Bonnie, Jess, I confess I haven't been able to read Jess's piece about talking to her mom yet; I started to, and it brought tears to my eyes. Like Jess, I used to talk to my mom all the time, about matters large and small. (Should I refrigerate peanut butter? Should I take that job? Who are you voting for?) But my mother passed away on Christmas Day of 2008. And so I can't talk to her. I didn't think that Mother's Day was going to hit home at all, because my mother, a wry pragmatist, considered it a fake holiday. In her view, it was more about Hallmark than her. Still, we often gave her flowers, or, in the past few years, when she was sick, made a point of seeing her. One reason that Mother's Day is hard, though, is that I see all these other daughters talking about their mothers. The hardest part about losing her are times when I realize that the unique mother-daughter relationship is one I will never again experience—not as a daughter, at least. And frankly, the idea of having children without her around to impart her wisdom makes the whole enterprise seem a lot less appealing. I'm sure that will change over time, but the pain won't. In fact, there's a moving piece about this over on the New York Times parenting blog. So this Mother's Day, I will be thinking most about daughters and sons; the motherless ones.

Tags: Mother's Day

To all you young men out there swearing to mom this Sunday that when you grow up, you'll be lucky to find a woman just like her, and to all you moms out there who believe what your sons are telling you, we are about to burst your bubble. Christine Whelan, a professor of sociology at the University of Iowa, has been analyzing results of a survey taken steadily by college students over the last seven decades asking what they want in a mate.

Men, it turns out, are increasingly interested in an educated woman who is a good financial prospect and less interested in chastity. Women are increasingly interested in a man who wants a family and less picky about whether he's always Mr. Nice Guy.

In the latest survey, Whelan included questions about a mother's work history. She hypothesized that men whose mothers didn't work wouldn't care so much about smarts or good financial prospects. (Which is also what I've always assumed).

Well, it turns out the differences are slight. Men who grew up with stay-at-home and working mothers ranked "education, intelligence" among the top six traits they want in a mate, and "good financial prospects" among the top 12. Now that's progress.

Tags: what men want in a mate

On this Mother's Day weekend, here's a shout out to Jessica Grose's mother who as Jess writes, "didn't want to get in the way" of her college age son's and daughter's independence so she would never call them, though they could call her whenever they wanted. It takes a lot of self-discipline to not call an adult daughter. A lot. As I confessed in Slate last year, being available to our grown children without inserting ourselves into their lives is a very tough balance beam to walk. One of the hardest tasks a mother has is recognizing when the job is done. Congratulations to all the moms who have graduated to being the person who can still listen, cheer, and celebrate but somehow refrain from meddling.

Tags: adult children, grown children, jessica grose, Mother's Day, motherherhood

While Bristol Palin was enjoying another prime time moment making her ambassadorial debut as the Candie's Foundation's abstinence spokesperson—Meghan, you're right, what dizzy come-hither-hypocrisy is at work there!—you probably missed the Obama administration's low-key unveiling, in the budget, of its teenage pregnancy prevention approach. Mature discretion in tackling this hot-button issue: Now there's a style that seems to send the right sober signals. In a minimal, and carefully muted, paragraph in the budget blueprint, the administration emphasizes its support of "evidence-based" programs while clearly aiming not to get both sides all riled up right away. Thus you won't find such phrases as "comprehensive sex education" and "abstinence-only." Instead, you'll find references to "medically-accurate" information and to the "importance of abstinence."

But don't bet on the success of efforts to avoid the rhetoric of arousal. Already some reproductive health advocates are complaining that the formulations fudge too much. And it's not clear that abstinence proponents, whose funding is being cut, are going to buy the administration line, reported in the Wall Street Journal, that they could qualify for funds set aside in a pot for developing and testing "innovative strategies." They surely can't hope for a penny if Bristol is their idea of innovation.

Tags: abstinence education, Bristol Palin, Candie's, comprehensive sex education, Obama, teenage pregnancy

More on Rosen attacking Sotomayor: It's not just women judges who get blasted for being tough. It's also tough male judges—including judges whose intellectual and personal qualifications for the Supreme Court it's hard to imagine anyone questioning. As a commenter at the New Republic points out, it's worth comparing the complaints about Sotomayor's temperament and demeanor to what lawyers have to say about a couple of male lions of the bench, Frank Easterbrook and Richard Posner, both of the 7th Circuit. From the entry on Easterbrook in the Almanac of the Federal Judiciary:

Lawyers were critical in their assessment of Easterbrook's courtroom demeanor. "His courtroom demeanor is not good for lawyers." "He creates a discourteous environment in the courtroom. He likes to circle his kill and gives a nod and a wink to his clerk when he catches his prey." ... "He berates lawyers mercilessly if that is the direction he is going. If he is with you, be quiet, and if he opposes your position watch out and get ready to be embarrassed in open court. He berates lawyers. It is almost a game to him." "If you are on the right side, it is fun. If you're on the wrong side, it is hell. The rules of civility for the circuit have not reined him in." ... He bullies weak lawyers and enjoys it." "His attitude is the worst. He berates lawyers and shows off to his clerks how powerful and smart he is."

From the Almanac entry on Posner:

Lawyers said Posner can be tough on lawyers. "His demeanor is not very good. He talks a lot more than he should. He wants all to know how smart he is." "He can talk down to lawyers and give them an extremely hard time." ... "His agenda seems to be to make lawyers uncomfortable, and he succeeds. ... "He often crosses over the line in his demeaning treatment of lawyers." "He can be very condescending." "His demeanor is simple to describe—take no prisoners. If I never see him again, it will be O.K."

Some of the lawyers were more appreciative. Just like some of them had nicer things to say about Sotomayor. But tough judges are hard on lawyers, and hard for them. There's plenty more to be said about how the judges could handle themselves better. But at the moment, my question is this: If Posner was on a Supreme Court short list, would Rosen or anyone else write The Case Against Posner because some lawyers think he's a big meanie? That one's also hard to imagine.

Tags: frank easterbrook, richard posner, Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme Court

Bristol Palin is partnering with the Candie's Foundation, a subset of the Candie's company, to promote "abstinence" as a way to "raise awareness" and "combat teen pregnancy." Never mind that one form of awareness, of course, is the awareness that pregnancy and STD rates often drop when teenagers are educated about birth control. Or that abstinence-only education doesn't seem to make teen pregnancy rates go down. Forget all that, but consider, for a second, the cultural incoherence of launching a huge new campaign to promote abstinence when this is the home page for your clothing and accessories company. Britney looks great, but she also looks, well, highly sexualized. There's a hall of mirrors effect here worth noting: No other young female star of the past ten years at once tried to sell herself as a virginal young thing while embracing the media sexualization of her as fully as ol' Britney. (Remember when she appeared barely clad and highly waxed in Rolling Stone?) In this sense, Britney is actually the perfect figurehead for Candie's, which is trying to have its cake and eat it too. On the one hand, the Candie's Foundation represents the company's deliberate embrace of cultural family values. On the other hand, of course, the company peddles in the same old implicit commercial messaging to girls: namely, that a girl's worth lies in her overt sex appeal, which, by the way, can really be enhanced with a fabulous new Candie's Floral Lace Thong for Juniors or this Candie's Studded Cold Shoulder Top. Then again, maybe I'm cynical, and Candie's isn't peddling teen sexuality at all. It just realized that sometimes a 15-year-old girl practicing abstinence likes to dance around in the privacy of her own bedroom in her lace-thong undies. Just like Sandra Dee.

Tags: Bristol Palin, Britney Spears, Candie's

The Root has a set of takes on motherhood today (and yesterday, and tomorrow). We’ve allowed four women in their 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s riff on just how significant is it is that someone, somewhere, grinned and bore it—literally—pushing a football-sized version of themselves out into the world.

They’re all great pieces. I notice that in the younger ages, there is downward pressure—the being-a-daughter part takes center stage. In your 30s, there may be kids, but things turn inward—Rebecca Walker sums up mothering at that age as being “about getting your proverbial sh*t together.” Forty-something Salatheia Bryant-Honors, who lost her mother, feels both at once. But of course, the tale with which I identify most closely is from my friend Helena Andrews, who writes from her 20s with the specter of maternity breathing down her neck:

If you’ve ever been to a wedding, funeral or father-daughter purity ball, then you’ve sat—perhaps teary-eyed—through John Mayer’s “Daughters.” The song is the audio version of a Lifetime movie event. Basically it’s about how some girl got so messed up by her parents that now she can’t truly love the man standing on her steps with his heart in his hand.

The last two lines of the hook are something like a eulogy: “Girls become lovers, who turn into mothers. So mothers, be good to your daughters, too.” Why not “girls become lovers who turn into. ...” something other than mothers?

Why, indeed? I’m certainly not averse to motherhood—I’ve seen some pretty great examples of it in my life. But like Helena’s, my own wonderful mother has also suddenly been afflicted with “a crazy case of the ‘grandbabies.’” At dinner in Washington this week to celebrate our mutual birthdays, she was way unsubtle about her desire for me to get hitched and start cranking out some grandkids. She jabbed me and said that I was “ready.” I got up to go to the bathroom. She waxed nostalgic about the joys of raising me and my sister—Irish (or Nigerian) twins—while my dad completed his medical residency 300 miles away. I swapped my empty wine glass for hers. She described what sounded like awful sacrifices and stresses. I joked about how lame it must have been to be pregnant-to-bursting with me on her 28th birthday. Still, she persisted in her relentless advocacy for early marriage, and little ones for her to go all Marion Robinson on.

This is all by way of saying that Mireille Grangenois has singlehandedly made me reconsider my glib eye-rolling. All of The Root’s storytellers do wonderful jobs of explaining their lives as women and mothers, but Grangenois, a media executive, gives a particularly honest take on what it’s like to have an 11-year-old at age 53—just as everyone else seems to be having all the fun. “I am flanked on both sides by the comparatively carefree existence of two other women in my peripheral orbit. My husband Steve’s ex-wife celebrated her 60th birthday in December with surfing lessons in Costa Rica as she vacationed with their adult daughter.” My mom is no M.I.A., but she couldn’t be more excited to be empty-nesting at 52 (sorry, mom!), sipping wine at a trendy out-of-town restaurant, instead of changing diapers or, heaven forbid, still wrangling my hair.

She really needs to stop being right all the time.

Tags: early marriage, empty-nesting, Mother's Day, motherhood

In his response to the justified hoopla over his attack on Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Jeff Rosen writes:

I was satisfied that my sources's concerns were widely shared when I read Sotomayor's entry in the Almanac of the Federal Judiciary, which includes the rating of judges based on the collective opinions of the lawyers who work with them. Usually lawyers provide fairly positive comments. That's what makes the discussion of Sotomayor's temperament so striking. Rosen quotes a bunch of negative comments from attorneys-"overly aggressive," "abuses lawyers"—followed by a brief acknowledgment of a couple of tepidly positive ones—"good legal ability." She sounds like a bitch. Who'd want her on the Supreme Court?

Or many other women judges for that matter. Because this is how lawyers often talk about women on the bench. It's an old story. In 1994, in writing up the findings of the Ninth Circuit Gender Bias Task Force, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor noted that "attorney evaluations of judicial performance revealed a ‘pattern of bias;' ‘female judges were rated lower consistently than their male counterparts on every attribute measured.'" O'Connor was quoting a 1993 study by law professor Joyce S. Sterling. Here's another summary from a symposium by the National Association of Women Judges:

Many states conduct judicial performance evaluations, sometimes called bar polls, in which lawyers respond to a survey instrument querying their opinions about the judges in their communities. ... Often these evaluations have proven to be an open invitation to biased assessments in which competent, even-tempered female and minority judges are rated as subpar and lacking in judicial temperament. When Colorado law professor Joyce Sterling analyzed the Colorado Judicial Performance Evaluation utilized for the 1992 retention election to which nearly 11,000 attorneys responded, she found "a clear pattern of bias" with women judges ranked significantly lower than male judges. Not only did male attorneys rank female judges lower than men on every attribute measured, there were five attributes on which women lawyers ranked female judges significantly lower: compassion, courtesy, satisfactory performance as a motions judge, satisfactory performances as a settlement judge, and overall rating. This list is revealing because it shows that the expectations for women judges by both men and women are that they will be warm and nurturing. A male judge who strictly controls his courtroom runs a tight ship. His female counterpart is a bitch.

The bold is mine. Because I feel like shouting. Is this really where the conversation has to go when we talk about appointing a woman to the Supreme Court?

Tags: Sonia Sotomayor; Supreme Court; judges

What struck me most, Kerry, about Elizabeth Edwards interview with Oprah was her repeated insistence John's possible child with Rielle Hunter is irrelevant. She told Oprah that she doesn't know if the baby is John's (She also said John didn't know if the baby was John's, which reminds me of Emily's post wondering why, if Elizabeth Edwards has such an infallible bullshit detector, she's married to this dissembler in the first place) and that it doesn't matter. Here's a quote of her talking about the child, always an "it", at length:

"It doesn't make any difference to me [if Hunter's son is John's]. If I have to analyze why that should make a difference to me [it would only be because] I care about something completely extraneous to my life. That is not my life. And if we were to discover it was, that would be part of John's life, but it is not part of mine. And I cant see any upside to making it part of my life. It doesn't change anything. It doesn't change anything. It's not going to change my life in any way. I could try to make it change my life and could keep myself up about if I thought he was trying to start a family with this woman. That would be one thing, but I do I not think that's true. I do not by any stretch of the imagination think that's true. And therefore, it doesn't have any effect on me. Part of resilience is deciding to make yourself miserable about something that matters, or deciding to make yourself miserable over something that doesn't matter."

And her children's possible half sibling is something that doesn't matter? And can something, a something that's really a son, be "part" of John's life without being a part of hers? Does saying something won't change anything over and over make it true?

I found this exchange even more blinkered in the context of the entire interview, during which Edwards seemed, as she usually does, remarkably open, likeable, thoughtful, and authentic—as Hanna pointed out, her key trait. (In an age of disappearing privacy, it's worth remembering that we're not all equally equipped to kill our private lives. Some people, Edwards and Oprah among them, are better able to totally explode the distinction between their public and private lives by virtue of being more natural, comfortable, and open at television and publicity than the rest of us).

But on this subject, her husband's probable kid, Edwards seems willfully unthoughtful, as if she has artificially cordoned off one of the more painful aspects of her husband's philandering and decided that her ability not to think or feel about it means it doesn't warrant thoughts of feelings. I wonder if there will be another book that comes after Resilience, like Acceptance (or maybe Divorce).

Tags: Elizabeth Edwards, John Edwards, political wives, politics, Resilience

Thanks for all of the amazing Obama drawings you've been submitting for our Drawing Obama series. We're still on the prowl for more, so if you haven't yet, go scour the fridges and playrooms of homes with kids and send us whatever wonderful Obama portraits you turn up.

We now have the grisly counterpart to our princess-ified Obama: Monster Obama. Five-year-old Wyatt "makes everything he draws into a monster," writes his mother, Jayne Hayden. "To Wyatt, monsters can be good or bad—the thing that he seems to like about them is that they're powerful. So this is a portrait of power." For those who can't read Wyatt speak, Jayne provides this translation of the text on the drawing: "monst/ r brocobom/ u."

Are those the hands of Wyatt's monsters reaching for the jack-o-lantern Obama pictured below? Exposed light bulbs? Prickly boom mics? Only the artist, 7-year-old Nathan, knows for sure. This one was submitted by his mom, Janice Malloy.

And this Fairey-inspired piece comes to us from Eric Gollihar, whose 6-year-old daughter, Anna, works in dry-erase marker on whiteboard.

Tags: obama kid art