Picket Fence Post

Oh joy. Another story about how having kids can make you miserable because parenthood is: a) Hard b) Requires sacrifices c) Is oftentimes maddening and d) Is so tiring that it sucks the life out of you and renders you useless for other things, like happiness, romance and discussions about adult topics, like politics, books and good television programming.

The new issue of Newsweek contains a feature story questioning whether having kids makes you happier or miserable (their answer: miserable).

An excerpt:

“Parents may openly lament their lack of sleep, hectic schedules and difficulty in dealing with their surly teens, but rarely will they cop to feeling depressed due to the everyday rigors of child-rearing. ‘If you admit that kids and parenthood aren’t making you happy, it’s basically blasphemy,’ says Jen Singer, a stay-at-home mother of two from New Jersey who runs the popular parenting blog MommaSaid.net. ‘From baby-lotion commercials that make motherhood look happy and well rested, to commercials for Disney World where you’re supposed to feel like a kid because you’re there with your kids, we’ve made parenthood out to be one blissful moment after another, and it’s disappointing when you find out it’s not.’”

But then, you already knew that parenting is a series of trade-offs. Nothing good comes without sacrifice, at least that’s what I keep telling myself. If you’re married, it’s not all rainbows and sunshine either, but the moments when it’s good make up for the irritations and frustrations. That’s the way parenting is. If it’s not that way for you, there’s always sleep-away camp and boarding school and colleges really far away.

Image credit: Zohar Lazar/Newsweek.

Item #1: Cindy McCain’s Strength

While some in the media portray her harshly — depict her as talking Barbie doll — Cindy McCain has an inspiring life story. Profiled in a cover story in Newsweek, she addresses how difficult it has been to be married to someone who spent a large chunk of their marriage either deployed with the Navy someplace or serving in Washington, D.C. while she was home with four kids in Arizona, working at her father’s beer distributorship and running her charity for children.

An excerpt:

“Cindy has sometimes likened herself to a single mother; now 54, she has often been far away from her husband during difficult moments, including two of three miscarriages she suffered in the 1980s. Years later, her husband did not notice when she became addicted to painkillers, a habit, she says, brought on in part by the stress of politics. In 2004, he was on the other side of the country when she suffered a stroke that left her partly debilitated. On her own, she learned to walk again. Cindy says she doesn’t resent the time she spent without her husband. It was her choice to stay in Arizona while he rose in Washington, and she says she knew when she married him that he was always going to ‘put country first.’”

She also said she tries not to discuss that she had a son serving in Iraq during the presidential primaries because she was afraid it would put him in danger, while her husband’s statements on the Iraq war were being parsed by the media. Newsweeksaid that when her son was in Iraq (he’s back now and it’s unclear if he could be redeployed), McCain slept with her BlackBerry in her hand so she wouldn’t miss his call if he phoned.

(more…)

When I was ready to push and give birth to my third child, I was still in my bathroom, miles away from the hospital. I asked The Spouse to call 911 for an ambulance, but he insisted, Speed Racer he, that he could get me to the hospital faster than an ambulance could make it to our house. (Had I not been howling like an animal and doubled over at this point, I would’ve argued with him.)

While writhing around the passenger seat, I could feel the in-tact amniotic sac starting to protrude from my body. The wild-eyed Spouse urged me to hold the baby in and not push. (I would’ve laughed at that if I didn’t feel as though I was being impaled internally.) The ER staff eventually dragged me out of the car, cut off my maternity shorts in the parking lot and wheeled me into the ER where I frightened everyone in the waiting room with my shrieking. If anything, I thought afterwards, I had a fairly dramatic birth story on my hands.

But Francine Alfontent has me beat by a country mile.

Alfontent and her husband were on a New York City subway train Monday heading for the hospital when her daughter decided she wasn’t going to wait for any stinkin’ hospital to make her entrance into the world. So Alfontent, with the help of strangers, gave birth right there on the subway platform while trains were coming and going, and a crowd had gathered.

A guy who witnessed the birth told MSNBC: “Guys were coming up and they were saying, ‘Congratulations, Mom. You’re a very strong woman,’ and guys were giving the father high fives. It’s not every day that a woman has a baby on the subway.”

How about you, Picket Fence Post readers, any of you have an interesting childbirth story? It doesn’t have to be of the subway platform caliber. Feel free to share.

Image credit: MSNBC/Wendy Brown.

Caps and gowns.

Graduation speakers.

Proms.

Manicures, pedicures and limos.

“After-parties” at homes or even hotels.

Professional party planners.

Not for college graduations or even high school graduations. We’re talkin’ eighth grade graduations, at least ones highlighted recently in the New York Times.

During a Father’s Day speech, Senator Barack Obama commented on such celebrations, saying: “This is just eighth grade. So let’s not go over the top. Let’s not have a huge party. Let’s just give them a handshake. You’re supposed to graduate from eighth grade.”

My kids are years away from eighth grade, so what say you middle school parents: Is the eighth grade graduation scene over-the-top or is the Times just highlighting extremes? Do you think the media are sensationalizing this and that there’s nothing wrong with having a big, happy party?

Item #1: HS ‘Pregnancy Pact’

I must admit, a question mark lingers over my head in a cartoonish balloon when it comes to this story. I’m sure you’ve heard about it if you listen to talk radio or watch cable chattering head shows (which I’ll be watching tonight while The Girl commandeers the “good” TV to watch Camp Rock on the Disney Channel). A large group of teens, all ages 16 and under, from Gloucester, Mass. made a pact to all get pregnant at around the same time so they’d all become moms at the same time. And 17 are pregnant. The story was featured in Time Magazine and makes my heart sick on so many different levels. Why would girls be focused on procreating instead of going to college or pursuing a career? (Don’t blame Juno as they made the pact before the charming, independent film about the teen who got pregnant by accident and gave her baby up for adoption, was released.)

The magazine reports:

“The girls who made the pregnancy pact — some of whom, according to [Gloucester High School Principal Joseph] Sullivan, reacted to the news that they were expecting with high fives and plans for baby showers — declined to be interviewed. So did their parents. But Amanda Ireland, who graduated from Gloucester High on June 8, thinks she knows why these girls wanted to get pregnant. Ireland, 18, gave birth her freshman year and says some of her now pregnant schoolmates regularly approached her in the hall, remarking how lucky she was to have a baby. ‘They’re so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally,’ Ireland says. ‘I try to explain it’s hard to feel loved when an infant is screaming to be fed at 3 a.m.’”

Item #2: Michelle Obama, Target Customer

US Weekly, which usually trafficks in sensational celeb-related garbage reporting, features Barack and Michelle Obama on its cover this week bearing the headline, “Why Barack Loves Her.” The story is largely a pro-Obama puff piece but has a number of interesting mom-related tidbits of info. “. . . [W]hen not on the road, the mom [Michelle Obama] can be seen in her Chicago neighborhood driving to Target for toilet paper and buying clothing for her girls at The Gap and Limited Too.”

The Obamas had difficulty getting pregnant, according to Us, and now are hands-on parents, when they’re home with the 6- and 10-year-old girls, a challenge these days for their presidential nominee father who’s on the road most of the time. Us said: “With the help of a housekeeper but no nanny, Michelle certainly has found her smart-mom shortcuts: She relies on headbands for bad-hair days, claims dessert at school potlucks so she can buy a pie and, until recently, packed Oscar Mayer Lunchables and juice boxes into her kids’ lunches. (She has now cut out processed food, after her pediatrician worried her oldest daughter ‘was tipping the scale,’ as she puts it.)”

(more…)

I previously heaped praise upon two books — The Daring Book for Girls and The Dangerous Book for Boys – which remind me of the good old days when kids played outside without parental interference and didn’t come back home until it was dark out. The publishers of both books recently released new pocket versions of each, focusing on “Things to Do.”

When they arrived at the Picket Fence Post HQ, I decided that instead of having me wax nostalgic about making God’s Eyes out of yarn and sticks during summer camp and playing lively games of SPUD until dusk, I’d turn to my two resident experts to see what they think. I gave my nearly 10-year-old twins — The Girl and The Eldest Boy — copies of the pocket editions and a stack of Post-It notes with instructions to put sticky notes on suggested activities they liked or didn’t like. I then sat down with each child individually. Below are the interviews.

The Daring Book for Girls

Lemonade Stand: When I asked the Hannah Montana/High School Musical/sporty/Manny Ramirez loving girl what she liked from Daring, the first thing that caught her eye was the entry on how to make and run a lemonade stand. “If you ever want to earn money, here’s a fun way to do it,” she said, sounding as though she’d been paid off by the book’s publisher. “If you want to earn money, it’s not a boring way to do it, like chores.”

What ideas did the book give her about setting up lemonade stands? “When I pictured doing a lemonade stand, I just thought of lemonade and cookies, but this had different ways to draw attention,” she said, noting that she was intrigued by suggestions to dress up the stand with decorations and music. (Can you say, “The Best of Both Worlds” crankin’ in our ‘hood?)

Frying An Egg on Sidewalk: “I thought it was fun, but weird. You need to live in a warm place where there’s a lot of sun on the sidewalk to do it,” The Girl said, adding that the book had explanations about why this “odd but fun” activity would or wouldn’t work under certain conditions.

How to Be a Spy: “It says the word ’spy’ comes from ancient words . . . I don’t really get that, but I spy a lot around my house,” she said (*mother tries to camouflage her concern as to exactly what her child has discovered during her covert ops*). “. . . It gives me different ways to make codes that my brothers wouldn’t get, but I could teach my friends and they have siblings who they’d want to fake out.”

How to Run Faster: This was the only item The Girl singled out as something she did not like in the book. Why? “It’s kind of like cheating because it doesn’t really matter how fast you run as a kid . . . until, like, high school,” she said.

Her Overall Assessment: “I think it was pretty good,” she said. “It gives girls a lot of fun stuff to do over the summer. If they’re bored, all they have to do is pick up the book and flip to a random page.”

(more…)

The Bay State is teeming — teeming I tell you — with twins, according to a page one story in the Boston Globe:

“The combination of an unusually large number of pregnancies in older women, who are more likely to have multiples, and a heavy reliance on readily available infertility treatments, which also increases the odds, has propelled Massachusetts to the top: The state has a twin birth rate of 4.5 for every 100 live births, compared with a national rate of 3.2, according to the most recent figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

What does this mean? Well, sometimes, bad, bad things, according to the article which included quotes from physicians about the dangers of pre-term births (most twins are born early) and the drain multiple births are putting on Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs). Typical stuff. No article on multiples is quite complete without the not-so-subtle bashing of parents of multiples for selfishly pursuing infertility treatments (usually uttered by people with no fertility challenges) and blaming them for hogging hospital resources when they forge ahead with a multiple pregnancy in which babies which could be born early.

As a mother of nearly 10-year-old twins, I have a special loathing for these kinds of articles which start out fine and then go downhill quickly. I’m the first one to acknowledge that twin pregnancies are difficult (though I had a harder time with my singleton pregnancy), that babies born early do sometimes require time in the NICU (as mine did), that twins born very early can suffer from health problems (mine, thankfully, did not). Attempts have been made by physicians administering infertility treatments, as noted in the article, to reduce the number of multiples. All of that is fair game . . . to a point.

But then I read quotes like this one from the chief of newborn medicine at a Boston hospital: “The usual condition is one baby per uterus. That’s the way the system is designed. Mother nature does not take kindly to anything being unusual — even if she created it.”

I’m glad I didn’t give birth to my twins in his hospital where I could benefit from his warm understanding and compassion.

Apparently when a mom and a dad share the child-rearing workload, it’s a major news story. At least according to the New York Times.

The cover story of this weekend’s New York Times Magazine – entitled, “Will Dad Ever Do His Share” (not a very nice topic for Father’s Day weekend) – was downright depressing. While the piece did feature couples who participate in “the equal-parenting movement” (we need a movement, with an official name and, I suppose, name tags and literature, to get parents to do their jobs?), it also included some dire statistics, . . . dire if you’re a mother raising young kids that is.

Among the upsetting stats: Women handle more child care duties in their households than men by a margin of nearly five to one. Even if you remove the whole employment factor and look at two-income families, women still spend 11 hours a week caring for the couple’s children, to men’s three hours. Sampson Lee Blair, a professor of sociology specializing in families, told the Times, “The most striking part is that none of this is all that different, in terms of ratio, from 90 years ago.”

 So, I guess it IS news when mothers and fathers share the burdens (and yes, of course, the JOYS, but no one complains about the joys) of child-rearing.

In my household, because I work from home, I bear the brunt of the responsibility for doctors’ appointments and trucking kids to activities, although The Spouse has coached several of the kids’ teams and makes it to the practices and games. When The Spouse is home (and not commuting during dinner time as he usually does) he will make or help make dinner, particularly if he’s trying to butter me up so he can go play basketball with the guys. He does the laundry and has almost always been in charge of making sure the kids have been bathed at night. If he hasn’t left for work before the kids have gone to school in the mornings, we tag-team breakfast duty and school lunch-making. I have precious little about which to complain regarding the ratio of child-rearing work The Spouse does, except when he has a string of really late nights, misses a bunch of meals and I get cranky about it.

What about in your household? Do both parents share the work or is Mom responsible for a disproportionate amount of the work? And if Mom does most of the child-rearing is it because she wants to or because she thinks she does it “better” than Dad?

Anyone who loves politics and journalism is in mourning today after hearing about the loss of Tim Russert, the moderator of the gold standard in political talk shows, Meet the Press.

I used Russert not only as a shining example to my journalism students of how to conduct well researched and balanced interviews (many students will attest that I was fond of having them watch Russert excerpts and told them, at length, about his use of white boards during the 2000 presidential election), but also used his show as a way to introduce my children to politics and how exciting it can be. I wrote about the loss on my other blog, Suburban Mom: Notes from the Asylum.

Sunday morning talk shows — and political journalism — will never be the same.

UPDATE: I wrote in greater length about what we’ve lost with the passing of Tim Russert in this column.

Image credit: NBC News/Getty Images.

A few weeks ago, I posted a video from Lifetime’s web site, a comic short from its Mommy Madness series, featuring an at-home Las Vegas mom of two, Angela Hoover. I was so taken with the satire that I tracked Angela Hoover down and she fielded several of my questions about how she got started making these videos about the insanity of parenthood for a national network.

With a background in commercials and experience in stand-up, the Philadelphia-born Hoover has been a self-employed bookkeeper and was the host of Lifetime’s Mother’s Day Weekend Movie Marathon. Here’s an edited Q&A with Hoover:

Meredith O’Brien, Picket Fence Post: How did you get involved with Lifetime and how did the idea for these Mommy Madness video shorts come about?

Angela Hoover, Mommy Madness: My manager introduced me to producer Rosemond Cranner. We clicked right away. She then kept one of my demo tapes and vowed we would work together. I was very flattered but in L.A., things don’t always happen right away, so I sort of forgot about it, moved to Vegas and changed diapers. Well, two kids later, she came up with this idea of a real mom in the trenches with a comical twist. (Is there any other way?) We came up with some episode ideas, which she took to Lifetime and before I knew it, she was e-mailing me from her BlackBerry saying, “They want to do it!”

Apparently moving away from Hollywood and finger-painting with my children in Las Vegas brought me to my dreams faster than any type of action I could possibly take in tinsel town.

O’Brien: Who writes the scripts?

Hoover: It’s collaborative. Some I write. Some the producers write. Some we write together. And then, oftentimes, it’s improv.

(more…)