Wild things

Photos taken while drinking tea and watching Cormac, the 4 year old playing in the garden.

 

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Questions to be answered

Questions I’ve been asked by my just-turned four year old:

Why do aliens hate our bodies so much?

What’s your favourite colour that comes out of the sun?

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My new article: The sexualisation of girls

I have a new article in Essential Kid discussing the four biggest problems I see with the conversation around the sexualisation of young girls. And I almost never say this about an article I have written but you can read the comments.

Not so long ago there was controversy over child models being photographed in French Vogue mimicking sultry adult poses and being dressed in women’s clothing and makeup. Everyone agreed that it was little girls looking like adults but some people still wondered what the fuss was about. Even some feminists view the concern about the sexualisation of children as really being a sneaky resurrection of female purity obsessions. To my mind, there’s nothing bad about little girls playing dress-up, or even playing with sexy dress-up ideas, if they’re genuinely choosing this play idea from a range of gender-diverse options. Shaming girls about femininity, even artificial constructs of it, is a big mistake. But the Vogue photos weren’t pictures of little girls playing – they were adults playing dress-up with little girls. That’s an important difference and we should pay attention, particularly when it is for commercial purposes. What was the magazine selling? Notably, little boys are not typically used to represent miniature versions of sexy adult men, why is that? It could be that this collapsing of sexiness and materialism into displays of girlhood is part of a wider trend in sexually objectifying women.

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Parties

My nephew’s Naming Ceremony.

Arranging a baby and its frou frou on your lap.

I was so cross with Lauca for putting tattoos on herself the day before but now I kind of like the effect in the photos.

Old friends of mine who years ago watched me craftily set up their workmate with my sister.. and now there’s a baby to show for all that.

Cormac’s 4th birthday party. My least effort yet… and a success.

Cupcake decorating activity.

High on turning four… and sugar.

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Oh my god, Autumn

This is not what it normally looks like when I working on my laptop, but let’s imagine it is..

This weekend, seriously.

My city has a truly wonderful autumn and spring and even though I know it does each year still kind of takes me by surprise. On the weekend I had this beautiful morning where the kids were off with their dad and I used the time to ride to the gym and the Asian grocer and then I rode home and cooked myself brunch. And while I was cutting eshallots in the garden I noticed one of my lavender bushes was also flowering. It was all very reassuring, like my life is just absolutely toodle-pip perfect or something.

I spent the late afternoon and evening at my sister’s house where we walked in the park and played with her baby. In the evening when her husband came home from work we all drank beers and ate take-away curry and laughed too loud and woke the baby up. My sister’s husband is working hard on this big case and he was fretting a little and wanting my sister to look over the work he’d prepared for cross-examining witnesses. I told them to go do that together and I will put your baby back to sleep. Of course the baby would only sleep in my arms which was quite frankly, lovely, and I lay with him on their bed in the dark.

The next morning I promised my kids a bike ride and we went to see some friends to tempt them along with us. Their kid and mine played Lego while she got ready and I took photos of all the lovely light in their house. Because the weather is so beautiful and the preparation is inevitably so involved we took the kids on quite a long ride, sufficient to eventually break the spirit of Cormac, the youngest. So then we called her husband to come and get the kids and the bikes in the car and she and I rode back together. How amazing is this ride without them, we said, and do you think we’ll ever go home.

Behold the morning sun on my friends’ deck.

Cormac stuffing Lego into his pockets like a little thief.

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The age of unselfconscious mothering is over

While each successive era’s ideas about motherhood have had a political and economic dimension, the proliferation of parenting manuals and programmes such as Supernanny signals something else: a moral panic over parenting that feeds into the narrative of “broken Britain”, in which “faulty” parenting is the cause of everything from obesity to educational failure and even divorce. Jensen says: “It’s a very common narrative that we’re going through a parenting crisis. There’s a lot of nostalgia in there – that our parents knew how to parent us, and that our grandparents knew how to parent them,” even though all the evidence suggests that parents today spend more time with their children and are more attentive to them than previous generations. Leaving children unsupervised – standard practice in the 1960s – is now seen as evidence of neglect.

Of course the parenting advice industry has not just ideas, but products to sell – you can actually buy a naughty step, aka a Time Out Pad, solving parenting dilemmas by shopping. But even if you strive to resist their messages, contends Jensen, programmes such as Supernanny create a system of self-surveillance in which mothers scrutinise their every decision, thereby generating yet more anxiety.

From “Mothers on the naughty step: the growth of the parenting advice era” by Anne Karpf in The Guardian.

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My new article: Returning to work: a walk in the park?

I love my work and I’m terribly grateful for the flexibility my employer provides. I’ve had the benefit of maternity leave (both paid and unpaid), some flexibility in my start and finish times, and occasional work-from-home days in emergency situations. It has made all the difference; I have a career and two children and I do not feel torn in half by the process. And my appreciation makes me a very loyal employee, too, so it’s win-win. So I must share a confession: if I had been asked to write this article a couple of years ago, here’s where my conclusions about working part-time would have ended. But I would be lying if I said it has all been easy.

Combining work outside the home with the work of rearing children and running a household has often been a grind. Working part-time has been the best of both worlds, and in some ways a taste of the worst of both, too. We frequently fall short of money, I’m exhausted, the house is disorganised, often I fight a sense of not being taken seriously in the workplace, the children sometimes feel ignored, my after-school care arrangements are in a permanent state of near collapse, and I’m getting increasingly petty about wanting the corner office again. Like the Wall Street Journal article, the workplace is both encouraging and discouraging of mothers returning to work.

Essential Baby asked me to comment on the Wall Street Journal article and write about what it was like for me returning to work after maternity leave.  My article is here.

Update: Corrected the link, sorry everyone.

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Everything

Bike riding has just become my magic cure for everything.

For instance, I want more exercise but I already go to the gym two to three times a week and if I go any more than that my brains will fall out with boredom. Also, I want the children to get more some exercise because they are as addicted to computers as I am.. and bike riding is a way for them and me to exercise together. Then, I am tired of always leaving my neighborhood for socialising and recreation so I figure bike riding could be a way to do more in my local area.

But most of all, I am not feeling as connected to the kids as I would like to be – work is taking its toll – so, I am hoping that being outside and active together will facilitate the relaxed space that brings about more of that for us. The bike rides are still a novelty for the kids, and consequently I get a lot of “I love you’s” during them. Of course, there are tantrums and complaints, too, and no outing would be complete without me saying “well, do you think this is any fun for me either?”

Photo 1: My kids and my friend’s kids on a rest stop during the bike ride.

Photo 2: Lauca inspecting a shell.

Photo 3: Cormac, reluctant to be photographed.

Photo 4: The kids walking out on a sandbar and taking much longer than intended because “ok, a quick walk out there but then we really must go home”.

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While I was at work

The school holidays can feel a bit sad when you’re at work and your kids are at the beach with their grandmother.

1. Lauca and Cormac looking at the last remains of the shipwreck.

2. Lauca watching creatures in the rock pools.

3. Cormac and Lauca.

 

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Walk on the shoreline

And when Lauca, the eight year old made lunch for us.

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