COFFEE BREAK
Saturday, June 13, 2015
PARENTS TALK BACK
East Oregonian
Page 9C
Marriage in America today
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By DAVID CRARY
AP National Writer
Photo by Stephanie Cotta
Professional portraits of newborns
are increasingly popular — and can
be costly.
Your newborn’s
glamour shots can
cost thousands
A
dd another item to the pregnancy
checklist: Book the glamour shots
for your newborn.
It only makes sense for a generation
used to displaying their curated and
polished life milestones.
You’ve seen this pictorial story on
Facebook: First comes the newly engaged
couple sitting in a tree. Then comes the
art-directed wedding. Then comes the
baby posed in a baby sling.
There may also be
professional pregnancy
photos and a gender
reveal along the way.
But the Anne Geddes
poster-worthy baby —
that’s the money shot.
St. Louis-based
newborn photographer
Aisha
Stephanie Cotta says
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Parents talk back
to bring the idea of
“newborn art” to the city
back in 2010, soon after the birth of her
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17 poses she only uses on babies between
four and 14 days old.
“I’ve worked it down to a science,”
Cotta said. The photo may involve a
bucket, a blanket or beanbag, but it’s the
wrinkly days-old baby who makes the
shot.
Three-month-olds are too late.
“When they are that old, they’re not as
sleepy and not as curly,” she said.
Too bad, so sad, punkin.
Moms-to-be start contacting Cotta in
their second trimester, because she books
six to eight months out. Even if it’s too
late to get into her schedule, new moms
and other aspiring photographers can take
her “Newborn Mentoring Workshop,”
in which she shares the art of newborn
posing. The goal is to “capture exactly
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About 40 percent of the clients taking
her workshops are new moms with new
cameras.
The camera is the new mirror. But
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It says something semipermanent about
you, and a baby has become an extension
of that personal brand.
Her clients typically spend between
$800 and $2,500 for newborn photos.
Cotta wants to create a piece of
work that will evoke, decades later, the
same emotions as when the baby was
born. Now, there may be a tiny bit of
whitewashing required. Cotta says she
edits and Photoshops all the images,
and in some cases, that may involve
smoothing baby skin or “addressing color
issues.” Sometimes newborns get little
scratches or baby acne on their faces, but
that’s easily erased, too.
“Everything else, I leave it as they
are,” Cotta said.
Not everyone opts for such a stylized
representation of those earliest days.
Beth Kerley, mom to a 13-month-old
daughter, booked her newborn shoot near
the end of her second trimester. But she
didn’t want the typical baby-in-a-basket
shots. She hired a documentary-style
baby photographer, who followed them
around their house for a few hours,
documenting the new parents taking care
of their 3-week-old baby.
She caught images of Kerley’s
husband making a bottle in the kitchen
and holding the baby while watching a
hockey game on TV.
“We wanted something that captured
how we were feeling and what we were
doing at that point of our lives,” Kerley
said. She had no desire to sit in a studio
under lights three weeks after a C-section.
While she opted for a more affordable
session ($450), she understands the
impulse to overspend.
“Anything associated with babies
and weddings, there’s a higher price tag
because it’s a very emotional moment.
You’re willing to pay more,” Kerley said.
She also chose a more low-key, natural
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but she doesn’t judge those who choose a
more cultivated option.
She waited until her baby was three
weeks old — pushing the edge of that
newborn photo shoot window — because
she wanted to wait until the umbilical
cord stump had fallen out.
Their newborn’s bellybutton looked
picture-perfect.
But Kerley wouldn’t be surprised if
the photographer touched it up a bit.
Ŷ
Aisha Sultan is a St. Louis-based
journalist who studies parenting in the
digital age while trying to keep up with
her tech-savvy children. Find her on
Twitter: @AishaS.
Does marriage in America need help?
What kind of shape is it in? In simplest terms,
the diagnosis is mixed.
Among college-educated, relatively
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well. Where education and income levels are
lower, it’s often a different story — higher
divorce rates; far more children being born
out of wedlock, including many to single
mothers.
There’s broad sentiment that this
“marriage gap” is unfortunate, but no
consensus on what to do about it. Some
believe government-funded marriage-pro-
motion programs can make a difference.
Others depict marriage-focused solutions
as misguided and say the problems can be
eased only by broader economic and social
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“There is no one silver bullet,” said David
Blankenhorn, head of a centrist think-tank,
the Institute for American Values, that focuses
much of its work on marriage and families.
Yet despite uncertainty about solutions, he
and others believe there is now an opportunity
to bridge the left-right split over marriage,
particularly in light of the sweeping gains for
gay and lesbian couples.
For many years, the gay-marriage debate
was intertwined with assertions about “tradi-
tional marriage” between a man and a woman.
A federal act passed in 1996 and a subsequent
wave of amendments adopted in many states
used the term “defense of marriage” to
deny recognition to same-sex unions. Many
opponents of same-sex marriage argued that
allowing gays to wed would somehow under-
mine heterosexual marriage.
Such arguments have fared poorly in
recent federal court cases. And there’s a
strong likelihood that the Supreme Court will
order the legalization of same-sex marriage
in all 50 states in a ruling expected soon.
Opinion polls show a solid majority of Amer-
icans support it.
“Marriage as culture war in America can
now be replaced by marriage as common
cause,” said a coalition of scholars and civic
leaders in their manifesto for a new initiative
called Marriage Opportunity.
The group, with Blankenhorn as an
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for stronger families and gays who have
now won marriage rights for themselves all
uniting to confront the marriage gap.
AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki
In this June 4 photo from left, the Chudoba family, Chad Chudoba, Isaac Chudoba, Rachel
Chudoba and Alexandra Chudoba, spend family time together as they walk through Myriad
Gardens in Oklahoma City. Rachel and Chad are graduates of Family Expectations, a program that
provides relationship education.
Scholars who have chronicled the gap
say it stems in large measure from the
loss of stable, well-paid industrial jobs —
consigning many young adults to precarious,
low-paid work, and prompting some to put
off marriage even while having children out
of wedlock.
In contrast, college-educated young adults
are more likely to wait until marriage to have
children and then have the prospect of raising
them in a household supported by two good
incomes.
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the share of American adults who’ve never
married is at a historic high. In 2012, 20
percent of adults 25 and older had never been
married, compared to 9 percent of adults in
1960. Back then, according to Pew, the likeli-
hood of being married didn’t vary according
to level of education; now men with advanced
degrees are far more likely to have married
than those who didn’t go beyond high school.
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mothers account for 40.6 percent of children
born in the U.S., according to recent Census
data. In the African-American community,
the rate is 71.5 percent.
Tera Jordan, a professor of human devel-
opment at Iowa State University, has studied
various aspects of marriage and relationships
among black Americans.
She sees a need for multiple changes —
more access to good-paying jobs, better
educational opportunities, a lowering of the
incarceration rate for young black men. Her
advice to young adults wondering about
marriage: “Be clear about your goals, be
patient. Finish your education.”
Before moving to Iowa, Jordan worked
with a federally funded marriage-strength-
ening program in Georgia. In all, according
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billion in public funding has been spent since
2005 on such programs, yet their effective-
ness remains subject to debate.
The largest, most durable state-level
program is the Oklahoma Marriage Initia-
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its launch in 1999, it has served more than
400,000 Oklahomans — about 10 percent of
the population.
One of its primary programs, Family
Expectations, entails 30 hours of classes for
low-income expectant parents who want to
strengthen their relationships. Independent
assessments found that couples taking the
program are more likely to stay together than
other couples.
OUT OF THE VAULT
Tiny guests move into swinging home
S
pring is the time for new
beginnings, and one of the
most ubiquitous signs of
spring is nesting birds. They
build their homes in a variety
of places: trees, under the eaves
of roofs, and even in houses
provided by helpful humans.
But one set of parenting birds in
1990 built their home in a most
precarious place — on top of a
wind chime.
Arnold and Arlene Schiller
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the porch of their home on
Southwest Hailey Avenue in
Pendleton in early June. The
nest, built of
spider webs
and grass, was
perched on
the top of the
wind chime,
where it swung
freely in the
breeze. “That
Renee
Struthers nest must be
Out of the vault on there pretty
good because
the wind blows
it around like crazy. They must
like the swinging,” said Arnold.
Usually, hummingbirds
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upward, downward, backward
and forward on wings that beat
more than 70 times per second.
On June 22, 1990, the female
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on the nest, which the Schillers
said contained two or three navy
bean-sized eggs. Bill Jacobson,
biology instructor at Blue
Mountain Community College,
said the birds sometimes will
have two broods, each with one
to three eggs, which hatch after
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hummingbirds, which usually
breed and nest in the forest or
on brushy slopes, winter in the
southwest as far as south central
Mexico.
The Schillers said they hadn’t
changed their lifestyle much
since the arrival of their tiny
guests. They put up a feeder, and
they didn’t let kids come up on
the porch. And, of course, they
kept the cats away.
“They really are a lot of
company,” said Arlene. “They
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window at us.”
Ŷ
Renee Struthers is the
Community Records Editor for
the East Oregonian. See the
complete collection of Out of
the Vault columns at eovault.
blogspot.com
ODDS & ENDS
Report of plane crash
actually monster
truck’s bath time
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(AP) — Ambulances, law
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emergency responders rushed to
a property in southwest Missouri
upon receiving a report of a
possible plane crash.
Instead, they found a man
washing his jet-powered semi
— named “Shockwave” — on
Monday afternoon.
Owner Neal Darnell’s new
neighbors called 911 after
hearing the loud noise and
seeing smoke over their tree
line.
Darnell said he recently raced
the vehicle, which can reach
376 miles per hour, on a dirt
course so it needed to be washed
on Monday, the 6SULQJ¿HOG
News-Leader reported. To wash
the 36,000-horsepower truck,
Darnell has to use its jet engines,
which causes a lot of noise and
white smoke.
“We do it from time to time
and it will usually generate a
couple of 911 calls, but today
for some reason it brought out
a whole army of emergency
vehicles,” Darnell said. He
also said he doesn’t blame the
neighbors for being concerned.
A Greene County sheriff’s
deputy told the newspaper that
no citations were issued and
that the 911 callers had acted in
good faith because they believed
someone might be in danger.
Nathan Papes/The Springfield News-Leader via AP
The semi-trailer known as Shockwave is parked in
Springfield, Mo., June 8. The truck is powered by three jet
engines producing 36,000 horse power.
Darnell said he takes
Shockwave to truck shows
across the country, where it does
things like setting stacks of cars
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Does free ping pong
in parks stop crime?
SEATTLE (AP) — The city
of Seattle is wondering if free
ping pong in its parks may help
stop crime.
KING-TV reports that the
city’s experiment with a free
ping pong table seems to be
making a difference.
A ping pong table was
installed at Hing Hay Park in
Chinatown four years ago. Since
then, crime data from the Seattle
Police Department suggests
incidents in the area seem to be
going down, although there have
been ups and downs. There were
46 crime incidents in the area in
2009 and 16 in 2014.
No one is willing to draw
a direct connection between
the ping pong table and the
crime statistics, but the city
has installed four other tables
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positive community activity
could be crowding out crime.
Police: Man baked
potato, raked leaves
during break-in
HOBBS, N.M. (AP) — A
New Mexico man is facing
charges after police say he
walked into an unlocked home,
stole car keys and stunned a
resident who found him baking a
potato and raking leaves.
Patrick Lynn Waits, 45, was
arrested early Tuesday following
a bizarre chain of events that
confused residents of a Hobbs
home, the Hobbs News-Sun
reports.
A female resident awoke to
noise in her kitchen, and found
Waits allegedly wiping down a
countertop and baking a potato
in her microwave oven, police
said. “She asked him what he
was doing there, and he told
her he was making a potato,”
according to a police report.
When told to leave, a
criminal complaint says Waits
walked outside and left his
potato in the microwave.
The report said Waits then
went outside to rake leaves in
the front yard.
The female resident
convinced Waits to stay by
saying she wanted to pay him
for his service, police said. The
move was apparently a ploy to
get Waits to stay long enough
before authorities arrived, police
said.
Waits was found stumbling
while walking, and he slurred
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Waits was arrested on
burglary and unlawful entry
charges. He also faces several
felony warrants for failure to
appear in court.
It was not known if Waits had
an attorney.