MALE AND FEMALE are more than biological realities. They are spiritual essences and cultural ideals. Bonald, a writer who takes his pseudonym from the French  monarchist Louis de Bonald, describes these ideals at his site, Throne and Altar. He writes:

Of course, each nature has its characteristic deformations, but it is always a gross error to identify a thing with its deformation. (more…)

IN THE ANNALS OF surrogate mothering, British nannies and Southern nannies are the most famous, two utterly different species, now mostly extinct. In response to the recent posts on nannies near and far, a reader sends this beautiful excerpt from Stephen Vincent Benet’s John Brown’s Body about a black slavewoman, “matriarch of the weak and young:”

(more…)

  WE HAVE about three feet of snow in our yard here in Pennsylvania. That may seem unexceptional for residents of Buffalo or Syracuse but for us, it's very exceptional. During the blizzard on Wednesday, we lost power for ten hours and a gargantuan  pine fell across our road. At the height of the storm, these words from the Bellows Falls Times in Vermont seemed apt. They were written right after the Blizzard of 1888: "No paths, no streets, no sidewalks, no light, no roads, no guests, no calls, no teams, no hacks, no trains, no moon, no meat, no milk, no paper, no mail, no news, no thing -- but snow."

IN THE THIRD OF a series of essays on the decline in literacy, Thomas F. Bertonneau explores the connection between memory and popular culture. He describes introducing his university students to folk and music-hall songs. He says, “there is a startling difference between the songs that students consume and the songs that their grandparents and great grandparents sang, the memory of which the commercialization of music rudely interrupted, starting about fifty years ago”:  (more…)

It’s hard to overstate the importance of two French intellectuals, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, in the history of postmodern romance. Much has been written that discredits their image, but the fairy tale lives on.

(more…)

 IN RESPONSE TO the previous posts on nannies,  which can be found  here and here, a working nanny writes in to share her observations. By the way, Eloise, the famous character who roamed the halls of the Plaza Hotel, was able to have a perfectly decent life with her “rawther” British nanny, who never kept Eloise from her very necessary adventures.

Mrs. Cote writes:

As someone who is currently a professional nanny, I just wanted to thank you for pointing out that there are those of us who take our work seriously. You are right to point the low paid, usually foreign women are not actually nannies. At best they can be called babysitters. They should be called dangerous since they are completely unsupervised and are actually allowed to take their charges out of the home. A true governess would work with school age children while a nanny/nurse would care for babies and very young children.

(more…)

Fitzgerald writes:

True to form, most Super Bowl commercials showed men in a variety of convenient misandrist stereotypes. But none were quite as repellent and creepy as the Doritos ad with the kid slapping his mother’s date. Revolting on many levels.

(more…)

Alex A. from England writes:

An ongoing debate on TV over here has been concerned with the effects of “pushy parenting” on children. Do parents who put a contented marriage first and their children’s demands second, provide a more stable environment for raising children? It’s a commonplace to observe that children will divide and rule if parents don’t support each other in establishing reasonable boundaries. But perhaps modern child-centered imperatives are undermining the “united front” that parents often need to present in order to socialize their children successfully.

Advice from family therapist and Wall Street Journal writer David Code has entered the debate. He has written a book, which I haven’t read, entitled, To Raise Happy Kids, Put Your Marriage First.

If you have the time and inclination to read it, I have provided a link to a British newspaper article in which some of the issues are discussed.

(more…)

LAST WEEK, government statisticians reported that women have surpassed men in numbers in the workforce, largely pushed to a slim majority by the recession which has been harder on male occupations in construction and manufacturing.

Hip Hip Hooray for working women! Let’s look at the ten most common jobs women hold and see what a wonderful milestone this is:

(more…)

WHEN WALKING through the tonier section of Central Park West in Manhattan a few months ago, I couldn’t help noticing the nannies. They were everywhere, mostly black and Hispanic women, pushing strollers or leading young children by the hand. What was most striking, other than the racial differences between them and their white charges, was the look on their faces.

They wore expressions of deadly boredom, of almost zombie-like indifference. Here in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the world, the children were handed over to zombies during the day.

(more…)

This is one of the top ten bridal gowns by Vera Wang, a big name in wedding fashion.  Many of her dresses make women look like waifs who have stumbled into chiffon parachutes, but this satin dress is just plain bizarre. I’m having trouble reading it. Is it an allusion to mermaids? Interestingly, all of Wang’s gowns feature bare shoulders, arms and upper chests. Women pay many thousands for these hideous get ups and they don’t even get sleeves.

As Kidist Paulos Asrat says, “Beauty is the last thing on the minds of modern designers. Edginess, the avant-garde, experimentation and originality win over aesthetics.” You can read Kidist’s other thoughts on Wang wear at Camera Lucida.

(more…)