Sometimes being a nanny is a sweet gig. I spent my summers during grad school hanging out on a posh resort island with a couple of adorable kids and their sweet mom, writing my thesis in the evenings and playing with the girls while Mama got in some tennis time with her sisters.

Sometimes, being a nanny isn’t so great. Employers have been known to seize immigrant nannies passports to prevent them from leaving, to require 24/7 on-call status, to pay as little as $2 an hour for what I can assure you is grueling work, and to provide living quarters most of us wouldn’t expect our pets to put up with.

And for the most part, they can get away with it. A proposed New York law would change that. Continue reading »

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Jamie Oliver’s so-called Food Revolution has gone too far in Britain where a nursery school employee confiscated a student’s cheese sandwich because it — gasp! — didn’t have any lettuce or tomato on it.

Not surprisingly, the two-year-old student broke down in tears. Wouldn’t you?

The town council supported the teacher’s decision saying that a plain cheese sandwich was not on the list of recommended healthy food for children.

I’m all for eating healthfully, but this move strikes me as just a little bit over-the-line.  If I banned cheese sandwiches in our house, my 8-year-old daughter would pretty much go hungry. Continue reading »

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• Big Love‘s Amanda Seyfried says she doesn’t like the way Hollywood handles the very real and very tough issue of miscarriage, and that she feels like her character, Sarah, wasn’t allowed to live up to her potential because of it.  — Jezebel
• This is interesting:  Stress during pregnancy affects male and female babies differently.  Boys keep growing happily, while girls’ growth slows down.  But if there is a secondary stressor, a female baby is more likely to keep growing at the slower rate, while a boy baby is put at risk of complication. — Eureka Alert
• A video by Human Rights Watch called In Silence:  Maternal Mortality in India was just nominated for a 2010 Webby.  Watch it, then go vote. — MomsRising.org
• Here’s a well kept secret I just learned myself: As kids get older, parents get busier. Sure, babies need 24 hour care, but the needs of grade schoolers are a lot more complex. — Work It, Mom!
• Diapers cost 20 to 30 cents a piece, and a newborn goes through about 60 a week. Enter Help a Mother Out, and organization that works to provide diapers to mothers who can’t afford them. In honor of Mother’s Day, they’ll kick of a month-long campaign. — Blogher

Photo: cstova, Flickr

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Interest in natural foods has grown tremendously over the last decade.  The Associated Press reports that market share of organics increased “14 to 21 percent annually with sales of $24.6 billion in 2008.”  Organic baby food items like Stonyfield Farm’s YoBaby are available at mainstream retailers such as Wal*Mart, and anyone who watches Sesame Street on the regular knows Earth’s Best Organics are a ‘proud sponsor’ of the show.  But the AP says watchdogs think the National Organic Program “has not been restrictive enough in what it allows to be labeled as organic,” so in an effort to crack down on Bush administration leniency, President Obama announced this week that the additives ARA and DHA “will no longer be permitted in infant formula or baby foods certified as organic because (they) have not received legal approval for use in organic products,” according to The Washington Post.  The article goes on to say that ARA and DHA, thought to promote brain and eye development, “are present in 90 percent of organic infant formulas.”

A quick search on Amazon shows that Earth’s Best Organic and Similac Organic formulas both contain the fatty acids.  The problem is not that omega-3 and omega-6 are bad for infants; the acids themselves occur naturally in breast milk.  But these beneficial omegas are produced chemically “using a potential neurotoxin known as hexane,” then added to formula. Presumably non-organic formulas like Enfamil Premium will continue to include ARA and DHA, begging the question, if they’re not safe for organics, why should they be added at all?  Continue reading »

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German scientists have come up with a formula to get touch-deprived moms the kind of action they really want.

Cuddle spray!

The makers promise that just a puff or two of the stuff will make even the most insensitive oaf skootch in for a snuggle. (Actually, they say “a puff or two of the ‘cuddle chemical’ will make even the most masculine of men as sensitive as a woman,” but, as a not-so-cuddly woman, I didn’t want to perpetuate that inanity. Forgive me.) Continue reading »

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Let’s face it, the iPad is a toy. It may be the most universally desired toy since the bicycle, something three-year-olds in the throes of princess mania and their gadget-hungry grandparents can get equally excited about. But with it’s big easy touch screen and bright colors, it’s especially appealing to kids.

App makers know this, and they’re releasing rocking apps for kids with the iPad in mind.

Continue reading »

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Doctors in western Sweden have announced they will no longer perform circumcisions on newborn baby boys.

Their decision to suspend routine circumcisions isn’t another of Sweden’s enviably holier-than-the-rest laws regarding parents and babies (I’m thinking maternity leaves, breastfeeding rates, etc.). Rather, it’s a matter of resources. Watch out, this will also be fodder for those in the U.S. who oppose universal health care. Continue reading »

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