Moms on the Tube

“I don’t really watch TV.”

THIS BAFFLES ME. I mean, obviously, to each his or her own, but I just love television so much that when I hear this declaration (less and less frequently, according to my unscientific and entirely anecdotal experience) I’m as shocked as I’d be if someone said, “I don’t really eat cheese.”

Wait, what? Some people don’t eat cheese?

I kid. But in all seriousness, deciding to give up cheese or TV would be a fucking heartbreaker of a Sophie’s Choice in my world. But in the end, the cheese would have to go, because the satisfaction of a hunk of brie is temporary,  but the joy of a ten-year relationship with my shows (or 8-episode relationship for these new miniseries deals) gives me stuff to chew over for weeks and months to come.

This week for Role/Reboot, in honor of Mother’s Day, I wrote about the range and variety of TV moms. June Cleaver is out, Cersei Lannister is in. Is that a good thing? Read on!

Related Post: Moms and body image, from Mika Brzezinski to Jennifer Weiner

Related Post: True Detective and the male gaze.

S(Tuesday) Scraps 109

1. HOOPS: Bill Simmons, who I generally love, gets rightfully reamed by college basketball player Wayne Washington when Simmons refers to his dreads as “stinky.”

2. AUTHORS: Curtis Sittenfeld (Prep, American Wife) gets interviewed by The Rumpus about her new book, Sisterland.

3. NEW MEXICO: The New Yorker‘s Rachel Syme, writes eloquently about the hometown she shares with Walter White.

4. CELEB: I really dig this advice from Olivie Wilde in Glamour, or rather, this advice from her ghostwriter. Regardless, I’m into it.

5. MOMS: My favorite, Roxane Gay, interviews her mother for The Hairpin about how she feels about her mothering decisions, 30 years later. Should we all be so lucky as to have these conversations.

6. SPORTS: What does it say about you as a parent when you push your daughter down the path of soccer, dance, or chess? Apparently a lot?

Related Post: Sunday 108: George Saunders, OITNB, Ill-Doctrine, etc.

Related Post: Sunday 107: Amanda Palmer = awesome, millennials worry, email mapping!

Rules

Saturday was a big deal birthday for my mother. I’m not sure whether she wants me to reveal her age or not, so I’ll err on the side of caution (against all of my instincts).

The Rumpus published a piece by Judy Bolton-Fasman last week called “A Jubana Mother Gives Advice to her Tragically Gringa Daughter.” A Jubana is a woman of Jewish and Cuban descent. Given that I am not Cuban and only sort of a little bit sometimes Jewish, I can’t comment on the relevance of this advice for women who fit this specific profile. What I can comment on is the style of the advice, which is offered in pat, pearls of wisdom like:

• Never talk to a man who has a tattoo.
• Do not scream in labor. Be a lady.
• Do not marry again when you’re old. You do not want to get stuck taking care of some old man you hardly know.
• Do not wear sleeveless shirts. Chusmas wear sleeveless shirts.

I recognize that this is a piece of creative writing, and the whole of it is indeed lyrical and lovely. What I’m also struck by, however, is how little wiggle room these pieces of advice leave for grey area, going with your gut, trusting your instincts, and rolling with the punches. The kind of parenting I received (and now admire from the far side of childhood) had very few pieces of concrete advice. I’m hard pressed to come up with any, now that I put my mind to it, and I don’t think that’s a failure.

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Do you remember the scene in Freaky Friday when Jamie Lee Curtis yells out the car window, “Make good choices!”? That was my parents’ model, more time spent learning how to ask questions, weigh options, and make decisions in the grey area, less time on rules.

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Related Post: Massachssuetts reconsiders its custody bias.

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Related Post: Do you hope your child will be straight?

I Was a Two-Two

Did anyone else read the Baby-Sitters Club Little Sister books? Remember Karen the “Two Two”? I was a two-two too, though in this piece for the Good Men Project I refer to myself as a fifty-fifty kid. My parents made the unusual decision to split custody down the middle, and my brother and I commuted between houses twice a week. While logistically challenging, in retrospect, I’m so very grateful they picked this arrangement. I know it’s not right for every family, but I think kids are more adaptable than we think, and the chance to build strong relationships with both parents should count very heavily in favor of joint custody agreements. Here’s why:

Related Post: Something else that prompted me to think about my parents.

Related Post: I’ve written about my dad before, and HuffPo seemed to like it.

Do You Hope Your Child Will Be Straight?

“Are you gay?” It was my mother asking. We were in the car, the hub for most awkward parent-child conversations, in the middle of a pleasant, but heated debate about parental reactions to coming out. A few friends had recently gone through the process with less-than-enthusiastic responses from their very liberal, highly-educated parents.
“No.”
“But if you were,” she asked, “Would you worry about telling me?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think I would be disappointed?”
“Yes.”

*      *       *       *       *

My editor at the GMP pointed out that my essay this week has virtually no men at all. Oh well! It’s about parenting, conversations about sexual orientation and how the assumption of straightness can make it hard for kids to come out, even to the most well-meaning liberal parents. I’d hope it’s pretty gender-neutral. So read on for my man-free article for The Good Men Project.

Related Post: Last week at the GMP, I wrote about if and when first date sex is a good idea.

Related Post: Two amazing essays on the legal issues and arguments about gay marriage and biology.

Is Porn Cheating? Depends.

This week on the Good Men Project, I write about porn. Specifically, I was asked to address the question, “Is Porn Cheating?” I think not. But then again…. who cares what I think?

After some minor soulsearching and irritating my friends with incessant questions, I’ve landed here: It’s only cheating if your partner thinks it’s cheating. Every couple has to make their rules and abide by them. What your friends and neighbors think of your sexual mores is entirely beside the point, as long as you two agree to respect guidelines that suit your relationship.

Read on for more of my views on porn, plus the points-of-view of three gracious volunteers who offered some other perspectives:

Related Post: Last week on the GMP, Hugo and I hashed out the debate on who pays for dates. Who knew it came down to razors?

Related Post: My piece on how not to respond when your partner doesn’t orgasm made it on The Frisky.

Role/Reboot – A Small World Story

Aside from a myriad of facial features, I have inherited from my mother several things, including a willingness to talk to strangers, wonky dance moves, and a never-ending delight in “small world moments”.

Fifteen years ago, we were walking through Muir Woods on vacation several thousand miles from home. We passed another tourist family of similar make-up to ours. Ten feet past the group, my mother stopped short. “Jan?” she called. Except it came out more like “Jaaaayuuuuun?” The blonde mother who, moments before passed us on the boardwalk, turned. “Michele?” she called? Except it came out like  “Micheeeelllle?” They had been college roommates and hadn’t seen each other in decades.

A few years after that, we bumped into our state senator and his family under the Eiffel Tower. In a bar in Chicago, we met a guy who had been taught by my first-grade teacher in Lexington, MA twenty years earlier.

These are moments that my mother adores, and that I, too, find reassuring. I saw a girl I’d traveled with in Israel on a plane from New York to Chicago last week. I bumped into a high school classmate on a summer night in London, a city neither of us inhabit. I could go on, but I think the point is made.

Yesterday, I got an email from Role/Reboot, a non-profit “created to navigate a world built on outdated assumptions about men’s and women’s roles and to advocate ways to understand and embrace the changing reality of our day-to-day lives.” They wanted to run the story I wrote about splitting checks on first dates.

Who founded Role/Reboot? Fran Rodgers. Who did my mom work for fifteen years ago at a pioneer company that addressed work/life balances of a new generation of female workers? Fran Rodgers. And there it is.

Note: The splitting-checks piece is up and running today, so stop by and see what other fun content they have.

Related Post: More relationship advice that got republished on The Frisky. How to respond when your partner doesn’t orgasm?

Related Post: Dating in the digital age: we’ve lost the awkward and I wish we could get it back.

In My Absence

Taking a few days off for some family stuff. Some reading for you in my absence:

On Education: Diane Ravitch vs. Michelle Rhee (Washington City Paper)

On Parenting: Heather from Go Fug Yourself on being a mom and the importance of girlfriends (Redbook)

On Birth Control: Why the wait for male contraception? (Mother Jones)

On Exercise/On Class: Cool graphs on the correlations between fitness and wealth (Sociological Images)

On Roald Dahl: A different take on an old favorite (This Recording)