Topic: family

Let’s Talk About All The Crap I’m Going To Let My Kids Eat Today During The Superbowl

Let's Talk About All The Crap I'm Going To Let My Kids Eat Today During The Superbowl

Are you ready for some football? If by football you mean am I ready to eat a mess of junk food and watch some amazingly expensive television commercials and BEYONCE then yes, yes I am! And my kids are ready too, because my daughter woke me at six a.m. this morning asking if it was time to eat the king’s cake I purchased for breakfast, and I think she mainly wants it because this bread is bedecked in mardi gras beads and  fake gold coins. I love Super Bowl Sunday you guys. My refrigerator is filled with beer and we have takeaway pulled barbecue pork to pick up and I will be making something involving cheese and salsa and tortilla chips. Plus, cupcakes. Plus, that super gross and by gross I mean amazingly good onion dip and salty potato chips. More »

Michele Bachmann’s Anti-Gay Vitriol Is Understandably Breaking Her Gay Little Step-Sister’s Heart

Michele Bachmann's Anti-Gay Vitriol Is Understandably Breaking Her Gay Little Step-Sister's Heart

While my personal Bachmann-coping mechanism is to always chalk her up to harmless crazy, I can understand why this tactic might be a little more challenging for Bachmann’s own family. I, after all, never have to bump into her at family reunions, nod my head at her at Thanksgiving, or even pretend to like her Christmas presents. But one woman does: her lesbian step-sister. More »

Hanna Rosin Tells Mommyish Why ‘See-Saw Marriages’ Are More Flexible

Hanna Rosin Tells Mommyish Why 'See-Saw Marriages' Are More Flexible

Hanna Rosin, senior editor at The Atlantic and founder of DoubleX, covers a lot of ground in her complex and compelling book The End of Men. The facetiously titled exploration of contemporary marriage, families, and education reveals that while women are succeeding, men are flailing. Although young women and girls are rapidly closing in on the space that has been recently awarded to them, such as better career opportunities and higher education, men, for the most part, are not adjusting. Whether it’s finding work in the still slumping economy or staying the steady course to college, they are quickly falling behind a new cohort of ambitious and driven females.

Hanna, a mother of three herself, shares with us the ruptures within the scholastic trajectory for boys, why we’re seeing an uptick in violence among young girls, and the growing trend of “see-saw marriages.” More »

This Family Commune Idea Isn’t As Easy As It Looked

This Family Commune Idea Isnât As Easy As It Looked

I’m building a community. It’s a somewhat half-baked, hair-brained idea at this point, involving large pieces of real estate, a potential web of legal concerns, the very real need for serious budget talks and myriad other logistical issues. But at its core, it’s about people; good people who want to live among other good people with a great deal of trust and healthy co-dependence floating around. It is for this reason that the “people” part of this complicated equation is by far the most important. More »

Anne-Marie Slaughter Represents Her Atlantic Piece Better Than That Cheap Cover

Anne-Marie Slaughter Represents Her Atlantic Piece Better Than That Cheap Cover

Mommy covers seem to be taking a turn for the solely incendiary these days, what with TIME getting a conventionally attractive blonde to model attachment parenting with her boob out and now The Atlantic — which harps on the “Sad White Babies With Mean Feminist Mommies” trend. Author Anne-Marie Slaughter may have raised strong points about the archaic work policies — not the lack of ambition — that keep women and parents from their families, but you wouldn’t know that given how cheaply The Atlantic emblazons that buzz-worthy “have it all” on their cover. More »

Help Young Women ‘Have It All’ By Being Frank About Fertility

Help Young Women 'Have It All' By Being Frank About Fertility

“Having it all” is one of those press lady narratives that never fails to get a headline — or perhaps an Atlantic cover story, entitled “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.” The “having it all” or “having it all but not all at once” song and dance is one of those obligatory annual lifestyle commentaries that usually ends on the whole “women need to think bigger” and “develop more confidence” conclusions that circulate through the feminist blogosphere — not because anything necessarily wise was articulated — but because modern privileged women see the phrase and instantly click.

This isn’t to discredit author Anne-Marie Slaughter, who goes beyond the superficial having it all script and gets to the real cornerstones — like choosing a partner who doesn’t view managing the kiddies as “babysitting” and isn’t going to chide you for not making it to every damn ballet recital. But along with developing flexible work schedules and acknowledging your own personal priorities, Anne-Marie only alludes to a pretty prominent factor in fielding questions from 20-somethings eager to learn about balancing an enviable career with family. That being that biology is not going to accommodate our societal changes. More »

Learning To Cook, Reluctantly: What Was Your Least Favorite Childhood Food?

Learning To Cook, Reluctantly: What Was Your Least Favorite Childhood Food?

Brussel sprouts.

You might think I am making that statement about me, but actually I am making it about you. Brussel sprouts were your least favorite food. Right? Right.

Good chat.

Why were they your least favorite food? They were my least favorite food because my mother only ever boiled them in hot water. I don’t know why. I guess because we weren’t really home cooked meal people? We were more restaurant people? I have such fond associations with restaurants that when I see children under the age of ten eating gnocchi in a trattoria I feel immediately homesick for my family. More »

France’s New First Lady Isn’t Married To The President — And France Doesn’t Care

France's New First Lady Isn't Married To The President -- And France Doesn't Care

Carla Bruni may have made a very photogenic French First Lady, but the country has bid Bonjour! to a new one with the win of François Hollande. The “unglamorous leftist,” to quote The New York Times, seems to be quite the contrast to Nicolas Sarkozy’s flashy ways. But aside from the differences in political affiliation, Hollande isn’t legally married to his long-time partner Valérie Trierweiler, meaning that France has welcomed its first unmarried presidential couple. More »

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