You can do this, even when you don’t think you can. I won’t lie. There were times growing up that I hated my mom. She was a single mom. She spent her days teaching emotionally disturbed children and would come home totally exhausted. Some days she was so tired that she locked herself in her […]
We talk a lot about how to keep our children from seeing violence on TV and online. We talk about parental controls. But do we talk enough about how important Internet kindness and decency is? On a recent share of an article I wrote, Facebook commenters used the following phrases to describe me: “condescending twat,” […]
Women are harassed daily for breastfeeding. Some incidents are reported; most aren’t. And many, many women simply don’t breastfeed in public because they know how vulnerable they are to such harassment. By the time my son was a few months old, I became an expert at nursing anywhere, anytime. And let me tell you, my […]
I hope that someday no children will have to grow up living in fear of the enormous love their hearts hold. Since becoming a parent, when anything big happens in the news—good or bad—I immediately think of how it will affect my kids. The news that the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage for all 50 […]
Understanding the significance of my father’s childhood has helped me understand my father, and untangle our complicated relationship. My father is the child of Holocaust survivors. It’s strange for me to type those words because that was never how my father described his parents. His parents never discussed the Holocaust or the war. When he […]
America treats its mothers like shit. This Sunday, families across America will be celebrating Mother’s Day. I will be doing the same, gathering with my own mother, my mother-in-law, my children. But this year, I can’t quite settle into it the way I usually do. Something doesn’t sit right with me. To put it simply: […]
Curvy is just who I am. I have the same kind of body that my mother had, that my grandmothers had. And I take good care of it. I can’t tell you exactly how it happened. I wish I could tell you there is a magic solution out there that could make all women accept […]
Implying that mothers are sick or “selfish” for wanting to continue nourishing and nurturing their babies past a certain age is not only misinformed, but is demeaning to women, mothers, and children. Almost every time I read an article about extended breastfeeding—or even breastfeeding past six months—someone comments that at a certain point, breastfeeding is […]
