While the concept that a gaggle of kids is a mark of social standing sounds ludicrous to the majority of us, the fact that people are influenced in their reproductive choices by what they see around them is less so. Tori Spelling recently announced she is pregnant with her fifth child. It was news I met with an unabashed: Wow, is […]
The goal of so much of my parenting, I have come to realize, is to raise my three sons in such a way that they do not grow up to be mindless reinforcers of the patriarchy. The conversation I had with my son about abortion wasn’t one I planned for. We were sitting on his […]
My kids are a very important part of our family, but they aren’t the only part. I said no to the Wellie Waddle, but yes to the Messibat Siddur. No to the Burns Night Supper, but yes to the Daffodil Tea. My kids don’t have an unwieldy amount of school events—we live in the U.K., which […]
When I was a full-time mother, they had more of my attention, a lot more of it. As a part-time working mother, what they lose in hours logged, they gain in the fact that I am modeling self-fulfillment. I was a stay-at-home mom for eight years. For eight years, I had no employment outside of […]
“I have my own life,” she reminds me, with perfect kindness and accuracy. “I don’t need to re-live having children through yours.” My mother recently came to visit me and my family for 10 days. Here is a list of the things she did vis-a-vis my four children: Played with them. Gave them snacks and sweets. […]
Mothers are two and a half times more likely than fathers to cover the nightshift of caretaking. Arianna Huffington has deemed sleep the next big feminist issue, because women are significantly more sleep deprived than men. Without enough sleep, she argues, we cannot reach our full potential as a sex: “A nation of sleepy women is […]
