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Strollerderby
Can we ever agree to disagree, or will the fighting continue?
Opinions are like moms. Everyone has one. And every mom has an opinion.
In fact, you won’t have to look far (the mirror, perhaps?) to find a mom with a very strong opinion on a variety of parenting topics. Perhaps the one thing we can all agree on, however, is that we’ll never agree on many of these things.
Take a glance at the arguments that will likely never be settled, no matter how right you just know you are on the issue:
Child care helps depressed moms' kids.
The old saying “If mom isn’t happy, nobody’s happy” is true. Mom sets the tone for the household. So what if mom is sad all the time? According to a new study, about a quarter of the moms with 18 month-olds and one in five mothers of 3-year-olds show signs of depression.
Experts say children often show the signs of their parents’ distress. Some act out by being hyperactive and overly aggressive, others internalize the feeling, take on their mother’s depression and sadness by becoming withdrawn. In fact, children of moms who experience ongoing or recurring depression are twice as likely to act out and four times as likely to be sad or depressed themselves. Click here to learn how to know if your child is depressed.
Often, these are moms who are at home with young ones full-time. They don’t take their children to day care because they believe it’s their job to watch them. Why waste money on child care when I’m home full-time, seems to be the consensus in many homes. But a new study says spending just a few hours a week in day care, especially if mom’s prone to depression, will help protects kids from developing behavioral and psychological problems. Continue reading »
For a few hours a day, better her than me!
Each time after giving birth, I fell immediately and madly in love with my kids, so much so that I couldn’t stand to be away from them. My arms felt empty when my newborns weren’t cradled against me. I longed for their tiny bodies during my daily 10-minute showers. Hours could go by with me having done little more than stare at their sleeping faces, a contact high from the new baby smell nearly bringing me to tears. During those timeless, early weeks of each of my kids’ lives, I could honestly say — and as a feminist, I said it with much reluctance — my babies completed me.
Then the babies got older. Continue reading »
It's not entirely clear to me why people are so judgmental when it comes to discussions about childcare
Who doesn’t love a good, juicy, heated discussion, especially when it turns out that they’re right, as I usually am. On the rare occasions when I’m wrong, it’s usually because my debate partner is misguided or delusional, or both. But even then it’s OK, because I always know when I’m right.
Apparently, so do a lot of other moms. The debate about daycare vs. stay-at-home-moms is not one that’s easily settled, but it seems as though lots of moms know the answer — and not just for themselves, but for everyone else, too. And while I get the need to be right (because I always am, remember?), this is one issue where I don’t understand how and why others feel it’s okay to pass judgment on any childcare situation other than their own (assuming that the child is not any immediate physical or emotional danger).
Jessica Tata was charged today in the connection of a fire that killed four children under her supervision at a home day care
The operator of a home day care center in Houston who was charged earlier today with reckless injury to a child involving serious bodily injury has fled the country for Nigeria. The U.S. Marshall’s Office has been asked by local officials to step in and help bring Jessica Rene Tata back to Texas.
Twenty-two-year-old Tata was charged today after a fire killed four children and injured another three at her home-based day care last Thursday. She is accused of leaving the seven toddlers alone while she went to the supermarket.
Tata is said to have taken flight hours on a Delta flight from Atlanta after a warrant was issued for her arrest yesterday and bond was set at half a million dollars. The Houston Fire Department, which was leading the arson investigation, turned over her case earlier this afternoon to U.S. Marshals.
The sign that first told parents something was up.
When it comes to daycare, all parents know how hard it is to find the right one. But I read a story over the weekend that showed the flip side of that: namely how easy it is to find the wrong one.
If you don’t believe me, ask a handful of parents in Pittsburg. Because they found out that the daycare they had entrusted their children with was the subject of a recent police search. And the first sign that things were awry was a literal one taped to the door that read “Closed to to emergency,” but it just as easily could have read “shut down because of felony.”
Can you properly bond with your baby and have a career?
If you’re a mom and have time to read things other than the back of the Infant Tylenol bottle, chances are you’ve caught wind of the recent heated debate over attachment parenting. Erica Jong opened up a can of worms in the Wall Street Journal last month with a piece asserting that women have essentially become prisoners to their children because of an unrealistic, round-the-clock style of parenting that’s doing more harm than good to the psyche of working moms who are literally unavailable to bond with their babies 24 hours a day.
In today’s “Science of Kids” column on Babble, Heather Turgeon moves the debate away from Jong, who said as a single mom, she simple had no choice but to grab bonding moments where she could fit them into her work schedule instead of tucking her daughter in her side pocket and taking her with her every day, and she essentially resented being told she was worse off for it. Instead, Turgeon put the focus back on the root of Jong’s issue, which is William and Martha Sears’ “The Baby Book,” but says the tome doesn’t actually assert that moms need be joined at the sling with their offspring in order for an attachment to form.
Lori Garcia 
Joslyn Gray 
Amber Doty 
Julianna Miner 
Monica Bielanko 
Sierra Black 
Meredith Carroll 
Carolyn Castiglia 
Sunny Chanel 
Madeline Holler 
Rebecca Odes 
Danielle Smith 
Danielle Sullivan 
Katherine Stone 
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