ELLEN writes:

I wanted to bring up yet another cultural problem that women in the workforce have created in our society: The awkwardness of dealing with “stay-at-home dads.” When my child becomes friends with someone, it’s nice to have a play date. I can have a little grown-up time with the mother; they can run around and be kids with their friends. The problem with stay-at-home dads is that suddenly you as a married woman are expected to spend time alone with a married man, and everyone has to pretend like this is okay. It’s not appropriate and I believe it can lead to improper relationships. Read More »

Still Life by Giovanna Garzoni

CHRISTIE writes:

I am so grateful to have found your website. I am struggling with my current situation and feel a light of hope shining in – the possibility of truly engaging my mind while being a housewife.

I am a college educated, stay-at-home mother of two young, elementary school children. Having come up for air out of the whirlwind life of preschoolers at home, I am struggling with the rhythm and meaning of my daily life. I physically labor each day cleaning and cooking, etc. for my family, but my mind feels dull much of the time.

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“REAL FAMILIES,” is the name of a personal-essay series at Salon “that celebrates the surprising and ever-shifting nature of domestic life in the 21st century.”  Salon means “surprising and ever-shifting” in the sense that tornados and hurricanes that lift whole houses off the ground and hurl them into the air are “surprising and ever-shifting.”

The latest entry is “Why I left my children,” by the Japanese-American, prize-winning author Rahna Reiko Rizzuto. Rizzuto has outdone Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert by leaving not just her husband but her children too and then writing about it, in the apparent hope of invigorating discussion at women’s book clubs everywhere. (Since many top women writers gloat over their damaged marriages and homes, investing this destruction with drama in order to make money and careers, the competition for any award for the worst wife or mother among them would be quite stiff.) When Rizzuto’s children were toddlers she left them for a fellowship in Asia. Then she divorced her husband and settled down the block from her family. This, she discovered, was a good way to raise her children: Read More »