Motherlode Blog Feeds

An updated, but always incomplete, blogroll. Never let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Little boys like mine need to move their bodies, to explore and wrestle and chase each other around. They need to shake the ants out of their pants, and city life just doesn't allow for it.

I thought it would be great if my children enjoyed watching the films I liked. I was right, until I pushed my luck.

"Seesaw marriage" means taking turns. But waiting for your time in either the dominant parent or the career-focused parent role can feel more like a tug of war.

To be a drunk was one thing. A drunk mommy? That, I decided, was my rock bottom.

Both working parents are equally in need of child care. So why do I suddenly think of my salary as paying that bill?

Standing in the hospital, surveying her former babysitter's newborn son, my daughter declared him so tiny — like she had been, she said, when she "came out of your tummy." But she didn't, and she knows it.

If you pay a nanny or baby sitter more than $1,800 a year, you are required to be paying employment taxes.

I thought being a blogging dad made me a rare man willing to share his frustrations — until I realized they're frustrations we all share.

Many parents prefer to "redshirt" a young child by holding her out of kindergarten for an extra year. This reader has the opposite problem — her just-shy-of-the-cut-off child is ready to go.

Only Julia Sweeney would find herself adopting a baby named Mulan — "like the movie." And she knows it.

If Melissa Harris-Perry can't propose investing in our children without provoking partisan ire, our "every man for himself" family policies are never going to change.

In forming new family relationships, children need to feel that their frustrations are heard, while disagreements between adults are kept in the background.

In her memoir, Monica Wesolowska explores how to parent a child who is caught up in our complex system of modern medical death.

When we took our newborn child and deposited him in a crib (and out of our bed, thank you very much) a mere three months into his little life, our Indian family thought us heartless and cruel.

“Mommy, it’s so hard at school," my daughter whispers. “We’re not even allowed to say the word ‘gun.’ But then they make us think about them.”

After two years of Lyme disease, I realized that I needed to take care of myself before I took care of others.

When my son wet his pants every day at nursery school, the teachers thought I'd lied when I said he was potty trained. He was — he just wasn't trained to be with anyone but me.

Quick, what's wrong with this sentence: "Most working mothers who pay for child care do so out of their after-tax income"?

Once, a rape accuser might have found the word "whore" on a note in her locker and heard accusations about her behavior whispered behind her. Now, this is on social media — and the single good thing about that public ugliness is that it can no longer be ignored.