Month: November 2011

I fell asleep on the bus yesterday and only woke up to the sound of the bus driver saying "last stop" over the loudspeaker. I rushed off the now-empty bus and realized I was a half mile beyond my destination. I’ve never been able to sleep on a city bus before but I sure did this time because I had a thick cotton hat on that allowed my to rest my head against the window without getting drain bramage and I have not been getting a lot of sleep this past week and this semester because of work and school.

This reminded me of when I read the phrase "sleep machismo" in reference to people’s attitude toward sleep as a low-priority activity, the first to lose out when there are other demands in one’s week. The author was some health professional who said that people are missing sleep at the expense of their health and not even knowing it.

But I know there are many adverse effects on my health and social life and do it anyway. I have been losing time to hang out with friends and family, losing opportunities to be outside in the sun and seasons, and absorbing some possible mental health problems that may be making me more depressed or negative. But it seems like a bargain I can reasonably take: I am getting done some necessary coursework for the next stage in my life, I am paying down tens of thousands in student loan debt, in other words, I am doing things that cannot wait. Maybe I can compensate with extra exercise and a healthy diet and with better time management. In other words there is no "machismo" involved, rather it is a sober accounting of the costs and benefits and a compromise between wellness and accomplishment, and between the future and the present.

Besides, as I have been learning, people who are resilient tend to view their current problems as a temporary hardship that will eventually be overcome with time and effort. Now I can worry about the process of "becoming," later I can enter the "being" phase.

One or two inches have fallen already. But that’s okay. I am ready for it and looking forward to skiing Theodore Wirth park and Elm Creek Park Reserve. I also want to check out the trails at Willow River State Park outside Hudson WI. They have some great hiking trails but I have never been there in the winter before. I am in better shape than I was last year and have more reason to get out since I have been so cooped up inside – at home reading all kinds of damn books and at work under fluorescent lights.

And today I biked to work under the falling snow with my thermal underwear and my headlamp and stopped for a sandwich on a bench on the Greenway and watched the cars go by on Highway 100. I should really get a mountain bike.

Also went to the Annex Teen Clinic benefit last night. I left pretty soon though. I don’t need to hear the oldies performed again. Not when I could be sleeping.

This class would suck if it weren’t so easy. A three-hour class every Tuesday morning. But even the professor cannot stand to go that long, so we usually get out after two hours. Actually the text is kind of interesting, in a fuzzy kind of way.

A Developmental Perspective on the "Parasite Singles" of Japan

In Japan the term "parasite single" became instantly popular in 1999 when it was first used to describe unmarried young people, primarily women, who live with their parents and remain dependent on them even after college (Orenstein 2001). Although the concept of stalled young adults is increasingly talked about in the U.S and Europe, Japan’s young adult situation has some interesting peculiarities. Bringing a biosocial, cognitive and psychosocial perspective on Japan’s parasite singles may help illuminate this issue in a way the media reports do not. After mentioning how these three domains are relevant to the parasite single issue, I will relate my own personal experience and then offer a final thought on how useful the developmental approach is in this discussion.

Biosocial
According to Berger, sexual desire, attractiveness and fertility is at its peak in emerging adulthood (2011, p. 488). But many of the parasite singles in interviews report that they have no intention of cutting short their fun. Although often employed in low-paying jobs, their entire income is disposable, and the young women interviewed report relishing their ability to spend lots of money on spa treatments and parties that they could no longer enjoy if they were mothers. One young woman said, "If I have my first child by the time I’m 35, that’s early enough" (Tolbert 2000).

Cognitive

Berger emphasizes dilemmas that emerging adults face. She says that emerging adults are no longer bound by the strictures of their parents’ life patterns, so they must make important choices on their own (2011, p. 504). This is especially evident in Japan’s parasite singles as they live in a household of traditional parental roles while avoiding such roles for themselves. In her article, Orenstein focuses on the ways in which they are protesting against the rigid gender roles of their parents’ generation, in which the woman must quit her job soon after marrying in order to care for her children and her emotionally distant, work-obsessed husband (2001).

Psychosocial

Berger emphasizes that friendships are especially crucial in emerging adulthood, and this is evident in the testimony of the female parasite singles interviewed by Orenstein (2001). Again and again, the young women talk of their desire to have the freedom to eat out with their female friends, go shopping together, and get new manicures and hairstyles at their leisure. They emphatically state that they want to live for themselves, identifying more with their friends than with their mothers, whom they may even pity in some ways (Orenstein 2001).

A personal experience

I also have gone through a "parasitic" phase. After graduating from college I was so depressed and so sick of school that I told my parents (whose approval I craved) that I was going to "take some time off." I could hardly bear their placid acceptance of this statement. Yet I took their offer to continue to pay my car insurance and cell phone bill while I worked a job that did not require a college degree, hung out as much as possible, and drank too much alcohol. Although I was living on my own, I still felt my life had stalled, so I cut back on the drinking, took on a more demanding work schedule and new responsibilities, and took the pre-requisite courses for my chosen graduate school program. If I could go back, I would have skipped those years of freedom altogether because they did not contribute to my life goals or happiness anyway. I believe I am happier when engaged, and I want to help others avoid being as careless with their time as I was.

A final thought

According to the biosocial perspective, parasite singles may be taking advantage of the best years of their life in order to enjoy close relationships with friends and to have adventures they would be forced to suppress if they had spouses and children. But on the other, their chances of having a safe pregnancy and starting a family later on may be reduced. Cognitively parasite singles are, understandably, not enthusiastic about adopting their parents’ lifestyles. But their own focus on their immediate gratification may be a form of irresponsible risk-taking in itself (also a danger of this phase of life, according to Berger). And psychosocially, parasite singles are devoting themselves to friends and selfhood instead of to the prescribed path of career and family, but an element of balance or "juggling" of the three realms may be lacking. All three of these life-span approaches are useful in discussing the parasite single phenomenon and in reflecting on my own post-college stagnation. I look forward to the point when the unfortunate term "parasite single" fades from use and we gain some real insights into the causes and consequences of stalled young adults for Japan and elsewhere.

Works cited

Berger, Kathleen Stassen "The Developing Person through the Life Span" Worth Publishers: New York, 2011.

Orenstein, Peggy "Parasites in Prêt-à-Porter" New York Times Magazine 1 Jul 2001. Accessed online

Tolbert, Kathryn "Japan’s New Material Girls" Washington Post 10 Feb 2000 page A01. Accessed online

On the same note as the previous post, I think I could learn to be less dismissive, to remember that there are good times and bad times to be skeptical.

Recently a co-worker of mine told me about how he drank a single cup of coffee and it resulted in a nosebleed for hours. This same co-worker had made a number of highly questionable claims about health in previous conversations and he was prone to repeating scientific falsities that he had heard in the popular media or secondhand. So, I thought, this sounds implausible, but I will just listen and nod like I usually do.

Sure enough, later I looked into it, and it turns out that caffeine can cause people to have uncontrollable nosebleeds! I immediately felt guilty for dismissing my co-workers testimony. I was glad that I had not directly contradicted his claim, and I had been supportive and displayed interest in his story. But I still felt my skeptical attitude had been a little condescending. "Trust but verify" prevailed. Skepticism is a great tool for finding the truth but it should not prevent you from giving a person a fair hearing.

I approached the bus stop and found a big fat guy smoking a cigar, stinking up the whole place, despite the clear signs saying no smoking in the bus shelter and the fact that other people have to stand there and breathe it in order to catch the bus. Maybe he had a family who would someday be mourning his death of lung cancer. Maybe he would soak up hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money or money from his fellow employees’ health premiums with many years of health problems. How could he? But he struck up a conversation with me, he began telling me his life story in fact. And he mentioned that when he was younger his house caught on fire and his sister died in it. So, his psychiatrist, a person in authority, prescribed smoking as a behavioral therapy. The psychiatrist thought that he needed to do something involving sparks and flame every day in order to overcome his post-traumatic symptoms. It was a decent idea, in line with standard treatment of phobias through systematic desensitization. But it doomed the man to a lifetime of smoking. It is just another mini-lesson in prejudice for me. Before I go thinking, "This asshole needs to stop breathing his smoke in my face, and quit," "We all pay the price" of tobacco use, and so on, I should think of the many ways in which a person is pushed and pulled around by forces and people they cannot control, some of them malevolent and some benign, and some people, like the psychiatrist, whose good intentions brought on consequences they did not foresee.