The following was an exchange (question and my response) on a parenting mailing list I am on that I am pretty proud of and would love some feedback from other moms who have been there. I paraphrased the question to get to the meat of it.

Dear XXX community:

My husband and I are going on a family cruise with some very critical relatives. They seem to ( Read more... )

"Test Tube Orphan"?I really did mean not to click on this story when I saw the tagline, but somehow I did. Just how common/widespread commercial surrogacy becoming, I wonder ( Read more... )

I've finished reading this (a book about preschool children and gender) for the first time - I read it very quickly, so have not digested it thoroughly. I've also read Marianne Alireza's autobiography about being an American woman marrying into a Saudi Arabian family in 1945, "At The Drop Of A Veil," and I've started Natasha Walter's "The New ( Read more... )

'Opting In' to Progressive Parenthood: A Personal Challenge to Modern Mothers ( Read more... )

We recorded an episode of Bob the Builder during the Week We Let the TV Raise the Baby*. I resisted showing it to Lillian, a LOT. For DAYS. Because it is a boy show ( Read more... )

I really hate the mothers-against-mothers stuff. I have particular aspects of it I particularly hate, chief among them the idea that mothers who have other jobs / do not have other jobs are not proper mothers / not proper workers. I use the phrases "part-time mother" and "doesn't work" when I'm talking about this ( Read more... )

An article from a couple of days ago: The baby blues: Study finds a third of mothers slip down career ladder.

And the original paper that the article is about.

I don't have a vast deal to say on this right now, but I would like to hear what other people have on the conflation of housework and childcare into one job called "housewife." It's not what I do, and it's not a job title I allow people to use for me (I'd rather be listed as unemployed than as a housewife, I can't imagine a more loaded word), but ( Read more... )

This is probably going to sound very blamey. That's because I'm talking about my mother in law (since my father in law had NO INPUT WHATSOEVER because that's why god gave us gender roles) but not because I think she was operating as the sole blamable wossname in a vacuum ( Read more... )

Hello, motherists. I've just posted a long and scrappy rant about the frustrations of shopping for baby clothes and small-child toys. Some of you might be interested.