It’s not enough, dad

A new American Time Use Survey shows that men are doing more around the house, but in most cases not nearly enough.images-2

Dads devote more time to caring for children and keeping up the house than they did decades ago, reports today’s Los Angeles Times: ” They spend almost as much time as moms romping with kids in the yard or on the rug. But as dads step up, moms are still wiped out.

“Whether at work or at home — and even at leisure — mothers feel more exhausted than fathers, a study shows. Despite strides toward gender equality, mothers still shoulder much more work at home, especially when it comes to humdrum tasks such as changing diapers and doing the laundry, the Pew Research Center found in the study based on the American Time Use Survey.

“Dads spend almost the same amount of time as moms in terms of playing with kids,” Pew research associate Wendy Wang said. “But they do less in other areas of child care.”

‘For instance, mothers logged more than twice as much time doing “physical care,” such as changing diapers or tending to sick kids. That could be one reason dads find child care less tiring than moms do: Mothers are more than twice as likely as fathers to feel “very tired” during child care.

“Mothers also did more cooking and cleaning, while fathers did more household repairs and maintenance, such as mowing the lawn. All in all, American moms still spend almost twice as many hours on housework and child care, on average, than dads do. Fathers, in turn, spend much more time at work outside the home than mothers do.

“Earlier rounds of the survey, sponsored by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, yielded estimates on how Americans spent their time. But the 2010 survey, which included more than 4,800 parents, was the first to ask how people felt during different activities. For Rosie Arroyo-Carmona, the schedule starts at 5:30 a.m. and doesn’t end until 11:30 p.m. or midnight, she said. The Burbank mom and her husband both juggle jobs in the nonprofit sector with caring for their baby daughter. Because her husband travels more than she does, Arroyo-Carmona often takes charge of feeding and bathing the baby. After the baby falls asleep, she puts in another few hours working from home. When a bit of free time arises, “I think that I could get something done, or I could get some rest,” Arroyo-Carmona said. “I always choose to check something off my list.” Two years ago, a Boston College survey of mostly white-collar fathers found that although nearly two-thirds said spouses should split child care equally, only 30% said it actually was divided that way in their homes. Even when parents try to share work equally, many moms say they end up doing more. Continue reading “It’s not enough, dad”

“The Civil rights issue of our time”

urlAs America continues to grow and morph as a social melting pot of differences, the issue of civil rights of each group rises to the forefront of our attention and becomes a matter to which law enforcement personnel must adjust. We adjusted during the ’60s and ’70s, evolving to recognize the rights of women and African Americans. We also evolved during the ’90s to recognize the rights of lesbians and gays. Law enforcement, often the social leadership of American society, has also become diversified with the addition of women and minorities, as well as gay and lesbian officers, within their ranks. Continue reading ““The Civil rights issue of our time””

The Civil Rights issue of our time

“While there’s still a lot more work to be done, 2012 saw some remarkable milestones for transgender people both in the U.S. and abroad,” said today’s Huffington Post in the beginning of its 2012 year-in-review series8206734246_75149a2eb2_z

“From Vice President Joe Biden declaring transgender rights as the ‘civil rights issue of our time,” to the huge update made by the American Psychiatric Association to its Diagnostic And Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders, trans acceptance has certainly made some enormous strides this year.

“We even saw one of our favorite TV shows, ‘Glee,’ include a transgender character in its diverse cast, and the transgender flag was flown in place of the iconic rainbow flag at Harvey Milk Plaza in San Francisco for the first time ever.

Check out some more phenomenal transgender stories from 2012 in our roundup below and be sure to let us know what other moments captured your attention in the comments section.”

For more on this story, see “2012 Top Transgender Moments” in Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/22/top-transgender-moments-stories-2012_n_2347346.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices

Don’t look back in space-time

New research was unveiled in the study of time. As reported in ArsTechnica, “Unlike our daily experience, the world of elementary particle physics is mostly symmetrical in time. Run the clock backward on your day and it won’t work; run the clock backward on a process in particle physics and things are just fine. However, to preserve certain fundamental aspects of space-time the Standard Model predicts that certain reversible events nevertheless have different probabilities, depending on which way they go. This time-reversal asymmetry is remarkably hard to observe in practice since it involves measurements of highly unstable particles. Continue reading “Don’t look back in space-time”

Giving time, not money

“Writing a check is simply a matter of figuring out an amount you can afford and sending it off. But actually donating your time, which was not counted by the survey toward the dollars people gave, seemed a far greater level of commitment.” This from an insightful story in todays’s New York Times by Paul Sullivan entitled A portion of the text appears below. For the complete story, see “Some Prefer Giving Time, Not Money, to Schools” in the New York Times.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a group that rated charities for their effectiveness but was surprised when one of the group’s young founders said he had stopped supporting groups focused on education. He had a perfectly rational-sounding reason: the problems were daunting and he didn’t feel his donations would have an impact.

Then, I heard about a recent study of high-net-worth households that found that education was the leading concern among affluent donors, ahead of health care, the economy, poverty and the federal budget deficit. Continue reading “Giving time, not money”