Showing all posts in Parenthood

In Blogging, Children, Mothers, Parenthood, Parenting

Mothering

Author VadaPosted on 15 Comments

My husband and I are working on adopting, which is a large part of why I’ve been mostly absent here for the last year. I wrote this post last night on our adoption blog, but I thought it might generate some good discussion here, and go along nicely with some of the recent posts, so I’m cross-posting it.

Anyone who knows me know that I’m a pretty honest person, and I don’t sugarcoat things. Especially when it comes to my kids and mothering. In fact, this blog is probably about the least honest I’ve been, and even here I don’t feel like I’ve been at all dishonest, I just don’t have nearly enough whiny posts up for you to realize how whiny I can be in real life. That’s probably okay. A little less whining is good for me, and you probably appreciate not hearing so much of it. I know it grates on my nerves when my kids do it, so I really ought to be setting a better example.

But that’s not really why I’ve avoided my tendencies toward whininess here. (What do they mean, whininess isn’t a word? It totally is.) I’ve avoided it here because for the first time in a very long time people are judging me and I care what they think. Read More

In Children, Family, Mothers, Parenthood, Parenting

A Day in My Life (a few years ago)

Author VadaPosted on 11 Comments

This is a repost of a post I did for FMH‘s A Day in the Life series. I’m resurrecting it now because my little sister recently had her second baby and is feeling overwhelmed. Hopefully this will help her realize that she’s at least doing better than I managed at the same time. Also, I hope to follow this up by finishing a post I started when the second was about a year old and things were much more under control, so look for that soon.

I’m a SAHM with a BA in anthropology and a minor in computer science. I have a 21-mo-old and a 3-mo-old (both boys). I write, and hope someday to publish a book, but not for a while at the rate I’m going.

Here’s my post… Read More

In Parenthood, Personal Narratives

Missing Motherhood

Author SeraphinePosted on 19 Comments

In high school, I was often frustrated with the standard gender narrative for women (get married in the temple, have babies, become a noble mother in Zion, ad nauseum). I was passionate about education, and even in high school, I imagined myself going to graduate school. I resented being told over and over in YW that my only purpose in life was to be a mother. I wasn’t anti-motherhood, but I had other goals and dreams that I wanted everyone (including God) to recognize. Read More

In Church Life, Parenthood

On Ignorance and Offense (includes FREE Bonus Discussion of Infertility!)

Author EvePosted on 25 Comments

Patricia’s excellent series of posts about her experiences with her daughter Mattea over at T&S have got me thinking again about ignorance and offense. I don’t want to presume to compare Patricia’s experiences (which she rightly terms “unbelievable”) with my own, but I suspect all of us have experienced the hurt and frustration of blithely presumptuous, well-meaning drive-by comments on our lives, sometimes in church settings, sometimes from fallible church leaders. I imagine all of us have endured remarks that stick in our craws that we struggle to forgive and to eject from our souls. To start this post off I’ll reflect on a few such remarks in my own life. Then I’ll try to put those remarks in some sort of meaningful context. Read More

In Parenthood, Parenting

I Hate Breastfeeding

Author VadaPosted on 124 Comments

(In a recent off-blog discussion, I mentioned how we’d never discussed childbearing or breastfeeding on our blog. Since I’m the only one of us who has actually born a child or breastfed (at least as far as I know), I figured I’d have to be the one to remedy that. So I pulled out a post I wrote last month but never actually posted anywhere. And at least one other blogger encouraged me in this, so it’s not totally my fault.)

Well, since it’s National Breastfeeding Awareness Month, I’ve seen a number of posts about breastfeeding and how great and wonderful it is. Azucar even talks about the glories of nursing toddlers. So I felt the need to come out of the closet myself, and tell everyone the truth. I hate breastfeeding. Read More

In Parenthood, Parenting, Theology

Parenthood and the Imago Dei

Author LynnettePosted on 8 Comments

In honor of having made it through another year of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day celebrations (and/or firestorms), I’d like to consider some issues related to parenthood, and how we talk about it in the Church. Though I admittedly do have my qualms about some of the language related to gender, I have to say that the LDS emphasis on the importance of parenting is something I actually quite appreciate, and generally see as positive. At the same time, as a single adult member of the Church, I’m all too aware of how this emphasis can leave a large segment of the community feeling somewhat like second-class citizens. So I find myself coming back to the question, is there a way to talk about the importance of parenthood that doesn’t marginalize the non-parents? Or is that simply one of the costs of keeping the role of parent as central as we want it to be? I honestly don’t know the answer to that one. Read More

In Parenthood

Leading a Secondary Life

Author EvePosted on 33 Comments

The discussion over at FMH on Ana’s excellent day-in-the-life-of-a-working-mom post got me thinking again about the complexities of leading a secondary life. For a variety of reasons I won’t go into here, it’s becoming more and more likely that my husband and I will never have children. (The complexities of infertility merit their own post, and perhaps someday I’ll post about them, but it remains a painful subject, and at the moment I manage the pain mostly by trying not to think about it.) Here, though, I want to consider the contradictions of what I will call, for lack of a better term, a secondary life.

Read More