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U.S. in top 10 most dangerous countries for women
#MeToo and #TimesUp catapult America into the club of world's most anti-women countries.
These ten countries are the worst ones in the world to be female in.
Image: Statista / Thomson Reuters Foundation (CC)
- India tops a global ranking of most dangerous countries for women.
- Most other countries in the Top 10 cluster together in an Indo-Arab-African window of 'female-unfriendliness'.
- One outlier: the United States – 10th most dangerous country for women.
Worst for women
Philadelphia Women's March, January 2018.
Image: Rob Kall / CC BY-SA 2.0
The worst countries in the world to be a woman? Places torn apart by war, or societies stifled by centuries of male patriarchy, a recent survey by the Thomson Reuters Foundation shows. So which category does the United States fall into? Because the US made 10th place – the only western country on the list.
Conducted online, by phone and in person between March 26th and May 4th, the survey polled 548 experts on women's issues spread evenly across Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific. Those surveyed included academics and policymakers, healthcare staff and ngo workers, aid and development professionals and social commentators.They were asked which five of the UN's 193 member states they thought were the most dangerous for women in six areas:
- healthcare,
- economic resources,
- cultural or traditional practices,
- sexual violence and harassment,
- non-sexual violence, and
- human trafficking.
"India is raped"
Protests in Delhi in December 2012.
Image: Nilroy (Nilanjana Roy) / CC BY-SA 3.0
India's rise to the top of shame may be the result of increased awareness around women's safety, following a highly publicised rape case in 2012. A 23-year-old woman travelling in a private bus in Delhi was raped by all other male passengers (and the driver), tortured and eventually died from her injuries.
That could explain why Indian government data shows reported cases of crimes against women rose by 83% between 2007 and 2016. An average of one rape every fifteen minutes was reported in India in that year.
But greater awareness has not yet been very effective in reversing deeply-ingrained traditions, attitudes and practices – including female infanticide, forced marriages, sex slavery, domestic servitude, human trafficking and death by stoning.
Good news in the smallest of doses
Mother and child in Parwan province, Afghanistan.
Image: Sgt. Sean A. Terry / public domain
Numbers two and three on the list are Afghanistan and Syria, countries where the social fabric has been well and truly torn by seemingly interminable civil wars.
Good news for Afghanistan, albeit in a homeopathically small dose: it dropped to second place from first, which it occupied in a similar survey conducted in 2011. But the country still fared worst in four of the questions asked, especially regarding healthcare and conflict-related violence.
Almost two decades after America's intervention in Afghanistan, the Taliban continues to gain ground and the situation for women and girls is worsening – especially when it comes to literacy (i.e. education), poverty and gender-based violence.
Syria's seven-year civil war is restricting access to healthcare (resulting in higher deaths during childbirth), fanning violence (both sexual and non-sexual) and increasing the incidence of child marriages. As a result, the country finds itself in third place on the list.
Culture of violence
Street scene in Mogadishu, capital of Somalia.
Image: AMISOM Public Information / public domain
Numbers four and five are Somalia and Saudi Arabia, two countries in the grip of fundamentalist interpretations of Islam.
Somalia's decades of civil war have produced a culture of violence and weakened laws and institutions that could have protected women against its worst excesses.
Slight progress in Saudi Arabia – women are now allowed to drive – was nullified by the arbitrary nature of its male-chauvinism-powered regime – women campaigning against the ban on female drivers were arrested even as that ban was being lifted. Meanwhile, every Saudi woman is still subject to male guardianship: if not her father or her husband, then her brother or even her son.
Surprise addition
The club of shame.
Image: Statista / Thomson Reuters Foundation (CC)
Numbers six to nine on the list are Pakistan, DR Congo, Yemen, Nigeria – countries afflicted in various degrees by conflict, poverty and patriarchy. Singling out human trafficking – a criminal practice turning over $150 billion a year globally – the top three would be India, Libya and Myanmar.
These nine countries are clustered in three zones: centered on the Indian subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan), the Arabian peninsula (Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia) and the African continent (Nigeria, DR Congo).
The only geographic outlier, and the only western/developed country on the list, is the United States of America. It 'earned' its 10th place due to its ranking in third place when the respondents were asked where women were most at risk of sexual violence, harassment and being coerced into sex.
The U.S. did not figure in the Top 10 for the previous survey in 2011. Its 'surprise' addition this time, experts say, is because of the #MeToo movement and #TimesUp campaign, highlighting issues of sexual violence and harassment – both in the high-profile cases that started the ball rolling, and the many others that came to light since.
More on the Thomson Reuters Foundation here. Here is its statement on the survey cited above.
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Live on Tuesday | Personal finance in the COVID-19 era
Sallie Krawcheck and Bob Kulhan will be talking money, jobs, and how the pandemic will disproportionally affect women's finances.
04 July, 2020
Big Think LIVE
Add event to calendar
<p>
<strong>What should you be doing with your money during the coronavirus financial crisis?</strong> In this Big Think Live session, Sallie Krawcheck, CEO and co-founder of <a href="https://www.ellevest.com/" target="_blank">Ellevest</a>, a financial advisory and investment platform for women, will discuss personal finance and wealth-building career strategies with Bob Kulhan, founder and CEO of <a href="http://businessimprov.com/" target="_blank">Business Improv</a>. What steps can we take to guard ourselves from an uncertain financial future? <strong>Find out on Tuesday at 1 pm ET.</strong><br>
<br>
Ask your questions for Sallie Krawcheck during the Q&A!</p>
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How to manage self-inflicted stress
Stress and anxiety therapist Dr. Amelia Aldao suggests waiting 60 seconds before reacting to a stressor, giving your rational mind time to catch up to your emotions.
13 March, 2020
Studies show that positive emotions (happiness, comfort, pleasure, etc) allow us to consider a larger set of options in order to make faster, smarter decisions.
Image by pimchawee on Shutterstock
Personal Growth
- Stress is a complex defense mechanism that we experience in relation to either internal or external threats.
- Self-inflicted stress is stress we inflict upon ourselves with our emotional and behavioral responses to certain situations. An example of self-inflicted stress would be your car breaking down on the morning of an important meeting because your "check engine" let had been on, but you ignored it.
- There are a few ways for you to cope with self-inflicted internal and external stressors, put forth by researchers and therapists.
What is “self-inflicted stress”?
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjg3NDgwMi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTU5ODUyNzQ5M30.plH9mP77sPf3-un8g7KNIU84ad6zVgKIbQONcopUGK0/img.jpg?width=1245&coordinates=0%2C52%2C0%2C52&height=700" id="ee733" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0ba6b904a1542563f02dfe038f18fe50" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="concept of stress businesswoman feeling stressed at her desk" />Stress is a complex defence mechanism that each of us experiences differently depending on our personality and the circumstances of the situation.
Photo by Kite_rin on Shutterstock
<p>Stress is an adaptation of a living organism to internal or external threats. It's a complex defense mechanism that each of us experiences in vastly different ways depending on various factors such as personality, causal factors, and circumstance.</p><p>Studies show that positive emotions (happiness, comfort, pleasure, etc) allow us to consider a larger set of options in order to make faster, smarter decisions. The opposite is also true - unpleasant emotions (anger, stress, fear, etc.) overwhelm our rational minds and impact our behavior in ways that damage our ability to make smart, rational choices. </p><p>Stressors can be either external or internal, and this greatly impacts how we react to that stressful situation. </p><p><strong>Examples of self-inflicted internal stress (stress we inflict on ourselves by how we manage expectations, time, relationships, and emotions) can include:</strong> </p><ul><li>Putting pressure on yourself to excel at something within an unrealistic timespan.</li><li>Negative self-talk after not being able to complete something (realistic or not). </li><li>Fear of public speaking, thinking you're going to make a mistake in front of everyone even if you're prepared.</li><li>Not having enough time in the day to complete your "to-do" list and having thoughts of not being good enough because you didn't complete an unrealistic goal. </li><li>An "all or nothing" attitude (example: if I can't get everything on my list done today I just won't do anything at all." </li></ul><p>In more serious situations, these kinds of internal stressors can lead to feelings of anxiety and/or depression. </p><p><strong>Examples of self-inflicted external stress can include:</strong> </p><ul><li>Planning a vacation in a time of budget cuts at work only to discover that your salary has been lowered in a time where you've spent more money than normal. </li><li>Procrastinating to study for an upcoming exam or presentation and then staying up all night the day before. </li><li>Ignoring the "check engine" light in your car only to have it break down in a moment of urgency (picking a child up from school, on your way to a meeting, etc). </li></ul>How to manage your self-inflicted stress
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjg3NDgwMS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxOTUxNjY2MX0.UvFSTWkXcFi4qIqv1moPKac3KIPJugywdeSePEw2Upo/img.jpg?width=1245&coordinates=0%2C103%2C0%2C1&height=700" id="c0a57" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="6a683cb20ee3a37aa850b32b39560db9" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="concept stress man squeezing happy face stress ball" />A tip: wait one full minute before doing anything in reaction to the stressor.
Photo by Obak on Shutterstock
<p>Over time, stress can damage areas of your life (adding even more stress) such as you having trouble sleeping, losing your appetite, losing interest in daily activities due to stress. Symptoms that you are stressed can include things like irritability, headaches/migraines, stomach pains, and unbalanced emotions.</p> <p>How do you cope with stress? There are a few different methods that are specifically designed to help you overcome self-inflicted stressors in your life. </p> <p><strong>Take a full 60 seconds of pause before doing anything.<br></strong>The 60 Second Method is simple: wait one minute before doing anything in reaction to the stressor. It can be as simple as that, according to OCD, stress, anxiety and depression therapist <a href="https://www.togethercbt.com/groups" target="_blank">Dr. Amelia Aldao</a>.</p> <p>"In particular," she explains in <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sweet-emotion/202003/the-60-second-approach-managing-emotions" target="_blank">this Psychology Today article</a>, "don't follow what the emotion is telling you to do. Don't send that angry text, don't decline the invitation to present at work, don't tell your potential date you're too busy this week…" </p> <p>While this is extremely difficult for some people, pausing before reacting to a stressful situation gives your "rational brain" the ability to catch up. The best thing you can do is "stay with your emotion", according to Dr. Aldao, "but don't act it out." </p> <p>Experiencing the emotions is a good thing, we should never ignore how certain situations (even stressful ones) make us feel - but acting from a place of pure emotion (instead of thinking rationally about a proper action to follow the situation) can be detrimental to our mental health. </p> <p>According to Dr. Aldao, by the end of these 60 seconds, the intensity of your initial emotional reaction to the stressor should have somewhat subsided, allowing you to act from a place of rationality than a place of hasty emotion. </p> <p><strong>Prioritize your schedule and manage your time in a realistic way to motivate yourself.<br></strong>When it comes to internal stressors, much of the time we inflict these upon ourselves with ever-growing to-do lists and agendas that seem impossible to get through. This, in a way, is setting ourselves up for failure, because we aren't giving ourselves realistic goals that can encourage us to keep going.</p> <p>Instead, what you're doing, is designing a system that will make you feel more stressed the more work you do because even if you complete the work, it will seem as though you're falling behind. </p> <p>Instead, you should operate in a prioritization system. This can be done by splitting your to-do list into categories such as immediate (needs to be done in the next 3 hours), average (needs to be done sometime today) and non-critical (can easily be done tomorrow or the next day). </p> <p><strong>Ask for help and accept that you might not be able to accomplish everything on your own (or risk falling apart).<br></strong><a href="https://www.ruthklein.com/" target="_blank">Productivity coach Ruth Klein</a>, who has also authored a book called Time Management Secrets for Working Women, explains that you should start by asking yourself what the top three priorities for the day are. If there are more than three main things, delegate some of your work to someone else or push back deadlines if you can. It takes courage to admit you can't do it all, but ultimately that might be your best option.</p> <p>Waiting too long to ask for help, according to Klein, will eventually lead us into an "overwhelmed crisis" which tends to zap us of all energy and motivation. </p> <p><strong>Acknowledge that some (if not most) of your stress may be self-inflicted and make changes to fix that.<br></strong>While there are external stressors that we have little to no control over, there are lots of times when the stress we feel is self-inflicted. And when stress is self-inflicted it can also be self-solved, even when that feels impossible.</p> <p>When we are managing self-inflicted stress, it can be extremely difficult to see outside of our bubble of worry. We are focused on trying to beat the stress because we don't want to feel stressed - it seems like a solution. But if your stress isn't motivating you to get things done (and is instead actually hindering you from being productive) it's time for you to change how you react to your stress. </p> <p><em>"What can I do to lessen my stress right now?" </em></p> <p><a href="https://www.lessstresscoach.com/2016/12/21/do-you-suffer-from-self-inflicted-stress/" target="_blank">Jamie Sussel Turner</a> (otherwise known as "The Less Stress Coach") explains that asking yourself this question and acknowledging some of the harmful behaviors and emotions you're feeling that are negatively impacting your stress levels can help us re-evaluate the importance of the things we're trying to do. </p>
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Why is everyone so selfish? Science explains
The coronavirus pandemic has brought out the perception of selfishness among many.
05 July, 2020
Credit: Adobe Stock, Olivier Le Moal.
Personal Growth
- Selfish behavior has been analyzed by philosophers and psychologists for centuries.
- New research shows people may be wired for altruistic behavior and get more benefits from it.
- Crisis times tend to increase self-centered acts.
<p>Why do so many people seem so selfish these days, putting their needs first? The coronavirus has not only decimated our population and placed lives on anxious hold, it has also been a test of character. A test that, by and large, we appear to be failing. People are at each other's throats over wearing masks, the true facts of the pandemic, blatant racism and old monuments, all the while appearing to be driven by pure selfishness to others – a feeling coming from all sides of the political spectrum. Where does this selfish behavior come from, exacerbated by a series of crises?</p><p>For starters, it is to some extent, natural to be self-oriented. After all, what else do we know? We are at the center of our own worlds, always looking to bolster the ego. Self-interest is the most fundamental human motivation, <a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/hobmoral/" target="_blank">argued</a> English philosopher <strong>Thomas Hobbes</strong> all the way back in the 1600s. But acting out of self-interest is not necessarily the only thing on our minds. As research <a href="https://www.livescience.com/53533-women-prefer-altruism-over-looks.html" target="_blank">has shown</a>, human behavior can be motivated as much by altruism and moral considerations. So at what point does healthy self-care and the right amount of self-love become selfishness, a trait we judge negatively? </p>
<p><span style="background-color: initial;">Psychologists, like <strong>F. Diane Barth</strong>, <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-couch/201602/what-s-the-best-way-deal-rude-and-selfish-people" target="_blank">define selfishness</a> as having two primary pillars: "</span><span style="background-color: initial;">Being concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself" and "Having no regard for the needs or feelings of others." Of course, most of us probably live somewhere on a sliding scale of selfless to selfish moments. Still, in the public consciousness being selfish is erroneously associated with becoming more successful, even though the facts don't necessarily bear that out.</span></p><p>A 2020 <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2018-47966-001" target="_blank">study</a> published in the <em>Journal of Personality and Social Psychology </em>looked to figure out if people who prioritize self-oriented behavior did better in life. The team led by <strong>Kimmo Eriksson</strong> of Stockholm University compared such factors as the yearly income and number of biological children. They analyzed a large sample of responses by 5,294 Americans to the public opinion General Social Survey (GSS) between the years of 2002 and 2014, as well as European responses to the European Social Survey (ESS). The scientists identified the more selfish people by their answers to various survey questions. Overall, while the researchers found that in public perception, 68% of the people believed selfishness was a common trait of those who made more money, in reality, people with selfless attitudes and behavior had higher incomes and also more children. "Generosity pays," as states the title of their <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2018-47966-001" target="_blank">study</a>.</p>
Paul Krugman on the Virtues of Selfishness
<div class="rm-shortcode" data-media_id="7ZtAkm6C" data-player_id="FvQKszTI" data-rm-shortcode-id="828936bf6953080e9018307354c0c02b"> <div id="botr_7ZtAkm6C_FvQKszTI_div" class="jwplayer-media" data-jwplayer-video-src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/7ZtAkm6C-FvQKszTI.js"> <img src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/thumbs/7ZtAkm6C-1920.jpg" class="jwplayer-media-preview" /> </div> <script src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/7ZtAkm6C-FvQKszTI.js"></script> </div> The Nobel Prize-winning economist on the virtues of selfishness.<p><span style="background-color: initial;">What's more, altruistic behavior may be the default option in our brains, suggests <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26942832/" target="_blank">research</a> carried out in 2016/2017 by a team led by </span><span style="background-color: initial;"><strong>Leonardo Christov-Moore</strong> from UCLA. They found an area of the prefrontal cortex that can be specifically affected to make people less giving.</span></p><p>So if selflessness is rooted in the brain, why do some people have such a hard time caring about the needs of others? The answer might lie in emotional intelligence, as pointed out psychologist Lisa Marie Bobby in an <a href="https://www.oprahmag.com/life/relationships-love/a29416336/dealing-selfish-people/" target="_blank">interview</a>. "Emotional intelligence exists on a spectrum, and some individuals are higher in emotional intelligence than others," she shared. "One symptom of low emotional intelligence is the tendency to be self-absorbed, or exclusively concerned about what <em>you're</em> thinking, feeling, needing and wanting, instead of the thoughts, feelings, needs and desires of others."</p>
Evolution Is Moving Us Away from Selfishness. But Where Is It Taking ...
<div class="rm-shortcode" data-media_id="cyeqmYCb" data-player_id="FvQKszTI" data-rm-shortcode-id="6c5efecb56456e9acc25cf36935b1826"> <div id="botr_cyeqmYCb_FvQKszTI_div" class="jwplayer-media" data-jwplayer-video-src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/cyeqmYCb-FvQKszTI.js"> <img src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/thumbs/cyeqmYCb-1920.jpg" class="jwplayer-media-preview" /> </div> <script src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/cyeqmYCb-FvQKszTI.js"></script> </div><p><span style="background-color: initial;">Another unfortunate factor – </span><span style="background-color: initial;">many find it hard to detect selfishness in themselves. As a 2020 study from</span> Yale psychologists and economists at the University of Zurich found out, selfish people make adaptions to their memories to avoid feeling bad about their egotistical behavior. The research, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15602-4" target="_blank">published in the April 29 in the journal Nature Communications</a><span style="background-color: initial;">, revealed that people tend to remember themselves being better to others than they actually were.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"When people behave in ways that fall short of their personal standards, one way they maintain their moral self-image is by misremembering their ethical lapses," <a href="https://news.yale.edu/2020/04/29/memory-misfires-help-selfish-maintain-their-self-image" target="_blank">explained</a> <strong>Molly Crockett</strong>, assistant professor of psychology at Yale University and the study's senior author.</p><p>Fast-forward a few years from now, and certainly more than a few people will be remembering their actions of today with a very different slant from what actually happened. As it is, getting a better grasp on behavior that doesn't take others into consideration is everyone's personal responsibility. Where does one right end (let's say, the liberty not to wear masks) and the right of everyone else to good health begin? At what point does your right not to get infected outweigh the right of another to pursue economic prosperity? How much does my right to survive depend on the good will and cooperation from others? Answering these truthfully, without feeling attacked, can stem the tide of real and perceived selfishness that goes against our better natures and costs us lives and societal degradation. </p>
Exploring Morality and Selfishness in Modern Times
<div class="rm-shortcode" data-media_id="02eX1Cag" data-player_id="FvQKszTI" data-rm-shortcode-id="45cc6180db791f32683988fb52faff26"> <div id="botr_02eX1Cag_FvQKszTI_div" class="jwplayer-media" data-jwplayer-video-src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/02eX1Cag-FvQKszTI.js"> <img src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/thumbs/02eX1Cag-1920.jpg" class="jwplayer-media-preview" /> </div> <script src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/02eX1Cag-FvQKszTI.js"></script> </div> Philosopher Peter Singer discusses the state of global ethics.
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How Hemingway felt about fatherhood
Parenting could be a distraction from what mattered most to him: his writing.
05 July, 2020
Ernest Hemingway Holding His Son 1927 (Wikimedia Commons)
Culture & Religion
Ernest Hemingway was affectionately called “Papa," but what kind of dad was he?
<p>In my role as Associate Editor of the <a href="https://www.hemingwaysociety.org/hemingway-letters-project" target="_blank">Hemingway Letters Project</a>, I spend my time investigating the approximately 6,000 letters sent by Hemingway, 85% of which are now being published for the first time in a multivolume series. <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/literature/literary-texts/letters-ernest-hemingway-19321934-volume-5?format=HB&isbn=9780521897372" target="_blank">The latest volume</a> – the fifth – spans his letters from January 1932 through May 1934 and gives us an intimate look into Hemingway's daily life, not only as a writer and a sportsman, but also as a father.</p><p>During this period, Hemingway explored the emotional depths of fatherhood in his fiction. But his letters show that parenting could be a distraction from what mattered most to him: his writing. </p>
<h2>'No alibis' in the writing business</h2><p>Hemingway had three sons. His oldest, John – nicknamed "Bumby" – was born to Ernest and his first wife, Hadley, when Ernest was 24 years old. He had Patrick and Gregory with his second wife, Pauline.</p><p>Hemingway initially approached fatherhood with some ambivalence. In her 1933 memoir "<a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0608711.txt" target="_blank">The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas</a>," Gertrude Stein recalls that one evening Hemingway came to visit and "announced…with great bitterness" that he was "too young to be a father."</p><p>As the fifth volume of letters opens in January 1932, Hemingway is trying to finish "<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Death_in_the_Afternoon.html?id=Wn69QsdwDlQC" target="_blank">Death in the Afternoon</a>," his nonfiction account of bullfighting, in a household with a six-week-old baby, a three-year-old who ingests ant poison and nearly dies, a wife still recovering from a C-section, along with all the quotidian problems of home ownership, from a leaky roof to faulty wiring.</p><p><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342233/original/file-20200616-23227-ywfum4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip" target="_blank"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342233/original/file-20200616-23227-ywfum4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip"></a></p><p>Ernest Hemingway and Pauline Pfeiffer Hemingway, with Gregory, Patrick and Bumby in Key West, 1933. (Princeton University Library, Author provided)</p><p>Hemingway explained to his mother-in-law, Mary Pfeiffer, that if his latest book fell short, he couldn't simply take readers aside and say, "But you ought to see what a big boy Gregory is…and you ought to see our wonderful water-work system and I go to church every Sunday and am a good father to my family or as good as I can be."</p><p>There are "no alibis" in the writing business, Hemingway continued, and "a man is a fool" to allow anything, even family, to interrupt his work. "Taking refuge in domestic successes," he added, "is merely a form of quitting."</p><p>For Hemingway, work didn't simply entail sitting at a desk and writing. It also included the various adventures he was famous for – the <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Hemingway-on-Fishing/Ernest-Hemingway/9781476716411" target="_blank">fishing</a>, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/hemingwayadventure/africa.html" target="_blank">hunting</a>, traveling and socializing with the people he met along the way. Though he would teach the boys to fish and shoot when they were older, when they were very young he didn't hesitate to leave them with nannies or extended family for long stretches of time.</p><p>This separation was <a href="https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/john-hemingway/strange-tribe/" target="_blank">particularly hard</a> on the youngest, Gregory, who, from a very young age, was left for months in the care of Ada Stern, a governess who lived up to her last name. Patrick sometimes joined his parents on their travels or stayed with other relatives. Bumby, the oldest, divided his time between his father and his mother in Paris. The children's lives were so peripatetic that at the Letters Project we maintain a spreadsheet to keep track of their whereabouts at any given time.</p>
<h2>'Papa' explores fathers and sons in his fiction</h2><p>However, it would not be accurate to say that Hemingway did not care about his children. In the latest volume of letters, three are addressed to Patrick, two of them decorated with circled dots, a Hemingway family tradition called "toosies," which represented kisses.</p><p><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342482/original/file-20200617-94044-1rk64fc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip"></p><p>In his letters to his kids, Hemingway would sometimes draw dots called 'toosies,' which represented kisses. (Princeton University Library, Author provided)</p><p>In Hemingway's fiction, we can see the depth of that paternal feeling, and in his letters, the domestic moments that inspired him.</p><p>In November 1932, with his two youngest sons ill with whooping cough and being cared for by their mother at their grandparents' home in Arkansas, Hemingway postponed a trip to New York to stay in Key West with Bumby.</p><p>"He is a good kid and a good companion," Hemingway wrote his editor, Maxwell Perkins, "but I do not want to drag him around the speakies [bars] too much."</p><p>That same month Hemingway worked on the story of a father and son traveling together that would become "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fathers_and_Sons_(short_story)" target="_blank">Fathers and Sons</a>" in the collection "<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Winner_Take_Nothing.html?id=Bc8C0Hb9B5YC" target="_blank">Winner Take Nothing</a>." It's one of the only stories in which Nick Adams – a semi-autobiographical recurring character – is portrayed as a parent, and the reflective, melancholy piece was written just three years after Hemingway's own father <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2926355?seq=1" target="_blank">had died by suicide</a>.</p><p>In the story, Nick is driving along a stretch of highway in the countryside with "his son asleep on the seat by his side" when he starts thinking about his father.</p><p>Nick recalls many details about him: his eyesight, good; his body odor, bad; his advice on hunting, wise; his advice about sex, unsound. He reflects on viewing his father's face after the undertaker had made "certain dashingly executed repairs of doubtful artistic merit."</p>
<p>Nick is surprised when his son starts to speak to him because he "had felt quite alone" even though "this boy had been with him." As if reading his father's thoughts, the boy wonders, "What was it like, Papa, when you were a little boy and used to hunt with the Indians?'"</p><p>Hemingway's letters show that another story in the collection, "<a href="http://crmsl.weebly.com/uploads/6/3/1/4/63143381/a_day%E2%80%99s_wait_by_ernest_hemingway.pdf" target="_blank">A Day's Wait</a>," was inspired by Bumby's bout with influenza in the fall of 1932. It is a seemingly lighthearted story about a young boy's misunderstanding of the differences between the centigrade and Fahrenheit scales of temperature. Like Bumby, the protagonist, "Schatz" – one of Bumby's other nicknames, a term of endearment in German – attends school in France but is staying with his father when he becomes ill. Schatz had learned at school that no one can survive a temperature of 44 Celsius, so, unbeknownst to his father, he spends the day waiting to die of his fever of 102 Fahrenheit.</p><p>But there is more to this story than the twist. "You don't have to stay in here with me, Papa, if it bothers you," the boy tells him. "It doesn't bother me," his father replies. He unwittingly leaves his son to believe, for an entire day, not only that the boy is going to die, but that his death is of no importance to his father.</p><p>In this slight story – one of those stories he told Perkins was written "absolutely as they happen" – we find an unexpected Hemingway hero in the form of a nine-year-old boy who bravely faces death alone.</p><p>Though he once wrote that he wanted "Winner Take Nothing" to make "a picture of the whole world," Hemingway also seemed to understand that no one ever truly knows the subjective experience of another, not even a father and son.</p><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/verna-kale-408674" target="_blank">Verna Kale</a>, Associate Editor, The Letters of Ernest Hemingway and Assistant Research Professor of English, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/pennsylvania-state-university-1258" target="_blank">Pennsylvania State University</a></em></p><p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com/" target="_blank">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-hemingway-felt-about-fatherhood-139801" target="_blank">original article</a>.</p>
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