Picket Fence Post

October 8, 2009

Three for Thursday: Anxious Kids, Mommy Penalty & the Puppy Cut

Item #1: Anxious Kids

Do you have a child who seems tentative, bothered or frightened by new things? Are you worried that the child will grow up to be an anxious adult?

The recent New York Times Magazine cover story about anxiety said that some people are born worriers. While many nervous children are able to successfully channel their nervous energy productively as they grow older, others deftly cover up the anxiety roiling beneath the surface. “. . . [W]hile temperament persists, the behavior associated with it doesn’t always,” the Times reported. It’s a long piece, but if you have a child who you think might be considered “anxious,” it’s worth the read.

Item #2: Mommy Penalty

If you’re a woman and you have a kid, there’s a good chance that in the workplace you may suffer from what researchers have dubbed, “the mommy penalty.” The Boston CBS affiliate, WBZ ran a segment this week based on a Cornell University study which found that “mothers suffer a substantial wage penalty” while “. . . [m]en were not penalized for, and sometimes benefited from, being a parent,” the study reported.

What kind of penalty? Five percent less pay per child than a childless woman receives, WBZ reported:

“A recent ruling handed down by the First Circuit of Appeals in Boston, could have an impact on the way working mothers are treated. The case involves a mother from Maine who says she was denied a promotion and told ‘You have the kids, and you just have enough on your plate right now.’

The ruling stated, ‘. . . the assumption that a woman will do her job less well due to her personal family obligations is a form of sex stereotyping . . . and that adverse job actions on that basis constitute sex discrimination.”

Here’s the link to the video segment.

Item #3: The Puppy Cut

I finally relented and agreed to bring the puppy to get his hair trimmed. I’d been fretting that the groomers would make him look like a rat if his hair were trimmed too closely, that he’d lose his fluffy cuteness. But he doesn’t look like a rat. Other than the fact that you can now see that his legs aren’t as stocky as they appeared when his hair was longer, he looks pretty much the same. Look at the “before” photo followed by the “after” photo:

max-before-first-haircut-oct-6-09

max-first-haircut-oct-6-09

July 23, 2009

Three for Thursday: Acupressure, Working from Home, Dog Hunt Continues

dog imageItem #1: Acupressure

I took  The Girl to visit a medical acupuncturist today. Instead of using the acupuncture needles, he used acupressure — pressure applied to the acupuncture points sans a needle – and other techniques, like cupping . . . which was a good thing, given how apprehensive the 10-year-old was. I did the best that I could to calm her and soothe her worries. The staff put in a great effort to try to alleviate her fears by talking to her and affording her the chance to feel the hair-thin, flexible needle so she’d see that they weren’t some metal behemoths waiting to be jammed into her arms and legs. But every time a staff member left the room, The Girl’s eyes filled with tears and she told me she wanted to leave. NOW!

For those who’ve been following this saga, The Girl has had persistent ankle problems since January 2008 when she first twisted it during a basketball practice. Since then, she’s missed half of several seasons of soccer and hoop because of flare-ups. This spring we finally saw a youth sports specialist in Boston who recommended water therapy (which she’s been doing for a few weeks), TENS therapy (we just got the unit this week) and acupuncture.

The Girl had been dreading this acupuncture appointment ever since the orthopaedist first mentioned it. For weeks she’s told me there was no way that she was going to let anyone put the acupuncture needles into her, no matter how thin they were.

So, did the alternative techniques the doctor used today work? We’ll have to wait and see. (*fingers crossed*)

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July 13, 2009

Palin Resignation: A ‘Meta-Working Mom’ Tale?

Filed under: Moms, Parenting News, Work — Tags: , , , , — Meredith O'Brien @ 11:13 am

sarah-palin-nytNow that the dust has settled, folks have returned from their July 4 holidays and Sarah Palin has attempted to clarify why she’s quitting her post as Alaska’s governor midstream, I’ve deconstructed her resignation in my Pop Culture column this week, arguing that what you think about her and her decision largely depends upon your political perspective and life’s experiences. From where I sit, I view Palin’s tale as a “meta-working mom” story.

Ten days after her initial announcement, Palin’s bombshell is still making news. The New York Times has a page one story today which also seeks to explain Palin decision, saying that she’s become so stressed out lately that her friends are worried that her hair’s thinning and she’s becoming underweight.

At the risk of inviting your ire (*putting on my flak jacket and ducking*) I invite you to weigh in on Palin and her decision to quit.

Image credit: Jim Wilson/New York Times.

May 6, 2009

Annual ‘What a Mom’s Worth’ Stories

Filed under: Holidaze, Moms, Parenting News, Work — Tags: , , , , , , — Meredith O'Brien @ 12:19 pm

Every year it’s the same. In the days surrounding Mother’s Day, the media start producing all manner of stories and news segments about moms, their work (paid and unpaid) and their value, on many levels.

A group called Salary.com has, for several years, been releasing an estimate of the dollar value of the work done by at-home moms for free. The way they figure it is that they estimate how much it would cost to outsource the tasks done by the at-home parents, everything from child care, cooking, housecleaning, laundry, transportation, etc.

 This year’s figure for the average at-home mom is $122,732. For the average mom with a paid job outside the home — EXCLUDING her salary — Salary.com said the unpaid work she does for her family is worth an average of $76,185 a year.

NBC’s Nightly News even ran a segment this week about the worth of a mother’s work, calling it “Mom Inc.:”

But, no matter how many times I read the figures, how many times we’re told that the work parents do has a market value, somehow we only seem to think about it, or talk about it, during the month of May. And then *poof*the matter disappears from people’s radar screens — the massive amount of societally undervalued work people do caring for their families — until next Mother’s Day.

February 9, 2009

New Mom Woes on ‘House’

Who doesn’t love House, the Fox medical drama built around the cantankerous and rogue Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie), who irritates everyone around him while he and his crack team of physicians solve medical mysteries?

For the past few weeks, House has featured a storyline about the hospital’s chief administrator, Dr. Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein), who became a foster mother to an infant whom she hopes to adopt. After years of failed infertility treatments, Cuddy finally got to take home a baby. But once the baby came home, things weren’t quite as warm and maternal as Cuddy, a single mom, had imagined they would be.

I wrote about the Cuddy-working mom/new mom story arc in my Pop Culture & Politics column this week, in which I mentioned probably one of the best working mom exchanges I’ve heard on a TV program in a while:

Cuddy had just passed her department of children’s services inspection as a competent foster mother, yet remained irritated that she’d done so when her home was a mess and she was generally disorganized. Her colleague, Dr. James Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) urged her to focus on passing the inspection and forget about the mess, but she wouldn’t.

“Why do women always do that . . . create ridiculous standards that no human could meet, with your careers, with your kids?” Wilson asked. “You’ve got to be more like us men.”

“Be lazy?” she replied sarcastically. “Blame others?”

“Get help! Most men in your position have a deputy and two assistants at work, and a wife and two nannies at home. You’re not Superwoman. Don’t be martyr!”

Image credit: Fox/Adam Taylor via the blog House is Right.

 

December 11, 2008

Three for Thursday: Work from Home Glitch, Balance-Schmalance and What Recession?

Item #1: Work from Home Glitch

What’s the work from home glitch? That would be called noise, more precisely, kid-related noise. When I read the Stone Soup comics this week about a mom of an infant trying to work from home as the baby cries during a conference call, I could sooo relate.

When my three kids were very young (and the youngest was a toddler), I had scheduled a telephone interview with a local district attorney to discuss an anti-bullying legislative proposal. Planning ahead, I fed the children a snack, then, after their bellies were full, I set them up in front of their favorite PBS show and headed down the hall to my bedroom, where I shut the door behind me.

Mid-conversation, the toddler started pounding loudly on my bedroom door. When I didn’t open the door immediately, he started shouting, “MAAAMAAA!” I responded by sticking my head underneath my bed trying in vain to continue the conversation. (By the toddler’s tone, I discerned that he was fine.) Fearing that the DA would hink something was drastically awry in my house, I admitted to him that I was working from home and that my youngest child was making noise. Luckily, he was very understanding. (For those of you who were wondering, the crisis that compelled my toddler to pound on the door was the desire for more food.)

Even now – with kids ages 10, 10 and 7 – they STILL make a racket when I’m on the phone. Yesterday I was on the phone for a very long time with the insurance company and the 10-year-olds decided that, of all the places in the house, the floor in front of the open door to my office was the perfect location in which to stage a loud wrestling match.

Item #2: Balance-Schmalance

Just in time for the chaos of the holidays, my witty Mommy Track’d colleague – author Stefanie Wilder-Taylor – recently mused about how insanely difficult it is to try to do have a well balanced life while simultaneously raising young children. Noting that she and her husband haven’t had sex in three weeks, Wilder-Taylor, mother of three including infant twins, said the horizontal mambo is simply one of those things they just couldn’t fit into their hectic schedules, regardless of the false hopes offered by “experts” in parenting/women’s magazines who claim that parents can make space and time in their lives for everything if they plan well:

“I’m not quite sure what makes someone an expert in the field to how to manage a family of five, a full-time writing job and an eating challenged baby without needing prescription medication — they will suggest to make an appointment for sex . . . My husband and I both have jobs, responsibilities, friends we barely see, e-mails we can’t return, broken things in the house that never seem to get fixed . . . [N]one of us really ‘have it all.’”

(more…)

September 15, 2008

Stress Expert: Chill and Let Go of the Illusion of Perfect

I had the pleasure last week of sitting next to Alice Domar, the keynote speaker at the MetroWest Chamber of Commerce’s Women’s Initiative dinner. (Note: One of the event sponsors was skirt! magazine, which is owned by the same company as P&K Magazine.) Domar, an internationally known expert on what’s called the mind-body connection, discussed the main themes of her new book, Be Happy Without Being Perfect, specifically on how and why women should let go of the illusion of perfection.

What struck me about Domar, wasn’t just that during dinner, she was a down-to-earth person who spoke with ease about how her tween-aged daughter was upset that Domar had to be out for the evening and about her exploits helping her daughter sell Girl Scout cookies outside a local grocery store. It was that what Domar said — both at the microphone and away from it – was real, didn’t seem rehearsed/polished (even though this is a person who toured with Oprah in 2004-2005 and regularly appears on national television) and indicated that she understands what it’s like to be a working parent circa 2008 during an “epidemic of stress” like the rest of us.

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September 4, 2008

Three for Thursday: School Supply Woes in NYC, How Palin Does It & ‘Hockey Mom’ Humor

Item #1: School Supply Woes in NYC

When it comes to crazy-long school supply lists, apparently my kids’ public schools aren’t the only ones doling them out. The New York Times ran a page one piece about schools in the New York area and elsewhere which are asking parents to shell out big bucks for supplies, including one mom who had ”10 boxes of baby wipes” on her kindergartener’s list.

“. . . [A]ccording to the New York State School Boards Association, supplies run an average of $100 for high school students and $60 for middle schoolers,” the paper reported. In some school districts, the school supply lists have grown so large that school boards have stepped in and placed caps on how much families should be asked to spend:

“In the suburbs of Rochester, the Gates Chilli Central School District last year capped the amount that parents were expected to spend on supplies at $10 a child, adding $100,000 to the budget to make up the difference. The sprawling Fayette County Public Schools in Lexington, Ky., set the limit this fall of $120 a child for the year, including field trips.”

Item #2: How Palin Does It

Answer (according to press reports): Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has a husband named Todd. Who’s the father of their five kids. Who works part-time. And takes care of the children (all but the baby and the eldest – who’s deploying to Iraq this month – are in school all day). The Palin family, you see, works together. Just like the Obama family, only no one’s asking Barack Obama how he’s managing to parent his two school-aged daughters while he’s on the campaign trail. So let’s back off the Palin-is-a-bad-mom garbage, why don’t we. It’s an unbecomingly sexist attack. ‘Nuf said.

Item #3: ‘Hockey Mom’ Humor

The line of the night, as Sarah Palin accepted the Republican’s VP nomination: “You know [what] they say [is] the difference between a hockey mom and a pit-bull? [*pause*] Lipstick.”

Palin’s speech — including the lipstick comment, at 8:50 – can be found here.

September 2, 2008

Politics, Work and Mothers . . . Ready, Aim, Fire

There they go again.

Savaging a working mother of small children for her choices instead of just trying to understand her decisions and realize that each family and each woman is very, very different.

This time it’s GOP VP nominee, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a mother of five, who’s in the cross-hairs. She had a baby in April. And returned to work days after giving birth. Before the birth, Palin reportedly got on an airplane while her amniotic fluid was leaking after consulting with her doctor. Now, because she went back to work, because she boarded that plane and because she’s got a baby and is running for vice president, people are all over her. Calling her a bad mom and questioning her competency, particularly because her 4-month-old has Down Syndrome. (And I’m not even talkin’ about Palin’s policy positions, qualifications or her teenage daughter’s private situation which even her opponent says should be kept out of the political arena. Let’s leave those items aside and focus on the attacks on her bio.)

Today’s New York Times has a page one story about what they coyly dubbed, “The Mommy Wars: Special Campaign Edition:”

“. . . [T]his time the battle lines are drawn inside out, with social conservatives, usually staunch advocates for stay-at-home motherhood, mostly defending [Palin], while some others, including plenty of working mothers, worry that she is taking on too much.”

The article continued:

“In interviews, many women, citing their own difficulties with less demanding jobs, said it would be impossible for Ms. Palin to succeed both at motherhood and in the nation’s second-highest elected position at once . . . Many women expressed incredulity — some of it polite, some angry — that Ms. Palin would pursue the vice presidency given her younger son’s age and condition.”

(more…)

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