Firefighting Women

Although women have served as volunteer firefighters since the 19th century, putting out fires for a living is one of the hardest careers for women to pursue today. Caroline and Cristen turn up the heat on the history of women firefighters and why gender discrimination still persists in many fire departments.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mob never told you from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm and Today we were talking about firefighting
women because even though they're around all year, it's peak
fire season in January, these cold winter months, that's right,

(00:27):
I mean people running their space theaters and their generators
and whatnot. It gets dangerous and you want capable people
to be coming to your aid, that's right. But if
a fire breaks out, chances are that the people coming
to your aid are probably going to be guys. Because
only three point four percent of firefighters are women, which
is far lower than workplace statistics would project for that

(00:53):
type of sector, right, And I mean women actually make
up a good chunk of like emergency services. I mean
I think or about which is not great, but it's
definitely higher than three point four percent. And so before
we get into why there's so few women, let's look
at some of the women who have been firefighters and
some of those trailblazers. Well, the very first trailblazer we

(01:15):
have to talk about is a woman named Molly Williams,
who is recognized as the first known female firefighter in
the United States. And she was a slave who belonged
to a merchant named Benjamin Amar, and they lived in
New York City, and Amar was associated with the Oceanus
Engine Company number eleven, and Molly Williams became known as

(01:38):
volunteer number eleven because I guess she went with a
mar when he would be working at this fire department,
right and during a particularly nasty eighteen eighteen blizzard when
a lot of men had the flu, Williams joined in
to help and pulled the giant heavy pump through the snow,
wearing nothing but her calico dress and a checked apron.

(02:00):
And there are all of these children's books now about
Molly Williams, and it's lauded that, you know, she came
out in this blizzard. She was wearing just a calico
dress and a checked apron. And when you read about it,
it's it's usually this in a very chipper tone, of
this woman who was in the blizzard fighting fires. But

(02:21):
when I was reading this Caroline, the first thought in
my head was, did Molly Williams really want to be
putting out these fires during a blizzard and nothing but
a calico dress. I have a feeling she probably did
not write because it seems sort of glossed over that.
Oh wait, no, this woman was actually enslaved by this

(02:41):
merchant who was probably making her do this, because there
was one quote from her basically saying, listen, I kind
of have to do whatever this amar guy tells me
to do, because yeah, slavery hello. Yeah. So not to
cast a dismal light on the first female firefighter in

(03:01):
the United States, because it's it's cool that she's the first,
but at the same time, it's sort of tainted by
the reasons surrounding why more negative circumstances. But moving on
from Williams's service, there were plenty of other women who
volunteered on their own throughout the early twentieth century. Yeah,

(03:24):
and even way before that. The earliest women firefighters were
actually volunteers in urban and small town settings, dating back
to the eighteen hundreds at least, and as we move forward,
women have worked as fire lookouts since the early nineteen hundreds,
chiefs of volunteer fire department since at least the nineteen thirties,
and beginning in the mid nineteen seventies, seasonal firefighters in

(03:47):
the wild land sector a k a. Forest fires. Yeah,
and over at PPS we found a pretty comprehensive timeline
of some of those earlier nineteenth century trailblazers. In addition
to Molly Williams, for instance, if we leave New York
City where Molly Williams was and head over to Pittsburgh
in the eighteen twenties, you have Marina Betts, who was

(04:09):
a volunteer firefighter who served for about ten years, and
she was said to have never missed an alarm during
all of her service, and especially liked this tactic of
hers which was pouring buckets of water on male bystanders
at fire scenes. Yeah, guys who weren't helping out, she
would douse them. Yeah, Yeah, that would probably get me

(04:32):
on the move, probably a wave away from the end um.
And then we have Adelaide von buck how she volunteered
during a fire outbreak in eight and eventually was voted
into the membership of the Atlantic City Fire Department in
nineteen o four after helping out with a bucket brigade.
And she is still the only female member of that

(04:52):
fire department. Yeah, and I think one of the reasons
too that she was eventually voted into the fire department
is that she married a guy who worked there too.
But yeah, still nineteen o four, come analytics city, what's happening? Uh?
Moving on though. In eighteen seventy eight, across the pond,
students at the all female Girton College near Cambridge in

(05:15):
the UK formed a bucket brigade that existed until nineteen
thirty two. And that might sound like, oh, some the
ladies got together and formed a bucket brigade, no big deal,
But actually there was this problem on the Girton College
campus where they had no way to put out fires
at buildings because I think their pump system was broken

(05:36):
or something like that. So it was almost an engineering
problem that these students got together and solved to figure
out how to institute some sort of fire safety measures.
So it was it was a pretty significant thing that
these that this bucket brigade was. Man, how many fires
are these people putting out? I wonder just stopped catching

(05:56):
things on fire? Well, they were probably tons of fires.
And in the nineteenth century before you have central heating,
that's right, you're probably right. Smoky the bear was not
around at that time. Caroline um Well in you have
Carrie Rockefeller chosen as a regular member of Engine Company
number one in West Haven, Connecticut quote for her valuable

(06:17):
services and helping to pull the apparatus, which sounds like,
but no, she was. She was rewarded for her very
good work. Yeah, and uh. In the nineteen tens, I
kind of like what was going on in Los Angeles
with the fire departments, because, as we will talk about
later in the podcast, it's and start contrast to the
situation with women in firefighting today in l A. But

(06:40):
at the time there was a lack of available men
during daytime working hours, and so during the early twentieth century,
the male chief of the fire department in l A
was encouraging women to volunteer. And so you have in
nineteen twelve, for instance, Captain Marie Stack, who heads up

(07:00):
an all female brigade in the l A Fire Department.
And there were other all female brigades that popped up
in Los Angeles as well, one of which was called
something like the Society Brigade. And it was literally like
ladies who lunched, like wealthy women who this was their
little hobby of just getting together and putting fires out. Yeah,

(07:23):
like a posh thing to do. And if they would
take off their white gloves first, Oh, I imagine. You
know what, though, they probably had paid help who actually
did the dirty word. Probably right, cynical, we are very yeah,
it's kind of cynical. I don't know. It didn't stay
around too long, but for a short while they're in
Los Angeles, women putting out fires was all the rage. Yeah,

(07:46):
it was a common thing. Well, then let's look at
the transition from um, just volunteer service, not to poo
poo that, but into actual careers and paid service. UM.
In nine six you have fifty year old Emma ver
Now who became the first woman officially recognized as a
firefighter in New Jersey, and then higher up the ranks

(08:07):
in firefighting in and Crawford. Alan Holst became the first
female fire chief when she became chief of the Cedar Hill,
Rhode Island Fire Department. And when we get into World
War Two, as with a lot of other male dominated fields,
you have a lot of women entering fire departments, both
volunteer and like main fire departments in cities to take

(08:32):
over the work that men left behind. After the war,
the first women known to have been paid for fire
suppression services were the wild land firefighting crews working for
the U S for a Service and the Bureau of
Land Management. But when it comes to municipal fire services,
like the people who you'd call if a fire broke
out at your house, the progress has been even still

(08:55):
much slower, although you have a lot of movement starting
to happen in the nineteen sixties and seventies. In fact,
there were some all women fire companies that sprang up
in King County, California and Woodbine, Texas in the sixties,
and by the seventies it was becoming slightly more common
for women to join the ranks of regular volunteer fire
departments and working side by side with male peers. This

(09:19):
is when you start to see a lot of first
and also a lot of women more forcibly pushing their
way into fire departments because they weren't always welcomed with
open arms. Oh yeah, that's an understatement. Um. In nineteen
seventy four, you have Judy Brewer who becomes the first
paid career female firefighter in Arlington County, Virginia, and she

(09:40):
was quoted by mpr IS saying, when I applied to
my local fire station to volunteer in Fairfax County, I
was told essentially to go back to my kitchen. It
was no place for a woman. And this situation is
hardly unique to Brewer. I mean, this story gets told
over and over again. And then the following year, in
nineteen seventies seven, we have then law student Brenda Burke
Men who's living in New York City, who notices that

(10:03):
the Fire Department of New York is accepting applicants. And
at this point f D n Y is under pressure
from the court to diversify. So what the fire department
was doing was actively trying to recruit black men. But
Berkman thought, hey, you know what, I think that they
also need to diversify in terms of gender. So she

(10:27):
wants to get a group of women to apply to
be firefighters, and they do. I think it was like
five women or something applied in this massive recruitment effort
in the late seventies. But guess what they all failed. Yeah,
they most of them passed the actual examination, the test,

(10:49):
the written test, but they all failed the physical examination.
And so in Berkman brings a gender discrimination lawsuit against
the New York Fire Department under the Civil Rights Act
after all of those women had women had failed, saying
that the test had been retooled and based off of
the current male firefighters abilities, and to set off a
huge media firestorm because first of all, people just didn't

(11:12):
think that women should be allowed to professionally fight fires.
There didn't seem to be a huge pushback against women
who might want to volunteer, but actually having something a
place like the New York Fire Department, which is one of,
if not the largest municipal fire department in the nation,
starting to accept women just seemed wrong. I mean when

(11:35):
when all of those women failed that test in nine
one of the headlines from that in the Daily News
in New York, which is a paper that's no longer
in existence, was ms flop fire tests and one sizzles.
I mean, there were all these puns about, like, you
know how they're they were just waiting essentially for women

(11:56):
to fail. And so when Berkman decided to bring this lawsuit,
people weren't happy, and the fire union was not happy either, right,
I mean, Brendan Berkman gave an interview with Makers on
PBS which is so interesting and so heartbreaking, and some
of the images that they showed during the interview are
you know, people holding up signs saying I want to

(12:16):
be saved by a fireman, and a bumper sticker that
says don't send in a girl to do a man's job,
over and over. I mean that the abuse that Berkman
describes that she and her fellow female firefighters underwent in
the New York Fire Department is insane. I just I
can't imagine going through anything like that. Well, and it
wasn't only men who were leaving the charge against this

(12:40):
civil rights lawsuit either, I mean there were plenty of
women who are saying, no, we want don't don't send
a girl to do a man's work, that kind of thing.
And one of the quotes from that interview with Makers
that Berkman gave was, when I first came on the
job twenty three years ago, fighting fires was the easiest
part of the job for me. Much harder was dealing
with a hatred and descrip nation that some male firefighters

(13:01):
had for me. And now many of the initial problems
f the n Y women firefighters encountered have improved. Um,
But it took a long time for that lawsuit to
actually make its way through the court, right, Yeah, And
she was saying that, um men around her at that time,
were voicing opinions like, okay, feminism has gone too far.

(13:22):
Second way feminism, you know this is a joke now,
like you want to be in every single facet of society,
Like that's ridiculous. You're a woman. There are just some
things you should leave it to men. And Barbay was saying, no,
I this is what I have dreamed of doing since
I was a little girl. Her family were all firefighters.
She wanted to pursue that line of work. Also, yeah,
because it was interesting hearing her motivation for wanting to

(13:44):
fight fires, because it wasn't so much about breaking any
kind of glass ceiling, although clearly you know that was
that was part of the motivation for bringing that lawsuit,
But for her personally, she thought that it was the
best way to help people in the community because when
you have a problem at home, what do you do?
You end up calling the fire department. A lot of

(14:06):
times those are the people who are going to respond
to your distress calls. So then in two Judge Charles
Proctor Swift In rules in favor of those women, but
not after the massive press controversy and demonstrations. People continue
to demonstrate outside of his court, he received death threats
and horrible, hateful letters. I mean, the heat was on

(14:29):
him as well for making this decision. And later that year,
in November of nineteen eleven, women including Berkman, graduated from
the firefighting Academy and Berkman went on to serve twenty
six years and achieved the rank of captain after enduring
a ton of harassment. And she talks about how after
she was promoted to lieutenant, she was like, you know,
a lot of guys think it's hard to suddenly go

(14:51):
from being a buddy and being in that like fraternity
to suddenly being the boss and having to tell people
what to do and to cut it out and all
that stuff. And she's like, but you know, that really
wasn't a problem for me because they had never accepted
me into their group anyway. Yeah, what were some of
the things that she mentioned as examples of the harassment
she had to endure. I remember one thing she said

(15:11):
was going in and having seeing a massive bra stretched
over her locker. But I mean, all the things she
listed they ranged from like stupid stuff like having a
bra with her name on it, to the guys would
empty the oxygen out of her oxygen tanks. They would
mess with her equipment, they pete in her boots, they
turned her locker upside down. She wasn't allowed to eat

(15:33):
with them. I mean, it's like the worst kind of
in your face discrimination I've ever heard, which only goes
to show the determination of hers and these other groundbreaking women.
There's eleven other women who passed the test to actually
go out and fight fires, and I think she was
one of the first responders to during nine eleven as well. Um.

(15:59):
But the thing is, the situation in the late seventies
and early eighties in the New York Fire Department is
not isolated at all. I mean, even today, if we
look at the national numbers, the firefighting gender gap is
still massive, in large part because of those issues of

(16:21):
gender harassment, sexual harassment, and discrimination that are still going on. Um.
As we mentioned at the top of the podcast. For instance,
according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women comprise only
three point four percent of all firefighters in the US,
and out of that just point five percent of first
line supervisors of firefighting and prevention workers. Yeah. And if

(16:44):
you want to look on the broad scale across the
country of paid fire departments have never hired a female
firefighter ever. Wow wow, Wow, that's a majority. So people
are still wondering today, why are those numbers so persistently low.
I mean, first of all, it's not supposed to be

(17:05):
easy to become a firefighter. It's incredibly demanding because you
have to do things like pull heavy lengths of hose,
you have to climb stairs while wielding huge power tools
like chainsaws. You have to be able to lift a
ton of weight, such as an hundred eighty pounds thirty
five foot wooden ladder. Personally, Caroline, I have zero upper

(17:26):
body stream. I wouldn't cut it. I would not be
able to pass the physical exam. It's not supposed to
be easy, but it's also not supposed to be discriminatory either, right,
And when you look at the Los Angeles Fire Department,
for instance, they have come under a lot of heat
no pun intended for their hiring practices, and they have

(17:49):
barely been able to pass any women, with a lot
of those women alleging discrimination. Yeah, there was a huge
article about this in the l A Times, kind of
charting this whole hot mess essentially of their municipal fire department,
and in one comprehensive article from The l A Times,
the journalist details how there are less than three percent

(18:13):
of firefighters, fire paramedics, fire administrators, and fire investigators that
are women, but according to an audit by the city's
personnel department in two thousand six, that tiny group accounted
for fifty six percent of the lawsuits against the Los
Angeles Fire Department between and two thousand five. Right, and

(18:36):
these women are claiming that there's an unequal playing field,
you know. They say they just want to be accepted
as firefighters. They don't want to be treated differently, and
they don't want to be considered cry babies either. But
a lot of people are pointing out, like, hey, you're
hiring practices are putting a dent in the taxpayers wallet. Yeah,
because the taxpayers are ultimately the ones who are paying

(18:57):
for all of these costly sexual discriminations suits that are
being brought because a lot of times it's the plaintiffs
who are winning and so the fire departments having to
settle with them. But ultimately they're not the ones who
are paying for it. And when they the journalists was
interviewing people within the government and within the fire departments,
trying to figure out whether or not the tests had

(19:20):
been devised to you know, allow women in there, if
they were even passable for women. The answers were so ambiguous.
Some would say, oh, well, yeah, I mean we've actually
had to let some women in who wouldn't normally be
allowed in just for numbers reasons. Other others saying that no,
actually it's devised so that women can't get in. It

(19:44):
was hard to get to figure out what exactly was
going on. And you know, one issue in particular when
you're talking about, um just gender discrimination and not being
properly equipped to handle women becoming firefighters is the gear.
You know, if you don't have suits that fit right,
masks that fit right, you can really be injured. And
so women firefighters in Orange County out in California recently

(20:07):
did win a lawsuit to provide them with the basics,
just the protective gear and the uniforms that fit. Yeah.
I mean, in addition to things like uniforms, even the
facilities often aren't set up for women to even work there.
So you've also had lawsuits that have been brought down
simply to institute bathrooms for women being built, because I mean,

(20:30):
if you think about it, if you're working full time
with the fire department, there are living quarters there, and
there are bathrooms there, and you are showering there, and
if you're a woman, you don't wanna you know, it
can't be co ed and be copacetic all the time. Um.
And there was a recent blog post actually by a

(20:51):
guy named John K. Murphy who was a retired fire chief,
and he was riding over at the fire engineering site
and he essentially just gave a paundry list of all
of these discrimination suits that women had brought, alleging things
like sexual harassment, that the test being set up against them,
like all of these barriers that women were facing once

(21:13):
they were inside of fire departments. And he was just
saying that it's time for it to stop. I mean,
he was horrified as someone who was a fire chief
who had worked in this field for years and years,
just saying, guys, listen, what what is going on? Stop it?
Right And people from outside the industry are taking a
look at this too. There's been a lot of academic

(21:34):
research into the issues of of gender and race in
uh in fire departments. One study published in the International
Journal and Diversity documented the good and the bad that
comes with firefighting, and the good is that, you know,
for a job that does not require you to go
to college or get a master's degree or anything, the
potential benefits are great and the hourly wage of nineteen

(21:57):
dollars and forty two cents isn't too shabby. Unfortunately, as
the study found, when women are hired, the majority of
them say that they were treated differently, eight percent that
they were issued ill fitting equipment, reported that their gender
created barriers to career advancement, half felt shunned or socially isolated,

(22:19):
and thirty seven percent are verbally harassed. And just for comparison,
and that same study, they found that twelve percent of
men reported experiencing discrimination. So clearly there there's something going
on there. And one other thing that these Cornell researchers
did in that study was compare the number of women

(22:41):
in firefighting with other high risks types of jobs like logging,
being a bus mechanic, being a roofer, being a septic
tank servicer, and they found that women in those other
similar sectors comprised around seventeen percent of the employees and
to and that's in such stark contrast to the three

(23:02):
point four percent of female firefighters. Now there are a
lot more volunteer firefighters. It's it's estimated that they are
between thirty five to women in the volunteer fire service
in the US. But if you want this to be
your career, even today, it's quite a challenge, and it's
even a challenge too for women who are in there,
because I don't think that a lot of women want

(23:24):
it to be I don't think a lot of women
want their gender to be an even bigger issue than
it already is by virtue of them just standing there
and looking like a woman, you know. And so there
were some women in the l A Fire department talking
about how you know, they don't they don't want to
say anything because it's already assumed that they're going to

(23:44):
be a cry baby. But this is what they really want,
right well, you know, like Berkman said that, you know,
she was like, Ei, there were a million times I
could have quit, you know, the abuse got so bad,
But she was like, I knew that if they got
rid of me, it would be open season on the
rest of the women in the department. They would pick
them off one by one and have no mercy. Yeah,

(24:06):
it's tough, I can I mean, I can only imagine
tough on top of what can't be an easy job
to begin with in the day to day, right, And
so all of this is in line with a study
that's that's slightly dated, but I think it illustrates while
what we're talking about. There was study in Women's Health
that found that male and female firefighters have similar job stressors,

(24:27):
but female firefighters reported significantly higher scores than mended on
job skill concerns, and job discrimination reported by female respondence
was significantly higher than for males, even though it was
not ranked among the five most stressful factors. And there
were a number of studies that we also found suggesting
that women of color are at even greater risk of

(24:49):
gender harassment within fire departments. So it only exacerbates these
issues that are already at work. It's not easy to
be a woman in a fire department. It's especially not
s to be a black or Latino woman in a
fire department because they were almost targeted more for um

(25:09):
hazing that would go on and just being isolated socially isolated.
I mean, I can't imagine like with like you mentioned
with Berkman, she wasn't allowed to eat with her coworkers.
Now I eat at my desk because I don't have
time to not eat at my desk every day at work.
But to to be so forcibly ostracized, it's got to
be really tough. So I mean, props to any women

(25:33):
firefighters who are listening to this, and we we are
specifically talking about firefighters and not talking so much about
e M S workers because the gender issues in this
are so stark. I was not expecting this at all.
I thought it would be, you know, kind of a
plucky tale of women putting out fires and aren't we strong?

(25:55):
And whoa, No, it's like it's horrific. It's not that
at all. And so I mean, I'm glad, you know
we we we like to try to end things on
a more hopeful note, and I don't know that we
can other than to say that it's good that we're
talking about it. And like Berkman said in her Maker's interview,
you know, you never see women in fire trucks by

(26:18):
riding along on the truck to the fire, to the emergency,
and how important that is as it is to see women,
you know, in the computing fields and the science fields.
It's the same thing. You know, how important it is
to see a woman on a fire truck, so that
just a girl, you know, playing outside will think maybe
I can do that when I'm a grown up. Yeah

(26:38):
I was. I was reading an interview actually with uh
female firefighter who was a nine eleven responder, and she
was saying that exact thing of how when she was
on the fire truck headed to the twin towers, she
remembers looking and seeing people with these astonished looks on
their faces, just at the sight of seeing a woman,

(27:01):
you know, responding to this fire because even she's like
it still happens after years of service, which is kind
of incredible. Um, but not even as incredible as what
these women are are doing all for the passion of
the specific line of work. I mean, clearly, we shouldn't

(27:22):
take our female firefighters for granted, or our male firefighters.
This is an important job and one that I am
not physically strong enough to do. No, definitely can't pull
that hose. No no. Uh So I hope that maybe
there are some firefighters listening, male female, whoever, we want
to hear from you. Um, it was this as surprising

(27:42):
to you as it was for us. Let us know
all of your fiery thoughts mom. Stuff at Discovery dot
com is where you can send your letters, and we
have a couple of letters to share with you when
we get right back from a quick break and now
back to our letters. So I've got a couple of
letters here about the holidays. The first one is from

(28:06):
a nuke. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. Um, So
she writes your podcast or holidays. Bad relationships made me
think back to Christmas two thousand seven. I was dating
a German since the end of October of that year,
and I'm Dutch and lived in Amsterdam at the time,
so we only saw each other every other weekend. Around Christmas.
There were a few parties in this town that we
were both invited to, and he said I could stay

(28:28):
with him for the two weeks around Christmas and New Year's.
So the day finally arrived and he had an official
dinner from work and invited me to come along, and
I was also invited to his family for Christmas dinner.
To me, this meant that things were getting more serious
and I was very flabbergasid when a friend made a
joke about relationships, and my quote unquote boyfriend bluntly said
we are not in a relationship. There were a lot

(28:50):
of people in the room that all seemed surprised. It
really hurt my feelings, and I told him that when
we were alone, he said that he had never said
we were in a relationship, and I made it clear
that I found a disrespect and didn't want to be
treated that way. It took about five more months before
you wanted to make the relationship official. I saw something
special on him and thus gave it a chance while
pursuing my own dreams. Fortunately, the story has a happy ending.

(29:12):
We moved in together in two thousand nine, bought a
house this year, and I are expecting our second child.
We were very happy together, but the beginning was difficult,
and it took me a long time to not feel
sad about that. Perhaps that we hadn't had that holiday
period in the beginning, the relationship would have developed more naturally. Well,
I'm glad there was a happy ending, though. Okay, I
have a letter here from Laurie about dealing with family

(29:35):
stress during the holidays, and I all I can say
Laurie is oh girl, Aphelia. Uh. The letter states. Since
I have a small family and we live in different states,
I have always done the holidays with my husband's family,
which is rather large. There are four siblings with their
husbands and wives and their children and grandchildren. When my
mother in law was no longer able to host the

(29:56):
holiday dinners, I took over. A holiday meal at my
house would normally consist of twenty five to thirty five
people with numerous children. Two of the families consistently showed
up a half hour to an hour late and then
would complain if we started eating without them or if
the food was cold. Also, their children and grandchildren were
out of control. They would climb behind furniture, knock over lamps,

(30:16):
mark my walls, and if I said anything, I was
told that they were just kids. They also would leave
their plates on the table and just walk away and
would not think of helping to wash a dish. I
have to pause here and say, Lorie again, I feel you,
and some people don't understand that even though they are
just kids, they should be able to help out and

(30:36):
not be jerks and rant. Okay, Continuing on, she says,
since it seemed to be only these two families that
caused all the commotion. I finally told my husband that
I refused to do the holiday meals any longer if
I had to deal with this. The following year, my
husband only invited his sister and her family, as well
as my mother in law. The holiday meals are much
calmer now. We also switched from eating on china to

(30:58):
eating on paper plates to save dishway, sick and cleaning time.
Instead of just family for holiday meals, we now sometimes
have friends also join us. Well. My holidays are still busy,
I do enjoy them much more and with much less stress,
less mess and less broken items in my house. So, Lori,
I'm glad that you are such a wonderful example of
communication slash telling your husband that you're just not dealing

(31:21):
with it anymore. Sometimes you gotta do it, Sometimes you
gotta draw a line in the sand. So good for you,
lor and thanks to everybody who's written into his Mom's Stuff.
At Discovery dot com is where you can send your letters.
You can also get in touch with us on Twitter
at mom Stuff podcast or messages over on Facebook and
to find all things stuff Mom Never told you are, blogs,

(31:42):
are videos, are podcasts, all of our social media links.
There are a ton of them. We're on pretty much everything.
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