what men earned, and it didn't look like things were going to get better anytime soon.

Of course women should have equal pay, some of the more enlightened men-in-charge told us. But these things take time. You can't expect things to happen overnight. Making demands will get you nowhere. That's what the same enlightened men-in charge-had been saying about civil rights for people of color just a few years earlier. And that's what the weaselly union and business leaders told the women machinists in east London.

Fortunately, the women machinists didn't agree.

In 1968 I taught history and French at a small private high school. The pay scale had three levels: married men earned approximately $7000 a year; single men earned about $6000, and women earned about $5000. The English teacher, the German teacher, and I thought this was not quite fair. All the married men had working wives. We, however, though women, were all married to students and were the sole support of our families. Why shouldn't we earn as much as the married men?

We wrote a polite letter of inquiry to the people responsible for our paychecks. We made no threats; we merely asked for an explanation. Immediately our principal got a terrified phone call from his board chairman. "What's this I hear about a teacher's strike?" the man wanted to know.

Unlike Rita O'Grady, the spunky heroine of Made in Dagenham, we didn't strike. We didn't do anything, in fact: we were nice girls. Those were the days, my friend. I'm glad they finally ended.

HEALING HEARTS by Kathy E. Magliato

The January 2011 paperback
edition is retitled Heart Matters.

There are many good reasons to read Healing Hearts: A Memoir of a Female Heart Surgeon.

Maybe you're inspired by success-against-all-odds stories, especially when the author is a lively straight-shooter with a wry sense of humor.

Maybe you're a fan of House or Grey's Anatomy or other medical dramas, and you'd like to know what really goes on in a hospital. (Hint: it's not as sexy as you might think.)

Maybe you'd like to know more about what it's like to be a woman in a specialty where women are almost nonexistent:

Since 1948 the [American Board of Thoracic Surgery] has awarded approximately 7,400 certificates.... In 1961 the board certified its first woman.... From 1961 to 2008, ... only 180 [certificates] have been awarded to women.

(I just searched the "Find a Doctor" data base for Cleveland Clinic, for years the #1 ranking heart hospital in US News's annual rankings: no female heart surgeons on their Cleveland Campus. So I tried Mayo Clinic, hospital #2: zero in Rochester, MN. Johns Hopkins, #3: zero. Texas Heart Institute / St. Luke's Episcopal, #4: one! Note to my granddaughters: the field is wide open.)

Maybe you're curious about how Magliato - who sometimes works 24-hour days, frequently gives speeches, invented a device to assist heart patients, earned an MBA on the side, and, of course, wrote this book - manages to maintain a good relationship with her husband and their two young sons, as she claims she does:

Life is too short not to have it all.... If I can do it, anyone can.

Yeah, right.

On the other hand, you probably won't want to read Healing Hearts if
you crave sympathy for your own hectic days, or if you're looking for practical ways to balance work and family - unless you, like Magliato, have relentless ambition and energy to burn.

You probably won't want to read it if you have low tolerance for self-promotion: achievement is extremely important to Magliato, and she never neglects an opportunity to mention her accomplishments.

You certainly won't want to read it if you're facing open-chest surgery and need reassurance that nothing can possibly go wrong. Things often go wrong - more things than you might imagine, and Magliato is happy to tell you about them.

And if you're struggling to get by in America's foundering economy, parts of this book may raise your blood pressure to dangerous levels. In an astoundingly tone-deaf chapter, "Where Have All the Good Times Gone?" Magliato complains that her rates are less than her hairdresser's, notes that at age 45 she is still paying off student loans, expresses concern that new medicines and technologies are making surgery less necessary, and takes comfort in the fact that congestive heart failure is on the rise.

If I can't shed a tear for her plight, it's because a recent physician compensation survey shows cardiac and thoracic surgeons to be the fourth-highest-paid U.S. specialty out of the 69 listed. The average salary for a heart surgeon is $533,084; not as high as that of an orthopedic surgeon who does joint replacements ($605,953), but considerably higher than, say, that of a pediatric endocrinologist ($187,957) or a geriatrics specialist ($187,602). Magliato works hard and deserves adequate compensation, but she could have stated her case more tactfully.

Still, Magliato is a genuine pioneer, and pioneers are rarely soft-spoken and cuddly. She has had to summon the strength not only to put herself through decades of higher education, but also to stand up to sexism at every step along the way. She has had to work longer hours under more strenuous conditions than most of us will ever dream of, and at the same time she has had to fend off criticism about how she relates to her husband and children. You need a triple dose of chutzpah to do what she has done, and I applaud her for her success.

But please, Dr. Magliato, stop saying anyone can do it. You may think you're being modest, but really you're just making us normal people feel inadequate.

THE SOCIAL ANIMAL by David Brooks

Last December a couple of magazine editors asked me to read a galley of David Brooks's then-forthcoming book, The Social Animal: A Story of Love, Character, and Achievement, and consider reviewing it. After reading the galley, I declined.

I didn't hate the book as much as P.Z. Myers does in his hilarious Salon review, "David Brooks' Dream World for the Trust Fund Set," though you might want to read Myers before tackling Brooks. Equally dismissive but more analytical is Will Wilkinson's "Scornful Review" on his Forbes blog. And while philosopher Thomas Nagel, who analyzes "David Brooks's Theory of Human Nature" in the New York Times, is not dismissive, he too seems less than impressed by Brooks's argument and presentation.

I sent one of the editors a lengthy e-mail explaining why I didn't want to review the book, which was published last week. Here's what I told him:

... I’m less enthusiastic about it than I hoped I’d be. Brooks is writing about the primacy of the unconscious over the conscious mind, and secondarily (I think) the primacy of interpersonal relationships over rational constructs. Basically he’s synthesizing a lot of books he’s read, and he’s presenting the findings in more-or-less story form as he follows the lives of two imaginary characters, Harold and Erica. Weirdly, he has his characters living in the eternal present, as he warns us up front—at every stage of their life, they seem to be living in about 2010.

This framework allows Brooks to pontificate on lots of things that are dear to his heart, especially in the chapter “The Soft Side” in which Harold joins a think tank and ruminates on everything that Brooks thinks about (“He spent those years writing his essays, peppering the world with his policy proposals. Not many people seemed to agree with him. There was a New York Times columnist whose views were remarkably similar to his own, and a few others. Still, he plugged away, feeling that he was mostly right about things and that someday others would reach the conclusions he had reached.”)

The book also includes a great deal of typical Brooks humor. Unlike some reviewers of his previous books, I generally enjoyed the humor, though it sometimes seemed discordant with his sociological musings.

Summary: the book put a lot of interesting research together, but it did not break any new ground. Harold and Erica kept my attention, but I didn’t identify with either of them – and I’m not sure that many other readers would either. Erica is a driven over-achiever from an underprivileged background who ends up in the halls of power, partly thanks to Harold’s support and occasional wisdom. Harold doesn’t really seem to be anybody, though he has good people skills. They have quite a lot of money and no kids. When they retire, they lead overseas tours three times a year until they can’t do that anymore, and then they buy a second home in Aspen. Who are these people, and could they exist anywhere but inside the Beltway?

Anyway, I do plan to comment on the book on The Neff Review, though I won’t publish my comments until March, when the book is published. But I’ve lost my enthusiasm for writing a review for [your magazine]. This is by no means to say that it shouldn’t be reviewed. Brooks says some fine things about relationships and the unconscious and why we need to get past mechanistic Enlightenment reasoning, or at least move from the French to the English Enlightenment. Another of your authors may be perfectly suited to review it.

I loved Brooks's first book, Bobos in Paradise. I liked his second, On Paradise Drive. I managed to finish reading his third, The Social Animal. I appreciate the irenic tone of his op-ed pieces, and I wish him well. I hope he takes a refreshing sabbatical before starting another book.

Ethical business : 10 field marks

In a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce two days ago, President Obama appealed to some 200 business leaders to act responsibly. "I want to be clear, even as we make America the best place on earth to do business," he said,  "businesses also have a responsibility to America."

Now, I understand the challenges you face [the president said]. I understand that you're under incredible pressure to cut costs and keep your margins up. I understand the significance of your obligations to your shareholders. I get it. But as we work with you to make America a better place to do business, ask yourselves what you can do for America. Ask yourselves what you can do to hire American workers, to support the American economy, and to invest in this nation. 

A blogging friend of mine - a man who automatically opposes or is cynical about anything Mr. Obama says - responded predictably: "Amazing. The president (apparently hearkening back to JFK) tells these CEOs to ask what they can do for their country, as if providing jobs, goods, and services in a very uncertain economy is not enough. What an insult!"

My friend does not really believe that providing jobs, goods, and services is all a business needs to do, of course. He does not support pimps or drug pushers, for example, even though they provide jobs and goods or services; and I suspect that he's not fond of gambling casinos or abortion clinics either, even if they are entirely legal.

His comment, though, got me thinking, and for that I thank him. What, exactly, does an ethical business do beyond providing jobs, goods, and services? Here are some preliminary thoughts - please improve on them.

An ethical business ...

1. exists to provide life-sustaining jobs and useful goods and services.
2. makes a profit so that it can continue providing jobs, goods, and services; but rather than sitting on excessive earnings or turning them into fat bonuses, creates new products or hires more workers or increases overall employee compensation.
3. manages its affairs so that not just executives and shareholders but also rank-and-file employees are adequately compensated.
4. keeps honest and transparent accounts so that its directors, contractors, shareholders, and employees can make informed decisions.
5. markets its products honestly, not making misleading claims or delivering shoddy merchandise or poor service.
6. assures healthy working conditions for all of its employees at home and abroad, refusing to outsource to anyone who uses child labor, sweatshops, toxic working environments, or slave labor.
7. makes sure that its methods and materials preserve the environment for future generations at home and abroad, and takes responsibility to clean up any environmental disasters it inadvertently causes.
8. does not attempt to profit through taking advantage of consumers' ignorance, addictions, or desperation.
9. does not lobby or bribe lawmakers so as to be excused from ethical behavior in any of the above areas, or so as to gain an advantage over other companies.
10. gives back to the community not only through creating jobs, goods, and services; but also, whenever possible, by providing funding for community projects, rewarding employees who engage in community service, and supporting legislation that fosters the common good.

When President Kennedy challenged us to ask what we could do for our country, none of us took it as an insult. Rather, his words were an affirmation that we could, with vision and hard work, make the world a better place. I take President Obama's words to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in the same way. Ethical businesses are a tremendous force for good, and the world needs them now more than ever.

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For further reading: Bill George, professor of management practice at Harvard Business School and a director of ExxonMobil and Goldman Sachs, has written an interesting op-ed piece listing over a dozen concrete actions President Obama has recently taken in support of the business community. Check out "President Obama's Challenge to Business: 'It's Time to Invest in America.' "

WERE YOU BORN ON THE WRONG CONTINENT? by Thomas Geoghegan

Front

Back

Was I born on the wrong continent? Well, if you're talking bread, I'll definitely opt for the baguette. But Geoghegan (rhymes with "Reagan") says little about food, alas, in this comparison between American and Western European - mostly German - lifestyles. Instead, he looks at work, leisure, taxes, benefits, labor, management, social policy...

Don't let your eyes glaze over just yet. Geoghegan is a delightfully quirky writer who manages to convey a lot of information while making you think you're reading a chatty and often humorous travel book. Indeed, travel writing inspires him:

For years I read the front page [of the New York Times] about European unemployment, the collapse of social democracy, etc. But then I'd flip to the travel page and get the real news, the news that they don't dare put on page one, that every year in Europe, the whole place keeps getting nicer.

Geoghegan, a Chicago labor lawyer, made several extended trips to France, Switzerland, and Germany to study European socialism. He gives his conclusion in the preface:

The cover of the February 16, 2009, Newsweek announced: "WE ARE ALL SOCIALISTS NOW." The argument is that U.S. government spending is nearly as high as Europe's. A decade ago, the U.S. government was spending 34.3 percent of GDP, compared with 48.2 percent in the "euro-zone," which is Europe without the UK. Now, while the Continent is at 47 percent, we have gone up to 40.

And, in fact, I think the U.S. will close the gap. But in a sense, the more we spend, the less socialist we become. For whether it is health care or education, we use the private market to pay for the distribution of public goods. In other words, we pay socialist-type taxes so that the private insurance companies, drug companies, and, yes, doctors can profiteer.

That's the crisis of our time: we're paying for European-type socialism, without getting the equivalent payback.

Much of the rest of the book describes the European payback (and this will be counter-intuitive to a lot of American readers): Fewer poverty-stricken seniors and children. Six weeks' vacation time plus more paid holidays. Cheaper higher education, health care, day care, concerts. Paid maternity and paternity leave. Higher old-age pensions. Nursing-home benefits. Cleaner, faster, more readily available public transportation. More efficient land-use planning. Lower unemployment. More successful small businesses.

The only area in which the U.S. outshines its European counterparts is GDP - and Geoghegan offers fascinating observations as to why that actually may be making American lives more frantic and yes, even more expensive than the lives of European socialists.

Ironically, some of the structures that make German socialism work were developed by Americans during the occupation after World War II. Rather than the authoritarian, top-down socialism of the Nazis, the occupiers insisted on a bottom-up socialism where the workers themselves would have a big influence in organizational management. As a result, German businesses are much more democratically run than American businesses, who never adopted the practices themselves.

And some of the German bureaucratic regulation that Americans love to mock, says Geoghegan, has enabled Germany to become a major exporter of durable goods - really durable ones like Mercedes and BMWs - even as the U.S. has been ramping up its trade deficit. In fact, while the U.S. is increasing its debt by $1 trillion a year, Germany has no net external debt - and in fact vies with China for first place in world exports, an amazing feat for a country that has 82 million people compared with China's 1.3 billion. And yet "Americans still seem unaware that it's not just East Asia but the socialist Europeans who have outcompeted us in global markets as we sink deeper into debt."

So was Geoghegan born on the wrong continent? I don't think so. Like T.R. Reid, author of The Healing of America (a wonderfully enlightening book comparing health-care systems in various developed nations), Geoghehan wants us Americans to stop thinking we're best at everything, to start paying attention to how other countries handle vexing problems similar to our own, and to adapt their best solutions to our situation in ways that will give us happier, healthier lives. Our house is on fire, there's a fire station across the street, yet we're trying to fight the fire with buckets of water - or oil. "I know on the right and even in the center I am dismissed as a European-style liberal," he writes. "But my question for those on the right is as follows: do they care about the sovereignty of our country? Then they better start taking seriously what the Europeans do."

4 reasons not to mess with payroll taxes

Now that President Obama's people have sent out glowing press releases about how wonderful the proposed tax agreement is ("A Win for Women, Mothers and Working Families"), and Bill Clinton has hailed it as "a significant net plus for the country," and even AARP has signed off on it despite earlier misgivings, may I timidly suggest that the proposal contains one really dreadful item that should terrify all of us in a totally nonpartisan way?

Reducing payroll taxes is a terrible idea.

1. The proposed reduction isn't a mere 2%, even though the amount removed from our paychecks will drop from 6.2% to 4.2%. I won't bore you with the math, but work it out (remembering that your employer will continue to pay 6.2%) or take it on faith - it's actually a 16.4% reduction.

2. Even though Congress says it will make up the difference from general operating funds, may I point out that Congress is also saying it will balance the budget? Bear in mind that Social Security is not currently part of the federal budget, but if general funds are used to keep it solvent, it will become a hostage of Congressional budget negotiations. Is that a good idea?

3. Once taxes are lowered - even if unwisely, and even if the results are devastating - it is almost impossible to raise them again. Hey, isn't that why the President and Congress are working on a tax cut agreement right now? Do we really think that people who plan to run for office in 2012 are going to suggest raising payroll taxes back to 6.2% at the end of 2011?

4. We need the Social Security safety net. If we damage it now, do we have alternate plans for taking care of seniors? Are we still thinking about privatizing Social Security the way we privatized pension plans? Now that was a big success, wasn't it! Did you know that a yearly retirement income of $36,000 requires investments of about $900,000? And that the average American in his or her 50s has saved ... (drumroll) ... $29,000?

An AARP poll last August found that the vast majority of Americans of all ages want Social Security to continue as a guaranteed benefit. Few younger people, however, think it will be there when they need it. If the payroll reduction makes it through Congress this year, Social Security's chance of survival grows still dimmer.

Folks, if we want the goods, we're going to have to pay for them. We can't keep on lowering all our sources of revenue while raising all our expectations of benefits, though a Bloomberg poll released this week shows that that's exactly what most of us want to do. And that's exactly what our politicians keep promising they'll do, even though it's impossible, and even though their efforts are already devastating our economy.

Yesterday Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND), referring to the Bloomberg poll, said that there's only one way for our elected officials to get us out of the mess we're in:

They have to be prepared to sacrifice their political careers to do what must be done for the nation. Look, if we fail to get our deficits and debt under control, America will become a second-class nation. We are going to slip over the abyss into a fiscal crisis that is as sure as we sit here. 

How many of our 535 voting members of Congress have enough integrity to insist that we need to keep Social Security strong and that we will pay to do so - even if this means raising taxes?

Understanding the immigration debate: the necessary context

If I hadn't just read Moving Millions, I might not have noticed how many of this morning's news stories relate to immigration.

Jeffrey Kaye, a freelance journalist and special correspondent for The PBS NewsHour, subtitled his book How Coyote Capitalism Fuels Global Immigration. It's a book that goes way beyond what I'm used to reading in news stories or op-ed pieces about Arizona's new law. Kaye looks at immigration around the world, not just in America. He frequently puts today's stories in historical context. Most of all, he looks at business practices and government policies that either entice or drive people to leave their homes in search of a better life.

There's a lot of data in the book, and Publishers Weekly called it "a dense read." It isn't, really--Kaye injects enough stories and interviews to keep eyes from glazing over. If I sometimes found it hard going, it was because each chapter examines a different facet of immigration, and sometimes the evidence seems to lead to contradictory conclusions. In the final chapter Kaye ties things together and clearly states his own views, though he offers no policy recommendations. Since it majors on information, not advocacy, Moving Millions will probably appeal more to wonks than to activists.

But back to this morning's news stories, and how Kaye helped me understand them:

"Immigrant Maids Flee Lives of Abuse in Kuwait." Indentured servitude seems to be par for the course in some Middle Eastern countries where the elite have an obscenely luxurious lifestyle and immigrants, whose passports are confiscated so they can't run away, are forced to do all the work. Moving Millions includes a damning chapter about immigrants in Dubai.

"U.S. Official Boost Efforts to Protect Immigrant Crime Victims." Good enough - but why should immigrant laborers, whose work keeps our food prices low, need special visas in order to have basic human rights? Is it really necessary to be mugged in order to seek justice?

"Christiane Amanpour Takes On ABC News' 'This Week.'" Immigrants contribute to the American economy at all levels, as you've no doubt noticed if you've looked for a doctor lately. Amanpour, a British citizen, is the daughter of an Iranian named Mohammad and a British Christian. She is married to an American Jew and recently moved from London to New York.

"Border Deployment Will Take Weeks." Yup, and it's not going to accomplish anything except possibly help re-elect politicians who should know better. Fences and guns don't keep people out when businesses lure them in. And if businesses stop hiring illegal immigrants, expect the American cost of living to skyrocket.

Interestingly, some companies are trying to have it both ways. According to one Arizona politician quoted in the book, "Many of the companies that made a profit off the backs of migrant workers were the same companies donating money to anti-immigration proponents." See my April 29 post in which I suggest that many businesses want immigrants here, but they want them scared. They are so much easier to exploit when they're terrified of being sent home.

Review: "The Lincoln Lawyer" by Michael Connelly

I am a Michael Connelly fan. So far I have read or listened to 18 of his 21 novels, and I've loved 17 of them (I wasn't as thrilled with Chasing the Dime, a stand-alone thriller whose protagonist is just too foolish to be believed - but I still read the whole thing). The Lincoln Lawyer, published in 2005, is one of the best.

Connelly's usual protagonist, Detective Hieronymus (Harry) Bosch, isn't in The Lincoln Lawyer, though if you paid attention while reading The Black Ice (1993), you'll quickly figure out that defense attorney Mickey Haller is Bosch's half-brother. While Bosch is an orphaned, street-smart, self-taught Vietnam vet whose work is almost a vocation, Haller is a well-educated, highly paid, very slick lawyer who plays the legal game for one reason - money.

The two men have a lot in common, though. Both are involved with criminals. Both are exceptionally clever at figuring out plots and launching counterplots. Both have a little trouble hanging on to female companions and wives, and both have small daughters. In a pinch - and pinches abound in these books - both men ignore the rules and fend for themselves, even if they have to bend the truth, professional standards, and the law to do so. And both are extremely skillful, or lucky, at avoiding death.

Character is extremely important in Connelly's novels, but Connelly is also a master plotter. In The Lincoln Lawyer, Haller faces an agonizing choice. Believing that a client is a serial murderer, should he try to persuade the jury he is not guilty? If he succeeds and the man is acquitted, will more lives be in danger? If he fails and the man is condemned, or if he refuses to continue with the case, will Haller himself be at risk? And if he tells anyone about his quandary, will he be disbarred for abusing the attorney-client privilege?

An Amazon customer reviewer notes that "in real life no matter how secret the client confidence, lawyers are ethically able to access the expertise necessary to know how to respond to any dilemma in an ethically sound way. The real Mickey Haller would have picked up the phone to the Bar's hotline for an ethics opinion. That simple act would have destroyed a helluva tale." OK, but Haller - like Bosch - prefers doing things his way. Anyway, no matter what opinion he might be given by a fellow member of the Bar, he would still be in a deadly relationship with a brilliant, murderous psychopath.

And that's why this story is so compelling. It looks like there's no way out, but you know Haller is up to something. If you've read other books by Connelly, you also know that the final chapters always contain a surprise, and you suspect that this book's surprise will go well beyond Haller's scheme, whatever it may be.

If you haven't read other books by Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer is a good place to start. It stands on its own without reference to the 15 preceding books. It is a page-turner that will shorten an airplane flight or keep you from snoring in your recliner after a long day at the office. It is also a perceptive character study of a genuine sleazeball who, in the midst of the biggest crisis of his career, begins to see himself as he really is.

Review: "Slow Love" by Dominique Browning

She had me at the subtitle. Dominique Browning lost her job as editor in chief of House and Garden when the magazine abruptly ceased publication; I quit my job as editorial director with a book publisher when I decided life is too short to spend three and a half hours every day commuting. She put on her pajamas and found happiness in less than three years; more than ten years later I - though grateful to be able to wear pajamas as late in the day as I please - am still working on contentment. I thought maybe Browning could lift my mood.

And indeed Slow Love was a cheering book, though not quite in the way I expected. Browning is very funny, even when she's writing about physical and emotional pain. Not many writers can make you smile or even laugh out loud when you're reading about, say, kidney stones, cancer, depression, eating disorders, and apparently unalterable codependency. Not that she gives her doomed love affair that name, but she doesn't need to.

Browning does not offer cheap cheer by telling how to overcome obstacles and achieve serenity in six easy steps (come to think of it, that kind of book isn't very cheering anyway). Serenity comes through toward the end of the book, after she has moved to her house by the ocean, in some wonderfully evocative nature writing; though I suspect Browning is better at writing about serenity than actually experiencing it.

She certainly does not give pointers that would help the average unemployed person, as a customer reviewer on Amazon seemed to think she should have done ("Except for recently unemployed New York media executives, who can really relate to her position?"). Yes, her financial concerns were minor compared to those of most people who lose their jobs, though the disgruntled reviewer should realize that a full-time writer is self-employed, not jobless. But this isn't a memoir about unemployment.

Instead, it's a memoir about values. Browning looks at our culture's image of the good life - a well-paid, high-status career, a beautiful home near New York City, designer clothes, meals in fine restaurants - and says : These things are less important than we think. Work is not the whole purpose of life. Financial security does not guarantee against depression. Status is fleeting and essentially meaningless. There are worse things than being alone.

I find these insights very helpful, though they have not yet lodged permanently in my brain. I need to hear them over and over.

As someone who has never made much money or achieved much status; who has always lived in small houses, bought clothes on sale, and cooked at home because it's cheaper; and who every now and then gets really tired of simple living and turns to her husband and says, "Let's get rich" - I appreciated reading about Browning's journey. It made me feel a lot more grateful for the good life I already have, and especially grateful for the good man I married over 42 years ago when we were both too young to have any idea what we were doing.

By contrast, Browning's pseudonymous lover, "Stroller," is a real jerk, and everyone but Browning knows this. Stroller is legally separated from his wife, but  he refuses to divorce her and is in frequent contact with her.

Every time he decided to let go of his ambivalence, he began throwing up new barricades against me. It is obvious to me, now, that our problems weren't coming from his inability to make a clean break from his marriage; they were symbolic of a larger inability to relax into a peaceful, loving relationship, one that didn't include shoving me away with stunning regularity. The mere proximity to a vital, unambiguous attachment triggered calamity in his heart.

"The situation with Stroller is not at all normal," her therapist tells her. "Why don't you think you are worth the effort?"

That's what I wondered over and over again as Browning keeps accepting, forgiving, or overlooking reprehensible behavior on the part of this clearly unstable and selfish man, who shows up (and disappears) so often that the book becomes as much about the author's doomed relationship as about her lost job. Finally, several months after Stroller leaves her alone in the hospital and goes off to London on a trip they had intended to take together, she seems to get it. "I was startled to realize that I had been using my fight with Stroller to avoid all the fights I should have been having with myself," she writes on page 219 (of 267). "I suddenly realized I didn't care any longer why he was wedded to ambivalence. Why was I so mired in it? ... Suddenly I realized that I couldn't change him. I could only change myself."

Whew. Now Browning can stop stuffing herself with giant cookies and piles of muffins. Now she can pay attention to her new house, her new garden, her new life. And indeed at this point her writing becomes more lyrical, and the book starts to match the summary of it on her blog: "SLOW LOVE means engaging with the world in a deeper, more meaningful way, learning to appreciate the beauty of everyday moments, and taking time to share them with one another - in the midst of our busy, productive lives."

Slow love is a great concept, even better than slow food. I hope she's practicing it. I hope she's gotten rid of Stroller, once and for all. But I wonder. Here's the third sentence in her Acknowledgments: "Many thanks to Stroller for reading this manuscript with care and concern, and for taking the time to comb through the pages, pointing out distortion and delight alike."

Earth to Dominique: It no longer matters what Stroller thinks. You don't have to check your memories or opinions with him. Stop already! You're worthwhile, all by yourself. And if you must hang your self-worth on personal accomplishment rather than simple existence, then take this : you're a brilliant writer. And as for happiness - well, you know what you need to do.

Caregetting

Yesterday I wrote about the toll caregiving takes, especially on women. This is not news. For several decades we Boomers, shocked at the fatigue and messiness and expense and relational difficulties of caring for our parents, have been writing about it. And we have written truthfully: caregiving is hard work.

We’re used to hard work, of course. We’re the generation that brought you the two-or-more-career household, the omnipresent electronic office, and the answer “Keeping busy” to the question “How are you?” Thanks to us Boomers, younger folks have no memory of long winter evenings playing board games, Sundays without shopping, or even family dinner.

But caregiving is not like our other work. Caregiving is unpaid. It does not lead to career advancement – in fact, it often makes it hard for us to keep our jobs. And since it still falls primarily to women, it serves to widen the status gap between men and women.

Here’s a heretical thought: maybe it’s time for us to talk less about the pain of giving care and more about the pain of needing care.

I do not need care yet, so I am only guessing at what care-getting feels like. I did, however, care for and observe my parents as their health declined. I have also come face to face with a life-threatening condition myself, and I can affirm Samuel Johnson’s observation: “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

Lacking British reserve, I would speak not of concentration but of primal terror. The healthy body – or at least the body that feels healthy – struggles to live. Yet many people who are very old or very sick or very demented find sweet release in death. What, then, must their lives feel like?

How does it feel when your spouse of sixty years dies and nearly all your friends are either dead or too infirm to visit you? When your body aches constantly from head to toe, whether you’re sitting or standing or lying down? When you can’t walk to the bathroom without help? When you can’t make it to the bathroom even with help and have to wear diapers? When your vision dims and your hearing is nearly gone? When you no longer recognize your children and feel as if you are living among strangers?

How does it feel to be nobody, to be called by your first name by nursing-home and hospital attendants younger than your grandchildren, to be told what to eat and where to live and how to spend your time, to know that even the kindest people are treating you like a kindergartner?

How does it feel to think you are a burden to the people you love most, to suspect that they are forfeiting jobs and money and family time and much-needed rest because you desperately need their care?

Pretty soon a lot of us Boomers are going to know exactly how these things feel. And I’ll bet any amount of money that we’ll start focusing a lot less on the stress of giving care and a lot more on the stress of needing it. We’re selfish that way.

Truth is, of course, that there’s plenty of stress to go around. It is very stressful to care for someone you love as she gradually, and often painfully, disintegrates. It is very stressful to become dependent on your children and strangers as your body, and often your mind, weaken. Parents and children who respect and honor one another recognize the mutual stress and are grateful for the bond of love that continues to hold them together.

Still, when it comes to caregiving, I’ll go with Jesus’ observation: “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).

Caregiving

A few minutes ago I got the news that my daughter’s mother-in-law has stage 4 cancer. I was still staring at the computer screen, trying to digest the information, when a friend forwarded me a report on a Canadian study with this headline: “Female Caregivers Face a Heavier Toll.”

Yes, we do. My mother died almost exactly 15 years ago, four months after my father died. Both had Alzheimer’s disease. Both were in a nursing home about five minutes from my house. I visited them at least several times a week, sometimes daily.

“We’re so glad we had a daughter,” my mother used to tell me. “It’s only the daughters who visit.” She wasn’t entirely right: several sons joined the many women who visited regularly. Though the study said six in ten caregivers are women, in my parents’ nursing home the number must have been closer to eight in ten.

Warning: If you are a woman with a spouse, parents, or parents-in-law, you are likely to spend a number of years as a caregiver.

"In terms of society's norms, the responsibility to care for parents tends to fall on the women," said Marina Bastawrous, the author of the study, who discovered that forty percent of female caregivers experience high-level stress. Women, she noted, are more likely than men to quit their jobs in order to care for their parents. When my parents started needing more care than I could handle along with my demanding job, I cut my hours back to 30 a week. Eventually I quit altogether. (More information on the toll caregiving takes is available from the Family Caregiver Alliance).

Sadly, according to the Canadian study, despite—or perhaps because of—all their hard work, “adult daughters suffer more than adult sons from poor relationships with ailing and aging parents who need their care.” If we care for our parents because we want to be thanked, or because we want to be closer to them, or because we have a romantic vision of saintly elders, we are likely to be disappointed. A bookstore assistant, noticing the book I was buying on caregiving, said to me, “God bless you, dear—I remember those days. Nothing you do is ever right.”

To be sure, nothing is ever enough. Nothing will restore our parents’ youth. Nothing will keep them from eventually dying. Nothing will keep us from our own certain decline. And yet we continue to care and to hope. That is what love does. Not sentimental, stress-free, feel-good love, but tough love that does what needs doing.

My daughter’s mother-in-law has no daughters, but she has an excellent husband and three good sons who love her very much and are already doing what they can for her. She also has three fine daughters-in-law, one of whom has been taking her to her doctors’ appointments all week. Chemo begins Monday. We are all praying for their strength and her healing. Please pray with us.
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See also my next post, "Caregetting."

Why Arizona's immigration bill won't make much difference

Arizona's Senate Bill 1070, signed by Governor Jan Brewer last Friday, has the nation's knickers in a knot. I agree with President Obama, who called the law

a "misguided" piece of legislation that "threaten[s] to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and their communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe. "

In spite of the law's claim to reject racial profiling, its first effect will surely be to increase harassment of Hispanics. For many of the law's supporters, however, this is not a drawback. Indeed, it is the main benefit of the legislation - not to send all undocumented immigrants back to their countries of origin, but to scare the ones who stay.

Think about it. If you ran a business that required a large number of unskilled workers - people who would pick vegetables, for instance, or slaughter pigs - fear could be your ally. Hire a man who is desperate for money and tell him that one misstep will put him on the bus to Nogales. He's not going to complain too loudly if his wages drop below the federally mandated minimum, or if he doesn't get health insurance or sick leave, or if he is required to work 12 or more hours a day with no overtime pay, or even if he is injured while working in dangerous conditions. He's certainly not going to join a union and demand fair labor practices. In fact, he may make his pre-adolescent children join him in the fields. He'll let you get away with a lot, because your small paycheck beats no paycheck at all. And then, when you don't need him anymore, you can lay him off. He can't do anything about it.

Yes, if you treat him that way, you are breaking Arizona's law, which -  like federal law and the laws of all other states - makes it illegal to employ and then mistreat undocumented immigrants. The problem is that these laws are rarely enforced. According to journalist and political activist Deborah White,

In 1999, under President Bill Clinton, the US government collected $3.69 million in fines from 890 companies for employing undocumented workers. In 2004, under President George Bush, the federal government collected $188,500 from 64 companies for such illegal employment practices. And in 2004, the Bush Administration levied NO fines for US companies employing undocumented workers.

Has there been a change under President Obama? Law professor Kris W. Kobach, defending Arizona's law in today's New York Times, says that "the Obama administration has scaled back work-site enforcement and otherwise shown it does not consider immigration laws to be a high priority." By contrast, Greg Moran, writing Sunday in San Diego's Union-Tribune, refers to "a stepped-up effort by the Obama administration to attack illegal immigration by cracking down on the employers who hire them." Whatever the truth about the present administration, the situation continues to be grave. According to the United Farm Workers of America's website,

Federal reports indicate between 50 percent and two-thirds of U.S. farm workers are undocumented. The UFW’s experience in areas where it is active, including the Central Valley, is that it is 90 percent or more.

Q. Why aren't we conducting massive raids on businesses so grossly violating federal and state law? Wouldn't that be more effective than targeting the immigrants themselves?
 
A. Yes, of course. Mexicans don't move to Arizona because they like the sunsets. But if every American business that employs undocumented workers were heavily fined, repeat violators were shut down, and undocumented employees were returned to their native lands, the food industry would collapse.

The collapse would not be permanent, of course. We have to eat. Businesses that formerly hired illegal immigrants would scramble to hire American citizens and legal immigrants. In order to do so, they would have to give their employees legally mandated protections. This would in turn dramatically increase the price of food. Voters - even the ones that backed get-tough laws against illegal immigrants - would be outraged.

Interestingly, if we changed our laws in the other direction and gave every undocumented worker in America a green card, prices would also skyrocket. Legal workers get legal protections, and this greatly increases the cost of human resources. Voters - even the ones that backed amnesty and permanent residency for illegal immigrants - might be less enthusiastic about paying double for food.

And that is why I think Arizona's legislation - and indeed, reforms currently under discussion by the administration - won't make much difference. Politicians depend on voters, and voters do not like rising prices. Politicians also depend on major financial contributors, and agribusiness spends big on PAC contributions and lobbying. One of the easiest ways to keep food prices low and agribusiness happy is to keep the workforce scared.

So I expect to see a flurry of state laws aimed at pacifying nativists and frightening foreigners. Some undocumented workers will be rounded up and shipped home. Most will not. Business will continue as usual. In the words of Amos the shepherd, we affluent Americans will continue to "sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals, ... [to] trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and push the afflicted out of the way."