Taken from here.

It's not a coincidence that one week after Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In gave feminism a much-needed reboot and sparked a national conversation about the innate gender biases that need to be dismantled so that professional women can achieve their full potential, New York Magazine pooped our party with an incendiary cover story about the "legions" of "feminist housewives" who're "having it all by choosing to stay home." Choosy feminists choose choice! And I'm choosing to roll my eyes. More »

Taken from here.
 


India's reputation has taken a beating since December, when a 23-year-old student was fatally gang raped, which led to widespread international outrage.
Just last week another woman was gang raped — only this time, it was a Swiss tourist who was on a cycling trip with her husband.

Yesterday, a British woman jumped out of her hotel room window, reportedly to escape a sexual attack by the hotel's owner.
And though the attackers have been arrested, many people in India — including police and government officials — have blamed the victims, leaving many to question just how safe the country is.

As a result, it seems that more and more people — especially women — are being dissuaded from traveling to the country.
There are multiple discussion threads on Thorn Tree, Lonely Planet's travel forum, over whether traveling to India is safe or not. And several users said that they are considering canceling their trips for fear of their safety.
"Soon I'm planning to visit India with my boyfriend and I'm a bit concerned about safety there," a user named tiag wrote on a Thorn Tree thread. "It raises some questions, [about] what is the situation about safety in India."

Danish tourist Judith Jensen is currently traveling in India with her 10-year-old daughter and told the International Herald Tribune that she feels a "persistent sense of danger.”
“There is no question that these stories will have an impact on foreign visitors,” she told the Tribune. “Women will prefer to visit other places like Singapore or Bali or Thailand, where safety is not such a big concern.”

Several countries have also issued travel warnings, especially for women. The U.S. Department of state warns that "U.S. citizens, particularly women, are cautioned not to travel alone in India," and the British Common & Foreign Wealth Office also warns women to "use caution when travelling in India." The British Office also reminds women that "Reported cases of sexual assault against women and young girls are increasing; recent sexual attacks against female visitors in tourist areas and cities show that foreign women are also at risk."

In short, these events may wreak havoc on India's tourism industry.
Tourism is an important industry in India. About 6.3 million foreign tourists visited India in 2011, the most recent year for which data is available, according to the country's Ministry of Tourism. And in that same year, tourism generated $121 million of India’s GDP in 2011, making up about 6.4 percent of India's economy, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council.
That means that a decline in tourism could seriously hurt the economy.
Yet, tour operators and travel experts insist that the events have not affected tourism and that the country is still safe.

Praveen Syal, the managing director of Indus Travels, a travel agency specializing in trips to India, said that he does not believe that these events have impacted people's decisions to travel to India.
"We have not seen any decline in bookings to India by either women or couples/families," Syal wrote in an email. "India has always been a challenging destination for Western tourists... We have always taken precaution with our women clients to India."
Syal added that the events are rare and can be avoided with simple precautions.
"We still consider India a very safe destination even for women but like any other foreign destination we advise our clients what is safe to do and what is not. If you stay within safe boundaries in India nothing will happen," Syal added.

Harkripal Singh, a representative of the Travel Agents Association of India, a tourism lobby group, told the Wall Street Journal that he does not believe the events have affected tourism to India. However, he insisted that the organization is now doing more to protect women.
“In every country of the globe, these kinds of incidents happen from time to time,” Singh told the Wall Street Journal.

Admittedly, these events are rare and the majority of tourists travel through India without incident.
However, it's clear that the Indian government must respond to these incidents swiftly and sincerely, and prove to women that it can protect them. They can do this with a few simple actions: for one, they can stop blaming the victims and start enacting laws that will protect them. Basic reforms, like protecting married women from being raped by their husbands (which is still considered legal) and pursuing harsher sentences for rapists, will help reform India's image.
Otherwise, they can kiss their tourism industry goodbye.

SEE ALSO: Swiss Tourist Gang Raped On Bike Trip In India >

Please follow The Life on Twitter and Facebook.
Join the conversation about this story »

Taken from here.

Katie Lambert summitting Mt. Proboscis. Photo: Ben Ditto

March is Women’s History Month, a month-long celebration of groundbreaking women observed nationally in the United States, Australia, and Canada.

WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH is about women’s rights and the fight to make the world safer and better for girls and women everywhere. But it’s also about badass ladies who made advances and achievements in the arts, sciences, and sports. (Take this quiz to see how many you know.)
All month, students will study the legacy of female pioneers, and cities will host events where influential women currently making a difference — on community, national, and international levels — speak and inspire us. The theme for this year’s national awards, decided by the National Women’s History Project, is “Women Inspiring Innovation Through Imagination: Celebrating Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.” As Amy Poehler says, Smart Girls Have More Fun.

At Matador, we are proud of publishing articles that celebrate strong, groundbreaking women. In the spirit of Women’s History Month, here is a collection of pieces run at Matador over the years that tell the stories of traveling women, taking risks and breaking records.

Photo: Jessica Watson

1. Jessica Watson

In 2009, we interviewed Jessica Watson, a 16-year-old who was getting ready to break the world record and become the youngest person to sail solo around the world. On preparing mentally for the journey, she told Matador, “You do what you can. You talk to the right people and you get all the advice and you can do your practice runs and all that. But when it comes down to it, there’s no way you can prepare yourself in your head for eight months alone. There’s no test for that.”

2. Katie Lambert

Matador Ambassador Katie Lambert was part of the second ever group to free climb Mt. Proboscis in a single day. She writes about the ascent, the view from the top, and the long trip back to base camp. “With less experience in this kind of setting, and as the only woman, I was concerned I would be the weak link — that I wouldn’t be able to handle the environment, that I wouldn’t like it, that it would be too cold, too hard, too much. My mind changed daily until finally I decided that I couldn’t pass up the opportunity or the adventure.”

3. Shannon Galpin

Shannon Galpin is the first woman to mountain bike in Afghanistan. In 2010, she crossed the Panjshir Valley and last year shared photos and details from her trip with Matador readers. “Afghanistan is one of the few countries in the world where women are not allowed to ride bikes.” Shannon is another Matador Ambassador and is also behind the Afghan Dreamers Project, which works to “amplify voices and broaden the view of Afghanistan at a time when most people in America want to turn their back on the region.”

4. Paige Aarhus

In Notes from a white girl journalist in Kenya, Paige Aarhus explores being a white woman in a male-dominated field, embedded in a country with a male-dominated culture. On recognizing the danger she might place herself in on the assignment, Paige asks herself, “There are always questions of: How far do I want to push it? Which risk is worth taking?”

5. Marjan Kalhor

Iran sent its first female Olympic athlete to the games in 1996, but it wasn’t until 2010 in Vancouver that a female Iranian athlete competed in the Winter Games, where she was the only woman representing her country. Marjan Kalhor, a 21-year-old alpine and slalom skier, began skiing when she was four and has been winning major awards since she was 11.

6. SheJumps

We profiled SheJumps, a nonprofit dedicated to encouraging women who want to “jump” into trying something new, in 2010. “This may mean putting on a pair of skis for the first time or working up the courage to travel solo.” Their goal is to highlight achievements by women, create a community to support each other, and provide gear and other help for women who want to try new sports.

7. Liz Clark

When David Miller interviewed Liz Clark in 2010, she had been living aboard her sailboat Swell for four years. She spent her time sailing, surfing, traveling, blogging, and meeting people wherever her boat docked. About her lifestyle she said, “The one thing that keeps it all in perspective for me is the fact that, despite being as busy as a New York stockbroker, I get to be surrounded by nature the majority of the time.”

8. Polonia Ana Choque Silvestre

Polonia Ana Choque Silvestre is a 40+-year-old indigenous Bolivian wrestler and the subject of the documentary, Mamachas del Ring, by filmmaker Betty M. Park. When Mamachas premiered in New York City in 2010, Julie Schwietert spoke with Polonia Ana, who goes by Carmen, on how wrestling has changed her life, the documentary, and the next logical step in her career: politics.

9. Muriel Johnston

In 2009, when she was 84, Muriel Johnston joined the Peace Corps as a Health Educator. In an interview with Matador before she left for Morocco, where she planned to serve for 27 months, Muriel made it clear that as a “mature” volunteer she had life experiences to draw on to enrich her volunteering, but that she was also looking forward to new experiences.

Taken from here.
 

A sample tweet from my mentions since Tuesday night.

Trigger Warning

On Tuesday night, I appeared on Hannity in a segment framed around the idea that giving women guns is the solution to ending rape.  I was on with Independent Women’s Forum’s Gayle Trotter who recently made the point that women need guns for self defense from rape and gun violence prevention is infringing on their second Amendment rights, as well as, putting them at greater risk for domestic violence and rape.

Obviously, I disagreed.  Giving every woman a gun is not rape prevention.  If a woman chooses to go out and buy a legal gun for self-defense, that’s fine.  But that shouldn’t be confused with actual prevention, which is really about stopping rapes before they happen and focusing on the sole party responsible: the rapist.

Since Tuesday, I’ve been bombared by conservatives on Facebook and Twitter purposefully misquoting and misunderstanding my point in order to call me dumb, bitch, idiot, and at worst threaten to gang rape common sense into me.  Charming.
My point still stands whether conservatives want to acknowledge it or not.  So when I said:

“I think that the entire conversation is wrong. I don’t want anybody to be telling women anything. I don’t want men to be telling me what to wear and how to act, not to drink. And I don’t, honestly, want you to tell me that I needed a gun in order to prevent my rape. In my case, don’t tell me if I’d only had a gun, I wouldn’t have been raped. Don’t put it on me to prevent the rape.”  

I meant it.
Watch the clip (Transcript to come or if someone could put the transcript in the comments I will be forever in your debt):

Taken from here (an old post).
 


With Obama’s second inauguration approaching, it’s time to hold him to his campaign promises–especially those he made to women. There’s been a lot of discussion about Obama winning reelection because of women; now we need to start discussing specific actions Obama can take to create the future he imagined.

The Obama campaign began focusing on women long before politicians started making inappropriate remarks about rape, bringing women’s rights to the forefront. Last May, the Obama campaign introduced us to an avid supporter of the president named “Julia.” Julia is a fictitious young white, middle-class woman featured on the website Obama launched called “The Life of Julia.”

Now that Obama is starting his second term, I thought it was worth spending a little more time with Julia to check in and see if she still has such an optimistic viewpoint. After all, now that we’re certain for awhile that politicians won’t be moving us back to the 1950s, it’s time to hold Obama to his campaign slogan promise to move us “forward.”

Unfortunately, as a 19-year-old female college student trying to launch my career, I’m not convinced that Julia’s idyllic life will be quite so easily achieved by myself or my peers.
At age 18, Julia receives a Pell Grant for college, as well as an American Opportunity Tax Credit for up to $10,000 over four years. However, the average cost of a four-year university went up 15 percent between 2008 and 2010, with public universities in states such as Georgia, Arizona and California suffered increases of 40 percent and more. These fee increases, fueled by state budget cuts for higher education, have put an added stress on families like mine, a stress that a tax credit does little to alleviate and even Pell Grants can’t cover.



I attend Scripps College, a California private school, on a half-tuition merit scholarship.  I’m one of the lucky ones who’s able to afford the education I’m receiving, and so is Julia. At age 25, Julia is well on her way to paying off her college loans, since Obama capped income-based federal student loan payments and kept interest rates low. Julia “makes her payments on time every month,” which she is able to do after starting her career as a web designer at age 23.

I hope to be so fortunate when I begin my career, for many college grads aren’t so lucky. Fifty-three percent of recent college grads are jobless or underemployed, making regular loan payments much more difficult than they are for Julia.
Even if one manages to enter the career of her choice, circumstances remain challenging for women. Among recent college graduates, full-time working women earn an average of 82 percent of what their male peers earn, according to a study released in October by the American Association of University Women. This remains true even after the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act that Obama signed at the beginning of his first term. It is crucial that Obama continues to support the Paycheck Fairness Act as well, which was voted down unanimously by Republicans in Senate in June.

By age 27, Julia has been working for four years as a web designer, and “her health insurance is required to cover birth control and preventive care, letting Julia focus on her work rather than worry about her health.” Four years later, Julie “decides” to have a child–and this word underlines that it’s a woman’s decision when or if to have a child. The word also reflects the empowered women Obama supports, as when he thanked his wife Michelle in his acceptance speech as “the woman who agreed to marry me” (an interesting contrast to Mitt Romney’s reference to his wife as “the best choice I’ve ever made” in his concession speech).

During Julia’s pregnancy, she is portrayed with her hand resting slyly on top of her stomach so as not to reveal any ring. While I respect Julia’s privacy, the real world is not as accepting of such ambiguity. Just this year, the private high school my boyfriend attended allegedly fired a teacher for getting pregnant without being married. The lawsuit is underway, but a tarnished reputation is hard to clean and a hostile employer is hard to return to.

So, while visiting with Julia has calmed my fears of a future reminiscent of The Handmaid’s Tale, I’m still afraid. I fear for entering the job market not only as a recent graduate during an economic downturn, but also as a woman. I fear for those women less lucky than white, middle class Julia and me, who can’t easily pay off their student loans or rely on their parents’ health insurance.

I’m afraid, but I’m also proud. Julia’s experience may be a privileged one, but it is also hopeful. Julia has been criticized as pandering to women, but Julia isn’t just one in a binder full of women. Julia stands for a set of promises Obama has made about the future, and it’s up to us to stand with Julia to make sure women and men of all races, classes and sexualities can get there together.

Taken from here.
 
If a woman changes her name after marriage, it’s a sign of her love and enduring commitment. (Aw…) If a man does it, he’s a fraud who’s trying to get one over on the state, and such offenses will not stand!

After Lazaro Sopena and Hanh Dinh got married, Sopena decided to change his name to Lazaro Dinh to honor his wife’s Vietnamese family surname.
“It was an act of love. I have no particular emotional ties to my last name,” Dinh (ne Sopena) told Reuters.
Dinh obtained a new passport and Social Security card, and changed his bank account and credit cards before going to the DMV to get a new driver’s license.
That’s when things got ridiculous.
More than a year later, he received a letter from Florida’s DMV accusing him of “obtaining a driver’s license by fraud,” and letting him know that his license would soon be suspended.

It turns out that the state of Florida, along with 40 other states in the U.S., lacks any kind of a streamlined system to let a man give up his father’s name to cleave to and become one with his new wife (’cause, I mean, what real man would want to, amiright?). Outside of California, New York, Hawaii, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Oregon, Iowa, Georgia, and North Dakota, he might as well be changing it to reflect his jersey number or his favorite dinosaur. That also means six of the states that recognize gay marriage still require lengthy and pricey legal processes for new husbands to take each other’s name.

The suspension was upheld in court on January 14 after Dinh produced his marriage certificate and new U.S. passport. But on Tuesday, after nearly a month riding shotgun, the Florida DMV gave him his license back, saying that it had been suspended by mistake, that “either a man or a woman can change their name” on a driver’s license, and that the DMV staff would receive training to this effect. No word on whether the judge who upheld Dinh’s suspension would receive similar training.
The takeaway: Society isn’t interested in helping you buck traditional gender roles. The missus is going to be subordinate whether she and he want it or not. Florida is a screwy state, but also not the only screwy state or the screwiest state. The English language currently lacks a male equivalent for maiden name. And if you’re going to have to jump through those name-changing hoops anyway, you might as well change both of your names to Optimus Prime.)

Taken from here.

 
Today, one of my best friends embarks on a new adventure. After spending nearly two decades in a high-powered Wall Street career, she’s starting her own business. She’s hoping to achieve a new kind of success, one that includes plenty of quality time with her kids.

She was the last holdout among our group of friends—the last one with traditional, benefits and 401K kind of career. Every single one of the seven women who started our book club nearly a decade ago has dropped out of the corporate life to forge a new, more flexible career.

I left my fancy-office and expense-account editorial job six months after I became a mom, tired of the political intrigue of the office and too many nights where I didn’t get to kiss my baby good night. And as kids came into the picture, more and more of us grew tired of a dictated 9 to 6 (or in my friend’s case, often 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.) schedule, of missing out on preschool parties and arguing with our mates over who was taking the day off to tend to a croupy kid. And so, one by one, we bought into the 21st-century version of having it all—sacrificing job stability and benefits for the greater flexibility and autonomy that freelancing provides. We are now all guns for hire—a TV producer, a writer/editor, a personal chef/caterer, a grants writer, a content strategist, an instructor and now, a corporate communications consultant. (By the way, this isn’t just a “mom” thing—even our childless-by-choice member ditched the corporate career a few years back.)

I think we all finally realized that all that time we were sacrificing in pursuit of our ambitions wasn’t necessarily going to pay off the way we hoped. In fact, Forbes columnist Meghan Casserly pointed out that women are often are viewed as workers who value their home lives more than their work. “To prove this notion wrong, women often feel compelled to demonstrate their commitment to the extreme.” And what comes of that extra time we were putting in, to the detriment of our families? Often, nothing more than exhaustion and burnout. It’s no wonder that Forbes reports that nearly a third of women who graduate from the Harvard MBA program drop out of corporate work within 15 years of graduation. (Most of them, because of the inability to get a good work-life balance during their kids’ formative years.)

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman had an interesting post last week, about the work-life balance we lost in the decades as women entered the workforce. While in countries like France, more women in the workforce has meant that everyone’s working fewer hours and enjoying more vacation and time with the family, here in the U.S., it’s just meant that everyone’s working more hours outside the home. And more hours of work means fewer hours for living—less time for the day-to-day drudgery of cleaning and cooking and caring for our families, and much less time to squeeze in something fun with our kids, as fellow Parents.com blogger Nick Shell pointed out yesterday. Somehow, I don’t think that’s what the previous generation of feminists was aiming for when they wanted us to have it all.

I’m thankful that I have a supportive spouse (with some excellent health insurance), a person who believed in me and my talent enough to gamble our financial security on a dream of greater flexibility. And it paid off in spades—as I’ve been even more successful as a freelancer than I was as a full-time editor, and I still get to slip away on occasion to read to my daughter’s kindergarten class. But sometimes I wish I had simply pushed for greater flexibility and kept the stability of that full-time gig. Because if so many of us simply drop out instead of pushing for the changes that will make work-life balance better for everyone, it isn’t going to happen.

So today, I’m celebrating with my friend. But I’m keeping an eye on what our choices may mean for our sons and daughters tomorrow.

Photo: Working mom by Vikulin / Shutterstock.com

Taken from here.
 

I can't agree with all points raised in this TED Talk* — The Wizard of Oz movie doesn't deliver exactly the same feminist message as the books — but I love that Stokes' talks about how movies can help teach boys to be inspired by girls. The white male normative tales don't allow much room for learning about anyone other than white men. And this world is mostly filled with people who aren't white men. So, you know, we need some new stories, and fast. Creating more movies with strong female characters is good for boys and girls, and for society as a whole. More »

Taken from here.
 

There's a full-length mirror and a scale on every single floor of the all-girls high school where Julia Lurie works. She's an American teaching English in South Korea, and apparently, South Korea has the highest per capita rate of plastic surgery in the world — one in five women in Seoul have undergone some kind of procedure. Most popular: Eyelid surgery, to make the eyes "more Western," and getting your jawbone shaved or chiseled down for a less-square and more V-shaped look. More »

Taken from here.
 

As recently as last year, the Miss Universe Organization disqualified a contestant—Miss Canada, Jenna Talakova—after they discovered she was transgender. When they finally changed their rules regarding the exclusion of LGBT contestants in April, Kylan Arianna Wentzel of Century City, California, was a shift manager at Jamba Juice saving up for her sex reassignment surgery. But when she heard the news, she worked her ass off and moved her surgery up six months in order to enter the competition, which takes place on Saturday. More »

Taken from here.

I have been arguing on the Internet. Which, yes, I know, is stupid and pointless. I know my debates and arguments are not going to sway everyone's opinion, but as a woman and a mom I still keep screaming into the ether and at least hoping by doing so that I am making a small dent in what I like to refer to as the "Gigantic pile of victim-blaming and rape-shaming fuckery." Unless one of you gentle readers can give me a better title that can be made into a cute little acronym or something. In this case, I have been arguing with Lee Stranahan, over whether or not it's fair to call the Steubenville Jane Doe's rape "brutal." More »

As A Human With A Vagina, I’m Here To Tell You That All Rapes Are Brutal, Period. is a post from Mommyish - Parenting Imperfect.

Taken from here.

 

 Manohar Lal Sharma, the lawyer who is representing three of the men charged with rape and murder, believes that his clients will be found innocent because of "a number of problems" with the investigation. But then he has to go and throw in Classic Victim Blaming Tactic One. More »

Lawyer For Alleged New Delhi Rapists Wants You To Know That A ‘Respected Lady’ Doesn’t Get Raped is a post from Mommyish - Parenting Imperfect.

Taken from here.

It's hard out there for a mom. Recently, a woman in Houston was kicked out of a Hollister store because no human beings should shop there. JK, it's because she was breast feeding. In response, three women decided to stage a "nurse in" at a Hollister store at the Concord Mall in Delaware on Saturday. Just for the record, according to Delaware state law, women are allowed to breastfeed in any public or private location. More »

Taken from here.
 

The Pentagon might let women become infantry troops, but do most female soldiers and Marines actually want to be front-line war fighters? Does it matter? No. Framing the debate as "but the ladies don't even want to fight!" is offensive and besides the point. More »

Taken from here.
 
Apparently, this level of crime is what it takes to get the world riled up about rape. The details of the crime and its aftermath, as reflected upon by her father, are almost too sad to say, but they must be related to the public in order to give this young woman the voice back that has been so cruelly stolen from her. More »

The Indian Gang Rape Victim Now Has A Name, But No Voice is a post from TheGloss - A gloss on beauty, fashion, style, love and more.

Taken from here.
 


On this day in 1431, Joan of Arc was handed over to be tried for heresy; in 1793, abolitionist and feminist Lucretia Mott was born; and in 1987, Aretha Franklin became the first female artist to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Thanks to the just-launched Radical Women’s History Project, you can learn quick facts like these about the lives and the accomplishments of the world’s women–especially those who have been most ignored–every day. Shelby Knox explains the project:

In short, women and men have been denied for far too long the history of half of the population. When we know what the women before did and overcame, it becomes more possible to see ourselves doing and overcoming.
But just as women have been mostly left out of the broad discourse we call “history,” women of color, indigenous, queer, trans, disabled and non-Western women (and women living within all the intersection thereof) have been further marginalized, mostly left out of or tossed in as an afterthought in feminist attempts to add women to existing history.

As Shelby acknowledges, this is a going to be a difficult project for one (privileged) woman to take on, so she needs your help. Send tips and sources her way, and hopefully RWHP will become a useful resource and source of inspiration for all of us.

Taken from here.

I do not care if a girl or woman has consensual sex with a man, changes her mind mid-coitus and says no, she does not deserve to be raped. I do not care how many dark alleys she walks down, how many bad parts of town she frequents, how sexually active she is, how much makeup she wears, the length of her hemline, she does not deserve to be raped. There is never an excuse, or reason, or justification for rape. Ever. More »

It’s Official, Rape Is No Longer A Girl Problem, It’s A Boy Problem. So Shut Up About Girls ‘Preventing’ Rape is a post from Mommyish - Parenting Imperfect.

Taken from here.



The most popular article of the year in the Wall Street Journal was an excerpt of a book by Pamela Druckerman called "Bringing Up Bebe."
The excerpt describes the moment in which Druckerman realized that French kids are much better behaved than American kids and then set out to discover why that is the case.
Not surprisingly, American parents went nuts about the story.
Some, presumably, read it as a "how to" manual. Others, presumably, read it as criticism.
Either way, the story struck a nerve.

And what were Druckerman's conclusions?
Why are French parents better than American parents at raising well-behaved children?
Here are two key points:

• First, French parents aren't as obsessed with making sure their kids are in training to become CEOs, world-famous composers, professional athletes, and Senators from the moment they emerge from the womb. French parents do make sure their kids do some "activities," but they don't schedule every moment as training for some specific future achievement. Rather they give the kids some time to learn how to amuse themselves.
• Second, and more importantly, French parents teach their kids to wait. Specifically, they teach them to defer gratification--to wait until later to eat candy, to sleep through the night, to wait a few moments until their parents have stopped speaking before interrupting them, and so on. American, parents, meanwhile, want to encourage every blurt or impulse as an example of self-expression and are too wimpy to teach their kids how to be patient.

This latter point is critical. And, ironically, it may do more to help make kids successful than any of the "training" America's over-scheduled toddlers and kids get in all of their various disciplines.
For decades, psychologists have demonstrated that the ability to defer gratification is one of the best predictors of future success. In the 1960s, the famous "marshmallow test" at Stanford showed that kids who were able to not eat a marshmallow for 15 minutes in order to be rewarded with 2 marshmallows went on to be much more successful in life than the kids who just grabbed the marshmallow immediately. Since then, this experiment has been refined and repeated, but the bottom line has always been the same.

(A colleague of billionaire Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg attributes his success, in part, to this ability to defer gratification--and he jokes that, if Zuckerberg had been given the marshmallow test, he'd still be sitting in the laboratory not eating the marshmallows.)
But teaching their kids to wait, and calmly and confidently teaching them what they can and can't do--instead of worrying that they don't really have the right to do this--French parents produce kids that can, for example, sit at restaurants without destroying the table and driving their parents crazy.
And, more importantly, they produce kids who can amuse themselves, wait patiently until a parent has stopped speaking before asking for something, and sleep through the night.

(Yes, French parents apparently practice the controversial parenting tactic called "Ferberizing," in which babies are left to scream themselves to sleep rather than picked up the moment the start crying--and, thus, are taught to put themselves back to sleep. In America, in some households, this tactic is viewed as a form of child abuse. This wimpy American parent with impatient children, for one, certainly viewed it that way).
You can read Druckerman's story here >

SEE ALSO: Downton Abbey Fiasco Shows That Ancient Media Practices Are Absurd In Today's Global World

Please follow Business Insider on Twitter and Facebook.
Join the conversation about this story »