No Legos were lost up noses this past week, at least not which made it into national news, but one girl (at least) was lost in Chicago after the airline she was flying with as a registered minor forgot to, um, keep track of her. Also lost were a diploma; a beloved and (let’s admit it) kinda weird baby seat; more ground in the hope for equal pay and employment by working moms; and maybe the dignity of hilarious rapper parents (or not, you decide).
The new “mom-cession?” Time reports on new research that shows married mothers looking for work are experiencing a triple whammy: a longer gap between jobs, less chance of finding a new job at all, and once they’ve secured a new paycheck, lower earnings than married father and single women.
New Oh, darn: Another round in the debate over free speech vs. training up our kids right. A high-school valedictorian from Oklahoma is being denied her diploma because of a certain four-letter word (I'll give you a clue: It does not begin with either "s" or "f") she uttered while addressing her classmates during her graduation speech. Fair, or unfair?
Product recalls amount to one big bummer: Everyone heard about the recall of that seat called the Bumbo, which held millions of babies magically aloft while they smeared food around their faces, bobbed their big, bald heads and practiced eye-contact skills. One mom mourns the loss of Bumbo and wonders who’s to blame for child-product malfunctions, the manufacturers or parents who use it wrong?
Rockin’ the hizzle with their own little posse (If you don’t like it, I’m gonna get bossy): If you aren’t spending your free time creating parents raps like these moms and dads, you’re obviously not living up to your full breeder potential. But hey, we can’t all be mega-talented supastars. We can all watch them, though. Popcorn?
The courage to love: What if the worst kind of thing happened? Wendy Staley Colbert teaches us all something about being parents in her brave and heart-opening story about what she learned about herself when she lost her baby son Max to Trisomy 13.
Ladies, start your engines: What is the deal with the debate over the biological clock races? The Washington Post’s Janice D’Arcy reports on the range of opinions when it comes to determining whether having babies early or delaying motherhood is ultimately better for women.
Before you put them on that plane … When news broke this week that United Airlines lost a little girl who was on her way to summer camp, parents around the nation expressed outrage. The 10-year-old’s flight was from San Francisco to Traverse City, Mich., with a layover in Chicago, but the connection didn’t go as planned.
Single-mother stereotypes: “There is no typical single mother any more than there is a typical mother,” writes Katie Roiphe in The New York Times. To continuing pushing a narrow view of families and the typical stereotype of single mothers that we see in books, classrooms and in adults’ conversation onto American children is irresponsible and dangerous. Americans’ “prevailing fantasies about family life,” Roiphe says, “no longer match the facts on the ground.”
The seasons (and HB #2 pencils) of motherhood: I’m still in the phase of running around like a crazy person trying to stock my kids’ backpacks before the city-wide shortage of glue sticks sets in. But this bittersweet blog post by Lisa Belkin made me take pause and reminded me of the fleeting nature of time.
In between glue-stick runs and coffee binges, Natalie Singer-Velush is ParentMap’s Web Editor. In her former life she wrote for newspapers and once pumped milk in the bathroom of the King County Superior Courthouse while covering a murder trial. She was also once chased by rabid raccoons. Natalie lives in Seattle with her husband and two school-aged daughters.
