The Good Mother Myth: redefining motherhood to fit reality
Her kids have always slept through the night, and even if they don’t, she still manages to look like she has had eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. There is always a well-balanced, home-cooked meal on her dinner table. She either happily stays at home or holds down a fulfilling job while still finding time to join the PTA, run the school’s book sale, and makes it to every single soccer game. She is usually white, middle to upper class, heterosexual, and neither too young nor too old. But above all… she’s a myth. And it’s this myth that divides women and pits mothers against each other while fueling the flames of the manufactured “mommy wars.”
We couldn’t find a childbirth class we liked so we made up our own
I knew almost immediately that the class was not what I was expecting it to be. I expected my husband to be a little resistant, but I also expected to feel like I should defend the class. I couldn’t. He said he hated how it all felt like a sales pitch for itself, that it tried to tell us, “Yes, you CAN have an unmedicated birth, but only with US!” and I agreed with him. He hated the format of the class, too — the instructor read us questions straight out of the workbook and we wrote down the answers. Not a good learning style for either of us. I don’t know how much of this is related to the method, and how much was our particular instructor. I know Bradley classes are great for some people. They just weren’t right for us.
The road to acceptance for parents of children with special needs
With the birth of our son we joined the ranks of that undefined, amorphous, limitless group of “special needs parents.” Within the first days of the NICU I knew there would be challenges, but I could not ever imagine the constituency of belonging to such a group. A stat perhaps. A label. A stigma?
How do you respond if someone is blatantly racist in front of your kids?
I in turn wanted to share this [now gone] post from Ask Moxie — the topic is powerful and uncomfortable, and definitely needs to be addressed. A (Chinese-American) mother was out with her two kiddos and confronted with blatantly racist comments directed at her
How can I get comfortable with the idea of being pregnant?
I’m TERRIFIED of getting pregnant. Like, it is literally the worst fear I have of everything I could encounter in the world. There’s going to be this parasitic THING inside my body, screwing everything up: squishing my organs, messing with my hormones, and causing me pain, sickness, and constant discomfort.
The right answer to “how is the baby?” and why we have kids in the first place
If you don’t have kids but plan to have them some day, remember that. Chances are you’ll need to change the way you hear that question soon, so that when you have a baby you don’t start answering the way things are really going. Because, if you were being honest, you would probably say: “Baby is fine, except…” (don’t worry, there are LOTS of things you can fill in here. I’ll just add one.)
My unplanned emergency C-section renegotiated my parenting ideals
Before I had my baby, I had a lot of plans and expectations based around an unmedicated birth and high hopes for a water birth. This didn’t seem unfeasible as the pregnancy had been entirely uncomplicated. I hadn’t bought a pram, preferring a Kari Me sling. I was planning to wear the baby all the time, breastfeed all the time (after all it’s free and if you’re on limited finances that’s pretty important) and was overall looking forward to it.
From ’80s fridge to a brightly coloured message station
Homie Cheryl Hellcat is just killing it with craftiness — Lord of the Rings table, driftwood key rack, and bird feeders and baths made from plates. Now let’s all oggle her fridge make-over…