bad mother

All I Want For Mother’s Day Is All This And A Bag Of Chips

May 3, 2011

I’m kind of a Mother’s Day curmudgeon. I’m one of those grumpy moms who says, when asked what I’d like for Mother’s Day, ‘a day off,’ because, seriously, isn’t spending a day not being a mom the very best way to spend the day on which motherhood is celebrated? The thing is, when I say [...]

37 comments Keep reading…

You’ve Got Mail!

April 21, 2011

Emilia likes to make cards. She has a basket filled with stickers and glue and ribbon and glitter and discarded Hallmark product and she draws upon the contents of that basket frequently to craft fancifully illustrated and elaborately decorated cartes de voeux for every occasion, including but not limited to birthdays, holidays, dinnertime, bedtime, breakfast [...]

Keep reading…

In Defense Of The Selfish Parent

March 22, 2011

“Parenting is the most selfless institution in the world.” The words jumped out at me from the screen. Most selfless? In the world? I sipped my coffee and considered the ethical calculation that would rank me as more selfless than, say, Mother Teresa. Maybe, I thought. I can see that. Mother Teresa, after all, never [...]

55 comments Keep reading…

Mommy Went To Texas And All She Brought Me Was This Essay On Travel In The Age Of Postmodern Motherhood

March 8, 2011

The other night, I was sitting in a restaurant in San Antonio, sipping a margarita the size of a baby’s head and chatting about balancing motherhood and work and travel with a writer from National Geographic. “It’s hard sometimes,” I said. “I know that my husband finds it challenging when I’m gone one weekend and [...]

131 comments Keep reading…

Bad Mother Is As Bad Mother Does

February 4, 2011

Usually, when I say that I’m a bad mother, I have my tongue jammed pretty firmly into the fleshy innards of my cheek. Even when I insist that I am not making a tongue-in-cheek statement – when I state that we’re all bad mothers, according to someone (because someone, somewhere, always thinks that we are, [...]

75 comments Keep reading…

Tiger Moms Don’t Dance

January 11, 2011

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a ballerina. More than anything, I wanted to be a ballerina. And so I asked to take ballet classes and I donned pink tights and black leotards and pranced my way through class after class after class. I practiced plies at home, and spent hours [...]

83 comments Keep reading…

I Am A Mother

December 15, 2010

It was sometime early on in one of the first sessions of TEDWomen last week that the question occurred to me: are we saying to each other here – in this go go women go celebration of everything that women can do – that women are the new men? And if that’s the case, is [...]

36 comments Keep reading…

Ceci N’est Pas Une Mommy Blogger

November 18, 2010

Oh, hi! Can I tell you something about myself? I am not a mommy blogger. Yeah, I know. There’s a baby in my header. There are lots of pictures of my children here, including that one, right there, on the left. (Aren’t they cute? I let them call me Mommy.) But still. I am not [...]

119 comments Keep reading…

On Being A Good Mother, In Spite Of It All

November 9, 2010

Before Emilia was born, I had a very clear plan about what kind of mother I was going to be. I was going to carry her with me everywhere in designer slings, I was going to hand-blend my own organic baby food, I was going to shun pacifiers, I was going to teach her sign [...]

89 comments Keep reading…

Her Bad Monsters

October 25, 2010

I’m not saying that my children are dastardly little life-sucking beast-monsters who spread unholy terror lo these long autumn nights, it’s just that… yeah, I am saying that.

Keep reading…

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →