The personal is political, said feminist writer Carol Hanisch back in 1969, and while reading Renee Ghert-Zand’s recent blog post on childbearing, I couldn’t help but think that procreation is political, as well. That’s especially true when it comes to Jewish parenting; anyone who is Jewishly engaged is aware of the cultural/religious imperative to have…
Somehow, I am not surprised that just as I find myself at what has for me been the hardest stage of parenting (working mom with three boys, ages 9, 14 and 16), studies are showing that fewer women are choosing to be mothers. A recently released Pew Research Center study shows that a quarter of…
Girlchik got on the camp bus yesterday with a wave and a smile, happy to head off to overnight camp and into the safe first steps toward independence for which, at 11, she is beginning to hunger. Rockerchik, who is 9, was by turns excited and having separation anxiety, bounding off the bus to give…
“Shrek the Final Chapter” caused a bit of a dispute in my house. Don’t get me wrong – I love the “Shrek” movies. The messages about beauty, gender, acceptance and love fly in the face of mainstream Hollywood with the size-zero Photoshopped girly-girls who, even if they are detectives or fighters or professionals are still…
Jennifer Senior’s recent New York magazine article about parenting and its discontents (an article that The Sisterhood weighed in on here) made it to Cambodia — or at least to the terrace of the apartment that my family and I rented during our recent month-long stay in Phnom Penh. (Read my previous dispatches here and…
When I saw the cover line — “All Joy and No Fun: Why Parents Hate Parenting” — on this week’s New York magazine, I thought “Yes! That sums it up exactly.” The story, a well-crafted synthesis by Jennifer Senior of research old and new, merged with a personal take on the experience of mothering a…
Father’s Day has just passed, but it’s always interesting to look at the ways in which parenting roles are changing. True, I live in Greater Park Slope — a progressive neighborhood that may be unlike most other parts of the country. But it’s now common in my neighborhood to see hipsterish young dads carrying their babies…
I began my phone call to my friend Karen with the same question that has launched all of our recent conversations: “How’s Noah?” And so I get the latest report on her 18-year-old son who recently entered training for a combat unit in the Israel Defense Forces. Noah is the first child of a close…
דאָס ביכל נעמט אַרײַן אַ גלאָסאַר, שמועס־פֿראַגעס און קלאַנג־רעקאָרדירונגען פֿון די דערציילונגען.
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