THE NANNY TIME BOMB

Friday Funny

2012-02-24T08:41:00.000-08:00

The Nanny Diaries: from sunshine to snow, from dream to nightmare

2012-02-23T17:06:00.000-08:00

Crikey intern Freya Cole writes: I had no idea what I was getting myself in to when I applied to be a nanny for six months. I had romanticised the idea in my head, thinking that a nanny would look after polite little children and take them to the local park, where they would meet other nannies over a picnic.

Oh, how wrong was I.

Flying out of 45 degrees heat at Tullamarine and flying in to minus 4 degrees at Heathrow was just the first surprise.

guess you could say, alarm bells really started ringing when the current nanny picked me up from the airport and started to spill the beans on the mother.

“Oh, don’t worry about her, she will act strangely from time to time, but if you stay out of her way there will be no problems,” she told me.

She hadn’t cared to mention or even hint at this slightly important piece of information in one of the hundreds of emails over the previous five months.

I took the nanny’s ‘advice’ on board and went into the live-in position with a smile and positive attitude.

The house and my room were nothing like what they described on the nanny recruitment website: aupair.com.

It was dingy and I had to share a bathroom with the kids. But, I wasn’t a princess and just got on with it.

After a week’s induction I knew the routine. Eight o’clock start, breakfast, pack lunches, nursery, afternoon sleep, play date, dinner, bath, bed, 7pm knock off. Five days a week. Maybe four, if I was lucky.

Two weeks into the job, one of the boys came home from kindergarten with a scratch on his face. He was a typical lively three year old boy who probably fell over in play time. I didn’t think anything of it.

When the mother returned home that evening, she grabbed my fingernails and examined them.

“Are you using physical violence to discipline my boys,” she exclaimed.

“N,n,n,noo!” I stammered. “Of course not, he fell over at the nursery.”

I was absolutely devastated, could she be for real?

Well, she was for real, and these burst of outrage continued. Sure, she was under pressure. She worked hard as a PR agent for a large fashion merchant and her husband, who was really quite nice, was a banker in constant fear of becoming one of the hundreds being made redundant.

All of the grocery shopping was done online and automatically delivered every Wednesday afternoon. It was one of my jobs to unpack the groceries so I found a place for all of the food in the two by three metre kitchen.

That evening once the boys were in bed, the mother said she needed to talk to me.

My mind was racing at a hundred miles per hour as we sat down, thinking, “what could I possibly have done wrong now?”

“Are you starving my boys?” she asked.

“There is too much food in the house. I can only conclude that you are not feeding my boys enough food. From now on, you will follow my list of meals for the boys.”

There was no trust in the relationship. It was time for a new job.

Luckily, only a few days later a nice lady approached me at the kindergarten and asked if I had any friends looking for work.

“Can you take me?” I desperately responded.

Over a cuppa we shared our story and I agreed to start working for her in a week.

I walked home feeling enlightened and excited at the prospects of my new job. The family seemed very nice and my materialistic weaknesses gave in to the nice house and large bedroom.

Then I remembered I had to resign first.

This wasn’t an easy task. The “I quit” speech never is. The boys for starters had grown very fond of my company and I felt terrible for abandoning them.

Moreover, as much as I didn’t like the mother, both parents worked very hard and I was leaving them without much notice. But, I couldn’t bear the thought of my year away from home being ruined by a terrible job.

It was now my turn to approach the mother and request we have a talk. “I’m sorry, but this job is not for me,” I said matter-of-factly.

She stared at me, and continued to do so for half an hour of agonizing awkward silence.

“Can you say something?” I asked.

“I feel sick,” she said as she continued to stare at me, barely blinking.

Continued more: http://blogs.crikey.com.au/back-in-a-bit/2012/02/23/the-nanny-diaries-from-sunshine-to-snow-from-dream-to-nightmare/

The Boy With No Toys

2012-02-22T16:53:00.000-08:00

Before he was born, his mother decided her son would have no toys. Abandoned by the father, she was already a single parent. She made a living cleaning for other people. Most days she took the bus to affluent streets where children never seemed to play outside. As she vacuumed and scrubbed beautiful homes overfilled with possessions she paid close attention to what children did all day. Often they were gone at lessons, after school programs, or playdates. When they were home they usually sat staring at screens. Toys in their carefully decorated rooms appeared to be tossed around as if the small owners had no idea how to play, only how to root restlessly for entertainment.

She thought about it, talked to the oldest people she knew, and read everything she could. Then she informed anyone who cared to listen that her child would not have toys. Not a single purchased plaything.

Will (name changed) and his mother live in a small mobile home park. By most standards they are poor. Their income is well below the poverty line. They don’t have a TV or computer (although Will uses the computer at the library and watches the occasional TV program at babysitters’ homes). But their lives are rich in what matters. Together Will and his mom grow food on several shares of a community garden, bartering when they have extra produce. They make all their meals from scratch. These routines activate a whole array of learning opportunities for Will, quite naturally.

They are close to most of their neighbors in proximity as well as in friendliness. While his mother is working Will is cared for by several different seniors in their trailer park. He not only likes to help his mother garden, cook, and take care of their small home but he also likes to take part in helping his neighbors with small tasks. He carries groceries for certain ladies, helps an older gentleman with a birdhouse building hobby, and sometimes gets to assist another neighbor in automotive repairs. He gets a lot out of these meaningful tasks. Children long to take on real responsibility and make useful contributions. Giving them these opportunities promotes their development in important ways.

Sounds nice. But what about play?

When Will was a baby his mother made all sorts of toys. Most took no time at all. Food containers became stacking toys, a small water bottle with beans inside became a rattle, a sock stuffed with drier fuzz and tied in knots became a soft animal.

Will is now six years old. He plays as any child naturally does. He makes up games and turns all sorts of objects into toys. His mother saves money by not owning a car, so Will has commandeered a large portion of the shed that would normally be used as a garage. Mostly he uses it to stockpile his own resources. He has scrap wood, a few tools, and cans of nails. He likes to straighten bent nails for future projects, working carefully now that he recently discovered what smacking his fingers with a hammer feels like. Recently he found a discarded lawn mower tire, so he’s looking for three more tires to make a go-cart. In the evenings he likes to draw elaborate pictures of this upcoming project. He particularly enjoys playing in the soft dirt along the side of the shed where “robot men” he makes out of kitchen utensils use their potato peeler and wisk limbs to churn through the soil, leaving tracks as they clink. When he visits friends he happily plays with their toys, although he doesn’t always “get” that certain TV or movie-themed toys are limited to the plot-related storylines. So far he seems to have no urge to possess the same toys.

What about birthdays and holidays? Will’s mother does give him gifts. But she limits her gifts to useful items—crayons, clothes, tools, a compass. Each weekend her folk band practices at their mobile home. Will quickly mastered the harmonica and begged for time on the fiddle, so her big gift to him this year was a used child-sized fiddle. She urges the other adults in his life to gift him with experiences—a trip to the beach, a day of horseback riding, a visit to a museum. Out-of-town relatives now renew a children’s magazine subscription and send him regular snail mail letters, both of which are helping him learn to read with very little prompting.

Flying with children

2012-02-22T11:24:00.000-08:00

Child-minders at 36,000 feet

Feb 22nd 2012, 14:28 by A.B.

IF YOU have ever flown with young children, you may well have wished for an extra set of hands to help with feeding, entertaining and generally managing the little tykes. This is the gap in the market that Nanny in the Clouds is trying to fill. This Californian company aims to connect registered babysitters who happen to be flying between A and B (and want to earn some extra cash), with passengers on the same flight wanting some child-minding help.

The system is simple. The babysitter inputs details of flights they will be taking on the website. The child-toting passenger inputs details of flights where they need help. If there's a match, the child-toter pays $10 to the website and then makes whatever deal is convenient with the baby-sitter: where to meet, how much help is wanted and at what price.

It's a nice little idea, but scale is the obvious problem. There are in the region of 30,000 commercial flights leaving American airports each day. Unless Nanny in the Clouds enjoys stratospheric success, the chance of a willing, signed-up babysitter being on your plane seems rather remote.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2012/02/flying-children

New Labor Ruling for U.S. Home Care Workers

2012-02-21T08:13:00.000-08:00

By Mary Elaine Ramos | February 21, 2012 2:15 PM EST

The Department of Labor is now undergoing a public comment period up until the end of February concerning a new rule which tackles wage protection to two groups that are predominantly female: casual babysitters and companions for the elderly and infirmed.

Back in the year 1974, these workers were under the "companionship" exclusion because of the implementation of the Fair Labor Standards Act in the year 1974. Other domestic workers like housekeepers, cooks, and chauffeurs were also considered in this ruling. This industry is considered to be worth US$70 billion and encompasses different types of care and companionship like babysitting, giving medication, cleaning, helping clients bathe, clothe and move around.

Nearly 2 million home care workers--almost all women--make up a growing $70 billion industry in the United States. The job provides a unique mix of care and companionship, from babysitting, to administering medication, helping clients bathe, clothe and move around, and cleaning.

The home care industry more than tripled between 2001 and 2010, growing from 24,919 establishments or agencies to 82,239, according to the New York-based Paraprofessionals Health Care Institute. In 1963, that official figure was 1,100.

"Congress wasn't thinking then about the work force as it is today," Robin Shaffert, a policy consultant for Caring Across Generations, a workers' advocacy coalition based in New York and Washington, said in a phone interview. "And so what has happened is there is this broad group of people who are not doing this casually, who are supporting themselves and their families, and they are not covered by minimum wage and overtime provisions."

Caring Across Generation has five major goals, one for each finger of a worker's caring hand.

Preparing good jobs for a projected 50 percent increase of personal care aides between 2008 to 2018 (from 921,700 to 1,328,600);

Improving the quality of current jobs;
Providing training;
Providing a path to citizenship for undocumented home care workers;
Supporting individuals and families.

Conditions Lag Demand

Caring Across Generations says home care workers' access to job protections and training lags the boom in demand for their services.

Sylvia Liang, of Seattle, agrees.

Liang is employed by her 23-year-old son, living with autism. She said she has learned almost everything she knows about caring for him by simply raising him. She works out of their house and last year became involved with Caring Across Generations.

When she talks with other home care workers they recognize a common need for training, Liang said. "We know we don't have as much training as we would like. I am not a medical professional. I learn from trial and error."

In 2009, the National Domestic Worker Alliance pushed through a groundbreaking domestic workers' bill of rights that extended basic protections to nannies and housekeepers.

But the bill--which workers have successfully used to recoup wages--neglected home care workers, in keeping with the same definition of a domestic worker as outlined by the Fair Labor Standards Act, now subject to revision.

Jodeen Olguin-Tayler, field director of Caring Across Generations, said one person turns 55 every eight seconds in the United States.

"That totals more than 10,000 people a day," Olguin-Tayler, in a recent phone interview from her D.C. office. "It's just a huge amount of people aging in the United States, and without a job creation plan for home care workers at the national level, we need to figure out how to fill this exploding need."

Tough Negotiations

The intimate and complicated nature of home care work can make it hard for a worker to negotiate and receive standard work conditions, said Olguin-Tayler, who also serves as campaign director for the New York-based National Domestic Worker Alliance.

"We hear things about people not having sick days, getting pressure to go to work when they are sick."

In July 2011 Caring Across Generations began a series of day-long "care congresses" across the country to fill in the education gaps.

The meetings are hosted and run by a grassroots network of advocacates for seniors, disability rights and in-home care workers. Funding comes from a mix of donations and money from Caring Across Generation, according to Olguin-Tayler.

Seven more of these meetings, which attract between 250 and 500 participants, are scheduled for later this year, including New York City, Seattle, Chicago and Miami.

Campaigners are looking for more state domestic workers' bills of rights to follow and be expanded to home care health workers at the same time. One in California was introduced last year, and comparable bills are expected to arise in Washington state and Illinois in the coming year.

"A lot of the issues that I've seen workers bring up are very similar," said Perla Placencia, an organizer for the National Domestic Workers Alliance, based in New York, who helped organize a meeting for caregivers in the San Francisco Bay Are last summer. "Limited pay, lack of benefits, and just working in a stressful environment, because it's so much responsibility to care for someone who has particular health needs. People really enjoy the work they do, but they aren't being compensated for how important it is, and how hard it is."

To contact the editor, e-mail: editor@ibtimes.com

SOURCE: http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/301769/20120221/wage-protection-domestic-workers .htm

From Generation X to Generation Me by Rhiana Maidenberg

2012-02-20T10:04:00.000-08:00

Rhiana Maidenberg

Writer, wife, and mother of toddler

I am a proud, social security card carrying member of Generation X. In high school, I dressed in the latest grunge fashion (plucked fresh from the bins at Goodwill), and drove my beat-up Honda Civic in the rain while listening to REM, Pearl Jam, and Nirvana. My fellow Gen X'ers and I remember fondly the fall of the Berlin Wall, Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign, and the debut of Michael Jackson's Thriller music video.

We were an independent generation, adaptable to change. Many of us came from divorced families, and found it normal to split our time between two homes. We lived in households where both parents worked and were often labeled as "latch-key" kids. Watching our parents work tireless hours at jobs they didn't like, we embraced technology and education, vowing to do what we loved, on our own terms, with a reasonable work/life balance.

And then we began to procreate.

In contrast to our upbringing, we resolved to be a more constant presence in our children's lives. Many of us, now as mothers, are now staying home, sacrificing career and economic prosperity to be the one to do the drop-offs and pick-ups. We read every new parenting book, determined to raise our children with all possible opportunities and advantages. By the time the children are two, they are enrolled in ballet, soccer, gymnastics, music and art class. Our kids are constantly praised for their efforts and are repeatedly told how smart, talented, beautiful and special they are.

And this is how we raised the "Me" generation.

The problem is that these children are now dependent on their parents. They have become accustomed to their moms and dads holding their hands through each major decision, and many of these young adults now call home multiple times a day for guidance. College professors are fielding phone calls from parents wanting to discuss their child's grade on a paper. Managers complain that this generation is so unfamiliar with criticism that they are nearly impossible to train. This generation truly believes that they are exceptionally smart, talented, and beautiful, and therefore unprepared for the real world.

So, what do we do? As a mother of toddlers, how do I combat this trend and raise independent children, while still being an active participant in their childhood?

Lori Gottlieb, author of How to Land Your Kid in Therapy, offers many suggestions to find this balance. Here are a few I intend to follow:

Allow the child to fight her own battles. Imagine a common preschool scene. You witness another child grabbing a toy from your little one. As much as this may trouble your mama bear instincts, resist the urge to interfere. Give your child the opportunity to problem solve for herself. If she can't manage to get the toy back, let her feel the frustration.

Don't be the parent that demands her child be invited to all birthday parties. Life is unfair, and not every kid is going to like your child. Help the child cope with the disappointment of being excluded instead of saving her from all possible unhappiness.

Let them experience failure. Sometimes you try to climb a new play structure and fall. Sometimes you study really hard for a test and still get a C. Sometimes you strive to be everyone's friend and nonetheless, these is still that one girl who continues to spread rumors. This is life, and it should also be childhood.

Recently my oldest, Elana, tested me on just this. She advanced in her swim lessons to the next level and was finding herself in a difficult position -- she shifted from the best in her class to the worst. After the first session in the new class she sweetly pleaded with me, though teary eyes, to be moved back to her old group. "It's too deep. I'm scared. I don't like the teacher." While part of me hated seeing her sad, I knew that this was an important lesson for her. "Whenever we try something new, we often suck," I explained, "but, without sinking, we never learn to swim."

Follow Rhiana Maidenberg on Twitter: www.twitter.com/marriedwtoddler

SOURCE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rhiana-maidenberg/generation-x-parents_b_1257602.html?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl12%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D136975

Sweet spot for low-wage earners: after-tax salaries of $30,000 or more a year

2012-02-19T15:38:00.000-08:00

Laurie MonsebraatenSocial Justice Reporter

Neserita Gascon sacrificed a teaching career and the joy of raising her two school-age children when she left the Philippines for Canada in 1985 to build a better future for her family.

But after working for nine years as a live-in nanny for a Willowdale family, Gascon developed a severe skin allergy to harsh cleaning chemicals and rubber gloves and had to quit.

The timing couldn’t have been worse. Her children, who by this time were 17 and 19, had just arrived in Canada. It was the mid-1990s, jobs were scarce, and the Mike Harris Tories were slashing welfare and social programs. Life on welfare was not the example Gascon wanted to set for her children.

By chance, Gascon learned about a free training program to become an early childhood assistant. It proved to be her ticket off welfare, out of social housing and, eventually, out of poverty.

The six-month program led to two years of daycare supply teaching, a full-time job, an opportunity to upgrade her credentials to registered early childhood educator (ECE), and a pay hike. Today Gascon, who recently turned 65, earns about $38,600 with benefits.

“When I got my full ECE — that opportunity — that is when I started to breathe,” she says. “I felt more secure, financially, personally and socially.”

Gascon’s journey is reflected in new Toronto research that shows low-wage workers experience the biggest jump in financial well-being, personal skills and connections to family and community when their after-tax incomes rise to between $30,000 and $40,000.

“This is when a single wage earner moves from merely existing to living,” says Peter Frampton, executive director of the Learning Enrichment Foundation, which is conducting the research in partnership with the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE).

“It is when they can eat a meal in a restaurant without feeling guilty and are able to pay all their bills in the month without having to choose,” he adds.

The ongoing research — believed to be the first of its kind in Canada — lends support to a 2008 report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives that pegged a “living wage” in Toronto at $16.60 an hour, or about $33,000 a year.

“We think this shows in very real terms what a person needs to earn to feel a sense of financial and personal well-being,” Frampton says.

In Ontario, a household is considered to be living in poverty when annual income dips below the Low Income Measure (LIM), or 50 per cent of the median income, after taxes.

By that measure, a single person with an after-tax income of $19,600 or less in 2011 is considered poor.

The new research suggests that it would take an additional $10,000 to $20,000 annually to boost a single person from grinding poverty to a life with a sense of well-being.

In Gascon’s case, when she earned her certification as an early childhood educator in 1999, she was able to move out of subsidized housing into her own apartment. In today’s dollars, her income jumped from $29,000 to almost $39,000.

“When it is your own apartment, you feel very motivated,” she says. “You feel more accomplished. More fulfilled. Proud.”

The extra cash meant she was able to eat out occasionally with friends and save for the future.

In 2005, she put a down payment on a $200,000, two-bedroom condo near the Scarborough Town Centre, where she currently lives.

The study, which looked at Gascon and about 60 other long-time child-care workers at the Learning Enrichment Foundation’s 17 daycare centres last spring, measured a number of variables, including how the workers’ quality of life changed as they upgraded their skills and climbed the non-profit organization’s pay scale.

The survey used five broad quality-of-life indicators including: financial well-being, self-confidence, access to services, human capital (skills and abilities) and family and community relations.

“In three of the five scales we saw a statistically significant difference between people whose income was less than $30,000 and people whose income was between $30,000 and $40,000,” says professor Jack Quarter, co-director of OISE’s Social Economy Centre. “They reported higher financial well-being, a higher level of human capital and family and community relations.”

But for those earning over $40,000, the scores weren’t really any higher, he says.

“Scores below $30,000 rose with increased income,” he notes. “But the big bump came above $30,000.”

The data doesn’t explain why that is. But Quarter’s hunch is that below $30,000, a person is still trying to make ends meet. By the time a worker is earning more than $40,000, they are approaching the middle-class and likely starting to take on more household debt such as a mortgage, which may lead to a feeling of financial insecurity.

Quarter and the Learning Enrichment Foundation team hope to find definitive answers during the next phase of the study this spring when they will conduct in-depth interviews with survey subjects. The study is expected to be complete by the summer and will be part of a forthcoming book, Social Purpose Enterprises: Case Studies in Doing Business Differently, to be published by the University of Toronto Press in 2013.

Hugh Mackenzie, co-author of the 2008 living wage study, is excited by the new research.

“It is the first time that somebody has come at this question from the different end of the telescope . . . ” he says. “It is very interesting.

“It doesn’t surprise me that it is such a knife edge, that it is a relatively narrow range of income that tells you the difference between feeling that you are not getting by and feeling that you are getting by.”

Mackenzie’s 2008 study, co-authored by Canadian Auto Workers economist Jim Stanford, used government tax and other data to calculate how much it costs to raise a family at a barely adequate standard.

“A living wage is envisioned as a wage that allows employees not just to survive (in minimal physiological terms) but to have a decent quality of life, to raise children to be healthy and successful citizens, to enjoy recreation, culture and entertainment, and to participate fully in social life,” the 2008 study says.

“To me, it all comes down to participation,” Mackenzie says in an interview. “Yes, you can live without a TV, you can live without a car. But in this society you are not a participant. You are just surviving.”

For example, children over age 8 who live in a family that can’t afford an Internet connection are not part of life in their community, he notes.

As companies like Caterpillar in London, Ont., flee Canada for low-wage jurisdictions in the United States, and governments like the city of Toronto look to save money by contracting out well-paying unionized jobs, Mackenzie and the team from U of T and the Learning Enrichment Foundation are hoping their work can change the conversation among government and business leaders.

As Quarter points out: “Minimum wage isn’t very much in Toronto unless you are perhaps a student or somebody who has additional forms of support.

“If you have to take care of yourself and you have children, minimum wage is not going to cut it in a city like Toronto,” he adds. “I think our research should offer some support for the argument for a living wage.”

Gascon is living proof. Her daughter, now 39, is a successful travel agent, married and living in Richmond Hill with two young children. Her son, 37, a forklift operator, is single and still lives with her.

“It was a lot of struggle and sacrifice,” she says of the time when her children arrived in Canada as teenagers. “They used to work part-time at McDonald’s. But I always tell them it was worth it.”

She is grateful to the Learning Enrichment Foundation for giving her the chance to put her teaching experience towards a meaningful career in Canada that allows her to earn a living wage.

“I just love the children and I love the job. I have friends from all over the world who work with me. I have a very good life.”

Friday Fluff: Victoria Beckham: behind the scenes with the queen of fashion

2012-02-16T20:04:00.001-08:00

- The Guardian Newspaper (UK)
  By Jess Cartner-Morley

Here's the thing about Victoria Beckham: of any celebrity I have ever encountered, she is the one who in real life is least like her public image. The character of Victoria Beckham is so well established in popular culture – the Spice Girl who made her fortune by pouting rather than singing, the wife guarding her marriage and her lifestyle behind a steely barricade of sunglasses and 24 inch-waist designer jeans – that it is disorienting to find that woman doesn't actually exist. The walking, talking Victoria Beckham is someone different. She's funny, for a start – quick with the banter, a good mimic and with a sharp eye for the absurd. Way more of a girl's girl than you expect a footballer's wife could ever be. Smart, warm and smiley.

This is not to suggest for a moment that she is remotely down-to-earth or just-like-us. There is zero pretence of being low-maintenance. The way Mrs Beckham rolls – well, the lady makes Joan Collins look like a backpacker. It's all grand hotels and blacked-out Range Rovers, wraparound security detail and Louboutins at breakfast time. And one aspect of the folklore that surrounds her is entirely true: in all my time in the fashion industry, I have rarely come across anyone who is so constantly vigilant about their appearance. She requests a straw with every Diet Coke, presumably to avoid dislodging her lipstick. When we met for coffee recently, she had Harper on her knee throughout, and while one hand stroked and petted and rearranged her baby daughter, the other hand just as constantly stroked and petted and rearranged her carefully tonged glossy curls, to make sure they lay just-so over her other shoulder. For breakfast she orders a fruit plate, but without melon or banana. Once, at a ladies' lunch she hosted at Claridge's, we were all served white fish with steamed green vegetables and a few roasted cherry tomatoes – except for Beckham, whose plate arrived without the cherry tomatoes, a detail I can't shake off. Who knew four cherry tomatoes could make you fat?

The question that has fascinated the fashion industry since Victoria Beckham made her New York fashion week debut as a designer in September 2008 is where exactly does Victoria-Beckham-the-fashion-designer fit into this fractured picture of truths, half-truths and fiction? The success of the label, both critical and commercial, has taken the fashion industry by surprise. Reviewers are consistently impressed by her catwalk shows, prestigious department stores compete for the right to sell her clothes and customers, in turn, pay serious money to wear Victoria Beckham dresses – and now, as the company expands, handbags, too. But over this success has hovered a question mark: does Beckham, who has no formal design training, really create the clothes? Or does she just get parachuted in at the end for a fashion week photo op, fronting someone else's work? To put it bluntly, is Victoria Beckham for real?

And so it is that I found myself, one October day last year, embarking on probably the most glamorous work-shadowing assignment going. Victoria Beckham's "people", headed by Simon Fuller, one-time Spice Girl guru and now the backer of Victoria Beckham and Roland Mouret's fashion labels, agreed to our suggestion that I go behind the scenes and watch her at work. We made a plan for me to meet with Beckham at intervals during the period she was putting together the second collection for her Victoria line. (Victoria – or, to give it its full name, Victoria, Victoria Beckham – is a more casual, more affordably priced little-sister line to the flagship Victoria Beckham label.) This is a crucial season for the Victoria line: the spring collection shown to the press last year is about to go on sale and Beckham is hosting a party at Harvey Nichols during London fashion week to celebrate.

Beckham's studio is housed in Fuller's headquarters, and my first thought on walking in is that Fuller clearly never expected this particular outpost of his empire to get as big as it has. A room that could comfortably house four or five desks has more than twice that many, jammed between rails of clothes, piles of boxes and bolts of fabrics. There are three phone calls going on, all in such close proximity that I can hear what's being said on the other end of the line as well as by the person in the room. Mira, the "fit" model on whom the clothes are tried out in the studio, is perched on the desk of someone in the sales team.

Victoria Beckham is in the middle of it all, in layers of skinny black: towering heels, tight jeans, a hoodie under a fitted jacket. "Lovely, isn't it? I told them to tidy up because you were coming," she jokes, watching me take in the chaos. I am here to sit in on a 5pm meeting, and the LA jet lag is starting to hit. Her nails and hair and make-up are as immaculate as ever, but she looks pale and tired. Everyone seems curious about my presence – design studios are notoriously insular places – but entirely comfortable with Beckham. Watching her interact with her team, it seems less and less likely that there is a "real" designer hidden in a cupboard somewhere.

Today's agenda is to decide which of the early ideas for the spring Victoria line will be pursued to production, and which will get left on the drawing board. In a meeting room just off the studio, Beckham sits down with Danny, project manager for the label, Saskia the sales director, Susanne Tide-Frater (one-time creative director at both Selfridges and Harrods, now a freelance retail consultant) and me. Danny is bouncy and puppyish. Saskia is blonde and beautiful, and has one of those extraordinary accents you only get in fashion; I can't figure out whether she is German, or just incredibly posh.

After a preamble about sales of the first collection, which I suspect has been tacked on for my benefit – to precis, everything is selling amazingly well, buyers love everything, etc, etc – Danny starts a process of show-and-tell of 37 potential designs. They are at various stages of development, from a sketch with a fabric swatch attached, to a finished-looking dress. Two things immediately become clear about Beckham: that she has an excellent eye and that she works fast. There is one print that looks the weakest of the bunch and she kills it off straight away. Then she seizes on a swan-print dress, which is very pretty but doesn't strike me as quite right, and points out that the willow trees in the background make it too fussy and vintagey. (She's absolutely right.) Can they remake it with a simplified print?

Beckham's way of being a fashion designer is certainly not in the grand romantic tradition of a tortured artist with his sketchbook. She is not an artist expressing herself in fabric. But as to the authorship of the clothes, there doesn't seem to me much doubt. Her style and her taste is the life force in the room. There is an unashamed vanity to how she considers the collection – she will hold a dress in front of her in the mirror, pouting and fluffing her hair – and she views everything in terms of how it will look on her own body. When she says, about a long-sleeved jacquard dress, "I want to wear that now", Danny smiles happily.

There is a telling exchange after Saskia the sales director suggests that they might consider making one of the dresses with a scooped-out neckline rather than the modest round neck Beckham has decreed.

"If you've got your legs out, you can't have your boobs out," Beckham says firmly.

"I don't mean show cleavage, but how about collarbone?" Saskia asks.

Tide-Frater backs her up, pointing out – accurately – that women don't want to be completely covered up, and many are happier to show a little skin at the décolleté than wear a short skirt. "Maybe we could think about doing some different shapes," she says.

"No. I'm not feeling open necklines at all, I'd rather keep the neck and the hem high," Beckham says, uncrossing and recrossing her pin-thin legs.

"But not everyone has your legs," Tide-Frater adds, a comment that Beckham, sitting six inches away, seems not to hear. The subject is closed.

Fashion designers vary enormously as to involvement in the business and financial aspect. Tom Ford reels off percentage points of sales breakdowns in conversation; Marc Jacobs, on the other hand, is quite open about the fact that he neither knows nor cares about the retail price of his clothes. Beckham is a natural businesswoman, debating with Saskia at length about whether a spring collection should include a long-sleeved dress in wool – spring collections "drop" in January these days, so it makes sense to do something warmer. On the other hand, industry wisdom is that if customers see a wool dress on sale in January, they expect it to be reduced. Beckham decides it is essential that the dresses are print-matched – the panels sewn together so that the seam doesn't interrupt the pattern – but takes time weighing up the cost implications. "If you don't match up the patterns, you use 50% less fabric and that makes a huge impact on the bottom line," she explains. "You end up with a dress at about two-thirds of the price. When I started doing this second line, people told me that to achieve the prices I wanted to achieve, I had to let go of print placement. But I won't compromise because, actually, I don't want my customer walking around with an upside-down cat's arse on the front of a dress."

By now, it is after 8pm, the meeting has taken three hours, and Beckham calls time. Seventeen machinists will be at work tomorrow, running up rough versions of today's ideas, so she can see another set of samples before she heads back to LA.

A couple of days before that visit to the studio, I had met Beckham in theSavoy hotel, where she stays while in London. It was 8.30am but she was dressed as if for dinner at Le Caprice, in an ankle-length burgundy dress from her own collection and high leather boots. The first thing she wanted to know was if I had seen the debut Victoria collection, which I had; I recounted how I had tried some dresses on, behind a pile of chairs in a Milan showroom. "Oh, that's good to hear," she deadpanned. "We do like to treat people well. We're a luxury brand, after all. Getting dressed behind a pile of chairs – perfect. I bet that's how they do it atTom Ford."

Catwalk… The new collection, Victoria, Victoria Beckham, in Harvey Nichols. Photograph: Michael Bowles/Rex Features/BBZ

The new Victoria collection, with its simple shapes and fun prints, seems to semaphore a loosening up of Beckham's image, in contrast to the strict hourglass silhouettes of her mainline. "I think as I have got older, I have got a bit more relaxed, although you might not think that if you heard me screaming at my kids." The idea for a cheaper line was in the pipeline for over a year, but the bulk of the collection was designed in the spring and summer of last year, when Beckham was pregnant with Harper. "I was travelling back and forth to London all through the pregnancy. I got home from the final trip on the last day that the doctor had given me permission to travel. I was so pregnant that when I landed at LAX they tried to put me in a wheelchair. Can you imagine? I was like, I don't think so, thank you very much."

When Harper was born she took a week off work, after which her team travelled to LA so that they could finalise the New York fashion week plans. "Stopping work wasn't an option for long, but I took as much time off as I could. I spent the whole summer with my boobs out, breastfeeding. I loved it. It was heaven. She's such a good baby. I love all my children exactly the same, of course, but the boys were hard work. They had colic, they had acid reflux. They never slept. Brooklyn screamed at the top of his lungs, every 20 minutes, 24 hours a day."

At that moment, as if on cue, Harper arrives with her nanny. She is dressed in a fine grey wool tunic dress and matching tights, which look French and expensive. (Harper doesn't do pink.) "Do you know," Beckham says as Harper is handed to her mum, "she just loves fashion. She sat through all the presentations in New York and she just cooed. I was so proud. Finally there's someone in my house who likes fashion more than premiership football. Result." Today, Harper is going with her mum to the studio. "We've turned Simon Fuller's office into a creche: I've got her swinging chair in there, a playmat, her pram so she can sleep."

Beckham is fearsomely organised. "I have to be because I'm in LA and my team are here, so it has to be run like clockwork." The initial ideas meeting for this collection was held in New York, the day after the previous season had been shown on the catwalk. "Since then I've been on the phone, and on Skype, every day. The time difference is a pain – I spend a lot of time on Skype in my dressing gown – but we make it work. Our routine is that I work for an hour before we have to get the kids ready, then I take Brooklyn to school while David takes the other boys, and then we have a few hours before we pick them up again. And I see my team intensively every two weeks – once a month I come here and once a month people come to LA. When I'm here it's full on, we have so much to get through. I am a control freak. Nothing comes out of that studio that I have not designed and approved at every stage. I can't let go. I find it so strange when designers say they don't read reviews – after a presentation I sit with my team, waiting for the reviews to come in. I don't believe anyone who says they don't care what people say about them. Of course they bloody well do."

Three months later I arrive at the Savoy for another breakfast and before I am even inside the building I can hear the sound of a baby screaming. In the foyer a clean-cut young American woman in neat jeans and sneakers is tucking layers of double-faced cashmere into a pram, while a shaven-headed man with the distinctive posture of a keen weightlifter stands silently by. It is the Beckhams' nanny and driver-cum-security guard, preparing to take a cross, jet-lagged Harper out for a walk. Victoria is late down to breakfast today; her public relations director explains that Harper, having started out the very best behaved of babies, "has stopped sleeping". When Victoria appears she apologises for being late and for the (nonexistent) baby dribble on the Prada cardigan she is wearing over a tailored, calf-length navy and black dress from her own collection.

Since we last met at the British Fashion awards a month previously, when Beckham was presented with the Designer Brand award by Marc Jacobs, the Beckhams have decided against a move from LA to Paris. "I left LA to come back to the UK for Christmas, not knowing whether I was leaving for two weeks or 18 months, so that brought with it a certain amount of anxiety. Of course I've got people to help me, but in the end there's a lot that only I can do. Finding new schools for the children isn't something anyone else can do for me. Plus the fact that this season [between the September and February fashion weeks in New York] is such a short one. It got to the point, just before Christmas, when for the first time ever, I wasn't actually sure if I could cope. I was working in London and the day I finished work, I went to bed and woke up at 4 o'clock in the morning with a chest infection and throat infection. I very rarely get sick – I can't remember the last time before that that I had a cold or anything – but I guess I was really feeling the pressure."

When Beckham talks about her home life, she gives the impression that in their household her career and David's carry equal weight. It's cheering to hear a footballer's wife follow the statement, "Wherever he wanted to go, or needed to be for work, I would follow him" with the caveat, "And of course, he would do exactly the same for me." LA Galaxyhave the junior Beckhams to thank for David signing a new contract. "The kids are so happy in LA. Brooklyn especially has been moved around a lot, from Manchester to Spain to LA, and that's hard for a kid. David and I both love what we do, and from a career point of view Paris really appealed to both of us, but in the end the children's happiness comes first."

The Victoria collection has changed quite a bit since the last meeting, she says. "I've made it more me. Last season was tricky because I was pregnant so I didn't have my body, so now I've really perfected the fit. The bottom line is if it's not right for my wardrobe, then it's not right for the brand. I realise women come in different sizes, and I do want to reach a larger audience with this line. My sister, for instance – she won't wear the mainline but loves the Victoria dresses. But I have to remember what my customer likes about the brand – what my customer likes about me."

Beckham's personal style reinvention is well documented. The makeover she performed when she launched herself into the fashion world in 2008 was a masterstroke. Only two years after the Baden-Baden World Cup wardrobe of white hotpants and tight red England vests, she appeared in the Waldorf hotel to present her first collection in an Audrey Hepburn pixie cut and minimal make-up, wearing stud earrings and a simple dress. This very refined, polished, classic look became a new trademark, but "my personal style has changed a lot since then. I think the more confidence I gain, the more open I get to things I wouldn't have worn previously. When I started out in fashion, everything had to be very structured and tight and controlling, and now I'm getting to a point where I think – I could wear a great big parka, that could be quite fabulous. I haven't always got to show off my size, show off my shape. It's a turning point for me."

You've been a pop star, and now you're a fashion designer: which is more fun? "Definitely fashion. Isn't that obvious? I enjoy what I'm doing now so much more. God, definitely. Being in the Spice Girls was fantastic, but I was never going to be the best singer and it wasn't my passion. Getting my British Fashion award felt completely different from any other time I'd been on stage. It meant so much."

In the last month, Simon Fuller has moved Beckham's team into a bigger studio. "We've got more space, which is brilliant, although we've only been in there two weeks and it's a bloody tip already. I've got Harper's swinging chair in there, which she loves, but when she swings one way she bumps into a pile of fabric and the other way she's bumping the pattern cutting table. It's mayhem. We have fun, though. My team are brilliant, they really are. And you know what? Contrary to rumour, sometimes I can be quite a laugh." And with that the sunglasses go on, the smile goes off, and the real Victoria Beckham disappears into the Range Rover.

SOURCE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/10/victoria-beckham-fashion-exclusive

Mommy Bloggers Comedy. Satire, but how much truth is there in satire?

2012-02-15T16:22:00.000-08:00

On: Jamaican Nannies

On: Tibetan Nannies

On: Canadian Nannies

Is the key to romance outsourcing household chores?

2012-02-14T09:59:00.000-08:00

By Janice D'Arcy (Washington Post)

For Valentine’s Day, here’s a question: Is the key to marital romance outsourcing?

Two top economists, who happen to be a couple raising a daughter, think that paying others to do chores, including the bulk of childcare duties, may be an under-appreciated secret to stronger marriages.

Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers are both successful Philadelphia-based economists well known for their work, especially in the areas of family dynamics.

Faculty members at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and now visiting fellows at Princeton, both work long hours and would naturally need full-time childcare for their 2-year-old daughter, Matilda. But the couple pay for more than that.

They also pay for their house to be cleaned, groceries purchased and to be driven to work, besides paying a nanny to work eleven hours, five days a week.

It’s an expensive arrangement (the nanny alone is paid $50,000 a year) that flies in the face of conventional wisdom. Most working parents try to pay for the least amount of care they need.

These two have concluded that comprehensive outsourcing is actually the most economical decision for them. Not only does it free them up to devote more time to their professional work, but it also relieves the stress on the family and the marriage. “The emotional and psychic costs are much lower,” Stevenson told me.

Of course, this is an option for only certain parents with considerable incomes. But, Stevenson suggests, there are many families (she says perhaps those making more than $100,000) who might be miscalculating the costs and benefits of child-rearing duties. “Families tend to over-buy things and under-buy services given what psychologists have told us about how spending money impacts happiness.”

Even when they were students and before they had children, Stevenson and Wolfers, who were profiled this past weekend in the New York Times, decided to outsource as many chores as they could.

As graduate students they went into debt paying a house cleaner with a credit card. Their calculation was that their ability to focus on professional work would bring in more money, whether in real time or through the eventual benefits of professional advancement. It also, Stevenson said, provided the added benefit of avoiding time-consuming and energy-sapping fights over “who was doing what…When there are no chores at all, it changes the dynamic.”

Finger-pointing fights only get more frequent and more draining once children arrive. The answer for the economists, who have decided not to marry, was to increase their dependency on employees.

In the mornings, for instance, the nanny prepares their daughter’s breakfast, packs the diaper bag and is responsible for dressing Matilda for the day. That means Stevenson and Wolfers can spend their pre-commute time coloring and playing with Matilda.

The parents are on the hook for weekend childcare, but Stevenson said that since it’s a smaller portion of their time, the duties are considered by both parents to be more of a leisure activity than drudgery. “If someone is doing it 24/7, it is going to get much more frustrating.”

As for the costs, she said they look for low-cost activities and skimp on personal luxuries. She’s never, for instance, paid retail price for her clothes.

What about guilt? What about the desire to spend more, not less, time with your child?

Stevenson said the situation has allowed her to “maximize the quality time” with her daughter. “Yesterday, I was starting to unload the dishwasher when Matilda asked me to dance. I got a lot more joy out of dancing for 15 minutes with Matilda than I would have from a Starbucks cappuccino. And it cost me about a Starbucks drink to pay our assistant [to] spend 15 minutes cleaning up the kitchen.”

Stevenson is quick to point out that childcare cost-benefit analysis are highly personal and many families will come to different, valid conclusions. Still, she said, the public discussions on childcare and marital strength often miss this important part of the equation.

“What we fail to talk about is that the reducing of stress can help families stay together and it can help marriages be stronger.”

What do you think? Is more outsourcing the answer to better family unity? If it is a realistic financial option, is it a desirable one?

View the original source here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-parenting/post/is-the-key-to-romance-outsourcing-household-chores/2012/02/13/gIQAXOttBR_blog.html

Christine Quinn pitches child care plan

2012-02-13T09:04:00.000-08:00

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Some day care centers can cost as much as $2,500 per month in New York City.

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Published: February 09, 2012 8:44 p.m.

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For many New York parents, paying for child care can cost more than their rent — and sometimes even more than their salary.

In her State of the City speech Thursday, Council Speaker Christine Quinn acknowledged city parents need help, and outlined a new plan for middle-class families.

Low-income families are eligible for subsidized child care from the city, Quinn said. But for families earning between roughly $40,000 and $111,000 a year, who are ineligible for public subsidies, Quinn promised a new program, the first of its kind in the nation.

For those families, the city will pay for half of the cost of child care as a loan, and families would eventually pay it back over time. The speaker’s office estimates that families would have about four years to pay back a loan at about a 5 or 6 percent interest rate.

“Child care can be a daunting expense for new parents,” Quinn said. “There’s a group that’s been left out of the conversation altogether — middle-income families who can’t afford to pay for child care out of pocket, but make too much to qualify for subsidized programs.”

New York City would be the first in the U.S. to have such a program, she said.

Quinn estimated that child care averages $13,000 each year in New York. Betty Holcomb, police director at the Center for Children’s Initiatives, agreed.

“That’s more than college at a public university,” she said. “It’s often for families as much, or more, than what rent or mortgage is in the family budget. It’s a huge expense.”

But some parents say $13,000 is a low estimate. Carroll Gardens mom Courtney Cosentino, 32, found that a full-time nanny would cost about $2,600 per month, plus the nanny’s MetroCard and paying for the kids’ activities. When she crunched the numbers, she found the expense came out to more than $32,000 per year.

One day care center they visited wanted $2,500 per month, she said.

“The nanny was adding up to more than our rent,” she said. “It’s a really difficult situation.”

Cost of child care

The average family spends up to $16,250 each year for an infant, $11,648 for a toddler and $9,620 for a school-age child, according to Quinn’s office.

According to September 2011 estimates from the New York State Office of Children and Family Services, day care in New York City cost an average of $330 each week for children under 1 and a half years old.

For children aged 1 and a half to 2 years old, the weekly cost was $255; for children 3 to 5 years old, $217; and for children 6 to 12 years old, $210.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand estimates that child care in New York City is increasing $1,612 each year.

source: http://www.metro.us/newyork/local/article/1093731--christine-quinn-pitches-child-care-plan

Sunday Read: The Poor are Working but not getting any Richer

2012-02-12T08:30:00.000-08:00

Armira Varga moved to Canada from Colombia 23 years ago, built a life for herself and her kids and faced the challenges of job loss and having to start a new life. Moe Doiron / The Globe and Mail

Armira Vargas could be mistaken for a Canadian-dream poster child.

She moved to Toronto from Colombia in 1989, parlaying her work visa as a nanny into a job at a formal-wear shop. After years of sending money home, she could afford to bring her three children to join her.

She and her two sons got jobs at Progressive Moulded Products – well-paid, full-time gigs assembling plastic car parts. They earned benefits and paid into corporate pensions. They bought a house in Maple, north of Toronto.

PMP declared bankruptcy as the auto industry foundered; its liquidation auction, in the fall of 2008, was billed as the largest plastic injection moulding sale event in Canadian history.

With three breadwinners out of work, the Vargases sold the house and went their separate ways: The daughter is now living in a basement apartment with her own 12-year-old; one son landed an engineering job in Kitchener; the other is still seeking work.

Ms. Vargas juggled multiple jobs for as long as she could, working full-time at another manufacturing plant in the Toronto area while holding down a part-time gig at Wal-Mart. Then it was just Wal-Mart – sometimes as little as 12 or 16 hours a week, barely enough to cover the rent on her apartment on the city’s northern edge. Her English isn’t good enough to qualify for the provincial government’s Second Career program: 25 years working in trades means her office and computer skills aren’t up to snuff in a 21st-century workplace.

“I want to work. I want to earn money. I want to do something useful – a livelihood. This is no life.”

Ms. Vargas’s predicament is no anomaly. Across Canada, a job is no longer a ticket out of poverty, or a safeguard against it. And the number of people working but unable to make ends meet is growing in the country’s most populous urban hub – far faster than in Ontario or Canada as a whole. A study by Toronto researchers provided exclusively to The Globe and Mail provides a granular glimpse of working poverty at the census-tract level.

The Metcalf Foundation study, the first of its kind in Canada, documents the changing face of the Toronto area’s workforce.

And it isn’t pretty: Even during times of economic prosperity, from 2000 to 2005, the number of working people unable to make ends meet grew by 42 per cent in the Toronto area.

The exacerbation was especially pronounced in the city’s transit-starved east end. But rates grew fastest in the suburbs: Cities like Mississauga, Brampton, Markham and Vaughan are dealing with working poverty they’ve never faced before.

A deep recession and sluggish recovery haven’t helped.

“We’ve got a lot of people who are working very hard, and they’re still poor. So what’s up with that?” says Sandy Houston, Metcalf’s president.

“Maybe if we can better understand … we can start to better address the implications of that situation.”

More jobs, few good ones

The number of Torontonians working hard and hardly earning was growing even before a global financial crisis pummelled the province and brought the region’s manufacturing sector to its knees.

In theory, the economy is back on track. In neighbourhoods across the Toronto region, not so much.

It’s crunch time for employees. Public support for higher wages, benefits and unionized labour is low. Caterpillar’s London closure, and Toronto’s showdown with its outdoor public workers give a sense of the squeeze: There’s little leverage to be had in a take-it-or-leave-it bargaining situation.

Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey last month looked ugly compared to a year ago: Toronto’s unemployment rate edged up by just a third of a percentage point, and its labour force dropped by more than a quarter, indicating people are giving up the job search altogether. Both labour force numbers and unemployment are significantly better than at the recession’s nadir.

CONT'D HERE: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/globe-to/the-poor-in-toronto-theyre-working-but-not-getting-any-richer/article2334814/

ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Published Saturday, Feb. 11, 2012 6:00AM EST

What To Do When Your Nanny Quits?

2012-02-11T11:56:00.000-08:00

By GalTime.com, Published February 10, 2012

1 Join the discussion!

Let’s face it. There is one person in your life who you count on more than anyone-more than your mother and maybe even more than your husband or your best friend. This person is,of course, your NANNY. She has a tremendous amount of power in your life. Not only does she watch your precious children but she has the unique ability to set your life into a tailspin in a heartbeat. One day your kids love her; your life is on automatic pilot and the next day she tells you that she has been unhappy and she is leaving in two weeks. Anyone out there been in this situation? It’s a moment that can send you into a panic, a panic attack, a rage, or even a momentary meltdown.

Here’s what is most likely running through your mind:

1. My kids love her. How will I explain this to them?

2. How much time will it take me to find a replacement?

3. Oh S T; And after I bent over backwards to please her so much.

4. I thought things were going great. Where did I go wrong?

AND

5. What has she been saying about me to the other nannies? Am I a terrible boss.

Okay, let’s re-wind and re-consider how to think about this:

1. Your kids will love another nanny. You can explain to them that as attached as they get to their nannies they only stay in their lives for a temporary period of time. This is the nature of the beast. You, on the other hand, are a stable fixture in their lives. This may be hard to digest but it is the truth. As much as we try to make the nannies a part of the family they really are NOT.

2. You will find a replacement. And the replacement may even be better because she may be happier. It will take some time but the time invested will be worth it.

3. Yes, you may have bent over backwards to please her- but hey- she is spending many hours with your kids. And, what’s wrong with increasing our flexibility at our age? Think of it as practice for yoga.

4. Things may in fact have appeared peachy but maybe she wants to move on with her life. Maybe she misses her family, perhaps she wants to return to school, or she may even just have had her fill of children. That is no crime.

5. She may have said something disparaging about you to others but it is equally likely that she has not.

What to DO If and (More Likely) When You Find Yourself Abandoned By Your Nanny:

1. Resist your impulse to beg her to stay. Let her go. Nothing good will come of keeping an unhappy nanny in your home.

2. Ask her calmly if you did anything that upset her or if there was anything about your household that was frustrating for her. She may or may not give you answers but she just may give you some honest and beneficial feedback. This may help you with your job expectations with your next nanny.

3. Ask her to reassure your children that she has enjoyed being with them and then try to keep her in their lives somehow-perhaps with occasional letters, skyping, or even visits.

4. Try, at all costs, to facilitate the good-bye. You may even want to turn her departure into a small party so that your kids learn to say good-bye to people graciously and in a good-spirited manner. This is an important life lesson.

5.Keep in mind that YES life will be stressful as you transition to a new nanny but that dealing with transition and change teach all of us a valuable resiliency skill which is flexibility.

Good Luck and Yes, you will get through it. You are in good and plentiful company. We have all been there. This is an experience that most of us in the mother’s club have experienced. We thought it was the end of the world-literally-but we are all alive and well-and here to tell the story?

How have you handled nanny break-ups?

SOURCE: http://www.business2community.com/travel-leisure/what-to-do-when-your-nanny-quits-0131922

Friday Fluff: Beyonce's Baby Blue: The Truth Behind Celebrity Nannies

2012-02-10T09:44:00.000-08:00

Beyonce made an unexpected appearance Monday night to promote husband Jay-Z's Carnegie Hall concert, and it was the first glimpse we've caught of the new mom since she gave birth last month. But there was one accessory noticeably missing from Beyonce's hip: baby Blue Ivy.

While Beyonce was stage-side listening to Jay-Z spit "Glory" -- a song he wrote for his newborn baby girl -- there were likely actual lullabies ringing throughout the Carter home. Forget designer cribs or Swarovski-encrusted rattles; the real expense when it comes to celebrity offspring lies with the nanny.

This elite group of stroller-pushers who answer to the likes of Jennifer Lopez and Katie Holmes can rake in up to six figures annually. But while babysitting may be a twice-a-week gig for Lana Del Rey, a celebrity nanny's schedule is far more demanding

For one, these surrogate mother figures must be tight-lipped. If you don't want a "Nanny Diaries"-esque roman a clef surfacing, it may cost you. These rarely seen nannies are prized for their discretion. When was the last time you heard a celebrity mom referring to a team of help in a mommyhood anecdote?

But discretion doesn't come cheap. According to New York magazine, celebrity nannies run anywhere between $70K and $130K annually -- and that's not even including tutors and other additional expenses. Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin were reportedly willing to pay $98K for their 5-year-old son Moses to learn Latin and Greek, among other advanced subjects.

But not just any "I'm really good with kids" sitter will get the chance to look after Hollywood's sippy-cup set. According to Fox News, Paltrow has a laundry list of nanny requirements that would put Mary Poppins to shame. She and Martin were reportedly looking for a super-nanny who was fluent in four languages, adept at two musical instruments and was "sporty" to boot.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are reportedly willing to pay up to $150K a year to ensure that their six children are in the best hands. Their specifications: The nanny must speak the native language of the child they are tending to, have a college degree in education or child development, and be willing to travel at a moment's notice with the citizens-of-the-world family.

Like attempting to enroll a toddler at a New York City private pre-school, the nanny vetting process may happen long before the child is even born. But with Beyonce already back on the red carpet just one month after giving birth, we have a feeling that whoever the famous couple deems worthy of the role will be cashing in on quite a few billable hours.

SOURCE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/07/beyonces-first-appearance-post-baby-body-celebrity-nannies-nanny-jay-z_n_1259576.html

Scandal of Britain's lazy parents: How children are starting school in daipers and some can't even put on their coats

2012-02-08T18:52:00.000-08:00

Rising numbers of children are still in nappies when they start primary school. Staff say they are increasingly forced to disrupt classes to change pupils or clear up ‘accidents’ because parents believe toilet training is a school’s job. Teachers also report that children are generally less independent, needing help with putting on coats and changing for PE. Some claim parents are too busy to teach their children basic life skills.

Life skills: There has been a rise in the number of children starting school without being toilet trained, teachers have said. (File picture)

‘Parents do not spend the time training their children – they feel it is the school’s job,’ said one teacher.

Almost two-thirds of 850 primary school staff polled said they had seen an increase over the past five years in the number of pupils wetting or soiling themselves.The figure rose to 71 per cent among teachers working with three to five-year-olds, and some schools have been forced to put on parent workshops to help with toilet training. The findings do not refer to youngsters with special needs or health problems.

Just 36 per cent of staff surveyed said their schools required parents to ensure their children were toilet-trained by the time they started their education. With fewer nurses working in schools, the job of clearing up after accidents or changing pupils increasingly falls to teaching assistants, and occasionally teachers. One teacher said: ‘I currently have three incontinent children in my reception class. Sometimes an adult changes children up to nine times daily. This means the education of other children suffers.’Another teacher said: ‘Nappies have been designed to absorb large quantities of liquid. Children do not feel wet or notice any discomfort and this seems to delay their urge to be free of nappies.’

Another added: ‘There is less independence generally – more children need help putting on coats, changing for PE, etc.’

Technology: With nappies designed to absorb ever greater quantities of liquid, children seem to have less of an urge to use the toilet, one teacher said

The survey was carried out by Education and Resources for Improving Childhood Continence and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers.

ATL general secretary Dr Mary Bousted said: ‘Having to deal with increased numbers of pupils who have not yet been toilet-trained puts extra pressure on education staff when they already have enough pressure on them.’

█ More than a quarter of British children have problems at home that are damaging their behaviour and development, according to a study published today.Researchers from London’s Institute of Education found 28 per cent of youngsters face hardships such as parents with chaotic lifestyles or financial woes.

Is your charge ready for the potty?

2012-02-08T18:49:00.000-08:00

Children usually begin to show signs they are ready for potty training between the ages of 18 and 30 months. Boys tend to start later than girls. Most children achieve mastery before the age of 5.

Nevertheless, the initiation of potty training should be based on what your child can do, not your child’s age. Additionally, many experts recommend waiting until 30 months before starting to potty train even if a child begins to show readiness signs earlier.

Waiting until your child is physically, emotionally, and intellectually ready increases the likelihood that he/she will achieve success early on, while pushing your child before he/she is ready has the potential to result in resistance to training and unnecessary frustration for all parties involved.

10 Signs Your Toddler is Ready For Potty Training

1. Your child dislikes being in wet or soiled diapers.

2. Your child knows the difference between being wet or dry.

3. Your child tells you when they are urinating or about to have a bowel movement.

4. Your child expresses interest in using the toilet, in his/her bowel movements, in how others use the bathroom, and/or in wearing underpants.

5. Your child can pull his/her pants up and down.

6. Your child stays dry for at least 2 hours during the day and has dry diapers after naps.

7. Your child has bowel movements at regular, predictable times.

8. Your child has the muscle control to hold their urine or bowel movement to get to the toilet.

9. Your child can understand and follow simple directions.

10. Your child can get to the potty, sit on it, and get off the potty.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE:http://blogs.babble.com/toddler-times/2012/02/07/10-signs-your-toddler-is-ready-for-potty-training/?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=babbleeditors&utm_content=post

The US & Family Leave

2012-02-07T11:16:00.000-08:00

By Ruth, Kristin, Elisa, Ashley and the whole MomsRising team

While I’m at work writing to you, my husband is home taking care of our four-month-old daughter. After my three months of paid leave were up, he started his three months of paid family leave to stay home and care for our second baby like he did with our first.

I know, right? We’re both lucky to work for employers that provide paid family leave. So lucky that I feel torn between shouting from the rooftops my personal ode to paid leave and how it has benefitted our family, and keeping it to myself because so few families receive this vital support that it feels like I'm bragging.

At MomsRising we frequently hear from our members about the need for all families to have access to paid family leave. In fact paid family leave was one of the top issues MomsRising members wanted addressed in the State of the Union.

Join us in shouting from the rooftops that EVERYONE needs access to paid family leave when new children arrive! Congress needs to hear from you! Add your signature here:

http://action.momsrising.org/go/1528?akid=3103.1974999.IhQfSS&t=4

Having access to paid family leave shouldn’t have anything to do with luck. It’s good for moms, dads, and babies and, as a new study shows, paid family leave is a sweetheart deal for the economy and taxpayers too.

Paid family leave, good for the economy?

Yes! Paid family leave is a win-win. Recent research from the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers shows, controlling for other factors that affect leave-taking, among new parents who took paid family leave after the birth of a child:

Women who took paid leave are 39% less likely to receive public assistance [1]
Women who took paid leave were 40% less likely to receive food stamps in the year following their child’s birth when compared to those did not take any leave [2]
Women and men who took paid family leave were less likley to rely on public assistance after the birth of their child, compared to those who did not take any leave [3]
Women who took a paid leave were more likely to be working 9-12 months after a child’s birth than those who did not take any leave [4]
And women who took a paid leave report increases in wages within a year of their child's birth compared to those women who did not take any leave [5]

Study author Linda Houser notes: “While we have known for a long time about the maternal and infant health benefits of leave policies, we can now link paid family leave to greater labor force attachment and increased wages for women as well as to reduced spending by businesses in the form of employee replacement costs, and by governments in the form of public assistance.”

That is some sweet news! And good timing too, because for the first time in history, women comprise half of the paid labor force, three-quarters of moms are in the labor force and the majority of families need two working parents to make ends meet. This and the fact that over 80% of women in our nation have children by the time they are 44 add up – and you can see why this should be the priority issue for Congress that it is for our MomsRising members. It is long past time for our public policies to catch up to the modern realities of today's families.

*Sign our petition to Congress to support paid family leave policies for families! We’ll deliver your signatures to elected officials ASAP along with the message that paid family leave is a neccesity and we can’t afford to wait! http://action.momsrising.org/go/1528?akid=3103.1974999.IhQfSS&t=6

Why is paid family leave so important?

Paid family leave after the birth of a child helps give kids a healthy start in life and gives their families the economic security they need to stay out of poverty at a critical time. At the same time it can benefit businesses’ bottom line. This saves everyone--from parents to taxpayers to businesses--money in the long run.

Studies show that paid family leave after the birth of a child combats poverty, gives children a healthy start, lowers infant mortality by more than 20% [6] and helps lower the wage gap between women and men. [7]

Yet, in the United States, only 49% of mothers are able to cobble together paid leave by using sick days, vacation days, disability leave, and maternity leave. And 51% of new mothers lack any paid leave -- so some take unpaid leave, some quit, some even lose their jobs just when they need them the most. [8] No wonder having a baby is a leading cause of "poverty spells" in our nation!

In addition, a number of studies have shown that maternity leave has a positive impact on how long women breastfeed, which in turn affects the long-term health of mother and child. This is important because major medical authorities recommend that infants be breastfed exclusively for their first six months. Despite the government's Healthy People 2010 breastfeeding goals, only 13.6% of U.S. infants are breastfeeding exclusively and only 43% are breastfeeding at all at six months of age. [9] Recently the U.S. Surgeon General called paid family leave policies important for families and babies’ health – linking the ability of new moms to take paid leave to increased rates of breastfeeding. [10]

Paid leave benefits dads too: studies show that while not all dads have access to paid leave, fathers who are able to take paid leave to care for their children are more involved in their kids’ lives nine months after the children are born and are less likely to rely on public assistance. [11, 12]

Paid family leave isn’t just good for families – it also benefits employers. A 2011 study of the California Paid Leave program showed that most employers found that the Paid Family Leave had a positive effect on productivity, profitability/performance, turnover and employee morale. [13]

177 countries have some form of paid leave for new moms after the birth of a child. Sadly, the U.S. isn't one of them, setting up our families for failure. [14] We can do better.

*Join us in showing Congress that paid family leave is a necessity for ALL moms, dads, babies, tax-payers and the economy! Sign our petition calling on Congress to support paid family leave policies that make America’s families stronger! http://action.momsrising.org/go/1528?akid=3103.1974999.IhQfSS&t=8

And please forward this to at least three friends you think might like to take action too.

Together we’re a more powerful voice for women and families.

- Ruth, Kristin, Elisa, Ashley and the whole MomsRising team

P.S. MomsRising is working with our friends at the National Partnership for Women and Families and Working Mother Media to deliver this petition to Congress to encourage them to support paid leave for families.

P.P.S. Can you take a moment to share your experiences with family leave (or your experiences with a lack of family leave)? What did you--or your friends or family members--do when a new child arrived?http://action.momsrising.org/go/662?akid=3103.1974999.IhQfSS&t=10

[1-5] Linda Houser, PhD “Pay Matters: The Positive Economic Impacts of Paid Family Leave for Families, Businesses and the Public,” A Report for the Center for Women and Work, January 2012

[6] Sakiko Tanaka, “Parental Leave and Child Health Across OECD Countries,” Economic Journal 115, no. 501 (2005)

[7] Waldfogel, Jane “Understanding the 'Family Gap' in Pay for Women with Children," Journal of Economic Perspectives 12, no. 1 (1998), 137-156

[8] Bureau of Labor Statistics Press Release: Employment Characteristics of Families 2009, May 2010

[9] Centers for Disease Control, Breastfeeding Report Card—United States 2010

[10] Department of Health and Human Services Press Release, “Everyone Can Help Make Breastfeeding Easier, Surgeon General Says in “Call to Action””, Jan. 20, 2011

[11] Paternity Leave and Fathers’ Involvement With Their Young Children. Lenna Nepomnyaschy and Jane Waldfogel. Community, Work, and Family, 2007.

[12] Linda Houser, PhD “Pay Matters: The Positive Economic Impacts of Paid Family Leave for Families, Businesses and the Public,” A Report for the Center for Women and Work, January 2012

[13] Applebaum, Eileen and Ruth Milkman “Leaves that Pay: Employer and Worker Experiences with Paid Family Leave in California” January 2011

[14] www.RaisingtheGlobalFloor.org

Like what we're doing? Donate: We're a bootstrap, low overhead, mom run organization. Your donations make the work of MomsRising.org possible--and we deeply appreciate your support. Every little bit counts.

SOURCE: MomsRising.org

Proposal to establish rights for domestic workers splits lawmakers

2012-02-07T10:34:00.000-08:00

By Patrick McGreevy, Los Angeles Times

February 7, 2012

Reporting from Sacramento -- Maria Moctezuma's workday began at 6 a.m. and often ran until midnight when she was nanny, housekeeper and cook for a family of four in Rancho Cucamonga.

She hurried through her own meals in five minutes, she said, so she could get back to a long list of chores that included washing the family car, scrubbing the bathrooms, serving at late-night parties and caring for an infant and a toddler. Sometimes Moctezuma, 64, was lucky to get six hours sleep between shifts. She made $200 a week, below the minimum wage.

Stories like Moctezuma's are what drove Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) to propose legislation requiring that nannies, housekeepers and other domestic workers receive the same workplace rights — overtime pay, meal breaks, time off — that apply to other California laborers.

"Ask any parent, and they will tell you that domestic workers like nannies, caregivers and housekeepers do some of the hardest and most necessary work around," Ammiano said. They need to be treated "with dignity, respect and with the same basic protections that many of us already have."

But the idea of inserting workplace regulations into the privacy of the home is anathema to many.

"This is the type of legislation that drives everyday Californians crazy," said Sen. Doug La Malfa (R-Richvale). "Now parents have to worry about getting sued for not having a detailed wage statement, workers comp and having meal and rest breaks for your babysitter? The cost of date night just went way up."

Across the country, domestic workers have been pressing for rights more commonly associated with the factory floor. New York adopted overtime and time-off requirements in 2010, and activists are pushing for similar laws in at least four other states. In December, President Obama weighed in with a speech in which he proposed extending wage and overtime guarantees to some domestic workers who care for the disabled and elderly.

California, with its size and proliferation of cheap immigrant labor, is at the forefront of the debate over how much the government should protect household help. Ammiano's bill would extend overtime to as many as 200,000 nannies and other domestic workers. Opposition has come from staffing agencies up and down the state, including rural areas as well as big cities.

Some domestic workers are already entitled to overtime and meal breaks in California, but there is an exemption for "personal attendants," including those who care for children, the elderly or the disabled. Ammiano's bill would require anyone who hires an adult nanny or other personal attendant to pay time-and-a-half if the employee works more than eight hours in one day or more than 40 hours in one week.

Domestic workers on duty for 24 hours would have to be provided eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. A live-in domestic worker would not be required to work more than five days without a day off.

The measure would also guarantee such workers a half-hour meal break after five hours of labor and 10-minute rest breaks after four hours. Employers would have to maintain pay and time-off records and pay workers a fine of $50 a day for each day on which violations occurred.

Opponents of the proposal said that a second nanny or caregiver could be needed to cover meal and rest breaks taken by the primary worker and that many people who need domestic services cannot shoulder such costs.

Fred Nisen of Berkeley has cerebral palsy and already spends half his income paying an assistant to bathe and help dress him and to cook, clean, drive him to medical appointments and accompany him on business travel. Requiring that he pay overtime and provide fill-in help "would be more money than I can afford," Nisen said.

Ammiano's bill (AB 889), dubbed the Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, passed the Assembly last summer. It was held up in the Senate because legislative staffers estimated that it could cost the cash-strapped state at least $385,000 a year to investigate complaints that would inevitably roll in from domestic workers.

The Assemblyman said he is trying to find a way to reduce the cost. .....

CONT'D HERE: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-nannies-20120207,0,146984.story

Preteens and Cell Phones: My Change of Heart

2012-02-07T10:02:00.000-08:00

Claire McCarthy, M.D.

Pediatrician, Children's Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School

My daughter Natasha, 10 years old and in 4th grade at the time, wanted a cell phone bad. She'd been asking and asking and essentially being ignored, so she decided to put her argument in writing (with, I found out later, the support of my husband). She went through all the reasons she should have one (you can't tell from the picture, but it was on really big paper), figuring it would be irrefutable.

And, it turned out, the real reason she wanted one was that her friends had them. It wasn't about needing one, it was about wanting to be cool. She kept up the campaign for a long time. Finally, after several months, she gave up (I have to say, although it was a relief not to be fighting with her, part of me that felt sad that we'd squelched her feistiness.)

Then something happened: I started wishing Tash had a cell phone.

Mostly, it was the darn swim practice thing. Who knows, maybe it was on purpose, but she got more social with the girls on the team and sometimes (unpredictably, of course) took literally forever showering and getting dressed. Because we don't want her waiting outside on the street long, especially in winter, we err on the side of getting there early (leaving dinner on the stove or work undone) -- and sometimes wait for a frustratingly long time.

But it was more than that. Tash started venturing out into the world more -- going on bike rides alone, walking further to friends' houses, going with friends to the park. Although we have all sorts of rules about routes and contacting us, I couldn't help wishing there was a way for us to reach her -- or her us -- immediately if necessary.

I'm not alone in wanting my preteen kid to have a phone. According to a 2010 Mediamark Research Intelligence study, from 2005-2009 the percentage of 10-11-year-olds with a cell phone went from 20% to 36%, an 80% increase. Given the exponential nature of this rise, we are probably at around 50% now.

Cell phones are simply becoming part of life for our youth. In a 2009 Pew Internet survey, none of the 17-year-olds surveyed had cell phones when they were 11 -- but 16% of 14-year-olds and 20% of 13-year-olds did. I get that evolution. When my oldest two got their phones seven years ago at 13 and 12, I had no idea how it was going to affect our lives. Now I have a better idea. Yes, there are dangers and downsides. We've learned to manage most of those with safety and usage rules (no texting while walking on the street and phone off at bedtime, for example.) We talk about bullying and other ways phone usage can go bad.

But we've also found that there are real upsides. The convenience and safety stuff is huge, but the ability to connect is really wonderful too. The other day my son called mid-afternoon to say he'd just walked within 5 feet of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on his college campus (way cooler than any movie star as far as Zack is concerned). We send pictures or videos of what we are doing back and forth. We wish each other good luck. We are always within reach of each other -- and as a parent, I love that.

So as Natasha's 11th birthday approached, I talked to my husband. Turns out he'd been thinking the same thing. Here's the video (the hugs caused some technical difficulties):

Follow Claire McCarthy, M.D. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@drClaire

SOURCE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/claire-mccarthy-md/teens-cell-phones_b_1255912.html?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl12%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D133368

Before You Consider Using In-Home Surveillance

2012-02-05T21:28:00.000-08:00

More parents are considering using hidden in-home surveillance devices to watch their child's caregiver. Counter Spy Shops, an international retail chain, reports a 25 percent increase in sales of these devices--often called "nanny cams,"--over the past five years. But is it a good idea...or an invasion of privacy? Before you make this decision, consider the following:

Advantages of Using a Nanny Cam

There are a variety of cameras available on the market today. Most are wireless and can be hidden in almost any type of household item from a plant to a stuffed animal. And the prices vary too from about $100 for a basic camera offering remote computer access to more than $500 for digital systems, which can send video images live via computer or cell phone. Peace of mind and confidence in child care are reasons why some families opt to "spy" on their child's provider.

Disadvantages of Using a Nanny Cam

Studies and polls show that many care providers are not necessarily against video taping of child-provider interaction, it's just that they want to know about it. It seems to be a matter of trust and feeling of deception.

Nanny Cam May Leave Home Exposed

Other Uses For In-Home Surveillance

Spy cams can be used for many other reasons than just child care. The device can be used while your home is being cleaned, for occasional in-home sitter services, and for security reasons. However, spy shops indicate the leading reason continues to be to monitor care providers.

What Do Providers Think About Nanny Cams?

Do providers support the use of video cameras? While media stories have focused on potential abuse and inattention being reasons parents should consider using a nanny cam, some sitters have indicated a camera can provide a positive connection with the families while at work. The rub seems to be when care providers are secretly taped. Some parents handle the situation by telling a potential care provider upfront that a nanny cam will be used so that they can feel comfortable and confident about their child's care. It's then up to the provider to accept or decline the position with a family who uses a nanny cam.

Is It Legal To Use A Hidden Camera?

It is indeed legal in all 50 states to use a hidden camera. However, it is illegal to record speech without a person's consent in the following 15 states: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oregon, Pennyslvania, and Washington.

Are More Daycares Starting To Use Cameras?

More daycare centers are installing cameras and even provide parents with the ability to spot check and watch their child while at work. Some facilities provide parents with a realtime access to watch happenings in their child's classroom via the internet. Parents report that while they often don't use it all the time, it's nice to be able to log in and check on their child whenever they desire.

Where Can I Get A Nanny Cam?

General surveillance cameras are easily obtainable in most communities at electronic-type stores. However, higher-end models or ones that are disguised into stuffed animals, for example, are available at specialty-type stores or on the internet. Prices can vary greatly depending on your need and overall usage and expectation.

SOURCE:

http://childcare.about.com/cs/evaluations/bb/nannycam.htm?r=et

Parents: Would you quit your job to save on childcare?

2012-02-04T10:06:00.000-08:00

Amy Levin-Epstein

(MoneyWatch)

Quit your job...to save money? While this may sound counterintuitive, it's exactly the decision some parents make to deal with skyrocketing childcare costs. According to research from the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies (NACCRRA), putting a 4-year-old in full-time daycare for a year in Mississippi costs $4,650. Sounds expensive, but relatively doable? If you happen to live in Washington, D.C., the cost soars to $18,200. Even more stunning, the figures for infant daycare are higher than annual public college tuition in 36 states. With job growth on the upswing and more people going back to work, new employment may mean some tough decisions for parents. In some cases, childcare costs combined with commuting and other expenses may push households to downsize from two incomes to one.

For former Fulbright scholar Jacqueline Edelberg, her choice was made clear when she realized her nanny's income would exceed her own. "As a starting-out adjunct professor, I'd make $45,000 a year; as an instructor, considerably less, and no benefits. Either way, my nanny would out-earn me," says Edelberg, who wrote How To Walk To School: A Blueprint For A Neighborhood School Renaissance. And even if childcare costs are relatively reasonable, tax laws may be another factor to consider when deciding whether to outsource childcare.

When Kristin Maschka was laid off from her part-time job at an internet start-up around the time her daughter (now 11) was born, she and her husband ran the numbers and were surprised by what they saw. "We looked at my income and the cost of childcare, and also noted that my job would put us in a higher tax bracket. The cost of childcare was not the issue, the issue was a tax policy from post WWII -- joint filing -- that was designed to push women out of the workforce," says Maschka, author of This is Not How I Thought It Would Be: Remodeling Motherhood to Get the Lives We Want Today. Today, she urges fellow parents to look at longer-term financial considerations -- including future earning potential and retirement savings -- when making the choice to have a parent provide childcare or to hire outside help.

CONT'D HERE: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505125_162-57371076/parents-would-you-quit-your-job-to-save-on-childcare/

Pure, white and deadly: No, not cocaine but sugar

2012-02-04T07:34:00.000-08:00

By DR ROBERT LEFEVER

Last updated at 5:03 PM on 3rd February 2012

Cocaine is pure, white and deadly but so is sugar.

Scientists at the University of California have not said that sugar should be illegal, but they are saying its sale should be regulated. Some hope!

The scientists point out that obesity is now a bigger problem in the world than malnourishment. I don't believe that.

The populations of China, India, Africa and South America may know more about malnutrition than people living in California, but they may not have the scientists to study it or doctors to treat it. The developed world does not appear to know how the other half lives.

The American scientists say that sugar is a poison and that its sale should be as tightly regulated as nicotine and alcohol. Such hyperbole is not persuasive. They get publicity for going over the top but I doubt that they will have influence where it matters - in the shops and at the table.

That being said, they did draw attention to the fact that sugar not only makes people fat, but also changes the body's metabolism, raises blood pressure, throws hormones off balance and harms the liver. Its effects are similar to those of alcohol, which is itself made from sugar.

They claim that sugar kills 35million people in the world each year. Many will have died from diabetes or from heart attacks and strokes.

I certainly believe that sugar and alcohol are major contributors to these clinical conditions. However, it does not follow that the law should be involved in protecting people from themselves.

Nobody has been prosecuted - so far - for being fat in charge of a motor vehicle. But maybe that is on the agenda for the health fascists and nanny statisticians.

Research: The American scientists say that sugar is a poison and that its sale should be as tightly regulated as nicotine and alcohol

I myself have not eaten sugar or white flour for 27 years. I am addicted to them. They make me crave for more. I don't want death by chocolate.

Alcohol has the same effect on me as sugar so I don't drink it. I don't smoke because I can't stop when I start. Unlike Demi Moore, I don't drink caffeine in Red Bull or anything else.

The end result is that I am fit and healthy and I experience the full range of my feelings, rather than push them down with mood-altering substances. I enjoy my life enormously but I am not enormous.

The law should be involved when people are incapable of making rational judgements for themselves and when their behaviour is a risk to others.

We need to be able to identify those of us who have an addictive nature. Sometimes the law helps in identifying those people. This is why I support the decriminalisation but not the legalisation of drugs.

But to bring in the law to control the sale of sugar would make the law 'a ass, a idiot'.

SOURCE: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2096088/Pure-white-deadly-No-cocaine-sugar.html#ixzz1lQaPozMS

Friday fluff: Gwyneth Paltrow Enters the Mommy Wars: ‘Compromise…To Be a Wife’

2012-02-03T06:47:00.000-08:00

By Alice Gomstyn
@AliceGomstyn

Gwyneth Paltrow has stepped out of a magazine’s pages and into the mommy wars.

In a new interview with Harper’s Bazaar, the movie star and mother of two, revealed that she advised a girlfriend — an unnamed fellow actress — that she needs “to compromise…to be a wife.” She also talks about being home when her husband returns from work as a way to maintain her marriage and family.

Her words are rubbing a number of moms the wrong way, with some accusing Paltrow of being judgmental and out of touch.

“This is going to make a lot of people feel, at best, inadequate and, at worst, angry (because) the average person really has no chance to live the lifestyle that Gwyneth has,” said Carol Evans, the president of Working Mother Media, which publishes Working Mother magazine.

Paltrow is married to Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin. The friend she gave advice to, she said, also has a signficant other with a “big career.”

“I said this may not be feminist, but you have to compromise. It’s been all about you and you’re a big deal. And if you want what you’re saying you want — a family — you have to be a wife, and that is part of the equation,” the actress said.

Paltrow has a nanny, runs her lifestyle website Goop, pursues other projects — including a new cookbook — and travels for work. But said she’s the one usually cooking her family’s dinner and giving her kids a bath.

“I have little kids in school. I want to maintain my marriage and my family, so I have to be here when (Martin) comes home,” she said.

Paltrow clearly knew that her comments could come off as controversial.

“Gloria Steinem may string me up by my toes, but all I can do is my best, and I can do only what works for me and my family,” she said.

Paltrow’s comments have already irked some in the momosphere who argue that the actress’ out-sized wealth affords her family time that others could only dream of having.

“(W)hen you talk about having a nanny AND a driver AND a chef, it’s pretty easy to talk about putting family first, isn’t it?” wrote blogger Tracey Gaughran-Perez at Babble Voices. (Babble is owned by Disney, which is also the parent company of ABC News.)

Gaughran-Perez also questioned why Paltrow didn’t speak to the importance of having husbands make compromises too.

Blogger Kelcey Kinter of The Mama Bird Diaries agrees.

“I think some of her statements might feel a little judgmental to me,” she told ABC News. “I don’t think it’s the woman’s responsibility to be home for her husband, don’t think it’s man’s responsibility to be home for his wife. I think it’s everyone’s responsibility to spend as much time together as possible and I think it takes work to make that happen.”

Some suggest Paltrow is a hypocrite.

“For Paltrow to suggest that married women must never leave the hearth in order to make their relationships last is patently false, a fact that she herself has proven with her jet-setting lifestyle. Paltrow may see herself as a homemaker and wife, but truth be told she’s as business-driven and busy as any of the world’s most powerful women,” wrote Babble and Stroller Derby blogger Carolyn Castiglia.

Part of what’s driving moms’ frustrations, said Working Mother’s Evans, is that, in addition to her wealth, Paltrow has achieved the holy grail of working motherhood: part-time professional work that she can leave and come back to again.

A recent study found that mothers who work part-time are happier than full-time working moms and stay-at-home moms.

“Gwyneth is making choices for her life and it’s not really relevant to most moms,” Evans said. “Part-time professional work is remarkably hard to find.”

“We all make compromises in our lives and the more resources you have, the less compromising you have to do,” she said.

Not everyone disagrees with Paltrow, however.

Melissa Chapman, a blogger for Lifetime Moms andMarriedMySugarDaddy.com, said it’s tough for both parents to have high-powered careers and it’s better for mothers and fathers to take turns super-charging their work-lives. Chapman, a suburban New York mom with two children, said she’s now her family’s primary breadwinner, but earlier in her marriage, supporting the family was her husband’s role.

“I don’t think you can both be the alpha at the top of your game and not have your marriage suffer,” she said. “There’s got to be one primary parent there who knows my job is to handle the homestead and be the rock for my spouse.”

“Right now, (Paltrow’s) going to be the good wife and good mom and (Martin’s) going to have his time in the limelight,” Chapman said. “Maybe in a couple of years, the roles will reverse.”

SOURCE:http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/lifestyle/2012/02/gwyneth-paltrow-enters-the-mommy-wars-compromise-to-be-a-wife/

Author finds race, class in nanny roles

2012-02-02T18:40:00.000-08:00

SUBURBAN DIARY

By Francie Latour

Globe Correspondent / February 2, 2012

(photo not included in the original article)

In the mid-1990s and early 2000s, Cameron MacDonald spent a lot of time combing the playgrounds of neighborhoods from Brookline to Weston to Sudbury. A sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin, MacDonald was looking for nannies, and the typically high-earning mothers for whom they worked. Not surprisingly, she found them in droves.

But she also found them in almost every conceivable cultural combination - white CEOs with undocumented immigrants, black doctors with white au pairs from the Midwest, Latina professionals with nannies carefully selected from only certain Spanish-speaking countries, to make sure their children didn’t pick up an undesirable Spanish accent.

Ultimately, MacDonald interviewed 30 working mothers and 50 nannies in the course of her research. Her new book, “Shadow Mothers,’’ offers surprising and layered insights into a modern phenomenon played out every day from coast to coast: guilty mothers who are deeply conflicted about such an intimate outsourcing of child care, and nannies caught in the double bind of their unwritten job description - to be an extension of a working mother on demand, and a shadow mother who can appear and then instantly disappear.

A complicated picture

MacDonald said she chose Boston and its suburbs because the vast majority of previous research on nannies had focused on New York and Los Angeles, and almost exclusively on Caribbean and Latina nannies. In the suburban Boston version of the mommy-nanny drama, she said, race, ethnicity, and class matter in very unexpected ways.

“What I saw from my work in Boston was a much more mixed and complicated picture of who was doing nanny work, and what factors were driving mothers to choose which nannies,’’ she said in an interview.

That complicated picture, MacDonald found, is driven in part by enormous pressures that mothers feel to focus on and cater to every developmental stage of infancy and toddlerhood - and to hire nannies based on a series of racialized traits they believe best suit each stage. Again and again, MacDonald said, she observed mothers engaging in what she calls “ethnic logics’’ - a series of stereotypical skill sets the moms believed suited their children during one, and only one, particular phase of development.

In one example, MacDonald interviewed a 36-year-old mother named Naomi who described the reasoning behind her decision to hire Yvonne, her Jamaican nanny. (To protect the privacy of mothers and nannies, MacDonald did not use their last names, or identify the towns where the families lived.) Naomi, a physician, said Yvonne’s automatic ease with her infant could only be explained by what Naomi described bluntly as “Jamaican voodoo,’’ an instinct that she believed all Caribbean women must have with babies.

“I think I knew pretty soon after she came that she was the right person for us, because she seemed so comfortable with the baby,’’ Naomi said of Yvonne. “She just picked her right up, bounced her, and the kid was asleep.’’

A nanny herself at 16

You might think MacDonald is just another academic staking out her own ground in the endlessly hyped mommy wars. But you’d be wrong. For one thing, MacDonald worked as a full-time live-in nanny, minding three children under age 5 for a couple at a lake house in Maine when she was 16.

It was all going blissfully well, as she tells it - bonding with the children in the wild, cooking meals with her boss over a wood stove - until the day that baby Lily stumbled and fell. When Lily’s mother could not console her, and she had to hand the child over to the young nanny, everything changed.

CONT'D HERE:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2012/02/02/book_examines_nannies_and_the_mothers_who_hired_them_in_suburbs_west_of_boston/?page=full

Copyright material: http://www.boston.com/

WHY "CHOICE" MATTERS TO ALL WOMEN

2012-02-02T08:21:00.000-08:00

By Nanny X

Rarely I venture onto this platform to rattle a social issue, however today I am profoundly disturbed by the decision of the SUSAN G KOMEN foundation to cease funds for PLANNED PARENTHOOD. Here's why the decision is wrong on so many levels.

1) It is based upon a religious - not a political - perspective of two individuals on SGK's board.

2) The decision to stop funds will effect so many women especially our most vulnerable and economically challenged sisters.

3) PLANNED PARENTHOOD has around 97% of its services aimed at maintaining womens' health.

4) Regardless of how we may feel individually about abortion it is never our right to deny others reproductive choice.

Here's the breakdown:

What Planned Parenthood actually does

Posted by Ezra Klein at 01:31 PM ET, 04/08/2011

(Planned Parenthood)

With Planned Parenthood being either the major obstacle to a budget deal or one of the major obstacles to a budget deal, it’s worth taking a minute explaining what they do — and what they don’t do.

As you can see in the chart atop this post, abortion services account for about 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s activities. That’s less than cancer screening and prevention (16 percent), STD testing for both men and women (35 percent), and contraception (also 35 percent). About 80 percent of Planned Parenthood’s users are over age 20, and 75 percent have incomes below 150 percent of the poverty line. Planned Parenthood itself estimates it prevents more than 620,000 unintended pregnancies each year, and 220,000 abortions. It’s also worth noting that federal law already forbids Planned Parenthood from using the funds it receives from the government for abortions.

So though the fight over Planned Parenthood might be about abortion, Planned Parenthood itself isn’t about abortion. It’s primarily about contraception and reproductive health. And if Planned Parenthood loses funding, what will mainly happen is that cancer screenings and contraception and STD testing will become less available to poorer people. Folks with more money, of course, have many other ways to receive all these services, and tend to get them elsewhere already.

The fight also isn’t about cutting spending. The services Planned Parenthood provides save the federal government a lot of money. It’s somewhat cold to put it in these terms, but taxpayers end up bearing a lot of the expense for unintended pregnancies among people without the means to care for their children. The same goes for preventable cancers and sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV/AIDS. You can find a lot more information about Planned Parenthood and its services here.

Join me in adding my voice to this debate. Sign the petition here: http://pol.moveon.org/komen/?r_by=-7795020-TFcL8ix&rc=komen.confemail.g1

SOURCE: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/what-planned-parenthood-actually-does/2011/04/06/AFhBPa2C_blog.html