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Summer on the Coast of Maine, Doggy-Style

July 2nd, 2008 · 19 Comments

I’m spending this week on the coast of southern Maine. If I had a choice, I’d spend most of the week as I am right now: in a low-slung beach chair, toes buried in the warm sand, and book propped open on my lap, pages ruffled by the strong wind off the water.
Every few minutes [...]

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Tags: Business · Children · Dogs · Parenting · Pets · Teenagers · travel

Beta Before Alpha

June 8th, 2008 · 25 Comments

My friend Rachel emailed me an article the other day from Yankelovich, a market research company. The article, produced just after Mother’s Day, heralded the arrival of “Beta Moms” and their “newfound acceptance that being a ‘just good enough for my family’ mother…speaks to a more forgiving, laid-back approach to parenting.”
Unlike “Alpha Moms” (or, as [...]

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Tags: Children · Family History · Media · Parenting · Women

Korean Otters

April 30th, 2008 · 38 Comments

My friend Maryse called me the other day with a question, she said, about her daughter Laurie-Maude, who is in the same grade as my daughter Caroline. It was Korea Day at school, she said, and Laurie-Maude wanted to dress as an Otter. “How do Otter’s dress?” Maryse wanted to know.
At least, that’s what I [...]

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Tags: Children · Family History · Women

The Shadow Knows: Watching Superbad with My Son

April 3rd, 2008 · 30 Comments

When I was a kid, in the 70s, I used to swipe my older brother’s Mad magazines. A lot of the humor was over my head, but that only added to the allure: This was a peep show into an unknown world, and I was lusting to grow up.
One Mad feature I did get, however, [...]

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Tags: Children · Dogs · Media · Parenting · Secrets · Teenagers

Competitive Parenting As Child’s Play

March 24th, 2008 · 26 Comments

If April is the cruelest month, March has to be the strangest. At least, this March: What a strange few weeks it’s been. Silda Spitzer stands by Eliot; Gilligan’s Mary Ann is a stoner.
Then, last night, as I was watching my daughter thumb through a new catalog from a local toy store, I noticed small [...]

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Tags: Children · Parenting · Pop Culture

Is 18 the New 8?

February 28th, 2008 · 24 Comments

In her book released last fall, Deceptively Delicious, Jessica Seinfeld slips chickpeas into her chocolate chip cookies and purees butternut squash into her mac and cheese. The general premise is that kid food is fried and white. But if you can slip in something on the sly—say, cauliflower into mashed potatoes, or sweet potato into [...]

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Tags: Children · Food · Parenting · Pop Culture · Technology