Bunch Family

What the cool parents are reading today:

1. Prefer to read the news on your iPhone? One writer explains that your kid may not register seeing you on your smart phone as doing something constructive, but they’ll probably notice if you read the paper.

2. Is the internet ruining kids manners? Or is it changing our concept of manners altogether? “I remember in high school learning how to type a proper letter. Kids don’t learn that these days, but how much time do you want your high school student learning about writing proper letters? They can type ‘business letter’ into a search engine and find out everything they need to know.”

3. It’s estimated that 12,000 women a year are arrested for breastfeeding in public. So feeding your baby when they need to be fed makes you a criminal? Where do we file our complaint?  Read more...

Why we don’t need a reality show about extended breastfeeding

In the latest installment of the North American obsession with breastfeeding, The New York Post revealed that there’s a new reality television series in the pipes devoted to the world of extended breastfeeding.

Los Angeles production company Collins Avenue is currently developing an entire series about women who choose to nurse infants older than a year. (How much over a year is still in question, although the two examples cited are women who have nursed children 3 and 7.)

Here’s the thing about reality television: as much as its name purports to be about reality, it does a pretty good job of capitalizing on situations that are really hyper-inflated reality. Otherwise, no one would watch it. It would be boring, mundane and probably a lot like everyday life. So one either watches reality shows about unusual people doing semi-quotidian things, regular people doing less-than-quotidian things or unusual people doing unusual things.  Read more...

What the cool parents are reading today:

1. It’s official - Tom and Katie have called it quits.  Co-parenting with Scientology in the mix? That’s a whole new level of wackiness. “She seems to have been raised in Scientology up to this age, so if the judge comes in and gives custody to Katie Holmes, she can change Suri’s religion.”

2. New slim & secure handheld video monitors are the tek-savvy parent’s answer to the baby monitor. It looks just like an iPod. For those who want to merge fashion and family-function.

3. Jonesing for some breastfeeding solidarity? Stop by this new website, mamasmilkproject.com. It seeks “to pass along women’s hard-earned breastfeeding wisdom and experience and to allow women a space to reflect upon and write about their breastfeeding experiences as an important life experience.” Sharing is caring.  Read more...

What the cool parents are reading today:

1. Last week, Pink tweeted a picture of herself breastfeeding her daughter Willow Sage, and voiced her thoughts on the illustrious TIME cover. “It’s time we support what’s healthy, breastfeeding, instead of judge it.”

2. Kids as young as 10 are involved in sexting.  According to Kids Helpline, almost 500 young people contacted the service with sexting-related concerns between January and March this year. One in three were between 10 – 14. Disturbing.

3. U.S. hate is taught as part of the Kindergarten curriculum in North Korea, where anti-American phrases adorn posters on classroom walls and “during playtime, children run around beating up mock American soldiers and planes.” Sounds like a very, um, positive learning environment for those formative years.

4. More than 80 kids in Indianapolis were sent to hospitals after taking a dip in a toxic public pool. Apparently a wrong combination of chemicals led to the water becoming a poisonous cocktail. All of a sudden athlete’s foot doesn’t seem like such a biggie.  Read more...

Precious Chong blogs about co-parenting alongside her ex and his new fiancee

Looking back, one of the things that scared me the most about leaving my marriage was the thought of dating again. I had a baby. I was pushing 40. I was still breastfeeding.

Call me crazy, but dating and breastfeeding just don’t really mix.

Even when I was younger I was always a sporadic dater. I would go on binges of dating two or three guys and then would go cold turkey, exhausted by the neuroses and/or awkward sex.

Dating in Los Angeles can be like that. Just to give you an idea, the last three men I dated before I met Wes, were all on anti-depressants. All three of them. Not that I have anything against anti-depressants, but come on.  Read more...

Trevor is a Milk Junkie and a transgender man with a husband and a baby

 Read more...

What we’re reading today:

1. Anderson Cooper talks about kids and race. In a recent study, 6-year-olds think kids should have interracial friendships; by 13, not so much.

2. Do you have a tween? Are you about to have a tween? Get ready for the Drama Years.

3. The true cost of breastfeeding: moms who nurse longer lose out on income that their peers don’t.

4. Obviously motherhood is tough and exhausting, but one childless woman says quit your whining since it’s just pouring salt in the wound. (We don’t see any problem with venting your frustrations, but maybe just to a selective audience.)

5. Are you pregnant and you know it? Do you want to sing about it?

Yesterday: Play date waivers, Europe’s Easter egg shortage and you didn’t imagine it, your kids get less cute at about 4 1/2. (Well fine, maybe not your kids, but everyone else’s)  Read more...

What we’re reading today:

1. The New York Times Sunday Magazine long read this week was all about girls hitting puberty earlier and earlier. Did you read it? It made us want to banish any and all plastic and preservatives from the house and move somewhere far, far away.

2. Your not imagining it and you can now tell your mother that you have science on your side: childbirth is three hours longer than it was 50 years ago.

3. Oh Park Slope parents, you’ve got it rough. How dare those Italian ice and ice cream vendors come into your playgrounds on those first few beautiful days of the spring and tempt your kids with treats you haven’t prepared yourself with local, organic macro ingredients. Is it really that hard to say “no” to your kids?

4. For moms unable to breastfeed, there’s been some good developments with formula.  Read more...

What we’re reading today:

1. The circumcision debate rages on! Bad news for intactivists, circumcision now linked to lower rates of prostate cancer.

2. Some Scottish researchers are looking to revise recommendations that new mothers should breastfeed exclusively for the first six months. They suggest that instead the goal should be not so much in the numbers, but the results — what works best for your family. “Six months exclusive breast-feeding,” they write, “is considered unrealistic and unachievable by many families and promoting this is perceived as setting parents up to fail.”

3. In support of Meatless Mondays, or adding a vegetarian meal or two a week for your family.

4. According to one author, serious career women don’t work part-time, even if they’re moms.

5. We would LOVE to try on wigs with Miss Piggy.

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