On Child-Free Weddings

Over at Feministe, there is a discussion on whether banning children from weddings — which is becoming a trend, apparently — should be perceived as offensive to parents who are invited. Lots of virtual ink is spilled detailing children’s propensity for undecorous behavior, the poor parenting skills of people who reproduce (as oppose to the child-free, who frequently emerge in these discussions as the experts on proper parenting), and why whole classes of adults are not excluded from such events based on unacceptable behavior of certain of their members, while excluding children is okay.

Do Your Kids a Favor: Send Them to Daycare

Image by digitalart

The American Psychological Association’s recent announcement that working mothers experience greater levels of happiness and lower rates of depression than their stay-home counterparts is not exactly a revelation. Nor is it surprising that a number of Internet commenters have reacted to the “news” with a faux concern that working mothers make children unhappy, and that there is nothing worse for our kids than this new and dangerous trend of being left with (gasp!) paid strangers for most of the day. Such comments are based on one of the most enduring myths about parenting — that historically, children (at least in the Western world) were raised as nature intended, by their closest family. History, however, is quite different.