True Madness

From Judith Warner’s excellent op-ed in the New York Times today:
“Stupak-Pitts passed not just because a group of Catholic bishops bore down on Democratic lawmakers. It passed because it could. Maybe because our cultural memory is short; because our fantasyland nostalgia for a world of stay-at-home moms and gray flannel dads is too great, because [...]

Will We Gain Health Care but Lose Abortion?

Grrrr! My blood pressure is going sky high. To read the whole story, click on the first phrase below.
WASHINGTON – Catholic bishops have emerged as a formidable force in the health care overhaul fight, using their clout with millions of Catholics and working behind the scenes in Congress to get strong abortion restrictions into the [...]

My Life Among The Doozies

The following is excerpt from an essay that appears in the just-published anthology,  My Baby Rides the Short Bus. I chose to publish it anonymously so as not to name the organization I write about here. It’s a great organization that does good and important work, and I do not mean to imply otherwise, nor [...]

Dept. of Parenting Inc.

A Daddy on the Ball
Steve Monforto, a Phillies fan who’d been trying his entire life to catch a baseball in the stands, finally managed to snag one during Tuesday night’s game against the Washington Nationals. Delirious with joy, he handed the treasure to his 3-year-old daughter Cecilia, who promptly threw it towards the field. Did [...]

Bad Mothers Come Out

Hello Hooray I’m ready!
That’s a line from an old song by Meg Christian, one of the standard bearers of “wimmins music” in the early 70’s, in celebration of lesbians coming out everywhere. I invoke it now to hail the coming out of the bad mother, which–keeping fingers crossed–might at long last be happening .
I base [...]

Another Infant Dies of Forgetfulness

While I was away from my computer last week, another California father forgot his infant was in the back seat of the car and boarded the train for work, leaving the baby to die of suffocation. I tore the story out of the newspaper planning to blog about it.
When I looked at my stats this [...]

Jon and Kate Plus 8

If I’d asked a random sampling of people as recently as a month ago if they’d ever watched Jon & Kate Plus 8, they’d stare at me blankly – but that was BT, Before Tabloids. BT, Jon & Kate Plus 8 was a half-hour weekly reality show on TLC that followed the lives of the [...]

Jewish Mothers

Check it out: A photo of my sister Linda holding a picture of our great-grandmother from many years ago. It’s part of a Jewish Women’s Archives project.

Thoughts on Mothers Day

I’ve been a mother all my adult life. I’ve been a feminist almost as long. I’ve always felt conflicted about Mothers Day. This doesn’t seem to be true of most feminists anymore, if it ever was; it’s my nature to find conflict under every chair and bed – still, I don’t see how [...]

My Baby Rides the Short Bus

Hot off the Press!
The anthology My Baby Rides the Short Bus is ready for pre-orders on Amazon.

This is something new in the world of disability writing–while I confess I haven’t seen it yet, their call for materials asked for stories from parents who feel like they don’t always fit in to disability organizations or support [...]