Category Archive

Offbeat Families in the media

Stay-at-home-dads, breadwinner moms, and making it all work

Stay-at-home-dads are slowly making a cultural creep into relevance: we’re seeing more dads who either by choice or circumstance are finding themselves happily keeping up the homestead while their partners work outside the home. Here’s a recent piece from NPR with more.

How the Wall Street Journal took a giant dump on women

You’ve heard about blogging conferences and events, right? Basically, a huge group of bloggers get together in a pre-determined location to do what people do at work conferences — network, hang out, and learn. Or, that’s what I’ve always assumed happens at work conferences, but according to this piece published by the Wall Street Journal, the only thing that happens when you gather a large group of mothers who blog together is a whole bunch of selfies and mini bar raiding.

3 age-appropriate ways to talk to kids and teens about media portrayals of sexual assault

I have this super awesome talent for thinking of the perfect thing to say hours later. A talent which is not in any way useful — unless you have a blog. In which case you can blog about it and get it all out. So here are three possible, age-appropriate, conversations you can have with your children about rape that I came up with.

On figuring out when a kid is old enough to be left alone

I saw my son with a mug of hot cocoa, piled high with marshmallows of course, concentrating furiously over his newest level of Angry Birds. As if in a mental split screen, I also saw him running around the ski lodge, frantically calling for my husband while nearby adults tried to help.

Daddy Issues: The Mixed Blessings of “Dadvertising”

Bitch Magazine recently ran a piece on the blessings and perils of Dadvertising — the often times not-realistic inclusion of Dads in advertisements that are aimed at women and families.

It turns out Finland and South Korea have the best education systems in the world

According to a poll recently conducted by education firm Pearson, students in Finland and South Koren are receiving the best education in the world. Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore round out the top 5, while the United Kingdom is sixth, Canada checks in at 10th, and the United States comes in at 17th.

Will “older parenthood” really upend American society?

Judith Shulevitz of The New Republic recently wrote a piece claiming the trend toward older parenting will “upend American society.” The article itself is long and comprehensive — Shulevitz discusses the rise of developmental disabilities and delays, men’s declining fertility, and genetic mutations — but definitely worth a read if you’re at all interested in genetics and fertility.

5 kid’s books that are probably out of print that you should try to find anyway

OUT-OF-PRINT BOOKS: why do they tease book lovers so? They’re always out there, calling out to you from awesome lists (ahem), just making you wish you could scoop them up and bring them home forever. To me the only thing worse than your everyday out-of-print book is a CHILDREN’s out-of-print book. I’ve experienced what can only be likened to anguish after discovering an incredible children’s book is no longer available.