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A Wisconsin mom says she was booted from her position as a Girl Scout troop leader because she and her husband run a goth website. Is this a case of Middle American moral panic, or is there more to this story? More »
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Kids usually don't think before they steal, but you can bet 13-year-old Natia Wade never thought she'd end up standing on the corner of a busy intersection holding up a hand-written sign that read, "I steal from my family." Wade, who lives in Memphis, ended up there after she racked up a record of taking things—mostly small, inconsequential things—without asking her mom. Apparently the final straw was when she took her mom's debit card and used it to reactivate her cell phone, which he mom had taken away. More »
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We talk a lot about the discrimination women face in science and engineering, but a new study says there may be a bigger reason why women don't rise higher in these fields: motherhood. Right now, science and engineering departments don't know how to deal with profs, postdocs, and grad students who might also want to be moms. But there are some simple changes they could make that would help a lot. More »
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Hey, Kiddo: Now that you're almost 2 years old, it's high time we started a dialog about that mystical beast called love. I guess by the time you're old enough to date or really care about romantic love, people will be able to swap out their vaginas for the weekend if they don't like them, or find out who they should marry from an app that sniffs pheromones. But none of these amazing technological advances will ever stop people from pulling the same old steaming pile of chocolate when it comes to sailing the choppy seas of love. More »
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You know how working moms are always taking time off because their kid is sick or there's a school play or something, and that's why they're just unreliable workers who can't be trusted with real responsibility. Yeah, that's bullshit — and there's data to prove it. More »
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In news that will most likely desiccate the last little puddle of faith you have in human rationality, some enthusiastically religious parents in Queens are asking a judge to nullify a law that would keep their children out of school if classmates are carrying communicable diseases such as measles, mumps, and chicken pox (which, to my daily mounting terror, I've never contracted). Lawsuits filed last week in Queens Supreme Court by parents Fabian Mendoza-Vaca and Nicole Phillips have been transferred to Brooklyn Federal Court and could be resolved as early as next week in an emergency hearing where some secular-minded necromancer will hopefully raise Clarence Darrow from his grave so he can give everyone involved a proper finger-wagging. More »
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When this father discovered his daughter's bratty rant about him on Facebook, he decided to make a rant of his own. The only difference is his (which he thankfully decided to videotape) ended with him shooting a round of hollow-point bullets into his entitled kid's laptop to ensure that she doesn't do it again. Texas forever. More »
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A new study shows that for low-income couples, moving into separate homes doesn't necessarily mean a breakup. And staying together — even if they don't live together — can be good for the kids. More »
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A North Carolina dad lost his job for doing coke, and he's currently awaiting trial for dealing. But he still has partial custody of his kids — and because she won't let them go to his house, his ex-wife could go to jail. More »
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One of the more horrifying things I read while extremely pregnant was not the description of the abdominal muscle wall separation that can happen at the end of your gestation, but rather a Facebook message from a high school friend describing a typical day in her life with a 6-month-old. More »
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A 46-year-old Staten Island mother has filed suit against the city of New York, claiming that the emotional and physical trauma of being forcibly separated for her children by the Administration for Children's Services entitles her to $900 trillion. If she wins, Newt Gingrich's Moon Colony Dreams will be all but shattered. More »
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Spanking has long been part of the American parenting repertoire, and it's been the source of plenty of controversy. Any kid that's ever been spanked knows it's scary as hell, and, for that reason alone, plenty of parents refuse to do it. But there are still many that swear by it as an effective disciplinary tool. Swear though they may, a new review of twenty years worth of research on the effects of spanking kids has found conclusively that it doesn't work—and worse, it can actually do long-term damage to kids. More »
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A new book that's been making the rounds on the parenting scene, Bringing Up Bebe by Pamela Druckerman, would like you to know that your American child rearing techniques are creating an army of self-entitled little monsters hellbent on eating their way through your home and probably your soul. Well, what did you — with your NASCAR t-shirt and that slice of Kraft cheese hanging out of your mouth — expect? That, by comforting your crying infant, you weren't spoiling an entire generation? Ha, typical American arrogance. What you should be doing is raising your kids the French way by feeding them solely Gauloises cigarettes and unfiltered wine. More »
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We hear a lot about ways moms can fuck up their kids for good, but here's some nice news for once: moms who support their kids can help them grow bigger brains. More »
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You can breathe a sigh of relief: Your cesarean won't make your child obese, as suggested by a controversial Brazilian study last year, the theory of which is part of the "hygiene hypothesis" which claims a link between a lack of exposure to certain bacteria in the birth canal during vaginal delivery to subsequent problems with the immune system and obesity. No, you will make your child obese. Because you're fat and poor. This new information comes to us via another study that states that the previous study didn't take other factors into account, like "family income, birth weight, schooling and the mother's weight, height, age and smoking habits." More »
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Apparently divorced dads are all pedophiles. At least, that's the assumption a parenting expert makes — and it may point to bigger problems. More »
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Recently I was sitting on the toilet peeing while my nearly 2-year old daughter was sitting in my lap playing with her stuffed koala bear, and I thought to myself, how did we get here? It could be worse, I suppose — we could be doing this as a performance art piece at a pop-up gallery in downtown L.A. More »
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What happens when you take one delusional nostalgia-peddler in a twinset, one accomplished young female journalist, and one public radio host, mix in a few splashes of princess culture, a liberal application of slut-shaming, a twist of incoherence, and a backhanded, condescending ad hominem attack? You get a matronly lecture from the fuzzy mind of Caitlin Flanagan, who warns radio listeners that unless they're careful parents, their daughters might end up like Salon writer Irin Carmon. More »
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Advice abounds for new parents, and I got heaps of it like anyone, but in my experience, it was so vague and foreshadowy as to be kinda useless. Taken together, it sounded like some comically exasperated Greek chorus dying to be ignored: Behold thoust shall not sleep again/Thine dreams the stuff of air/To think thoust thoughts of yesteryear/Shall lead but to despair. Huh? You mean my life is, like, never going to be the same again?   More »
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Another Chinese-American mom — this one also a psych researcher — has come forward to challenge Amy Chua's famous/infamous suggestion that "tiger" parenting is the best way to raise successful kids. Shockingly, she says moderation is actually best. More »
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The other morning after I finished nursing my 21-month-old baby, she sat up and smiled, looked me in the eye and said in a tiny little happy baby voice: "Tink you, mommy." Awww, your welcome, sweets — wait, what did you say?! Uh, is this weird? More »
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Jay-Z's new track, "Glory," is notable not just because it celebrates his newborn daughter with wife Beyoncé, but also because it makes reference to a previous miscarriage — and it's incredibly rare that a male celebrity does that. As music critic Ann Powers questioned yesterday on Twitter: "Has a rapper ever spoken about miscarriage before?" Good question. More »
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Have you ever wanted a kid to be quiet and stop drawing on the drywall with their own poop? Well, according to one psychologist, you need to knock that off this instant, because your prejudice against children— or "childism"— is ruining everything. More »
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We haven't seen much of Katherine Heigl lately, but later this month One For The Money — her flick based on the Janet Evanovich bestseller — hits theaters. So she's doing some publicity, including being interviewed by Elle and writing a blog for iVillage. And she's being uncharacteristically (for Hollywood, anyway) honest. Blunt, even. More »
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I wouldn't say I was the most prepared sandwich in the deli when it comes to having a kid, but these raw vegetables did what it took to get the soup cookin'. Er, cringe-inducing analogies for parental readiness aside, I read like a mofo while I was pregnant, talked to people with kids, and generally put my reporting skills to work to get my shit together to have a baby. More »
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Ryan has what some folks call an "all-American" look: Blond hair, blue eyes, creamy skin. He also has Down Syndrome. And he's in a Target ad this week — after appearing in a Nordstrom catalog last year. More »
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Screaming at your toddler for finger-painting your computer won't deter future acts of deviant self-expression, but it will probably help her tell a more convincing lie in ten years about the missing vodka in your liquor cabinet. More »
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Parents might prefer that their teenagers just accept what they say without argument. But a new study reveals — perhaps unsurprisingly — that teens who push back against their moms' words tend to be better at resisting peer pressure as well. More »
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Did you know you're happier doing less work and spending more time with your family, but not all of your time, because you're still a person with a brain and probably need the satisfaction of using it away from those people in a culturally validated way? Congratulations, you just indicated that you already intuitively understand the results of a new study that says moms who work are happier than moms who don't work, and that moms who only work part-time are the happiest of them all. Meanwhile, fathers are sometimes very good at coming home around 5 p.m. but are tired and would like a driiiiink. More »
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When someone you know has a miscarriage, it can be hard to know what to say. We have some tips for responding sensitively in this difficult situation. More »
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Planning your particular labor experience is a lot like communicating what kind of haircut you want to your stylist. You start out with this really great image of something fantastic and awesome (i.e., not "the Rachel"), and then you end up with something that, in the end, seems very much in the spirit of said awesomeness, but, you know, on your particular type of human head. More »
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A new study offers good news for those seeking to balance work and family: moms who work outside the home are healthier and less depressed than moms who don't. More »
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Fox News anchor and professional mom Megyn Kelly has made a name for herself not only for demonstrating how alternate spellings of common first names are terrible, but also for breaking step with her conservative pundit colleagues to defend paid maternity leave and upper mobility for people born into the middle class. You know, stuff Megyn Kelly did. What a brave, brave lady. More »
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Did you know that Japanese babies "never cry" on planes because Japanese parents "never yell"? That "before the baby boomers," any self-respecting parent wouldn't DREAM of taking their kids with them on a plane? That first and business class should only be for people who are held to a "higher standard" of behavior? That a little Benadryl never hurt anyone? That if you have kids you should live right next door to your parents forever and therefore never need to fly? That there's "nothing fun for kids to do in Paris" anyway? More »
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A team of scientists have spent the last several months studying the moments in a parent's life that seem like they last an eternity— children's temper tantrums. And they found there's a lot more to the angry screaming and flailing and hysterical "I HATE YOU"s than meets the eye. More »
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A new study may identify a major source of maternal stress: moms multitask more than dads do, and they also hate it more. More »
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The answer to this one may be obvious — no matter how liberal a parent may be, I think everyone can agree that it's too soon if the kid doesn't have any pubes — but no! Manicures for babies. Eyebrow waxes for 11-year-olds. 6-year-olds getting perms. Bikini waxes for 12-year-olds. These things are apparently happening all over America, according to the piece aired on Good Morning America today. They suggest that young girls are heading into salons at all ages to get beauty treatments done — at the encouragement of their mothers — and I can't even begin to wrap my head around it. Sure, I was one of those late bloomers who waxed the furry caterpillars off of her face for the first time at the junior prom (and that was very overdue — trust me) and in hindsight, even that feels a little too young. But this was a decade ago, and obviously times, they are a'changing. So I ask, how young is too young? Discuss. More »
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Saturday Night Live newcomer Vanessa Bayer stars in the latest episode of I Wanna Have Your Baby, a web series about a woman who is very enthusiastic about being a surrogate mother. The weight gain? She likes "getting fat." Morning sickness? She'd be throwing up anyway. The only issue left for this union is the inability for Vanessa's ghost husband to produce any ghost sperm. More »
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Looks like parents nowadays aren't afraid to get baby name inspiration from a source that literally sucks— books about vampires. More »
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Crisis alert: America's experiencing a wave of mom-on-mom judgment. Moms can't walk down the street without getting eyeballed and evaluated by other mothers, and they can't resist doing the same in turn to other moms they encounter. It's gotten so bad that soon we may be able to replace the word "judge" with the word "mom," used in this case as a verb meaning "to judge." Who's going to put a stop to it? More »
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