Sometimes there’s so much “mom news” it can be hard to sort through it all—and sometimes the news is so important we want to share it with our readers so we can all be well-informed. Here’s some of the most important articles we’ve seen in a long time.
So take 20 or 30 minutes, if and when you can, and look at the following stories. They’ll change the way you see motherhood and womanhood.
If you’ve ever struggled with your weight, your eating and your relationship to food — and you’re thinking about how to raise your kids in a society that’s so fixated on appearance, you’re not alone. The New York Times Magazine’s Taffy Akner took a long hard look at the rebranding of Weight Watchers in the “Wellness” era and discovered that beneath the more positive sheen, the same old obsession and self-loathing lurks. “Weight isn’t neutral. A woman’s body isn’t neutral. A woman’s body is everyone’s business but her own,” she writes. “Even in our attempts to free one another, we were still trying to tell one another what to want and what to do.”
What’s it really like to pump at work? An interactive, beautiful project from the Washington Post explores the stories of different moms who pump, with anecdotes like “I would climb under my desk, set up my equipment, pump and answer emails.” ““I had a 20-minute lunch that I used to pump in my classroom.”“I work with a lot of men, and I can tell that they get annoyed when I tell them I have 20-minute slots blocked out.”
What would you do if your labor and childbirth turned into a medical emergency? NPR talked to moms who came close to a fatal incident during or after childbirth to get their advice, and it’s absolutely crucial (and upsetting reading). Do you want to be uplifted after reading all this dismal maternal mortality stuff? Vox looked at how California is bucking the national trend and looking out for moms in childbirth.
It can be done.
