Which states support working families the best?
The National Partnership for Women and Families graded states on laws that support families, and overall the United States is not looking good.
Only two states were awarded an A and much of the South got Fs.
“The National Partnership for Women & Families released a new report that assigns grades to states based on their laws protecting new parents, like paid parental leave, paid sick days, and laws to accommodate breastfeeding mothers. While many of these laws benefit both moms and dads, they’re certainly more important for women, since we actually have to give birth and all.”
“Only two states–California and Connecticut—got an “A.” Eighteen states got a big old “F” for doing nothing help new, working parents. This is the first time the group has scored states like this, and the overall grade for the US is pretty grim:”
Click here to see the map and how all the state were rated.
The foundation also released a full report if you are interested in more …
Continue reading Which states support working families the best? »
Bring your laptops, set up a server: Is your kid having a Minecraft party?
My 9-year-old was recently invited to a Minecraft party. We were instructed to bring a laptop and show up for an afternoon of six little boys sitting in a room interacting in computer world they created.
Minecraft is a massively multiplayer game played on a large server where adults and kids can design almost any world they can imagine. The catch is they are on with adults.
So one of the dads at the party set up a separate VPN for the kids to play on together. (Can they just play soccer or swim?) They were on a private server so we didn’t have to worry about weirdos messing with them. However, the software used to set up the server downloaded a bunch of viruses onto our computer!
I knew Minecraft was big in my little guy’s world but I was surprised less than a week later to see a friend post a photo of an almost identical scene at his home. Boys and girls alike gathered with their laptops in a family room playing Minecraft.
I wrote to the friend and asked him how they had it …
Continue reading Bring your laptops, set up a server: Is your kid having a Minecraft party? »
What is the state of motherhood and children in the world?
Save the Children has released it’s 2012 report on the State of the World’s Mother with lots to think about and consider. I am going to hit a few of the highlights from the report but if you have some time poke around. It’s pretty interesting.
Some headlines from the round up report featured in The Huffington Post:
One in four children in the world are still chronically malnourished or stunted
“One in four of the world’s children are chronically malnourished or stunted — with little access to proper nutrients, these children have underdeveloped brains or bodies.”
“According to the report, malnutrition kills as many as 2.6 million children and 100,000 mothers every year. Millions of others are left struggling with the physical and mental impairments of stunting. In some parts of the developing world — like Afghanistan, Burundi and Yemen — the stunting rate is a whopping 60 percent!”
“Of the six key solutions offered by the report to combat malnutrition, one of the cheapest and …
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Attachment Parenting 20 years later: Are we better or worse parents for it? Is it extreme parenting?
Time magazine has devoted its coverage this week to an issue that is near and dear to my heart – attachment parenting.
The issue, which hits newsstands on Friday, is the buzz of the internet and morning talk shows with a provocative cover of a mother nursing her almost 4-year-old child. (Click here to see the cover shot.) There are so many people posting about it on Facebook and so many negative comments – one man on a public Facebook site compared the woman to a cow!! Is it pandering to sell issues or a reasonable cover to discuss the issue of attachment parenting?
It’s not a model – although she looks like one – pretending to nurse a child on the cover. It’s a real mother who is still nursing her son, who turns 4 next month. The mother herself was nursed until she was 6. Check out her interview here.
Enough about the cover photo and back to the issue at hand – …
Is ‘50 Shades of Grey’ too hot for Gwinnett County?
All 15 branches of the Gwinnett County library system will not carry “50 Shades of Grey,” the so-called mom porn book that Saturday Night Live thought would be a great Mother’s Day present. (See the video above.)
“We do not collect erotica at Gwinnett County Public Library. That’s part of our materials management collection policy. So, E L James’ three books in the trilogy fit that description,” said Deborah George, the county library’s director of materials management.
“A copy of “Fifty Shades” sits on George’s cluttered desk. Wedged in it are nearly a dozen yellow sticky notes at various pages of sultriness.”
Multiple states, including Florida and Georgia, have libraries “pulling the racy romance trilogy “Fifty Shades of Grey” from shelves or deciding not to order the bestseller at all, saying it’s too steamy or too poorly written.”
So why does that matter?
“Even in the age of e-books and tablets, banning a book from a public library …
Continue reading Is ‘50 Shades of Grey’ too hot for Gwinnett County? »
Are you a man or a woman?
We were checking out in the grocery store last night. I watched my 5-year-old eying the cashier. I could tell she was thinking hard and I knew exactly why.
The male cashier, who often wears very heavy eyeliner, also had his eyelids covered in Robin’s egg blue eye shadow.
She was quiet for a little bit and then said, “Um excuse me. Are you a boy or a girl?”
I waited a beat to see if the cashier would answer but he didn’t. I’m not sure if he didn’t hear her little voice or just chose to ignore the question.
I said, “Well of course he’s a boy” and moved on with my checkout. He didn’t seem mad as we concluded the transaction.
When we got outside I told Lilina I know you weren’t trying to hurt his feelings but you may have. Try not to comment on people’s appearances and if you’re not sure about something try to ask me quietly.
Have you ever had your child ask a stranger an embarrassing question about their appearance? How did you handle? Are the questions ever fair game?
Why do parents like to brag so much?
It turns out its not just parents that like to brag, but everyone. According to new research, bragging actually stimulates parts of the brain that make you feel pleasure – like food and money.
“About 40% of everyday speech is devoted to telling others about what we feel or think. Now, through five brain imaging and behavioral experiments, Harvard University neuroscientists have uncovered the reason: It feels so rewarding, at the level of brain cells and synapses, that we can’t help sharing our thoughts. …”
” ‘Self-disclosure is extra rewarding,’ said Harvard neuroscientist Diana Tamir, who conducted the experiments with Harvard colleague Jason Mitchell. Their findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ‘People were even willing to forgo money in order to talk about themselves,’ Ms. Tamir said…”
“Despite the financial incentive, people often preferred to talk about themselves and willingly gave up between 17% and …
Parents, children alike mourn death of Maurice Sendak
I wondered which child would have the book "Where The Wild Things Are" in their room. I found it in my 9-year-old's room. When I brought it downstairs this morning the 5-year-old decided to read it to the dog. He looks like he's enjoying it.
There are only a handful of books that parents enjoy reading as much as kids enjoy hearing, and I think Maurice Sendak’s “Where The Wild Thing Are” is one of those books. It’s a nursery-room essential that many parents have on the bookshelf even before the baby is born.
Children and parents can recite the lines of Max’s great adventure across the sea and have burned into their imaginations the dark, yet beautiful images of horned monsters hanging from trees celebrating their wild rumpus. (That’s my favorite picture in the book.)
Parents will have to break the news to their kids tonight that Maurice Sendak died early Tuesday in Danbury, Conn., at age 83. He had recently suffered a stroke. (Here is a link to a list of many of his books …
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Do stepmoms get shafted on Mother’s Day?
Are stepmothers forgotten or ignored on Mother’s Day?
Family therapist and stepmother Judy Osborne says Mother’s Day is “the hardest day of the year.”
“Osborne, a Brookline, Mass.-based marriage and family therapist, started her practice, Stepfamily Associates, in 1980, specializing in stepfamilies. While she said she has a strong relationship with her own stepdaughter — a bond she cultivated slowly over many years — her stepmother clients have shown her time and again how the holiday sparks complicated feelings. “They really dread it,” Osborne said. “Mother’s Day tends to be a lot more charged” than Father’s Day because most women invest in mothering a new partner’s children. “I think it’s hardest on women who don’t have children themselves….”
“What Osborne said she observes affects a growing number of Americans as “nontraditional” family structures become more commonplace. As of 2009, 5.6 million children lived with at least one stepparent,
N.J. tanning mom loved ‘SNL’ parody of her
The New Jersey tanning mom accused of taking her 5-year-old daughter into a tanning booth thought Kristen Wiig’s SNL impression her was very funny.
The Los Angeles Times reports:
“The whole thing was hysterical,” Krentcil told the New York Post on Sunday. “It was well done…”
Krentcil pleaded not guilty last week to a child-endangerment charge that she allegedly placed her 5-year-old daughter in a tanning bed. She acknowledges a penchant for tanning, but says she would never allow her daughter to use a fake bake, and describes the charge and uproar as a witch hunt. (Krentcil says her daughter got sunburned the old fashioned way — by being in the sun for too long.) The media, meanwhile, have become somewhat obsessed with Krentcil and her burnished brown hue.”
“In the “Saturday Night Live” skit, Wiig arrives onstage as Krentcil, followed by a swirl of smoke. At several points, she stops to drink some water because she’s parched from the inside out. The segment wraps up …
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