Work for family-minded women

By Mary C. Tillotson

Image by Plaid for Women

A few years ago, a nearly-finished homeschool mom (her youngest was in high school) ran across this article, The Bride who was Groomed for a Career, and it sparked a conversation among her nearly-finished homeschooling friends. They had all given their daughters a solid education and grounding in faith and morals, but had they taught them the skills they’d need to be wives and mothers?


At the time, I didn’t know that mom (or my opinion) well enough to say anything much, but it’s been on my mind for a while. When I was in college, I hardly felt like I had any direction, career or otherwise – college was just what you did after high school.

I turned this question over at length with my women friends in college. One friend was thinking about law school, but didn’t see the purpose in getting a law degree if she was just going to get married, get pregnant, quit being a lawyer, and homeschool her kids. She’s been out of college for a few years now and has a great career in a different field, but (as far as I know) no marriage prospects. She seems happy. Other women set out to find and follow their career passion, knowing that if they got married and had kids, they’d give it all up, but at least for now they might as well pursue their passions. Other women studied in the classic liberal-arts way, majoring in some higher-things-oriented field without thinking about careers. Of those, the ones who aren’t moms are teachers. Other women didn’t finish college because they got married and pregnant before graduation.

I graduated, worked as a small-town reporter for a year, got married, spent the next year doing odd jobs to make ends meet, and now I’m back in journalism, and I’m not (at the moment) raising kids. I think I’m finally starting to find answers.

My advice to family-minded female college students?

Be aware that there are plenty of unknowns. You might dream of being a homeschool mom of many but never find a man you want to marry; you might dream of an awesome political career but unexpectedly meet the man you really want to raise kids with. You might marry and realize you and your husband aren’t able to conceive children, temporarily or permanently.

I have anecdotal evidence from talking to my friends and statistical evidence from seeing polls: a majority of mothers want to work part-time in some professional field. A few want to work full-time and a few don’t want to work professionally at all, but most want to keep being professional while reserving most of the day for their kids.

When you’re in college, I think it makes sense to do what you love and pursue a career in that field. Keep in mind the usual factors like how much the field pays, whether jobs are available in that field, whether you’ll have to go to grad school (and if it’s worth the time/money), etc., but also consider how flexible that field can be. If you’re a journalist or writer, it’s very easy to do that full-time or part-time. Teaching can go part time pretty easily too. Other fields don’t flex into part-time near as easily. I don’t mean you should avoid them; I do mean you should think about that.

Do you have the skills it takes to raise kids and keep house? I don’t think this should be a big concern. A mom of six with two in diapers told me no matter how prepared you are for motherhood, you make 90 percent of it up on the spot. I suppose it might help to have enough exposure to kids that you aren’t afraid of them, but from everything I’ve seen, taking care of babies is hard work but not complicated. As they get older you get wiser and read more books and talk to more people about it; I don’t see how a lot of pre-marriage preparation would be helpful. The rest of keeping house is mostly cooking, cleaning, and paying bills – none of that is hard to learn, and anyway I think men and women ought to have these basic skills before college.

I know a lot of you readers have different experiences than I have. Some of you are moms, some of you are single, some of you are in college, some have careers and some don’t. What do you think about all this?

Letter to a Young Woman about Balancing a Writing Career and Kids

By Joy Pullmann

A few days ago, a college freshman emailed me to ask how I manage to work and have kids, and what a regular work day looks like for me, and if I have advice for her now. She also wants to be a writer and mother. Here's my email back to her, edited a little to add clarity and delete a few things that are unique to her situation.

Dear [young lady],
A regular day looks like crazy. :) Like right now I am standing in a New York train with my sleeping 2-month-old hanging off me in a pack. I'm here for work. I have three kids under four, and it would be utterly impossible to work if my husband did not stay at home with us (you can always ship your kids off to daycare, but I thought that would be selfish of me and knew it is also bad for their development). The littlest guy is two months old, and I mostly work around his nap schedule (luckily, the little ones sleep a lot) while my husband wrangles the other two. If I have to take or make a phone call and must not have random whining in the background, my lucky husband wrangles all the kids.

Luckily, writing and editing is very flexible and can be done reasonably at home, which is where I and many writer/editor friends work. Once your baby is about 6 months old, however, you basically either need to go part-time or get childcare, or plan to work evenings and probably weekends also to fill in those breaks during the day when he is now awake and needs attention. And that is only really possible if you are lucky enough to get a baby who sleeps well (hah!).

Raising Daughters in the Brave New World

By Chelsea Zimmerman
Reflections of a Paralytic

The already difficult task of raising daughters and protecting them from a society that seems to degrade them at every turn (or convince them that they aren’t beautiful enough, that their bodies aren’t perfect enough) is not getting any easier.

Remember the good old days when we used to only have to worry about a billion dollar sex industry and horny boys taking advantage of our girls and using them for their bodies? Well, now we also have to contend with a fast-growing biotech industry that is dependent on them putting their bodies on the line in order to obtain the “raw materials” needed for their experimentation.

Anonymous Us: Some Thoughts on Third-Party Reproduction

By Mary C. Tillotson

Photo via Wikimedia

Some things don’t get talked about very often – maybe because they’re too complex for our world of sound bites and pigeon-holing, maybe because they’re uncomfortable topics. Alana Newman knew this and founded Anonymous Us for this reason: to talk about what it’s like to be conceived by a third-party donor.

Anonymous Us is a website for donor-conceived children, sperm and egg donors, surrogates, fertility-industry professionals, and others whose lives have been affected by the fertility industry to share their stories anonymously. Founded in January 2011, the site boasts almost 200 stories that run the gamut of emotions.

“The reason I started my site is people are just too ashamed to come forward,” she said.

Alana and I chatted on the phone about a month ago, and it’s taken about that long for my life to calm down enough so I could write anything about our conversation. As you’ll see from her website, not every story is like hers, but many are.

I was especially interested in Alana’s thoughts on two issues: on a personal level, the complicated emotions involved in third-party reproduction, and on a societal level, the family breakdown that third-party reproduction contributes to. She has experience and knowledge in areas I don’t, so I’ll let her take it from here.

Abortion Kills 47% of Black Babies

by Joy Pullmann

Appropriate for a week that holds both Martin Luther King day and the anniversary of Roe v. Wade is a statistic I heard Saturday at our town's March for Life: thanks to abortion, 47% of African-American babies never take a breath.

The main speaker of our local event (which drew easily 500 people), Angela Minter, told her dramatic life story: Her mother had tried to have Angela aborted in the 1960s and failed. Later, Angela and her then-boyfriend chose two abortions and were about to commission a third, when Angela's father called.

"Don't kill that baby," he told her. She didn't. Later, the son that lived came to her. He and his girlfriend were pregnant, and planned to have an abortion. Eventually, his girlfriend refused the abortion, and now Angela has a beautiful two-year-old grandson.

Angela doesn't mince words when she talks.

Waiting for the Morning

By Joy Pullmann

I wanted to post this during Advent, when I was thinking it constantly, but I couldn't. During Advent, I was holding a newborn all day and night, and wishing desperately for some sleep. Any sleep. (I would still like more, but six hours a night broken by nursing is better than four broken by hours of fussing.)

Our second son was born December 5, and quickly revealed he would have the same tummy troubles as his two older siblings. This meant hours and hours a day of fussy sleep, where baby sleeps for five minutes in between squirms while mom and dad can't because he's squirming every five minutes. So I spent hours staring bleary-eyed out our bedroom window, holding a wiggly baby and waiting for dawn. I'd repeatedly check the time not to see how long baby had slept but to see how long it was until it was finally day and I didn't have to pretend I might get some sleep any more.

Advent, like Lent before Easter, is a time of sober reflection and preparation. New year resolutions and post-holiday housecleaning faintly resemble these two religious seasons. They are supposed to remind Christians that our eternal home is not this world, and that we await Christ's final return, when suffering will, at last, end.

Boy, did I feel that in my sleep-bereft state. A severe lack of sleep has always made me very melancholy. In college I used to cry every Friday night simply because I was so exhausted by the end of the week. This seems like a good setup for sober reflection, but it was hard to reflect on anything except how much I wanted to lie down.

This rotten experience did, however, reveal to me more about the reality of what it means to wait for a perfect eternity. I typically like this world. I have a good life. We're not poor, hungry, persecuted, or isolated. So why would I look forward to the end of it? Why bother with change when the present isn't that bad?

But when your newborn child is suffering, and so are you, this world gets a lot less attractive. It made me yearn, once again, for suffering to end. Some day, it will.

Image by Jan de Graaf, with no changes.

Motherly Love

By Anna Dunham
Anna-Bird

This weekend we reached 33 weeks! As we get closer to full-term, thinking about delivery is definitely starting to outweigh thinking about simply being pregnant. And there are a lot of possibilities to consider: I may be able to have our baby without any intervention or surgery. I may need to have a c-section, if the doctor is unable to remove my cerclage. Things may get more complicated if the baby comes especially early. The doctor explained this many months ago, and as a type-A firstborn who likes to know and plan as much as possible, I've appreciated having time to think about the various scenarios. 

One aspect of being pregnant that I've loved is the support I've immediately gotten from the mothers in my life. I feel lucky that this first-hand support has been so positive, especially since as soon as you move from your friend-circle to the internet-circle, support seems to be squashed by competition. I've been struck by the fact that people can in the same breath admit that each baby and situation is unique, and then assert that one method or technique is universally superior. Epidurals, induction, breastfeeding, co-sleeping....it seems like every aspect of parenting is open to criticism and censure. 

A Complainer Meets Sorrow, and Gives Thanks

By Joy Pullmann

I complain a lot about pregnancy (if you haven't noticed). I whine about how fat I am, and uncomfortable in myriad minor ways. But a few weeks ago, something made me sick of myself. It was a friends' funeral for their unborn child.

Their son died at about 19 weeks old. There is never very much to say about funerals. Thankfully, it was a Christian funeral and family, so grief in that case can be temporary. And I do not like to use other people's stories and sorrow as a morality tale—too much talk cheapens grief—but the little boy's death did make me realize how foolish I am. I complain frequently and crankily about a perfectly normal pregnancy (at least, as far as we know) while another woman and friend would give her right hand to have her little boy still kicking her ribs out. A commenter made a similar point a few weeks ago on one of my rants. And she was right.

My 14-year-old brother died in a car accident on my 19th birthday. Because of that, I sometimes look at my precious children and wonder if one of them will die before me. Or, worse, I wonder if one of them will not join me in heaven. There's no way for me to know, and it's not helpful to sit there morosely thinking of all the evil that may happen. Instead, I try to be thankful for what we do have, which is a great deal. One of them is this tiny little child inside, whose irritations to me mean he is not dead.

Image by The Bywaters.

Apparently, Baby Bunching Is a Thing

By Joy Pullmann

I had no idea there was a name for our inability to schedule conception, which has resulted in three babies in four years. But, apparently, there is. It's even trademarked, and there's a book coming. It's called "baby bunching."

According to other women I chat with, older women will often go deliberately for baby bunching because they have fewer good years of fertility left and they want to get kids in while they can. Some want to get the birthing years over with, which I am quite sympathetic to (I'm playing with the idea of "four by 30" but I hate pregnancy so much we'll see if we make it...or, which is more likely, if we continue to have children constantly despite my hoped-for 30-year cutoff). Other, less-organized people like me, keep having these kids during what are obviously highly fertile years, and we won't kill them, so we love them instead.

We're Not Confused, We're Married

My husband and I have sort of a strange relationship. I happen to earn our main income and produce all the babies, but he's not one of those lazy-a** husbands who make their wives do all the big jobs while they sit on the couch watching porn or Simpsons reruns. I'm also not the career woman who spends 80 hours a week in the office while her kids languish with a nanny. We're both sort of a weird mixture of the other, unlike both the traditional and sensible husband-wife relationship where the man is the hunter-gatherer and the woman the homemaker, and the modern relationship where everyone works while outsourcing the kids to strangers.

My husband is not androgynous or effeminate. He's spent the past two weeks jackhammering and digging out our hideous concrete patio to make way for what I hope will be a nice new brick one. He handles all the home repairs, car maintenance, and financial matters (thank goodness). I'm also not very manly. I'm not the Cinderalla-Barbie-princess sort of girl, but I crochet, and bake bread, and squee at mice. He's also more stern with the children, and I'm a mushball. 

But my husband also does almost all of our grocery shopping and meal creation. I used to, but I got busy and tired being pregnant all the time, so he took it over.

Combating forced abortion and gendercide in China

By Mary C. Tillotson

Reggie Littlejohn, Women's Rights Without Frontiers

Today is the 33rd anniversary of China's one-child policy, which has been devastating for Chinese women and girls. I just got off the phone with Reggie Littlejohn, founder and president of Women's Rights Without Frontiers, an organization dedicated to stopping forced abortions and gendercide in China. Reggie has testified with governments around the world, and her organization is running the Save a Girl Campaign, helping families on the grassroots level.

I'm going to let Reggie take it from here.

Tell me about the one-child policy in China.

Reggie: Some in the Chinese Communist Party want you to believe it's entirely voluntary. That is not true. Women are forcibly aborted up to the ninth month of pregnancy, and also forcibly sterilized. Some of these forced abortions are so violent that the women themselves die with their full-term babies.

The coercion gives rise to gendercide. Because of the coercive low birth limit, most families want to make sure they have a boy. Sex selective abortion is practiced, and up to 200 million women are missing in the world today due to sex-selective abortion. There are 37 million more men than women living in China.

What that gender imbalance is doing is it's driving human trafficking and sexual slavery, not only in China but in the surrounding countries as well.

Why do they have a preference for boys?

Reggie: Preference for boys is something that's centuries or possibly millennia old. It's prominent in Asia, but especially in China and India.

In both Indian culture and Chinese culture, when a couple gets married, the girl goes over to the boy's family, and the young woman and young man together support the young man's parents in their old age. If you give birth to a son, you know that when he marries, you will be gaining a daughter-in-law, so you're getting an addition to your family, whereas if you give birth to a daughter, you're not getting a son-in-law, you're losing your daughter also.

If you can only have one kid and it's a girl, you don't have anybody to support you in your old age. [Parents often have to choose between] sex-selective abortion or facing poverty in old age.

What is Women's Rights Without Frontiers doing about it?

Reggie met Pope Francis last week.

Reggie: We are doing two things. Number one, we've been called the leading voice in the world to expose and oppose forced abortions in China - forced abortion, gendercide, and sexual slavery in China. We gather documentation and go around and sound the alarm all over the world about what's going on in China.

Most people understand China has a one-child policy. They don't understand the brutality of the way it's enforced.

We gather documentation from China about forced abortion, forced sterilization, human trafficking, murder, all these things that are committed in connection with the one-child policy, and we testify.

We have credibility and a voice in informing government bodies about the truth about what's going on in China, concerning the one-child policy.

Reggie has testified six times at the United States Congress and three times at the European Parliament; she's also testified to the British, Irish, and Canadian Parliaments. She's briefed White House officials, the U.S. Department of State, the United Nations, and the Vatican. She's also spoken multiple times at the United Nations Commission on the Status of women, an annual convention in New York; the commission made a statement condemning forced abortion, forced sterilization, and forced contraception.

The other thing we do, we have a Save a Girl campaign.

Tell me about the Save a Girl Campaign.

Reggie: We've got workers on the ground in China who identify women who are pregnant with girls who are planning to have an abortion, or who have just given birth to a girl and are planning to abandon her. They say, 'Please don't abort or abandon your baby because she's a girl. We'll give you a monthly stipend for a year to help support this girl.'

I understand, from my network, we have a 95 percent success rate. We're saving lives in China.

We also help women who are fleeing forced abortion. We are stopping gendercide in China one baby girl at a time.

The Save a Girl Campaign was launched last year on October 11, the International Day of the Girl Child.

What can regular people do to help?

Reggie: If people want to do something to help these girls, we have petitions to stop forced abortion, and they can also donate toward the Save a Girl Campaign. It's amazing how little it takes to save a life in China.

So much of our effort has to do with getting the word out, and people help get the word out by liking the article you write, posting it on Facebook, tweeting it - that's huge for us. It's the only way we can turn political opinion to understand what's going on and oppose the violence against women.

People are listening to us, listening to our message.

Bravery and Babes

By Julie Baldwin

I've never felt very brave. I was picked on a lot growing up because I was shy, and I stuttered, and wore glasses. And even after the stuttering was "fixed", I had a hard time not allowing my feelings to be swayed or hurt by other people. This feeling has lasted for many years, although I grew much better at masking it. In the meanwhile, I developed as a writer.

I joined the high school paper, Lion's Roar, my freshman year, as an outlet for writing. It was so fun seeing my name in print and contacting people, asking them what they thought, collecting the facts, writing up a story. I remember when I was named Sports Editor, one of two juniors who got a spot usually reserved for a senior. I was so proud of my little section, which I grew from three writers to six. Our space grew too - a whole page!

I had the glued-to-my-phone pre-req. down

I went to college and decided I didn't want to do journalism any more, so I didn't sign up for the college paper. But then, I got drawn into the independent paper, and spent my entire college career editing, writing, promoting and nurturing it. The tiny staff again grew under me, as I pulled in every resource I could, helping my writers and making them feel wanted as much as they were needed. I hurt a lot of feelings with my edits and editorials and "Hillsdalians of Genius" columns, but I didn't stroke any egos, and I told the truth, and people respected the paper. I even got along well with the journalism department, and got a scholarship to write book reviews for it my senior year.

It seemed the obvious answer, then, when asked what I was going to do after college: journalism.

Statehouse reporting was thrilling, but my work environment was not. I worked for a non-profit, who accepted a grant to fund two journalism positions. Though I was successful, my articles were well-received and picked up by outside outlets, it was a difficult work environment for me, and for personal-affecting-professionalism reasons, I quit.

That was one of the scariest things I had ever done, and it changed my whole life. I had accepted that job because it was great cub reporter experience and I was two hours from home. But now I had quit, and I was thinking about the other job I turned down in Washington, D.C. Was that the better choice?

I decided not to pursue journalism when I returned home, which my journalism mentor severely disagreed with; he told me not to waste my talent. Since then, it's been an interesting ride: family business, nannying, freelance, and plenty more "not-for-profit" writing -- as well as more family time, a new family, marriage, a new city, a baby, and a whole new set of challenges. And I'm happy, even though a part of me twinges to be back in journalism.

And what does this have to do with bravery? I still don't think of myself as particularly brave. I'm still introverted and still have glasses. But I've tasted "failure" - I know what it's like not to have what you want. I know what it's like to think you know what you want. I've known surprise, and I've known success. I know what it feels like to stand at the crossroads, and make another decision you know is going to change your life. Then another. Then another. I keep pressing forward. That's brave. That's living.

We all live with the consequences, whether our action by active or passive. And can you live with regrets? Sure. That's one way to live, but it's not a preferable way - because regret stains all future successes if you allow it. Or you can learn from your mistakes, which is my attitude: I have only one real regret, and that was letting people lead me to think I wasn't worth it: as a friend, as a girlfriend, as a student, as a writer.

That is a lie, no matter who you are. 

We all have potential. We're all on a road to Damascus. None of us have completed the work we were put on this earth to do; most of us are still discerning what that work is, exactly. We should keep working, keep seeking, keep trying, keep loving, keep going.

In Jennifer Aist's book Babes in the Woods: Hiking, Camping & Boating with Babies and Young Children (my current read), she tells parents back off a bit and to let their kids explore (while still under supervision, of course!):

Watch an eight-month-old baby crawl around a coffee table. If left to explore it on his own, he'll run into it a few times, bonk his head on the bottom of it as he tries to crawl under it, and maybe even get a bit frustrated by it. Very quickly, this same baby will learn to duck going around that coffee table, slow down to avoid crashing into it, and generally learn how to be safe around it. The baby with "hover parents" never has an opportunity to learn by trial and error. So though this baby may never bonk his head on the coffee table at home, he also never develops the skills to avoid bonking his head on any other coffee table. Teach children the skills they need to safely negotiate any coffee table they may ever encounter, and you have given your children an incredible gift. You will have taught your child to be capable. 

Remember, frustration teaches children problem solving. Boredom teaches children creativity.

This is the same for adults as well. Be brave enough not to squander the chances in life to try, to "fail", to be who you want to be. You are exactly who you're supposed to be, and that is a true gift to the rest of us.

Republished with author's permission.

The Need for Self-Care

By Julie Baldwin

Last Sunday, I drove two and a half hours to a beach in Alabama with my husband and a friend, chatting and laughing and singing along to the radio and our CD collection. A couple hours later, we were driving back to New Orleans, with white sand stuck to all the crevices and skin (and in our hair), sunburns, and conversations that would dwindle off as a favorite song came into play.

Once we crossed back over the border into Louisiana, I asked my husband to drive because I was so tired. The waves had been strong and full, white-capping and carrying our bodies forward and onward. It takes strength to stand up against the tide, even when you dig your feet into the sand and swear you shan't move. But moving isn't the problem - it's where you end up. Let yourself get swayed, and you'll end up 20 feet down the beach. But maybe that's where the adventure starts? As I sat on the sand in the late afternoon and watched the sand crabs dive into their holes, I thought: this is self-care.

Self-care "refers to actions and attitudes which contribute to the maintenance of well-being and personal health and promote human development." Self-care starts with self-awareness.

What are you able to do? What do you want to do? Why are you feeling this way?

I Like Babies, But Not Pregnancy

When I was pregnant with my first child, I felt horrifically guilty for being so upset I was pregnant. And there was room for repentance there, as Christians believe children are a great blessing, and that God has the right to give you one when He wants (since he's the only one who can put a soul in a being anyway). I did not want a child then, and I really wished I could end his life. That was wrong, and evil.

But there's another aspect to not liking pregnancy that I think is not so much evil as human. Pregnancy is difficult, and annoying. It just is. And no one gains by lying about that. Right now I'm near month seven for baby three, and I do not look attractive in just about anything I wear. I look rotund because I am rotund. It's frustrating to be a 26-year-old young woman who is used to being skinny but really can't possibly look decent no matter how much makeup I apply, especially when my job involves lots of public presentations and interviews in which it is quite helpful to look at least not-hideous. As I have grown older and shared pregnancies with friends and been able to talk to more women about it, I have learned something that has made me feel a lot better: Lots of women don't like being pregnant, and lots of women are annoyed when we get pregnant, and we typically just get over it (right about when the baby stops being a bloodsucker and becomes a milksucker, and you can kiss his squashy little face and ditch the fat pants).

Nursing on CSPAN

By Joy Pullmann

One day, I had a radio interview. My husband usually minds the kids while I work, but this time he had to be away, so we hired a new babysitter for the morning. Right before the interview, I put the kids in their swim diapers and ushered them all outside so I couldn't hear them but they'd have a good time.

My toddler son chose that very moment to throw a wild tantrum. Note it was a new babysitter, and my son's tantrums are like a heavy metal rock concert packed into one child, complete with live bat-eating. 

Radio shows have regular commercial breaks, and I was set to be on this show for a whole hour. So at the first break I rushed downstairs, phone on mute, to rescue the poor babysitter. Turns out my son wanted to be done with water (heaven knows why--he's obsessed with water) and was demanding a diaper change. And *I* had to do the diaper change, not the babysitter we'd hired for this very reason. So I'm frantically tearing his clothes off and trotting my pregnant self up and down with new clothes and a diaper, when the commercial break ends, mid-change. So I rush upstairs, trying not to breathe hard into the phone, and switch back to interview expert. Next commercial break, my kid is still sitting there, at least only whimpering now, half-diapered. I finish him up in two minutes and tell the babysitter to read them books, right before dashing upstairs again and holding my breath in to what I hope sounds like normal breathing. 

Along the same lines, Mary (from this blog) recently told me of a very well-educated mom who works part-time from home with her three kids. This venerable lady recently went on CSPAN when her newest was only two months old, so when he was hungry she just topped him with a blanket and nursed him on air.

Three Things A Mama Doesn’t Need

By Megan Twomey
Becoming Mama Twomey

In movies about having babies, there is usually an obligatory scene exploring the worries of the future daddy. The sweating future father might pour out his soul to his best friend or maybe even to his glowing pregnant wife (who is, of course, smiling with preternatural maternal understanding), and says something like:  “What did I get myself into? I’m not ready for this.” In real life, he’s not the only one with those feelings. Having children can be a scary thing, and women are not often allowed to admit that they are worried too. 

I want to tell you, fellow women, future and current mothers, that it’s okay to be worried. I am a mother of two and, I’m not going to lie to you, I’m often terrified. Human souls weigh in the balance of this job. It’s worth a little worry. 

If you are thinking, “Gee, thanks, constant fear is a lot to look forward to,” then I ask you to hear me out. There’s going to be a lot of worries in your future if you become a parent, but there’s probably less than you think. Right now, I want to tell you what NOT to worry about. Things I worried about, but shouldn't have. 

Domestic by Choice

By Julie Baldwin

Yesterday, I set aside 30 minutes to write up a chore list for our townhouse. I had previously scoured Pintrest for hours, looking for one that would give me an idea of even how to go about setting up a chore list. And yet, nothing compared with my very own list that encapsulated our very own cleaning needs.

My first kitchen, on the even of destruction

When I lived with my family, my parents split up the house into sections. Between six kids, we could usually keep it tolerable. When I lived by myself, the apartment was so tiny that anything out of place would cause a cleaning frenzy to ensue. Now, I live with my husband and I waddle around at 33 weeks pregnant, cleaning sporadically because I forget what I was doing once I leave the room to put something away. Not always, but it can certainly feel that way. I needed a list, and I'm a happier lady today to have it.

Are women born domestic? Or do they have domesticity thrust upon them? I used to think I wasn't domestic, because people told me so. In a similar thread, I thought my mom wasn't domestic either. And so the quote from Albert Einstein now floats through my head: "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." The same with domesticity.

Not a War on Women, but a War on Mothers

By Joy Pullmann

An extremely well-spoken coalition of women descended on the U.S. Capitol Thursday to make some incisive statements. The contraceptive mandate that forces businesses and health insurers to pay for every woman's contraception and sterilization choices was the reason they showed up, but their comments touched on other things that matter to women, as well. For one (from World Magazine's coverage of the event):

“There’s no war on women, there’s a war on mothers,” said Washington attorney Cynthia Wood in fiery remarks that sparked cheers from the crowd.

And

“I’m tired of our government making it very difficult to stand up for the things that are good and true,” said Mary Ellen Barringer, a consultant for non-profit groups from Maryland. “I can’t send my son on a field trip without filling out all kinds of paperwork, yet teens have access to products and services that lead to all kinds of risky behavior—with no parental consent.”

Oh Shut Me Up! On Mummy Tummies

By Stacy Trasancos
StacyTrasancos.com

beautiful.

When I first saw Kate’s post-partum baby bump, I barely gave it a passing thought. Yep, that’s how it looks. Yep, best not to try to hide it. Yep, she’s got one. I was actually shocked to see the media talking about it. You can read some of it here:

Is Kate Middleton’s ‘mummy tummy’ coverage disrespectful to women?

At least not everyone’s criticizing her, but some fashionistas went too far wondering about how long it will take for her to get that “bod” back. Young mothers hear this and it cements a false idea of beauty. Those early days of new motherhood are difficult enough, for any woman, royalty or not. Muscles stretched for 38-40 weeks do not just snap back into place in a few days.