babble » blogs » Strollerderby
Strollerderby
Leave. The dolls. Alone.
If you’re one of the countless bloggers out there writing about your kid, watch out: there’s a new girl in town and she’s mad. It’s 4-year-old Lily and she’s sick of having pictures of and stories about herself posted on her mom’s blog.
On Bedtimes are for Suckers, Lily dishes on life as a blogged-about kid. This particularly painful post: Why I think all Mommy blogs are bullsh*t. Continue reading »
Working parents have to make compromises
None of us can do it all. We can be great moms, have stellar careers, love our partners and even get a little rock-and-roll in around the edges. But we can’t do all of it all the time. We’ll always run into a schedule conflict that can’t be resolved, or just hit the limits of our own abilities to multi-task. Where by “multi-task” I mean “stay awake”.
Mom 101 writes movingly about the things she misses out on doing with her kids, being a working mother. Mostly she’s made her peace with it: missing the playground dates and the music classes. She can’t get over not being at every doctor’s appointment, though.
It’s a new twist on the old “Mommy Wars” story. This time, instead of the working mom vs. the stay-at-home mom. It’s the work outside the home mom vs. the work at home mom.
The problem? Apparently, moms who work from home are fed up with being asked favors from moms who work outside the home.
The Wall Street Journal recently published a story about how people who work feel as if working parents are taking advantage of their flexibility. The story focuses on both genders, but I know firsthand (anecdotally) that people are more likely to ask work-at-home moms to help out than dads. Continue reading »
Love O magazine. Not loving Dr. Phil.
From this month’s O Magazine, perhaps the most off-base advice Dr. Phil has ever given. To a SAHM unhappy without her career, Dr. Phil says, in essence, tough. “Bloom where you’re planted” has never sounded so patronizing.
A mother of two writes in, saying that she and her husband agreed, before having kids, that she would stay home until they were in full-time school. Now that the kids, aged 2 and 4, are actually here, demanding snacks and generally absorbing all of her energy, she’s realized she can’t actually maintain her career as a freelance web designer when she’s “running after the boys all day.”
She wants to go back to work. Her husband wants her to stay home. And Dr. Phil comes down firmly on the side of the “deal.” If your husband (oh, lord and master) won’t alter the “terms of your agreement,” he says, that unhappy SAHM should “stick it out” for another four years.
Anyone else want to tell Dr. Phil where to stick it? Read on for the full exchange. Continue reading »
Over at Slate’s XX Factor, Jessica Grose poses the question, “Have We Reached a Mommy Wars Detente?”
Her premise is that with the recession, the whole working mom vs. stay-at-home mom issue is moot. With husbands out of work, many stay-at-home moms have had to return to work. Nowadays, it seems anybody is happy to have a job.
Grose suggests that this might be “an opportunity to lobby for things like paid maternity leave and better child care, rather than fight over whether women should be working at all.”
Sounds great, but then we wouldn’t have the chance to feel smug and superior about our choices, would we? Continue reading »
How much are you worth as a mom?
Of course, there’s no way to quantify all of the hugs, play date scheduling, and discipline you provide for your family. But Salary.com has come up with a number.
Based on ten daily functions described by a survey of some 28,000 stay-at-home moms (they didn’t include dads), Salary.com determined that the average stay-at-home mom should be earning $117,856 a year. In other words – that’s what a family would be paying someone else to do all of those duties. Continue reading »
Finally, a revelation has formed from all these dedicated Sunday night watchings of Mad Men. I wouldn’t mind being a stay-at-home mom if I could do it the Betty Draper way.
Take Sunday night’s episode (very, very minor spoiler here): her housekeeper doesn’t just clean the house and make dinner, she offers Betty a chance to go back to bed after a rough night with the baby, AND manages the “I don’t want this, I want that” arguments from the kids at dinner time. Continue reading »
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 
The Walt Disney Company supports Babble as a platform dedicated to honest, engaged, informed, intelligent and open conversation about parenting. However, the opinions expressed on this site are those of individual parents/writers and do not reflect the views of Disney. In addition, content provided on this site is for entertainment or informational purposes only and should not be construed as medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, or safety advice.
0