Return of the Stocks
Can anyone top this with a story of creative ‘consequences’?
Category Archives: parenting
A Mighty Girl
The Girls-Can-Do-Anything 1980s seem to have melted into the Girls-Can-Be-Princesses 2010s. Is there any other costume option for girls in kids’ media? Pop culture has become a morass for parents of little girls. You have to sidestep sexualised clothing for 6-year-olds and billboards of unusually skinny women in their knickers before you even get to questions of […]
Kiss Me!
I first encountered Carlos Gonzalez in this Guardian interview, and thought, what a lovely man! I bought his second book, Kiss Me!: How to Raise Your Children With Love, and gobbled it in a couple of days. He had me at ‘hello’ with this on the second page: The stance of a book or of […]
Soundtrack to Motherhood
Which one makes you cry? I saw this slightly mushy video a year ago, when I was pregnant, and was in floods of tears (possibly hormonal). It has mothers holding cards giving advice to their younger selves. I’m planning a blog series based on one of these cards. Before I start it, I’d be interested […]
The Best is Now: Nine Months
SBJ is nine months old. It’s the best age! The first thing he does when he wakes up in bed with us is smile at us. Then start climbing the headboard to try and reach the forbidden wall sockets. Then properly open his eyes. When we say ‘Come into the bathroom!’ he’s so excited about […]
Possession #1
The story of the Jamestown colony in Virginia goes like this, as far as I can remember from law school. The first settlers wanted to build a Utopia where all property was held in common. They set up one big farm that they all worked together, and planned to share the harvest out between everybody. […]
Surprise! You’re an Attachment Parent!
Elizabeth berates Darcy for professing to love her ‘against your will, against your reason, and even against your character’. I sometimes feel the same about attachment parenting. Before we had SBJ, I had no inclination towards attachment parenting, and thought (as far as I gave it any thought at all) that it was probably a […]
First Thing in the Morning
When I see you smile It feels like I’m falling It’s not for anybody else to know The way your face could light the bitter dark of every street In every town I’ll ever go It’s not for anybody else to know For anybody else to know When I see you smile First thing in […]
(some of) What I don’t know
I was a feminist before I knew the word. The eldest of three daughters, a child of the Girls Can Do Anything! eighties, brought up by strong, thoughtful, culture-critical parents, I was never going to be keen on the patriarchy. When I was a kid and asked my Mum why she was at home and […]
Downsizing
My congregation got smaller last year. I began 2011 working fulltime as the pastor of West Baptist Church in New Plymouth, a place of shelter, faith and laughter, where I was responsible for a lovely, diverse community of people aiming to make a difference in a challenging part of town. It was my job to […]