The USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service’s Women, Infants and Children program (commonly known as WIC) is offering up to 26 ounces of canned tuna per month to breastfeeding mothers. The program reaches over 8 million low-income women and children every month with nutrition counseling and food vouchers. But I guess the nutrition counseling doesn’t include […] Continue reading →

While traveling back from my vacation, I came across an article in an in-flight magazine by Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. My son had just spent a blissful week exploring my parents’ creek-crossed property, so the article made my heart sink as we flew back […] Continue reading →

Hello, MTs! I just got back from a week’s vacation. A week in Northern Wyoming, out of cell phone range, where the only computer around was on the green tortoise dial-up plan. It would have been too brutal to jump right back into the US news cycle, so my Sunday morning eyes ranged toward articles […] Continue reading →

Linda bemoans the freshly minted Harvard grads who will waste their gold brick educations vacuuming Cheerios out of couches. These highly educated housewives cost their parents a lot. Tuition, room and board at Harvard is over $50,000 a year. Although a college education enriches any life, why spend $200,000 to train someone to do a […] Continue reading →

Sorry, people. I know this has little to nothing to do with motherhood, but I so enjoyed this Salon essay by Garrison Keillor, who I never knew had such a sharp tongue! I always thought him the epitome of safe, his edges as round and furry as his voice. He’s disgusted by the GOP tactic […] Continue reading →

Linda Hirshman, author of Homeward Bound, is the anti-Flanagan. The drum she’s beating is that women should not quit their jobs to become mommies because that cuts them off from true power, which resides in the public and market spheres. She’s as brash and ready for a bitch-fight as Mrs. Caitlin, only sparring from the […] Continue reading →

Salon writer Lynn Harris writes about the discipline techniques of Tennessee pastor Michael Pearl, whose childrearing books are hot sellers amongst the Evangelical Christian/homeschooling set. If your child misbehaves, he recommends light whipping with quarter-inch plumbing supply line. Some people have taken his technique too far, as zealots are wont to do. And some children […] Continue reading →

They may not have as many kids, but men who are college graduates are more likely to fuss over them, according to a new federal study. Researchers say men who’ve earned their degree expect to father two children. On average, that’s about one less than men without a high school diploma. The better educated dads […] Continue reading →

In her NYTimes essay, “Well-Intentioned Food Police May Create Havoc With Children’s Diets,” Harriet Brown goes way, way overboard in trying to prove her main point, which is some homespun common sense about kids being allowed to eat all things in moderation. She sloppily grabs at about a million different issues related to the childhood […] Continue reading →

My 20th high school reunion will take place this summer, so memories of 1986 are rising up to the surface of my mind like so much beer foam. I attended prom–for five minutes. My date was the only admittedly gay person in high school, and for prom, he dyed his hair flame red, wore a […] Continue reading →