Eighteen months ago I looked at my husband and said, “I have an idea. What if I return to the United States with our children and start over while you stay here in New Zealand and do what you feel you have to do?” He asked, “Are you okay with that?” I replied, “I am. […]
“I am so bored with that question,” the woman told my wife, M, who had just asked her how they structured their family life so that she could go back to school with three kids. M wanted to know, What was their model? “We used to talk about that all the time,” the woman added. […]
Last week, in one of the highlights of my year (and okay, life), I was honored to sit down in a small group of New York-based writers over lattes and lemon pancakes, along with Anna Quindlen. She is only one of my all-time favorite writers, and possibly yours too, if you’re a parent who writes. […]
My mother, who grew up in the Midwest in the 1950’s, can do anything with her hands. She can sew, cook, fix plumbing, and diagnose an electrical problem. She can garden, compost, paint, and decorate. She taught me how to drive and she could parallel park the Titanic. Like most women of her generation, she […]
This article could set dreams of shared parenting and gender equality back decades. I applaud the honesty of the writer but wonder how much of what was described really has to do with parenting versus a dysfunctional relationship among two people with many idiosyncrasies. The first thing that struck me is the attempt to plan […]
I applaud the idea behind McKinsey & Company’s new special report, Unlocking the full potential of women in the U.S. economy, which hits on a number of important issues including why more women are not getting into higher management positions; how choices about the quality of the work/life balance affect both men and women; and […]
This article by women in the Financial Post of Canada really annoys me. It completely misses the point that the rules by which people are employed and judged are still mostly designed to the specs of men with wives at home. Women don’t want to necessarily be judged the same as men but they do […]
Now that House Republican men have led the effort to restrict women’s access to birth control, abortion, and essential health services, the question is whether men on the other side of the issue can weigh in as forcefully. After all, if men want sex and have a strong interest in not having to support unwanted […]
So far, 2011 hasn’t been a good year to be a woman in America. Your health is under attack from Congress, your wages are in jeopardy and you’re still not at the power table. Unless, apparently, you’re a mommy blogger. This week’s New York Times Magazine featured yet another profile of Dooce, the super mommy […]
Connie Earl is a family doctor in Santa Rosa, CA, and the mother of a 21 month old bundle of energy and collector of shin bruises. Her son, Jenner, was born during her residency training, and her husband, Russ, left his own teaching career to be the stay-at-home parent. Russ recently wrote about his experience […]
DUH? I can hardly believe that someone did a study of this. Who does not know that women are more likely to get up at night to care for a young child? The interesting fact here is that it does not matter who is primary breadwinner. I wish I understood why findings like this are […]
From MomsRising.org, marriage and family scholar Coontz: “We have to rise up against the idea that balance is a woman’s issue, says Stephanie Coontz, it’s equally a men’s issue. Currently, men are reporting higher levels of work family conflict than women.” Few people know more about the state of the American family’s past and present besides Stephanie Coontz, the […]
