Ten and Twenty Years Ago: The Confluence of Personal and Public History

Twenty years ago today, the Berlin Wall was breached. Günter Schabowski, an East German Politburo member, announced that East Germans were free to travel. Now an old man, Schabowski claimed on the BBC this morning that he didn’t make a basic mistake, that he just jumped the gun by a few hours, but the record [...]

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Do We Have Swine Flu? Or Do We Just “Have Swine”?

German has this wacky way of expressing good luck: “Schwein haben,” or having swine/pig. It’s clashing with the nomenclature of swine flu, which ain’t such great luck if you get it.
My sister tells me my niece is coming along well – she’s stopped puking, at least – but 19 out of 24 kids were absent [...]

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An Unusual Case of Father-Blaming

One reason I remain fascinated by the Heene “balloon boy” spectacle is that you don’t often see such a blatant case of father-blaming in the media. I can easily name famous mothers who murdered – Susan Smith, Andrea Yates – but I can’t think of a father who killed his kids and drew similar media [...]

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Hey, We Taxpayers Already Subsidize Abortion Services!

Via Ann at Feministing, I came upon Dana Goldstein’s excellent analysis of why a public option sans reproductive health coverage is doomed. She notes that while our congresscritters are under pressure not to fund abortions with taxpayers’ money, women will be less likely to choose the public option if it excludes abortions and other basic [...]

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Another Reason to Stop Being Jittery about Caffeine

A few months ago I mentioned a Cochrane review that found caffeine didn’t adversely affect full-term outcomes of pregnancy. However, the reviewers located only one study that met their criteria. Now, an apparently solid study provides reassurance that caffeine also is not implicated in causing miscarriage – which another study claimed in early 2008.
Here’s the [...]

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Feminism and Maternal Pleasure: Getting the History Right

Katie Roiphe isn’t wrong when she says feminist thought is underdeveloped when it comes to the pleasures of mothering an infant. I personally would extend this critique to the pleasures of parenting an infant, and the pleasures of parenting children at different ages, too. Of course it’s not just feminist writing that has failed to [...]

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Ohio to Nursing Mothers: Get Those Breasts on a Schedule!

If you’re a nursing mother in Ohio and your employer doesn’t allow you time to pump, you might as well quit before you’re fired. Here’s how the Columbus Dispatch reports a decision by the state’s highest court that, at least on its face, would appear to make breastfeeding incompatible with full-time employment if you’ve got [...]

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The Maternal Costs of Breastfeeding

The comments to my post on recent post on breast cancer and breastfeeding challenged the idea that breastfeeding advocates are overplaying their hand when it comes to maternal benefits. I’m not questioning its overall benefits to babies; as Sugarmag points out, it meets babies’ nutritional needs precisely. No formula can provide the immunities that breastmilk [...]

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Curmudgeonly Thoughts on the “Good News” about Breast Cancer

Yesterday came word that a major longitudinal study found that breastfeeding offers substantial protection against cancer among women at high risk. Those women whose mother or sister developed breast cancer reduced their own risk by 65 percent if they had ever breastfed a baby. This is great news, of course, for these women.
But the news [...]

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Sarah Palin: Mother to 5, Anti-Mother to Millions

Blue Gal has a quotation from Keith Olbermann that sums up my initial reaction to Sarah Palin casting Trig as a potential murder victim of Obamacare:
And incidentally, Madam, you have forfeited your right to be taken seriously the next time you claim offense at somebody mentioning your children. You have just exploited your youngest child, [...]

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Pregnant Women As Incubators

Following up on the recent discussion of forced cesareans, Hysperia drew my attention to this case in Florida, where a pregnant women’s rights were blatantly violated as she was reduced to a mere incubator for her fetus. Samantha Burton was forcibly confined to a hospital upon a local court’s order. The ACLU is supporting her [...]

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Pregnant with Irreverence

Boy, I wish I’d seen this video, “Pregnant Women Are Smug,” during my first pregnancy! (h/t Deborah Siegel at Girl w/Pen, who’s expecting her first baby – yay!) I wasn’t so much smug, myself, as slightly irreverent and deeply terrified. I’d lie awake, wondering how the heck I’d ever survive labor. But I wasn’t scared [...]

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Some Cautious *Good* News on Forced Cesareans

Hysperia sent me a link to this story by Louise Marie Roth at the Huff Post, detailing the latest case where a woman was forced to undergo a cesarean section:
In the case, New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services v. V.M. and B.G., the New Jersey appellate court found that V.M. and B.G. had [...]

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Labor Pain from the Lighter Side

Following up on yesterday’s post on the romanticization of labor pain: The other evening, my sons were watching clips on YouTube, and suddenly I heard the sort of moans that made me wonder if they’d stumbled onto YouPorn instead. But no. They’d found a “Maulwurf” video illustrating how birth works. “Der kleine Maulwurf” – or [...]

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Man-Midwifery and the Romanticization of Labor Pain

A few days ago, a friend of mine who’s expecting her first baby emailed me, wondering if she should plan for a “natural” birth or give in to the “temptation” of an epidural. I don’t know what she’ll decide (and honestly, both are reasonable choices, in my view), but I pointed out that she was [...]

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Criminal Neglect versus Stupid Moments in Parenting: Where’s the Line?

Regular commenter Mark Faulkner pointed me to Judith Warner’s latest piece at the New York Times, Dangerous Resentments. Warner argues that
our country’s resentment, and even hatred, of well-educated, apparently affluent women, is spiraling out of control.
But her evidence for this is mighty thin: one case of a professor-mother, Bridget Kevane, who was charged with child [...]

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In Defense of Childish Glee upon Palin’s Resignation

I admit to excessive glee at Palin’s departure. It’s not especially mature of me. I remember a similar feeling when Newt Gingrich dropped off the political scene (and I’d feel the same way if he disappeared again). I felt a similar schadenfreude when Bobby Jindal bobbled his big speech after Obama’s State of the Nation [...]

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Ersatz Fireworks, Palin Edition

So the Fourth of July is already somewhat surreal when you’re outside of the U.S. We’d hatched a scheme for viewing fireworks anyway at the German-French friendship fair, which is basically a carnival with good wine and Brie, but yet another thunderstorm washed out that plan.
The kids wept and railed. Me, I’m contenting myself with [...]

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The Birth Plan that Got Skunked

Exactly six years and two hours ago, my little Tiger slipped out his wet, dark, fetussphere and arrived fully in this world.
I’d been apprehensive about his birth, because my first delivery had been pretty horrendous. (I’ll leave the scare stories to another day, though.) So here I was, this feminist critic of medicalized birth, wanting [...]

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On the Last Day of School, Slightly Cosmic Gratitude

I’m not a Mormon, but I’m fascinated by their idea that pre-born souls are lined up in another dimension, waiting for their entrance ticket to the Earth. My husband and I were just discussing how remarkable it is that we got precisely these two kids, the Bear and the Tiger. In particular, we were marveling [...]

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