I’m often irritated when I hear parents talk about having a second child like its an obligation. What irritates me more is when parents rationalize having a second child before their financially or emotionally ready because “Little Johnny wants a sibling.” It’s a cop out. It’s an excuse to do something you don’t have the discipline to wait/prepare for, while putting the onus on a child that wouldn’t know a baby brother or sister if it jumped up and bit them in the diapered behind. More
Topic: family and money
- 6 days ago by Koa Beck
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There’s a lot to be irked about in The New York Post‘s story about “wealthy Manhattan moms” cutting Disney World lines with the hired help of “handicapped tour guides.” While I kept quadruple checking to make sure I wasn’t reading The Onion, I also found myself unable to get past a few particular details. And it wasn’t just the echoing of, “This is how the one percent does Disney.” More
- 9 days ago by Jennifer Russon
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My mom hated the concept, and still does, of ANY extracurricular activity—if and when I joined anything—and my track record (never actually ran track) was pretty modest. Anything I wanted to do: build sets for drama, enter the science fair, try out for tennis, or simply peddle cookies; well… I had to work hard on the PR angle and make Mom see that it was worth our time.
“Kids need to just be,” she’d insist and still does, especially now that her grandchildren are heavy into piano lessons. More
- 11 days ago by Anonymous Mom
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There was one winter we lived for months with no gas, meaning we didn’t have central heat, because we didn’t have the money to get it reconnected. Meanwhile, my mom was working through the emotions of a failed marriage and had no one to talk to.
She and I have always been close, and so she turned to me to vent her worries and frustrations about money or my dad. I didn’t have the words at the time to tell her that she was giving me a burden my small shoulders weren’t strong enough to bear. More
- 12 days ago by Frances Locke
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According to a new study done by the McGraw-Hill Federal Credit Union in New Jersey, most mothers don’t believe that their children are ready for financial independence. In other news the sky is blue and ice is cold.
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- 12 days ago by Karol Markowicz
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I couldn’t help but feel personally attacked by Eve Vawter‘s piece on entrepreneur women and the empathy they don’t deserve when they dare find balancing their businesses and family difficult. I find myself in a very similar situation to Natalie Massenet, the founder of Net-a-Porter. Like Massenet, I have a new baby, a new business and a successful husband. Unlike Massenet, I also have a demanding 3-year-old. Also unlike Massenet, I don’t get to talk about this extremely difficult time in my life in retrospect. More
- 13 days ago by Rebecca Eckler
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In less than a month, my son Holt will be celebrating his first birthday. I should probably send out invitations. But, actually, he won’t be celebrating anything. More
- 17 days ago by Koa Beck
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When Avenues: The World School in Chelsea was still being constructed, I remember rolling my eyes over parents vying for spots at the prestigious institution that didn’t even have desks yet. Later, Suri Cruise seemed to have no trouble cutting the line after her parents’ seemingly sudden divorce. But now that The World School has been up and running for a year, we see that aside from multilingual and international education, the institution also prioritizes 25-page PowerPoint presentations on school nutrition. More
- 20 days ago by STFU Parents
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This is a new-ish trend, brought about by the success of Kickstarter and other fundraisers on sites like Go Fund Me or Indiegogo. Those sites have had their share of criticism when popular, but perhaps frivolous, campaigns raise well over $1 million when other, less flashy campaigns struggle to reach their limits and serve a more serious purpose (like, say, a campaign to raise funds for teachers to buy school supplies).
That said, nothing comes close to parents using these platforms to raise funds to help them have or adopt a baby. The concept has some moral implications that raise the question, “What about this feels so…wrong?” It’s one of those occasions that the definition of “overshare” is relatively broad, because charity can apply to so many things. More
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- 20 days ago by Koa Beck
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Unless you’ve been under a rock with no Wifi, you know that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has been hit with some scrutiny regarding her work from home policy – specifically from parents. But now, I don’t give two figs about all the work from home hoopla considering that Marissa has officially announced a baller maternity leave and paternity leave for Yahoo employees. Work from home what? More
- 21 days ago by Koa Beck
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As someone who is generally pro-breastfeeding, I’ve never been a fan of the Latch On NYC program here in New York City. In addition to some very questionable advertisements, Latch On NYC is also responsible for famously keeping formula samples within hospitals on lock and key. The organization is now hiring a new program manager to spearhead yet another breastfeeding effort, all supposedly executed to encourage breastfeeding. But such initiatives fail to address why some women, who aren’t able to Lean In all Sheryl Sandberg style, cannot commit to breastfeeding. Like our flimsy excuse for maternity leave. More
- 33 days ago by Koa Beck
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If you haven’t seen the Queen of Versailles documentary, you need to. Like now. Like open another window with your Netflix streaming and have that loading while you finish reading this post. We’re talking epic layers of wealth, class, straight up nanny enslavement, economic recession commentary, women’s roles, and that’s only the first half hour. But for those of you who haven’t had the Queen of Versailles experience, suffice it to say that the obscenely wealthy Siegel family (of eight children) set out to build a Versailles-inspired home in Florida.
Then the economy tanks. More
- 34 days ago by Koa Beck
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Fertility treatments are pricey. So pricey that they’re out of reach for many, many infertile couples who seek to biologically expand their family. But in the now time-honored fertility “happy endings” that often times include twins, one family got double – or rather triple — the happily ever after with triplets. After winning said IVF treatments in a raffle, mind you.
- 34 days ago by Amanda Low
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I never lived in an apartment when I was a child, and even though my parents struggled a little in the beginning, the childhood I actually remember was an upper middle-class one. By the time I graduated high school, we lived in a suburb of Chicago in a house valued at a million dollars. My childhood included a sister, and a pet, and vacations, and parents who could just run out and buy something when they needed or wanted it.
We have none of these things, and the kinds of careers we’ve chosen indicate that we may never have these things. This scares me, I said to Shaun. I don’t know if this is okay for our daughter. More






