Men in Pink

In a meeting last week, another editor and I got to discussing the state of the food section of our paper. (Perhaps we were hungry.) He immediately went on a tangent (okay, we were hungry), talking about how he was so interested to learn recently of the history of food criticism; how the food pages, [...]

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The Real Lessons We Can Learn From Mad Men

Sure, there’s been a lot of chat about everything that’s wrong with Mad Men and why women in general and feminists in particular should hate its unrepentant misogynystic guts.  And let’s face it:  this is a show that glorifies gin, Lucky Strikes and getting laid (by anyone but one’s spouse). What’s not to hate, right? [...]

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Is Work-Life Balance The New Prince Charming?

Ahead of September’s “I Don’t Know How She Does It”–a movie based on Allison Pearson’s best-selling novel about the realities of life as a working mother, which stars Sarah Jessica Parker as the harried “She” in question–this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine ran a story about the film’s screenwriter, Aline Brosh McKenna, whose other credits [...]

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Are Supermoms Super Depressed?

This just in, ladies: Balancing a job and a family is hard! And, a recent study out of the University of Washington shows, the less difficult you expect it to be, the more likely you are to be depressed  when the rubber meets the road–when your expectations smack up against reality. Color us unshocked. The [...]

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Just Don’t Ask Her How She Juggles

Oh, Tina Fey. How do I love thee? In the current New Yorker, Tina Fey lays it all out there, as only she can. Work. Parenthood. Guilt. Aging. Enjoy: The writer’s daughter recently checked out a book from the preschool library called “My Working Mom,” which depicted a witch mother who was very busy and [...]

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Raised By Wolves

Weren’t we all? I came across that line Wednesday in a piece by Maureen Dowd, who quoted Michelle Obama as saying that her husband had spent so much time alone growing up that it was as if he had been raised by wolves. Love that phrase, don’t you? Think about it and you realize that, [...]

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There Is No Balance. Only Work

At least, that’s how it must look to researchers at UCLA who have come up with a landmark video picture of what work-life balance really means to today’s frantic families. The picture? Not so pretty. On the surface, it’s more than a little bit creepy: Thirty-two families that allowed social scientists from UCLA to videotape [...]

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Off the Clock: Killing the Cult of Busy-ness

What a day for a daydream. Just as we’re settling into another week of work after a blissful three-day weekend, here come three signs of intelligent life in the universe. The common denominator? Changing the norms of how we think of work — and maybe even chipping away at the cult of busy-ness that encourages [...]

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There is No Balance, Only Choices

This ever-elusive work-life balance thing we’re all so fond of talking about? Well, what if the cold, hard truth is that there’s just no such thing? I know, I know. Telling a woman who works and also has a life that there’s no such thing as work/life balance is pretty much on par with telling [...]

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Work and Life, Balanced: Just play cards?

The fix is in, at least according to a piece in the Guardian entitled “If you only do one thing this week, stop talking about work at home.” So simple. And yet. From the piece: Sharing your working life with your partner can give you perspective, reassurance and a chance to offload, but banging on [...]

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