Other Parents’ Money: It’s Hard to Not Be Judge-y
So, I read this article on Yahoo’s homepage yesterday, about how Nadya Suleman, aka Octomom, spent more than $500 on her hair, while her kids walk around half-dressed and her plumbing doesn’t work (the very fact that I got sucked into the story is why I stopped using my Yahoo email address for anything other than shopping; I go to the page to check my mail and end up reading about how Chelsea Handler hates Angelia Jolie on behalf of her gal-pal Jennifer Aniston, and those are not minutes I get back at the end of my life). In the …Keep Reading
Madonna Needs Me: The Material Girl Wants to be a “Tougher” Mom
So, I heard that Madonna, single mother of four, was on the Today Show the other morning, explaining to Harry Smith that while she believes she’s a pretty strict mother, she obviously can be tougher, given that paparazzi photographs surfaced recently of her 15-year-old daughter, Lourdes, smoking. Madge is not a fan of smoking (good for you, Madge). Here’s the clip from the show. Now, let’s leave aside questions of whether you can lump the famous, wealthy-into-the-stratosphere Madonna in with your average single mother of, well, any number of kids. Certainly, she has plenty of help with her brood. I …Keep Reading
We Are All Mothers: Can Hilary Rosen, Ann Romney, and Everyone Else Stop Stoking the Mommy Wars?
Did you hear the one about the stay-at-home mother who was outraged that a working-outside-the-home mother denigrated her choice? Or the one where the working-outside-the-home mother felt put down by the stay-at-home mother, who implied, again, that she wasn’t “raising her children”? Surely you have. They’ve been sniping at one another for decades. Or have they? The so-called Mommy Wars are aflame once again, making me tired, dispirited, angry and unhappy. But I don’t think that it’s the actual moms on the ground, so to speak, who are at war. Even if we had those feelings, and I’m …Keep Reading
Do You Know Who’s Breaking Up With Your Kids? (Please Tell Me You Don’t. Please.)
I keep reading this stuff, and I keep wondering if (a) it’s all a parody, a great, online reach for irony that either falls short or I just don’t get (but usually I’m pretty good at irony); or (b) if people are making up this stuff so that I have something to write about here. What I am talking about is the compounding evidence of the persistence — the deeply creepy persistence — of out-of-control helicopter parenting. The latest is a story by writer Jennifer Coburn, on Salon, about how she was floored and upset by a romantic …Keep Reading
It’s Book-Launch Day! Mean Moms *Do* Rule!
Me and my book, at a pre-launch sale and signing at my local library So, today is the day I’ve been anticipating since the time, back in January of 2011, when an email from my agent, Neil Salkind, landed in my box with the subject line “Good news.” A month later, contract in hand and a July deadline, I promptly … panicked. And cleaned my office, and dealt with 4,000 other things that were obviously far more important than sitting down to write my first book. Somewhere around the end of February, my month of panicked dithering over, I got …Keep Reading
