For years, I've been selling all of my own ads on this blog. That means that every single ad that shows up was approved by me before it shows on the site. I do this to avoid having, for example, formula ads showing up next to breastfeeding articles or having ads from companies that I do not support next to my carefully crafted message. This is a labour intensive process, but is a way to ensure that the companies I am working with are ones that I support.

There are also a great many advertising networks out there that automatically feed ads to bloggers. In the past, I've looked at and then rejected many of those ad networks because they didn't pay enough for the space they were taking up, they didn't allow me to block companies or categories that I wasn't comfortable with, or they demanded exclusivity on the "above the fold" area of my blog.

Recently, I was approached by an ad network that will allow me to block entire categories, specific companies, and specific ads. It will also let me place the ads wherever I want on the page, so I can continue to sell my own ads and provide the companies that I work with the best space. This seems like a good fit, and while my ad spaces were fully booked with a waiting list too a few months ago,  interest seems to have slowed this spring. So, I've decided to give this ad network a try on a trial basis to see if it is a fit for my blog.

That said, one of the issues with ad networks is that I don't get to see all the ads that are on the site, since they change quickly and are often geo-targeted (e.g. people in the United States will see a different ad than people in Canada).  I've sent the company a list of categories and brands to block and I'm now testing things out.

The new ad appears on the left-side, under my "No Nestle" graphic and above my "recommended books" section. So far, I've seen some ads that I was happy with (one was for Shopify, which is an amazing Canadian company offering a great ecommerce store service). I've also seen some ads I wasn't happy with and that I added to my "blocked" list (e.g. scams offering to get you thousands of dollars of government grants).

I'm going to give it some time and see if a bit of tinkering gets it to a place where I'm happy with the type of ads that are showing and the revenue that it is bringing in. If that doesn't work, I'll get rid of it and continue with the approach of exclusively selling my own ads.

As I evaluate and tinker, I'd love your help. Would you drop me a comment and let me know what ad you are seeing in that space (again, it is below the "No Nestle" graphic and above the recommended books)? That will help me get a better picture of what ads are showing up, even if they don't show to me.

Thank you for your help and your patience as I fiddle with this.

Today is Mother's Day and my partner and daughter arrived back from a two week visit with my in-laws just before dinner, so for most of the day it was just seven-year old Julian and I.

This morning, I was woken up to the sound of cutlery, dishes, and the fridge opening and closing shortly after 6:00am. About ten minutes later, Julian appeared in my room with my Mother's Day breakfast in bed. It was a German bun ("pretzel bread") that he cut in half and shaped like hearts with raspberry jam on it and a glass of juice. He then left and reappeared with four Mother's Day cards he'd made for me, two in English, one in French and one in German.

After I got out of bed, had coffee, and showered, we headed out to the Ottawa Farmer's market and spent a small fortune on amazing local foods (our garden is coming along, but not producing much yet). We had then planned to take a trunk full of wine and beer bottles back to the Beer Store, but didn't realize that it only opened at noon.

With more than an hour to spare, we decided to grab some brunch at a diner near the Beer Store. While we were waiting for our food to arrive, I learned the downside of teaching your children the proper names for genitalia and teaching them about menstruation. Checking out the dessert menu on the wall, he thought it was absolutely hilarious to loudly say "Red Vulva Cake?!?" over and over again. I now understand the wisdom of waiting to have "The Talk" until after children have passed the "bodily functions are so funny stage".

After brunch, we were walking back to the Beer Store, which is next to a Loblaws (a large supermarket chain, for those of you who aren't from here). Julian turned to me and said "do they make the laws at Loblaws?". I said, "no, actually, the make the laws in Parliament." Without missing a beat, he said, "oh, I thought they made the laws in China. They make everything in China."

And then my funny little man helped me with the gardening and the laundry while we waited for the others to arrive home to big cuddles.

Happy Mothers Day everyone. I hope your day was as great as mine. Have a piece of Red Vulva Cake and celebrate yourself.

Image credit: rox sm on flickr

Today was an interesting day.

All day yesterday, I was swamped with work. I had a major deadline today and every time I thought I was close to being finished, additional ideas would pop into my head and I felt compelled to pursue them. Ideas, and the rabbit holes that come with them, had me up until midnight working last night.

This morning, I had to finish up that report and send it off and then I had a commitment to my son to spend some time with him working in our garden.

I was teetering on the tightrope known as work-life balance and barely hanging on, when TIME magazine dropped a bomb.

Their magazine cover features blogger and mother Jamie Lynne Grumet breastfeeding her three year old son, along with the headline:

ARE YOU MOM ENOUGH?

Why attachment parenting drives some mothers to extremes – and how Dr. Bill Sears became their guru.

My head hit the desk. Not because of the picture, but because of the headline.

Mom enough?

Driving mothers to extremes?

Dr. Sears as my guru?

Could it get any worse than that? I'd better go read some Elisabeth Badinter to calm myself down, I thought. But no, I had deadlines and commitments, so I plugged away and eventually fell into bed at around midnight. This morning, I woke up to a request to be on live television on one of Canada's major networks at 11:00am. As the day went on, I got more requests for radio shows, for guest blog posts, for quotes for magazines and newspapers, and even an invitation to be on a reality television show about "alternative parenting practices".

I said no.

I said no over and over again, both because I had other commitments and because I'm sick of making what I think is a valuable contribution and then having an "extreme parenting" label slapped onto it (the only one who got a quote from me was Andrea Gordon from the Toronto Star because she caught me when I had 5 minutes to spare as I downloaded a file). I doubt Jamie Lynne Grumet knew she was going to be positioned as the poster child for a parenting movement that is "driving mothers to extremes" or that she'd be held up as "mom enough", while the rest of the world is obviously not.

In any case, beyond this rant here, I did agree to share my thoughts on the issue over at Care2, where I get to write what I want and choose my own headlines. Novel concept, eh? If you would like to read it, here is a link:

Are you MOM ENOUGH? Yes, you probably are.

What are your thoughts?

One of the first posts that I wrote on this blog was called Attachment parenting has not caught on in France. We were in France at the time, visiting my in-laws, one of many trips that we made there both before and after having children. It seems while I was busy observing, commenting on (and perhaps judging) French parenting choices, French feminist Elisabeth Badinter was observing, commenting on and judging our chosen parenting style. Funny how that works.

In her book, The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women, Badinter sets up a conflict between mothering and feminism; one that I don't think exists as I pointed out in my post last week called Badinter's "The Conflict": Oppression of Mothers Through the Lens of France's Hegemonic Masculinity. So when the New York Times contacted me and asked me if I wanted to comment on the issue, I agreed immediately.

The question the New York Times asked me to answer, in around 300 words, was:

Is Badinter right? Has women’s obsession with being the perfect mother destroyed feminism? In particular, has this trend of “attachment parenting” been bad for working moms?

The New York Times collected responses from a number of different voices (albeit with many perspectives underrepresented or missing), including Mayim Bialik, Erica Jong, and Pamela Druckerman in a piece entitled Motherhood vs. Feminism, which they published in their Room for Debate.

The Aftermath

Motherhood vs. Feminism

Yes, really. They did call it that. And the collective feminist blogger and mom blogger community groaned over the title. On this side of the Big Pond anyway, this discussion is tired, old, and has been hashed out so many times in so many different ways in the horrible stay-at-home mom versus work-out-of-home mom clashes. On Salon.com, Mary Elizabeth Williams wrote about The NYT's ridiculous mothering debate. On The Mamafesto, Avital Nathman wrote Motherhood vs. Feminism (Round 326?). On PunditMom, Joanne Bamberger wrote "The Conflict" – There Isn't Any for Most Moms. On twitter, Jessica Winter from Time said:

"Motherhood vs. Feminism" is an NYT debate. Next up: "Fatherhood vs. Sports," "Childhood vs. School," "Coats vs. Shoes" and "Cats vs. Dogs."

— Jessica Winter (@winterjessica) May 1, 2012

Of course they are all right.

I didn't like the way that Badinter's book positions feminism and "intensive" mothering in opposition to each other. I don't think we need an "or" or a "vs" in this conversation. I don't think it helps women. I don't think it helps children. And, depending on your perspective, it either lets men off the hook or it unfairly assumes they are incapable or uninterested in contributing anything more than sperm and possibly a paycheque. But despite all of that, I felt compelled to contribute my voice to the discussion (a discussion I knew would happen with or without my perspective).

Fathers: The Missing Link

While I didn't like Badinter's message and I didn't like the New York Times question, I do understand that their question stemmed from her ridiculous hypothesis and wasn't just something an editor dreamed up to fuel the 'mommy wars'.  Despite not liking it, I did feel it was important to point out the fact that fathers are a significant missing link in this discussion. If we do not talk more openly and frequently about the role that fathers can, should, and often want to play in parenting, then we will not see the societal shifts that are needed to migrate away from the conflict that women feel between their careers and their families.

My piece on the New York Times, which they entitled "It's About Parenting, Not 'Mothering'", talks about the need to push for a society that values fathers who strike a balance between their career and their family life too. Sure, attachment parenting (or any type of parenting) can feel oppressive if you are doing it all alone. But if women have a partner and a community around them that supports them, then it shouldn't be unrealistic to have both parenting goals and career goals.

Less Debate, More Models

I think it is time for us to put the debate among and about women aside. Instead, I think we need to look beyond individual mothers and find couples, families, and communities that have found a way to balance professional and personal goals with parenting. That can take on many forms, including:

• equally shared parenting
• cooperative day cares
• extended families
• trading off with other families
• parenting in the workplace
• maternity and parental leave
• flexible workforces
• co-op housing

There are so many options beyond the traditional model of one parent working and the other parenting staying home vs. both parents working and the child being in a traditional day care.  And then of course there are many other single parent (mostly single mother) families, where those options don't even come into play.

We need to be more creative. We need to look at models that work and share those ideas. We need to understand that each model may work for some family out there, even if it doesn't work for our own for some reason. Most of all, we need to be recognize that this is not a battle between feminism and motherhood, nor is it a battle between feminists and mothers. As a feminist mother, I don't want to be forced into a false dichotomy, I want to push for societal changes that will forever erase the pretend division.

Last week, the English version of French feminist Elisabeth Badinter's book The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women was released. The Internet has been abuzz with discussion of her book. While the book raises many issues that could be explored, I want to examine her assertion that it is no longer men who are oppressing women, it is modern motherhood.

A Conflict Between Woman and Mother

In The Conflict, Badinter talks about the potential conflict between motherhood and a woman's quest for personal fulfillment. She notes:

Now that motherhood is no longer the only source of affirmation for a woman, the desire to have children might conflict with other desires. A woman with an interesting job who hopes to build a career – although such women are a minority – cannot fail to consider such questions as whether a child would harm her professionally. How would she manage to combine a demanding job with raising a child? What effect would that undertaking have on her relationship with her partner? How would she need to reorganize her home life? Will she still be able to enjoy her advantages and, more important, how much of her freedom would she have to relinquish?

The basis of the book is that despite advances in opportunities for women, motherhood and the ever-increasing expectations that come with it, are undermining the status of women. As a feminist, attachment parenting style mother and career-oriented white collar professional, I don't deny the importance of the questions raised in this quote, but I do take issue with the way she exclusively assigns them to women.

Not the Baby, Still the Men

In The Conflict, Chapter Four is called 'The Baby's Dominion'. Badinter concisely sums up her argument in the first two paragraphs [emphasis mine]:

The irony of this history is that it was precisely at the point that Western women finally rid themselves of patriarchy that they acquired a new master in the home. Women had achieved financial independence as well as control over whether they had children or not: they had no reason, it seemed, to continue to confront men's power.

Yet, thirty years later, there is no denying that male domination persists. Men's general resistance to the model of equality is indisputable, but this alone does not explain women's situation today. Their increased responsibility for babies and young children has proved just as restrictive, if not more so, than sexism in the home or in the workplace. A woman might be able to turn her back on her boss or her husband, but she can hardly walk away from her baby. The tyranny of maternal duty is not new, but it has become considerably more pronounced with the rise of naturalism, and it has thus far produced neither a matriarchy nor sexual equality, but rather a regression in women's status. We have agreed to this regression in the home in the name of moral superiority, the love we bear for our children, and some ideal notion of child rearing, all of which are proving far more effective than external constraints.  As everyone knows, there is nothing quite like voluntary servitude. And men have not had to lift a finger to accomplish this fall. The best allies of men's dominance have been, quite unwittingly, innocent infants.

I could probably footnote and deconstruct each sentence in that passage, but I want to focus on her assertion that for once it isn't the men who are oppressing women, because she's wrong. It is still the men who are oppressing women. Parenting is not something solely in the mother's domain. Sure, there are things that are more easily and more naturally taken on by the woman (pregnancy, giving birth, breastfeeding). But with the amount of work that goes into raising a child, certainly there are equivalently hard or selfless tasks that a father can take on?

Did Badinter Give Up on the Revolution in Fatherhood?

In Badinter's other book, XY: On Masculine Identity, that she wrote two decades ago, she writes about the "conditions of the revolution in fatherhood":

The revolution in fatherhood, barely perceptible today, ought to cause great upheavels for generations to come and most notably lead to a new masculinity, more diversified and subtler. But it presupposes more democratic relations between members of a couple than those that we know today and is dependent on more than the good will of individuals.

She then talks about two models of equally shared parenting, one where parents split all tasks equally and one where the work, overall, is split equally with each parent tending to different tasks. Like me, Badinter prefers the latter model:

There is an economical use of time, access to the child by both its parents, and greater parental solidarity than in the traditional mode, thus strengthening the couple without threatening it. What is more, the children seem more secure and less anxious [than in the case where they don't know which parent is responsible for what].

Finally, she goes on to talk about the need to change what we perceive as masculine virtues:

It is time to tell our sons that Terminator, far from being a superman, is a miserable parody. Even more important, it is also high time to sing the praises of masculine virtues that are not acquired either passively or easily but that find expression in effort and struggle. These virtues are self-control, the desire to surpass oneself, a love of risk and challenge, and resistance to oppression, among others. They are the conditions for creation, but also for dignity. They belong to every human being in the same way as the feminine virtues.

But somewhere in the time between writing XY: On Masculine Identity and The Conflict, Badinter seems to have given up on men and the possibility of a revolution in fatherhood.

L'Homme

Badinter ends The Conflict with a chapter specifically on the situation in France, where breastfeeding rates are significantly lower than in other countries, where women go back to work quickly, and where fathers don't contribute much.

There is no moral or social pressure bearing on a woman to be a full-time mother, not even in the first year after birth. French society acknowledged a long time ago that the mother need not be the only party responsible for her child.

Although they are constantly admonished to take on their fair share of parental and householder chores, French fathers continue to contribute very little in this area. But in their place, the state shares responsibility for the baby's well-being and upbringing. And because the state's duty toward the mother and the child is universally accepted, that public opinion tends to be far more scathing about the state's shortcomings than about any failure on the part of the mother, or especially, the father.

So, writing from the perspective of French society (and in particular, a class of French society that would have had all the help necessary in raising children and completing household chores), Badinter sees trends towards more involved parenting as necessarily oppressing women. Rather than seeing greater involvement of men as the solution (or the lack thereof as the problem), she seemingly brushes that aside and advocates for women to be just as uninvolved with their children as most French fathers are.

Let's take another look at that paragraph from The Conflict that I quoted at the start. What if we replaced "woman" with "man", "she" with "he", and adjusted a few other key elements to ensure accuracy, while still posing the same questions?

Now that a career is no longer the only source of affirmation for a man, the desire to have children might conflict with other desires. A man with an interesting job who hopes to build a career – especially because such men are in the majority – cannot fail to consider such questions as whether a child would harm him professionally. How would he manage to combine a demanding job with raising a child? What effect would that undertaking have on his relationship with his partner? How would he need to reorganize his home life? Will he still be able to enjoy his advantages and, more important, how much of his freedom would he have to relinquish?

Do those questions sound ridiculous now that the roles are reversed? They probably do, because our society does assume that women will be the ones who sacrifice the most when children enter the picture. But in a society free of patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity the questions shouldn't sound ridiculous.

• Why aren't more men taking years off of their career to stay home with their children if that is something the family values?
• Why aren't more men questioning whether it is still reasonable to head out to the golf course every Saturday morning?
• Why aren't more men asking what changes they might need to make to better balance their career and their family life?

Badinter says that breastfeeding and other forms of "intensive mothering" are problematic because it forces women into servitude and denies men "bottle time". I disagree. I think we should advocate for "intensive fathering" to complement that "intensive mothering". If men are wearing their babies, cuddling with them, playing with them, changing and washing diapers, taking them for walks, teaching them things, and later introducing them to interesting foods, the fact that he supported exclusive breastfeeding of the infant for the first six months shouldn't be equated with his exclusion or her oppression. If fathers are doing all of that, it also gives mothers the opportunity to find the balance they need and to meet their own needs.

Choosing a parenting style shouldn't be something the mother does alone. She should have control over her body (and therefore have the final say on issues like breastfeeding), but decisions about how to parent the child should be something that both parents make together and that both of them invest equally in. There are certainly mothers who choose very intensive parenting styles and take everything on their own shoulders. But I don't think the answer to that problem is to suggest that certain parenting styles (like attachment parenting) are wrong.

The solution is to ensure that fathers are equal partners in parenting, so that mothers are not the only ones to suffer physically, professionally and personally from the demands of parenting. Being a parent is incredibly fulfilling, but it also involves challenges. In my opinion, both the rewards and the sacrifices stemming from the decision to procreate should be shared equally by both parents.

More Reading on Badinter

There are so many problems with the arguments raised in Badinter's book, that it is impossible for me to cover them all in one blog post. But other people are discussing this too.

• Take a look at the conversation between Hanna Rosin and Katie Allison Granju on Slate, which explores some of the issues around attachment parenting as raised in Badinter's book and which also exposes Badinter's undisclosed ties not just to Nestle, but also the rest of the infant formula industry.

• Read the features on the Huffington Post, including Lisa Belkin's interview with Badinter, Badinter's own post, and Melissa Fay Greene's response.

• Take a look at the Blue Milk post on The Conflict, but more importantly scroll to the bottom to find links to her other posts about Badinter, including Oppressed by Breastfeeding and Feminism and attachment parenting and why they've more in common than in conflict.

Your Thoughts

I would love to hear your thoughts on this. On the one hand, I support the right of each family to make decisions for themselves in terms of how to balance the parenting workload between parents. On the other hand, however, I think that dismantling the patriarchy necessarily requires more men to take time off work to either be a stay-at-home dad or at least be the one rushing out the door to grab the kids from daycare on a more regular basis.

How can we encourage greater equality across society while still valuing and recognizing the ability of each family to determine what roles make sense to them?

Not everyone is a trailblazer

For better or for worse, most people are not trailblazers.

That doesn't mean that they have no potential. But it does mean that they need role models. They need to see other people, often people like them, succeeding at the type of thing they want to do. They need it for inspiration, leadership, paths to follow, and to help them believe that they can succeed.

They also need other people to have seen people like them succeed, so that they will give them a chance. The owner of an auto-repair shop is more likely to hire a woman if he's seen a woman mechanic before. A couple saving for their retirement is more likely to trust a female financial adviser, if they've seen women talking about financial issues on the news before.

First woman to _____.

First gay person to  _____.

First black person to _____.

First ____ person to _____.

Those firsts are important. Those trailblazers are critical. But the thing that truly makes a difference to each and every member of a marginalized group is when it becomes mainstream for people like them to do something they didn't dare dream was possible.

What happens when women are invisible?

"You can't be what you can't see."  Those are the wise words of Marie Wilson from the White House Project.  When children are seven years old, an equal number of girls and boys say that they want to be President when they grow up. But over time, something happens. Girls watch, observe and listen to what is happening around them. By the time they are fifteen,  a wide gap has emerged between the number of boys who still want to be President and the now much smaller group of girls who want to be President.

Take a look at this video that shares some eye-opening statistics on the gender disparity in the media.

The lack of balance between women's voices and men's voices in the media is the reason why it was such a big deal recently, when all of the by-lines on the front page of the Wall Street Journal were from women.

What happens when women's role is relegated to sex object or commentary on "women's issues"?

Some media outlets do a better job at ensuring that women are fully represented than others. But for many of them, I get the idea that fair representation of women means getting women to talk about what they perceive as "women's issues". There are not yet enough women commenting on politics, finance, business, the economy, sports, and more. In some cases, shockingly, even on things that are considered "women's issues" (e.g. abortion, birth control), some media outlets will call in a cast of male "experts" instead of seeking out women's voices.

The problem most days is not simply that women's voices are absent. The problem is that when they are present, they serve to further perpetuate stereotypes and gender roles.

For example, in the Huffington Post earlier this year, Tara Sophia Mohr wrote about the montage of great movie moments shown at the Oscars:

In the first clip in the montage, Forrest Gump ate from his box of chocolates.

Next, a series of couples gazed lovingly into each other's eyes: Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio on the Titanic, Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart in Twilight, Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore in Ghost.

Then came a stream of 25 clips showing male heroes talking to, leading or fighting other men. In the middle were a few women, one screaming in stress about her wedding, one screaming because she was being attacked and one screaming to fake an orgasm.

And with that, the montage ended.

She goes on to deconstruct the montage in more detail and ask whether it really matters, concluding that it does:

Films shape our culture and they shape us. Popular films become part of our cultural fabric, stories that paint a particular picture of what it means to be a man, to be a woman, to be white or black. Over time, the images we see in story after story subtly impact our ideas about who we are. Films — whether realistic or fantastical –teach us underlying ideas about what is possible and what is true.

When women can't see strong, interesting, female protagonists in the stories we watch, it becomes harder for us to see ourselves as the strong, interesting protagonists of our own lives. When girls grow up seeing story after story that tells them they are sex objects, accessories or victims, they will learn that to be a "woman" is to play one of those three roles.

That movie montage may be just one example, but it is emblematic of women's portrayal in the media in general. If you haven't seen it yet, the movie Miss Representation is definitely a must-see to understand how female actors,  journalists, politicians and more are treated in the media.

Newest Miss Representation Trailer (2011 Sundance Film Festival Official Selection) from Miss Representation on Vimeo.

As if that wasn't enough, the recent media commentary on Ashley Judd's "puffy face" showed us all one more time how things work. The difference, however, is that she fought back. Explaining why she chose to address the issue instead of just ignoring it, she wrote:

I choose to address it because the conversation was pointedly nasty, gendered, and misogynistic and embodies what all girls and women in our culture, to a greater or lesser degree, endure every day, in ways both outrageous and subtle. The assault on our body image, the hypersexualization of girls and women and subsequent degradation of our sexuality as we walk through the decades, and the general incessant objectification is what this conversation allegedly about my face is really about.

She also addressed the fact that the attacks on her, much like the "mommy wars" I've written about here before, came primarily from women. Instead of us supporting each other in our ambitions, whatever they may be, we have nothing better to do than to attack each other's appearance and parenting. Judd wrote:

That women are joining in the ongoing disassembling of my appearance is salient. Patriarchy is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate. It privileges, inter alia, the interests of boys and men over the bodily integrity, autonomy, and dignity of girls and women. It is subtle, insidious, and never more dangerous than when women passionately deny that they themselves are engaging in it.

Let Them See

I want our daughters to look out into society and see that they can be anything they want to be. I want them to see women in roles that include President, teacher, mother, lawyer, scientist, construction worker, astronaut, activist, engineer, doctor, farmer and more. I want them to see women expressing opinions, calling the shots, giving expert advice, and standing up for what they believe in. I want them to see women doing all of those things, without people commenting first and foremost on their bodies, their clothing, and their make-up. I want our daughters to believe that they can be anything they want to be, not just because we've told them that, but because they see that mirrored back to them in society.

I want all girls to believe that they have a chance to be whatever they want to be. Not just those girls with the trailblazer gene.

This is the third in a series of four posts looking critically at the way society, corporations and media influence the role girls and women are expected to play in society. The posts are written by me (Annie @ PhD in Parenting) and are generously sponsored by Pigtail Pals.

Image credit: JD Hancock on flickr.

I want to introduce you to Trevor, a transgender, gay, Canadian, breastfeeding father who blogs at Milk Junkies. Last night my friend Rebecca from Bunch Family pointed me to a guest post on her website by Trevor, describing his experience as a transgender breastfeeding father.

Everyone loves lactivist dads, right? But most of them are supporting from the sidelines and don't get to truly experience what it is like — joys, challenges, and all.

Trevor's experience with breastfeeding after transitioning to male is an amazing story, with many unique challenges and experiences.  The post on Bunch Family provides a good overview of Trevor's story. But I really enjoyed digging into his blog and reading about some of the day-to-day experiences he's had and the unique insights he provides.

• In Time to Breastfeed Outdoors Again, he writes about breastfeeding in public.
• In Dear Paramedic, I'm Transgender, he writes about the time he had to give a paramedic a "mini-lesson in queer lactation".
• In Newborn Bliss All Over Again, Trevor wrote about nursing a friend's baby when the friend was hospitalized and the baby refused to take a bottle.
• He also wrote a post with Tips for Transgender Breastfeeders and Their Lactation Educators.
• Many of you have a probably read my series of posts about breastfeeding on an airplane. Well, Trevor has one too — and a follow-up post with the things he wishes he'd said at the time.

Just as I fight for the normalization of breastfeeding, I also think it is important to fight for the normalization of all types of relationships and families. On his blog, Trevor wrote:

This blog is important to me because I hope it will help make the world a better place for our child, and others like him, to live in. Awareness of transgender lives increases every time someone puts him or herself out there in some way. Because Thomas Beatie discussed his transgender pregnancy on Oprah, some of my friends were already familiar with what we were up to when we announced our own pregnancy. And little by little it gets better, right?

I have added Milk Junkies to my reading list and I hope you'll take the time to learn a bit about Trevor's family and read his insights about breastfeeding from the perspective of a transgender man. Thank you for sharing your journey, Trevor.

The American feminist blogosphere is aflutter this week with discussion of a war of words between Hilary Rosen and Ann Romney about working moms and stay at home moms. It is a discussion deeply rooted in class warfare and mommy warfare and nicely wrapped up in partisan politics. It is a discussion that has played out over, and over, and over again in the past and again this week.

The renewed discussion has brought out some brilliant voices, for sure. On Mom 101, Liz wrote about the myth of the rich, selfish, working mom, noting the many reasons, beyond financial necessity that mothers choose to work. On Black Girl in Maine, Shay wrote about the way our choices are limited by the cards we are dealt in life, concluding that:

In the end, we all make choices, we have too, its part of this experience we call living life but let’s not kid ourselves that we all have the ability to make the same choices because we don’t. Who and what we are shape the decisions and choices we make.

These are important conversations to have, especially when dealing with people who are still in denial and think this is a simple black and white issue. But they are also conversations that don't deserve and shouldn't need nearly as much vitriol.  If women and families were supported in the choices that they make, perhaps this whole mommy war would fizzle out into something not much more controversial than playground discussions about whether to puree your baby's food or not.

Let me give you an example. In Quebec, where I live, there is a subsidized day care program and a child care tax credit for parents who do not get a space in the subsidized program.  Parents who get a subsidized day care space pay $7 per day for child care. Parents who don't get a subsidized space get to deduct child care expenses from their income on their federal taxes and they get between 26% and 75% of the money they spent on child care back as a tax credit on their provincial taxes (depending on income level). If you want to see what those policies would mean for your family, based on your income level and the rate you pay for child care, you can make your head explode with this handy little calculator.

I know, I know. People who don't know better are going to scream about how they don't want to pay for someone else's daycare when they chose not to have children or chose to stay at home with their children. What they don't know, however, is that they wouldn't be paying for it. Quebec's child care policies have been proven to pay for themselves and then some. For every $1.00 that Quebec taxpayers put in to subsidized day care, they get back $1.49 from the increased income taxes and consumption taxes resulting from higher maternal workforce participation. That's a pretty good return on investment, in my opinion.

We also have maternity and parental leave programs which are not perfect, but are a good start. Oh, and health care that is universally available instead of being tied to that crappy job that you really wish you could leave, but has amazing benefits so you can't.

I know there are Americans fighting for these things and I hope that they continue to fight that fight.  Because I agree with Ann Romney that "all moms are entitled to choose their path". I just don't think the current system gives them the flexibility and support needed to do so and that is a problem for mothers, for families, for children, and for the economy. As with real wars, these mommy wars are not truly about a clash between moms, but about a system that has let people down, poured fuel on the fire, and left each family to fend for themselves.

Can we call a cease fire on the mommy wars and find a way to make things easier for all mothers, regardless of their choices?

Image credit: davi sommerfield on flickr

I was in an Ottawa public high school this evening and as I walked toward the doors of the gym, I saw a poster hanging on the wall advertising chocolate milk and claiming that it would help you "up your game". It immediately struck me as inappropriate, for several reasons.

Chocolate Milk Isn't a Health Drink

No matter how you cut it, chocolate milk simply isn't a health drink. Sure, it has the same nutritional benefits of regular milk, but it also has a ton of added sugar.

A lot of people claim that they give their child chocolate milk because they won't drink white milk. I hate white milk too and I always have. I like it in my coffee and love a good latte, but you'll never see me sit down and drink a glass of milk. When I was a kid, I had to drink my milk at dinner. At the end of the meal, I would chug it down in one huge gulp and then shove a cookie or brownie into my mouth to mask the taste.

Milk is a convenient source of a lot of nutrients that our bodies need, but it is far from essential. If a child (or adult) doesn't want to drink milk for taste or other reasons (ethical, environmental), forcing them to do so or enticing them to do so by adding a ton of chocolate and sugar, may not be the best route to take. People can drink water to quench their thirst and get their nutritional needs through the food that they eat or even through vitamin supplements if necessary. I don't think that the nutrients in milk, as beneficial as they are, constitute a good reason to consume all the sugar in chocolate milk.

In my opinion, chocolate milk is to milk what McDonald's fries are to potatoes. I don't buy chocolate milk for our house, but our kids are allowed to order it when we go to a restaurant and they get it when we visit Grannie. I don't see that as any different than allowing a child to have pop on rare occasions (as I did when I went to a restaurant or my Grannie's house when I was a kid). A lot of people claim that at least chocolate milk is better than pop, but I'm not so sure. Chocolate milk has the same amount of sugar, a lot more sodium and fat, and 1/3 more calories than a cola drink.

But really, how chocolate milk compares to soda isn't relevant to me. I don't want to know how it compares to other unhealthy options. If people are claiming it is part of a healthy diet, then compare it to some healthy options.

Chocolate Milk Won't Help You "Up Your Game"

The poster on the wall wasn't simply saying that chocolate milk tastes great or that it will help you meet certain daily dietary requirements (along with a good kick of sugar). In this case, it was specifically saying that it will help you "up your game". To be fair, this is a rumour that is being passed around, with articles everywhere talking about how chocolate milk is replacing Gatorade as the "power drink" of choice (never mind the small print about it having 2.5 times as many calories).

Dr. Yoni Freedhoff wrote about the marketing of chocolate milk as a recovery drink on his blog Weighty Matters last week. He wrote:

If I had to venture a guess, I'd bet that over 95% of all so-called recovery drinks were consumed by people who truly don't need them.  I'd also wager that a large percentage of those same folks only decided to exercise in order to lose or maintain weight, in which case that "recovery" drink's more likely to aid in the "recovery" of a few pounds, than of muscle or performance.

But the thing that really gets my knickers in a knot is that they're being aggressively marketed to children, virtually none of who are elite performance athletes, and all of who burn substantially fewer calories than full grown adults.

What will help you "up your game"?

• Exercising
• Practicing
• Getting enough sleep
• Eating a balanced diet

If you aren't doing those things, then chocolate milk isn't going to "up your game" any more than a pair of Air Jordans or a few morning prayers.

Advertising in Schools Crosses Boundaries

I don't think there should be advertising in schools. Schools are a place that parents should be able to send their children to get an education, not to have biased commercial messages pushed on them. There are already enough challenges keeping the curriculum clear of special interests and biases without the hallways being plastered with posters vying for students attention and pocket money.

I think children should learn about nutrition in school, which may involve a discussion of the nutritional value of milk and even chocolate milk. I also think they should learn about the environmental and ethical issues at play in the dairy industry. But that information should not be furnished by industry sources that stand to gain from it. Or, if it is, it should be presented in a media literacy module where students are encouraged to pick apart the ads in order to understand how and why companies are targeting them.

What do you think? Is chocolate milk a decent nutritional choice or is it on par with junk food? How do you feel about it being marketed in schools?

Image credit: sfllaw on flickr

One of my twitter friends passed along a link to an article in The Atlantic about Finland's "Baby Box" and I was fascinated. Apparently new parents can choose either to receive a box of baby goods from the government or a cash grant of 140 Euros. The box, however, is seen as the better deal. The full contents of the box can be seen on the page announcing the 2011 maternity package. It includes:

• outfits in different sizes, shoes, gloves, hats and a winter suit
• toiletries
• cloth diapers
• a sleeping bag
• toys and books
• nursing pads
• condoms …only 6 of them though!
• the box itself which, along with a mattress and bedding that is provided, doubles as a bed for the newborn as needed for the first few months

I have to admit that I'm impressed. This seems like a measure that would help ensure that all newborns have the essentials that they need to get a good start in life. But I'm sure others will see it as "rampant, baby-coddling, anti-capitalism" (not sure if that was intended to be tongue-in-cheek or an entirely serious comment, but either way I'm sure someone thinks that).

Anyone notice what is NOT in the box? That's right, the exact thing that the government hands out to low-income mothers in the United States — infant formula and bottles.

To think, I was impressed when the Quebec government gave me a free copy of their book From Tiny Tot to Toddler, which is updated each year and is almost as good as the Dr. Sears Baby Book (and I would argue better than What to Expect…).

What do you think? Is a state-sponsored universal baby shower a great way to get families off on the right foot or too much of a "nanny state"?