Elizabeth Bernstein is a forty-year resident of Arizona, having moved to the Navajo Nation after graduating from Harvard Law School. There, among other matters, she represented the tribal government before the United States Supreme Court in the case of Kerr-McGee vs. Navajo Tribe. After the birth of their first child, she and her husband left the reservation for rural southern Arizona. Her years as a mother at home inspired her to research cultural messages about childrearing and their intersection with feminism. Later she returned to her first love, mathematics, and began a career as a high school math teacher. She now combines her various interests as she does math tutoring, legal consulting, and writing. Email: ebernsteinlex [at] gmail.com
by Elizabeth S. Bernstein The United States continues to be virtually the only developed country which does not guarantee any paid time off work to new parents. A study recently released by the New America think tank explores the “complicated, confusing, and uneven leave landscape for workers,” and the behaviors that result. The federal Family…
by Elizabeth S. Bernstein In 1885 Mary Terhune, a mother and published childcare adviser, ended her instructions on how to give baby a bath with this observation: When perfectly dry, his flesh sweet and pure with the exquisite lustre imparted by bath and friction, he is the most kissable object in nature.1 A quarter century…
by Elizabeth S. Bernstein From whatever quarter the scientist comes to the study of human behavior – psychology, sociology, education – he finds that the unwise behavior of the mother has had much to do with the wrong starting of the personality trend. —Ernest R. Groves and Gladys Hoagland Groves (1928)1 Childrearing practices in the…
by Elizabeth S. Bernstein Feminists are often accused of downgrading motherhood. The accusation is ridiculous: motherhood hit rock bottom long before the new feminist wave broke. —Germaine Greer (1984) 1 What sort of picture does the phrase “stay-at-home mother” call to mind? Searching images and stock photos online, you may find a reasonably diverse looking group…
by Elizabeth S. Bernstein If we find that society values the traits and skills that are associated with being male and devalues the traits and skills that are associated with being female, then it is time to rethink societal values instead of denying the existence of biologically based male-female differences. —Diane F. Halpern, Sex Differences in…
by Elizabeth S. Bernstein In 1973 Betty Friedan traveled to France to have a conversation about the state of feminism with Simone de Beauvoir, whom she regarded as a cultural hero. Friedan’s own opinions had evolved considerably in the decade since the publication of The Feminine Mystique. She would elaborate those changes sometime later in…
by Elizabeth S. Bernstein To follow the popular discourse about the gender wage gap in the United States is to confront perpetual confusion. It is a confusion created at least in part by pronouncements of the type many of us have heard: “Women are paid only 82 cents for every dollar men earn! It is…