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Strollerderby
A pediatrician in Florida is giving preggo patients experimental hormone treatments in the hopes of preventing their future daughters from becoming lesbians.This isn’t quite what I had in mind when I suggested that more drugs should be tested on pregnant women.
The hormone, dexamethasone (also called “dex”), has not been shown to be safe for pregnant women or their unborn children. The FDA hasn’t approved it for use in pregnant women, but a few researchers think it shows promise in preventing “ambiguous genitalia” in babies: genitals that are neither clearly male nor female.
Maria New and her colleagues at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine are taking it a step further, and experimenting to see if the drug can prevent lesbianism in girl babies. They also hope to “help” girls grow up to be wives and mothers. Their dream is to find a cure not only for queerness, but also for an “abnormal” disinterest in babies, marriage and “women’s work”.
Strollerderby reported Monday that the deputy editor of Mother & Baby Magazine in the U.K., Kathryn Blundell, “caused quite a stir with an essay on why she skipped breastfeeding and went straight to formula for her baby.” In said essay, Blundell wrote that breastfeeding – for her – felt, “well, a little creepy.” (An important distinction I think from accusing her of saying out and out that breastfeeding is creepy, which she did not do.)
But even if she had, so be it! As SD blogger Madeline said in her excellent post on the subject, “Blundell’s sentiment is a danger in the minds of many, who think her words will be too discouraging for women who want to breastfeed…. Pregnant women don’t need to be shielded from opinions, they should have the chance to hear them all.” I concur, as you know from my earlier post, Am I the Only Mother Who Ever Felt Embarrassed Breastfeeding in Public? I think all of the recent hubbub over breastfeeding that’s got Twitter a-flutter and Parenting Magazine editors and bloggers riled up will only serve to provide more understanding between what can seem like two polarized camps. According to staunch breastfeeding advocates, it’s us against those uneducated, heartless formula-feeding moms – like Blundell – who only care about themselves and their sex lives. And the view from the other side is us against those hippie-yuppie zealots who don’t understand how impossible it can be to breastfeed and are only willing to promote a woman’s right to choose when it serves their agenda.
Nonetheless, I was nervous when I was asked by the BBC to participate in their show on breastfeeding during today’s live radio broadcast of World Have Your Say. (Click the link to download the podcast.) The discussion, for the most part, was very civil. And Blundell was given first dibs. A chance to explain herself, you might say.
She said, “In a nutshell, I didn’t want to breastfeed. I felt my breasts were part of sex and the idea of putting a baby to my breast just made me feel a bit uncomfortable. I used the word creepy and I mean the word creepy. It just didn’t feel right to me. And because of the wonders of modern nutritional science, I didn’t have to breastfeed my baby. I could go for a formula feed, and I was perfectly happy to do that. I don’t think any woman should feel bad about her feeding choice, whether that’s formula feeding or breastfeeding in public.”
When asked if she thought it was hard for women to acknowledge negative feelings about breastfeeding, Blundell answered with a resounding yes. Continue reading »
I love my stepson. He was the first kid to call me, “Mom,” in an embarassing moment that made us both blush and stammer and turn away. He was about 9 at the time, and I’d been in his life for a year or so. We were loading our bikes in the car and he shouted, “Hey, Mom, can you grab my helmet?”
He didn’t mean me. He meant his real mom, who wasn’t there. I was, and I grabbed his bike helmet and threw it quickly in the car.
A year later, my new husband and I had a baby, who grew up to call me mom and really mean it. But I’ve never forgotten that moment. The boy in question is 16 now, and calls me by my first name. We play board games and share music collections and get into fierce late night conversations about our favorite TV shows and world politics and everything in between.
He’s a kid in my family, and in some sense my kid, is what I’m trying to say. I love him.
Apparently, my love for my stepson is a pretty rare gift. Salon offers up an essay today on the legions of guilty stepmoms who loathe, or at best politely tolerate, the little monsters their husbands brought into the household by way of a previous marriage.
I’ve been running through my contacts list, trying to figure out which of my friends and relatives are spies for Russia. I’m coming up empty. But maybe I’m not thinking about this in the right way. It’s possible that, despite evidence to the contrary, I still expect spies to have gold teeth, nice suits and stand-offish demeanor, when, actually, they’re boring middle-class parents just like me.
Who knew spies (Russian spies!) could be raising teens, carrying mortgages, sending Christmas cards and working in real estate? I know people like that! (Hang on while I go through guest lists for the last five years of Memorial Day barbecues.)
I know I’m supposed to be incensed by the members of a Russian spy ring, but mainly I’m charmed. Continue reading »
Obesity starts at birth (or before!), so it’s important for your baby to acquire healthy lifestyle habits right away. Here are a few tips for helping your baby stay in shape.
Health News reprinted the Nemours Foundation’s tips for getting baby moving: Continue reading »
Trust me, I've made jam. It's not as glamorous as it sounds.
Strollerderby blogger Madeline Holler has written a funny and revealing piece for Salon called I Am a Radical Homemaker Failure. In it, she chronicles the struggles she and her family have gone through as her husband transitioned from ”earning piles of gold shoveling rocks for Satan” to the life of an academic, and challenges the idea that everyone is suited to embrace poverty, living happily as a hippie farmer.
I can totally relate. Life with my late – sorry, I mean ex – husband was a lot like an episode of Green Acres, if Eddie Albert were less a forthright, lovable farmer and more a passive-aggressive sociopath. My ex enjoys life upstate, spending his time canning blackberry jam made from fruit picked in the neighbor’s backyard. (Why buy the cow when you can milk the neighbor’s berries for free?) I thrive in the city, preferring my berries in the context of a Stoli Raz with tonic.
Holler spends most of the essay discussing the book “Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity From a Consumer Culture” by Dr. Shannon Hayes. Hayes has a Ph.D. in sustainable agriculture and is a wife and mother. (Just reading her credits exhausts me, so Holler, despite her unwillingness to can fruit, is even sturdier than I am. At least at one point in her life, Holler made homemade yogurt. I feel like a champ when I buy the big container of Stonyfield vanilla and not the individual-sized six-pack.)
Holler says, “Central to the Radical Homemaker agenda is the idea that we don’t have to rely on nameless, faceless corporations to feed, clothe, shelter and entertain us.” I’m all for that. But I like my locally grown products to be sold at the Union Square Greenmarket so that I’m in the East Village for an 8 pm show. Holler, too, scoffs at the notion that one should be able to “survive on home-grown food, old-timey skills and a willingness to help the neighbors.” Unlike Hayes, Holler did not grow up on a farm, which may explain part of her resistance to fully succumbing to Radical Homemaking. I didn’t exactly grow up on a farm, either, but I was raised by a father – and mother, for that matter – who could harvest a yard full of vegetables. Plus, when I was younger, my Dad often hunted deer and caught fish that he would skin and cook himself. As a result, I get to be a smug adult who thinks things like, “Oh yeah, I totally get the idea of sustainable eating,” without having any actual survival skills of my own. Continue reading »
Is that the REALLY stylish way to wear Silly Bandz?
Ok, I was hoping for a little tell-all scoop on what it’s like to be the ultimate Material Girl’s daughter, too. But mostly, what we have here is a little marketing for a Material Girl clothing line–and maybe the tiniest glimpse of Madonna the Mommy. Or is fourteen just the age when everyone starts letting their daughters dye their hair? Continue reading »
Joslyn Gray 
Amber Doty 
Julianna Miner 
Monica Bielanko 
Sierra Black 
Meredith Carroll 
Carolyn Castiglia 
Sunny Chanel 
Madeline Holler 
Wendy Michaels 
Rebecca Odes 
Danielle Smith 
Danielle Sullivan 
Katherine Stone 
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