Our 4-year (and counting!) Experiment

This past weekend, our daughter turned four (!!!), marking four years of parenting for my husband and me -- and four years of thinking maternally and paternally: you know, parentally. As I read "The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes" to her every evening this weekend (and some mornings!), I've found myself thinking about the role that books have played in our parenting. My students asked me if I read all of the parenting books when I was pregnant, and I did read a lot of them -- but really, the ones that have taught me the most have been the ones I've read her: the ones with messages I want her to embrace, the ones with sassy, spunky girls I (mostly) want her to emulate, the ones with mothers I aspire to be for her -- like the Country Bunny. The whole world is contained between the covers of books, it seems...
Happy birthday, Monkey-girl!

Why the "Research Paper" Isn't Working - Inside Higher Ed

We've been talking a bit in class about the research paper that's due in mid-May, and in that context, I found this piece quite interesting: Why the "Research Paper" Isn't Working - Inside Higher Ed

The Child You Didn't Dream Of - Newsweek

For those of you desperately seeking a happy mom facing challenges -- check out Benj's story and his mom, Priscilla: The Child You Didn't Dream Of - Newsweek

Awesome quote to share

The grad students are reading Ariel Gore's essay "High Risk: Who a Mother Should Be" for our discussion tomorrow, and this paragraph just jumped out at me:

The world tells us all--in a thousand ways--that there is no margin for error in mothering. But I am here to tell you that there is a margin, and it is wide. Just as the occasional piece of chocolate cake can't make you fat, just as a few days off won't make you a lousy employee, blowing it as a mother every once and a while doesn't spell disaster for your kids' psyches. It just doesn't.

And now I'm off to read Purplicious for the 27th time this week....

One of the scariest novels I ever read...

remains mere impressions in my mind now, decades later. I can't remember the title (even with 10 minutes of Internet searching) or the author, just the bare bones of the plot: a woman decides to leave her husband and two children to go to graduate school. When I read it (as an undergraduate), I just couldn't understand how someone could leave her children like that OR how she could live in the stultifying environment that was her life -- and the novel made it pretty clear that there was no middle ground. So I found the atmosphere of the novel claustrophobic.
Now that I'm the mother of an almost four-year-old, I have a deeper appreciation for just how gut-wrenching her decision must have been -- as well as less sympathy for her because she sidelined her own needs to follow a socially prescribed path, leading to heartbreak for her children. As we read Colm Toibin's The South and Michael Cunningham's The Hours, I'm sure we'll be exploring this dilemma from a multitude of angles.

The Natural End of Schooling - Inside Higher Ed

Here's an interesting take on some of the angst surrounding (higher) education right now:
The Natural End of Schooling - Inside Higher Ed