The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Atlanta tops for female earners
Expert says some women still should work on assertiveness.
Kristin Klingshirn isn’t shy about earning more money than her boyfriend.
“I always chuckle inside because whenever we go out to dinner, I tend to pick up the check,” the 32-year-old said. “However, the check is never placed in front of me. It is always placed in front of my boyfriend. It depends on how many cocktails I’ve had — sometimes I’ll be more dramatic about it by reaching across the table to pick it up. It’s comical to me.”
As a cast member on “The Bert Show” on Atlanta’s Q100, Klingshirn’s financial support of her live-in boyfriend has become a running story line on the show, prompting open discussions about income and gender roles.
“It makes [women] more attractive,” Klingshirn said. “By being able to take care of yourself and by being self-sufficient, it shows that you’re a hard worker. Reverse the roles, and that’s the way it’s been for decades. But all of the sudden, I pay the mortgage, and he’s a moocher.”
Despite the surprised looks Klingshirn sometimes receives, she’s actually on the edge of a larger cultural shift, some say.
Single women ages 22-30 with no children out-earn men in 147 out of 150 major U.S. cities — and Atlanta tops the list, according to 2008 U.S. Census Bureau data. In Atlanta, women in this age group earn 21 percent more in median income than men.
Although men still lead women nationally in median income overall, the gap is closing. From 2000 to 2010, Atlanta men experienced a 48 percent jump in median earnings, from $32,654 to $48,256, but women saw a 71 percent increase, from $22,916 to $39,228, according to census data. Liza Mundy, an author and journalist, explores the implications of this trend in “The Richer Sex,” (Simon & Schuster, 2012) which argues
Last spring, Katie Dickman of Dunkirk, Md., was at the playground with her 18month-old toddler, Hannah, when the little girl asked to ride down a twisting slide. Dickman accompanied her daughter, carefully keeping the child on her lap as they coasted to the bottom.
But without warning, Hannah’s sneaker caught on the side of the slide. Although Dickman grabbed the leg and unstuck her daughter’s foot, by the time they reached the ground, the girl was whimpering and could not walk. A doctor’s visit later revealed a fractured tibia.
“My wife was just trying to keep Hannah extra safe and make sure she didn’t fall,” said Hannah’s father, Jed Dickman. “She felt very guilty about it.”
As the Dickmans soon learned, such injuries are surprisingly common. Although nobody keeps national statistics, orthopedic specialists say they treat a number of toddlers and young children each year with broken legs as a result of riding down the slide on a parent’s lap. A study at Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola, N.Y., found that nearly 14 percent of pediatric leg fractures over an 11-month period involved toddlers riding down the slide with a parent.
Dr. Edward Holt, the orthopedic surgeon at Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis who treated Hannah’s injury last April, said that just two weeks ago he treated a 4-yearold boy who had been injured going down the slide with his father.
“This fracture is entirely preventable,” said Holt, who has created a warning poster for local pediatrician offices and a Youtube video alerting parents to the hazard.
This may be one of those counterintuitive cases when a child is safer by himself. If a foot gets caught while the child is sliding alone, he can just stop moving or twist around until it comes free. But when a child is sitting in an adult lap, the force of the adult’s weight behind him ends up breaking his leg.
The injury is typically treated with a cast from the foot to above the knee; the good news is that no surgery or resetting is needed. The child wears the cast for four to six weeks and heals without any lasting complications.
But the damage is not merely physical. “The parents are always crushed that they broke their kid’s leg and are baffled as to why nobody ever told them this could happen,” Holt said. “Sometimes one parent is angry at the other parent because that parent caused the child’s fracture. It has some real consequences to families, and I hate to see it happen.” The Mineola study was done by Dr. John Gaffney, a pediatric orthopedic specialist at Winthrop, after he had treated a rash of playground slide fractures. The hospital’s data indicated that every sliding fracture involved a child younger than 3 riding in an ing as well. At the emergency room, both boys were found to have fractures, and they were fitted with orange and blue casts.
“I was surprised at how easy it was for a young child to break their leg on a playground,” said Dworkin, who wrote about the experience for his hometown paper, The Oregonian. “I was even more surprised how nonchalant the hospital staff was about what was happening. They said they see this all the time.”
Both boys had full recoveries. Felix, now 3 ½, doesn’t remember the accident, but will now go down small slides only and remains cautious around large twisting slides, Dworkin said.
Holt said he did not want to discourage parents from taking their children to the playground or even playing on slides, but did want to spread the word about the risks of sliding with a child on your lap.
To prevent the injury, the best solution is to allow a child to slide by himself, with supervision and instructions on how to play safely. Young children can be placed on the slide at the halfway point with a parent standing next to the slide.
At the very least, parents should remove a child’s shoes before riding down the slide with the child on their laps, and make sure the child’s legs don’t touch the sides or sliding surface.
“I’m not saying we need to make the entire world out of rubber and insulate kids,” he said. “But this is something that is so totally predictable and preventable. That’s why I want to get the word out this one could go away.”