Before I had a child, I thought the perennial media issue dogging women was “work and life balance.” Little did I realize how much breastfeeding was another evergreen. When stirred up into discussion of “work and life balance,” it creates a perfect maelstrom. Such as when Adrienne Pine, an assistant professor of anthropology at American [...]
About a month ago, in anticipation of starting my son on solid foods I attended a seminar at a parenting support center in Los Angeles. Of course we must make our own baby food, the lecturer began: By chopping, steaming and pureeing (defrosting batch-cooked “food cubes” was eschewed due to potential vitamin loss) we could [...]
In the early 1980s I was a suburban girl growing up outside Miami and I knew few mothers who worked. My own mother had quit the nursing job she loved to become a stay-at-home mom, though she still sought hospital news from my doctor dad. The closest I had come to seeing her at work [...]
If you’ve been within 50 feet of a 4-year-old girl in the past decade, you can’t have escaped the fact that princess is a booming industry. From T-shirts emblazoned with “princess” to the fad for “makeover” parties to “princess potty seats”, there is no shortage of products with a tiara theme offered to girls. In [...]
Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, the breakaway bestseller first published in 1994 was possibly the one book that touched off the notion of a self-esteem “crisis” in pre-adolescent girls. Its author, Mary Pipher, based it on her experience as a psychologist working with adolescent girls in Lincoln, Neb., indicting American culture as [...]
Mattel’s Barbie never had her own kids, but the toy company isn’t opposed to procreation. In fact, it has now envisioned girl offspring from well-known supernatural figures–and molded them into doll form. Deliberately scheduling the official launch of Monster High on Friday, Aug. 13, Mattel has unleashed a next-generation team of progeny from media icons [...]
