Sydne Didier wanted to teach her son that men are caregivers too. Trevor was 12 years old when I hired him to take care of my son. The same age my son is now, it was his first time babysitting and he was nervous. He lived across the street and I’d asked him to come […]
If this generation of children is not responded to with caring, love, and empathy, then they too will learn the habits of denial and repression, says Sarah MacLaughlin. Have you seen Jill Greenberg’s beautiful photos of children? She has an amazing eye. Her lighting is silky and bright; her subjects are chubby-cheeked and downright adorable. […]
You thought the DOMA ruling was just a triumph for gay rights? Actually, it changes everything—for women, for parents, for workers. Even straight ones. What a happy historical coincidence. Exactly 50 years after Betty Friedan—herself no proponent of sexual openness—showed in The Feminine Mystique that gender roles in families suppress women’s personhood and potential, the […]
Originally appeared on The Frisky. Republished here with permission. I was so sure I was having a boy. I’d even given my baby a boy name, and I talked to my belly and told him he was a great son. A strong, noble, excellent son. People said, “A mother knows…” and nodded along with me. […]
Originally appeared on The Daily Life. Republished here with permission. Dear Mom, I was 7 when I discovered that you were fat, ugly, and horrible. Up until that point I had believed that you were beautiful—in every sense of the word. I remember flicking through old photo albums and staring at pictures of you standing […]
Cate Dicharry was not prepared for the all-encompassing love she’d have for her child that would wipe out any signs of the woman she once was. I am thoroughbred for Motherlove. My father and mother are each one of eight children, in the case of my maternal grandmother, eight children amid 12 pregnancies. In the […]
This originally appeared on Mamamia. Republished here with permission. For more than 30 weeks I’ve been keeping a secret. I’m pregnant. With child. Knocked up. Got a bun in the oven. Up the duff. In the pudding club. On stork watch. Preggers. In the family way. That’s right, in less than two months I’m due […]
Edwin Lyngar’s been a father since he was 20 years old. When all of his kids are eventually grown and out of the house, he wonders who he’ll be without them. I’ve had a child under the age of 6 since I was 20 years old, in essence for my entire adult life. As my […]
Father’s Day may be just another Hallmark holiday, but Emily Heist Moss is reminded this week of how lucky she is to have her dad. My uncle died two years ago this week. Though younger than my mom, he’d married his high school sweetheart and had a handful of kids while my mother was still […]
Wendy Fontaine never told her daughter Angie what to call the new man in their life, but to Angie, he’s “Dad.” My daughter, Angie, spent the last few weeks of first grade learning a Native American language of pictures and symbols that tribal members scrawled on cave walls and animal hides many years ago to […]
We must improve our assumptions about dads and domesticity if we’re ever going to solve the problems plaguing female breadwinners and derelict dads, says stay-at-home dad Vincent O’Keefe. Last week I had the torturous pleasure of chaperoning five 13-year-old girls around an enormous amusement park for 10 hours. So imagine my irritation later when I […]
Many couples choose to stay in unhappy marriages, ostensibly for the sake of their children. But are kids better off in an environment of hostility and fear? As I was putting my 7-year-old daughter to bed the other night, she ran through her usual litany of complaints. I said, “I know. Your life is so […]
