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Your Happy Baby

I don’t have a baby anymore. Little Man is resolutely beyond the stages of babyhood, so I really don’t pay much attention to parenting books about infants as much anymore. Recently, I found a book that I couldn’t resist picking up....

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Please, Please Tell Me This is Just a Phase

If only babies came with manuals and toddlers came with warranties.

That terrible whining noise that my two-year-old is making should definitely be enough to send him back to the manufacturer, if one existed. I take comfort in knowing that this is just a phase. That’s what people keep telling me, at least.

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The Mother (and Father)hood Manifesto

So, there’s an election coming up this November.

A big one.

And whether you are blue, red, or purple, the fact of the matter is that as parents, we face real challenges today. From health care, to family leave policies, to problems with our schools, American parents face real difficulties.

I don’t want to use this brief column to advocate any specific party or candidate, nor even to advocate for one policy over another. But I do want to use this small space to advocate one thing–

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Nation of Wimps

I once had a student turn in an essay that I could tell wasn’t his. I brought formal plagiarism charges against him, but they were dropped… because his mother wrote a note.

The entire incident was frustrating, but I also had a sense that it was very, very sad. Here was a young man, away from home for the first time, who made a mistake. Rather than learning something from the whole incident, rather than becoming a better student and a more responsible person, this particular young man learned nothing.

I’d heard of helicopter parents. They’re a pop culture phenomenon, but they’re also a very real problem.

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The "Other" Mothers....

They’re out there. Those “other” mothers. The ones with the perfectly pressed locks, bangs never out of place who just seem so, well, together. They are the moms that I imagine must have been those lucky creatures who glowed during pregnancy, who pushed twice and gave birth to a baby with a perfectly shaped head. Their children never had sleep issues, never had tantrums, never were picky eaters. They look perfect by the pool in their string bikinis while little Emma floats nearby. They know what’s up. They know somehow, some way how to make being a mom seem natural. No, they make being a mom look easy.

And they regularly make me want to throw a shoe at them.

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If Only the Stork Came with a Personal Shopper

I remember it like it was yesterday–parking in the special “mom-to-be” section, walking through the automatic doors, and encountering a space that seemed the size of a Target which held nothing but baby gear. It was overwhelming. Dizzying that there could be that much stuff to need, that much stuff to buy for a being whose biggest accomplishment to date was being able to provide sure and direct kicks directly to my bladder.

But overwhelmed or not, we marched on, scanner gun in hand, clutching our own list and the list that Babies “R” Us so handily provided for us. We had brought along my parents, and standing in front of the two-story high wall of bottling accessories, my dad asked, “you got enough nipples?” It was funny then, and it’s still funny to me now....

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Rockabye

I’ve never smoked a cigarette or gotten a tattoo. I don’t even have my ears pierced. My closet sports no designer clothing or shoes. I’ve never even lived close enough to a major city to be in the know about the hottest nightspots or newest underground bands. My pregnancy, like most other things in my life, was thoroughly and meticulously planned--mapped out and carefully rationalized. On the surface, my life and my experience with motherhood has very little in common with that of Rebecca Woolf...

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