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Strollerderby
A broken ankle teaches Lisa Belkin a new appreciation for technology
Last weekend, a lot of us celebrated the National Day of Unplugging, a time-out from technology intended to help us reconnect with the people and passions that really matter in our lives.
Lisa Belkin of Motherlode thought she’d be one of them. Minutes after she posted her intentions on her blog, however, she fell outside her home, breaking both ankles.
Her cell phone didn’t rescue her. Her sons did. She screamed where she fell, and they ran out to help her. It was a cell phone that made the 911 call to get her an ambulance though, and a cell phone that redirected her husband from their planned dinner out to the emergency room she was taken to.
Today, Lisa Belkin tackles the concept of over-parenting at Motherlode. She cites a paper to be published later this year in The U.C. Davis Law Review by Gaia Bernstein and Zvi Triger that gently mocks Intensive Parenting (as they call it), needling at mothers for using the Internet as a parenting resource (ahem) and suggesting that over-parenting is creating a generation of co-dependent, clingy kids.
Belkin doesn’t flat-out condemn over-parenting, but she admits that modern parents often have trouble letting go of our kids. She writes, “I think the point of parenting is to guide children toward independence. The goal, starkly put, is for them to stop needing you.” As for how to reach that goal? “The road from here to there is different from child to child and parent to parent,” she says.
Wait, you mean there are no answers? There is no sure-fire method by which to raise The Perfect Child? Then what are we all doing on the Internet? Continue reading »
Is your kid robbed of a proper childhood if she never learns to ride a bike? Should parents go to great lengths to ensure that their sons can pedal confidently on two wheels?
Taking off training wheels is something of a rite of passage. But it’s a pretty difficult rite of passage to usher the kids through if you can’t afford ever-increasing-in-size sets of wheels, or if, like me, you don’t live in a bike-friendly area.
Nicole Sprinkle writes in the New York Times Motherlode that she’ll go to whatever lengths necessary to ensure her daughter will be able to ride a bike by the time she’s 5. A friend got Sprinkle all freaked out with an anecdote about the friend’s son, now a pre-teen, who isn’t very good on a bike. Continue reading »
The worst of news today at Babble.
Work/Life blogger Katie Allison Granju‘s 18-year-old son has died. He had been hospitalized following a drug overdose and physical assault just over one month ago.
Late in April, Granju’s son, H, was taken to the hospital after he had overdosed and been brutally assaulted in a drug-related incident. There, he was in a coma for several days.
Granju chronicled some of her son’s — and her own — struggles following the tragedy in her Work/Life blog. She was also featured in the New York Times Motherlode blog. There, she spoke of the secret she was no longer willing to keep — that her son was addicted to drugs. Continue reading »
Lisa Belkin turned over Motherlode today (and will again, periodically) to one of her most frequent — and critical commenters. He’s William McCloskey and his beef with Belkin and the parenting world at large is that single fathers get no respect. Or at least not much. And, in any case, writing about parenting is always for moms.
McCloskey has a point that most parenting writing is addresses mothers, sometimes specifically. Mom-Friendly Cooking! The 10 Kid Things Your Purse Needs! Stuff like that. But what’s also interesting is at the end of his column, he says he’d never buy a parenting book and most fathers wouldn’t either. Well, there’s the target audience problem in a nutshell right there! Continue reading »
The greatest of news: Babble blogger Katie Allison Granju’s son is alive.
Last week, Granju shocked readers when she went public on her Work/Life blog with a heartbreaking parenting secret. Katie’s teenager, H, is an addict, a fact she says she kept somewhat hidden from all but the closest readers. But after H’s near-fatal overdose less than two weeks ago — an overdose that left him in a coma – Katie decided her secret was one she no longer wanted to keep. Comments and criticisms and deepest well-wishes poured in both at Babble and at the NY Times Motherlode. Continue reading »
Behold faminism!
Irina Aleksander, writing in this week’s New York Observer, takes a look at the new maternalism, arguing that young women’s energies have morphed from fighting about abortion and birth control and other things that signal autonomy, to issues that impact them as moms. “The feminist battleground, with it’s slogans, marches and campaigns for reproductive rights, has given way to the playground and the fight for lactation rights, stroller rights, school-system rights, unpasteurized milk rights, charter schools, birthing techniques, nutritional value of bagged lunches and water quality. It’s not so much about the Fem as it is about the Fam.”
A friend writing about the piece at Slate’s DoubleX calls it a “faux trend.” Me, I’m not so sure. Continue reading »
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