Tags
Babble, Breastfeeding, Children, Entitled Children, Family, Hyphenated names, Infant formula, Last names, Names, Parenting, Play
** A collection of articles and other fun stuff from around the web. Mostly dealing with babies, parenting, moms, etc. But not always. **
Risks of Formula Feeding Your Baby (Wow. Really interesting stuff. Even one bottle of formula can increase the risk of future allergies.)
Ask Not What You Can Do For Your Child – Ask What Your Child Can Do For You (Great premise – how to not create an entitled child)
Is a Family’s Identity Muddled when Mom and Dad Have Different Last Names? (I almost didn’t want to link to this because it just annoys me, but whatever. Seriously? As the child of a two-last-name family and a woman who did not change her name, I say, if you can’t create a family identity except by having the same last name, you have bigger problems. Not to mention the writing is less than stellar. How is it that this chick gets to write for Babble, anyways?)
Children of the Hyphens, the Next Generation (And a more intelligent article on names and naming)
The Importance of Child’s Play: In striving to make our kids super safe and super smart we have turned them into bored blobs. (Yes. Just, yes. Let the kids play!)
That article about your children’s identity being muddled… I don’t know what to do with that one. Some of the things she mentioned are reasons that factored into why I did end up changing my name when I got married. The more practical things like I didn’t want to always have paperwork to prove my children were mine, or names being too long for forms, etc. But… multiple family identities? We all already have multiple family identities. My nuclear family of origin, my mother’s side, my father’s side, my family I created when I married my husband, my in-laws. I’m a daughter, wife, granddaughter, niece, aunt, and cousin, whatever my last name is.
Yeah, I get the practical stuff. When I was married to my ex-husband I had two last names and it was a huge pain in the ass. But her premise that without the same name you somehow don’t have a family identity? It just bothers me. Her implication is almost that a woman who keeps her name is somehow selfish or not a good mother. Not cool.