Teaching for a LIFETIME: My thoughts on Dance Moms, Bring It!, and Kim of Queens

Welcome to the world of Anti-Abby Lee Millers... Ironically brought to you by the network that made her famous, Lifetime. Building off the success (or infamy) of Dance Moms (a show I've written about quite a bit), the network debuted two new series this year: Kim of Queens and Bring It! Given the descent of Dance Moms into madness (it's one of the few "reality" shows where I believe some of the cast members truly hate one another, as evidenced by the arrest of Kelly Hyland), I guess it makes sense that someone had to be waiting in the wings and the network doesn't want to come off like Bravo, only creating drama-filled shows to make people famous. Dance Moms has become so divorced from reality with parents engaging in such egregious behavior that you have to think their contracts are so lucrative/ironclad that it's not worth stopping, or the only way to get off the show is to commit assault. In any case, I can't believe the show has made the players into stars,  as opposed to the negative backlash caused by Toddlers & Tiaras for many families. I mean, they now show the Dance moms (even relatively sane Holly!) painting on abs and arm muscles on their girls-- how is this any different from spray tans? I've asked this before because there are so many similarities between dance competitions and child beauty pageants for young girls, but so many more do dance that by sheer numbers it's not as marginalized as kiddie pageants. On top of the musculature-enhancing make-up, this year/season the girls often wear costumes with enhanced bust (though some are hitting puberty), which is also uncomfortable to watch at times. Also, the fact that sisters Maddie and Mackenzie (oh, excuse me, Mack Z!) are now homeschooled shows how far off the priorities have become and they are truly not kids living a competitive life, but performers 24/7. Despite all this drama, the show has managed to become boring because it's so formulaic. I for one would never want to go to a competition where the show is filming (for fear of rigging, delays, privacy issues, etc.); although I will admit that the show did give me a glimpse of one of my dance crushes, Blake McGrath, even if he did take a presumably large paycheck to work for Crazy Cathy, so I'm grateful for that

When Kim of Queens started I was initially a bit turned off-- and assumed they were looking to create a new Abby (and to fill the void creating by the cancelled Toddlers & Tiaras). With Kim Gravel portraying herself as country I thought she was trying to horn in on the Honey Boo Boo crowd as well. If that angle drew viewers initially though, it wasn't what made them (or me) stay because despite having contrived story lines and bring a bit silly at times, it became extremely clear that Coach Kim loves all her Pageant Place girls and truly wants the best for them. Her big heart (and voice and personality) and tears made for compelling viewing and her emphasis on growth, loss, and the long-term goal/win as opposed to the short-term win/title/crown was a refreshing message.  I of course know the show was staged-- especially so many of the gags with her own family-- and I disliked the way Kin of Queens brought in new girls all the time because the recruits didn't stick around often and it created extra drama when the natural story was more interesting. But overall it was a nice message, and for that reason the series hasn't been as big of a hit. I know Kim isn't always PC, but her comment about clogging being "tapping with hooves," made me laugh. Her aversion to clogging (even trying to transform it into Irish dance) is one example of her outsize personality and wackiness coming from a place of helpfulness and not pure egotism.

Dianna Williams of Lifetime's other new series, which has done well enough to warrant to additional episodes at the end of its run, including a sit-down reunion special, is similar. She is much tougher and even less diplomatic than Kim Gravel, but her students, the Dancing Dolls, face even bigger challenges (the fact that one of the girls' moms became a grandmother at 28 gives you a sense of the challenges in this community). I love that Dianna says she is preparing her "girls" for life and trying to teach them life lessons, which as you know I believe is possible through competitive activities and competitive dance, if done in a healthy way. Bring It! features a hop hop majorette team, which is a style of dance associated with the African-American community and affiliated with many Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The producers often defined dance terms and moves, which even differ from more "traditional" dance. At times I thought talk of "technique" was a bit of a stretch but chalked it up to a different style; but in the finale when a dance team aficionado who was judging complained about the lack of pointed toes I realized the Dancing Dolls were a bit lacking. That said, it was interesting to learn about a new type of dance and all the different categories of competition. The "stand battle" was the biggest component, but there were field dances, captain's dances, burlesque, character, etc. I am sure it is much more complicated than the show let on even so I'd love an insider's perspective! The other refreshing thing about the show was that the body was portrayed in a much less self-conscious way. Compared to the thin Dance Moms girls who paint on muscles, the Bring It! girls embrace their bodies whatever their size and dance with energy and enthusiasm as well (note that this is well known to be more common in the African-American community and black girls/women have fewer incidences of eating disorders and body image problems). I didn't always understand the costume selections, but there is clearly a tradition there. However, my biggest pet peeve was the ripped fishnet stockings and the dance tights showing over the top of the costume pants. That said, the fact many of the girls had to wear "nude" stockings for a different skin tone shows that dance companies should make colors in a wider variety of shades.

While Dance Moms is now so popular it is basically never on hiatus-- constantly doing clips specials and now creating a second team, and a THIRD series starring Abby!-- I'll be tuning in to the shows that feature more positive performance coaches with a more realistic and valuable message. Be sure to check them out, especially if you don't like Dance Moms!

Writing, Writing, Writing, and Writing (Talking, too) about Competition

I've been writing so much lately, partly in preparation for the release of Playing to Win: Raising Children in a Competitive Culture (have I mentioned you can pre-order it now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or the University of California Press' website?!), that I decided to do a writing round-up this week. These four different pieces give you a sense of different outlets for competition, especially in childhood-- including the athletic field, the classroom, the stage, and the television screen.

1) “Qualities of the B (aka Bench-Warming) Player” at PsychologyToday.com- I am very excited that I now have a monthly blog, Playing to Win, at Psychology Today where I will write about the intersections of competition and childhood in America. Stay tuned for topics like the National Spelling Bee and measuring ambition.

2) “It’s College Admissions Decision Time: Are Parents Prepared” at The Huffington Post- It's always interesting to see who you reach when you write at The Huffington Post (and also talking- I've done a few recent video sessions with HuffPost Live as well, like these on the sociological impacts of sperm having an expiration date and how to talk with children about tragedy). This article explores how and why parents should try to raise resilient kids in a competitive world long before they get to high school and deal with college rejection.

3) Oxford Bibliographies entries on Child Beauty Pageants and After-school Hours and Activities in the Childhood Studies volume- I was honored to be recognized as the leading social scientist in these two areas and to write the entry for them. While they both include some of my work (obviously!), they also suggest other areas to explore including books, articles, television shows, and documentaries to help you learn more about these often misunderstood areas of children's lives.

4) “Why ‘Bet on Your Baby’ is Bad for the Babies”  at Kveller- So happy to be back at Kveller writing about some of my favorite topics all in the same piece: reality television, social science, baby experiments, and my son. Watching so much TV not only gets me writing, but also talking, like in this recent article at Fox News about Teen Mom star Farrah Abraham (and another pop culture piece about Beyonce).

Hope you enjoy these pieces and stay tuned for more talk about competition and kids in the coming months!

What Suzy Lee Weiss, Susan Patton, and Claire Vaye Watkins Have in Common

Every year around April 1st we get a wave of news coverage about college admissions. Even though research has not (yet) shown that attending an elite school means you'll make more money, lots of other studies suggest that it does matter. Often the ways it matters are difficult to measure, but they include social networks and access to resources, information, and opportunities. This year three much talked about op-eds were published within a day of one another. First there was the New York Times piece by Claire Vaye Watkins, "The Ivy League was Another Planet." Then the next day brought Suzy Lee Weiss' "To (All) the Colleges That Rejected Me: If only I had a tiger mom or started a fake charity)" and Susan Patton's letter in The Daily Princetonian, "Advice for the young women of Princeton: the daughters I never had." The Weiss and Patton pieces have been extremely polarizing (if you haven't read them, click through and you'll immediately see why). The Watkins piece has a much more measured, even sociological bent to it, making a connection between information (and lack thereof) about the Ivy League to an abundance of information about the military option in poor American communities.

I haven't seen anyone connect these three pieces, but to me they all address what sociologists call cultural capital. Weiss and Patton-- who I kind of see as same sides of a generational coin-- know that attending an Ivy brings you a particular type of cultural capital; it's why Weiss wanted to attend one and why Patton says Ivy Leaguers should practice assortative mating (a college classmate, Ross Douthat [who incidentally also married a fellow '02er like I did] wrote about this exceptionally well in the the Times). Now both women seem uncomfortably and unlikelably elitist (Patton claims her ex-husband went to a no-name college and in an interesting Today Show appearance Weiss seems to put down Penn State) but that doesn't mean there isn't a kernel of truth in what they are saying. Watkins' piece is evidence of that. Attending an Ivy means knowing enough to get there, and getting access to lots of other information once you are "in."

Of course, that's not always without complications: It can also mean a permanent inferiority complex. This is spoken by an outsider who has since managed to become an insider, albeit while trying to retain an outsider's perspective. I actually write about this at the beginning of my forthcoming book, Playing to Win: Raising Children in a Competitive Culture, as so much of the focus of many parents I met is how their elementary school-age kids will get to an elite college someday (oh, have I mentioned you can now pre-order it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the University of California Press' website?!).

Watkins, a published author and professor, doesn't seem caught up in an inferiority complex. Weiss' self-deprecating humor may yet give her an out and she can enjoy her infamy. I suppose there's still hope for them that they can marry Patton's youngest son, since in Patton's world Princeton men can marry "down"... Although I'm guessing both young women have other foci and aren't just focused on getting married to an Ivy Leaguer. And if they are, I suppose there's always graduate school.

LEANING IN to Single-Sex Education (originally appeared on The Huffington Post)

So much ink has already been used up discussing one of the hottest books in recent memory, Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In. For that reason I was hesitant to add my two cents, even though I had many thoughts while reading the book (Not the least of which was, "Wait, I feel like I do all this, so why am I not Sandberg?!" Although, I still have nine more years to become the fifth most powerful woman in the world I suppose...). But I realized that I hadn't read some of things I was thinking, so I wanted to share. The below piece, originally published on The Huffington Post, focuses on single-sex education as one way for young women to learn how to lean in. I also want to add that I found it pretty egregious that Sandberg didn't discuss Larry Summers' 2005 remarks on women and science. I understand that he is her mentor, but it just screamed out to be addressed. I suppose it's yet another example of why women need to lean in, but I would have appreciated hearing her perspective on the incident (more than knowing that the incident with her children and lice occurred on a private jet as opposed to commercial aircraft-- since the private part didn't really matter for her overall point).

Most of my other thoughts (besides my own personal anecdotes and experiences) have been addressed by others far more eloquent than yours truly. But I'd love to hear what you think, so feel free to leave me a comment here or on Facebook/Twitter!

When people find out I'm the product of eight years of all-girls' schooling they often ask what the best part of the experience was. I usually answer, only half-joking, "I rarely had to shave my legs."

Lately I've been thinking more seriously about my single-sex education after devouring Sheryl Sandberg's now infamous Lean In. One of Sandberg's bigger points is that a lot of work needs to be done long before women are in careers, graduate school, or even college, in order to teach them how to lean in. Given this focus on childhood and adolescence I'm surprised that all-girls' schools haven't been discussed in the same breath as Sandberg's long-term project. Based on my experience, and my research on competition, gender, and education, promoting all-girls' education in the grade school years is a useful strategy to raise women who know how to lean in throughout life.

In Lean In Sandberg explains that as a child she used to organize all the neighborhood children and tell them what to do. But to this day she cringes when her siblings tell this story because: "When a girl tries to lead, she is often labeled bossy. Boys are seldom called bossy because a boy taking the role of a boss does not surprise or offend."

My professional, adult self certainly understands this sentiment, but my 13-year-old self would have been confused. At 13 I would have said that of course girls need to be bossy -- who else would lead? I always thought of girls as the sports stars and the valedictorians, because at my school they were.

I took this attitude with me into high school, a building that sat next to an all-boys' school. Some of my classes were coed. The boys came over for European history and drama, classes where I always positioned myself in the front row, preferring the "visiting" boys sit behind me. To my teenage self they were clearly infringing on my territory and I made sure I outperformed them. That confidence translated when I went next door for Latin, where I righteously covered my tests with my arm to make sure the boy sitting behind me couldn't cheat off of me (a trick he only got away with once).

When I arrived at Harvard (also Sandberg's alma mater) I was never afraid to raise my hand in a seminar, and I quickly learned that the best way to be heard meant jumping into the discussion and not waiting to be recognized. I credit my earlier classroom experiences for my chutzpah.

But being a social scientist I can't help but look to the literature (incidentally, the well-researched footnotes are one of Lean In's strongest features, and worth a read), and that's when the picture becomes more complicated. A 2009 study by professors at UCLA's Graduate School of Education & Information Studies presented data that graduates of all-girls' schools show stronger academic orientations, especially in math and computer skills, and higher standardized tests scores, than their coed counterparts. Other studies have acknowledged that all-girls' education doesn't necessarily improve academic performance, but they haven't found that it hurts either. A well-publicized 2011 Science paper disagreed, proclaiming that single-sex education can have a long-term negative effect by promoting gender stereotypes.

CLICK HERE TO KEEP READING ON THE HUFFINGTON POST BOOKS!

Short of being able to do twin experiments (where one identical twin goes to a coed school and the other goes to a single-sex school), we may never know the precise effect of what learning in a single-sex environment does for girls. But we can know how people assess their experiences -- like me and my former classmates.

Thanks in part to Sandberg and her Facebook team, I know that many of the girls I attended middle and high school with have made a variety of different choices as women: some are married, many have children, and some are stay-at-home moms while others are doctors or lawyers (one even premiered at the Metropolitan Opera this month, while still nursing her five-month-old son). We all learned as young women the hard-to-measure notion that females can be leaders in any area just by looking around us at our peers. This knowledge and the confidence that comes with it can't be discounted.

And while we're at it, ladies, it's also worth remembering that shaving your legs every day isn't a necessity -- and not doing so leaves more time for all kinds of leaning in.

Lines to Add to my Son's Baby Resume: Infant Scientist and TV Star

Is there anything worse than a Harvard stage mother? No, there is not. When I was an undergraduate and saw all the babies going to do experiments in William James Hall, I vowed that someday my kids would do the same. But in the haze of postpartum life I forgot my promise to myself. Until a letter arrived from Harvard's Baby Lab when Little Man was around 6 months. I immediately signed him up and he did his first experiment within weeks.

The next month I got a letter from Boston College's Infant & Child Cognition Laboratory so I also signed him up for experiments there. He loved their lab, where he found one of his all-time favorite toys (an activity table), and started a collection of Infant Scientist certificates (he's now received a post-doc in infant science and he's an Advanced Scholar, natch).

That got the social scientist and writer in my thinking about other experimental opportunities in Boston. I quickly discovered that I could sign Carston up for experiments at other area institutions, like Boston Children's Hospital and University of Massachusetts-Boston. We'd officially joined what I dubbed the "Boston baby experiment circuit" and I had the motivation for my next article.

That article is in this month's Boston Magazine. It's even featured on the cover!

Click HERE to read the web version of the article or HERE to see the published version in the Magazine.

I mentioned the article to my friends at NECN's The Morning Show, where I am a regular guest, and they decided to follow Carston as he did an experiment at Boston College's Lab.

Carston *loved* being on camera, as you can see:

He also loved anchor Bridget Blythe, of course.

Here's his big TV debut!

(You can also link to the clip and story by clicking HERE.)

Also, I swear that the sensor cap doesn't bother Carston at all. They used an unsmiling (but nonetheless cute, of course) pic of my guy for the story, but here is one of my all-time favorite images of him smiling in an experiment:

He's even happy when he has "octopus kisses" after getting his cap off!

I have apparently raised a rather vain Little Man though; he was completely obsessed and mystified by seeing himself on TV this morning.

He even checked out the picture of himself watching himself (this is getting very meta and says a lot about screens in our society, I'm sure):

Carston, the Infant Scientist, thinks it would be an interesting experiment to see what kids his age think about seeing moving images of themselves...