Beware the White Van! How Do You Balance Safety with Fear?
Kids! Beware the white panel van! I kid, sort of, but we got one of those robo calls from the school district superintendent last night informing us about two girls being approached or called out to, while they were walking home from school, by someone in a white van. (I’m sure a letter is coming, too, probably two copies of it in my boys’ separate homework folders, plus maybe another copy in the mail for good measure.) We get a lot of these, all written or spoken with great gravity and engineered, in my opinion, to stoke the maximum of …Keep Reading
When Fear Goes Viral: Panic should never replace instinct
In my last post, I answered a question from a reader who wanted to know how we could, as parents, quit being an overprotective helicopter parent (which I espouse! Land that ‘copter, please!), but still keep our kids safe from ever-present danger. My answer was that danger may be ever-present, but not the kind of danger we’re all so afraid of. Life, as in being human, is and always has been dangerous. You could get eaten by a saber toothed tiger, right? Or slip in the bathtub. But there’s close to zero chance that your child is going to be …Keep Reading
Ask the Mean Mom: You Asked, I’m Answering
Questions and answers. Who doesn’t love ‘em? Just the other day, when the four of us were driving home from a family event, our boys slipped into fierce, rapid-fire question mode. My husband found it exhausting (though certainly better than breaking up fights!), but I like it, even when it’s tiring: I like answering their questions. Or anyone’s questions, really. (Speaking of which, if you have a moment, read this Q&A I did with my friend Meagan Francis on her wonderful blog, The Happiest Mom. I love that we can find the large overlap between Happy Mom and Mean Mom). …Keep Reading
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
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
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
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
French Parents are Not Superior. But They Do Have an Awful Lot Right. (“Bringing Up Bebe” Book Review, Part I)
I remember being told that making assumptions got you into trouble. (Remember that old saw: When you ASSUME you make an ASS out of YOU and ME, which is one of those plays on words that never felt terribly clever to me.) When I became a parent, though, I made a whole mess of assumptions. I assumed my babies would eat and sleep well; I assumed they’d be fine with the caregivers I chose for them; I assumed that they (probably) wouldn’t stick their fingers into electrical sockets and would eventually be able to eat a whole banana without having …Keep Reading
Le Mean Maman: Are French Moms Meaner (And Are Their Kids Better Behaved as a Result)?
Mon dieu! Some news (well, okay, not news so much as opinion) from across the pond: French moms are not just thinner than their American counterparts; they’re meaner, too. (And Amy Chua thought she had cornered the market on tough.) A friend just sent me this link, to a 2007 article in an U.K. paper (the Telegraph) by an American journalist married to a Frenchman. Janine diGiovanni may (inexplicably, to my ears) describe non-French mamans as “Anglo-Saxon” mothers (who, me, Anglo-Saxon? My people are from Sicily!), but she makes excellent observations (some of them uncomfortable to modern American parents’ …Keep Reading
Holiday TV Special Redux: Why “Rudolph” Would Never Be Made Today
Just this morning, I was reading an excellent op-ed in Newsday, the Long Island, New York newspaper. A writer friend of mine, Claudia Copquin, wrote about Rudolph. I’ll put the link here for those of you who may be Newsday subscribers or Optimum Online customers (which you have to be, dang it, to get access), but for the rest of you, here’s the gist: A professor at a local university came out with a self-published e-book called “No More Bullies at the North Pole,” contending that all the adult figures in the 1964 holiday classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer are …Keep Reading
