Table manners

This year has been better. Better than last year this time. I made A's birthday cupcakes myself, instead of having someone else make them, and more significantly, I had the energy to clean up after the making of said cupcakes. We were still dragging quite a bit last year at this time, especially as the one year anniversary of A's birth came around. This year, there was nothing in my mind about her birth throughout our 4 days of celebrating her birthday, and singing to her and watching her open presents and eat cupcakes. There was no connection left to the difficult birth experience. Or the more difficult year following that.

And now, even though the Swiss do not celebrate Thanksgiving, I'm happy to say that we do. Not in any cook-it-yourself super meal, but we will be going over to some friends' with my grandmother's vermicelli stuffing in hand, for dinner. And a few hours later, we will come home, and go to sleep. No big family event, no black Friday shopping, no Friday off work. But it is still nice to take a half day off, cook some familiar food, and rest.

Now, given that we will not be at a big family gathering, the table talk will probably be pretty mild. Good manners between acquaintances are sure to lead the evening. Politeness, no name calling, talking back, inappropriate making fun of others. And hopefully we can all remember to keep our ever-moving feet off the table, A. There was a post this week on the NYTimes Motherlode blog about manners at the table.

As A gets older, we are having to once again figure out what is and isn't acceptable at the table, and how to ask her to use her voice and not her tears. Pacifiers and feet are not currently welcome at the table. We try to have a family meal together at least once a day, and everyone should get to participate. Not sure how we will teach A to not interrupt constantly. Turn taking is probably not high on the list of a small being who doesn't even get conversation yet. But of course, as parents, we want our kid to be polite and well mannered at a meal.

So what happened in academia? How come, within a culture which sometimes pursues the construction of intellectual family trees (who was whose advisor, or academic parent, etc), we don't teach table manners in setting where we all gather to interact verbally. Why is a rudely phrased question from a faculty member or postdoc allowed to ride? How come you never hear another senior member of a faculty ask an aggressive question-asker to please rephrase using a calm voice? How come you don't hear most advisors having a talk with (maybe this happens behind closed doors, but who knows) a particularly aggressive grad student to explain the rules of friendly science engagement How come we encourage shy women to speak up more and not be so scared to talk, but don't ask the people who constantly talk over their classmates to give others a turn? Dismissive comments seem to perfectly acceptable, as if being nice, or polite, or not getting into a raised-voice discussion about someone's work, and not calling other academics idiots behind their backs, marks a weaker scientist.

When did being mean become equated with scientific rigor?