Denise Schipani
No! I Don’t WANT to Comment on the Now-Infamous Time Magazine Breastfeeding Cover Story! (But, Okay, I Will)
Note: I will answer the questions posed in the comments section of last week’s Ask the Mean Mom post, but I’ve also been asked by a subscriber and some others what my “take” is on the by-now-infamous Time Magazine cover, here: I didn’t want to comment, really. Certainly, I didn’t want to comment just on the cover; I wanted to read the article, which I finally did, yesterday. But first, the cover: I think we can all agree that it’s blatant sensationalism. Everyone sees what they want to see. Some see a proud mother, unashamed to be nursing a four-year-old …Keep Reading
A Couple of Updates, and A New Feature: Ask the Mean Mom!
It’s been a busy month. In case you have not noticed, my book was released last month (no! what’s that you say!?), and since then I’ve been consumed, for at least part of each day physically, and all of each day mentally and emotionally, investing in its (hopeful) success. It kicked off with the first-annual Local Author Fair at my library, which was a great success and a lot of fun. I’ve been working the publicity front, with some decent success (though I’m hoping this is just the tip of the iceberg) with guest blog posts, like this one on …Keep Reading
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
What Would the Easter Bunny Say? Helicopter Parents Ruin Colorado Easter Egg Hunt
I’m laughing over this story, which I read yesterday in the Toronto Star online, about the cancellation of the annual Easter Egg Hunt, sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and held in Colorado Springs, thanks to past instances of overzealous parents hopping (ha!) the rope lines to “help” their children get the most eggs. That’s not funny, obviously. I’m laughing because if I didn’t, I’d cry. I’d cry because I could just imagine it: A small clutch of parents who arrived early in order to be first at the entrance, pressing their kids against the barriers, whispering in their …Keep Reading
Uncomfortable? That’s Life, Kiddo. (Or, Why I’m Not Raising Professional Victims)
I don’t mind if my kids are uncomfortable. No, seriously. Of course, when they were babies and had dirty diapers and empty bellies, I dispatched those discomforts (those are the easy ones). But these days? If my sons find themselves in situations where they have to suck it up, wait, make do, play second fiddle, or just plain-old not get what they want when they want it (or at all), I sit back and watch rather than scramble to fix it. And that even goes for times the situation is pretty obviously unfair. (Because who promised fair? Not me, that’s …Keep Reading
Bringing Up Bebe Part II: French Moms Don’t Play in the Guilt Olympics. (Me, Either)
If the Olympic Games had been founded by modern American moms (rather than ancient Greeks with chariots and time to kill), the prize for Most Abject Guilt would be a coveted gold. I refuse to compete. I like to say I was born without the guilt gene, but after reading Pamela Druckerman’s Bringing Up Bebe, I’m thinking I was born in the wrong country. Frenchwomen, Druckerman reports, don’t express guilt over their choices to work or not, nurse or not or – this resonated most with me – over wanting to remain fully themselves after becoming mothers. It’s not that …Keep Reading
