My Jenn-eration

Lately, what seems to be “trending” online, re-tweeted or shared on FB seems to be a fair litmus test for what’s on people’s minds. So when a seemingly innocuous piece from a publication I’m willing to bet almost none of you read on a daily basis got a shocking amount of recirculation and sharing at least within my circle of friends, it got me thinking. The article was from The Atlantic (read it lately? exactly –didn’t think so) but I bet you read the article: “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.” It’s a smartly written and illuminating piece by Anne-Marie Slaughter documenting her experience reaching the pinnacle of her professional experience and saying explicitly that the trade-offs between work and family are real. She goes on to discuss how the younger generation seems more keenly aware of these pitfalls and is consequently less likely to as aggressively pursue the very highest rung of their respective professional ladders, as they suffer no disillusion about their ability to “have...

So it’s that time of year again. Somehow we seem to be getting ready to move – AGAIN! And while I am excited to bring my family back to CT where we feel most at home, it is hard to say goodbye to some of the really lovely new friends we’ve made during our rather tumultuous year in NJ. I’ve never been good at goodbyes. I feel like there are approximately three types of goodbye-rs. There is type a), the completely unemotional, unattached goodbye-r who says au revoir without a single tear or tug of sentimentality; b) the no goodbye-r who never actually says it or closes the loop because they just can’t bring themselves to do so. I equate this one to feeling like someone clicks over to take another call and they just never click back to your conversation and everything feels just kind of weird and unfinished. And of course there is type c), the overly emotional person who is crying before they can say anything goodbye-r, so caught up in a flood of memories and nostalgia that the poor pe...

I bet you and I hit the same 3-5 websites everyday to get our quick fix of news and cultural references. Maybe you’re a CNN and Huffington Post lady. Or maybe your cup of tea is Fox News or The Stir. I’d even bet that among your FB friends and twitter feeds, you’ve found yourself reading and/or engaged in one of the three following topics over the past few weeks: 50 Shades of Grey, the now infamous Time Magazine article on attachment parenting, and/or perhaps some sort of related discussion about a supposed “war” between working moms and stay at home moms. And it is starting to make me anxious to think that we, my fellow sisters, wives and mothers, are co-conspirators in a media-driven effort to make us more stupid, divided, and generally less focused on legitimate issues that matter to us and our families. First – let’s call a spade a spade. I fell for it all. I monitored all the chats following the hype on 50 Shades of Grey while I furtively discussed among my female friends if I ...