By Una LaMarche 5/23/12 12:07pm

Mothers Superior

ZinaSaunders_BreastFeeding

What About Boob?: It’s All Fun and Games Until Somebody Breastfeeds a 3-Year-Old

I was breastfed until I was 4 years old. Or 5, maybe. My mother has always been fuzzy on the exact math. I choose to go with 4, because as it is, people tend to look so shocked that I’m afraid their lower jaws might actually fracture were I to add a full year to my tenure suckling on what I reportedly liked to call “nippy.”

As you might imagine, this information became humiliating to me right around the time I sprouted my own breasts (sixth grade or seventh grade, depending on which breast you want to date from—they were Irish twins). Read More

By Una LaMarche 5/01/12 9:30am

Mothers Superior

Web_-IceCream_David_Saracino2

Ice Cream Anti-Social: Slope Parents Fear Playground Popsicle Pusherman

I was shocked—shocked—to hear about the backlash that erupted a few weeks ago after a mom on the Park Slope Parents message board complained about ice cream vendors infiltrating our local playgrounds, in a craven attempt to force their obesity-promoting, lactose-intolerant intolerant products on innocent children.

In the interest of full disclosure, I was eating a pint of ice cream—well, gelato—when I received my weekly PSP digest, which was otherwise a lovely and harmless collection of stories about people getting help spying on their nannies using iPhone apps, or choosing the right Jewish day school, that read like an ever-so-slightly ethnic Nicholas Sparks novel. But when I got to the blast about the the ice cream incident, I pushed back my stracciatella in shame. Read More

By Kim Velsey 4/02/12 4:15pm

The Parenting Trap

Responsible for so many spoiled days at the park (bigoteetoe, flickr)

I Scream, You Scream, Park Slope Parents Scream For No More Ice Cream

It’s one thing to stop for a pomegranate frozen yogurt on the way home from the park, but Park Slope parents have had it with those ice cream trucks that are always lurking around the playground. (And no, this has nothing to do with boycotting Israel.)

In true Park Slope fashion, parents have taken to the infamous Park Slope Parents blog to air their grievances with the trucks, The New York Post reports. And rather than teaching kids to deal with temptations and master their impulses, parents would like those temptations removed. Now! Please. Read More

By Una LaMarche 3/05/12 8:00am

The Parenting Trap

Björn this way

Behold a Pale Listserv: Could 666 Yahoo! Messages from Park Slope Parents be a Bad Sign?

I signed up for Park Slope Parents, the notorious community listserv for procreating BroBos, under absurdly apropos circumstances: via 4G roaming Internet on an iPad 2 in a car on my way back from a President’s Day weekend trip to New England. As I typed away on my convenient keyboard dock, my five-month-old son sat beside me in his car seat, idly drooling on a tarted-up chew toy crafted to resemble an anthropomorphic toadstool with a nipple protruding from its head like a jaunty, pastel fez. This toy retails for almost $20, and is considered a steal at my local baby boutique, where it was sold to me by a cute lesbian shopkeep who favors ironic trucker hats.

The moment you realize you’ve become a cliche—strolling down upper Madison Avenue in your fur and turban, say, or arranging the artisanal cheese and pluot plate at the reception for the dystopian YA novel you Kickstarter-published—is a New York rite of passage. And there on I-95, as I sent in the $35 annual fee, I knew I had crossed the paper-thin threshold that separates the merely pretentious from the parodic: I had become the consummate SAHM (stay-at-home mom). Read More