Thinkingmama

Here I will “point” to articles and other useful information about motherhood and careers that I haven’t written posts about: (Chronological, with most recent ones on the bottom of the list.)

• The San Francisco Chronicle had an interesting front-page story about professional Indian women who are prohibited from working outside the home because their husbands are working in the U.S. under the H-1B visa program.
• I read Ann Crittenden’s book “The Price of Motherhood: Why the most important job in the world is still the least valued” a while ago and remember having mixed feelings about it. Check out this review I found recently. If you’ve read this book, what did you think?
• I remember reading — and feeling dismayed about — the 2003 New York Times article on educated women opting out of careers to stay home with their kids. Now I understand where they were coming from.
• Ah, kids and eating out. Here’s a Chronicle article about kids’ menus at Bay Area restaurants. It says something completely different from the Wall Street Journal article I wrote a post about here.
• A Wall Street Journal article about one of the most famous mommy bloggers of all, the writer of Dooce. If you don’t know anything about Heather Armstrong, she’s the blogger who got fired from her job for blogging about her bosses. Now she supports her family from the money her blog brings in.
• Associated Press article about the percentage of U.S. women — 77 percent, an all-time high — who breastfeed their babies.
• Wall Street Journal article about mothers who just have to dress their babies in what celebrities’ babies are wearing. There’s a blog that encourages such behavior! (www.celebrity-babies.com) Not that I’m judging. If you’ve got the money, spend it on your honey.
• From Slate, an XX Factor blog entry about the “motherhood crunch” and how “women are tripped up in science, tech, and engineering.”
• “The Hillary Lesson,” an essay in the New York Times Magazine about what Clinton’s candidacy says to girls and young women. And check out what Arianna Huffington has to say about Clinton.
• Front Line (a Wall Street Journal blog about women) post about the female brain drain in science
• A somewhat encouraging article about flex time and job sharing
• A lengthy but mostly interesting New York Times Magazine article on division of labor in the household titled “When Mom and Dad Share it All.” (Too bad about the length, too. If it were shorter more women could probably get their husbands to read it.)
• There’s a new column in the Wall Street Journal called Cheapskate. It looks like it will run on Thursdays. Might be worth keeping an eye out for, because I know many stay-at-home moms are always looking for money-saving tips or ideas. (Even though I’m no longer a SAHM, I still feel like I need to keep thinking like one. Nothing’s permanent, especially in the newspaper industry.)
• A recent article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about a working dad struggling to find work-life balance reminds me there’s plenty of room on this boat.

Tools

• In some households — unfortunately, not in mine — having the mom quit her job is actually cost-effective. Here’s an online calculator from Parents.com that helps figure it out.