motherhood

Chest hair, growth spurts, voice changes, lust! In this edition of The Man Files, Rebekah Spicuglia writes about the challenges of feminist parenting when boys start coming of age.

My 11-½-year-old son recently announced that he is going through puberty.

My usually obsessive preparations for Oscar’s visits now have a new urgency. I find myself planning discussions I somehow never thought I would need to have. When kids grow up it’s an exciting — but scary — time for any parent. And as a noncustodial, long-distance mom, the challenges and opportunities for me are unique. Over the years, lots of conversations with my son have been held over the phone. Lately, we’ve had some incredible talks about more adult things (you know … coffee, sex ed). more...

My man is really involved in this pregnancy thing, I tell ya. What a modern dude.

So I’ve started to feel fluttering inside me — “quickening,” I’ve learned, is the official term when you start to feel the fetus(es) move. Last night I put Marco’s hand on my belly, to see if he could feel it on the outside. This morning, he turns to me and says “Wow – mine is totally moving around.” Accompanying photo attached.

There’s so much Father’s Day goodness out there today I don’t know where to start.

Former NYTimes blogger Marci Alboher asks “Are Dads the New Moms?” over at her new Yahoo blog, Working the New Economy.

Lisa Belkin conducts a two part interview with The Daddy Shift: How Stay-at-Home Dads, Breadwinning Moms, and Shared ParentingAreTransforming the American Family author and Daddy Dialectic blogger Jeremy Adam Smith

Michelle Goldberg of ABCNews.com tells us What Laid-Off Dads Want

And I offer “Findings from from the Layoff Lab”— a Father’s Day assessment of recession-era dads — over at The Big Money! 

You can bet we’ll touch on many of these themes — and more, and from a fresh and feminist perspective — at the Brooklyn Museum tomorrow when the WomenGirlsLadies talk about “Dads, Dudes, and Doing It.” Event is free!  We’ll be giving books away!  I’ll be wearing straight-up maternity wear!  This is one you won’t want to miss 🙂

PS. Time Out New York just listed us as one of the “Ten Best Father’s Day events” in town!

My dear friend (and fellow member of my writers’ group) Rachel Lehmann-Haupt appeared on Good Morning America this week discussing women’s fertility options without that note of sensational panic with which this topic is usually covered.  Remember the one about how a woman over 35 has a better chance of being in a terrorist attack that getting married and having kids?  No more.

I heart Rachel for writing In Her Own Sweet Time: Unexpected Adventures in Finding Love, Commitment, and Motherhood, for celebrating choice in an age of mixed messages about the “proper” timing of women’s lives, and for honoring the myriad configurations of the modern family these days.  Watch her, right here!

(“Love the purple.  It’s working for you.”)

We’ve heard of the cock block, right? Well, here’s a new one (I just made it up — maybe): the Dad block.

According to a Wall Street Journal article today, “Helping Moms to Let Dads Be Dads,” research shows how kids benefit from having a positive, involved father, but negative “gatekeeping” by mothers can be an obstacle.  Hmm…Must go investigate this.

For another look at modern fatherhood, check out Sharon Jayson’s article in USA Today, “New Daditude”.

Look for more from me on dads at Slate’s The Big Money on Friday! And, of course, ahem, at the Brooklyn Museum on Saturday at 2pm, where I’ll be whooping it up with my fellow WomenGirlsLadies.

(Thanks to CCF and to Rebekah at the WMC–always–for the heads ups)

According to a recent report from National Center for Health Statistics, nearly 40 percent of all babies born in the United States in 2007, up from 34 percent in 2002 and 18 percent in 1980, were born to “unmarried” (their word) women.  And the other week (May 26), Cathy Young asked in a Boston Globe article (“Single Mothers and the Baby Boom“) whether we should be treating single motherhood as “the new normal” or (once again) as a problem that needs to be addressed.  Writes Young:

Today, we have two contradictory trends. Millions of fathers are involved in hands-on child care to an unprecedented degree; millions of children have little or no contact with their fathers. Ironically, the mother-child family unit takes us back to a very pre-feminist idea: family and child-rearing as a feminine sphere. (For both biological and cultural reasons, men are far less likely to parent on their own.) Male alienation is another likely result.…Certainly, many single parents do a wonderful job of raising their children and many married couples do not. But in general, the two-parent family does work best for children, women, and men, and marriage seems the best way to ensure it. No one wants to go back to the day when unwed mothers and their children were outcasts. But restoring a cultural commitment to married parenting is a goal that should unite sensible conservatives, sane fathers’ rights advocates, and reasonable feminists.

Call me unreasonable, but I’m not so sure.

And on that note, be sure to check out Rachel Lehmann-Haupt’s awesome new book, In Her Own Sweet Time: Unexpected Adventures in Finding Love, Commitment, and Motherhood.  Rachel will be talking it up on Good Morning America next week, and keep an eye out for forthcoming reviews in both The New York Times and The Washington Post. This book is generating BUZZ.

(Thanks, of course, to CCF for the heads up on Young’s article.)

I wrote about being preggers with twins!

This month Science Grrl looks at the mother-daughter bond in science & engineering.

First, the only mother – daughter duo to ever win the Nobel Prize was the Curies. Marie Curie won twice: first in 1903 for her discovery of radiation and second in 1911 in chemistry for her work on radium and polonium. Marie’s daughter Irène Joliot-Curie won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1935. Irène had built upon the work that Marie and her father, Pierre, had started. While we can stand in awe of the mother-daughter science-duo and the amazing knowledge they brought to our world, their relationship wasn’t ideal. Marie “was so obsessed with her science and the discovery of radioactivity that she pretty much ignored her two daughters and after her husband’s tragic death retreated into her mind even more.”

I try to temper this view of Marie with the knowledge that she lived in a vastly different time than we do. It was a time when she almost HAD to marry a scientist to gain access to good lab space and equipment. Her partnership with Pierre was born not just from love, but also from need of resources. She was often not chosen for faculty positions because she was a woman or because Pierre already had one. Today universities have spousal hire rules to allow them to hire one “lead” partner for a tenure track position and then hire the “trailing” partner for maybe a tenure track position or adjunct faculty position. A generation ago there were rules at universities that outlawed nepotism or the hiring of both husband and wife into academic faculty positions. While yes, it is nepotism it’s not the same nepotism that we warn against when we think our cousin might be the best person for a job.

Luckily things are far better for moms in science today. It’s far from perfect, but I can only imagine the amazing work the Curie women could have done today!

We also shouldn’t forget to mention that moms are often the #1 advocate for daughters who want to get into science and engineering. My late mom didn’t totally get my aspirations for marine biology, but she supported my decision and that meant the world to me. I found a curriculum online for creating a mother-daughter Science Club. They do recommend you buy their biography books, but I’m sure you can switch out biographies you find online or in your local library. As someone who works with college students, I find that one of the many issues young women have is getting their parents to understand why they want to major in physics rather than biology and go to medical school. The education goes both ways in this issue!

So girls, get your mom involved in your decisions and moms push your daughter to reach for the stars.