Parents are writing letters to toy companies asking them to stop targeting ads at kids. According to the AP story (link here to the USA today version),
The letter-writing initiative was launched by the Boston-based Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, which says roughly 1,400 of its members and supporters have contacted 24 leading toy […]
The other day on The View that brilliant analyst of social relations, Joy Behar, said that a lot of homeschooled kids are demented. The gaggle had been talking about the Obama girls going to the pricey Sidwell Friends school, and Joy said wouldn’t it be swell (she didn’t use the word swell, of course) […]
Bookmarking stupid New York Times and Santa Fe New Mexican editorials that make me scream and want to write blog posts about, then not having the time to do it.
Trying to organize my desk and all my homeschooling papers. Organization shall set you free – except when you are a truly sick OCD sufferer […]
Before I had children, I had no concept of the power of a mother’s love. Truly, it can overcome almost anything. The example I am about to give is mundane, and many of you will laugh at me, but I’ll risk your ridicule and relate it anyway.
I am not afraid of snakes, or […]
I almost quit blogging last week. So often I feel pressed for time, unable to find the time to write the kind of thoughtful posts I’d like to write, and unwilling to write too many of the sort of stream-of-consciousness quickie posts I can dash off between diaper changes and dinner prep. Other […]
When I told people that Portia was sleeping through the night, I had a feeling I might jinx it. Sure enough, she woke up hungry at 3:30 this morning. If that had been the only nocturnal disturbance, it would have been okay, since she’s only three months old, and infants are expected to […]
According to my blog’s stat program, the term “Caribou Barbie” is gaining on (but is still well behind) “I hate Kate Gosselin” and “Kate Gosselin shrew” in the keyword search sweepstakes, and poor old Jerome Block, Jr., is now a sad and distant third, eclipsed by two women other women love to hate. And […]
Finally, a non-political post. What finally dragged my attention away from the most riveting presidential race in decades? Those little bugs that swarm around overripe bananas, that’s what. I don’t know what you call them. I’m sure a web search for “those little bugs that swarm around overripe bananas” would tell me, but I’m trying really […]
This comment was posted to my most recent blog entry:
Reading the exchange you and Slackonomics author Lisa Chamberlain had about the challenges of parenting (and noting that you haven’t had much time to blog because of the needs of your own children), I’m curious what you think about Gov. Palin campaigning for - and possibly […]
When I mentioned the other day that I wouldn’t want to see McCain choose Condoleeza Rice as as his running mate, it was because she says the kind of thing she’s been saying a lot since the Russians invaded Georgia. My initial reaction to all the the Secretary of State’s “Russia must withdraw from […]
I was absolutely blown away by the number of hits this blog got after I posted my “Lazy shrew and breeder pig” post. I had no idea how many people Google the Duggars and the Gosselins. Especially the Gosselins. Especially Kate Gosselin, whom people (mainly women, from what I can see) apparently […]
Imperfect Parenting has named my humble little Moralia their parenting blog of the week. Toward the end of August the site will having voting for blogger of the month, and I’ll be in the running. Stay tuned.
Not one post for over a week, then I finally resurface for a catty two-paragraph fluff piece about a sex scandal. Where is the substantive piece I wanted to write? Maybe something about the always entertaining Jerome Block, whose opponent Rick Lass I met last week. Lass seems like a nice fellow, […]
Last year there was a discussion on an e-mail list I’m on about the Duggars, the notoriously large family of 17 (soon to be 18) children. There were comments about how that was too many children to give individual attention to each, a snide comment or two about Mrs. Duggar’s hairstyle, and the general […]
Since I’ve started blogging about parenting issues, my friends have started sending me URL links to whatever loony parent stories they read online.
Martha Brozyna, the nation’s foremost expert on sexual deviancy in medieval Poland, one of probably about twelve people in America besides me and Victor Davis Hanson who have PhDs in history and are […]
British mother of 13 (soon to be 14) Joanne Watson was featured in a Daily Mail story the other day. One photo in the story shows the 37-year-old blonde Mrs. Watson with her blond husband and baker’s dozen of mostly blond and beautiful children. The other photo is a full-length shot of an […]
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Posted 23 July 2008
† Brigette Russell
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Tagged: beauty, Demi Moore, Earth Mother, Joanne Watson, large family, maternal sexuality, mother goddess, motherhood, pregnancy, Venus of Willendorf, weight loss
As I was reading Maureen Dowd’s cleverly titled column “Ich Bin Ein Jet-Setter” about Barack Obama’s world tour, the phrase “he will have to successfully complete a number of tasks” jumped out at me: yet another split infinitive appearing in what is arguably our nation’s most illustrious newspaper, The New York Times, written by […]
For years I’ve been reading about how there are too many cesarean deliveries performed in this country, that vain celebrity moms choose c-sections to have smaller babies and preserve their figures or suit the convenience of their schedules or avoid some of the potential after-effects of vaginal birth. We hear repeatedly from natural childbirth […]
Portia Louise Russell and her exhausted but deliriously happy mother came home from the hospital on Sunday, and it’s taken this long for me to get around to writing about it.
First, the name. Portia is the name we had in mind when I wrote my earlier post about baby names, but I was keeping […]
In her new TimesOnline piece, “Why you shouldn’t let your kids rule your life,” Katie Roiphe trots out the familiar feminist canard about how she found her brain atrophying when she took a year-long maternity leave. She writes:
A lot of my friends who don’t work — and it was the same for me when […]
Melanie of My World, My Words, writes in a post called “Too Much Lazy Parenting” about a recent trip to a restaurant where she saw not one but two families who had brought portable DVD players to entertain their children so the adults could enjoy their meal in peace and pretty much ignore the kids. […]
Newsweek poses the question: Having Kids Makes You Happy: True or False? The article cites several studies that find parents are in fact less happy than the childless (or childfree, as many prefer to call themselves), and that they have less happy marriages as well. The author, Lorraine Ali, is herself a […]
One of my husband’s friends gave him a hard time because I “slammed” him in my blog the other day. I was dumbfounded, since the post in question didn’t mention my husband, and my comment was a general one about how mothers tend to feel guilty for frittering away time on the internet instead […]
Bitch PhD is a blog I’ve just discovered. I’d seen the name on blogrolls before, but hadn’t gotten around to checking it out until recently. As in-your-face as the blog name itself is the photo on the home page, which shows a cute little girl making an angry face and giving the finger […]
Is there a mother who doesn’t feel like this is her once in a while? When we yell at the kids over something stupid and feel like a complete jackass afterward. When we sit like a zombie surfing the internet instead of reading to our children like we promised ourselves (or God forbid […]
Sometimes I think my husband loves this little beast more than he does me or any of our daughters. Why? Because she loves him with a selfless devotion that would be sickening in a human being, and obeys him instantly and without fail. The dog is indifferent to me, and obeys me […]
Not long ago I listened to a segment of Dennis Prager’s radio show about whether parents should introduce their children to drinking alcohol in moderation. The show originally aired on March 27, but I only recently heard it. (Now that I live in Santa Fe, I can’t get Prager live on the radio as I […]
With the Russian birthrate far below the level needed to sustain the country’s population, the central Russian province of Ulyanovsk celebrated Russian Independence Day on June 12 by giving TVs, refrigerators, jeeps and even new houses as prizes for women giving birth on that day. Nine months earlier, Sept. 12, had been declared the […]
Remember that bit from SNL back when the show was still funny instead of filthy and Franken was still a comedian instead of the Democratic nominee for a U.S. Senate seat? Well, it reminds me of parenthood, because children are every bit as narcissistic – or more, if possible – than Franken’s character in […]
Don’t read this if you don’t want to be sickened by man’s inhumanity to man. And don’t watch the video if you don’t want to cry.
Bookworm writes about an experience that illustrates a growing problem with child-rearing. Her children were invited to an award ceremony at their school to honor their good qualities. Her children did not want to go, saying that everyone was getting an award and the awards didn’t mean anything. She tells an engaging […]
What do you mean you don’t HAVE a nursery?????
This was my dumbfounded response when I toured the maternity ward (the only one in Santa Fe) where I’ll be delivering next month. The hospital where I had my other three children had one, and since all my deliveries were c-section and I wasn’t […]
If Romeo and Juliet had been called Ethelbald and Hildegarde, would their names be synonymous with romance?
Names have been on my mind lately, since we have to choose one for our fourth daughter next month. Our first and third daughters have traditional, mainstream names, Elizabeth and Theresa, and we didn’t catch any flak about […]
That’s how Warren Dunn signs himself in a “My View” piece in the Santa Fe New Mexican entitled “Fewer children will leave fewer carbon footprints.” Worried about deforestation, global warming and “the possible demise of our species,” Dunn calls for free vasectomies and tubal ligations, and replacing tax deductions for having children with rewards […]
This is the title of a brief article in yesterday’s Parade section of the Santa Fe New Mexican. I missed it, since I didn’t get past the front page, local news and opinion sections. My conscientious friend and fellow homeschooling mom Melissa alerted our local homeschooling e-mail list.
There was nothing really new in […]
This story appeared yesterday on my friend Patrick O’Hannigan’s blog, The Paragraph Farmer, but my friend Martha Brozyna, medieval historian and author of a recently published book on stock trading, had already sent me the link to the Daily Mail article.
In it, 38-year-old Rebecca Walker blames her famous mother, author Alice Walker, for very nearly […]
On Mother’s Day, a story called “Ageless Motherhood” dominated the front page of my local paper, the Santa Fe New Mexican. The cover photo featured Joyce Bond, 53, with two of the triplets she recently bore. Births to women over 40 are “soaring” according to the article, with the birth rate to women […]