“You are not who you were, only older,” Suzanne Braun Levine
I haven’t written a book review for Mothering, yet, since I believe our readers are a widely diverse group of women representing many ages, interests and ideologies. So, when I received How We Love Now, I wasn’t sure what I would do with it, other than read it. […]
by Carla Naumberg
The BBC recently ran an interview with Susan Tollefsen, a British woman who gave birth to her first daughter at age 57 in 2008. The baby was conceived with the help of in vitro fertilization, using a donor egg and her partner’s sperm (although the couple is now separated). Ms. Tollefsen was refused fertility treatment in the UK because of her age, and became pregnant with the help of a clinic in Russia. Two years later, a clinic in London agreed to assist her with a second pregnancy, but she ultimately decided not to follow through, citing potential health concerns. […]by Jane Samuel
We added our third child when I was forty and that’s when the skeptical stares started. You know the ones. You are just coming up to the counter at the local gym or squeezing through the candy-packed aisle at the grocery, baby on your hip, mask of exhaustion painted on your face where make-up should be when some bright-faced-twenty-something looks over in disbelief and says, “My! You have your hands full.” […]
Rosemary Lichtman and Phyllis Goldberg
Over two thousand years ago, the ancient Romans began the practice of making New Year’s resolutions when they named the first month after Janus, the god of beginnings. Janus had two faces, one looking back at the old year, the other looking forward to the new one. In order to secure good fortune in the future, January became the time when you ask forgiveness for past deeds and look inward for areas to improve. […]
By Phyllis Goldberg, Ph.D. and Rosemary Lichtman, Ph.D.
By now your college student has settled into the dorm and adjusted to campus life. Despite the relief you feel, are you surprised to discover that letting go is more difficult than you imagined? Even with the time constraints and daily pressures that you experience as a member of the Sandwich Generation, are you ambivalent about cutting the apron strings? […]
I attended a class on “how to become a foster and or adoptive parent” this past weekend. The class consisted of me and five couples. Three of the couples said were unable to have children and are considering adoption; two have grown children and want to foster or adopt. As the only single person there, I felt like a freak. But by the end of the first Friday night session, that feeling had subsided. We were all there for one thing only: to have a family. […]
Dr. Barb DePree
(Dear Reader, as you may notice, we now have advertisers on our site! Although I am in some way connected to all these entities, I have found such sympatico with MiddlesexMD.com – a site dedicated to providing women with information and resources for navigating the sometimes treacherous waters of peri- and menopause. This is another “Cyma’s Picks.” With this in mind, I bring you the following post by founder Dr. Barb Depree. We hope to offer more posts like this in the future. For now, read on…)
You may not be able to leap up from a lotus position in a single bound. (Heck, you may not even be able to get into a lotus position.) You may find your back a little cranky when your two-year-old demands to be carried. Most disappointing of all (to your love life, anyway), you may find yourself falling into an exhausted stupor every night at the same time as your kindergartner.
For all the delights of motherhood, it’s a different ballgame at midlife. […]
by Cyma Shapiro
I have two sets of kids – a common occurrence for many Midlife Mothers. I have two generations, in two differing decades, with two differing experiences. (The total count of this is four children). One is Gen Y; the other is yet to be named (soon to be called Z or M). One is pre-9/11; the other is post 9/11. One is all about the advent of social media and the importance of the Internet; the other has never lived without all of it. One is the MTV generation, the other is all about the digital age, cell phones (only) and the world of texting. More importantly, one sees the world as basically benign and good, the other as being scary and dangerous and all about the horrors seemingly right outside our front door. These aren’t just man-made horrors; these now include tornados, hurricanes, flash floods, power outages, unhappy out-of-work people, and less money to live as we’d like. […]
by Peg O'Neill, M.D.
I am the queen of making lists. Like many busy working moms, I use lists to help me juggle the myriad of balls that I need to keep in the air on a regular basis: the grocery list, the list of school events, sports and music lessons, not to mention the lists I make at work to remind me to follow up on patients and to take care of the other responsibilities that come with being a partner in a busy pediatric practice. Though they sometimes drive me crazy, lists actually help keep me sane by keeping me at least a little bit organized and by helping to prevent important stuff from falling through the cracks. With the holidays approaching and the myriad of extra things to do, I find myself making even more lists. […]
by Loretta Tayar
I am a verb. I am all action. I make homemade soup for my daughters when they are sick. I jump out of bed in the middle of the night to lend a sympathetic ear to a frightened child and reassure her it was just a bad dream — their mother, father, brother, sister or friend did not get shot to death in their apartment. I write checks for tuition, tutors, cheerleading uniforms, school supplies, clothes (some functionally necessary and some to avert the fashion death that they believe will occur if said clothing wasn’t purchased), food, cell phone charges, doctor visits, gym memberships, family vacations. When my daughters were younger I went to parent-teacher conferences, graduations and plays. I did not go to PTA functions at one daughter’s high school because she didn’t think she could explain having a white parent when she’s black. […]