Arguing Against Resilience

My 3 ½ year old fell head first in the duck pond in Prospect Park this past spring. The incident left him scared and rather traumatized. So much so, that when his friend lays on the ground, and throws leaves into the duck pond in Central Park, he screams, cries, and then pulls her back from the edge by her dress while yelling, “It's not safe!”

My son and I spend a lot of time in the park and around a variety of duck ponds, so we talk a lot about water, being scared, learning to swim, how to stay safe, and how still, he doesn't want to go to the parts of the park where he saw a kid fall face first into a deep puddle, so that his entire head was submerged under water.

Oddly, in reference to the duck pond incident, I have been told randomly, that my son will get over it eventually, because kids are resilient. Not only are kids resilient, but people are, generally speaking.

I know what these people mean: that children go through difficult things and survive, even turn out well, despite an aversion to water.

Yet, it's the English teacher in me that just has to point out that it's not a correct use of the word “resilient.” I find it hard, in these conversations, not to quote Mandy Patinkin in The Princess Bride by saying, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

To be clear, the word resilient means the ability to recoil or spring back into shape after bending, stretching, or being compressed. This definition suggests that kids simply endure whatever trauma or hardship, from falling in the duck pond to being bullied at school or by their parent, and simply spring back into shape, as if that event never occurred.

Granted, the alternate definition of resilient is that someone withstands or recovers quickly from difficult conditions. Still, this definition suggests that the difficult conditions do not leave lasting marks or at the very least, that kids (and people in general) can endure rather a lot, without much harm coming to them in the long run.

I just don't think this is true of kids, or of grownups either.

After my son's fall into the duck pond, he has not just bounced back as if he never fell head first into dark murky water. Even in the alternate definition, he is recovering from the fright of his fall, but quickly? He fell in three months ago. Is that quickly? I have a friend who lost her gorgeous off the grid house in the Colorado fires. She is recovering, but she is grieving, raging, crying, yelling, and grieving some more. Is that all part of withstanding?

The word resilience devalues the experiences that shape us and impact us. It asks that we experience life by acting as if things don't.

I think the better word is adapt. Instead of saying children are resilient, we could say, children adapt. Because they do. They develop coping mechanisms. They make decisions about the world and they make decisions about themselves. Some children who are abused are scared into behaving well, because they adapt with the notion of, “if I just stay quiet and out of the way...” while others adapt by becoming physical fighters. But spring back as if nothing ever happened? I don't know anyone who does that. Humans collect experiences the way a child collects shells at the beach; it doesn't serve anyone to act as if those experiences don't leave some imprint long after their moment has passed.

After my son's fall, he's adapted by staying away from the edge of the duck pond. He only goes in the ocean if he's holding my hand, and he won't let the waves go higher than his knees. This week he begins swimming lessons, an adaptation we're hoping lessens his fear of water. He will recover, and I do believe this whole process will contribute to who he becomes, but I don't expect him to bounce back as if it never happened. To do so would be a disservice to who he is and his experience.

On Judgment

On Saturday mornings, the Fort Greene farmers market lines the side of Fort Greene Park. The location is ideal, as families can pick up the weekly groceries and then take the kids to the playground just inside the park. Or in our case, my husband takes my son to the playground, while I pick up the vegetables, meat, half & half, and enough strawberries and rhubarb to satisfy my addiction for all things strawberry-rhubarb for the following week.

As I walked through the market this morning with my sister, we were once again talking about a thing that we often talk about, how women do this funny thing where we either judge the bejeezus out of each other or we accuse other women for judging the bejeezus out of us. Once we become parents this trait goes into hyperdrive to such an extent that all that has to happen is that another mother shows up with artfully arranged organic snacks in a stainless steel container and we feel judged because we have decided that with our snacks – the standard peanut butter and jelly sandwich (made of course with organic peanut butter and jelly but no one knows this since we left the jars where they belong in the refrigerator at home) in a plastic container that may very well contain BPA (or not, we just don't know because we've had them so long we can't remember if we bought them before and after BPA starting making the headlines) – we fall short. Or in some way, we feel invalidated, just because someone else does things differently. It's a leap of mental energy – mental energy that we very much need for other more important tasks, but nonetheless we use it anyway and carelessly – to accuse the other person of judging us or making us feel judged simply because they do something different.

My sister and I talked about this leap that happens, about how there are times we don't understand it, how it happens, how just because we do something differently than someone else, someone else feels judged by us. Yet, I concede that the places I judge myself the harshest are the places it doesn't take much at all for me to feel judged. The other person doesn't even have to say a word.

I've been on both sides of this coin. I've had mothers come up to me and admit that they feel intimidated by me because I write parenting articles and posts on how to be the perfect parent, or that because I write, I must have it all figured out. I've corrected them, to say that I have written no such thing about knowing how to be a perfect parent, that I actually write how I'd like to see the word “perfect” dropped from the English language or at the very least redefined to mean that as perfect parents, we lose it and then apologize and forgive ourselves and start over, just so our kids know that it's okay to make mistakes, to try, fail, and try again or that's okay for my kids to see that I too have emotions, or that I get frustrated or angry – and that I understand my anger and frustration impacts them and can even scare them. I correct them and say that generally the times I do things “wrong” are what I write about, and the times I do things “wrong” actually teach my children how to be resourceful like how to handle things when we end up on a subway ride without a toy to play with or in the park without snacks or a spare diaper or the baby's spare outfit.

Saturday morning, after my sister and I walked through the market and entered the playground where my son and husband were playing, I tried to figure out how I could put my market bag down without all of its contents spilling out. I had my 11-month old in her carrier and didn't want to have to bend over to pick up escaping apples or potatoes. One of my friends came running over. She was cute in her usual hip Bohemian Fort Greene mom way. She was especially energetic and happy. I instantly assessed that to be so hip and energetic, she must be very well rested and that it must be smooth sailing at her house with her two children, while at my house, we were lucky to get all four of us dressed to stumble out the door.

And so I said, “Oh, you're one of those smart, quick-witted mothers, one of those mothers with the answers...”

She said, “Are you kidding? Here you are wearing heels and a baby and carrying a bag full of vegetables. It's like a vision of perfection.”

I started to explain that I wasn't really wearing heels, that I was actually wearing heels made by the clog people so that they felt like clogs, but then I realized it was besides the point. I had just done that very thing my sister and I were just talking about; I had looked at someone else and instantly judged myself. It was like a bad habit left over from puberty, but worse, because I was still doing it and doing it without even thinking about it, almost as if it was an unconscious hard wired brain pattern, the kind of wiring that has you breathe without realizing it.

It wasn't even a thirty second interaction. We didn't discuss the usual hot topics that can cause parents to get weird, or their feathers ruffled, the topics like diet and snacks, discipline, TV watching, schools, or god forbid, vaccinations. It wasn't one of those conversations where I felt baited, like when a friend asked what we were going to do about my son's Pre-K in the fall. When I answered that we were going to try homeschooling, she immediately began defending her decision to send her son to school, and what a great school they had found for him. Even when I said, “That's great. We haven't found that – or we haven't found it close to our home or for less than $28,000.” She continued to defend her decision and her son's school. Even when I said, “Different families need different things.” She still defended. I left feeling weird and wondering why she had asked in the first place.

I have noticed since I've gotten caught in the judgment back and forth often enough and often without even meaning to or doing anything, that now, unless I'm with my closest friends (or friends that I know while we may do things differently, we know that we're all slightly neurotic about different things, and we're very good at respecting each other's neurosis) I no longer fall into the judgment trap because I don't casually disclose our various choices, or if I do, it's not without thought, or briefly explaining why we've done what we've done as an attempt to simply say, this is what works for us. Like that we no longer let our son watch TV because it made him violent and caused temper tantrums and I simply was unwilling to do it anymore. We don't do sugar because it also makes him nutty, not to mention, even with a lack of sugar (and juice, milk, bottles, candy, soda, or dried fruit), he has a mouth full of cavities that has the dentist stumped. I don't talk about vaccinations because that's a potential heated argument I have no desire to get into. When a friend asks for advice, I deflect with “Well, we're a little untraditional, but what we've found is...”

After talking with my sister and the brief interaction with my friend, I realized once again how comparing myself to others is just a reflex of my mind. It's not something I have to stay focused on. And, while I didn't know it in puberty, I know now that often others are also comparing themselves without even meaning to.

Recently, in an email with some beloved friends (versus some random online moms group), one mother asked, “How do the rest of you do it? Get snacks made? Get out of the house? Get time to yourself and get work done?” The discussion that followed was reassuring for all of us, as we all thought the rest of us had it all pulled together. Instead, we found that many of us often wear the same thing days in a row or that our children do, or that people pack snacks the night before, or drop the laundry off for someone else to do, or cook soup on Sunday so the week starts off with a few nights of leftovers. Some of us admitted that we throw parties just so we have to clean or that we've pulled the majority of our children's toys just so we don't have to continually pick up the pieces. I admitted that if you actually came over to our house, you'd discover that with two kids, two adults, two cats, a large dog and six chickens in the backyard, our home more resembles a circus than a peaceful sanctuary. Yet it's a circus that works for us, which is what I now remind myself when I notice that I'm feeling judged or inadequate.

How to Apologize

Apologies are rare things to make the news, yet this week one did with Dharun Ravi's apology to the Clementi family for his actions that led Tyler Clementi to take his own life. I have followed this case the way I follow much of the news, in that I listen to NPR in my kitchen in the morning. Thanks to the iPhone, I check headlines and my favorite writers throughout the day. While I think Tyler Clementi's death tragic, and Ravi's actions that contributed to it abhorrent, I didn't obsessively follow the court proceedings. I didn't weigh in at Ravi's potential deportation or jail sentencing. Though I often have quite a bit to yell back at my kitchen radio about, I didn't yell about this case – or I didn't until I heard Ravi's apology this week.

Except that I don't know that we can call it an apology. Mostly, it was a statement read by his lawyers. When Judge Berman asked if Ravi had anything to say to the family about his actions, he said nothing. Given that Ravi made extensive attempts to cover up his actions, many commentators and Op-Ed writers concluded Ravi didn't feel remorse, or that if he did, it was only remorse for getting caught.

There is an art to apologizing, and it's not really one that is often taught. We think we are teaching our children to apologize: any time our toddler goes to a play ground and grabs a toy that isn't his, the knee jerk reaction is to demand s/he say their sorry. While this tells children they are expected to tell people they are sorry when they do something that upsets someone else, it doesn't teach them about responsibility for their actions or about being accountable for the repercussions of those actions. So, what we often end up with are people who say they are sorry, simply because it's expected of them to do so. And this is what Ravi's apology sounds like: his advisors standing over him like his parents used to do at the playground, “Now. Say you're sorry.”

Tyler Clementi's family was right to reject the apology and say that it was insincere. They were right to say that “a sincere apology is personal” and to point out that “it included no words of sincere remorse, compassion or responsibility for the pain he caused.” Because it didn't. An effective apology requires compassion and the ability to see the damage done from another point of view; the apologizer has to be able to understand why the other party feels wronged.

Instead, Ravi's statement allows that he just made a thoughtless mistake. He writes, “my behavior and actions, which at no time were motivated by hate, bigotry, prejudice or desire to hurt, humiliate or embarrass anyone, were nonetheless the wrong choices and decisions.”

If Tyler Clementi were my son, I'd give Ravi's apology a no pass too.

I too would ask for some authenticity, or at the very least, I'd ask, if your actions were not motivated by the desire to hurt, humiliate or embarrass someone, what were they motivated by? Because sticking a camera in someone's bedroom when they have a date coming over, and then inviting all your friends to watch is actually a pretty clear attempt to humiliate or embarrass or laugh at someone. Anytime we stick someone into the position of “other” or “different from us” we are hurting them. And anytime we seek to look good or feel included at the expense of someone else, you are bullying.

An actual apology takes courage. It takes courage to acknowledge one's hurtful actions and those it impacted, but when doing so, it shows the other party that you understand the cause-effect nature of your actions, and that your actions have repercussions that you didn't anticipate.

An actual apology also requires an explanation for why the offense happened, what motivated it, what led someone to take a considerable amount of action to hurt someone else. An explanation for the behavior has others see that you understand the damage of your actions and that your behavior is worth changing. Injured parties want to know that the wrongdoing won't occur again; an effective apology reassures them that it won't.

Often, effective apologies also make reparations. In Ravi's case, the court has assigned these in hours of community service. Still, it wouldn't have hurt Ravi to ask Clementi's family about what they wanted him to do or if there was anything he could do that would ease the pain he caused. It's thoughtful.

Everyone does things that hurts other people or at the very least bothers other people, but it takes vulnerability to admit that you were wrong or that you did something that really hurt someone else. On the playground, it is nice to apologize, but it doesn't mean anything if it's just out of expectation, and not actual compassion.

  

Feminism and Attachment Parenting: It Can Work

Twenty years ago, or maybe it's closer to fifteen, in any case, once upon what feels like a lifetime ago, an ex-boyfriend and I had an argument about whether a woman should stay home after having children. He argued that women should stay home, because it was better for the children; a mother could give children an emotional security that no one else could. I argued that it was sexist to say a woman “should” do anything, and that women should not be the ones to give up their career or work outside the home just because they happen to be the ones having children. A father or other trusted care giver could just as easily provide the love, care and emotional security children required.

In hindsight, the fight was stupid, simply because it was theoretical. We were still in college. We were too young to even be talking about the prospect of having children. Even when we were out of college, the topic of living together never came up. I never expected a proposal. Now I know enough to know it doesn't make sense to talk about scenarios that aren't real or on the soon-to-be-horizon. As they say, it's like worrying about problems that you don't even have yet.

But at the time, I was young and oversensitive, I took his views as a personal attack, as if he was saying, what I wanted for myself individually was less important than my potential child needs, as if he was suggesting that women (me) not just take off a few years or the first year of each child's life off from their careers, but give them up permanently, and to fail to do this, made them a bad mother. Whether he was actually saying this or not, I made the point that women who have something – like a career – that nurtures them, make better and far more nurturing mothers, in addition to demonstrating to their children of both genders that they can pursue and fulfill the careers of their dreams.

At the time, I thought anyone saying that women SHOULD stay home was sexist, and that anyone who suggested that a baby's needs were more important than a mother's was especially sexist, because such a view devalued women, their potential, their skills, and their lives. I thought for a mother to be a good respectable mother, she had to put herself first. That if she took care of herself, and enjoyed her life, it would only benefit her children, whereas an exhausted woman who gave everything, never got anything for herself, would only end up resenting her children and feeling like she was constantly being taken advantaged of. For the record, I do think some degree of this is true. And yes, I realize, in all fairness to my ex-boyfriend, he wasn't saying women are a dishrag who should be completely used up by their children.

At least I hope not. (Actually, what I hear from his mother, whom I am still friends with, is that he is a very loving, committed, hands on, and patient parent.)

I think I was all of nineteen when we had this fight. I don't know for sure, and I'm unwilling to go through old journals (because there are a lot – this ranting habit of mine is hardly new) to find the exact date. But it was the early 90s. I had read Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth and Carol Gilligan's Ina Different Voice. My copy of Susan Faludi's Backlash was dogeared, with a spine that was so cracked, I had to tape it back together. I subscribed to Ms. Magazine. Gloria Steinem and Hillary Rodham Clinton had told me I could have it all and that I was entitled to it. Poor ex-boyfriend, given all the reading I had been doing, it was just an argument waiting for an opportunity to assert itself.

When I became a mother a good decade and half later, I thought of this fight often. I found myself wondering what my 19 year old feminist self would say about my mothering self. When I was 19, I had wanted to teach college English. I wanted tenure. I wanted to write books that won the Pulitzer. By the time I got pregnant, I had taught college English, but I no longer wanted tenure. In fact, I walked off campus the last time before my husband's job took us to LA, and realized with a startlingly clarity that I never wanted to teach again. While I had written books, they hadn't won the Pulitzer because they hadn't been published (yet...). My husband and I moved to LA, and I sat my pregnant-bellied self in my new found spot at Ground Zero of My Life.

And when I gave birth to my son (Yes, naturally. My fear of needles is bigger than my fear of pain.) I, like many parents before me, melted. While I had some anxiety about mothering, simply because my own mother didn't seem to enjoy it much, it disappeared the second he was born. I was startled to discover a few weeks, and then a few months later, that I had never felt happier. Given that my son literally nursed every twenty minutes, it's entirely likely, I was just high on oxytocin, with fresh new hormones releasing every single time he latched. Nevertheless, he was an easy and happy baby, as long as he nursed. Which means, I was one of “those” women that Elisabeth Badinter writes about in The Conflict and that the latest issue of Time magazine points to, with its cover asking, "Are You Mom Enough?"

In my new motherhood, I was surprised how often I found myself questioning what my younger feminist self would say about my mothering self, and wondering if she felt like she had failed as a feminist, and if I could still even call myself one. I talked to myself a lot about this point. I even joked at mom's group and with other mothers that honestly, I have failed at everything and most of my ideal career choices in my life, breastfeeding is just the weird thing that came easily to me. It's just my bad luck that I can no longer make a living as a wet nurse. (And if I had known that this would be the one thing I was good at, maybe I should have pursued it earlier?). In the end though, I would end the conversation with myself by concluding that what I had been arguing for all along was that women have choices, and that those choices be equally valued and respected.

Consequently, what has come to be these ridiculous debates or battles or in more polite words, conversations, about Attachment Parenting and if it devalues women, has continued to hit nerve after nerve of mine. Badinter is hardly the first. Ayelet Waldmen makes a few jabs in Bad Mother. Judith Warner in Perfect Madness; Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety argues against the pressure to breastfeed for at least a year and the “boundary breakdown” of attachment parenting, and Lisa Bloom in Think takes a two paragraph time out from arguing against the dumbing down of American women to argue against co-sleeping, because she thinks sleeping next to one's child causes one to lose sleep.

No, actually. When you co-sleep, you roll over, nurse and go back to sleep (if you've woken up). When your baby is in a crib down the hall, you wake up, walk down the hall, sit in a rocking chair and nurse, then after your baby is back asleep, you walk back down the hall, go back to sleep, only to repeat the entire process two hours later. Because your sleep is so physically disrupted, you can't help but be exhausted.

See? Nerve. I try to rise above these weird assumptions about attachment parenting, and I keep taking the bait.

And all these books make valid points and are worth reading (while the Badinter reads quickly, you could probably still save the time and find a nice summary. It's not like it hasn't been written about ad nauseam.) Still, I can't help it. I want to shout at these women, “You know what devalues a woman and mother? FATIGUE!”

I understand - having thought similar thoughts as a 19 year old feminist – the concerns of these women and the people who feel compelled to turn attachment parenting into some weird thing it's not. It's easy to fear falling so head first into mothering that you risk losing yourself. It's happened to many an innocent woman before. 

But I have to question the women who continue to point to certain choices women are making as mothers and asserting that those choices are causing them to be devalued as individuals. I have to question the notion of not keeping our children at arm's length makes us less feminist or equal. Because I don't actually think the issue is attachment parenting or any other form of parenting. Most parents of my current parenting generation are fairly clear that like many parents before us, there will be things we do as parents that work, and that there are things we do that don't work as well. All of us are making the best choices we can with what we have, and the choices we're making line up with our values, who we know ourselves to be, and who we know our children to be. We're all interested in doing what works for us, our children and our nightly sleep. There are more parenting resources than ever before in history. It's not like we're not doing our homework.

Rather, I think the issue is that motherhood isn't valued the way we'd like to think it is. It's easy to resent anyone who recommends breastfeeding at least a year because employers aren't set up to support mothers who breastfeed a year with paid maternal leave. Of course working women who resort to bottles and formula feel pressured to breastfeed: their doctors are recommending they do something they can't easily do. With work days getting longer, not shorter, it isn't exactly fun to stick your breasts into a machine inspired by efficiently milking commercial dairy cows while you think of your baby that you haven't seen in 10 hours. And not that breastfeeding mothers are off the pressure hook either, with breastfeeding rates at 30% after three months and 13%, I can't say I agree with Badinter that the “Tyranny of Breastfeeding” has accomplished its goal. Rather, a woman breastfeeding her child the recommended length, more often than not, is asked when she'll quit, why she hasn't quit, isn't it weird, and if not, when will it be? The tyranny of breastfeeding has hardly normalized what pediatricians around the world recommend for all children.

I do appreciate the conversations women are starting, because it's clear dissatisfaction is afoot. But instead of taking our dissatisfaction out on each other and various parenting choices, which are nobody else's business anyway, why not instead work towards something that will make parenting better for everyone? Because let's be honest, the current work culture doesn't make it easy for parents of either gender to be good parents, whether it's an utter lack of paid sick days and family and medical leave or a work environment that demands employees work at least 12 hours at a time, and look down on them if they don't.

I am tired of women being women's harshest critics. It's hardly new. Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women was published in 1792. Her sharpest critics were women. The reasoning behind it is rather simple. As my midwife told me in my first pregnancy, I would never have to even utter a word about my parenting (or life) choices, because the sheer fact that I was doing it differently than someone else would have that someone else feel judged or threatened or like I thought they or their way wasn't good enough, when in reality, it has nothing to do with them at all. Surely, in addition to all the rights we've earned since 1792, we've also gained enough security in our selves and our choices that we can not take each other's approaches so personally?

Badinter and Time magazine seem to think not. I disagree. 

What I Want For Mother's Day

Two weeks ago, my sister asked this season's first, “what do you want for Mother's Day?”

Mother's Day is a big business. Greeting cards, brunches, champagne toasts, jewelry, spa treatments, flowers, mugs from the paint-your-own-pottery place. The intention is valid, even admirable: to honor mothers and the work they do raising children.

Except this year, when my sister asked what I might want for Mother's Day, I did not think of the potential flower arrangements, necklaces with children's birth stones, or sappy greeting cards that were supposed to honor the hours and attention I give to my children. It's counter-intuitive, really, given that raising children can be exhaustive work with only emotional fulfillment as its reward. But raising my children is not what I recently find so exhausting.

No, what I recently find exhausting and what I thought of instead of the potential gifts I might reap is that in 45 states, 944 provisions have been introduced that would limit women's reproductive health and rights. I thought of how Arizona, now declares by law that pregnancy begins up to two weeks before conception - “from the first day of the last menstrual period of the pregnant woman.” So for Arizona, life begins before an egg is even fertilized, which by extension then means every woman in Arizona is pregnant the first two weeks of her monthly cycle. This is purely to limit abortion rights, but it just made the Sex Education taught in the public schools that much more confusing. No matter though, because while the most effective way to reduce teen pregnancy and abortion is through education in the public schools, several states introduced bills that would forbid anything but abstinence education or stipulate that certain “facts” must be taught, even if these “facts” aren't facts at all or have any medical or scientific basis. Abstinence education, as we know, is very good at telling women not to get pregnant by not having sex or to protect themselves from getting sexually abused or raped. It's also good for perpetuating sexist and traditional gender roles since when an unplanned pregnancy happens, it's the woman's life it impacts or education that gets derailed. It's lousy for educating or empowering men to take responsibility for themselves in preventing rapes, sex abuses, or unwanted pregnancies.

In Wisconsin, Gov. Walker repealed the comprehensive sex education laws only to replace it with an abstinence only one. He signed legislation to restrict abortion rights in health care exchanges and require doctors to “investigate women” seeking abortions to make sure they aren't being coerced (because it's such a big decision – surely a woman can't work this one out by herself). Then Walked signed a bill to nullify enforcement of the federal Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay for Women Act. So he may want women to have children, but he doesn't want to help them support the children his laws encourage.

I also thought of how many friends I have that since becoming mothers, they were passed over for promotions and raises – all because of the perception, that because of their family life, they would be less “available” or “committed” or “reliable” or “serious” at work, even though all solid evidence points to the contrary. Or the women who receive inadequate maternal leaves, so they go back to work after two or six weeks, as if they were out for a root canal rather than the act of having a baby. I thought of how women, on average, make 77 cents for each dollar that men make and that number drops to 73 if a woman is a mother. If that mother is single, the number drops further to 60 cents. Mothers are also 79% less likely to be hired compared to non-mothers with the same education and experience. Given that having a baby is one of the leading causes of a poverty spell for a family in this country, it seems we might want to point our attention to empowering women to provide for the families politicians think they should be having.

Then I thought of how every 90 seconds, or in other words, 1,000 women a day, die from a pregnancy related death. 90% of these are preventable and 50% of these happen in the first 48 hours after delivery. The US ranks 50^th in the world for maternal health.

The US also spends 30 cents of every dollar on the military, while only 4 cents goes towards education. So while the US has figured out how to monetize the killing of people, and even the incarcerating of people, we haven't figured out how to monetize the raising and education of people, and therefore, it falls to the bottom of the financial priority list.

I could go on about the recent injustices aimed at mothers and women, but I don't know that I need to. You get the idea, and that there's enough for me to say that to live in a country so actively limiting the rights of women and mothers on an almost daily basis – to such extent of 944 provisions in the first three months of 2012 alone – that Mother's Day feels like a cheap-drug-store-bought consolation prize of an acknowledgment.

A champagne toast brunch is a tempting way to spend a May Sunday morning; a boat ride on the lake in Central Park is an exquisitely tempting way to spend a morning having my parenting energies acknowledged. But I don't want it, because it's meaningless in a culture that doesn't put its attention and money where its mouth is.

No, what I want for Mother's Day is to live in a culture that values women and mothers and empowers them to be the best mothers they can be, and that means empowering them to decide for themselves when and how to give birth and how best to provide for their families, instead of leaving it up to a bunch of white guys to decide for them. Until then, I have no interest in a holiday that essentially is a band-aid for the rest of the year.  

The Frustrated Mom

A year ago this April, Lashanda Armstrong loaded her four children into her minivan and drove into the Hudson River. Her oldest son, aged 10, was the only survivor after he rolled down his window and swam to the boat ramp in 45 degree water. Her other children, ages, 5, 2, and 11 months all died.

By all accounts, Armstrong was a good mother doing the best she could on limited means and with limited emotional support. She was estranged from both of the fathers of her children and for all intents and purposes a single parent. She mentioned in passing to her children’s daycare provider that she was “tired and all alone.” After a fight with the father of her younger 3 children, it seems she felt even more so as that was when she piled all of her kids into the car and drove them down a boat ramp into the Hudson River. 

Armstrong’s story is tragic, and still, when the topic came up in parent discussions on playgrounds or over dinner, parents talked about it in that distancing fashion that we save only for the most uncomfortable of topics. By the distancing fashion, I mean, the “I can’t imagine doing such a thing” or “Who could do such a thing?” or “It’s unnatural. It’s irrational – the urge to kill yourself and your children.” (as if we were unclear or thought that suicide and infanticide were well reasoned, thought out and rational courses of action). It’s the judgmental distancing thing we do when we’d like to think that the kinds of people who do these kinds of things are a completely different species of human being than ourselves.

I saw this again this last week, when a Chicago mom, Michelle Feliciano, 23, was arrested on child endangerment charges after her 11 month old baby was found with multiple injuries including bleeding on the brain, a broken clavicle, marks on the neck, and puncture wounds on his feet from toothpicks. Feliciano explained the injuries; she said they happened in a “bout of frustration.”  Her oldest child, between the ages of three and four, is now staying with a relative, while her baby is in stable condition in the hospital.

The comments on Feliciano’s debut into the papers sound like the things I remember reading about in the history of the Salem Witch trials or a Dickens novel. Feliciano is an immoral monster who should be hung in the town square. She should be sterilized without her consent or anesthetic. Her crimes inspire even the most collected and enlightened of onlookers to think of the most barbaric and medieval of punishments.

Yet, Feliciano’s case, while profoundly disturbing, I think deserves some degree of compassion. She is another young mom trying to raise children on limited means. There is no mention of a father being present. While Feliciano had family close by and it was a family member who noticed that something was wrong when the 11-month old baby couldn’t hold his head up, Feliciano obviously didn’t feel like she could call them for help when she found herself frustrated.  In the moment, dealing with two children all by herself seemed so overwhelming, that somehow hurting one of them seemed to make sense.

Child abuse is inexcusable, period.  But to assume that Armstrong or Feliciano are unlike other people is a mistake. Rather, they reveal the shortcomings of all of us.

Parenting, as one of my friends says, is unrelenting. Consequently, it can bring out anger and frustration that most of us didn’t know we had. Despite being raised in an angry household where my parents often yelled (generally at each other), I didn’t consider myself an angry person. I didn’t usually yell or throw things or kick things or throw tantrums like people who were angry people did. Even when I had a child I didn’t do these things.  When I had my first child, if anything, my patience, compassion, and tolerance increased. But something happened after the birth of my second. Since the birth of my daughter, and the increasing independence of my son who is 3-going-on-15, I have found myself profoundly and ridiculously angry. By sheer coincidence, I have also found myself profoundly and ridiculously tired.

And, I beat myself up all the more because my children are happy, easy to be around, healthy little people. Unlike Feliciano and Armstrong, I am educated and not young (and not there’s anything wrong with young parents, though studies show child abuse drops as people have children later in life, but to be clear, to have more than one child by 25 – the age when our own brain just finishes its development – is young) and I am not trying to raise my children on limited means. My children’s father is an active partner and parent; we have a solid marriage with pretty great communication skills. We fight and yell, but we also love and laugh and keep talking. My sister lives around the corner with her awesome soon-to-be husband. When my husband works late, I can crash – with my two kids in tow - dinner at their house. Yesterday, I came home to find my almost brother-in-law in the backyard working on our chicken coop and watching my son play; my husband had to run out for a work call.  I also have help; we can afford a housecleaner and I have a nanny part-time, so while I get up insanely early to get work done, I also have a few hours in the afternoon when she comes. I have her help for whatever I need: she can hold the baby, while I hold my son during his allergy tests at the doctor’s office or his teeth cleaning at the dentist. 

For all intents and purposes, my parenting experience is at the complete opposite end of the spectrum from Feliciano and Armstrong. Nonetheless, I have had days since the birth of my daughter, where I felt emotionally and physically exhausted, drained, isolated, angry and even violently so. I have had moments where I have imagined doing terrible things to my children and myself and horrified myself. I have had moments where I didn’t know I was going to make it through the end of the day. I have moments where when someone said, “it only gets worse” I have thought, “well, then, I am not going to make it.” I have had moments where walking into traffic seemed like a reasonable course of action.  I have thought there was something terribly wrong with me.  I have felt hopeless; because my own parents were so angry, I have spent years working on my personal development, so I didn’t follow in their marriage and child-rearing footsteps. And as a result, I do live a very different life than my parents did when they were my age.

Then one day, my son asked for sliced cheese and when I gave it to him, he cried that he didn’t want it and without even thinking, I became my mother in 1976 and picked up the cheese and threw it across the room and into the trash and said, “well, then don’t eat it.” Horrified by the instantaneous transformation, I instantly picked him up, apologized and we cried together about how I scared both of us.

When I tentatively brought up the topic of my own parenting anger in a group of friends and my favorite fellow parents, I was worried I would get asked to leave. But nonetheless, I had to ask, “I know we all want to be gentle parents, or conscious parents or whatever the terms are  - I know we all want to be the parents our parents weren’t, but does anyone beside me ever just lose it?”

I wasn’t shunned. One friend said, it’s going to happen, and it’s what you do in the moments after that make the difference. I realized that this is true, that my own parents told me I had it coming, so I always felt wrong even if I wasn’t. Whereas my children and I ended our bad patches, with me apologizing, and us on the couch snuggled together and reading, that this had the effect of my outbursts passing like my kids’ outbursts. Once we expressed the emotions and accounted for them, we could move on without carrying grudges forward.

Another friend wisely said, “I think we have to be like Gandhi, where we just keep taking hits from the British.” Then she added, “But I don’t know that Gandhi was as tired as we are.”

So while I’d like to pretend I can’t fathom how people like Armstrong or Feliciano do what they did, I can; I have felt the emotions that lead to those kind of actions. And like them, and like my favorite friends, and like my wise-Gandhi-citing friend, I - and most of us - weren’t taught how to deal with frustration or anger. Many of us were actually taught that expressing anger or throwing temper tantrums was nothing more than being manipulative or trying to get away with something. But this only leads to bottling emotions up until we can no longer stand it and we explode, often taking it out on those around us.  Not many of us had parents that got down at our eye-level and said, “I get you’re angry and that’s a valid emotion. Do you want to talk about what makes you angry?...Oh? What else?” Most of us grew up in households where expressing emotions like anger was considered misbehavior.

Except that it’s not. Alfie Kohn famously writes that every act of misbehavior has at its core a valid complaint. The trick is to give kids – and ourselves – the skills to express that valid complaint in language. I know for myself that when I act out, I too have a valid complaint at the source, whether it’s that I feel unsupported or overwhelmed or that I need a break and am unable to put my children on “pause” while I take a nap. I suspect if we asked Feliciano and Armstrong if they had a valid complaint at the source of their “unthinkable” actions, we would find they did. I suspect we would find, that, in a country we consider advanced, they felt the struggles that come with not enough support.

We can imagine Feliciano and Armstrong as monsters or unnatural. Or we can consider that like many of us, they didn’t have the tools to handle the wide range of emotions that come with parenting. Like many of us, they found themselves overwhelmed with frustration.

Talking About Work

Before last week’s Rosen/Romney exchange about work, my son and I had been talking a lot about work. When we go out and about in the city, much like a Sesame Street or Mr. Rogers episode, we talk about the various people we see working, from the garbage man, to the masons building a stone wall, the construction workers fixing the sidewalk with the cement mixer, the mail person, or the sushi chef at our favorite bodega. We talk about what various relatives do for work, how Abuela teaches teachers how to teach children, while his aunt designs couture wedding dresses and his uncle takes pictures. Most mornings after his dad leaves for work, he loads up an old MacBook Pro box (that he calls his briefcase though neither my husband nor I have ever carried such a thing) with his toys and announcing that he’s going to work.

When our nanny comes a few afternoons a week, I tell him that I too am going to get some work done, but I think my work of writing confuses him a little, because the lines that define it are a little more blurry. For example, I still keep his baby sister with me, while I do it. I also tend to sneak in writing a line here or there when I am with him, or let him sit on my lap while I write, which works as long as he sits still.

Most days, however, when my husband walks out the door or when my husband is on his computer in the morning, my son is clear that my husband is working while I am with him. He’s even said, “Daddy’s working. We’re not.”

I have pointed out that play is children’s work. I started to say too, that to be clear, I was working while spending time with him, that the care taking, activity organizing, snack packing, art & dance class researching, preventing one child from harming the baby as well as any form of tantrum and schlepping both kids to and from the city via subway was indeed work.

But given that often one connotation of work is that it’s arduous, strenuous, and unsatisfying struggle, I didn’t want him to think that I found spending time with him an arduous, strenuous, and unsatisfying struggle. Until I watched him spend his morning packing his MacBook Pro box with toys and announce to me that he was going to work and he’d see me later, did I realize that he didn’t connotate work with being arduous, unsatisfying or strenuous at all. He thinks work is fun; after working with his dad and uncle in the back yard, hauling bucket after bucket of sand from the front of the house to the backyard sandpit, he thinks its something you do with people you enjoy spending time with. When he types on a book pretending its his computer, he also thinks he’s working. He finds it satisfying, and I realized that I too found it satisfying, and that many days my work as a writer is similar to my work as a mother; some days are fun and great, and some days suck.

After the Rosen/Romney exchange, I found myself thinking a lot about work as I watched age-old arguments resurface as if they were new ideas, whether women (parents really – this includes fathers) should take time off and stay home with their children or they should stay working and can we consider the work of parenting in the home the same as working outside the home (and isn't it odd that we call mothers who work outside the home "working mothers" but don't call fathers who work outside the home "working fathers"?).  No, the work of raising children isn’t paid. When a parent chooses to stay home to raise a child, they give up not just their career (for a bit – most SAHMs and SAHDs aren’t staying home forever), but their Social Security credits and retirement earnings. Many defend this, as Leslie Bennett writes for the Daily Beast, “All mothers know that motherhood involves a lot of hard work, but let’s stop pretending that that’s the same as working for a living. It isn’t. When you’re a stay-at-home mom, somebody else is bringing home the paycheck.” This is true, but that doesn’t make it right. One of the sticky points is that being a mom, and especially one who stays home is unpaid labor. And as Bennetts writes in The Feminine Mistake, many SAHM moms have a rude awakening about how much they did give up when they chose to stop working, that re-entering the work force is rough, or god forbid, if she finds herself getting divorced, or facing any other kind of economic hardship being an economic dependent will only work against her. The laws are not in favor of anyone who contributed the unpaid labor of the home.  This is also true, but again, that doesn’t make it right.

We often assume how things work is the only way things can work, so clearly, those who stay home with children shouldn’t be paid because it doesn’t currently work that way. But what if we imagined something different? In The Price of Motherhood, Ann Crittenden writes, “women may be approaching equality, but mothers are still far behind. Changing the status of mothers, by gaining real recognition for their work, is the great unfinished business of the women’s movement.”

Indeed, as we now have Mitt Romney’s proposal that women receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) should go back to work after their child is two, so that they may know the “dignity” of work. Somehow he doesn’t have to explain how the person providing daycare is also working and knowing the dignity of that work, while doing that same “work” yourself doesn’t provide the same dignity. He also doesn’t explain the rather class based assumption, that poorer mothers especially need such dignity (they must somehow lack it being on TANF? being poor? Maybe their lack of dignity and pride in themselves is what landed them on assistance in the first place?). While middle and upper class women either don’t need that dignity or they already have it, because of their class – I don’t know, and it’s odd he was having his wife answer for such things, but she was curiously silent on this one. Nonetheless, he’s rather frank about his view, that choosing to stay home with your children for the lower classes shouldn’t be a choice, and it’s work outside the home that gives us dignity.

I admire the work of other countries here, countries like Norway where a mother can take a year off work and have her job held open by law, and the government sends her a check of 80% of what she earned at her job. This check is like a paycheck, as income and social security taxes were withheld and she earned social security credits for her time home with her children. (And isn’t this novel – to give women a year off, coincidentally the same amount of time that so many organizations recommend a mother breast feed her baby? Could we possibly see an increase in breast feeding rates if maternity leaves actually lined up with the medical recommendations for new mothers?) France too offers families subsidies for the raising of children, including free health care, housing subsidies and high quality free preschools.

I know the standard response is coming. Americans supposedly aren’t interested in paying for the kinds of socialized services that other countries provide. If Americans want to take time out of the workforce to take care of an aging family member, a new baby, young family, or a special needs child, they do so at a cost financially and personally, with others judging their work as undignified and not nearly as valid as the work they did in the workforce, simply because it’s personal. Yet the personal is social. What we value personally should be reflected in what we value socially and what we value with our tax dollars. American politicians  - like Norway politicians – love to talk about their strongly held family values; Norway just supports their values with money, because they feel that the raising of a child is real work and it’s work that provides value for all of society. As a friend told me over the weekend, what goes on her resume for her time spent with her children? Grooming the next leader.

Parenting isn’t paid, but not because it’s not dignified or not valid or doesn’t deserve space on our resumes. It’s not paid because we haven’t found a way to pay for it and we haven’t valued the work of it enough to deem it worthy of our financial attention. 

Granted, many argue that it shouldn’t be paid or receive compensation, even Social Security credits, because it’s our children. The emotional reward should be enough, plus it can be really fun. Parenting is fun and rewarding, but it’s also stressful, and sometimes more so than the work outside the home. And I say this after talking to people have taken time off from being public school teachers, politicians, neuroscientists, doctors, professors and academics, lawyers, advertising executives, and so on – people who found their work fun, rewarding and stressful. There are many days my husband comes home from his work and tells me about his hard and stressful day, but he always ends it with, “it was hard, but not as hard as what you did today.” I appreciate that he’s aware of this, and I take it as an acknowledgement (the same way I take my 3 year-old saying, “Thanks for cooking dinner, Mom.”). In the current culture of work and family values, where parents are penalized for taking time off from working outside the home, it’s all I’m going to get. 

The Mundane Child Questions I Don't Know the Answer To

Often, when parents talk about the questions from their children they are not prepared for, they are referring to the questions regarding sex, drugs or religion. Yet, I haven’t been too worried about these. I have no problem being straightforward about sex or explaining that at some point hormones will take over my children’s bodies, give them urges they feel they have no control over, but that they nonetheless are responsible for. I have no problem saying they should without question stay far away from doing any drug that involves a needle, but at some point they may be curious about marijuana, in which case, they again need to be responsible and safe, be with people they trust and not do anything stupid like mix drugs and alcohol and proceed to take themselves for a drive. Religion may be a bit sticky as I will have to explain why some people have one and why we don’t, or that religion is one of those things that in theory was meant to teach all of us how to get along with each other, but instead has led to thousands of years of war. I suspect the religion question will get a little complicated actually.

I am finding, however, that the questions I don’t know how to answer are the ones that are already coming at me from my three year old. Random mundane questions. Questions like, “Why does Mommy’s hair get dirty and mine doesn’t?” I don’t know. I don’t play in a sand pit. I don’t play with friends who dump dirt and leaves in my hair. I don’t play with play dough and then put it on my head. Yet I have to wash my hair – which for some reason is a chore I hate and if I ever am ridiculously rich, it is a chore I will happily pay someone else to do for me – while my son doesn’t. His hair doesn’t get dirty. Except for the time a kid smacked him in the head with a popsicle and last week when he scratched his head with his paint brush and consequently painted the back of his head green, his hair doesn't require washing.

I find I say I don’t know a lot.

“Why was that kid mean to me?”

“I don’t know. I suspect someone was mean to him, now he feels bad and sometimes people deal with feeling bad by being mean to someone else, often someone smaller.”

“Why do they do that?”

I don’t know.

"Why did they put that building there?"

I don't know.

"Why is that kid sad?"

I don't know.

"Why do I need shoes? Why can't I just wear socks outside?"

"I don't know actually. It's not raining or snowing. It's rather warm. Still, we wear shoes even when we'd rather go barefoot."

On the more complicated side of things, we recently pulled out of a playgroup, because one of the parents had a tendency to be overly affectionate and ignore the personal boundaries of the children. After a number of red flags, I realized I had a legitimate safety concern. After my husband and I told the other parents why we would no longer participate, I told Fyo that we wouldn’t play with his friends X and Y any more, because we had a disagreement with the parents.

“Are they mad at you Mom?”

“Yes, they are.”

“Why are they mad at you?”

“Well, I had a concern and I felt uncomfortable. Basically, we had a disagreement about the personal boundaries of children.”

“Why?”

“Well...I don't know. Do you think we could come back to this one later?”

Oh. And politics. I don't really know how to explain politics. When my dad was visiting, I was ranting about the current Republican Party’s war against women and sexist legislation they are trying to push through in various states. My son put his spoon down in his cereal bowl, and said, “Mom! Why are you yelling at your father?”

“Because I’m ranting about the sexist backlash running across the country at the moment. It makes me angry.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s degrading and it’s limits women’s access to healthcare and choices, and when you limit women’s healthcare and choices, it impacts the lives, health, and potential of children, and when you impact the health and potential of children you impact the health and potential of the country.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s how I think it works.”

“Why do you think so?”

Then I looked at my son, and calmly said words I never thought I would say, which were, “Now you sound like my high school History teacher.”

Then later in the day, “Why can’t I have a hot dog in the park?”

“Because the hot dogs they sell in the parks aren’t good quality meat.” My dad, however, proceeded with a description of pink slime.

“What’s pink slime?”

“Exactly the point,” we said.

Some parents do fear the embarrassment or social awkwardness when their kids ask loud questions in public places about disabilities or minorities. So far this has been smooth sailing for us. Thankfully, New York City is a diverse city, so kids have a lot of exposure to a lot of different people, and so far, my son hasn’t had any issues with my answers to the questions on these points:

“Why is that little boy brown?”

“Because that’s the color of his skin. What color is your skin? Different people have different colors of skin.”

“Why does that woman only have one eye?”

“Because something happened to one of her eyes.”

These are a little like a koan. But when my son saw a four year old strapped into a stroller sucking on a pacifier, and asked, “What is that in her mouth? Why?” I was stumped. I don’t know.

“Why do Nana and Grand Dad live in Texas?”

I get agoraphobic in Texas, so I really don’t know why people live there. But I said, “That’s where their families lived, so that’s where they chose to live too.”

“Why do the Abuelos live in Los Angeles?”

“Because that’s where their house is. Abuela lived there when Abuelo fell in love with her, so he moved.”

“Why?”

"I don’t know. He hates the traffic, the suburbs, and the sprawl, but he likes warm weather. It made sense to him."

And most recently, when he sees his baby sister nurse, “Why don’t I nurse any more?”

I don’t really know what to say to this one, but finally say, “it was just something we grew out of.” This isn’t true. He would have nursed until he left for college if he had his way, but I don’t have the heart to tell him that I just got tired.

“When baby goes back into your belly, can I nurse again?”

“Yes. Absolutely. If she finds her way back inside, the nursing is all yours.”

“I like baby on the outside, but I liked her more on the inside. When do you think she’ll go back inside?”

This one I’d actually love to say I don’t know to. But I don’t. I say, once babies are out, they stay out.

“Do you love baby? Do you love me?”

Finally! Questions I know the answer to!

"Yes, I love you both immensely."

“Why?”

Why do parents love their children?

“I don’t know. I just do. I love you because I love you.”

Completely lame. But it was all I could come up with. Still, from my lack of knowledge, I'm hoping he picks up on two things: 1) that it's okay not to know everything all the time and 2) that I'm open to the question and the conversation.

Tiger Moms and Other Food for Thought

Two hours after I said I hadn’t read The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and that I had no interest in it, I passed by it on the shelf at the library, and suddenly I couldn’t help myself. I grabbed it. It’s one of those books, I found, that isn’t much different than a train wreck; even though I abhor authoritarian parenting, spanking, threatening and public or private shaming children, I just couldn’t help myself.

For much of it, Amy Chua is righteous, arrogant, and stubborn (and this is putting it mildly); she also makes sweeping generalizations about Western parents (as if we all parent the same way) and makes it clear that she looks down on us all. Considering she is a Yale Law Professor, I find this aspect of her book sloppy and unforgivable. It also reveals that she’s out of touch with the amount of traffic in parenting blogs, websites and books. Given how much debate occurs over all things parenting (co-sleeping vs. crib, time outs and bribes vs. absence of rewards & punishments, academic preschool vs. play rich environment, independent play vs. parent dictated play, etc.) one cannot lump all Western parents into one basket. We make ourselves dizzy with all the debate and research on all the facets of rearing children.

Much has been made of Chua’s book and her claim that her results are undeniable; her eldest daughter is a talented pianist and is now attending Harvard. Her younger daughter rebelled, but still loves the piano, is a straight A student, and plays tennis. Her daughters claim to be happy. Many critics state that many could learn a thing or two from Chua’s strict and shaming methods.

I hesitate to follow in their footsteps, however. Chua states repeatedly that Chinese parents emphasize (demand) respect to all authority figures. If a child has an argument with another parent, teacher or employer, the parent is to take the side of the authority figure. Yet, what does this teach children long term? It teaches them not to question and to not to trust that their concerns, complaints, or experience is valid. Qualities that we value such as innovation and creativity aren’t necessarily going to come out of children taught to never question or speak up to authority figures. Not to mention that never questioning or speaking up can contribute to angry rebellious or passive aggressive children (which Chua’s younger daughter demonstrates).

My other concern about Chua’s approach is it relies heavily on external rewards for its success. Once her girls get the taste for achievement, she hopes, then they will want to achieve more, essentially because it feels good and they then feel good about themselves. Receiving external accolades can certainly be fun, yet it can be hard and exhausting to sustain. And some of the most difficult and satisfying work doesn’t come with rewards, awards, medals or approval; it comes with the ability to keep working despite repeated failures and lack of results. It comes after being able to take risks – which kids raised in such high-pressured to succeed environments are less likely to take.

For me the saddest moment of the book comes when Chua is struggling with her younger daughter. When she mentions it to her older daughter, Sophia simply says, “It’s a stage. It’s awful to be thirteen – I was miserable.” Chua then admits she hadn’t known Sophia was miserable at thirteen, just like her mother hadn’t known she was miserable at thirteen. Like Chua, I too want my children to succeed and have opportunities, but more importantly, I want to feel connected to my children. I want to know when they are struggling and I certainly want them to feel safe to express their vulnerable selves in my company.

Despite all of Chua’s insistence that she is a strict Chinese mother, I don’t know that I necessarily agree with her. Her drive for her daughters to succeed in music to me indicates she is much more an American parenting institution than she realizes; she’s a stage mom.

Yet, from Chua, I realized a couple things. One is we all know we’re not supposed to judge other parents, yet we still do it – even the people who say they don’t do – simply because we’re human beings and human beings are judgmental creatures (and what would happen to the media industry without judgment?); I tend to judge parents like Chua because her methods make me uncomfortable. I keenly remember the moments of my own childhood that relied on shaming or my parents’ strict authoritarian beliefs. While my parents now admit they parented in such a way because at the time it didn’t occur to them they could do it differently and even if they had wanted to parent differently, they didn’t know how, Chua does it because she has legitimate concerns about raising children. She may be on the opposite end of the parenting spectrum from me, but I have to agree with her about there being more worthwhile things to do than watching television, that to master something requires practice, and that you can achieve what you want, but it comes from work and a belief in yourself, not genes or talent (though genes and talent help).

Other parenting books for thought and discussion:

Simplicity Parenting; Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier and More Secure Kids by Lisa Ross and Kim Payne

The Power of Play: Learning What Comes Naturally by David Elkind

Einstein Never Used Flashcards: How Our Children Really Learn -- and Why They Need To Play More and Memorize Less by Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff and Diane Eyer

The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued by Ann Crittenden

Childism: Confronting Prejudice Against Children by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl

The Organic Family Cookbook by Anni Daulter

Reading From the Parenting Nightstand

On Amazon alone, there are more than 80,000 books about parenting. I haven’t read all of them. I also haven’t read the much talked about Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom (I admit, I heard the story about how she kept her daughter at the piano until her daughter chewed the piano keys in protest, and I got scared.) or the much talked about Raising Bebe (I read the reviews though and that seemed enough). But I have read a lot, and I read a lot that the people I respect and admire recommend. So here’s some of my all time favorite list; I’ll post another list next week of more of my current favorites ( and if you have a favorite that’s not here, put it in the Comments!)

Parenting for a Peaceful World by Robin Grille

I think everyone should read this book – it’s by far my most favorite book and Grille is my personal hero. He goes into parenting practices of the past and explains the evolution of how one generation improves upon the other, and he does so in a way that is compassionate without placing blame on previous generations for child rearing ideas that now would be considered abusive or just plain whacko. He also links shifts in parenting to shifts in philosophy and world events (ie why the Holocaust started in Germany, not France or England). It's absolutely fascinating and eye opening.

Unconditional Parenting; Moving From Rewards and Punishment to Love and Reason by Alfie Kohn

My other all time favorite book that I refer to regularly. I love it because it applies to all ages, all kids and all parents. Kohn gives us the tools to raise kids who behave, are respectful, who follow their inner values, and are intrinsically motivated. When I recommend this book, I often receive a doubtful look, as if Kohn's ideas are too good to be true, but I find he's dead on. I'd even consider it common sense; in a relationship based on rewards, it only works if kids want the rewards (or the bribes), which leaves parents constantly looking for a new trick to sway their children - and that doesn't sound fun for any one. Raising kids with love and reason, however, grants both parents and children with a relationship they can delight in.

Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves by Naomi Aldort

Often parents are told that they should ignore parenting books and advice for the simple reason that they know their children, they know themselves, they know their situation and values, and they therefore have enough to go on and should just trust their instincts. While I believe this to be often true, I also know that there are times that we think we're following our instincts, and what we're actually following is our own hard wiring - which isn't necessarily a good thing for some of us. Our children do something, and we react only to realize a moment later that our reaction doesn't reflect the kind of parent we are or want to be. Aldort points out that this is true for all of us and it doesn't help to beat ourselves up over these moments, but it does make a difference to get to the root of our reaction, for the sake of our own growth and development as parents.

You Are Your Child's First Teacher: What Parents Can Do With and For Their Children From Birth to Age Six by Rahima Baldwin

I read this book when my son was two, and it’s the one book I wished I had read before he was born, if only because of her insistence that you trust your instincts and your connection to your child. It’s a fantastic reminder to just relax and BE with your child – rather than rushing them off to some overpriced nonsense that advertises to increase your child’s aptitude for music, math and the arts and have them reading by the time they are done with diapers.

NurtureShock By Po Bronson and Ashley Merrill

Not necessarily a book that needs to be read before the arrival of baby, but definitely by the time a child enters pre-school. My husband teases me how I have my instincts about things, do a bunch of research until I find the people that agree with me, and then armed with their book in hand, I feel empowered enough to talk back to the people that suggest I’m off my rocker. This is why I love Bronson and Merryman: they did all the research that I didn’t have to to know I’m making the right choices for my son (and baby to be). I have a huge pet peeve when adults accuse children, toddlers and even babies (!) of being manipulative or lying, (especially when kids are actually just asking to have their basic needs met), now I can confidently talk back and point out that they probably are – because they learned it from their parents. They also deal with why praising backfires, and why the evaluations for giftedness are actually off.

Bright From the Start by Jill Stamm

I’m not one of those moms who wants her children reading by the time they turn three or is especially focused on future academic achievement. Mostly, I want to encourage my child’s natural curiosity and creativity, and Stamm offers the tools for this while also explaining developmentally what’s happening in the baby’s world. I find the more I understand the developmental phases, the easier it is to not take some of the difficult moments personally, since I know that whatever my child is doing is exactly the appropriate thing for him to be doing.

The Philosophical Baby by Alison Gopnik

I’ve long been a fan of Gopnik’s brother Adam and his New Yorker articles, but after this book by Alison Gopnik, I’d honestly do anything to be a guest or a fly on the wall at a Gopnik family Thanksgiving. Gopnik illustrates that babies are more conscious than we think they are, and even more conscious than adults are. They are busy little scientists and explorers, and while I was always in awe of my child, this book left me even more so – and just marveling at my son’s mind and in profound respect for his process.

Ice Pop Joy by Anni Daulter

Cookbooks or even cookbooks for feeding children don’t usually make lists of parenting reads, but Anni Daulter’s Popsicle cookbook makes the difference for me in my parenting life on an almost daily basis, given my son now eats between 1 and 4 a day. Consequently, this is the book I give as Christmas gifts and to new moms at baby showers.

In both of my pregnancies, popsicles were the mainstays of my happiness. I still get weak knees at the sight of a Trader Joe’s Key Lime Popsicle. My son shares my addiction, though my son also has a profound love of green juice (that green juice full of spinach, wheat grass, and algae. It sounds disgusting, but he loves it.) I, on a whim, one day took his beloved green juice, threw it in the blender with some pineapple and filled the Popsicle mold with it. Then, the next day when he asked for a popsicle for breakfast I felt like the best mom ever. Except for the fact that I had a rather limited repertoire.

Then I found Anni Daulter’s Ice Pop Joy. She has recipes for popsicles with yogurt, fruit, vegetables, tofu, even chocolate and all of them are kid-friendly. By kid-friendly, I mean all have some nutritional value and have enough sweetness to taste good, yet are not full of the kinds of sugar that send kids over the edge (I know many doctors say sugar intake and hyperactivity are not related. I don’t know that these doctors actually have children. If my child has 3 ounces of orange juice, he turns into a demon. He’s sugar sensitive, so we’re happy for recipes that use agave nectar or honey.) Those who have children with food sensitivities will find the recipes easy to amend (replace wheat germ with flax seeds for example).

My son loves the Breakfast Pops (Almond butter, bananas, yogurt, walnuts and wheat germ) though he will eat any of them for breakfast, even the Harvest Pops (apples, butternut squash, dried cranberries, wheat germ). Many of the recipes feature vegetables many kids won’t usually eat, spinach, zucchini, or yellow squash. Your child is sick? There are popsicles that boost her immune system and keep her hydrated. She also has tidbits of nutritional information sprinkled throughout that I refer to when I'm making things besides popsicles.