What I Learned Today

This week for my History of Youth Literature class, we were tasked to pick out three picture books, written in different decades, that portray family dynamics, and compare them. Here are the three picture books I chose, spanning 1964 to 2008:

1. A Baby Sister for Frances (by Russell Hoban, 1964)

This is a story about the challenges of a new sibling entering into the family (in this case, a skunk family). Frances feels left out and unimportant; her dress doesn’t get ironed before school, and there are no raisins for her oatmeal. “Things are not very good around here anymore,” she says, and decides to run away. She packs her things and runs away to the dining room. Her parents talk about how much they miss her, so as to be deliberately overheard. “A family is everybody all together,” they say. She comes back and her mom makes a chocolate cake.

2. Rosie Runs Away (by Maryann Macdonald, 1990)

This story about a rabbit family has almost the exact same plot as A Baby Sister for Frances. Rosie struggles to compete with baby Mat for Mama’s attention. Rosie tries to help by shushing Mat, then taking him outside to play, but she gets in trouble for this. She packs her things and runs away to sit under a tree, far enough to see her house but not be seen. She reflects how even if Mama doesn’t miss her, Mat and dad will. She comes back and bakes pies with Mama.

3. Kitchen Dance (by Maurie J. Manning, 2008)

This story begins with a mystery; the children wake up to strange noises coming from the kitchen. They investigate and find mother and father dancing around while washing the dishes. When they are discovered, their parents pull them in for some whole-family dancing, then gently put them back to bed. There is a strong atmosphere of love and acceptance. There is no sibling rivalry or competition.

Discussion

In all three books, children are indulged. Frances is allowed to “run away” and then provided with affection that compels her to choose to come back on her own. She negotiates for a higher allowance because she’s a big sister now. Rosie also runs away and is welcomed back with hugs and pie-baking. Rosie does get reprimanded for taking Mat outside by herself (and getting him dirty), but the feeling is exasperation rather than anger. These messages can help children work through their own feelings of frustration and sibling competition for attention without fearing punishment.

The children in Kitchen Dance are not chastised for getting up at night, but instead embraced and included. The magic in this book, I think, is the fascination kids have with the mystery of what adults do, once the kids are in bed, and the feeling of being drawn in and loved and included in that special time.

For the first two books, from 1964 and 1990, the gender roles are very traditional. Frances’s mom feeds the baby (from a bottle, not her breast), gets Frances ready for school, knits, and bakes a cake. Rosie’s mom bakes and tends to the baby. Frances’s dad (literally) reads a newspaper, smoking a pipe, in a comfortable chair. Rosie’s dad only appears on the last page, when he comes home (with groceries), and in a fond memory Rosie has of telling him jokes when he “comes home tired”, presumably from work. (In the picture, he too is sitting in a very comfortable chair with a newspaper on his lap.)

Kitchen Dance departs from the traditional view in that both parents share the domestic duties equally – washing dishes and putting the children to bed. They are equally domestic and nurturing. We don’t get to see what they do for work or childcare during the day.

All three families are two-parent families with a mom and dad. No extended family are present. The first two books have animal protagonists, but they feel very “white.” Kitchen Dance is explicitly hispanic. The father sings “Cómo te quiero,” a phrase that is repeated multiple times in the book. The family members all have dark skins rendered with beautiful colors.

The theme of conflict between a single child and a new sibling is one with enduring appeal and relevance. Still, I was surprised to see almost exactly the same plot in books written 26 years apart. Kitchen Dance portrays sibling dynamics in a subtle way; when the narrator (the youngest child) wakes up, she wakes her older brother to include him in investigating the noise, rather than seeking out parent time for herself.

There is also a consistent theme about food providing comfort. At the conclusion of the first two books, the family celebrates being back together by baking a cake or a pie. Kitchen Dance occurs in the aftermath of (presumably) a family dinner.

From this small sample, I would conclude that traditional family structures and gender roles continue to appeal to authors, illustrators, and readers. Our lecture notes for the week discuss the 1980’s and 1990’s as a time when working mothers were more recognized and social issues like divorce and out-of-wedlock pregnancy began to be portrayed, but these books don’t touch on any negative aspects. Overall, I enjoyed having this chance to dive into the world of picture books!

I recently learned that there is a *maximum* age at which one can start training to be an air traffic controller. While a minimum age for various efforts is common, specifying a maximum age seemed curious, and especially given that the oldest you can be to start ATC training is 30 years old. So young!

Naturally, I wondered why this limit had been chosen. After some digging, I discovered that it derives from studies done in the 1960s and 1970s such as

• “Problems in Air Traffic Management: III. Implications of Age for Training and Job Performance of Air Traffic Controllers” by Trites and Cobb (1962)
• “The Relationship Between Chronological Age and Aptitude Test Measures of Advanced-Level Air Traffic Control Trainees” by Cobb, Lay, and Bourdet (1971)

Trites and Cobb (1962) conducted a study of ATC trainees and their subsequent job performance (in the first year of work) that showed a marked increase in training failure rates with age, up to age 45:

They do not speculate about reasons for the reduction in performance, concluding that

“Whatever the nature of the casual factors associated with chronological age and underlying the relationships of this study, there is no doubt that the number of potential training failures can be reduced and undesirable controllers eliminated by specifying a maximum age for entry into air traffic controller training. In the best interests of air safety and financial economy, establishment of an upper age limit is recommended.”

The FAA must not have heeded this advice, because nine years later, Cobb was still working to persuade them of the dangers of older ATC trainees. The Cobb et al. (1971) study is of 710 air traffic controllers, aged 21-52, that concluded that “age correlated negatively with 21 of the 22 aptitude measures and with training course grades.” This is a study of a biased sample, however: “because of their highly specialized pre-employment experience, these men were not required to qualify on the CSC ATC Aptitude Screening Test.” It is perhaps unsurprising that they might have lower aptitude measures, since these were not used to screen them as applicants. However, the negative correlation of performance with age is there. In Figure 2 from this paper, black means “failed basic training course”, hashed means “course grades comprising the approximate lower half of pass group”, and white means “course grades comprising the approximate upper half of pass group”:

The numbers in the right column are the number of subjects in each age group. “Although the subjects over age 34 represented only about 23 per cent of the 710 men involved in the entire study, their failure rate (31.1 per cent) in Academy ATC training was about three times that of the younger trainees.”

Cobb et al. went on to test these subjects on a variety of mental tasks, including simple arithmetic, spatial reasoning, following oral directions, abstract/logical reasoning, and a job-relevant task described as follows: “A highly-speeded test consisting of two parts of thirty items each. In each part, the subject is presented a flight data display for several aircraft and must determine whether certain changes in altitude may be directed without violating a specified time-separation rule.”

Performance on every single test, except arithmetic, was negatively correlated with age.

Maybe this result, or others like it, did the trick. The right of the FAA to establish a maximum age for its air traffic controllers was passed into US Law in 1972. The current version of the law states that

“The Secretary may, with the concurrence of such agent as the President may designate, determine and fix the maximum limit of age within which an original appointment to a position as an air traffic controller may be made.”