To the Editor:
Re “An Act of Defiance Can Improve Things for Working Moms,” by Toby Kiers (Opinion guest essay, May 4):
I am a woman nearing the completion of my B.A. in philosophy, and I have the absurd hopes of going on to get my Ph.D. and work in academia and also have a family.
Dr. Kiers’s essay both shed light on the frustrating reality of the discrimination that mothers face in the world of academic research, and provided a shining beacon of hope to counteract it.
The false binary that women are presented and that so many people (including Dr. Kiers’s own child, she noted) assume is that we must decide: our research, our careers, our academic endeavors, or our children. One or the other.
Dr. Kiers has called this out; this is not actually a choice we have to make. Motherhood is not a detriment to our academic abilities and research contributions; it actually strengthens it in new and unexpected ways.
Dr. Kiers, in her refusal to choose between her research pursuits and her family, is helping to forge an exciting path forward. It is a path to a world where women can be celebrated, respected and supported with all that they are and all that they contribute, including their children.
That is the academic world I hope to enter into someday.
Megan Clancy
Washington
To the Editor:
Kudos to Dr. Toby Kiers! Her story is shared not only by fellow scientists, but by women at large. I admire her courage in bringing her 3-week-old son to work, and in pondering the advice of an older woman who discouraged her from being self-deprecating.
“What can feel like an inconvenience is often a blessing in disguise,” she writes. Amen to that! As far as detachment and vulnerability creating meaning? I now see vulnerability being valued and detachment being questioned in health care, via narrative prose and poetry by nurses and physicians.
I am a seasoned nurse. This article brought me back to the AIDS epidemic. In terms of science, we really had no idea what we were dealing with. I was on maternity leave and had come to know “brain fog” intimately. I received a call asking if I would open a new department for AIDS. After a day thinking about it, I accepted. My two boys went with me into the wilderness of men dying of a virus we knew little about.
My sons are now 40 and 50. The older one still recounts stories of things he learned and joy he felt at a party that those dying men held for us nurses on Mother’s Day. Vulnerability informing the work? You bet!
Pamela Mitchell
Bend, Ore.
To the Editor:
Since I am a woman who walked across the medical school graduation stage holding my toddler, while eight months pregnant with No. 2, I can certainly identify with Toby Kiers’s essay about managing a career as a scientist while parenting.
It was extremely trying for me to charge into residency with very small children at home. But I am blessed to have a wonderful husband who loved fathering, and was able to take a sabbatical for some of my residency.
As a result, our two daughters, now young adults, are very close to their father. I think that this is the real win in how things are evolving for women in the workplace. Partners get to join in on the nitty-gritty as well as the glorious moments of parenting.
I do believe I missed out on the sort of lovely parenting my mother gave me as a stay-at-home mom. But I was also able to show our daughters what commitment to an intellectual and humanistic goal looks like.
I certainly think medical residency programs are over the top in terms of workload and emotional toll; this needs to evolve. But I think enjoying the participation of both parents in the up-close-and-personal part of child-rearing makes all of our children stronger.
Susan Ferguson
Berkeley, Calif.
Mythologizing Trump
To the Editor:
Re “Trump Embraces Lawlessness in the Name of a Higher Law,” by Matthew Schmitz (Opinion guest essay, April 4):
Mythologizing Donald Trump — either Mr. Schmitz fancifully comparing him to outlaws like Robin Hood, Billy the Kid and Jesse James, who titillated people with their challenges to authority, or Christian evangelicals’ even more far-fetched casting of Mr. Trump as King Cyrus or even Jesus — fails because most of us see him for what he is, a narcissist with no positive agenda and no respect for the law.
If we must make comparisons, it’s to David Duke, the Klansman who ran for president, or Gov. George Wallace, standing in the schoolhouse door to block integration. The only people who saw them as rebels with a cause were themselves defending a lost cause, much like those who flock to MAGA now.
Steve Horwitz
Moraga, Calif.
Mentally Ill and in Prison
To the Editor:
Re “Inmate’s Death Highlights Failures in Mental Health” (front page, May 6), about the troubled life and death of a prisoner, Markus Johnson:
As a social worker who has worked in the field of mental health for more than 50 years, I read with interest and sadness yet another article about a mentally ill individual who was not provided with adequate treatment and subsequently died in prison.
This article highlights the failure of deinstitutionalization. It demonstrates how our prisons have become the institutions replacing those that formerly housed the mentally ill. Not only are the mentally ill being ill served, but so too is the public, which is at risk of harm from those hallucinating on the streets.
Our shelter system is also not in a position to manage needed services and supervision. The last resort is a cell. I believe that providing long-term residential programs with highly supervised step-down programs would provide a solution to the tragedies we currently read about daily. Certainly the cost would be less than incarceration.
Let’s look to providing real help rather than punishment for our mentally ill population.
Helen Rubel
Irvington, N.Y.
Say No to More Offshore Drilling
If climate change, rising ocean temperatures and the risk of horrific events like the Deepwater Horizon disaster weren’t enough reason to stop offshore oil expansion, we also know that this industry cannot be counted on to clean up its mess when the wells have run dry.
There is a huge backlog when it comes to plugging defunct or abandoned wells, removing old oil platforms and remediating the seafloor damaged by drilling operations. Oil and gas companies have already littered the Gulf of Mexico with more than 18,000 miles of disused pipeline and over 14,000 unplugged wells, which can leak chemicals like methane into the ocean.
It also comes with financial risks: If offshore oil and gas operators file for bankruptcy (as 37 have done since 2009), U.S. taxpayers could be forced to foot the bill for cleanup.
Enough is enough: We cannot afford more offshore drilling.
Andrew Hartsig
Anchorage
The writer is senior director, Arctic conservation, for Ocean Conservancy.