She talked about parenting during the round-table interview for her new movie, Motherhood.

What about parenting has thrown you?

Minnie: The unquantifiable love. It just takes my breath away. My son’s face in the morning … it feels like Christmas. It’s also terrifying though. You can’t really go there to think about the absence of that. Everyone tells you about the love but you can’t know it until you have it. It just blows your mind. Yeah…(happy sigh)…Henry.

How was it working on the movie while pregnant?

Minnie: Oh, it was horrible. Just awful. I really don’t recommend it. I was close to tears one evening on the phone with my mum whimpering “I just want to go home and iron onesies!” She laughed at me saying, “You’ll have plenty of time to do laundry, love. Don’t worry.”

Do you think you’ll have more kids?

Minnie: Oh! I really want to. I want to have them soon. I’m 39 and a part of me wishes I would have started 10 years ago but I know where I was then and there was no way. I’m expecting to have another baby at some point, but if I don’t it will be OK because I have my Henry.

What would you tell Henry if he said he wanted to be an actor?

Minnie: Good luck…and I’ll always cook for you when you’re totally broke. (laughs)

What do you think about the paparazzi photographing children?

Minnie: In England, we have pornography laws where you can’t take photos of children. There should absolutely be legislation like that in [the US]. The children get frightened. Henry burst into tears at the airport one time when the photographers were up in his face with flashing lightbulbs. There’s something very rabid about their energy because they don’t see you as a human being — all they see is what they can sell in the magazines. The editors have a responsibility that they’re not taking. They could choose not to publish endless photographs of these little babies on swings in parks on playdates. It’s gross. Those poor children have done nothing to deserve that except be born to famous parents. I haven’t gotten in trouble with those guys yet but God knows if they did ANYTHING to my kid…well, if you see me in jail, get all the mums together and come support me with a banner or something.

Should we be watching for a baby bump sometime soon? I definitely want to see her new film to see if it really portrays motherhood as it really is.

Source

Apparently, Jen and her father, long-time Days of Our Lives actor, John, both narrate a kids’ book called Loukoumi’s Good Deeds (about a lamb and her pals Gus the bear, Fistiki the cat and Mariki the monkey – we’re guessing it’s Greek). And both John and Jen have won the iParenting Media Award for it.

Here at the beautiful Hanging Gardens of Babble-On, we’re a bit perplexed by awards anyway, at the best of times – but parenting awards? To quite categorically non-parents? Only in America.

Which prompts us in slightly overcast, chilly Sydney to say, in our best Seppo accent, go figure.

Source

It took me two kids and more than few screwups, but I’ve finally allowed myself to go with this –and not only am I 100 percent happier as a result, my kids are too. My over-educated parenting cohort pretty much universally approached the appearance of a positive pregnancy test with a trip to the library, racking up as much knowledge as we could before baby got here. When the baby in question actually did arrive, though, some of us struggled with our previously ironclad beliefs (and everybody who already had kids laughed and laughed, having already acquired the wisdom that your baby doesn’t actually read the same books you did).

What we all learn, hopefully, is that there’s no One True Path to perfect parenting (and in fact, so such thing). What works like a charm for my daughter is an epic fail with my son, and what he needs from me is different than what she does. I find, also, that the wisest, happiest parents I know are the ones who allow themselves to be fluid, versus clinging to Sears or Ezzo or Supernanny or whatever. Those folks –not to mention your mum, your mother in law, or your most judgy fellow mum –are not parenting your kid. You are.

But the surprising amount of negative comments to the article revealed a new story.

Alison Godfrey’s piece on news.com.au was a light, humourous piece about the hidden truths of parenting. For example, friends may claim their kids always sleep through the night – except when the child is “sick, under six months, having nightmares, hungry, in an unfamiliar environment, teething or out of routine”.

Likewise, breastfeeding is often portrayed as the easy option, a delightfully natural and nurturing bonding experience. It is all of those things, but it can also be excruciatingly painful and difficult.

The point I think she was making was that some view parenting as a competition, and insist that their child walked earlier/eats better/watches less TV/is smarter than other kids – thereby making the rest of us feel we are doing it all wrong.

Godfrey’s article was slammed by critical commentors, who either called her ‘jealous’ at other parent’s experiences or claimed she was scare-mongering future mothers with tales of labour pain and cracked nipples.

At no point did Godfrey express disappointment with her child, yet received comments like this:

Is it possible that there are, in fact, just as many people bitter about their own bad experiences, that they refuse to accept that there may be some really good children out there? The number of times I’ve heard “Oh, but just wait until she gets older, then you’ll have a different story to tell”. Personally, I don’t need to hear it. If it so happens that things become more difficult later on, then so be it, I won’t hide it, but why try and bring me down? Is it jealousy??

I’ve encountered the same feedback when writing about my own pregnancy aches and labour pains. While some readers were supportive, others (especially men, who haven’t physically experienced either situation!) accused me of lying, whinging, exaggerating or “dragging people down”.

The thing is, I don’t think pregnancy, birth and parenting are black and white. There is a huge amount of joy to be found in these experiences, happiness that is all the more sweet after another long night of two-hour wakings. We need to appreciate the whole ride.

This article in USA Today examines some of those myths, plus has a nifty little quiz that I scored so badly on, it appears my children are lucky to be alive.

Here’s one fact I really like: That larger-headed babies are smarter. I clicked no, but it turns out? They do in fact score higher on intelligence tests. I should have known, because my daughter has an enormous head and is also clearly a supergenius.

Here are some other ones – there’s no clinical evidence that sugar makes kids any more hyper (these researchers clearly have not seen my kids after a birthday party or visit to the grandparents’), and teething doesn’t cause a fever. And playing Mozart for babies does not make them smarter — sorry, all you suckers who fell for the belly headphones. That belief comes from a study that was done on college students, the effect only lasted fifteen minutes and it’s never been able to be replicated.

And of course for many of these myths, they come courtesy of the paediatrician. Many of the long held beliefs about what you should and shouldn’t do have never been clinically tested in any sort of rigorous study, so doctors fall back on what their mentors told them whether it’s true or not.

Basically, if you question something the doctor is telling you (or your aunt or best friend or coworker, for that matter) it’s okay to ask them where they got their data. Or, do what I do – smile, thank them, and ignore.

1) Food is No Fun

When we were kids we had lunches packed with Fruit By the Foot, Teddy Grahams, and Squeeze Its. Now kids get organic crap like fruit leathers, vegetable-flavored “chips” that have the texture of packing cellophane, and sugar-free, 100% juice. What ever happened to “3% juice” juice that you could squeeze out of a cartoon face? Sure, some kids nowadays still have gloriously unhealthy lunches, but yuppie parents regard these children as contagious chunksters who could pass the “fat” virus onto their precious kids via direct, sticky-handed contact.

2) Clothing Has Gotten Ridiculous

Young girls have belly-baring shirts, kid-sized halter tops, and rhinestones on everything, while young boys look like mini douche bags with their youth-sized rugby shirts and cargo shorts. Pre-teens are just as bad: girls are pairing leggings with everything and boys are popping every collar they can get their hands on. What happened to Osh Kosh overalls and cute crap like duckies and froggies on little kids’ shirts? Why the hell would you want your 7-year-old to go to school wearing a t-shirt that says “spoiled brat” and hot pantsthat have the word “princess” emblazoned on the butt?

3) Parents are Too Paranoid

In the good ol’ days, we could go exploring in the woods behind our house, climb the tallest tree in our yard, and sled down the stairs in our house using a blanket or a laundry basket. Our parents didn’t care as long as we came for dinner when they shouted. Now everything in the house is childproof, kids are on leashes so they don’t stroll more than
two feet away from their parents, and parents go insane if their kid gets a single scratch or bump. Cuts and bruises gave us character, and they taught us valuable lessons that we were able to learn for ourselves (e.g., stoves are hot, roofs are high, table corners are pointy).

Now that I come to think of it, I don’t know why I didn’t perish as a kid in a roof-jumping off accident or from obesity triggered juvenile diabetes. Man, we do parent our kids like wussies these days.

To read more of Rebecca’s article, go here.

Let me be clear — my husband IS a fantastic father, a wonderful husband, the love of my life… the whole nine. But he’d be the first to tell you that he’s not looking for accolades. He’s just looking to be a parent.

That I still outrank him on the numbers of nappies changed or number of boo-boos kissed has more to do with my work-at-home job and his work-at-an-office job than it does with his involvement in our daughter’s life.

Today’s dads do a lot more than their predecessors, it’s true. My daughter’s godmother related once that her father never changed a single nappy. She has three brothers. Even if they toilet-trained early, that’s a good six years of avoidance.

What does that say about the man? That he couldn’t lift a finger to help his wife? That he was so disgusted by his own children’s poo that he couldn’t bear to touch a nappy? I think it says he was lazy, that he was willing to make a baby, but not responsible enough to deal with the aftermath.

So what if it was culturally acceptable back then? It was once culturally acceptable to drop racial epithets into polite conversation; that doesn’t make it any less disgusting.

It’s not just nappies, of course. In the months when my daughter was still getting up in the middle of the night, my husband took his share of evening shifts (this was after I’d quit breastfeeding). It was only fair, he said.

He knows the words to Green Eggs and Ham as well as I do, knows that peanut butter sandwiches need to be cut into four triangles and that juice cups should be filled halfway with water. He has a carseat in his car, picks her from daycare, makes her dinner.

In short, my husband knows how to be a parent — like millions of other dads. Labour figures put the number of fathers providing primary care to their kids today at one in five, while surveys have put http://www.rebeldad.com/stats.htm”>the number of fathers who’ve mulled staying at home with their kids anywhere from thirty-seven percent to fifty-six. They’re taking over Brownie troops and grabbing hold of stroller steering.

So why is it now culturally acceptable for men to be involved parents, but not to let it go uncelebrated? If I go out into public without my daughter in our small town, someone will invariably ask if “Daddy’s babysitting.” In 2009, I get that question a lot, even from women my age, women with children and partners of their own — women who should know better.

Calling my husband a babysitter is insulting. He doesn’t get paid. He doesn’t spend time with our daughter because he’s required to or because it’s going to get him something (money, sex, whatever). He spends time with our daughter because he is her father, and he kinda, sorta, really likes her. Isn’t that why men become fathers? Because they want children?

The comments from women on a recent Strollerderby post about the Daddy-babysitting issue poured in. One woman recounted the story of a kindly seatmate tapping her on the shoulder on a plane to tell her how “lucky” she was because her husband helped give their child a bottle.? “Clearly, he deserves a nomination for Man of the Year, because those are the little woman’s jobs, and any man who does them is worthy of a ticker-tape parade,” she said.

Hence the paradox. It’s no longer culturally acceptable for men to lay the entire burden of parenting at the feet of the women… but he still earns a big pat on the back for doing what women are automatically expected to do. Make no mistake: we are still expected to be good mothers. Even as it’s become the norm for women to get out of the kitchen — indeed out of the house — there’s still been more backlash against Brit than there has against K-Fed.

Bad mothers are strung up. Bad fathers are shrugged off. Good mothers are, well, there. And good fathers? They’re idolised.

A Washington Post article from 2007 meant to celebrate Father’s Day ends with what’s intended to be a sweet reference to dads’ ability to hear their kids crying in the night before their partners do. It turns sour when the author dubs it “mother’s intuition.”

Because fathers can’t be intuitive? Tell that to my husband the next time he hears our daughter cry out, and he’s on his feet before she can fall fully from her toddler bed onto the floor. Tell that to a father who fishes a doll’s hairbrush from the toilet while his daughter hiccups out an unintelligible string of pleas for help.?

Yes, fathers should be respected for being fathers, just as mothers should be for being mothers. Parenting is a hard job. But all the gushing about what a super-duper guy a father is because he figured out how to work the pull tabs on a nappy comes off as patronising. He’s not a martyr because he spends time with his kids and likes reading bedtime stories. He’s a parent.

Bruce Sallan writes a nationwide blog about his life as former single dad, now remarried, with two boys aged 15 and 12. In this week’s installment (actually called, “Am I A Selfish Parent?”), Sallan writes about a ski trip taken with his wife and his 12-year-old son. Son got a bad nosebleed. Dad tended to him, called the hospital, found out what to do, and sat with the boy until the blood stopped, almost 30 minutes later. Dad wanted to take turns with Step-mum going skiing, so that one would be with the kid and one on the slopes at all times. Step-mum volunteered to stay with the boy the whole time. After 45 minutes on the mountain, nosebleed recommences, Step-mum calls Dad, and Dad returns to Son. Son wants to go home.

“I rushed back (which was not easy) only to find he was calmer and the bleeding had stopped again,” writes Sallan. “This time, however, I gave him a relatively stern talk on being a man, learning to deal with some pain, as there will be some pain in life… I explained that running away would only teach him how not to deal with life’s crises.”

Dad returns to slopes, Son and Step-mom spend day in lodge, the next day all are able to ski; once home, Son is checked by the doctor and is pronounced fine.

“We give in to our children’s whims and complaints too easily,” writes Sallan. “Sometimes, we as parents need to take care of our needs… [Step-mom] chose to be over-the-board careful and I chose to be, what some might say, selfish…”

I agree with Sallan, to a point. But is forcing a child to endure a ski trip with a bloody nose really teaching him how to “deal with life’s crises”?

“Parents need their time away from their kids,” writes Sallan, and of course that is true. But, I would argue, not at the expense of their kids. For me, my child’s needs trump my own, almost every time.

What bothers me about this essay is that Dad completely dismissed the fear and concerns of his 12-year-old son. Not only that, he berated his son for having such fears. Is that really how we help our sons become men? I have no experience being a man, so I may be way off base here.

What do you think? Selfish? Jerk? Or simply human?

Aren’t you lucky? Oh, come on!

Rachel Emma Silverman over at The Juggle says she finds herself thinking “about all the things I’d do differently if I eventually have more children.”

So now it’s time for the big confession: I do to. And I KNOW I’m not having any more children. But since hindsight’s twenty/twenty and all that jazz, I can’t help looking back at the early days of my daughter’s life and wanting to smack myself a bit.

A taste:

So you were told never to wake a sleeping baby? Someone please tell the nurses at the hospital where I delivered. Because I was waking that kid every two hours to attempt breastfeeding… even at 2 a.m. No wonder I never slept. Worried less that I was going to drop her. Carrying my friend’s baby in a football hold recently, I realised I NEVER would have been that carefree with my daughter, and why not? Throw out the pre-treatment laundry formulas. She was a spit-up queen, and most of the onesies got chucked in the garbage anyway. Or made really good rags. Not let my in-laws stay at my house that first week. Sorry guys – but I was stressed enough without visitors living in my house, hiding away from the father-in-law trying to breastfeed, etc.I have plenty more, but I want to hear from you all – what would you “do over?”

Image: WSJ

Some people call it the slow parenting movement. Others call it a fact of life in a recession. Whatever you call it, the economic downturn is forcing parents to make cuts everywhere, including in their kids’ hectic schedules. So instead of shuttling their kids from activity to activity, parents are forced to find other ways to entertain their kids. In short, parents and kids are spending a lot more time together.

Dana Slomkowski, a New Jersey mother, has had to cut her kids’ activities and seems to enjoy the results. “We have more time, we talk,” she says. “Now I’m big on, ‘go outside and play.’”

The economic crunch is accelerating the slow parenting trend, says Mary Hickey, deputy editor of Parents magazine. “Instead of enrolling their 2-year-old in the best preschool,” she says, “they’re thinking, why not keep them at home a little longer?”

How has your family adapted to changing economic times?

Source