In 2018 I resolve to spend less time obsessing about the chasm between my own life and the fantasy of idealized motherhood, and more time enjoying what I already have. Last month I was hanging out with a friend – another mom – while our daughters played together. “Are you making New Year’s resolutions?” I […]
I think we do children and parents a disservice by assuming that if anyone stays home, it must be the person who gave birth. Sometimes people ask my partner and me how we decided which of us would give birth to our daughter. For some couples with two uteruses between them, that might be a […]
Now that my inner self has had a little taste of the wild, it won’t easily be domesticated again. Several years ago, after a friend mentioned the name of a blog she liked to read, I looked up the website and soon became obsessed not only with that blog, but with many more just like […]
The question of whose life is more luxurious, who is more selfish, who is lazier, etc., is a genuine distraction from truly important issues that affect all families. Last month, Allison B. Carter posted a piece in the New York Times about her decision to be a stay-at-home mom. It’s not a “luxury,” she argued. […]
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 […]
The fact that my son has two mamas does not mean that one of us needs to take on the role of father. In the early years of our son’s life, my partner Valerie and I struggled at times to define complementary parenting roles. As lesbians, we did not fit neatly into traditional mother-father gender definitions. […]
The main question facing any equality-minded SAHM or SAHD is: How do you pay the bills without giving away your independence? And for many working-class parents, staying at home is not even an option. Can anything be done? Many of you probably recall the incident last October when Obama managed to (again) enrage the country’s […]
It’s a lot easier to put baby’s needs first when you’ve got the money to do it. When we discovered we were pregnant, like so many other parents, we turned childrearing into a graduate-level research project. I spent hours studying breastfeeding, cosleeping, and attachment parenting. I read studies—I choose to believe some experts (Dr. Sears) […]
Maybe it makes everyone more comfortable to keep mothers in a safe, cozy, maternal box, their sole focus being their children, their homes, and maybe their book club. I’ve never been a very high-maintenance girl. I let my curly hair air-dry, I rarely wear makeup, and often choose comfort over style. Once my twin boys […]
Too often, this topic relegates women to one side or the other. Isn’t it time we recognize the dignity of each other’s lives and stop with the misnomers and judgment? Show me a mom who doesn’t work and I’ll show you a unicorn. Every. Mom. Works. The defining difference is whether a mom earns money […]
This originally appeared on The Daily Life. Republished here with permission. When women are asked what we are doing all day, the next question, sometimes silent but almost always present, is “Why aren’t you doing more?” “What do you do all day?” asked someone who reads this blog. Shouldn’t I post more often, since I must have […]
