babble » blogs » Strollerderby
Strollerderby
America: not doing as well as we like to think.
Save the Children just published their annual ranking of the best places in the world for mothers and “the U.S. ranked 31 out of 43 developed countries,” as LearnVest noted in a post today. They say there are four main reasons why the U.S. lags behind former Eastern Bloc territories like Lithuania, Croatia and Slovakia: Continue reading »
Martha Wilson: I have become my own worst fear
Advances in injectables may help a woman fit into standards of beauty. But just because she’s more sexually attractive doesn’t mean she’s more personally attractive. A Canadian study asked participants to evaluate women who had been treated with Botox and those who were aging naturally.
The (not entirely surprising) results? Women with the ‘Tox were rated as “cold” and “unfeeling” compared to their wrinkly, saggy sisters. The participants felt more warm and fuzzy towards the women with unadulterated faces, believing them to be less vain.
It’s been noted in the past that Botox affects the way emotions are interpreted. But I wonder, too, whether there’s something about visibly aging that we associate with warmth…in the form of motherhood.
Do you want these guys making important health care decisions for you?
Kathleen Prieskorn was three months pregnant and working as a waitress when she realized she was having her second miscarriage. She rushed to her doctor’s office where, as she tells writer Molly M. Ginty at Ms. Magazine, she learned her amniotic sac had torn.
Prieskorn lives in Manchester, New Hampshire with her husband. The nearest hospital had recently merged with a Catholic hospital so her doctor could not help her complete her miscarriage.
“… because my doctor could still detect a fetal heartbeat, he wasn’t allowed to give me a uterine evacuation that would help me complete my miscarriage.”
To get someone to perform the procedure, the poor woman had to drive eighty miles to a hospital that would perform the procedure. Prieskorn has no car and no health insurance, so an expensive ambulance trip was out of the question. Instead, as Ginty reports, Prieskorn’s doctor gave her $400 of his own cash and put her in a cab. Continue reading »
I joined a gym for the first time in a decade.
This week Michelle Obama celebrates the one year anniversary of her Let’s Move campaign, and yet she’s under fire from conservative women like Michele Bachmann – who thinks the First Lady is giving out free breast pumps – and Michelle Malkin, who has accused Mrs. Obama of cloaking “her meddling anti-obesity crusade in medical fakery.” In criticizing the First Lady’s newly introduced pro-breastfeeding element of her anti-obesity campaign, Malkin says, “Mrs. O’s real interest isn’t in nurturing nursing moms or slimming down kids’ waistlines. It’s in boosting government and public union payrolls, along with beefing up FCC and FTC regulators’ duties.”
Malkin has a right to point to the inconclusiveness of the breast vs. bottle debate, but it’s silly for her to suggest that Surgeon General Regina Benjamin is a hypocrite for telling women, “No mother should be made to feel guilty if she cannot or chooses not to breastfeed,” (Malkin adds) while laying an unmistakable guilt trip on moms and moms-to-be.” Malkin herself does the same kind of bait and switch in her post on the subject, saying, “As a proud mom who breastfed both of her babies, I’ve been and will always be a vocal defender of women who have devoted the time, dedication and selflessness it takes. But…. we don’t need Big Brother or Big Mother to lead the Charge of the Big Bosom to persuade us of the personal benefits.” In other words, don’t breastfeed because the Surgeon General and Michelle Obama want you to, breastfeed because you want to. And you do want to, right?
I wasn’t breastfed, but my mother was, and neither one of us turned out much differently than the other physically. We’re two pleasantly plump ladies on a health kick these days, trying to recuperate from damage that was inflicted during difficult periods in our lives. Just the other day I joined a gym for the first time in a decade. Meanwhile, my mother has been a Zumba devotee for the last several months. Listen to what she has to say about how it’s changed her life: Continue reading »
As much as I enjoyed my previous life as an associate director of a small non-profit organization, there was one job function that I dreaded. Despite the fact that I had a lot of support from my husband, business trips totally stressed me out. Sleeping away from home in a strange city far away from my family made me unhappy. Even when work took me to beautiful and exciting locations, I couldn’t enjoy the experience for feeling guilty and worrying about what horrible things might be happening in my absence.
My husband, on the other hand, never seems to suffer the same sort of business trip stress that I did. While I am sure he misses us when he travels, he doesn’t worry about us. And I am quite certain he never feels guilty when his job requires him to leave us for short periods of time. Continue reading »
Reporters and financial analysts have dubbed the economic downturn “the mancession” because it put a disproportionate number of men out of work.
But a new report, “Working Mothers in the Great Recession,” shows that it could just as easily be called “the momcession” because of the way it has slammed working women — especially mothers, and particularly single moms.
While the majority of recession job losses were overwhelmingly male, as the economy crept toward recovery, men gained employment, while women lost jobs, according to the report by the Joint Economic Committee based on analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
According to a survey of 1,279 five to 16-year-olds in the UK, kids are happier when Mom drives.
The survey, which painted dads as impatient and reckless and moms as competent and chatty, was performed by GEM, a motorist assistance company — sort of like the U.S. version of AAA. Read the rest of the results and tell us if you agree:
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 
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.
13