I will try and make this a regular feature if there is the need. Here are the latest items in my email in-box that deserve your attention.
Support other parents and Save The University of Queensland’s Family Room by signing the petition here.
The Family Room was a space where children, parents and families could feel they were safe and welcome as part of the University of Queensland community. Some of the invaluable, essential features of the space included a large fenced indoor play area, a quite room for a cot and bedding, a secure outdoor play area with shade-cloth protection and soft ground surface, a lounge area, a kitchen with child-security door/child-locks fitted with the basic necessities, baby change facilities, a store room, and internet connection. It was accessed through a card system and was available seven days a week. It was designed as a space for babies, toddlers and older children to inhabit, which enabled parents and carers to meet both their caring and employment/study responsibilities in a family-friendly and child-friendly way. It was also of great importance in facilitating breastfeeding on campus – particularly for families with an older toddler as well as a baby.
In many cases, it was the pivotal factor in people’s ability to continue their education or employment.
The Union made the decision to close down the facility with no consultation and extremely limited warning of the closure and gutting. Many parents turned up to use the facility, unaware that it had been closed down and pulled apart. Years of accumulated donated items, such as a cot and other baby-related items, have been lost, due to lack of time to collect and organise or locate owners of items. Such short notice is completely inappropriate when young children are involved.
Repeated requests for an opportunity to meet with the student union and discuss the issues have been completely ignored. Our voice is completely silenced.
Hi, my name is Mindy, (email: merchull at umw dot edu), and I am a teacher and researcher at the University of Mary Washington, in Fredericksburg, Virginia. I am researching attitudes about mothering and feminism with my colleague Miriam Liss.
We are collecting data from women over the age of 18. We are looking for feminists, non-feminists, mothers, and non-mothers. Your blog seems to target women who might be interested in our study. Would you be willing to post a link to it on your blog?
If so, please post this link (along with our permission for people to repost the link elsewhere if desired) along with anything else you choose to say.
I just tried taking that survey – it seems terribly unbalanced. There’s no way to input what you actually do – for instance I am responsible for 90% of feeding because I breastfeed and she has an occasional bottle, not because it’s a chore I do and I’m also on maternity leave so chores are somewhat unbalanced right now. And I can’t answer for the ‘typical feminist’ because I have no idea what she is doing or what she wants. Maybe she does want kids, maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she’s a stay at home parent, maybe she’s not. Those things aren’t common things for all feminists.
So yeah, I quit the survey halfway through. I can’t answer it honestly or fairly.
Agreed, there are quite a lot of problems with the survey design.
Re- the family room, I walk past it every time I go to uni and I noticed it was boarded up. Naive me, thought they were refurbishing it to make it a bigger and brighter space for parents and their children who were so obviously making good use of that space.
I Will certainly sign the petition and try to make some noise and do some investigations at uni about this injustice. It seemed to be most regularly used by international student parents who probably have limited other support networks…
Geek Anachronism, I had the same experience with the survey. It really annoyed me.
[…] 7, 2009 by blue milk Another installment from my email in-box: I’m writing in hopes that you might put me in touch with some feminist […]
hi im new to bluemilk.wordpress.com , looking to learn new things 😀