#Sarah Menkedick

[quotesfrommyreading]

Depression continues to command our focus in the area of postpartum mood disorders. From the vantage point of society, the depressed mother is a problem—inert, flattened by her apathy, her indifference endangering. By contrast the anxious mother operates in overdrive—evangelically cautious, safeguarding, detoxifying, buying things. The difference in social utility would seem to go a long way toward explaining why maternal depression has been at the center of so much research while postpartum anxiety has attracted less interest. And yet nearly every psychologist Menkedick speaks with sees the latter in patients far more than the former. One of the few studies on the subject, a 2013 paper that appeared in the journal Pediatrics, found that anxiety was three times as common as depression among those observed.

Too often, if women don’t meet the criteria for depression, they are considered fine. Too often anxiety is regarded merely as evidence of an underlying sadness rather than the illness itself, which complicates treatment—assuming that a new mother has the wherewithal to seek it out, and assuming that she can find good care when she does, which generally is a lot easier in Cambridge or Santa Monica than it is in, say, rural Ohio.

  —  Mothers Under Pressure (Ginia Bellafante)

#ginia bellafante #mothers under pressure #feminism #misogyny #family #parenting #motherhood #psychology #mental illness #depression #postpartum depression #anxiety #sarah menkedick

[bigtickhk]

Ordinary Insanity by Sarah Menkedick https://amzn.to/2JWecY5

#Ordinary Insanity #Sarah Menkedick #motherhood #parenting #memoir #books #book review

[vintageanchorbooks]

"We are on the cusp of transitioning from apprentices to full-time artists, and we are clueless about how to compose our lives—financially, personally, spiritually, aesthetically—to best accomplish this." - from "Wild River Blues" by Sarah Menkedick

In her early thirties and an aspiring literary journalist, Sarah Menkedick joins her baby brother Jackson and his precious Honda, the ”Jackwagon,” for fourteen transformative days on an east-coast backpacking adventure. The two cross mountains and by the end—exhausted to the core and unshowered—they reflect on the trajectory of their lives, the music they make and listen to, the principles to which they strive, and the disillusionment one can encounter after years of doggedly pursuing a passion. With only each other for company, they escape the trappings of their material lives. Together, they learn to heal, to love, and finally—to listen to one another.

#wild river blues #sarah menkedick

[heavenlyyshecomes]

Misc Readings pt. 5

The Graveyard Talks Back: Arundhati Roy on Fiction in the Time of Fake News*

The rise and rise of the Hindu Nation, Arundhati Roy*

American Dirt: A Bridge To Nowhere, Sarah Menkedick*

Stepping Into the Uncanny, Unsettling World of Shen Yun, Jia Tolentino

The dark side of the Nordic model, Jason Hickel

Undercover in the Orthodox Underworld, Dan Slater

We finally found out who makes wikihow's bizzare artwork

The 5 Best Places to Live in 2100

From fig leaves to pinups: Mary Beard on the evolution of the nude

My 9 Months on the Road With Fan Bingbing, China’s Biggest Movie Star, Rian Dundon

A Brutally Honest Review of My 10-Day Silent Meditation Retreat, Ivy Kwong

Garbage Language: Why do corporations speak the way they do?, Molly Young

Wikipedia Is the Last Best Place on the Internet, Richard Cooke

The End of Miss America, Lyz Lenz

Meet the revolutionary women strumming their way into the world of flamenco guitar, Lavinia Spalding

Baby Names From Fiction Are High Stakes

Inside China's Massive Surveillance Operation

Who decides what words mean

#couldn't be arsed 2 put the writer's name in the last few links #just..have it #articles #ref #ref: mine #readings #misc readings #mine

[laurenwilford]

“Meanwhile, I began to notice that, as kid culture filled up most of my days, I had been exiled from adult culture. Or rather, I began to notice that parents in the US lived in a strange, lonely and depressing gulf between two opposing cultures: one designed entirely around the fantasies not necessarily of children but of parents imagining the kind of uber-stimulation and play their children might need; the other designed almost entirely for single people or couples without children. Mixing these cultures is taboo. It was utterly surreal and hilarious to take my little brother, a single, 29-year-old musician living in Sweden, to the Children’s Museum – ‘What is this place?’ he kept repeating. It was also surreal and slightly stressful to take our daughter to certain restaurants and, once, to a bar in Portland at midnight, or out for the evening with adult friends, and it was off-limits to take her to many shows and performances.

“Our ‘family life’ was not supposed to intersect with our ‘adult life’. Being a family meant that we were eating at the local pizza house with its colouring pages and sticky booths; going to the event sponsored by Massive Corporation X or Y, where kids could jump in bouncy houses and glue-stick feathers to construction paper; spending our Saturdays at the playground. Then maybe we’d indulge in a ‘date night’ at some hip izakaya in Lawrenceville, downing cocktails while bleeding $15 per hour for a babysitter.”

“Why are American Kids Treated as a Different Species from Adults?”, Sarah Menkedick, Aeon

[charismaandcashmere]

The idea was to delineate not only where children could play, but how they should do it in order to best direct their cognitive, social, emotional and moral development. The neontocracy bumped up here against the ‘gerontocracies’ of the older world, in which children were, at best, ‘incompetent adults’, as Lancy described it, to be mostly ignored or commanded to help with the chores. The neontocracy wanted children in their own carefully organised spaces and, ideally, parents or other adults there to make sure that they were using this space as productively as possible. The idea was to create the right kind of American adult: as Hines put it, ‘patriotic, team-oriented, hygienic, physically competitive, morally upright’. Crucially, the playground was fenced off from the street, delineating where children belonged, and where they did not.

I was shocked to discover, when Jorge and I returned to the US, that he loathed kid-only spaces. He couldn’t stand the children in various stages of overload and meltdown, chucking gooey Teddy Grahams crackers from their strollers; the jittery parents shouting ‘Henry, come here right now and cut out these newspapers for your screen printing!’; the plastic and primary colours and noise and frenzy and monotony of it all. He occasionally enjoyed the Children’s Museum or the Carnegie Science Center on a quiet Thursday afternoon, when he and Elena could wander around without pressure, as through the landscape of a bizarre, abandoned ancient society. But, for the most part, he avoided kid culture.

Meanwhile, I began to notice that, as kid culture filled up most of my days, I had been exiled from adult culture. Or rather, I began to notice that parents in the US lived in a strange, lonely and depressing gulf between two opposing cultures: one designed entirely around the fantasies not necessarily of children but of parents imagining the kind of uber-stimulation and play their children might need; the other designed almost entirely for single people or couples without children. Mixing these cultures is taboo. It was utterly surreal and hilarious to take my little brother, a single, 29-year-old musician living in Sweden, to the Children’s Museum – ‘What is this place?’ he kept repeating. It was also surreal and slightly stressful to take our daughter to certain restaurants and, once, to a bar in Portland at midnight, or out for the evening with adult friends, and it was off-limits to take her to many shows and performances.

Our ‘family life’ was not supposed to intersect with our ‘adult life’. Being a family meant that we were eating at the local pizza house with its colouring pages and sticky booths; going to the event sponsored by Massive Corporation X or Y, where kids could jump in bouncy houses and glue-stick feathers to construction paper; spending our Saturdays at the playground. Then maybe we’d indulge in a ‘date night’ at some hip izakaya in Lawrenceville, downing cocktails while bleeding $15 per hour for a babysitter.

The New Zealand philosopher Brian Sutton-Smith, the 20th century’s leading play theorist, suggested that, as US society generated more amusements for adults – think of goat yoga, onesie bar crawls and Harry Potter-themed adults-only parties at the art museum – the need to distinguish adult ‘recreation’ or ‘entertainment’ from the play of children became paramount. Young adulthood, or childless adulthood, has roped itself off from family life, letting parents know that adult recreation is not child’s play.

Meanwhile, in The Prime of Life: A History of Modern Adulthood (2015) – an exhaustive exploration of the meaning of adulthood throughout US history – the American historian Steven Mintz declared that only after the Second World War did adulthood come to represent a plateau, generally reached upon having children, when the adventures and risks and meanderings of one’s 20s petered out into a long, steady, ‘settled’ plod. Mintz demonstrated that the 1950s ideal of the nuclear family, with its primly defined gender roles and suburban isolation from the rest of society, is actually a historical blip, not the norm.

But even as the period of adolescence and early adulthood has gotten longer and longer in the contemporary US, and increasing numbers of people are not marrying and not having children, the decision to begin a family is still experienced very much in these 1950s terms. Now you’ve arrived, look back fondly on the coffee dates and grubby concerts and spontaneous trips of your 20s, because from here on out it’s all bedtimes and playgrounds. It seems less like a plateau and more like a sudden plunge into the abyss of kid culture.

#kid culture #child rearing

[cloudblack]

Without realising it, I was falling in line with a long American tradition of worried adults fussing over children’s play, trying to get it just right. The first playgrounds in the US emerged less from a sense of playfulness than from progressive reformers’ moral concerns about the proper socialisation of poor immigrant children. As the American historian Dominick Cavallo wrote in his book Muscles and Morals (1981), play is ‘too serious a business to be left to children and parents’.

An immigration boom had led to overflowing slums in US cities, with immigrant children running free in the streets. As the American historian Michael Hines showed in his study of Chicago at the turn of the 19th century:

“It was these children – innumerable, highly visible, undirected, at risk (or so reformers maintained) from their impoverished environment and the lack of wholesome or productive activity – that social reformers sought to save with the creation of play sites that would offer both safety and supervision.”

The idea was to delineate not only where children could play, but how they should do it in order to best direct their cognitive, social, emotional and moral development. The neontocracy bumped up here against the ‘gerontocracies’ of the older world, in which children were, at best, ‘incompetent adults’, as Lancy described it, to be mostly ignored or commanded to help with the chores. The neontocracy wanted children in their own carefully organised spaces and, ideally, parents or other adults there to make sure that they were using this space as productively as possible. The idea was to create the right kind of American adult: as Hines put it, ‘patriotic, team-oriented, hygienic, physically competitive, morally upright’. Crucially, the playground was fenced off from the street, delineating where children belonged, and where they did not.

— Sarah Menkedick, “Kid Culture” (Aeon, 2020)

#essays #children/childhood #play #american culture #i sent this to my sister and she was so offended by everything written in this article lol

[longform]

America’s fetishization of reproductive risk is driving mothers mad.

Sarah Menkedick | Guernica | Apr 2020

[theseandthemoon]

Meanwhile, I began to notice that, as kid culture filled up most of my days, I had been exiled from adult culture. Or rather, I began to notice that parents in the US lived in a strange, lonely and depressing gulf between two opposing cultures: one designed entirely around the fantasies not necessarily of children but of parents imagining the kind of uber-stimulation and play their children might need; the other designed almost entirely for single people or couples without children. Mixing these cultures is taboo. It was utterly surreal and hilarious to take my little brother, a single, 29-year-old musician living in Sweden, to the Children’s Museum – ‘What is this place?’ he kept repeating. It was also surreal and slightly stressful to take our daughter to certain restaurants and, once, to a bar in Portland at midnight, or out for the evening with adult friends, and it was off-limits to take her to many shows and performances.

Our ‘family life’ was not supposed to intersect with our ‘adult life’. Being a family meant that we were eating at the local pizza house with its colouring pages and sticky booths; going to the event sponsored by Massive Corporation X or Y, where kids could jump in bouncy houses and glue-stick feathers to construction paper; spending our Saturdays at the playground. Then maybe we’d indulge in a ‘date night’ at some hip izakaya in Lawrenceville, downing cocktails while bleeding $15 per hour for a babysitter.

[...]

The boundaries between the worlds of families and everyone else in society seem to be getting more and more entrenched, and transgressing them is frowned upon. People rant about kids in fancy restaurants behaving badly, or wonder why on Earth anyone would bring a kid to a show, a brunch, an event, a bar or whatever. And it is true that, because kid culture is so ubiquitous and capable of swallowing up all of adult life, some parents assume everything revolves around their children; they become so absorbed in the child-centred fantasy world of constant play, attention, development and stimulation that they forget children are members of a society and not priestlings inhabiting their own sacred realm. They give up on integration; they cross over wholly to kid culture. This is why many people – three acquaintances in the past year alone – have taken to stipulating that their weddings are kid-free. It’s always gently phrased – ‘No little ones, please! We want you to enjoy the evening!’ – but the message is clear.

#parenting #kid culture #may reads

[vouloirgai]

“The first therapist Jamie saw diagnosed her with postpartum depression, postpartum OCD, postpartum anxiety, and post-traumatic stress syndrome, and told her that the fact she had a plan and an exact date for killing herself meant she had ‘good coping skills.’ This therapist was confident. ‘It’ll pass!’ she said. Jamie found a different therapist, whose treatment consisted mostly of asking Jamie to try and wait for ten minutes instead of three between breathing checks, which Jamie failed to do and found pointless and baffling. In most of the sessions with this therapist, Jamie bawled. Finally, a few months in, she asked if the therapist saw a lot of women like her, and if she would get better.

The therapist was cool. ‘Some women,’ she replied, ‘just don’t like being moms.’

This therapist might as well have carved out Jamie’s heart and tossed it into an incinerator. Jamie left and never looked back. She has never gotten the doubt sown by that comment out of her head.”

From Ordinary Insanity: Fear and the Silent Crisis of Motherhood in America by Sarah Menkedick, excerpted in Guernica Magazine

[jessicafurseth]

Reading List, 'Things I think about when I’m not thinking about brexit' edition 

To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall

If you ever woke in your dress at 4am ever closed your legs to a man you loved opened them for one you didn’t moved against a pillow in the dark stood miserably on a beach seaweed clinging to your ankles paid good money for a bad haircut backed away from a mirror that wanted to kill you bled into the back seat for lack of a tampon if you swam across a river under rain sang using a dildo for a microphone stayed up to watch the moon eat the sun entire ripped out the stitches in your heart because why not if you think nothing & no one can / listen I love you joy is coming 

[Kim Addonizio] *** 

"Maybe I could have been cool a decade ago, or moved to New York, or figured out who I was or what I wanted, rather than indulge myself in a surreal protest against a surreal war happening within my own body. I’m afraid I acquired too many resentments to survive without recoil, and I’m afraid that if I write myself out of them, I’ll be left without desires or skills." [Grace Lavery’s newsletter]

"I look back on these trips and see their beauty: how they allowed my parents to introduce a sense of adventure into our lives, a touch of something that felt like mild peril. "Jean Hannah Edelstein’s memories of travelling to Scotland as a child [The Daily Telegraph] 

“We shot in chronological order and worked on the script every weekend throughout the shoot,” the director and co-writer Richard Linklater said. “We went pretty far into this thinking they weren’t going to plan to meet again, and the night before, we were up until 3 in the morning rewriting the final scene." On the making of ‘Before Sunrise’ [Ashley Spencer, The New York Times] 

This is a fantastic deep dive into sex in the face of cancer, which is also a story about taking sexuality seriously as a health issue [Eleanor Cummins, Elemental at Medium] 

Inside r/relationships, the unbearably human corner of the internet [Kaitlyn Tiffany, The Atlantic] 

“I want a woman who loves to eat pizza but doesn’t look like she loves to eat pizza” Urgh [Madeleine Holden. MEL Magazine] 

"It ought to have been reassuring, but all I could think about were the people posting photos of the paintings to Instagram.” [Dayna Tortorici, N+1] 

On the rise of scheduling free time [Sarah Manavis, The New Statesman] 

On the rise of plant Instagram [Lizzy Dening, The Guardian] 

Today in “Let people love what they love”: In defence of Elizabeth Gilbert [Sarah Menkedick, The Outline] 

I have loved Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast, “Revisionist History”, for years, but this three-parter on how to apply morality to real life had me thinking for weeks. 

The chaotic, beautiful larks of Elizabeth Wurzel [Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker] 

#reading list #31st January 2020 at 11pm

[keshyre]

“i’m interested in the way our voices sound when we dip below the decibel level of politics.” - tracy k. smith 

last monday was raya’s lakbay aral day for teachers. we went on a “humans of manila” walk, exploring intramuros and binondo by foot, with no itinerary or rules except to get to know old manila by talking to the people who lived and worked there. 

this was fresh off of election week. for months i had been drowning in campaign and election discourse - a whole lot of shouting and pointing fingers about the mess that is our country’s politics. even dinners with friends would turn into a rant session about how they “couldn’t understand how anybody could support a man like duterte.” the day after elections, i was shell-shocked and angry, and took a day to myself to process the losses of bam, chel, colmenares and akbayan. when i thought i was ready to see what the rest of my friends were saying about it, i got even angrier - i really, truly couldn’t believe how so many people in my private and specially curated echo chamber were so quick to blame the masa for what they considered to be a failed election. visiting manila and sitting down with people was a special kind of healing, and a reminder to always listen. 

“when i talk about politics, i am my most righteous, performative self. but when i talk about my life, my fears, my love, i am a person.” - sarah menkedick

a few days after this i attended an election debriefing event with some friends. we talked about wins in the local elections, our renewed energy to connect, educate and resonate, and our shared love for country. confronted again with the age-old question, why do you love your country? and in these dark times, how? -  i was reminded of our manila walk. because while i resonate with the abstract, social, philosophical and other presumed reasons for this highfalutin patriotism, talking to kuya nonoy, kuya alberto, ate reynalyn and so many others reminded me that i love this country most because i genuinely, genuinely love its people.

“It is not about politics. it is about saying, this is my life, and this is what i care about. this is not politics. this is us: who we are, what we believe in, who we love,” and “It isn’t just rants over beers with a friend. It is a thorny, painstaking conversation with a family member you fundamentally disagree with, remembering their humanity, and then trying to show them the humanity of the people you love.” 

after each conversation i had in manila, i would sit in a corner and write down notes on my phone. i’m copy pasting some of them here as a reminder- this, this is the humanity of the people i love:

Kuya Nonoy - PWD galing sa Rodriguez Rizal; nagbebenta ng rosaries sa labas ng Manila Cathedral. umuuwi twice thrice a week. Nilapitan ko kasi napansin kong marami sa mga co-teachers ko ay di siya tinitingnan nang diretso. Dahil ba PWD siya? O kaya ayaw siya bentahan? May halong awa at kuryusidad ang namilit sa akin nakausapin siya, at bumili ng rosary sa kanya. Nakikitulog daw siya sa manila sa mga kaibigan niya tulad ni kuya Alberto. Tinanong niya ako kung may tour guide kami. Rekomendasyon niya ay kunin daw namin ang kanyang tropa, si Carlos Celdran, bilang tour guide sa susunod na pagpunta sa Intramuros. 

Kuya Alberto - kaibigan ni Kuya Nonoy, nagbebenta ng mga straw caps. Yung caps daw galing sa Laguna. Natutuwa ang mga puti sa binebenta niya at yun yung madalas niyang customer. Must see daw ang Fort Santiago; favorite niyang puntahan. Lahat daw silang taga Manila pwede maging tour guide pero ID niya pang vendor lamang kaya sang-ayon siya na dapat namin kunin si Carlos Celdran. Hindi daw siya lumaki dito pero hangang-hanga siya sa ganda ng kanyang siyudad. 

Ate Reynalyn - natagpuan namin sa isang tindahan malapit sa manila cathedral. Siya daw ay isang “totoong” taga-Manila. Hanggang high school umabot (Manila High), at hiyang hiya siya sabihin sa akin na hindi na siya tumuloy sa kolehiyo. Buong buhay nakatira sa barangay 65, supporter (leader?) ng kanilang chairman. Dahil sinabi niyang totoong taga-Manila siya, tinanong ko kung ibig sabihin ba nito ay binoto niya si Isko “Batang Manila” Moreno. May konting takot siya na pag-usapan ang pulitika, pero susupportahan daw niya ang kahit sinong Mayor. Excited naman daw para kay isko. Mayroon siyang 3 anak, panganay pa lang nag-aaral. Asawa ay side car driver and tour guide. Hanggang ngayon nagandahan sila sa mga tourists spots, “pero dito sa amin madumi pa rin.” 

Kuya Rio - nag-aayos ng kanyang pedicab sa tabi ng Casa Manila. Umupo ako sa tabi niya at kinausap habang binebenta niya sa akin ang kanyang tours. “Di bale Ma’am, pag naayos na ang aking Lambo, pwede na tayo umikot sa Intramuros.” Taga Regalado Highway Fairview. Kapitbahay ng Raya! 13 kids, 4 wives. Currently nasa pang-limang asawa na siya pero ayaw na daw nila magkaanak (“pagod na ako.”) Tinanong ko kung paano niya masisigurado yun at sagot niya “alam mo na yun Ma’am.” Haha! Maputi daw siya noong bata siya kaya ganun, marami siyang nabuntis. Di na niya mabilang ang mga apo. Pala-biro si kuya. 

Ate Florentina - nakausap ko sa isang tindahan, habang bumibili ng pepsi. Hindi ko napansin ang dala-dala niyang kariton na puno ng mga basura. Taga Paco Manila, nakikitira sa kanyang babaeng kapatid. Araw-araw nangangalakal sa Intramuros. Dati daw, taga Iligan sila. Nascam yung nanay papunta Manila kaya nagtrabaho muna sila dito bilang mga garbage pickers. Nang magkaanak, bumalik siya sa Iligan kasi mas masaya magtanim kesa mangalakal. Pero dumating yung araw na inaway daw siya ng mga asawa ng kanyang mga anak. Mahirap daw pakainin ang isa pang tao - kaya pinabalik si Ate Florentina sa Manila. Galit na galit si Ate Florentina habang nagkukuwento, pero hinalikan ako nang ako ay magpaalam na. 

Kuya Ice Cream (forgot to get his name!!!) - nilapitan ko pagkatapos niya bentahan ang isang grupo ng mga chinese na turista ng ice cream (’bintsili’ ang tawag nila diyan maam.”) Nakuwento niya na dumami talaga ang mga turista mula sa china sa pagkapaupo ni Duterte. “Siguro maam nararamdaman nilang protektado sila dito ni pangulo.” pero okay lang ito sa kanya, dahil madaming pera ang mga dayuhan - di nga daw siya hinihingan ng sukli. inamin niya na doble ang charge niya sa mga hindi pinoy. marami siyang opinyon tungkol sa pulitika - sa maynila daw, itinuturing kalaban si duterte ng mga erap loyalists. kaya siya, ayaw niya kay duterte, bong go at bato. si bong revilla daw ang masipag, madalas umiikot sa manila kasama si erap at lim. “Pinapawisan siya pero tuloy tuloy pa rin ang pag-ikot niya maam.” Nalungkot daw siya na puro kandidato ni Duterte ang nanalo. Nalungkot rin siya para sa aking nang sinabi ko na hindi ako kumakain ng ice cream, “anong klaseng buhay yan maam?”

The Family Under the Bridge (Ate Janet and company) - kinausap ko dahil hinahanap namin ang isa sa pinakalumang gusali sa binondo, ang el hogar building. nabigla ako nang sinabi nila na ang gusali sa likod nila, isang madumi, abandoned at nabubulok na istraktura, ay ang historikal na el hogar. “opo maam. yan yung el hogar. ospital ata dati? o paaralan? basta maraming nagshosooting na artista diyan dati, pero ngayon ipinagbawal na. di na daw safe.” hiyang hiya ako nang tinanong ko kung bakit kaya pinayagan na maging ganito ka rumi ang paligid ng el hogar: “di ko alam ma’am, pero ito lang ang alam namin na tahanan e.” grabe ang kanilang pagpuri sa binondo, kahit na tilang tinulak sila sa pinaka-laylayan ng chinatown. “maraming luma at historikal building maam! palagi kami binibisita ng mga estudyante, propesor at artista.”  

[whatchareadinbtch]

[lamajaoscura]

[iamthevideographer]

Is Fear the Last Taboo of American Motherhood? https://ift.tt/2V8MOLZ

Sarah Menkedick suffered horrible anxiety after her daughter was born. In “Ordinary Insanity,” she examines the unacknowledged prevalence of clinically anxious mothers.. via NYT Books https://ift.tt/2UTFx3P by JLD SEO MARKETING For services call [phone] or visit bit.ly/jld-seo-marketing …

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#jldseomarketing #florida #pressurewash #commercialpressurewashing #mmpressurewashingandexteriorclean

[outsidetheknow]

The First Book

Sarah Menkedick | Longreads | July 2019 | 38 minutes (10,294 words)

For me the low point came two months after publication, at a playground a few blocks from my house. I sobbed on the phone with my sister, eking out incomprehensible sentences about my career this, my life expectations that, writing this, the publishing industry that, until finally my sister said, “Maybe you should look for a…

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#Longreads