Our Surgeon General, Ourselves

Parenting in America Stinks       Twenty-six years ago, I published a parenting book titled Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent. Good sales numbers this far out from publication, continued attention from media, fan email, and royalty checks that still appear over a quarter of a century later tell me that a book about parenting written by an anthropologist of all things (not a “parenting expert,” not a pediatrician, not a child development researcher) rings true for so many Americans. The recent opinion piece in The…

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The American Healthcare System and the Airline Companies Have Turned Us Into Employees

  And How Inept We Are as New Recruits     American healthcare stinks and the airlines stink. You might think they are treating us badly because they only want our money, and for us to shut up as they fleece us, but I have another hypothesis. I suggest that healthcare and airline companies are aligned because they have elevated us to the role of employees, people who should be able to participate in the business, take of themselves, and relieve these person-oriented organizations of any burden of care. Here are the…

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Cultural Elite Elegy

What? I Am Part of the Cultural Elite? No Way!     The morning after the election results of November 2016 I was standing outside my apartment talking with a neighbor and knocking around our new world order. He was waxing lyrical about the phrase “Eastern Cultural Elite,” waving his arms inclusively and stating what was obvious to him—that we were both part of that newly criticized and chastised fraction of America. It stopped me. I had never thought of myself as belonging to any politically defined group beyond white and female…

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The Loneliest Primate

We Weren’t Meant to Be Alone All the Time            Some days I go to a co-operative workspace for a few hours just to get out of my house. Yes, it costs money, which is calculated by the number of days a week one wants to occupy a temporary desk, but that seems a small price to pay for colleagues when your occupation is a solitary one, such as a writer.        The idea behind cooperative open works spaces is not to spend so much time…

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