parenting

Nobody's Baby Now

Kelsey Wallace — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 18:35:51 -0500

The Netherlands may be known throughout the world for their quaint wooden shoes and their progressive drug and prostitution laws, but soon they might be known for something else: forced sterilization of women. You read me right, a draft bill currently before the Dutch parliament will, if passed, force women deemed to be “unfit mothers” to take oral contraception for a period of two years.

Ain't I a Mommy?

Kyla — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Shortly before the birth of my first child nine years ago, while browsing the bookstore for mommy wisdom, I discovered Anne Lamott’s Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year and fell in love with the author and the book. More than any parenting truisms the book might have contained, it was Lamott’s writing style—funny, self-deprecating, and brutally honest—that kept me reading. The big mommy insight I gleaned from Operating Instructions was that I wasn’t quite as neurotic as Anne, so my kid and I would probably be all right.  

Mommy & Me

Kyla — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Mommy blogs are big business these days. A recent Washington Post profile on ur-mommy blogger Heather Armstrong (a.k.a. Dooce) suggested that her site could be raking in up to 40 grand a month. While most mothers who blog are nowhere near as influential (and their sites nowhere near as lucrative), they take pride and satisfaction in the work they do, and the websites they maintain offer valuable community, a sense of connection to other parents, and occasionally a little pocket change.

Mom's the Word

Kyla — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 02:00:00 -0500

At the turn of the millennium, Bridget Jones and the Sex and the City girls heralded a new era of fun, fearless singledom. Chick lit, accompanied by memoirs and anthologies about single womanhood, made it whimsical for an otherwise-capable woman to be vain, proud of her missteps and mistakes, and heartbroken over her inability to find a man. Now, what happens in the next chapter after Ms. Adorably Quirky has found Mr. Right? She manifests new neuroses and fears as she enters the brave new world of motherhood.

Alpha Mom, Omega Journalism

Kyla — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:00:00 -0400

With all the world in strife, one might think the moms of New York would cut each other some slack.... That motherhood, in short, would serve as a safe house where civility and mutual respect rule. Think again. Motherhood, for all its well-documented joys, has become a flash point for envy, resentment, and guilt.

—Ralph Gardner Jr., “Mom vs. Mom,” New York, October 21, 2002

"One might think,” in other words, that mothers could comport themselves in a more seemly manner. Because if we don’t get ourselves under control, we’re going to explode.

Muddy Daughters

Kyla — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:00:00 -0400

The year my oldest daughter turned 4, her little sister was born, and that spring, in desperation, I let her play more or less unsupervised in the neighbors’ yard. When I came up for air from the endless diaper changes and nursing sessions, I’d catch a glimpse of her through the family-room window. Sweaty, dirty, and wild-eyed, she ran behind the neighbors’ pack of crazy, good-natured, and mostly unsupervised boys.

The Nan Show

Kyla — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:00:00 -0400

In this era of social conservatism, the so-called mommy wars, and renewed cultural clashes about gender, work, and “family values,” it’s hardly surprising that nanny narratives are making a comeback. Faster than you can say “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” nannies have popped up in movies (Uptown Girls) and bestselling novels (The Nanny Diaries, I Don’t Know How She Does It), as characters on tv shows (Friends, Kevin Hill, Desperate Housewives), and even as a subgenre of reality tv (Nanny 911, Supernanny).

Five Conversations About One Thing - Joe Kelly

Kyla — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Years ago, Joe Kelly noticed a Maidenform ad reading “Inner beauty only goes so far” on the side of a city bus, and was horrified to imagine one of his young daughters as the subject of it. As one of the founders, with wife Nancy Gruver, of New Moon: The Magazine for Girls and Their Dreams, an award-winning, youth-edited publication, Kelly was well aware that the relationships between girls and their fathers hold an importance that’s too often dismissed or overlooked.