On The Very Very Best Mommy in All The Land

Rosalind Little is amused at this woman on her favorite parenting web site, who starts a thread like this:

"Is there no one else out there who still makes sure their kids eat HEALTHY? I mean, my 2 year-old son never eats any cookies, candy, chocolate, or sugar. He doesn't even know you that you put butter or syrup on pancakes, or what fast food is! I used to eat at McDonald's myself when he was a baby, but now I definitely don't because he's old enough to know what I'm doing and I want to set a good example. It seems like I'm the only one left doing this. Is there nobody else out there like me?"

Put differently: I strongly suspet that I'm the Very Very Best Mommy In All The Land, and that my child will grow up to be a sandy-haired, strong-boned athlete with white teeth who calls his mother every day to thank her for not putting syrup on his waffles and leading him down the primrose path to childhood obesity like those other kids with the Bad, Stupid and Lazy Mommies. I can't understand why there has been no public acknowlegment of my mommying so far. My play group has never even given me a certificate or medal, if you can believe it! (Lol, What's THAT all about?) But anywho, I just wanted to point out in a public forum that no one else there has gone to the Great Mommying Lengths I have. Thanks for serving as my foils.

My imagined response:

A promising start. But I must say, I am a little shocked to read that you ate at McDonald's while your child was a baby. That implies to me that a healthy lifestyle is a fairly recent change to your family, so I'm worried that your pride in feeding your child healthy food might be a little premature -- the zeal of the newly converted, if you will.

I myself HAVE never and WOULD never eat fast food, and its difficult for me to imagine why anyone who claims to value healthy eating would. To be honest, it's a little strange that you think it's okay to risk your health like that when you are your son's mommy! When you put that stuff in your body, you are taking the risk that you have fewer years of life, and those are fewer years with him! What if he needs you when he's forty, and you've keeled over from a double coronory? Pretty selfish to value those fries over your son's needs.

Every time I eat any bite of anything, I ask myself: would my daughter, when she's forty, want me to eat this? Is this the best food choice I can make to be the best mommy I can be? We make healthy food choices together!

Sometimes, we eat raw spinach together and make a game out of it! I say: "Okay, who can eat the most grams of fiber in one sitting?" And she says: "I can, I can, Mommy!" True, I do give her a time out when she uses the word "can." In our house we only eat vegetables fresh, to maxmize the nutritional value! No "cans" here! Only "can't" -- as in, "can't eat that cookie!"

However, I did want to congratulate you on taking some of the first steps to being a mommy in a household living by a truly healthy lifestyle. A suggestion for the future from my own home: put up a large picture of a little boy in the kitchen. Should your son ever make bad food choices - "sneaking" junk food or eating cupcakes or pizza somebody brought to school -- add a little extra cardboard fat to the picture of the boy. (First add it to his tummy, then his legs, and so forth.) When he gets too obese to fit on the posterboard any more, your son loses a privilege. It's a very clear and visible way to demonstrate to him the pitfalls of unhealthy choices! Good luck! You'll get the hang of it!

On Mothers Who Hate Playing Blocks for Two Hours

This is rather how I feel about motherhood.

On the Anniversary of Me

Today is Rosalind Little's thirty-first birthday. She is a bit down.

On Smart, Brave and Pregnant Meg Murry

Madeleine L'Engle, the author of A Wrinkle in Time, has died. She was a favorite of Rosalind Little's.

I found Meg Murry, the heroine of A Wrinkle in Time, terribly easy to relate to. She was brainy and awkward and possessing of an undirected and unwieldy sexuality. I mean, I knew girls like that. I'm just saying.


Wrinkle is without a doubt one of the most memorable books of my childhood. And of course the sequels were lovely, too. I especially liked A Swiftly Tilting Planet, where Meg is an older pregnant woman still preoccupied with saving the world.

I thought about that book a lot when I was pregnant. I liked to think of myself as an inflated creampuff superhero, too.

A Wrinkle in Time was written and published during the Cold War. When I reread it as an adult, I was struck by L'Engle's description of Camazotz, the planet that is under the thumb of the totalitarian-dictator, giant-brain IT. Everyone on Camazotz lives in some kind of surburbian dystopia, where every child bounces their ball at the same time, every father comes home from work at the same time, etc., etc. It is a place characterized by horrible, stilted conformity -- and those who refuse to comply are brought to face the terrifying IT.

Was Camazotz written to bring to mind American perceptions of life in the Soviet Union? Or was it a sly critique of late-1950s American culture?

L'Engle was sufficiently complex that either interpretation, or both, is possible. She also wrote beautiful meditations on Christianity, which I always admired and ached to agree with.

God bless her. As they say: "I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die."

On Liking Other Human Beings, Mostly

Rosalind Little is a fairly bad environmentalist.

Mostly because I have all this laziness to work against. I worry about this a lot. I have been trying to be more conscientious about my footprint on the earth. For one, my husband and my friends are significantly more diligent than me, and folks, it's REALLY not going to be a good world if I can't assume the moral high ground in conversation.

That said, I still like to think that I do understand that we are in the midst of a global environmental crisis. I get that the stakes are high. I'm not one of these I'm-a-freaking-idiot-who-hates-those-liberals-so-much-that-I deny-what-is-absolutely-obvious folks who denies there is an environmental problem. But that doesn't make the reaction to Alan Weisman's new book The World Without Us any easier for me to understand.


Do you all know this book? Here's the description from the web site:

"In The World Without Us, author Alan Weisman takes on an irresistable concept: How our planet would respond without the relentless pressure of the human presence. Breathtaking in scope and filled with fascinating detail, this is narrative nonfiction at its finests that will change the way you view our world -- and your place within it."

This is a very smart idea for a book. Everybody vanishes. Like it was the Rapture, but everybody was saved. What happens to the world that is left behind? The book apparently describes how soon the New York subways would flood without human beings to operate the pumps, when biospheres would start to repair themselves from all the human damage, etc. It is a unique way of getting at the consequences of human action. Sounds intriguing. A good read.

What I don't understand is why so many people apparently think that this hypothetical premise is, like, a good idea. That there is beauty in the notion that humanity would disappear, giving the earth a chance to recover. That this is more than a thought experiment; that it is something that would ultimately be preferable to the survival of the human race.

I guess I feel like this: if you're not rooting for the survival of the human race, I don't know what to make of you.

Because I don't care if nature recovers beautifully if there's no human around to see it. I have a real soft spot for humans, you see. Call me sentimental for the species from which I sprung, but I dig their language and their societies and their food and their arts and their cultures. Individual people might annoy me, but I like the human race.

If there was really going to be a world without us, it by definition wouldn't be a good one. It would be a world of unspeakable loss. That's just my bias.

And since when did eliminating a species become an environmentally desirable solution to anything? If I proposed eradicating another animal species for the good of the whole, I would get lectured about biodiversity and the possibility of unforseen impacts. At the end of the day, aren't we just another animal species?

So often when people speak about the devastating effect of humanity on the natural world, they seem to be forgetting that humanity is also, really, part of the natural world. We are animals that evolved out of the same materials as all of this other plant and animal life around us. Our behavior is motivated by survival just like everything else's. In rhetoric, we might talk about how humanity exploits or suppresses or rapes nature, but in reality, we aren't separate from nature at all.

We are nature, and nature is us.

Granted, we're a species that has done really well in terms of survival. We have figured out ways to protect ourselves from predators, to eat well, even to achieve comfort and satisfaction. We have developed relationships to the rest of the natural world that seem to benefit us, but that have particular long term impacts. Hopefully we are a species that has developed reason enough to see that our current course is not consistent with our collective survival.

The strongest case for environmental sanity, to me, is that it is in the long-term interest of humanity.

Am I in error to admit that? Is it more noble to privilege the interest of the earth as a whole? Am I betraying my ignorance of the subtleties of these arguments?

Because this is certainly a classic case of Rosalind Little writing vehemently on a topic about which she knows very little. The margins of her knowledge: where one is prone to generalization.

Yet I cannot help but to wince when I hear people on the radio speaking wistfully of the end of humanity. Just call me a people person.

On Eight Presidential Elections

Rosalind Little has lived through eight presidential elections. She was alive for the 1976 presidential election, but just barely. She does not remember it, being preoccupied with drooling and bawling. She vaguely remember Carter being president. His name made her think of grocery carts. But she does not remember the 1980 election either.

In 1984, my elementary school had its own election. I remember wearing my Mondale button to school, and being surprised that other kids made fun of me. I was amazed that anyone I knew would support Reagan, who was obviously a putz. Plus, there was a girl running for vice president on the other side! As it turned out, I was the ONLY student in my third grade class to vote for Mondale. Sadly, the school's election probably mirrored the country's.

This was my introduction to the brutal world of presidential politics. Lesson one: it turns out your candidate doesn't always win. Lesson two: your friends don't always make good political decisions. Lesson three: a girl running is not necessarily an advantage.

In 1988, I was in seventh grade, and I represented Dukakis as a mock candidate in a debate during an all-school assembly in our junior high auditorium. There were particular topics we were supposed to research in advance, and I remember asking my mom what she thought about abortion. That was really the first time I was ever aware of the abortion debate. I also remember researching the environment and the defense budget, and it was my first serious introduction to those issues as well.

For me, anyway, the 1988 election worked out more happily than the 1984 election. My candidate still lost the national election, sure, but Dukakis won by a landslide at my junior high. I like to think my debating skills had something to do with that. Sure, I had only known about the abortion controversy for a few weeks. But it turns out there's really not far to go on that topic once you've made your mind up, now is there?


In 1992, I was in eleventh grade, and living in a much, much more conservative town. Because Georgia was a swing state back in those days, and because in those days he was only a governor of Arkansas, Clinton actually came to my home town to speak. I skipped school that afternoon to see him.

It was a beautiful, crisp, clear fall day. I went with some friends from the Drama Club, who dresssed in goth and flannel clothing to signal their political apathy. I wore a flaming red blazer, my braces, and a Hillary-esque hairdo. I carried a Clinton/Gore sign. We walked through the throng of angry conservative protesters out front, and entered into the amphitheater, and I was entirely taken with Clinton. It was a wonderful speech. Even the Drama Club kids seemed properly awed. I shook his hand afterwards. He smiled at me, and I was elated.

Still, I was shocked when he won. Just floored. I'd never supported a winning candidate, you see, in memory. Moreover, Augusta was such a conservative place that I didn't actually know anyone else who had supported Clinton. Lesson Number Four: you can't judge the outcome of a national election by the political sentiments of your immediate neighbors and friends.

In 1996, I was a sophomore in college in Atlanta. College students by reputation are deeply politically active, but in 1996 I was not. I was busy with school and musical theater. I remember watching the election results on TV in my dorm, relieved but not surprised to see Clinton win again. That year, I remember being exposed to no controversy or debate over the election. I was surrounded by fellow progressives. I knew very few people who voted for Dole.

By 2000, I was in a place that seemed to have no conservative voters at all: Berkeley, California. I followed the election very closely, as I was in journalism school at the time. I was not an impassioned Gore supporter, and some of my Berkeley friends and neighbors were telling me I should vote my conscience for Nader. I didn't do that, as I was just paranoid enough about the possibility of Bush winning. It turns out I was right to be anxious.

And yet really it seemed unfathomable that Bush actually won. (Arguably, of course, he did not.) It seemed unthinkable that we had this man as a president. He was just so obviously inappropriate. I'm afraid I had to relearn the lesson of 1992 from the opposite vantage point: you can't judge the outcome of a national election by the political sentiments of your immediate neighbors and friends.

By 2004, I was back in Atlanta, married, barely pregnant with my Lucy. Indeed, we didn't know yet that I was pregnant. We went to watch the returns at some friends' house -- still optimistically, as this election was hardly a done deal -- and we brought little cut-out donkey cookies with us as a refreshment. When it became clear that Bush was going to win again, I drank several miserable glasses of wine. It didn't do Lucy any harm in the long run, but I worried about it later. Lesson Five: Do not drink if your candidate loses if it is possible you are pregnant.

It's striking how much one's life changes in four year increments.

On Rosalind's Favorite Film Scenes

Rosalind Little has a very short media attention span. She does not like albums. She prefers singles. She is well aware that this is not very indy cool of her, and that it implies she has shallow musical tastes. So be it. She just likes to listen to a good single again and again and again until she knows the words and can scream them like a fifteen year old. Is that so wrong?

I have more patience for films. I can enjoy an entire film easily. Yet I also have a certain fondness for the art of a good film scene. Think about this carefully. What are your favorite scenes in movies?

Think specifically of the scene itself: its mood, its dialogue, its beginning, middle, and end.

As I make a quick list, I notice that some of my favorite films, and some of the best films, don't make the cut. They are brilliant overall, but there's not one standout scene that is really amazing, that takes your breath away.

I also notice that early and opening scenes of films are especially close to my heart, because they can have such tremendous forward momentum, such an irresistable energy.

Of course a film can have a superb opening scene, one that makes your heart race, and still not be a very good movie. The film Contact (1999) is a good example of this. But the criteria isn't that the film be good. Just think about the scene.

Some of Rosalind Little's All Time Favorite Scenes in Movies:

- The opening of Contact: the long pull away from earth into space in which you hear snatches of radio broadcasts from the present into the past. I could watch this four hundred times in a row. (And have.) It's fascinating. It makes a sub-par film worth watching.

- The opening of Rushmore. Clearly an amazing, amazing scene, from a filmmaker who is a master of amazing scenes. The math problem, and then the montage of Max's activities. Over the one of the best soundtracks of all time.

- The opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Come on, it's a classic. It still gets you going.

- The scene in which Cole tells his mother his "secret" while in the car in The Sixth Sense. Creepy, tender, beautifully observed. The dead bicyclist out the window. Toni Collette's hand over her mouth as Cole tells her about her mother's message for her. Lovely scene.

- The scene in E.T. when Michael and Gertie meet E.T. for the first time. I mean, maybe I'm showing my generational bias, but does anybody make movies with such natural performances from children anymore? Do kids ever curse in films anymore? This scene is just spot-on, just perfect. If you've not watched it for a while and think of E.T. as being sentimental kids' mush, you should watch this film again. Gertie's sarcasm, Michael's Yoda impression, Elliot's anxiety: it's wonderful.

- Oh, and the bicycle chase in E.T. The one with the guns still in it. I dare you to watch it, watch the kids take off flying and the music swell, and NOT to start to get excited. I dare you.

- When Marty walks into downtown Hill Valley in 1955 in Back to the Future. Mr. Sandman is playing. As he picks up the newspaper and sees the date, the music turns ominous. This one always takes me back to the first time I saw the film.

- The sword fight between Jack and Will Turner in the beginning of the first Pirates of the Carribbean. This is the scene that clued me in that this movie was going to be better than I thought it would be. Funny, well-choreographed, charming. And both these men are so hot. I mean really. Rosalind Little is but a mortal heterosexual woman.

- The sword fight between the Man in Black and Inigo Mantoya in Princess Bride. Which is obviously cited in the Pirates of the Carribean fight. Another classic, at least for a certain age group. Love it.

Maybe I can think of more. Let me mull it over.

On the Mommy Wars

I regularly read an online discussion group at BabyCenter.com. It's a group of mothers who gave birth to their children the same month I had Lucy, and the idea is that we will support one another and offer helpful parenting tips. Sometimes this is true. Other times it is a theater for outright mommy warfare.

Motherhood is an awfully thick institution. We have a lot of cultural scripts telling us what good mothers do and don't do. Yet we also have a country and culture that don't support mothering particularly well. Our economy requires most women to work, but we don't have a good child care system. We pressure women to stay home with children, but we don't reward working women who take time off, and we don't give much respect to stay-at-home moms.

This means the whole mothering thing is sealed up tight in a big old fat envelope of guilt.

I'm not telling anyone anything they don't already know. Especially if you've reproduced yourself. I see this playing out in the way me and my female friends react to motherhood. We judge ourselves, and one another, using some mighty unfair yardsticks. We have some idea of How Things Ought To Be. And this idea is non-negotiable. And unattainable.

On BabyCenter, women express their daily anxieties about motherhood. They post questions asking for our opinions on what they SHOULD have said to the pushy woman in the grocery store, whether you SHOULD listen to the pediatrician about vaccinations, or whether or not you SHOULD give a 2-year old time outs. They also do a lot of effusing about how much they love being (mostly stay-at-home) mommies.

When they discuss difficult mommying issues, or situations, they very rarely get angry about unfair cultural expectations for motherhood, or any kind of big picture issue. Like most Americans, they tend to see problems as originating from individual decisions. It pisses them off when people try to "blame others" for their problems. If you have a problem with taking care of your kid, it is probably due to your mommying. Or somebody else's mommying.

In fact, they often tend to blame other mommies for social problems. BAD mommies. You know, the kind that puts themselves ahead of their kids, that parks their toddlers in front of the TV for hours, who lets their kids misbehave during play dates and doesn't discipline them, who doesn't use the right car seat and doesn't care, who just doesn't care enough to meet the expectations of motherhood.

The other day I reached a breaking point of frustration with this. I rarely post, especially on contentious subjects, but I was sorely tempted to.

Somebody posted on BabyCenter asking why on earth any stay-at-home mom would send their 2-year old to preschool. Two year old was way too young. They could get nothing out of it. The poster's friend was sending her daughter to a 3-hour preschool a few days a week, and the poster just didn't get it. Why was her friend absolving herself of the proper job of a stay-at-home mom?

Not to analyze the poster too much, but it really seemed like this was seriously threatening.

A (slightly modified) excerpt from her post:
"My friend is mad that I don't understand why she's doing it. She claims it's for the social benefits and for learning a little too, but she also says that now she will have time to get manicures and go shopping by herself. Why would she pay to have somebody else teach her kid? Doesn't she know that's the whole point of being a stay-at-home mom? Why would anyone do this? I seriously don't understand."

The argument followed from there. There were 58 posts on the subject -- some supportive, some not. Some people pointed out the academic benefits of getting a head start; others pooh-poohed this as ridiculous. Some said preschool was just fun; others said it was serious and real school.

What was remarkable was that almost no one considered the sanity or comfort of the stay-at-home mom as a legitimate reason to do it. It was all talked about in terms of the benefits or disadvantages to the toddler. Mommies aren't supposed to make decisions based on their desire to get their nails done. That's just not acceptable.

I wrote and rewrote multiple responses to the woman's question. But Rosalind Little is a chicken. She can't deal with confrontation.

So here is my never-posted contribution to the discussion. Do bear in mind that I was adopted a certain colloquial style for the chat room, which is probably very obnoxious and very condescending of me. Here we are:

"My daughter isn't in a preschool, although I don't think it would be a bad thing for her at all. If we did it, it definitely wouldn't be for the test scores or the academic head start in school. It would be because she would find it fun to play with other kids in a structured setting, and because I would get a break. If she learned some new songs and picked up some new skills, hey, that's great, too.

But I'll come right out and say it: I don't think there's anything wrong with stay at home mommies, or any mommies, making the decision to do preschool because they want time to themselves for a few hours a week. I don't even think wanting to get your nails done is that bad. I don't think that makes anybody a bad mommy.

First of all, getting some hours to yourself during the workday means that you might be able to be more invested in "family time" when your spouse is home. I know that is true of me.

Second, I truly think that some mommies are going to do a better job if they get time away from their kids.

Some of you seem to treasure every second with your children and dread the day they start kindergarten, and that is really a blessing for your kids. It's wonderful. If you're putting all your energy into activities with them everyday and getting up the next morning ready for more, you are amazing women and deserve pats on the back. But I would ask that you not assume that everyone is like this, or that they HAVE to be like this to be good mommies.

The reality is, not everyone handles this toddler stage equally well. Mommies have different temperaments, different strengths, different life situations. (Not to mention different kids -- we know some are more challenging than others!) Some of you may have been born to play this role at this stage in our kids' lives. Others of us might love our children dearly but are struggling to do our best, with our love for our kid motivating us to try harder. What's challenging and fun for one woman might be pure hell on earth for another.

This age isn't going to last forever. And the tables might turn when our kids are five, or ten, or teenagers -- who knows? The point is, there's room for tolerance for different people's parenting strengths and weaknesses.

If some mommies are at the end of their rope and are finding there is a lot of their day that they are not enjoying, not treasuring, then I think it can be the right decision for them to do preschool with a two-year old. It can improve the situation a lot for some people. I've seen it happen with friends of mine. The happiness of mommies and toddlers is deeply connected, after all.

Sure, if your child hates preschool above all else, and you're dragging them in against their will and then sprinting out the door towards the nail salon, that's probably a bad idea. Of course.

But I honestly know that my daughter loves that kind of thing, and I think a lot of kids this age do, too. If they're having fun and you're getting a manicure, and everyone's in a good mood afterwards ... what's the problem? Can't we relax the mommy rules to allow it?"

On Webster Groves, Missouri

Rosalind Little moved away from Webster Groves, Missouri when she was thirteen years old, never really to return. This is an disruption in her life's narrative that continues to disorient her. She's still getting used to the move.

What do you think? Is it accurate to say that Webster Groves her is home town? Or is she from the town in Georgia where she attended high school and her parents live now? What does it mean not to be able to walk and touch and see the physical locations you associate with your oldest memories? To have no casual, everyday relationships, outside family, that predate the 1990s?

You see how I overthink these things. I'm a historian, you see.

Now the decent thing for the people and places of Webster Groves, Missouri to have done was to absolutely freeze in time. Like a perpetual shrine to my childhood memories. So that if I did go back, everyone and everything would be the same. But this didn't happen.

Not only does Webster Groves, Missouri continue to exist, it has a disquieting visibility for what is really just a very average suburb of St. Louis. It shows up all the time. I can think of many examples, but I'll share one here.

Apparently the novelist Jonathan Franzen is from Webster Groves, and writes about it in his famous novel The Corrections. I know this not because I am especially up to date on best-selling novels of the past ten years. I have not read The Corrections. I know this because I read it in an essay, "How I Got Jonathan Franzen To Stop Stealing Things From My Brain," by Sara Crosby, in my husband's Believer magazine.

In this essay, Crosby tells us that she, a struggling nonfiction writer, is also from Webster Groves. At a low point in her own career, she becomes frustrated that successful Franzen writes about the Webster Groves she knows, drawing upon places and cultural idiosyncrasies she also remembers, effectively "stealing" her own best and most personal material. His description of pulling pranks at the flagpole at Webster Groves High School in the 1970s gives her a shock of recognition:

I not only knew the flagpole and the entrance’s concrete columns and faded nuclear-fallout-shelter sign, but I also
knew plenty of prankster kids like Franzen in my 1994 graduating class—tall, lanky boys with easy, toothy laughs who
usually took Advanced Physics with Mr. Wojak.

Eventually she comes to her senses, has some professional success of her own, and no longer finds Franzen as threatening.

Which is fine, and great for her.

Except for what she's describing feeling when she reads Jonathan Franzen? I feel it reading Sara Crosby. Except for she and Franzen, their memories share only space in common. Sara Crosby and me, our memories share time.

Not only do I know her Webster Groves, I know HER. Had I never moved, I would have been in that 1994 graduating class with her. I went to first grade with her at Steger Elementary School. I can picture her face in my mind's eye. She was the first kid I knew whose parents got divorced, and I remember feeling sorry for her. Later, in junior high, I remember being scared of her. She was sullen and smartass.

She talks about one of her oldest friends, Peter, and I know exactly who she is talking about. I remember what he looked like in first grade, and that he dressed up like a St. Louis Cardinal for Halloween, but came late to the school that day because he was sick. And I know that he really must be one of her oldest friends because they knew each other back then. And I know that because I WAS THERE.

This might not be as mind-bending to others as it is to me. But that's why I have my little blog without readers.

I have no memory of Sara Crosby ever being a writer. It's not especially surprising that she is one, since it often happens to sullen smartasses. And people do tend to take up different life courses after age thirteen, or maybe she was already an accomplished writer when I moved and I just don't remember that about her.

It is unspeakably strange to discover a childhood memory, someone you never thought about after 1990, suddenly an intelligent and introspective adult writing about a past you have, at least to some degree, in common.

(Sara Crosby even taught me something about my past that I did not know. Apparently telling a joke in order to get candy while trick-or-treating was something unique to Webster Groves. I remember doing this, and have never been aware since that it wasn't the same everywhere. I suppose I never discovered this because after I left Webster Groves, I was thirteen, and I never really trick or treated again. For me, Webster Groves = everything before 1990 = childhood.)

On Naming Trends

Is there anything more fascinating than naming trends? What on earth makes people up and decide that they are going to start naming children Braden and Madison and London and Neveah?

That last one is "heaven" backwards, if you didn't catch that. It was one of the top 1000 most popular names for girls in 2006. Which I know because I frequent the Social Security names database, which is SERIOUS fun.

But not quite as fun as The Baby Name Wizard Name Voyager, which lets you look at a graph that changes baby name trends over time. So you can see the spectacular fall of names like Walter, and the spectacular rise of names like Kaylee, and the spectacular rise and fall of names like Erin.

I mean, this IS fun, right? Fun if you are me.

The name Madison for girls, which is currently the third most popular name in the country, seems to have been created by the 1984 romantic comedy "Splash." After the movie's release, the name Madison started climbing the charts. It was virtually unheard of before. Did you know this? (Apparently this same story is related in the book Freakanomics, which I've not read.)

In that movie, the main character, a mermaid played by Darryl Hannah, names herself after the Manhattan street she is on: Madison Avenue. Tom Hanks' character makes some joke right afterwards like, good thing we weren't on 39th Street, or something like that.

Yeah, funny, okay ... but seriously. The screenwriters really might have placed her on another street, given her a different name! What if she was on Mott Street, and called herself Mottie? Would that be a top-ten name now? Okay, that's hard to imagine. But what if she'd named herself Mulberry, Macdougal or Park? Or if she'd named herself Manhattan or Brooklyn? Would those be the third most popular names in the country today, and Madison virtually unknown?

Or maybe it wasn't the character in the movie that did it. Maybe it was the name Madison itself, something slightly feminine sounding (connoting Madeleine), with certain high-class associations, and yet slightly offbeat. Maybe the movie just served as the jumping off point.

Either way, Madison was a name that nobody ever heard of thirty years ago. Now it's more common than Mary or John in elementary schools.

There tends to be this tendency to assume that it is only recently that people started making up names for their children. That names before had been unchanging and constant. That it's only been lately that people saddled their children with monikers like MaKayLa and what have you. But this overlooks the fact that it was once acceptable to name children Epaphroditus or Birdadorothea or Hezekiah. That people would name children after any old favorite author or friend or virtue.

In my research lately, I came across an 18th century woman named Experience. I mean, come on. That was probably a bad name even at the time. Not only do opportunities for off-color jokes abound, but what the fuck was her nickname? Expie?

That said, it is the case that Rosalind Little tends to gravitate to the nineteenth-century names. She is not especially drawn to johnny-come-lately names like Brianna and Logan. They seem like suburban cookie-cutter names to her. She prefers Emma, Jacob, Hannah, Olivia and Andrew. They seem weightier, more substantial.

Yet she is not alone, as those are all top-ten names for 2006. My taste in names might seem individual to me, but it's really part of some national trend. Who understands broad subtle cultural change like this? Not me, folks.

So for my husband and me, the quest in naming a daughter became about finding a name that had roots, history and tradition, but finding one that other people weren't using in droves. We were drawn to lovely names that had been forgotten in recent years. The nursing home names. Ruby and Nora and Stella and Alice. And Lucy, which is what we named our dear girl.

A good compromise, right? And yet in doing this, in looking for possible names, we were told by baby naming books that we fell into another trend: "antique revival names." We shared this in common with other urban and college-educated types. So how unique is it possible to be? Individual taste is a myth. You can't escape the impact of culture.

On Mental Health

Confession time: Rosalind Little started this blog as a way to help her deal with her depression. She didn't want to tell you this. Because, well, it doesn't exactly seem like a selling point for readers, does it?

I imagined that I would be prone to long gloomy nihilistic posts about the state of the world. But now I think it is most honest to come clean. And that I should maybe just try to talk about depression as an aspect of my life, which is what it is.

Besides, it's not like I have any readers anyway. Which is just fine for right now.

While we're being honest, Rosalind Little is not my real name. This is because I'm an academic, and I teach undergraduates, and they understand very well how to google their instructors, and I'll be looking for jobs in the next few years.

So I can't pop up on Google as a depressed, Regis-and-Kelly-watching, maternally-impaired, would-be romance novelist. Besides, I'm vain about what former high school classmates might potentially find about me online. I hope you understand this.

If you've never had trouble with depression, it's hard to understand what it is like: a shifty little mood that sits on you and doesn't get off. It skews everything you think about. No, actually, it's not exactly a mood. You don't forget about it after somebody says something funny or you have a good day. But you might PRETEND like you do. At least I do. I have put in some really intense effort into pretending like I'm not feeling as bad as I do -- "hello! how are YOU today?! What a LOVELY day it is outside! Would you like a cookie?" -- so that I hopefully don't come across as detestable and self-pitying.

But then, of course, I get really angry when people I love don't understand how bad I feel. I don't understand why I can't get people to take it more seriously, to help me out. That's part of the charm of depressed people. We're cute like that.

Depression, as I experience it, makes nothing reliable. Not my own self-assessement. Not my friendships and relationships. Not the parts of life that I assign value to, and not the things I enjoy. Everything is vulnerable. When I'm really down, I feel like I am standing in a train depot with a million heavy bags hanging off of me, that I don't know how much longer I can stand, and there is no solid wall to lean against, much less some place to sit.

If I were reading this, I would probably be armchair-psychologist enough to wonder: why depression, Rosalind? What's wrong with you? Childhood trauma? Or is it just some bad wiring in your brain? What gives?

And I wish I could tell you. But I have no idea why I've been having these problems for the past year or so. Well, I have a few ideas. But I don't have any kind of satisfying air-tight story about what it is that causes it: that it is definitely all chemical, or that it is definitely all situational, or genetic, or due to childhood trauma, or whatever. I know being alone during the day doesn't help the situation. I know that I have a few lifelong tendencies (self-criticism, rumination, etc.) that make it worse, too. But I don't think either one of the those things cause it.

Sometimes I convince myself I'm not really depressed. I'm just another self-pitying, bookish, upper-middle class white girl with too much time on her hands. I need to stop feeling sorry for myself, dammit, and do something for other people for a change! But I'm starting to catch on that although it sounds admirably socially responsible and self-aware, that kind of thinking is really a trick of the depression. It's a way for me to talk myself out of doing something to stop it. I need to get well to be able to do good for other people. I need to get well to be able to be decent to my family and friends. And getting well involves admitting that you're sick.

Sometimes I convince myself that depression is just a rational reaction to an unfair and cruel social order. That we tell ourselves that depression is an individual-level problem, that it is something wrong with people psychologically, when in fact it is something wrong with society, something we all bear responsibility for. And maybe this is true. Who knows? But I'm doing well if I am combing my hair every morning, much less taking on remaking the social order all by myself. At some point one must narrow one's vision to what one can control.

I don't plan to dwell on the specifics of my depression in this blog, but I don't know why I should hide it either. Like it or not, it is part of who Rosalind Little is right now. I hope not forever.

On Democracy

Rosalind Little tends to vote Democrat, almost without exception. (When she lived in the Bay Area, she voted for Green Party candidates in some local elections. When she was still living with her parents in Augusta, Georgia, she voted for a Republican candidate when there no choice.)

Very rarely do Democratic candidates best reflect my true opinions. When I take online polls matching me up with my ideal candidates (like these), I invariably match up best with Kucinich, or Nader, or whoever the crazy left-wing candidate is who supports gay marriage and legalization of marijuana. It's not a perfect match -- I do have a few issues I tend to be oddly conservative on -- but it's usually closer than anything else.

Yet I do not vote for these candidates. I don't even consider voting for them. I vote for the Democrat. I know this is infuriating behavior on my part in some respects. But I'm a pragmatic girl, and frankly, sometimes the most important factor in an election is who does not get elected. For example, in the 2004 election the most pressing concern for the country was that Bush NOT get elected, and not so much who actually won. We didn't seem to pull that one through, though.

Right now I am more optimistic about the 2008 election. At very least, it promises to be immensely entertaining. We almost can't go wrong in that respect. (What with all the Latter-day Saints and insane New Yorkers and women and African Americans and actors who were featured on Law & Order as recently as LAST SEASON.) And I don't want to jinx it, but it seems like as of now the Democrats are less of a train wreck than the Republicans.

So why don't I know who to vote for? I don't know who I support. I honestly have no idea.

Edwards isn't doing it for me. I thought he was a solid VP candidate last time, but he's not ringing my bells right now.

I suppose I'm leaning slightly towards Obama. It's hard to argue against the charisma. He's dreamy. But really, seriously, he isn't all that experienced. I wish that we could put him on hold for a bit. Let him serve a few terms first. Why the rush? When you compare his level of preparation for the job to say, Hillary's, he's not really competitive at all. Makes me nervous.

So why not Hillary? She has the experience. She's smart. She's polished, if a bit unnatural. The symbolism of a female president is appealing.

But she would be a female president who was riding, at LEAST a little bit, on the coattails of her famous presidential spouse. And what really bothers me is that she would be the second president in the past ten years who was exploiting the presidential status of a family member. The past four presidents would be Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Clinton.

The dynasty aspect of that is troubling. I am not so naive as to think that the process of electing a president is really about finding the best person on an equal playing field ... but if we start to turn to the same powerful families to provide us consistently with our leaders, we're not even bothering trying any more. We're not even pretending that this democracy is functioning.

I'm surprised that more people haven't observed this, to be honest. It really troubles me. What would Jimmy Stewart say, for crying out loud?

Rosalind Little is Taken With Regis and Kelly

I am taken with Regis and Kelly. I know that some of you might find them to be too cheerful, or cloying, or insincere.

But you're wrong. I know this because they are my friends. Seriously. I watch them every day. Before my daughter Lucy was born, I watched them at the gym, and would become infuriated if I were five minutes late and missed the beginning. Since Lucy's birth, I record them on the Tivo and watch them whenever I get a spare moment.

It doesn't matter as much to me if I see the guests; what matters is the banter. I like to hear where Regis went to dinner last night; I like to know what Kelly watched on TV and how her daughter's dance recital went. I am comforted by the consistent connection with other people's lives.

Does that disturb you? Like, it's what happens when you take an impulse that used to be aimed at real relationships and you aim it at freaking talk show hosts, all disconnected and commercial?

Or maybe you're just jealous because I'm Regis and Kelly's best friend and you're not. Everybody wishes they were Rosalind Little.

On the Maternal Instinct

I am travelling for my dissertation research. I am in a strange city: a city that I actually like very much but that slightly intimidates me. Like almost all places with streets and cars and human beings.

This morning I was having coffee in a café, and reading -- the last third of the last Harry Potter book, as a matter of fact -- and I suddenly heard a baby crying.

At the next table there was an older man, perhaps sixty, feeding pieces of a muffin to a baby sprawled in a stroller. The baby was unhappy. She flailed her small limbs around. The man leapt out of his seat to get something at the counter, and in his absence the baby wailed more loudly, arching her back and balling her fists.

This distracted me to the point that I could not read. I tried to make eye contact with the baby -- to smile at her and lift my eyebrows and mouth the word "hi" -- which usually brings down the house with the under-two set.

But although she seemed to look my direction, her eyes could not seem to focus on mine. At this point I noticed the way her body slumped over in the stroller -- very little muscle control for such a large baby -- and the way her head bobbed around. I wondered if she had been born prematurely, or had some kind of special needs.

Her caretaker came back to the table with his coffee, and continued the process of feeding her the muffin. But she continued to wail. It was obvious that she was uncomfortable, distraught, anxious.The man doggedly tried to poke muffin into her mouth. His expression was blank and unaffected.

Now her despair, and the man's ineptitude at comforting her, was grating at me. Why didn't he TALK to her? What was the matter with this man? Didn't he know how to talk to a baby? You know: quietly, in that dumb sing-song way?

I started imagining scenarios that explained his behavior. I imagined that he was her grandfather, left alone with her for an hour and that he had never taken care of a child before. Or that he was her father, and a jerk, didn't think that talking to a special-needs baby was even worth it. Or that she was a rich person's baby, and he was her kidnapper, holding her for ransom, and he didn't care about her emotional well-being.

How tempted I was to get up from my table, and pick her up, wrap my arms reassuringly around her and pat her back: shh, shh, you're okay, you're okay. Like I have done a million times with my own daughter, my small and dear Lucy.

Eventually he wheeled her out of the café, across the street to a hotel. I hoped they were headed in the direction of someone who would pick that baby up. I mean really.

And why is this noteworthy? It was an experience that confirmed I DO have a maternal instinct.

Okay, an alarming thing for someone who is already a mother to say, I admit. Don't call child protective services, please. I certainly love my daughter madly, and would do anything for her. But I do worry that I am not, well, naturallly maternal. That it is all an act on my part.

I see my female friends fall seemingly effortlessly into nurturing others; I see them throw away their own dreams and comfort for the sake of their children in all kinds of ways I can't imagine. They really do seem to be selfless.

And I worry that wow, maybe I am too critical and self-absorbed and cold for motherhood. To be honest, it is not THAT uncommon that I wish somebody else were taking care of my kid, and I was, oh, I don't know, at a meeting, or at a bar, or out for a run, or on the couch, or really anywhere but reading this goddamn Go Dog Go again.

I worry that someday, in Lucy's autobiography, she will write the sentence: "My mother was not really the kind of woman who ought to be a mother, although she tried."

But in that café, without obvious reason, I actually had the urge to pick up unfamiliar baby. Not a baby to which I am related and thus naturally am drawn to and/or obligated to care for, and not a close friend's baby, but a total stranger baby! It made me ANGRY that the baby was going uncomforted. It actually produced real anxiety.

It turns out I have MATERNAL INSTINCT POURING OUT OF MY ORIFICES. I'm a nurturer leaking all over the place.

This is yet another sign that my judgment of myself is not to be trusted. What else have I been wrong about? Maybe how I look? Do you think it's possible that I actually am a five-ten Danish model with huge boobs?

On Mountaintops

Almost daily I wonder about mountaintop experiences. That moment when you suddenly have perspective, can see the horizon, feel connected with everything around you. Or maybe, even better, that moment when you kiss the face of God? I don't know -- how does it work exactly?

This certainly has never happened to me. Not even close. I am fairly skeptical as to whether it happens to anyone. I don't really believe those people that say it does, if you know what I mean.

But then sometimes I wonder. Maybe it is a matter of having experiences for which you have been primed. What if I had spent my formative years preparing for the extraordinary and the noble? Instead of, you know, obsessing about how many fat grams a bagel had, and whichever ridiculous unattainable boy I had a crush on, and how to set the timer on the VCR so that I could tape Days Of Our Lives while I was at school.

Or maybe the whole notion of the mountaintop experience is some kind of Romantic illusion. Why should we value these Great Sweeping Moments of Grandeur, these John Williams-scored epiphanies? Isn't that just a bombastic culture's view of a mystical experience?

Maybe perspective comes in quiet moments and in modest conclusions. Maybe it comes from wit and sacrasm. I hope so. I'm actually a lot better at that. Moutaintops are nice, but in point of fact I've never been fond of heights.

And yet. Transcendence is not without its appeals. Are we not ever intended to be thoroughly humbled and awed and thrilled and uplifted by contact with something greater than ourselves?

But there may not be anything greater than ourselves. Or there may be something that just doesn't care for us to kiss its face.

I am Rosalind Little.

Before I was a doctoral student (some fourteen, fifteen years before, actually, back before I was a living history instructor on a sailing ship or a documentary filmmaker or an actor or a college student or high school student or junior high student) I used to have an ambition to be a romance novelist.

When I was a sixth grader I wanted to grow up to be a romance novelist in Canada. I wanted to dress everyday in accurate Victorian clothing, and live in an antique country manor. I would have silk dresses, rose bushes pruned like animals, and seventeen cats. I think I imagined I would write my books with an quill and ink well all morning, and then break for tea and scones on the patio in the afternoon.

There was nothing in this fantasy about what my Canadian neighbors might think about me -- even in Canada I don't think this behavior is the norm -- and I doubt I gave it very much thought. I doubt at that age that it would have troubled me to have faced a future as a crazy corset-wearing cat lady.

On the other hand, I am sure I gave a LOT of thought as to what kind of scones they ought to be: raspberry? ginger? chocolate chip? topped with butter, cream or jam? This was the kind of kid I was.

Now I am primarily struck by the boldness of the idea, which does not match my current self-conception. It was a super idea, actually. Why not live in Canada? Why not be some cat-urine-scented thirtysomething version of Anne of Green Gables? What is so wrong with eccentricity? Don't you agree that I should have pursued it further? Do we get a do-over?