Sure flowers and chocolates are great, but I think I know just the thing for Mother's Day: Flexible work options. Earning a good living while still having time to take care of your family is the best gift ever. And I know it can be done, having recently witnessed family life in the Netherlands, where a mix of employer and government policies have made it possible for virtually anyone to work part time.

Okay, maybe a change in employment policy doesn’t say “I love you” the same way jewelry and verse do. But the way things are now, far too many American mothers have to choose between working far more than they’d like to. And their limited options leave many working moms and many stay-at-home moms miserable.

For those who stay home, the financial consequences are dire. Despite the popular notion that most mothers who don’t work outside the home are mostly wealthy elites, stay-at-home moms actually tend to be less educated and poorer than the rest of mothers, as we learned from recent census numbers. Many of these moms, especially younger ones, simply can’t find work that pays enough to cover their childcare costs.

Meanwhile, mothers who work for pay often do so full time—even when they’d prefer not to. Indeed, the U.S. has one of the highest rates of full-time working women in the world. But, whether they’re doing it because they need the income, the health insurance or simply because they can’t find decent part-time alternatives, many of these mothers would rather be working less. According to a recent Pew poll, 60 percent of these full-time working women with children under 18 would prefer part-time jobs.

Our government and workplaces still haven’t accommodated the bumpy reality of parenting. We’re the only industrialized nation without paid maternity leave. Without that, paid sick leave, or much assistance with childcare, working full-time while being a parent is stressful. Working fathers often feel this same stress, though the stereotype of what men want doesn’t encourage them to say so.

It’s worth taking a look at how the Dutch approached the issue of building a truly family-friendly workplace. In the Netherlands, workers can tailor almost any job to a less than full-time schedule. So three-quarters of working Dutch women and almost a quarter of Dutch men have part-time jobs—and not the low-paying, low-status type most available here.

When I recently met with Dutch families in which both parents worked part-time, their lives seemed decidedly saner than what I’ve witnessed—and lived—in this country. All of which got me thinking about mother’s day gifts. Instead of the flowers and the chocolates, or perhaps in addition to the flowers and the chocolates, your mom might like a new kind of mother’s day gift—a pledge to ask your local Congressperson to champion flex-time work regulations. I know I would.

Tags: flex time, Mother's Day

Most failed adoptions don't end, as in the case of Torry Hansen, with a child on a plane back home--but adoptions do fail. The "disruption" rate for older adopted children is relatively high, when you consider the expectations of the families and kids involved: about 8% for 6- to 10-year olds, and 16 percent for children over 11. 16 out of a hundred--nearly 1 in six. It's an astonishingly depressing statistic, and one that I--an adoptive parent of an older child, although younger than 6--never heard before we adopted our daughter.

At The Daily Beast, Constantino Diaz-Duran asked the obvious follow up question: what happens to those kids? The answer is actually pretty encouraging: most are re-adopted by families more prepared to deal with needs that can range from extreme difficulties in learning to trust to violent and threatening behavior. Diaz-Duran spoke to a woman who'd had to disrupt her adoption of an 11-year-old girl who threatened suicide. "I'm not good for this child, I'm making things worse for this child. She's miserably unhappy and she wants to be dead.” And he spoke to parents who'd stepped up and adopted children with terrible stories: lying, stealing, attempting to poison a parent. Those parents were honest about their struggles--they've chosen a difficult road, and there's not much help available. But they're still at it. What's different about the family who disrupts, and the family who then adopts?

Maybe not that much. Diaz-Duran quotes Joyce Sterkel, a nurse and psychologist who runs a program for emotionally damaged adopted children: “many times, parents have stars in their eyes. They believe that love will heal and overcome all. ... But you cannot love away a child's genetic foundation, his pre-verbal memories or his intrauterine exposure to alcohol. These are facts. You have to stop being silly about this. You can't love that stuff away.” I'm not sure how one would wipe those stars out of a prospective parent's eyes--part of me thinks the stars are almost a pre-requisite for adoption in many cases (the parents who step up after failure being a big, and wonderful, exception). But while adoption already requires a large dose of parent education, maybe there should be more. And maybe we need something larger, as well. If we're going to be a country willing to adopt children who can't be parented or supported in their homelands, we may need, as a society, to offer them more support. That may be what Russia will seek when meetings regarding a bilateral treaty with the United States on adoptions takes place.

If it doesn't, things are unlikely to change, and if if does, it's not clear what might happen next.  What state, what county, has the money for additional services for adoptive families often already stretched by the costs of adoption and travel? One answer, for individual adoptive families in the process, is one often raised by commenters--why not adopt a child from U.S. foster care, a far less expensive endeavor? I didn't--I'm not one to judge, and I'm not judging. But my sense is that many prospective adoptive parents fear an American child's history--the extended family and the circumstances which may have led him or her into foster care. But many Russian kids (and others) have those issues and more, compounded by cultural and language differences that make their adjustments even more difficult. More realistic education about all of that might encourage some prospective adoptive parents to consider looking closer to home.

Photograph of child by Michielvd, available under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License.

Tags: adoption, KJ Dell'Antonia

Up until now, Pixie Hollow, the multiplayer online game from Disney only allowed players to don a female fairy persona. But now they will also be able to choose a male fairy, or “Sparrow Man,” as Pixie Hollow calls it. According to Salon, some children had longed for male fairies since the launch of the site, giving their female avatars’ short hair and gender-neutral names.  “Launching Sparrow Men was a direct response to our community’s feedback,” the site’s product director Jason Everett said, explaining some parents and grandparents had told the team “their sons and grandsons wanted to be able to play Pixie Hollow but they wanted to play as boy avatars,” and that girls also wanted to be able to play as boy avatars.

After the Peter Pan animated movies, Disney started a franchise around Tinker Bell and her fairy friends with movies, books, even a magazine. And though this might be Pixie Hollow’s first male fairy, this franchise has had male fairies and sparrow men for a while. Judging from the game’s popular forums, some children were a bit wary of how the addition of sparrow men could change the virtual world’s dynamics: "It might ruin the integrity of the game. It’s about being able to fly around the Hollow with little to no inhibition and enjoying your time...if we add Boy fairies, it may turn into one of those school dance things, where they find their places to hangout and we avoid them...lol," wrote player Dawn Starvale.

With the addition of the male avatar came a new member of the Never Council, which represents the team on the site and provides feedback to the players about the game. Fairies Kit, Marina and Sweet Pea welcome a sparrow man named Slate. Sadly, his name does not come from his deep love for a certain online magazine, but simply reflects his "tinker-talent."

Tags: Disney, pixie hollow, sparrow man

The American Academy of Pediatrics has released a report suggesting that it may be preferable to draw from girls' genitals a physicially insignificant drop of blood to satisfy the wishes of mostly immigrant, Muslim families who normally enage in female genital mutilation. That fom of ritual cutting can excise the clitoris and much of the labia, leaving the girls vulnerable to horrible sexual, urinary, and obstetrical problems for the rest of their lives. I abhor genital mutilation, support the world-wide efforts to eliminate the practice and make it socially unacceptable, and understand the reaction of activists against this concession. The Academy argues that sometimes performing a tiny nick might save a girl from being sent back to the home country for a dangerous, invasive procedure. The report itself presents nuanced arguments both for acceding in this way, and for holding the line against any acceptance of this ritual -- it cites a study from Scandinavia that found criminalizing this procedure and threatening the loss of custody of one's children led the immigrant Somali community to largely abandon it. But what comes through in the report is the agony of pediatricians worried that girls in their care might be mutilated unless a doctor performs this small act, and I think the report makes a persuasive case.

Per last night's 30 Rock episode, we are supposed to believe that heroine Liz Lemon is still single because her standards are too high—just like the thesis of Lori Gottlieb's book, Marry Him, which posits that many educated women pushing 40 are single because they are holding out for Mr. Perfect. Liz, for her part, is holding out for "Astronaut Mike Dexter," whom she described in a previous episode as someone who is monogamous, nice to his mother, thinks strip clubs are gross, will shut up when she watches Lost, has forearms like a "damn Disney prince" and who genuinely likes her. These do not seem like a completely outlandish list of requests.

"For crying out loud," says her colleague Jack's mother, hilariously. "This is what feminism does, it makes smart girls with nice birthing shapes believe in fairy tales." Later in the episode, we find out that Liz's mom had a chance to marry real Astronaut Buzz Aldrin—but that that would have been a mistake, because Aldrin (who makes a cameo) turned out to be a world class alcoholic and philanderer with a screw loose.

Certainly the basic premise of this episode is sound: No one should expect perfection from a mate. But that Liz decides that she should "settle"—and she does use that term—is completely disheartening! Especially since in another previous episode she decides that settling for the annoying Brit she meets at the dentist's office isn't going to make her happy. Can't the writers frame Liz's romantic life in any other way? Why does the trope of settling/not settling keep coming up in this way? Is it all just a send-up of stereotypes about single women? So many questions. Last night's episode embedded below.

Tags: 30 Rock, lori gottlieb, marry him: the case for settling for mr. good enough, settling

If it weren’t all so cuddly, the baby bonanza being served up this Mother’s Day could have a coals-to-Newcastle quality: Isn’t Mom supposed to get a break from the kids on her special day? But the cumulative message of Babies, the documentary, and Paul Bloom’s cover piece in the New York Times Magazine on "The Moral Life of Babies" is better than a massage at the spa this particular Sunday. The wisdom might even go on a Hallmark card: Mom can chill a little every day of the week, certainly during that exhausting first year, because Mother Nature is on the case. She’s got the basics of infant development under control, wherever and however they may unfold.

In Slate’s own very smart contribution to the baby-mania,"Can Your Baby Wield a Machete?," I think Nicholas Day misses this one-world spin when he says, “As the (epically cute) new Babies documentary makes clear, culture matters.” In fact, the point of the movie—and of his own piece, too—is to savor, not sweat, the specific developmental variations, however big they may be from baby to baby and setting to setting, because they’re all on a common theme. Whether raised in Bayanchandmani, Mongolia, or San Francisco, California (or Tokyo, or Opuwo, Namibia, all sites where Babies was filmed), babies between 0 and 1 nurse and cling to their mommies, suck their toes and anything else that strikes them, learn to crawl or get around somehow, watch and touch whatever they can (especially furry animals), make messes and get cleaned, learn to walk.

And that’s not all: Miles from the Infant Cognition Center at Yale University where Paul Bloom has done his work, there’s vivid confirmation of his finding that babies—whether they’re the aggrieved or guilty party, or both—display a rudimentary sense of justice. Or not so rudimentary, as in several riveting scenes of sibling-on-sibling violence in Babies. Watch the amazing opening vignette between Ponijao, the baby from Namibia, and a slightly older brother (or relative). She’s just bitten him and he bops her. She wails in the histrionic way of a victim who knows she’s not blameless; he keeps banging his rock on a stone, unapologetic. Now watch the older brother of Bayar, the show-stealing Mongolian star: As he swats the unsuspecting baby Bayar again and again with a scarf, making him cry, Degi keeps a nervous eye out for his mother.

No, she isn’t at the spa—she’s out dealing with the family’s animals. The brothers, for what it’s worth, are now very close, according to interviews with the parents—who all say, by the way, that watching the film was a great family outing. So much for that solo Sunday…

Still from Babies courtesy of Focus Features

Tags: Babies,, infant development, The Moral Life of Babies,

—The accused Times Square bomber's American-born wife has an Orkut.com profile, and it reveals a woman who embraces both American and Pakistani culture. [The Daily Beast]

—The American Academy of Pediatrics is taking a different approach to the fight against female genital mutilation on U.S. soil: Let doctors administer a tiny "nick." The Academy argues that this "pin prick" would keep immigrant parents from shipping their daughters off to have the entire clitoral hood removed abroad. [Salon]

—Are smart phones detrimental to your sex life? Yes, finds a study conducted by Bayer, which is developing a drug to treat female sexual function. But is it just men who are giving their iPhones all their affection? [Jezebel]

—Although they are more tolerant of extramarital sex than they were a decade ago, people over 65 are are having sex less frequently and finding it less satisfying, a new AARP study finds. Is it the financial stress? (Maybe Bayer can help.) [Washington Post]

—It can be frustrating, convoluted, and involve a lot of expensive song and dance, gay adoption. Anyone else feel a MUSICAL coming on? [New York Times]

—That pricey E.R.B. intelligence test your kids' pricey private school made them take to win a place in its hallowed halls? Some schools are dropping it, alleging that the pretest prep for which many parents also shell out big bucks skews results and limits the test's usefulness. [New York Times]

Photograph by Win McNamee/Getty Images.

Tags: we're talking about

Yesterday, XX Factor contributors shared their realizations about their mothers' identities outside the domestic sphere in honor of Mother's Day this Sunday. In the aftermath of her mother's death from cancer in her early 60s, Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Rosman did something similar: She decided to investigate the threads of her mother's life that had nothing to do with her role as mom. The result is the sweet and unvarnished portrait of Rosman's mother that is If You Knew Suzy.

From the beginning of the memoir, you know that Rosman isn't going to make this memoir a saccharine affair. She tells the reader up front that mother-daughter relationships are complicated, and does not shy from revealing her mother's less-than-stellar qualities. Suzy was materialistic (There is an entire chapter devoted to Suzy's eBay obsession), and she could be manipulative in the stereotypical mom way. Rosman tells a funny, familiar anecdote about how even when Suzy was almost dead from cancer, she still tells her daughter, "It'd be very healing for me if you had a baby." There are also amusing, ambivalent passages about Suzy's love of anything new age, which brought her comfort and drove her daughter batty.

None of this is to say that If You Knew Suzy is an unkind portrait of a mother—the image of Suzy Rosin that emerges is ultimately one of a truly caring, large-hearted person who mothered friends and protégés alike. Suzy was a Pilates obsessive, and she taught and truly mentored countless future Pilates instructors, teaching them far more than just exercises. There were Suzy's life-long friends from suburban Detroit, and her later-in-life friends from Tucson, all of whom adored the spunky-yet-demure woman. Though Rosman questions her mother's shopping obsession, whenever she needs to feel "powerful and sophisticated" she wears something from the "Dead Mother Collection," which makes her feel like she's got "Suzy Rosin juju pumping through my veins."

No one can ever know who their mother really is outside of the mother-child relationship—the history is too strong to allow for any objectivity. But they can learn to accept what they learn about their mother as a whole person, and Katherine Rosman does this with grace and humor.

Tags: if you knew suzy, katherine rosman, memoirs, Mother's Day