All the Jewish parenting news you probably didn’t have time to read this week.
– The woman made famous by her cheeky Twitter parodies of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Spanish-ish, Rachel Figueroa-Levin, is a Jewish (and Puerto Rican) mamele. She blogs at The Misadventures of Mrs. Levin and tweets @jewyorican. She even tweeted while she was in labor with her now 8-month-old daughter, Adiella. (“Holy Frijole OWWW!” read one of her pre-delivery dispatches.) (The New York Times)
– Babble is out with a new list of the “Top 20 Hipster Baby Names.” (Think Atticus and Clementine.) For the record, we prefer the names on Kveller’s Jewish Baby Name Finder. (Think less pretentious.) (Babble)
– A new study purports to show that nursing mothers are more aggressive (while playing video games, that is) than their non-nursing counterparts. But perhaps the study’s real value is in proving, once and for all, that breastfeeding moms are less-than-ideal Nintendo opponents. (io9)
– Responding to a groundswell of Internet ire, J.C. Penney is no longer selling girls’ t-shirts with the intelligence-insulting message of “I’m too pretty to do homework so my brother has to do it for me.” Good riddance. (The Washington Post)
– Soleil Moon Frye, the Jewish actress whose portrayal of Punky Brewster taught children of the 1980s a thing or two about individualism (not to mention saying no to drugs, learning CPR and healing after a national tragedy), is out with a new book: In “Happy Chaos,” Frye, now a 35-year-old mother of two, advocates for embracing the messy chaos of parenthood. (The Today Show)
– Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Eve Weinbaum and Rachel Roth discuss the legacy of the early 20th century feminist Crystal Eastman, who, they say, was ahead of her time in understanding that “women’s freedom depends on resolving what we now call ‘work/family’ conflict.” (The Los Angeles Times)
– The mother of the free-range parenting movement, Lenore Skenazy, reminds us that 30 years ago, children weren’t considered ready for first grade unless they could “travel alone in the neighborhood [four to eight blocks] to store, school, playground, or to a friend’s home.” (Free-Range Kids)
– And just in case you’ve been living under a rock, Beyoncé is pregnant, revealing (and reveling in) her baby bump onstage at the MTV Video Music Awards. B’sha’a tova, Ms. Knowles. (MTV)
