Bone crushing exhaustion is keeping me from writing something original. Instead, let me point you to good stuff elsewhere.
Belle writes about wussy-assed men who are no longer attracted to their wives after watching them give birth.
Charter schools receive much less money per pupil than public schools.
Sandra Tsing Loh writes about "an American mother who stopped her yammering and found a stunningly simple solution to the work-life balance problem: she left her family—her husband and three small children."
Andrew Sullivan rants on about SUVs and then a soccer mom writes in to inform him that SUVs are necessary because of car seat regulations. Duh! So, Sullivan wants to relax car seat regulations. Worry not about a few kids impaling themselves on gear shifts, because that will stop Islamic fanaticism pronto. Good plan, child-less guy!
Russell Arben Fox writes about his experiences down South. (I’m about 20 pages away from reading his review of the Half Blood Prince.)
Apt. 11d 
Sandra Tsing Loh has clearly taken over the mommy slot with Caitlin Flanigan left behind at the Atlantic, and is doing nicely with it. Time to resubscribe.
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Aside from whether car-seat regulations promulgate SUVs, one might ask whether they actually make sense in the first place. It might be the case, for example, that seats built to be be placed parallel with the seat are safest of all on head injuries. That is apparently what they have concluded in Japan. But then Japan requires a side impact crash test for car seats; the U.S. does not.
Ah, the politics of child safety.
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Every parent I know HATES the carseat. It’s hard to get the kids in and out. Carpooling and childcare cooperation with neighbors is next to impossible, unless you have the SUV. More than two kids and you have to have an SUV to hold the carseats.
We’ve gotten around the SUV, because we have only two kids and I don’t cooperate well with other parents. I think that the carseat can be blamed for making child raising more difficult and certainly for crapping up the environment. However, I’m still doubtful it has much of an impact on Islamic fundamentalism.
If there are studies that show we can ensure child-car safety and eliminate the need for SUVs, I’m all for it, as I’m sure would every other parent out there. Nobody really wants to drive those dinosaurs anyway.
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“If there are studies that show we can ensure child-car safety and eliminate the need for SUVs, I’m all for it, as I’m sure would every other parent out there. Nobody really wants to drive those dinosaurs anyway.”
I’m with you there, Laura…except for the embarrassing fact that we’re probably only days away from a purchase of an SUV ourselves (we’ve narrowed it down to either a Toyota Sienna or a Honda Odyssey, unless something new sends us back to Consumer Reports all over again). I thought we’d be able to resist and stick with the station wagon, but no, we just make too many long drives. A while back there was something here about how child safety regulations have made DVD players in automobiles, if not necessary, then at least sensible: the kids are prisoners, not able to move around the car like they used to be able to. But I’d never connected that point to the size of cars themselves. Is the SUV phenomenon reducible to these huge, burdensome carseats that we’re to be fined for if we don’t put our children in them until they’re practically grown? I’d like to know.
Hey, and thanks for the link. Don’t get sucked too deep into that Harry Potter post; I got linked a couple of places, and ended hosting an argument about Snape with about 100 other people.
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Incidentally, what does operating a SUV in the United States have to do with Islamic fanaticism? After all, the United States obtains its oil from the following sources: Canada, Mexico, Venezuela. So there’s lots of Islamic fanatics in Canada whose insanity is funded by petrodollars…. I see the point though: SUVs are wasteful, but in a free society one is permitted to waste if one can afford to….
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A Honda Oddysey is not an SUV but a mini-van. It is built on a car platform and has to conform to car mileage and emission standards. It is also great as I got the ’04. The special end of model year lease deal we got necessitated us getting the DVD player, which I thought was a waste and a crime. Then we took an 8 hour car trip with the two year old. The headphones made it particularly survivable. The car seats are kind of cruel to kids. But mini-vans rule. I even had one when I was single. And they are not, repeat not, SUVs.
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It also doesn’t help that new cars are required to come with explosive devices that are dangerous to the little passengers, leading us to need more backseat space since we can’t put the little ones up front.
And yes, it’s kind of retarded to require car seats for seven year olds. Seat belts fit just fine for many of them…
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Thanks, Western Dave. You’re right; we’re not falling into the SUV trap. I guess my guilt about getting rid of the old reliable Ford Escort just kind of carried me away there.
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