Friday, August 01, 2008

Mojo Mom Podcast: How to Avoid the Mommy Trap

We've made it to August and I bet I am not the only Mojo Mom who is burned out! This is the first time in a long time that I have not blogged for a whole week. Fortunately, I have a new podcast to share with you, Mojo Mom and How to Avoid the Mommy Trap.

Listen to the podcast now:


In this week's show:

Amy and Sheryl discuss the recent NY Times article about parents who just can't seem to let go of their children while the kids are at summer camp.

Then we meet Julie Shields, author of one of Mojo Mom's favorite books, How to Avoid the Mommy Trap. Julie's strategies help couples lay out a roadmap for truly shared parenting.


You can learn more about Julie's work at her website, MommyTrap.com.

The article that Julie and I discussed that emphasizes equally-shared parenting was Lisa Belkin's New York Times Magazine feature, When Mom and Dad Share It All.

Sheryl and I talked about the NY Times story, Dear Parents: Please Relax, It's Just Camp, and then yesterday Judith Warner wrote about it in her latest blog post, Camp Codependence.

This week my kid went to sleep-away camp for the first time and there was very little drama, certainly none of the kind reported in the Times. I have to say, sometimes it's a relief to live outside the New York hothouse. Down here in North Carolina, as far as I have seen, camp really is just camp.

I am planning to blog lightly over the next couple of weeks, and we plan to have the podcast return on Friday, August 15.

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3 Comments:

Blogger Amy said...

Amy,
I enjoyed listening to your interview with Julie Shields - one of my heroines. As the couple most prominently featured in the NYT equally shared parenting piece, I found it also frustrating how many people (including you - but I hope to change that :-)) are equating ESP with exact 50/50 accounting and scorekeeping. I can see why people think that, given some of the taglines that the NYT chose to use. BUT, it isn't. Julie said it very well in your podcast - it is sharing from general feeling of goodwill and a shared desire to make things fair so that both partners can have balanced and happy lives. We use the term equally shared parenting to distinguish the concept from other standard models, and because 'shared parenting' seemed to vague to us to capture the meaning by itself. But we don't aim for 50/50; we get close 50/50 as a by-product of our dedication to being true partners in parenting, breadwinning, housework and recreation time.

It would be fun to talk with you sometime in more depth about this. I have a suspicion you would find that we're not crazy people who nitpick each other and have made our marriage a business arrangement. I think you might truly love what we have to share.

Anyway, all the best, and Julie rocks!

-Amy

4:45 PM  
Blogger MojoMom said...

Hi Amy--Great to hear from you! I would love to talk to you more about your experience. Perhaps you can come on our next podcast and tell us more about how you do it! I've been trying to figure out how much of the "equally-shared" emphasis comes from the reporting versus the real couples involved. Please send me an email: amy@mojomom.com and let's talk...

4:57 PM  
Blogger help4newmoms said...

As always, Amy, you come up with the BEST stuff for moms today. I would love to share this podcast with my newletter readers. Let's talk...

9:14 AM  

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