The Snowy Day

We had a snow day today, and just got a call that we--well, Curious Girl--will have a snow day tomorrow. If our college doesn't close, we'll be juggling Politica teaching all day and me hosting not one but two! candidates for two different positions. But that's a problem for another day (and probably a reason my happy woman professor day post is going to be late, since let me tell you, one factor in the happy woman professor process is having good quality and consistent arrangements for your child to be taken care of while you're being that happy woman professor).

On Sunday, we took some of the snow and made the maple syrup and snow concoction described in my preview issue of Wonder Time. It was fun and easy; Curious Girl had tons of fun gathering the three bowls of snow for us to use. But the resulting candy was very chewy and hard to eat; it didn't look much like what the magazine picture showed (although it was pretty tasty). So today, CG brought in a bowl of snow and we poured maple syrup over it and she ate it all up. Yum. And at least that way, it had some calories.

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There's been some interesting blogging about the new study about adoptive parents: Shannon picked up on the finding that adoptive parents are less likely to talk to other parents than bio parents are (if you read the study, the question asked was about talking to parents of other kids at your child's school, which the news reports don't mention); Daddy, Papa, and Me looks at some of the reasons adoptive families work the way they do; Jenna and Dawn looks at the issue of whether it's right to say that adoptive parents are "better." Dawn writes:

I’m all for using this information to support gay/lesbian parents ability to adopt but later the study points out that adoptive parents are “better” than single parents and families with step-parents (where — I wonder — does this put single adoptive parents? Or adoptive parents who are also step-parents?). Better how? They’re more devoted to their kids. (I’ll add that a different researcher might have put a different spin on it by playing on that stereotype that adoptive parents — especially older ones who spent a lot of time yearning for said kid — are worse helicoptor parents.) You know this will be used against a single woman contemplating making an adoption plan; after all it’s “proof” that her kid will be better off with someone else!

My state is going through another round of marriage-amendment-obnoxious-debate, so it was nice to hear some news spots about the bright points of adoptive parenting. Dawn is right, I think, that there's something a little creepy about the study from one point of view. But I've read of so many court cases where judges have presumed that lesbian families are bad for children that some nice social science research that can support what I know to be true is also good. It's complicated. I don't want a defense of my family to end up being an attack on someone else's parenting, or part of a coercive force in American adoption practices. (that said, the study isn't wholly focused on gay families; most families in the study were straight.)