Salon.com > Audrey Fisch

Where’s poppa?

Mon, 05 Aug 2002 19:21:00 +0000

In their just-released study, "Maternal Employment and Child Cognitive Outcomes in the First Three Years of Life," researchers Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Wen-Jui Han, and Jane Waldfogel have more bad news for working mothers. The trio used data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care to measure the impact on cognitive skills of maternal employment in a child's first year. (The skills were evaluated by the Bracken School Readiness Test, which is administered when a child is 3.) The study found "negative effects" on children whose mothers worked 30 hours or more per week in the first nine months, "even when controlling for child-care quality, the quality of the home environment, and maternal sensitivity." In other words, quality childcare and quality mothering notwithstanding, a mother who works fulltime in the first nine months of her child's life is statistically likely to have a child, who at age 3, scores lower than children of non-working mothers on a cognitive test.

The Pill for men?

Thu, 04 Jan 2001 20:38:00 +0000

Back in middle school, when my classmates were writing research papers on frogs or presidents, I wrote one on Valium. The joke in the family was that my dad pushed pills for a living. He still does.

For the past 40 years, my father has worked in the sales division of a major pharmaceutical company. His special focus has been women's health: He spends a good part of every day peddling the Pill.

Like most teenagers, I was reluctant to talk about sex with my parents, but birth control pills were dinner table conversation in our house. Although the discussion never ever entered into the taboo territory of the possibility of my sexuality, my father and I would argue about why all the major methods of birth control were aimed at controlling women's fertility rather than altering men's. My father would insist that birth control pills were safe, and that there wasn't really any demand for other methods of birth control. It was supply and demand, he would maintain; if there were any demand, the pharmaceutical companies would supply it.

Abortion at the movies

Mon, 15 May 2000 16:00:00 +0000

"The Cider House Rules,"
an earnest and strangely contrite morality movie about the horrors of illegal abortion, has received official designation as the pro-choice film of the year -- if not of all time. And that's OK, I guess. It certainly works hard to remind us about the agonies our society endured when abortion was a crime.

But it is not the courageous or radical film that critics and pro-choice advocates claim it to be. That particular distinction belongs to a movie that has been recognized as little more than a smart romantic comedy with an exceptionally great soundtrack. That movie, which conveys an almost revolutionary take on abortion, is "High Fidelity."

It is not surprising that "High Fidelity," directed by Stephen Frears and based on a 1995 British novel by Nick Hornby, has received almost no attention for its pro-choice politics. Its abortion plot line occupies about three minutes of film time.

Abortions in TV land

Wed, 08 Mar 2000 17:00:00 +0000

I know that TV is TV; I don't expect it to reflect reality. My husband and I have a running joke as we watch whatever junk we watch: Whenever one of us questions the logic or plausibility of a particular plot point, the other replies with the corrective "TV land." Enough said. We know how it works in TV land.

But there is one thing that always gets to me in TV land: abortion. I'm sure you've noticed the clichi: Any "good" character who has an unwanted pregnancy on network television either has a miscarriage or gets some strange, mysterious disease that rids her of the inconvenient fetus. If only reproduction worked that way in real life! The rare good character who wants to be pregnant always has the baby. (Remember Andrea on "90210," way back when?) I can't help myself: I yearn for an abortion plot line.

Which explains my naive excitement when a plot line about abortion developed on "Felicity." Now, I'm well aware that the pretty young college kids who populate the TV environment of Felicity's urban university in no way reflect the reality of your average college undergraduate, let alone the urban, working-class students whom I teach. Again, it's just my overwhelming desire for a decent abortion plot line.

A Fisch by any other name

Thu, 20 Jan 2000 17:00:00 +0000

"Please advise which parent has the court-established financial responsibility for the health care expenses of this child."

I recently received this notice from my insurance company. My partner and I are married; the court isn't involved in establishing anything about how we share the responsibilities of caring for our child. We received this notice because our son does not share a last name with either one of us.

My last name is Fisch. My husband's last name is Flynn. When our son was born, we gave him the last name Flysch. It's not a spelling error, as the woman who fills out the birth certificates at the hospital assumed it was. It's a combination name.

Our reasons for choosing a combination name are fairly simple.

I was unwilling to give up my last name when my partner and I got married. Fisch is who I am. It's the name I work under, publish under and respond to. I suffered through years of being called "fish-sticks" and "fish-face," and I've become used to constantly correcting the misspellings of my name.

I have to admit that the name "Flynn" was tempting. It's such an easy name: Easy to spell, easy to pronounce. My husband's childhood nickname was "Errol." Innocuous.