941 Books in the Kitchen

My husband took a look at the newest pile of books on the kitchen floor and sighed, "Why do we have a National Water Summary 1985--hydrologic events and surface-water resouces? " So I had to tell him about the freebie table outside the Agriculture Library (no longer its name, but you get the idea). I'd picked up three government publications from 1985 to see if anything had changed in twenty years. The water summary had really nice maps of all the states, and I'll probably pull out Ohio's. I compared it to the 1999 which was also on the table, but it was only boring computer printouts--no maps on slick paper.

Then there was the 1985 Environmental Education: Progress Toward a Sustainable Future Conference in Washington DC. You should see the mission statement--a full page. Couldn't help but notice that the editors said the papers were "copywrited" instead of "copyrighted," and the articles look completely reuseable if you need them for a 2005 conference. Not much has changed even though we are now in "the future" about which they were writing.

Here's my favorite. "Time Use Patterns and Satisfaction with Life of Single Parent Families; with special emphasis on the female, low income and/or minority family-head." The author was hopeful that her study could be a benchmark; that using her data agencies and institutions would do a better job of supporting and helping low-income, single mothers. But based on her "happiness scale," I think she may have worked herself out of that role. Maybe 51 families is too small a base, but I didn't see much unhappiness (dissatisfaction) here.

Feelings and perceptions were rated 1-5, negative to positive. In the happiness scale if you grouped the 3+ figures with the happy end, you get 80.3% felt good about their lives; if you grouped the threes with the unhappy, you'd get 61.7% were unhappy about their lives. Apparently it wouldn't do to have all those satisfied single moms, so they compared this study with a two-parent study done in 1979 using a different scale, and determined that single mothers had a more negative outlook on their lives than married mothers.

The biggest block of time for single moms (most weren't employed) in a 24 day, was of course, "rest," with slightly over 8 hours; the next largest block of time was "Leisure activities by yourself" at slightly over 5 hours (this was primarily TV). "Personal and family care" got 2.5 hours.

Anecdotal career advice I've seen seems to show that working women with high incomes and family responsibilities are unhappy about time with their children and lack of personal time. This study shows that low income single women are unhappy with their finances but very happy about time spent with family and their leisure time.

So that's what is piling up at my house. What's on your kitchen floor/table?