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Strollerderby
Katie Roiphe is a single mother. She lives in New York, theoretically the most open-minded city in the country. She works as a writer, theoretically a discipline peppered with creative, liberal, and open-minded people. Ten percent of babies in the U.S. are now born to women without partners. Given these things, you’d think Roiphe’s choice to have kids on her own might not raise many eyebrows. But apparently, you’d be wrong. So wrong, in fact, that she was reminded of that classic tome about single motherhood and social ostracism: The Scarlet Letter.
“One might be under the impression that tolerant liberal New York bears no resemblance to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s windy Puritan New England town, but one would be wrong. Our judgments are more polite, more subtle, more psychologically nuanced; latter-day critics of the state are thinking, of course, of what is best for the child, what is the healthiest environment; they are not opposed to extramarital philandering per se, but there is still underlying everything the same unimaginative approach to family, the same impulse to judge, the same sexual conservatism, and herd mentality.”
Check out some of these tasty nuggets of off-the cuff social critique Katie has come across in her six years as a single mom: Continue reading »
I was in an NYC taxi last week when I saw those unmistakeable lips on the screen in the seat, and the news ticker sliding along below them: OCTOMOM SAYS: I HATE MY KIDS.
I had just wrangled my own 1/4 size posse with enormous effort and a soundtrack of screaming, and what I felt most for Nadya Suleman at that moment was pity. With a little empathy. Though I can’t say I’m a big fan of Suleman or her childbearing choices, I do wonder how people’s reactions to her reflect on the way they react to moms in general. When mothers complain about their post-baby lives, the “you asked for it, you got it” mentality seems to be a common response. Is Octomom just experiencing that same attitude 8 times over?
Suleman brought her octuplets (plus one older kid to act as babysitter) onto the Today show on Friday. On the show, she vigorously denies having said anything about hating her kids, sitting on the floor with an armful of kid or three, swearing that she loves them, would die for them. She seems, to say the least, slightly off. But then, she always did.
But the weirdest thing about the clip is how the brood transforms the formal patter of the Today Show studio into the kind of unpredictable madness moms deal with every day. It’s painful to watch the two adults onscreen try to carry on a conversation, and not just because Suleman’s a nut job.
Destiny wrote to President Obama last fall
Someone fortunate enough to receive a rare, handwritten letter from the President of the United States would seem most likely to frame the letter and keep it in the family so it can become a treasured heirloom for generations to come.
That’s probably what Destiny Mathis wanted to do. But instead she’s selling a letter she got from President Obama.
Destiny, 26, a single mother of three from Indiana, wrote to Obama and asked for “a sign of hope in touch economic times.” Hope was what she got when she received a letter in return. But it’s those same tough economic times that have forced her to put the letter up for sale on an auction website. She’s due to be evicted in just weeks.
"Of course Mom's not here, she's at work where she wouldn't be if I were a boy."
Could it have been that the so-called opt-in/opt-out Mommy Wars were really a battle of the sexes — the sexes of those warring mamas’ babies?
Three European economists find in a new study that whether — and how many hours per week — a mom works after giving birth the first time depends on whether a woman’s first-born is a boy or a girl.
What’s interesting, is that they conclude it has nothing to do overtly with a preference for boys. Continue reading »
If you had to do it over, would you have had your kids earlier?
Carole Hobson of Britain had a long and successful career as a barrister and social worker, but she still longed to be a mother. She was in a committed relationship but her partner did not want to have children at his age, so Hobson ended the 11 year relationship. Her yearning for children became so strong that she underwent 5 rounds of IVF using donated eggs from a 24-year-old Indian woman and sperm from a Scandinavian engineering graduate. In the process, she spent about 20,000 pounds and gave birth this past December to twins Matthew and Frieda to become Britain’s oldest single mother of twins at age 58.
While she doesn’t say she regrets having her babies, she does admit that motherhood is overwhelming and exhausting. Hobson had to undergo an emergency caesarean section. Her babies, Matthew and Frieda spent the first eight-and-a-half weeks of their life in the neo-natal unit. Doctors feared the worst when their condition deteriorated after birth. It has been a long battle filled with many health conditions for both babies and mom.
I had never fully appreciated my mother's plight until I became a mom myself.
When I became a mom, I started to see the world in a whole new way. I became more patient, understanding, and instead of quickly summing up a situation, I began to think more about both sides of a situation and empathize. While a few of the changes that came from being a parent weren’t the greatest, like my newfound worry, most of the changes were enlightening. All along the way, I think that being a parent has given me the chance to really get to know myself more and contemplate life from a mom’s perspective. Through it all, one of the most unexpected ways that being a parent has changed me is that it helped me become a more appreciative daughter.
My mother was a single mom. She didn’t just work one job; at any given time she had two to three jobs at a time while raising my sister and me. When I was very young, I knew she was a nurse but I had no idea what stress and strain she went through as she traveled each morning to her hospital in Spanish Harlem, taking five trains each way back and forth. All I knew was that 5pm was the happiest time of my day because my mother would come home and Batman would come on TV. There was no better combination.
If you’re a man who took a vacation to Copenhagen last year, and if you’re also a man who met a women at the Custom House bar, and if that woman also took you back to her apartment shortly after you met, then you might want to sit up and pay attention to this.
Karen, 27, says that she had a one night stand 18 months ago that resulted in pregnancy. She’s now mom to baby August, and she’s turned to YouTube to help track down his dad, a vacationing foreigner whose name and home country she can’t remember.
Watch:
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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