Blog 9 Week 9

The article this week, "As good as it gets?" by Mike Edwards of AARP magazine I found to be interesting enough to focus my second to last post on.


The article focuses on the Dutch, and their retirement years.   All in all, a Dutch couple can receive almost $45,000 per year after the age of 65.  To my surprise, this is less that an American couple can receive on social security, though 100% of Dutch citizens have government insurance for medical and home nursing care.  Approximately 45 million Americans have no health insurance at all.  The Dutch also pay little to no copayments for prescription drugs, while many Americans have to pay out of pocket for prescription drugs. 


The main quote in this article which I found to be of particular importance "the European attitude is, we're all in this together and sooner or later we're all going to become older and need some help.  The U.S. attitude is, we're all rugged individualists and we're going to take care of ourselves, not others."


A good question I wondered the answer to is "how do the euros stretch further than our dollars?"  According to a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, we pay a lot more than others for the same stuff.  Costs for hospitals, drugs and physicians services can be up to 50% more expensive in the U.S. and our status of health isn't necessarily better than theirs.


It looks like the costs aren't going down for the Dutch, nor the Swedes.  Even a single family of two that has an income of about 60,000 still is in the 25% tax bracket, and more than 50% of those taxes goes toward the universal pension fund.  Currently, there is a 12% tax on food and as much as 40% on new cars.  Since it seems that very few complain about what they have to live on, the taxes are probably a fair deduction from their day to day living expenses.  Especially since the health care is almost 100% covered (at least for important/non cosmetic procedures).  The really jeopardy for retirement benefits will be the people living and willing to pay for it, especially as birth rates decline across western Europe.


 

Blog 8 Week 8

             I found the section in our text 'Alienation and Burnout' to be of particular interest this week (refer to page 437).  The first sentence ‘No job is perfect; there is always something about it that is not as good as it could be’.  I completely agree with this statement, and at the same time I am forced to recall movie clips of the empowered woman in her perfect job calling all the shots.  Why can’t we find perfection in a career we choose or a life we live?  Is that human nature? 

            Our text defines alienation as a feeling that results in workers when their work seems meaningless and their efforts devalued or when they see no connection between their own work and the final product.  I have felt this way many times in my life, not just related to work, so I consider myself an expert.  If people who supervise you or are at the level of your boss, and they don’t make eye contact or couldn’t care less who you were, what your name is, or what you do, you begin to resent them and your job. 

            I found it disconcerting that this section focused in particular on assembly line workers management.  The assembly line workers are apparently more likely to feel alienated, especially since their jobs could become automated by machines.  As far as white collar management and executives, usually those jobs are not exempt or unionized, so I don’t know of a time when they were ‘safe’ from layoffs.  Either way, an employee that feels alienated feels like they are not trusted (perhaps to do their jobs, or just in general).  In my own experience, if I feel distrusted or second-guessed, over time I begin to resent what I do and where I work.

            Burnout, is defined in our text as a depletion of a person’s energy and motivation, the loss of occupational idealism, and the feeling that one is being exploited.  I interpret the last part of this definition as the feeling that you are being used.  In a relationship if you feel used you might resent the person you are with or bear ill-will, neither of which are healthy.  How would an employee express to their supervisor that they feel used?  The state of physical, emotional and mental exhaustion (love the typo on page 438 in the fifth edition, below definition of burnout, ‘zexhaustion’) can be endless, so how does one change their mental attitude or address the need for change? 

            Teaching, social work, health care, those in occupational therapy and the military are more prone to feeling ‘burnout’ from their jobs.  Specifically, people in these occupations deal with people’s complex problems in stressful situations.  Day after day, these problems take their toll.  I like how our text summed it up: that disillusionment and exhaustion set in.  How many times have most of us felt that way?  Like 2000 times right????  (fyi I am not even thinking about being a parent here, so parents out there, I am sure you surpassed this number)

            I almost can’t stand when the only answer to the problem is stress-reduction techniques.  I mean for real.  Why do we have to change, why can’t the job stop being so ridiculously stressful???  Also, I get that sometimes reevaluating how you view a certain situation can help, but why isn’t there some sort of compensation for the stress we deal with at work (probably due to the fact that stress is subjective.  I know there are plenty of people who don’t stress as much as me or the average person, and their reward shall be a longer life J  )

Blog 7 Week 7

            Once again I have found one of the articles this week to be of particular interest.  Should You Stay Together for the Kids, by Walter Kirn, really struck a chord in me.  I grew up with two parents who would fight (verbally only, more just arguing) in front of my brothers and me weekly.  When I was a teenager, I do recall hearing them arguing after I called it a night, when I would go to my room and studying before falling asleep or just trying to fall asleep in general.  They didn’t fight every night, but I do remember thinking “why don’t they just get a divorce?” which I am glad they never did.  Oddly enough, I think they work, even codependent or dysfunctional as they are.  They are nearing 70, so at this point, I think divorce is out of the picture, and they still do things together as a couple.  They just argue.  Ok, on to the article…..

 

            When Joanne, the initial example in the article said “before I met my husband, I sabotaged all my other relationships with men because I assumed they would fail”.  To me, that was a powerful thing to say.  She really took her fathers’ leaving as an example for what is inevitable, and was just trying to avoid that pain herself.  Obviously she did find happiness as she states “before I met my husband” (though this article is from 2000, so that is 14 more years for something to have happened, but I try to be an optimist). 

            I was surprised, and also not so surprised (can that happen?) to hear that there are about a million children that are the product of divorce every year.  I am surprised because that number seems high, but when I think about perhaps two children households, that number is more like 500,000 couples split up, which seems about right.  Also, it seems as though discussion for the children happen mostly in the court, as the couples most likely are not on good terms.  

            The article focuses on the children of divorce who are grown now, and are still hurting from the pain of divorce (I still can’t believe how dramatic I was about wishing my parents would get a divorce, because that would make all my problems disappear).  The article points out that children of divorce “suffer depression, learning difficulties and other psychological problems more frequently than those of intact families.”  I would like to point out that children of mothers with postpartum depression who fail to gain their child’s attachment can also suffer from depression, and also those with permissive parents (which some households who stay together but are divided end up being like).  Children who are born to mothers who don’t take proper care of themselves during pregnancy can suffer learning challenges (among other things), and other psychological problems are all over the board (at least in the U.S.).  Children are stated to struggle when they start to develop more mature relationships, that they are gun shy, and look for love in strange places.  So did I.  There must be so many more factors than just the home environment, such as the parenting style, types of friends, temperament, 

            In many ways, a child that is raised in a single parent home, could even be stronger than the child of a two parent home.  I think of it as having to earn one’s keep, or pay one’s way.  A child who doesn’t have all of the advantages of having parents who are together (sometimes this means more $) will have to work harder, which in many ways I wish I could have learned many more lessons when I was young about money and responsibilities, because I am 31 (closer to 32) and still trying to figure out my life. 

            I am not religious, so I think that many of these children’s view of a fairy tale or nothing, isn’t such a bad thing to go for.  Why the heck not.  I know a few really happy couples, some approaching 10-15 years married, some with kids, some without, and these guys truly are wonderful couples.  Very social, but yet really tuned to what their partner wants.  These are the lucky ones.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that people should have high romantic expectations, but I think if you find it, holy moly, hang on to it for as long as you can!!!!!  I again am so glad and thankful for my parents staying together because I know it would have been worse if they were apart.

Week 6 Blog 6

1.             What I found to be very interesting this week was one of the articles we read.  The article, Teens Before Their Time suggested that there are many possible reasons for earlier puberty in girls.  According to the author, Michael Lemonick, some researchers believe the chemicals used to make plastics are at fault.  Bisphenol-A (aka BPA) and phthalates were linked to early puberty in Puerto Rico in the 1980’s.  Girls as young as 2 were growing breasts and pubic hair. 
               The article gives an example of a young girl who was put on hormones to stop the onset of puberty.  One young girl, who first showed signs of breast development at the early age of 4 was put on medication several years later.  According to her parents, once she was on medication to slow the onset of puberty, had horrible mood swings.  Her parents soon stopped the treatment, and by age 9 she had breasts and her period. 
               Another young girl began growing pubic hair at the age of 5.  Blood tests ruled out conditions which could pump out puberty-triggering hormones.  By age 8, this young girl had full growth of her pubic hair.  Her parents stopped letting her change swim suits in front of other children, or go to any slumber parties (out of fear of her embarrassment I suppose). 
               Studies that have been done only seem to focus on Caucasian or African American girls.  Among Caucasian girls, 1 in 7 develop breasts or pubic hair by age 8, and among African American girls, nearly 50% develop breasts or pubic hair by age 8.  The article does suggest that since from the mid 1800’s to the mid 1900’s, the average age girls started their periods fell from age 17 to age 13, and this is likely due to improvements in nutrition. 
               However, early puberty has also been linked with being overweight.  This could be because fat cells produce leptin, a hormone that is necessary for the progression of puberty.  Some chemicals can also mimic hormones that help the development of the reproductive system.  Another suggestion is that all the sexualized messages in our society could be causing early development (one comparison is made to a dog salivating at the mere sight of food).   
              
2.             I got my period at the age of 10, in 1993.  About a year before I started having to wear bras.  I was not a skinny girl, and I did watch anything I wanted on TV, and back then there was no attention given to BPA or phthalates.  Now, on most plastic containers I buy I see “NO BPA” stamped all over them, and on shampoo bottles quite often I see “phthalate-free”.  Perhaps, if these chemicals continue to lack from our plastics and hygiene products, maybe over time we will see a rise in the age puberty starts in girls.
    
3.             I would like to ask the author about the Puerto Rican girls who developed at the age of 2.  The article really didn’t discuss much detail about these cases.  I find myself constantly going back and thinking, trying to imagine how I would feel if my toddler got boobs.  Also, I would ask what age these young girls got their periods.  This is a fascinating topic, and also a scary one, because even though I am not a parent, I would want my little girl to stay a little girl for a reasonable amount of time, and first or second grade is too early.