My Family Blog

by Betsy Shaw posted in Mom Stories A coalition for German Chancellor Angela Merkel has agreed upon a measure that would pay mothers a monthly stipend in exchange for staying at home. Sort of. Under this measure, mothers of children aged 13 to 36 months, would receive roughly $200 per child, monthly as a “reward” [...]

Whee! Hey, Darth Vader! Your boss just sold your empire to Disney! What are you going to do now? Go to Disneyland, of course. This video, published on the Disney Parks YouTube page, shows what happens when a Sith visits the Happiest Place on Earth. It’s actually part of a longer video from 2011 promoting Star Tours [...]

Hundreds of toddlers, families, and other fans of public media marched from Lincoln Park to the Capitol in Washington, D.C. today in the “Million Puppet March,” one of the fluffiest, most adorable political rallies in the whole history of ever. The march was a response to GOP candidate Mitt Romney’s assertion, in the first ...

Someone is looking very toddler-like! Sniff.  Wow.  I started writing for Babble in June of 2011 – about halfway through my pregnancy with Cullen.  At the time, I remember clicking over to the Baby’s First Year posts, and wondering how these moms knew what they were doing.  I barely had a bump and still felt [...]

by Gwen Dewar, Ph.D. posted in Mom Stories You don’t really need me to tell you that the toddler beauty pageant world is messed up. But when I read this press release about new observational research of the show, I was still pretty disturbed. Martina M. Cartwright, a dietitian and adjunct professor at the University [...]

by Gwen Dewar, Ph.D. posted in Mom Stories You don’t really need me to tell you that the toddler beauty pageant world is messed up. But when I read this press release about new observational research of the show, I was still pretty disturbed. Martina M. Cartwright, a dietitian and adjunct professor at the University [...]

This time of year, lots of classrooms and moms groups put together community-focused projects to coincide with Thanksgiving feasts or wintertime celebrations.  For younger kids, the best charitable activities are those that connect with their everyday experiences or interests, from a love of animals to the understanding that everyone needs ...

Does all your Halloween fun revolve only around the kids? It seems that the push to extend the age limit on trick-or-treaters has gone over so well that now adults are taking Halloween back for themselves. Every year parents ask themselves the question, what age is too old to go to trick-or-treating? 10, 11, 12? [...]

Expectant moms are usually inundated with things they need to do before the baby arrives— like take a birthing class, pack a hospital bag, get the nursery ready, etc. etc. But we often forget about the simple things we need to do for ourselves. And I’m not talking about self-indulgent things like pre-natal massages and [...]

by Betsy Shaw posted in Mom Stories In Social Qs, an advice column for the N.Y. Times, a wife wrote in lamenting the fact that her husband brought a lunchbox filled with cold beer to a child’s first birthday party. “I told him it was inappropriate to take alcohol to a children’s party. He said [...]