My toddler is a crack addict. Even worse, your Amber Alert system is still operating in 1997.

My wife and I took our daughter to a local grocery store on Saturday morning to register her for the Amber Alert program.

In order to register a child for Amber Alert, the child’s height and weight is measured and a headshot of the child is needed.

My daughter despises all three of these activities.

This made it both amusing and frustrating to listen to the two Amber Alert volunteers attempt to coax my daughter onto the scale and in front of the camera.

First they attempted bribery, offering Clara stickers, candy, coloring books, a balloon and the promise of more candy if she would comply.

Bribery does not work on my daughter. She places little value on material possessions and simply cannot be bought.

You should have seen the look on the volunteer’s face when Clara rejected the balloon. I’m not sure if she had ever seen a child reject a balloon in her life.

Then they attempted to exert peer pressure, explaining how all the other children had stood in front of the camera.

Peer pressure also does not work with my daughter. She was quite happy for her friends when they all became potty trained but this did not influence her desire to become potty trained in any way. She simply does not care what other people are doing or thinking about her. 

Then they attempted to rationalize with Clara, explaining the importance of this program and the ease by which the process would be completed. I stopped the woman before she could finish her first sentence.

“My daughter is three years old,” I said. “No amount of rationalizing is going to work with her. You are only giving her unnecessary warning about we are about to do. Surprise is our only weapon here. Think of my daughter as a crack addict. Would you try to rationalize with a crack addict about the dangers of drug use? Same rules apply here.”

The volunteer, who is also probably a mother, did not seem to appreciate the comparison of my daughter to a crack addict, but I thought she was equally insane for trying to explain the benefits of the Amber Alert system to an entrenched three year old .

In the history of human civilization, has any entrenched toddler ever said, “You know what? You’re right. This is important. I’m sorry for not realizing it sooner.”

Here’s a better question:

Why does the Amber Alert registration process require me to meet  volunteers with a laptop and camera outside a grocery store on a Saturday morning to complete a process that I could have done at home in a fraction of the time?

Even more important, my daughter’s height and weight will be different by Thursday. How is this system going to assist in locating my daughter if she disappears two years from now, when her height, weight and overall appearance have changed entirely?

Am I expected to return to this supermarket every six months to have Clara’s information updated?

If the Amber Alert system consisted of a secure website that parents could access at home, we could update our child’s height, weight and photograph on a regular basis, and I wouldn’t be required to drive four towns over and wait outside a grocery store on a Saturday morning in order to have volunteers offer my daughter balloons and candy to get her to do something that I can already do at home with much greater ease.

And I could’ve registered my daughter for the program months or even years ago instead of waiting for an Amber Alert Safe ID Event to make an appearance near my home.

It’s as if someone has frozen the Amber Alert system in 1997.

Even the Amber Alert website is incredibly wonky. Not only does it include scrolling. illegible text circa 1997 and a prominent display of the “Current Date” and “Current Time” in the top right and left corners circa never, but my hometown is not listed in its database of Connecticut cities and towns, making it impossible for me to search for an Amber Alert event near my home.

The text of the site is written in (I kid you not) 6 point font and there are links placed on top of text.

Don’t get me wrong. The Amber Alert system is a wonderful and much needed program, but it appears to be run by people who are still using Windows 97 machines and accessing the Internet via dialup.

The dashboard is no place to roll back technology in favor of tradition

My rental car from the weekend, a Chrysler 200, was equipped with only an analog clock in the dashboard, even though the radio mounted directly below the clock had a digital display.

I can’t begin to imagine the amount of pretentiousness required in order to eliminate the digital clock entirely from the dashboard.

It’s akin to having an actual Rolodex mounted onto my iPhone rather than an app to organize my contact list. 

Which is another way of saying it’s incredibly stupid.

Marriage deconstruction tool

In 2011, Facebook was cited as a contributing factor in one-third of divorces. 

The most common reasons cited as evidence were inappropriate messages to members of the opposite sex, separated spouses posting nasty comments about each other, and Facebook friends reporting spouse’s inappropriate behavior.

I find these statistics tragic and unfathomable.

Facebook?

I have three close friends who do not have a Facebook account. All three are men.

I’m starting to think that they are smarter than the rest of us.

The Internet makes it a very small world

Yesterday I wrote about Erin DiMeglio, the first girl to play quarterback in a Florida high school football game. Uncertain about how I would react if my daughter asked to play football, I wrote a post parsing out some of my feelings on the subject.

Later that evening, Erin DiMeglio’s coach, Doug Gatewood, commented on the post and his wife, Bethany Gatewood, contacted me via Facebook.

An hour later Doug also contacted me via Facebook, asking to steal a line from the post for use with his football team this year.

I told him I’d be honored.

It an excellent reminder of the power of the Internet. Less than fifteen years ago, it would have been almost impossible for Doug Gatewood and I to exchange words. I would have read about Erin DiMeglio in the New York Times, wondered about how I would feel if she had been my daughter, conversed with my wife and perhaps some friends on the subject and moved on with life.

Today I am able to express my thoughts on the subject on a network connected to every other computer in the world, including Doug and Bethany Gatewood’s computer.

Presumably Erin DiMeglio’s computer as well.

Presumably as a result of a Google search or a Google Alert, Doug and his wife were able to find my post on the Internet and access social media to converse with me.

We sometimes forget how incredible this technology really is. It feels as if we have been living with the Internet forever, but not so very long ago, this type of communication would have been unimaginable.

It’s also a good lesson for me to bring back to my students. As we begin to live more and more of our lives online, we must remember how truly public our words are. While I have never been afraid of criticizing people when I disagree with their words or actions, this evening’s exchange with Doug and Bethany Gatewood serve as a reminder that the words we write can easily land in the laps of our subjects and often do.

I am not suggestions that criticism is wrong. Even harsh criticism is warranted at times. But it should be measured carefully before one sends it out into the world. For all intents and purposes, Erin DiMeglio, Doug Gatewood and Bethany Gatewood are sitting over my shoulder as a write,  capable of reading my every word.

Last night Doug and Bethany Gatewood did just that, and their words in response to mine meant a great deal to me. As a writer, there is nothing better than learning that my words have meant something to a person.

The fact that Doug and Bethany play an important role in the subject of my post made it even more meaningful. One of those moments I hope to never forget.   

The iPhone needs a better name

The device in my pocket is called an iPhone, but I’m starting to believe that this is the worst name possible for it.

At one time, the primary function of a mobile telephone was to serve as a telephone, but for me (and possibly the majority of Americans), the telephonic component of this device has become one of the least important parts of my iPhone.

The number of applications that I utilize on my iPhone more often than the actual phone include (in approximate order to frequency):

• Texting
• Instacast (downloading and listening to podcasts)
• Email
• Hootsuite (Twitter client)
• Camera
• Evernote
• Calendar
• Music (audiobooks and music)
• Mint
• Clock
• Chrome
• Maps
• ESPN Sportcenter
• Weather Bug
• Ziplist

This makes the telephone the 16th most frequently used application on my phone, falling well behind applications like my grocery list and the clock I use to tell time.

It’s also by far my least favorite use of the device.

iPhone hardly seems like the appropriate name anymore.

Anyone want to propose a better name?

2012: Products I can’t live without

Back in 2010, inspired by lists created by tech geeks like Michael Arrington and Kevin Rose, I created a list of products I could not live without.

Today I present my updated list of products I could not live without.

• Gmail
• Google Docs
• Google Calendar
• Google Chrome
• Mint (financial accounting software for the computer and mobile device)
• iPhone 4
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Carbonite (automatic, instant online backup)
• ZipList (a syncing mobile grocery list that we use for shopping)
• Evernote (note-taking program for the computer and mobile device)
• Dropbox (file syncing across my computer, mobile device and the cloud)
• Asus laptop
• Snapfish wireless headphones
• WordPress (my website and blogging software)
• Instapaper (saves webpages for later reading on computer and mobile device)

Some interesting comparisons between the 2010 and 2012 lists:

My 2010 list contained 14 items. This year’s list contains 16 items.

There are 7 items on the 2010 list that appear on this list as well, including the all the Google products, Mint, the iPhone (though the version has changed), and Carbonite.

ZipList has replaced Grocery IQ for my shopping list because it can sync between multiple mobile devices.

Twitter has replaced Facebook in terms of my indispensible social media tool. The amount of time I spend on Facebook is marginal. 

The mobile version of Chrome has replaced Opera Mini. It syncs open tabs between platforms and is just as fast as Opera.

Evernote replaced the pre-loaded note-taking program on the iPhone, which was so useless that it did not make my 2010 list even though I was using it on a daily basis.

WordPress replaced Typepad, which was another product so disappointing that even though I used it almost every day, it did not qualify as a product I could not live without in 2010.

YouTube has gained even greater importance in my life now that it is the primary means by which I can get her dressed in the morning and ready for bed at night without protest. A ten-minute episode of Charlie and Lola or Winnie the Pooh is just what I need to start and end my day without a fight.

Does Wikipedia have a a woman problem or do women have a Wikipedia problem?

Torie Bosch of Slate wrote a piece about a recent debate on Wikipedia over the validity of an entry on Kate Middleton’s bridal gown as a means of illustrating the gender gap that exists amongst Wikipedia’s citizen editors. Only 9 percent of Wiki editors are female, which is actually an improvement over recent years but still exceptionally disproportionate.

Serious efforts have been made to mitigate this gender gap. Wikipedia’s cofounder, Jimmy Wales, recently addressed the problem and has taken action, as have female editors already working on the site. Despite these efforts, female editors, on average, “make fewer changes to articles than male editors” and frequently don’t continue to be active online.”

All of this brings me to Bosch’s title for the piece:

How Kate Middleton’s Wedding Gown Demonstrates Wikipedia’s Woman Problem

I can’t help but wonder if Wikipedia has a woman problem or if women have a Wikipedia problem. While the editorial pages are currently dominated by male editors, anyone is free to make additions, deletions and revisions to the encyclopedia, meaning that women have just as much access to Wikipedia as men. They may have to fight for turf and battle a horde of male editors in order to be heard, but nothing is preventing them from doing so.

Furthermore, the efforts made thus far to involve more female editors have not yielded meaningful results.

I would also argue that the inclusion of Kate Middleton’s wedding gown into the pages of Wikipedia was by no means a slam dunk and not representative of any gender gap. I am glad that there was debate about its inclusion. I’m still not so sure that it belongs in the encyclopedia, but I am confident that if a discussion took place, it’s inclusion is probably justified. This is what makes Wikipedia great. I would also argue that the debate over the dress’s inclusion would have taken place even if female editors outnumbered male editors by a large number.

Like I said, the dress was hardly a slam dunk, regardless of who is editing the site.  

I think it’s great that Wikipedia is making efforts to be more inviting and inclusive to women, but at some point, when a subset of people is not taking advantage of an opportunity that is readily available to them, we might need to shift our gaze away from  the missed opportunity to the people failing to take advantage of it.

Wikipedia may have a woman problem, but I suspect that the problem is the result of women having a Wikipedia problem.

I’m not sure what the problem might be, but knowing the source of the problem is often the first step in finding a solution.

My Wikipedia dream

It’s my dream that someday I will click on the Wikipedia app on my phone, and the featured article of the day will be the same article that brought me to Wikipedia in the first place. That would be amazing.

This morning I was looking for information on Revolutionary War general Benedict Arnold.

Today’s featured article was about the Biddenden Maids:

… a pair of conjoined twins supposedly born in Biddenden, Kent, England, in the year 1100. They are said to have been joined at both the shoulder and the hip, and to have lived for 34 years. It is claimed that on their death they bequeathed five plots of land to the village, known as the Bread and Cheese Lands. The income from these lands was used to pay for an annual dole of food and drink to the poor every Easter. Since at least 1775 the dole has included Biddenden cakes, hard biscuits imprinted with an image of two conjoined women.

Most scholars believe that the Biddenden Maids are merely a folktale, though the story of their lives might make for an interesting novel.

Either way, they aren’t even close to Benedict Arnold.

Weiner-Dicks agreement

When  it comes to Twitter, Jennifer Weiner and I are in agreement on many things, including this:

Finally, these are my pet peeves, but if your first tweet every morning is some variation of “I need coffee,” I unfollow. That’s not tweet-worthy, that’s more of a casual complaint for a spouse or roommate only. Same with tweets about the weather (unless you’re planning on changing it). Remember, you’re speaking to an audience — make it interesting.

The only difference:

I don’t unfollow. I see it was an opportunity to make a new enemy.

Martin Cooper kicked Alexander Graham Bell’s ass

One of my favorite people in all of human history is Martin Cooper. Ever heard of him?

Cooper was a member of the Motorola team that invented the first cellular telephone back in 1973.

While I am immensely appreciative of the convenience and joy that my iPhone provides on a daily basis, it is not Cooper’s inventiveness that I admire most.

It was the choice he made when deciding upon who to call first.

For his first public cellular phone call in human history, Cooper took to the New York City streets and called his rivals at AT&T and inform them that they had lost the race to build the first functioning cell phone.

The combination of New York’s busy street sounds and Cooper’s voice told the engineers at AT&T that they had been bested.

Now that was one hell of a phone call.

The perfect combination of comeuppance, spite, humor, and bravado.

The inventor’s version of my four favorite words:

I told you so.

Can you even imagine a better phone call?

Contrast this to Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, whose first call was to his assistant in the other room:

"Mr. Watson—Come here—I want to see you.”

Alexander Graham Bell might have been a great inventor, but he sucked at understanding the importance of the moment.

"Mr. Watson—Come here—I want to see you.”

Is that the best he could do?

It makes me wish someone a little wittier, a little meaner or someone with a greater flair for the dramatic had invented the first telephone.

Someone like the great Martin Cooper.

Draw a Stickman: A waste of time well spent

I avoid most video games. I do not load games onto my phone.

I have never even seen a Facebook game.

As a kid, I spent hours playing the Atari 2600, the Atari 5200, various iterations of the Nintendo gaming system and PC games.

Not to mention the thousands of quarters dropped into arcade games over the years.

For a long time, video games occupied an enormous part of my life.

I’ve written about my gaming life.

I’ve complained about the video games of today.

I even married a gamer of sorts.

I do not regret the time spent playing video games. It was an entertaining and challenging way to spend time with my friends and family.

But today, I have more important things that need to be done. I have goals to accomplish, dreams to fulfill, and a family to support.

Other things have pushed the video games aside.

I still love playing video games and will play with my buddies from time to time, but I have structured my life in such a way that the temptation to play cannot be readily satiated.

No games on my phone. No games on my laptop. No gaming systems in my home.

I have built my life in such a way that except for online poker (when it was legal), I cannot easily access a video game.

But occasionally, the Internet will intervene, breaking through my gaming firewall, introducing me to some online variant of the gaming I once knew and I will become briefly obsessed by a game.

Sometimes it’s even worth my time.

It happened today.

I suggest you give this game a try.

This video made me laugh, but it strikes fear in my heart as a father and teacher, too.

My two-year old daughter can take my iPhone, turn it on, switch off the app that I was previously using, swipe three screens over to her selections of apps, and choose one. She’s been able to do this for more than a year.

And she doesn’t use the iPhone very often at all. We use it to keep her still when we are changing her diaper or brushing her teeth, and we’ll also turn to it in our most desperate moments in restaurants and the car when everything else fails.

I don’t mind that she is so proficient with the device. The iPhone has actually helped her to learn all of her letters, expand her vocabulary, learn to count and distinguish between a hexagon and an octagon (something my fifth graders still can’t do).

But it makes me nervous. She loves books, and I don’t want that love to evaporate in a haze of touch screens and interactive media.

We don’t own an iPad, partially because I have yet to find a real need for one, but also because Elysha’s mother owns an iPad, and I sometimes think Clara loves it more than she loves me.

The girl loves her some iPad.

But I worry that the iPad and other interactive media distribution devices will replace her love for books in a time when it is critical for her love for books to grow.

I have seen what happens when a child spends more time playing video games and watching television than he spends reading.

I fight those battles every day with my students.

I know the challenges that lie ahead of the struggling reader.

It is a trap into which I never want my daughter to fall.

I think this amusing yet frightening video demonstrates my fear perfectly:

Picture equals words

Very cool.

And unthinkable just a few years ago.

More problems with Dicks

I recently wrote about my need to change my last name in the UK for the purposes of publishing. While I am happy to be retaining my given name in the US and every other country where my books have been or are being translated (about a dozen at last count), it does create the occasional problem, as you might imagine.

A good example is my name as it relates to Twitter. Once a day, I use a search tool in order to determine if my name or the names of any of my books have been mentioned on Twitter within the past 24 hours. Quite often a reader has tweeted that he or she has begun reading one of my books or enjoyed the book, and I am able to respond with appreciation.

I’m also able to answer questions that the reader may have asked, offer to participate in book club talks remotely and begin the process of forming positive relationships with more and more readers.

But in addition to tweets about my books, a Twitter search of my name often yields additional results:

• Women who are especially angry at men named Matthew and prone to pejorative remarks
• Men named Matthew or men speaking to men named Matthew who are proposing unhealthy, dangerous and complete insane activities with their genitals
• Men named Matthew making lewd advances at women and women making lewd advances toward men named Matthew

It’s a base, grammatically challenged and vulgar side of Twitter that I don’t normally see in my feed and one that I wish I didn’t have to see on a regular basis.

But then again, I could have been named after my father, Leslie (Les) Dicks.

Or my Uncle Harry.

Or my other Uncle Harry.

I can’t imagine what a Twitter search on those names might yield.

Please don’t tell me.

Your sense of smell or your cell phone?

From a recent McCann survey of more than 7,000 people ages 16-30 across a variety of countries:

Given a list of things (including cosmetics, their car, their passport, their phone and their sense of smell) and told they could only save two, 53% of those aged 16-22 and 48% of those aged 23-30 would give up their own sense of smell if it meant they could keep an item of technology (most often their phone or laptop).

We all know how important technology is to young people, but a willingness to sacrifice one of their human senses to keep it shows just how intrinsic it has become.

I didn’t even have to think about it.  I would do the same. 

Without a moment’s hesitation.

Am I crazy?

Why today's video games suck

It happened more than a dozen years ago. I was playing a new PC game called Diablo II with some buddies and liking it very much. About an hour into the game, my character was killed by an arrow-shooting monster, and my head dropped to my chest. Damn. I’d have to start over.

“But, wait,” my friends said. “No need to start over.”

When a character dies in Diablo II, he or she simply reappears back in town without any of the equipment or items previously accumulated. And the lost equipment and items remain on the ground where your character died, so while it can be tricky to get back there without any weapons or armor, it is doable. And you have all the time in the world to accomplish it.

In short, the game has no risk. There are no life-or-death battles taking place within the game. It is simply a means of item-accumulation.

While I kept playing because my friends were playing with me, the joy in playing the game was gone.

It’s why I eventually became a griefer, finding a way to circumvent the rules of the game in order to kill players (also not normally allowed) and strip them of the items that they had spent hundred of hours accumulating.

The game needed genuine risk to be worthwhile.

So when I came upon this graphic illustrating the difference between the video games of my youth and the games of today, it made sense to me.

There was a time when dead meant dead in video games. When finishing a game was only possible for the most skilled players. When you would literally be drenched in sweat upon defeating the game’s boss.

Hell, there was a time when every game cost 25 cents to play. That made the stakes extraordinarily high.

But as video games moved exclusively into the home and the video game industry looked to expand beyond its base of hardcore gamers, it sought to create games that would appeal to a more casual gamer. The new games allowed players to experience the fun of playing the game without having to make a serious commitment in order to become good.

The risk-reward was removed from most games, including Diablo II.

This is probably why I play significantly fewer video games today. It has nothing to to with age.

It’s all about the stakes, or the lack thereof.

Henry Blake and Michael Scott: Thankfully not as intertwined as I (and many others) had feared

As The Office’s Michael Scott leaves the show forever, he boards a plane for Colorado and his new life. The final image before the scene ends is of his plane rising into the air. And in that instant, I thought about Henry Blake’s fate on M*A*S*H and was suddenly terrified that the writers of The Office might have decided upon a similar fate for Michael Scott.

Henry Blake was the commanding officer of the M*A*S*H unit featured in the long-running sitcom, and in season 3, he finally received his discharge papers. But the plane returning him to the States is shot down over the Sea of Japan with no survivors, thus killing off a beloved character at what should have been a moment of joy for the viewers.

The news of Blake’s demise shocked the viewing audience.

In fact, the very next night on The Carol Burnett Show, the opening shot was of Henry Blake actor McLean Stevenson in a smoking raft, waving his arms, hollering, "I’m OK! I’m OK!"

Even though I had seen Blake’s demise in reruns, it still saddened me beyond description. The thought that the same might be happening to Michael Scott sent a shiver down my spine.

I mentioned this to my wife, but she had never seen M*A*S*H. And then I wondered if anyone watching Michael Scott’s last episode of The Office had experienced a similar feeling of dread upon watching that plane take off.

M*A*S*H ran from 1972-1983, making it too old for me to have appreciated during it’s original airing and too old in syndication for my wife. But I watched the show in reruns on channel 38 out of Providence and loved every minute of it.

I’ve often said that it was the only good thing that my evil stepfather ever gave me.

Sadly, I tried to watch some M*A*S*H reruns a few years ago and discovered that the show didn’t survive the test of time. In comparison to today’s television, M*A*S*H is melodramatic, preachy and morally unambiguous. It also contains a laugh track, which makes it sound overly earnest and dated.

But I still love those characters and the memory of the show.

So I tweeted my thoughts of Henry Blake last night at the conclusion of The Office. I wrote:

Terrified that we were going to have another Henry Blake moment as Michael Scott's plane took off. Anyone understand the reference? Anyone?

Within a minute I received responses from four or five people who had experienced the same feelings of dread, and by the morning, more than a dozen people had expressed similar feelings.

This is the greatest of the Internet. Twenty years ago I would have been alone in these thoughts, wondering if anyone else in America was thinking like me.

Not anymore.

Before writing this post, I was responding to readers in Nebraska, California and Manchester, England. All contacted me today through the unifying force of the Internet.

And in the midst of writing this post, I received an email from someone in Minnesota who loved Henry Blake and also thought that Michael Scott might suffer a similar fate.

Amazing times we live in. Huh?

The Facebook like button gender gap

The Facebook "Like" button appears to have a severe gender bias.

I noticed that the majority of people who like my status updates are female and wondered if this trend is isolated to me or consistent throughout the Facebook universe.

I also realized how unlikely it was for me to ever click the Like button, in part because I tend to use the button judiciously.

As a writer, if I have something to say, I’ll write it. Not click a button.

Based upon other people’s use of the Like button, I suspect that my choice of when to like something may differ from most.

For example, if your status update indicates that you took your kids out for ice cream for the first time this spring, I’m happy for you, but I ‘m not sure how this equates to liking your update.

So while an update like this might receive a dozen or more likes, I am unlikely to like it.

I typically click the Like button for a witty remark, an interesting piece of data, or a laugh-worthy update, and only then if I have nothing to say in response.

So I wonder:

Is there a difference in the way that men and women view the Like button?

Do men view the button like me, and if so, what is the female perception of the button?

Or am I an outlier in terms of my use of the button?

Is my set of Facebook friends also an outlier?

Sampling my front page feed for a period of three days, I counted all the uses of the Like button on status updates that were not my own.

86% of the Likes on these pages were clicked by women. Though 61% of my Facebook friends are also women, this still amounts to quite a disparity.

In addition, I noted that only a small sample of men used the Like button over the course of these three days. While more then 30 different women accounted for the 86% of clicks, only five different men accounted for the remaining 14%.

It would seem that only a certain breed of man uses the Like button with any frequency.

What causes these men use the button while so many other do not?

Unfortunately, I have no answers. I know how I use the Like button, and I know what the data tells me in regards to my small, admittedly biased sample, but that’s about it. When I finish my teaching career someday, I’ve often thought about becoming a sociologist, and this is the kind of research that I would love to do.

In fact, I’ve toyed with the idea of declaring myself an unaccredited sociologist and beginning research on my own, absent any formal degree or training, but it remains a low priority at the moment.

So absent my proposed research, what do you think?

Is my data typical for most Facebook users?

If so, what is the reason for this disparity?

Most important, what does this disparity say about the difference between men and women in general?

These are the kinds of questions I’d like to answer someday.

Actually, just writing them down and seeing them on the screen bumps my unaccredited sociologist idea up a few pegs.

Perhaps I’ll be Matthew Dicks the Unaccredited Sociologist sooner than I thought.

Zelda fangirl

The Legend of Zelda is more than 25 years old. In honor of the iconic video game, I offer this brief anecdote: There are hundreds, if not thousands, of reasons why I love my wife, but many of them fall under one overarching heading:

She is cool.

And while there may be many, many reasons why this is so, here us one of my favorites:

When Elysha was in high school, she once skipped school in order to spend the day playing The Legend of Zelda.

Total hotness.

Temper your parental and marital advice based upon the bell curve

My friend, Tom, watched this TED Talk and thought of me.

The talk centers on what the Rufus Griscom and Alisa Volkman call "the four taboos of parenting."

One deals with the propensity of women to avoid speaking about their miscarriages.

With no experience in this realm, I will refrain from commenting on this one.

The remaining three are:

You can’t say that you didn’t immediately love your baby. 

As Tom said when he brought this to my attention:

“You’ve been saying that ever since Clara was born!”

It’s true. I loved Clara when she was born, but in comparison to how I feel about her today, I barely loved her.

I marginally loved her.

I probably loved her as much as I love ice cream cake and the New England Patriots.

I loved her because I was expected to love her.

I was also hungry when Clara was born, which isn’t an excuse for not loving your newborn daughter enough except it is.

I was really, really hungry.

I hadn’t eaten in almost eighteen hours, and I had barely slept the night before. Clara would not stop crying. After extracting her from my wife via cesarean section, a nurse placed her in my arms and abandoned me. While she counted sponges and sutures and instruments for the next hour, I was stuck holding this screaming newborn.

In all of the useless childbirth classes that I was forced to endure, this important fact was left out:

It only takes about ten minutes to extract a baby via c-section, but it takes more than an hour to put the woman back together again.

And I was hungry, damn it. So how could I have been expected to love Clara in the profound and moving way that most people claim?

I just wanted a burger.

Besides, men are different than women. We are less capable of unconditional love. It became much easier to love Clara once she started loving me.

It may be taboo to say that you didn’t love your child very much when he or she was born, but I have been saying it for two years, as Tom can readily attest.

The remaining two taboos are:

You can’t talk about how lonely having a baby can be.

You can’t say that your average level of happiness has declined since your baby was born. 

According to Griscom and Volkman, as taboo as they might be, both of these statements are generally true, and they cite the following statistics in support of their assertions:

58% of new mothers express a feeling of loneliness following the birth of their baby.

The average degree of martial satisfaction declines precipitously following the birth of a child and only rises after the child has gone off to college, as shown in this chart:

These admittedly compelling statistics lead Griscom and Volkman to assert that candor and brutal honesty are critical to successful parenting. They believe that soon-to-be parents need to be made aware of these unfortunate facts of life so that they can be better prepared for what lies ahead and establish reasonable expectations prior to the birth of their child.

I agree, except for one important caveat:

Whenever I dispense advice or information based upon statistical evidence, I always take the bell curve into consideration.

For example, although 58% of women report increased loneliness following the birth of their first child, 42% do not.

42% is a big number.

So when I am speaking to a new mother, I attempt to fix her position on the bell curve before choosing what to say.

I ask myself:

1. Is this person of average, above average or below average intelligence?
2. Is this person in a healthy, loving relationship?
3. Does this person possess a reasonable degree of perspective on life?
4. Is this a person who tackles challenges effectively?
5. What is the quality of the person’s overall life?

Only then do I proceed.

If I am faced with a generally dissatisfied, unskilled basket case, then yes, I would probably let her know about the 58% of women who experience loneliness following childbirth, because she is more likely to fall into this category.

But if I am speaking to a smart, organized, emotionally stable problem solver with a strong support system, I would be much less likely to warn her about the possibility of postpartum loneliness.

It’s simply less likely that she will experience it.

This is not to say that there is anything wrong with a woman who feels lonely after childbirth. I simply have no desire to pass on depressing news and would prefer to err on the side of optimism.

The same applies to the statistics regarding martial satisfaction. Though the chart above is compelling, there is an invisible chart lying just behind it that illustrates the minority of couples who did not fit the line graph (and those who exceed it).

Again, the bell curve is at work here.

So when my friend, Jeff, asked me about the trials and tribulations of becoming a parent, I told him to ignore the naysayers and their doomsday warnings because Jeff consistently operates on the far end of the bell curve in almost all regards (excluding height).

He’s a smart, capable, successful, well rounded guy in a great marriage. I told him that my happiness has only increased with the birth of my daughter and that parenting is not as difficult as so many claim.

I expected Jeff to handle parenting masterfully, and I told him as much.

And he has.

A good rule of thumb (and perhaps an entry into Bartlett's someday?):

Average is only applicable if you are average.