The Juggle Ramps Up Anxiety for Working Mothers

A couple of weeks ago psychologist Alison Gopnik wrote a widely read editorial in The New York Times about how babies learn.  Her conclusion wasn’t earth-shattering — in fact many of us knew this already — we don’t need fancy toys or learning programs to encourage our children to learn at a young age.  As [...]

Passion, Fulfillment and Pay Equity

It’s taken me a while to get to Meg Wolitzer’s The Ten-Year Nap.  I’ve had the sense that I might be bored and annoyed with the book’s over-privileged stay-at-home mother characters, so I procrastinated.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that the novel offers an interesting perspective on women, work and feminism.
One of the best [...]

Dinner Thursday: Not Julia Penne with Lemon Chicken and Broccoli

Last week I wrote about Michael Pollan’s New York Times Magazine article calling on us all to reclaim the art of cooking, particularly the variety promoted by the likes of Julia Child.  I love Julia Child — use many of her cookbooks — but also know that the days when parents have the time to [...]

Judgement of the Moms

On the heels of Louise Chunn’s piece about her life as a working mother comes two more personal essays in a similar vein, one from Katie Allison Granju in Babble, and a second mother-daughter editorial from Anne and Lesley Shooter in the UK’s Daily Mail.
Granju writes about the disapproval she feels from other mothers about [...]

Hurting the Collective by Opting Out

Last week I had dinner with a friend who pointed out that working women have lost the collective sense we had during the golden years of feminism; these days women who opt out do so at the expense of the group.  How can we expect that workplaces will improve if large numbers of women are [...]

Perfect as Enemy of Good: Exercise

Over the past few weeks I’ve been feeling badly about not exercising.  I’m lucky to have a gym in my office building, and usually I can get in 30 to 40 minutes of cardio plus a little weight training and stretching a few times a week.  But lately I’ve been so exhausted, busy, and eager [...]

Hillary Clinton in the Congo

There’s been much talk about Hillary Clinton losing her temper after a journalist in Congo asked for her husband’s opinion on the situation there.  Aside from the fact that the whole thing turned out to be a mistranslation, I did not think that her response was inappropriate or over the top.  Certainly a flash of [...]

Can the Balancing Act Drive A Woman To Suicide?

Last week The Times of London reported on the heart-breaking story of Catherine Bailey, a 41-year old lawyer and mother of three who drowned herself in the Thames.  The articles in The Times and the Daily Mail both note that Bailey returned to work less than six months after the birth of her third daughter, [...]

Snack Friday: Healthy Muffins

The weather on the East coast this summer has been abysmal.  On weekday evenings and weekend days when we would normally go to the playground, Baby Bee and I have been cooped up at home.  We’ve read a lot of books.  We’ve discovered old Muppet Show clips on YouTube.  We’ve played princesses, pirates, puppet shows [...]

Why We Should Stop Asking if Women Make Better Managers

Earlier this week The New York Times asked “Do Women Make Better Managers?”  The piece suggests that women mange more effectively than men by virtue of being women.  There has been a spate of these articles lately (see Daily News, ABC News, and the Cafferty File for a sampling) — many touched off by the [...]