Just returned from a midweek visit to stay with old friends and their toddler up in the stormy, lovely hamlet of Pt. Reyes Station, California. They are in a mixed marriage. He “grew up redneck,” as he put it, in Southwest Virginny. She’s from the heart of San Francisco, and even went to the Waldorf school, …
Author Archives: Nathan
The Tantrum: Is Sleep Training a Necessary Evil, or Just Evil? Part 3
Disclaimer: I occasionally shout at my kids. Sometimes I make them skip breakfast. I wish my wife had been drunker while breastfeeding. So maybe I’m simply the kind of parent who puts his own comfort over that of his kids. But the end result is that I disagree with my totally esteemed colleague Christopher about sleep …
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Joining the Really Clean Plate Club
At the very beginning of Elena Gorokhova’s remarkable new memoir A Mountain of Crumbs (which, at the risk of repeating one of its blurbs, really is like an Angela’s Ashes for the Soviet era, all beautiful and evocative and worth your attention), Gorokhova swiftly sums up the provincial baseness of her mother’s people by saying …
The Tantrum: Should Dads go to Birthing Class? Part 3
I’ve got no beef with getting more information about the process of labor and delivery. Dads need to be there and they need to be helpful. My problem with the Birthing Class industry, though, is that it has been hijacked in many cases by a rather extreme cabal of natural-birth boosters. And I’ve got a …
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