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Yesterday, I heard a interview that Governor Palin did last week with Alaskan radio hosts Bob and Mark, which you can listen to here. One of the questions that they asked her is how would she be different as a politician if she didn't have any kids. She discussed that having kids made her a better politician and gave her a more future-focused perspective. One thing that has drawn people to Governor Palin is that she seems to relate to the average American. For some, it's simply the fact that she is a mom. For others, it's her charisma and...

Michelle Duggar, who was hospitalized last week with gallstone issues, gave birth to her 19th child with husband Jim Bob Duggar. The couple, who stars on TLC’s 18 Kids and Counting, welcomed daughter Josie Brooklyn at 6:27 p.m. Thursday at University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Josie weighed in at 1 lb., 6 oz and was several months early. She was due in the spring. A rep for TLC said Michelle was taken to the OR for an emergency C-section. Josie is in stable condition in the NICU. No other details were available. “The most important thing right now is...

When a sonogram showed that Stephanie Lewis, a writer and party planner living in San Diego, was expecting boy-girl twins, she was ecstatic. Lewis, already the mother of a two-year-old son, had always longed for a girl. “From an early age, I just remember wanting a daughter,” says Lewis, an effervescent brunette who recalls a Pleasantville childhood filled with mother-daughter fashion shows, ballet recitals, and tea parties. “Now, finally, I was getting her. I was just in heaven.” Not that the sonographer’s revelation had come as a shock. For this, her second pregnancy, the 28-year-old Lewis had done everything in...

MADRID (AP) — A Spanish woman believed to have become the world's oldest new mother when she gave birth at 66 has died at 69, leaving behind twin toddlers, newspapers reported Wednesday. Maria del Carmen Bousada, who reportedly died Saturday, gave birth in December 2006 as a single mother after getting in vitro fertilization treatment at a clinic in Los Angeles. The births ignited a firestorm of debate over how old is too old for a new mother, and how much responsibility fertility clinics have over who gets treatments. Bousada told an interviewer she lied to the fertility clinic about...

TORONTO, June 18, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Alberta Finance Minister, Iris Evans, a member of the Progressive Conservative Party of  Alberta, has come under fire from the leader of the Liberal government after telling the Economic Club of Canada on Wednesday morning that having one parent stay at home is important for raising children well. Her comments came at the end of an address to the Club during the question period, in the context of speaking about the importance of teaching kids about finances.Referring to her own children, Minister Evans said, “They've understood perfectly well that when you're raising children, you...

... Officers ran out of police headquarters and responded from around the city to the officer's radio call for help from an apartment building at 557 Atlantic St. The mother of one suspect came to headquarters and demanded to know where her son was, saying she'd come from work because someone had told her he was being beaten unnecessarily by four cops and she would call President Barack Obama for help if necessary. "He's a good boy," she told police, slamming her hand on the window counter. ...

Some mothers - drug addicts among them - are incapable of taking care of their unborn children. Should they be interned in the interest of the children? Or should they even be allowed to have kids? A chubby infant plays with a book in his crib. He doesn't cry or coo, but his raspy breathing can be heard across the room. Unlike most nine-months-old babies, Carlos can't sit up or roll over yet. But lately he has been smiling and he is eating well, his foster mother Wilma Aarts says. And he no longer needs artificial respiration. Carlos is the...

The number of children born outside a stable married life continues to rise. Northern European countries have the highest levels of births to single women, but the United States is catching up. The latest figures come from a report published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). According to the May Data Brief issued by the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, births to unmarried women totaled 1,714,643 in 2007, 26% more than in 2002. As a result in 2007 nearly 4 in 10 births in the U.S. were to unmarried women. Contrary to the traditional concerns...

In their efforts to improve the situation of women around the globe, a handful in the international community believe there should be no honoring of motherhood in public policy since motherhood "traps" women in lowly domestic endeavors instead of using their talents in the workforce.

A mother is appealing for women to have sex with her adopted Down syndrome son. Lucy Baxter, of Abingdon, Oxfordshire in southern England, says she will even pay for a prostitute so he can lose his virginity. The mother has now set up a Web page for her son, Otto, appealing for potential dates to come forward. Baxter has three other adopted sons with Down syndrome and works with Mencap, the U.K.'s leading charity for people with disabilities. "I'd like all my boys to find love and enjoy sex," she said. "I always look at what other people are doing...

I have always been a strong willed person, certain of my convictions, not led by peer pressure or other’s opinions. I’ve known instinctively since childhood that life begins at conception and it’s a fact and opinion held firmly by both sides of our families, mine ( Jewish and Christian) and my husband’s is Scot and protestant. Sex is a choice, and pregnancy can be a result of that choice. Should you not wish that option, prevention is an alternative. But not abortion, this is simply termination of a life and in (Ex.21:22-23) it states… “If men strive, and hurt a...

Just yesterday I read about 22-year-old WNBA star Candace Parker, a player considered essential to the success of the league, who is expecting a baby in the spring. She is not the first WNBA star to have a child mid-career -- Lisa Leslie missed an entire season when she had a child -- but as the "new face" of the league there has been some grumbling by some fans and sports writers that Parker is letting everyone down. But overall, the league and coaches and teammates have been supportive. Parker told the Los Angeles Times that she wanted her children...

Reports are circulating that cast an unflattering light on the miracle mom who gave birth to octuplets in California Monday.CBS News reported Friday that the mother of eight newborns, who already had six children, filed for bankruptcy and abandoned her home less than two years ago. She hasn't been identified publicly yet, though CBS News described her as a woman in her 30s who lives with her parents. [Snip] Britain's Sun newspaper reported that the mother works in a fertility clinic. The grandmother said she had multiple embryos implanted last year and declined to abort any of them.

Pelosi, as is her habit, kept things focused on matronly matters. When Barack Obama takes the oath, she said, "I'll be thinking of his mother and his grandmother and what they did to instill the confidence in him. As a mother, I'm always thinking of the role of mothers."

Teenaged births up of the first time in 14 years. The highest rate of of out-of-wedlock births ever recorded. Lots of older moms. See link for interesting stats: like, August is the month most babies are born.

http://bhsclass67.blogspot.com/2008/11/mom-song.html For anyone who is a mom, or has or had a mom.

Butcher, baker, candlestick maker -- all noble professions, indeed. Stay-at-home Mom? Well, get a real job. At least, that's what one Australian mom was told when she went to buy a cell phone. Lyndal Fair, a thirty-six-year-old mother of three, wanted to purchase a mobile phone, presumably to keep track of her brood, to call their schools and doctors and to be available in an emergency. Not good enough, said Vodafone -- they don't sell phones to moms. In fact, the store employees suggested she get her husband to purchase the phone under his name for her. Sound familiar? "I...

Researchers in the US found that contrary to the popular view that having children reduces a woman's brainpower, having children actually improves her lifelong mental agility and protects her brain against the neurodegenerative diseases of old age. The research was carried out by Dr Craig Kinsley, professor of neuroscience at the University of Richmond, Virginia, and colleagues, and will be presented at the Society for Neuroscience 2008 conference which is to take place from 15 to 19 November in Washington DC. Kinsley said that while a woman may experience an apparent loss of brain function while she is pregnant, this...

For most working mothers, the third day after giving birth to a new baby is still a whirlwind of joy, sleep deprivation and recovery. For Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, it also was time to go back to work. Palin, who is now the Republican vice presidential candidate, returned to her job just a few days after giving birth last April to her fifth child, Trig, who has Down syndrome. She toted her newborn son to official events and nursed him during conference calls. Palin’s candidacy is shining the spotlight on countless issues surrounding working women, including the sticky topic of...

The Gutman standard has now been proffered by countless Obama hacks and water-carrying commentators. Damningly, it’s high-powered working mothers in the journalism business who are helping to broadcast the anti-Palin slams or doing nothing to defend her. How would Katie Couric like the Gutman standard applied to her? Her husband died at 42 when her daughters were 6 and 2 years old. With two young children devastated by the loss of a father, she opted not to quit journalism. She anchored NBC’s “Today Show� through his illness and death, continued working an intensive, time-consuming schedule as one of America’s most...

Laura Ingraham was discussing the comments of Sally Quinn of Washington Post fame. She is the queen of the Washington elite. Sally, as have others, has been criticizing Sarah Palin for putting her career ahead of her family. Oh, what happened to women's lib, Sally? I was able to get through to Laura's show, and she put me on right away. Yes, Sarah's family is going to be put second. But not to her career ----- to the country. As soldiers and the families of soldiers do every day, Sarah and her family are going to make a substantial sacrifice...

Three memories have shaped my approach to this year’s general election. Here’s the first. In the late 1970s, during a two-year break from teaching to raise our second son, an adopted child, I found myself at a Los Angeles dinner party filled with DINKs, the “double income, no kids” crowd who were just emerging as a self-aware and upwardly mobile social group. I fell to talking—or more accurately, listening—to a chatty young female attorney who said she was putting in eighty hours a week as a junior associate on a variety of important cases. After twenty minutes or so, she...

Three-time Grand Slam winner Lindsay Davenport took a winning first step at the US Open on Monday... But it may be her infant son Jagger who has the final say in how long 32-year-old mum continues her tennis career. Her experience in China was also the first time at an event without her son since his birth in June, 2007, and Davenport admits she felt the tug of motherhood. "When I went to Beijing I left him for two weeks and it was heart-breaking - not so much my husband, but my son," she said. "It's obviously not easy to...

August 12, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - When sixteen year-old Elizabeth Cameron found she was pregnant after being brutally gang raped, "practically everyone" in her life said she had every moral and legal right to kill her daughter by abortion. But Elizabeth defied the world's wisdom and says, now that her daughter Phoebe is a toddler, that she could not imagine life without her. "Every time I look at Phoebe, I know I made the right decision. I never wanted to end my baby's life just because of how she came to be," she told the Daily Mail this weekend. In...

She's revered as a trail-blazing feminist and author Alice Walker touched the lives of a generation of women. A champion of women's rights, she has always argued that motherhood is a form of servitude. But one woman didn't buy in to Alice's beliefs - her daughter, Rebecca, 38. Here the writer describes what it was like to grow up as the daughter of a cultural icon, and why she feels so blessed to be the sort of woman 64-year-old Alice despises - a mother. The other day I was vacuuming when my son came bounding into the room. 'Mummy, Mummy,...

When 59-year-old Round Rock grandmother Linda Smith couldn’t shake jet lag after a December trip to Europe, she figured she was going through menopause. It turned out she was pregnant. “It was a big shock,” Smith said Tuesday, a day after giving birth to a 5-pound, 11-ounce boy named Django. “My husband was jumping up and down for joy, and I was just dumbfounded.” Linda and Steve Smith’s first son died in a motorcycle accident in December 2005 at the age of 20. “Some people might think we’re trying to replace him but we’re not,” Linda Smith said. “We’re trying...

Agata Mroz celebrating a win in volleyball Rome, Jun 16, 2008 / 12:24 pm (CNA).- Thousands of Poles lined up to say their final goodbyes to Agata Mroz, a young volleyball star who died on June 4 after postponing a bone marrow transplant in order to allow her daughter to be born.At the age of 17, Agata was diagnosed with leukemia. She battled the disease and ended up becoming one of the top athletes in Poland, winning the European Volleyball Championship twice with her country’s team. She joined the professional volleyball team CAV in Murcia, Spain, where she also...

WASHINGTON (May 6) - A new study provides some of the best evidence to date that breast-feeding can make children smarter, an international team of researchers said on Monday. Children whose mothers breast-fed them longer and did not mix in baby formula scored higher on intelligence tests, the researchers in Canada and Belarus reported. About half the 14,000 babies were randomly assigned to a group in which prolonged and exclusive breast-feeding by the mother was encouraged at Belarussian hospitals and clinics. The mothers of the other babies received no special encouragement. Those in the breast-feeding encouragement group were, on average,...

NEW YORK (AP) — You didn't have to know anything about Spanish politics to be fascinated by the striking photo that came out of Spain this week: The new defense minister, 37 and seven months pregnant, reviewing her troops in a chic maternity outfit. But some women who felt a jolt of sisterly pride from across the Atlantic also felt a pang of empathy at another part of the story. In Spain, some were questioning whether Carme Chacon should be able to take her state-mandated 16 weeks of paid maternity leave, given the importance of her job. And that kind...

Why motherhood is the greatest job of all22:13pm 29th February 2008 Motherhood is denigrated as never before. Yet here, in a tribute to Mums everywhere, the Mail's Allison Pearson says it's still the most joyous (and important) job in the world. Situation vacant: challenging managerial position in busy small organisation. Would suit flexible, energetic female who doesn't need any sleep. Shifts last 24 hours a day. Boss comes on holiday with you. You will be expected to be a teacher, a cook, a nurse, a chauffeur, a health and safety adviser, a cleaner, a management consultant and an agony aunt. Must...

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power came under fire today for trying to hire a specialist who would be paid to show new and expectant mothers at the utility how to properly breastfeed their children. The plan to issue a DWP-funded "lactation services" contract drew howls from taxpayer advocate Walter Moore, who pointed out that the utility's five-member board voted just last week for a package of new rate hikes. "You couldn't make this up," he said. "This is such a rip off. You've got to wonder if somebody's cousin runs the lactation business." Lactation proposals are due...

have often proudly claimed the title for myself. And sometimes my three teenagers have bestowed it upon me. I was crowned after I decreed that they can no longer go to house parties if the parents aren't present after one gathering turned into a vomit fest with Grade 9s chugging vodka out of water bottles. I was nominated again when I insisted they can't go out on the eve of a test. And I'm always a clear winner when I dare to insist that my oldest return our car before I head off to bed so that I can sleep...

ANAND, India - Every night in this quiet western Indian city, 15 pregnant women prepare for sleep in the spacious house they share, ascending the stairs in a procession of ballooned bellies, to bedrooms that become a landscape of soft hills. A team of maids, cooks and doctors looks after the women, whose pregnancies would be unusual anywhere else but are common here. The young mothers of Anand, a place famous for its milk, are pregnant with the children of infertile couples from around the world. The small clinic at Kaival Hospital matches infertile couples with local women, cares for...

For some people, ending a pregnancy is the only way to keep on living Yael Mishali Published: 12.26.07, 00:39 / Israel Opinion Abortion is a type of murder; I have no doubt about that. In this context we can debate over questions such as the duration of a pregnancy and when exactly do several cells turn into a person with a soul, but I have no interest in doing that. I accept the universal assumption that as of a certain moment, we are talking about a real person, and “aborting it” is a type of murder. And still, as a...

The love of my life is seeing other women. It started innocently enough, a bite to eat, a stroll through the park -- the stuff I never have time for. Then came the private jokes, the pet names, the stolen kisses, the bubble baths. At first I was crushed. What did these women have that I didn't? Sure, they're gorgeous, but I happen to look very nice in navy; and, yes, they're bright, but I scored unbelievably high on the SATs ... if you don't count the half with all that math. I told myself it was just a fling,...

Greencastle, Ind. - "Four years ago in this cycle there was a front-runner and his name was Howard Dean," recalls Jeri Kehn Thompson, in an interview with Kentucky's Lexington Herald-Leader. "John Kerry was running about eighth. You can ask President Dean how things went in Iowa." Thompson, a 1988 graduate of DePauw University, is the wife of Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson, who is currently running third among GOP candidates in an Iowa poll. She was in Louisville campaigning for her husband yesterday. The article notes that Jeri Thompson returned home to Washington immediately following her Kentucky stop so she...

French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau is credited with the famous remark, "La guerre! C'est une chose trop grave pour la confier à des militaries" -- war is too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military. The idea that Clemenceau was trying to project through these words is that experts are often incapable of seeing beyond their profession and understanding the greater domains of necessity. Here in Hawaii, we are facing a transportation infrastructure crisis of the highest degree of peril. I assert to every single man, woman, and child of these Hawaiian Islands that our future is too...

Iranian "Mothers For Peace" Protest To Ahmadinejad Tehran, 8 Dec. (IPS) In a move to demonstrate their, and the nation’s preoccupation from the antagonistic attitude of the Iranian Government with the international community, more than 600 Iranian women told the clerical-led authorities that they would not support the regime’s nuclear ambitions if war is the price to pay for it. United in a new organization named “Mothers For Peace”, the signatories of a petition warned the fanatic President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that he should stop at once all nuclear activities if it is to cost Iran a war: “We all know...

A part of a new frontier for the British welfare state, the Government wants to encourage more women to go to work while their children are looked after in council nurseries. There will be nine months' maternity leave, more flexible working hours for parents and pressure put on businesses to allow mothers to take time off if they have a child under 17 who is taking exams or is ill. These family-friendly policies were announced in the Queen's Speech this month and won approval of female MPs, many who whom cut their teeth in politics during the feminist heyday of...

Mother-to-be flees as social workers warn her they will take her baby away at birth By PAUL SIMS 20th November 2007 A mother-to-be has fled her home after social workers threatened to take her baby within minutes of the birth. Fran Lyon, 22, hopes a new local authority will take a different approach. She insists that the mental health problems she had as a teenager - she started self-harming at 15 and has been treated at psychiatric hospitals for borderline personality disorder - are now behind her and there is no evidence she will harm her child. Miss Lyon moved...

Some women laugh about turkey basters replacing Mr. Right. The ongoing debate over going it alone. "Sex And The City's" Carrie Bradshaw once asked, "What if Prince Charming had never shown up? Would Snow White have slept in that glass coffin forever? Or would she have eventually woken up, spit out the apple, gotten a job, a health-care package and a baby from her local neighborhood sperm bank?" Though it's hard to say how Disney would have grappled with a no-show prince, if Ms. White were to awaken alone today, it's possible she'd take the advice of Louise Sloan, author...

Sure, it was just an acceptance speech at some silly awards ceremony. However, when Hollywoodans say ridiculous things on television that media applaud along with the Hollywoodans in attendance, someone's got to point out the inanity. As such, when Sally Field said at Sunday's Emmy awards ceremony as reported by the MRC's Tim Graham, "And, let's face it, if the mothers ruled the war, there would be no (expletive) wars in the first place," I can't sit idly by without contesting such nonsense. After all, it appears Field has never heard of some famous female leaders who brought their nation's...

A researcher is trying to figure out if more women are deciding not to have children because of changes in economics and birth control, or if genetic changes are affecting choices and goals. Lonnie Aarsen of Queen's University in Canada said the trend of childlessness in developed countries will ease because of biological evolution, despite the fact that women with more financial freedom may decide to pursue leisure and other personal goals, not parenthood. She said this is because the women who leave the most descendants will be those with an intrinsic drive for motherhood. Over time, she suggests, those...

Hollywood can afford to indulge Sally Field’s inarticulate naivete. America cannot. And the very moms that Sally Field claims to speak for know it. This weekend, I met dozens of military mothers in Washington, D.C., who fervently oppose the Sally Field/Cindy Sheehan model of maternal submission and immediate surrender. They were among several thousand grassroots activists who turned out for the “Gathering of Eagles” counterdemonstration on the National Mall. Deborah Johns, mother of William, a Marine who has served three tours of duty in Iraq, condemned the Left’s demonization of Gen. David Petraeus and urged Congress to oppose a precipitous...

We buried my mother, Jane Wyman, today and as I stood at her grave the words of Abraham Lincoln came back to me: "All I am or ever hope to be I owe to my angel mother." Everybody talks about my dad Ronald Reagan, and what he did for America, and many people think that because he set such a great example for his fellow citizens in so many ways, he was also responsible for making me who I am today. While that may be true in some ways, if anybody really wants to know who and what I am,...

Carolyn Moynihan | Wednesday, 5 September 2007 Dogs in prams Childless Japanese women push the country's culture of cute too far. It is not unknown for little girls to try and dress the family cat or puppy in baby clothes and wheel it about in a pram. Mostly they don't succeed but the instinct is understandable enough. A live pet is much more interesting than an inanimate doll, having the warmth, cuddliness and cuteness of a real baby, and it makes playing mothers so much more fun. It seems perfectly natural and predictable behaviour. An adult woman trying the...

A text message from a virtual stranger saying 'I want to have sex with you tonight' might, on occasion, be considered a compliment. When it comes from the nanny you just hired to look after your eight-month-old baby, it's bad news. Being a nervous first-time mother, I had done my homework to find Carole. I had interviewed her twice at length and spoken to her previous employer. As much as it upset me to leave my baby to go back to work, we needed the money - but at least I thought I had done everything to make sure Lily...

Polish Women Resent EU-Pushed Gov't Program Discouraging Stay-at-Home Moms By Elizabeth O'Brien WARSAW, August 9, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Polish women are expressing their indignation at a new EU-funded government campaign that discriminates against stay-at-home moms by pressuring women to be self-sufficient wage earners outside the home, Polish Radio (PR) reports.Financed by the EU Structural Funds, the Polish government is launching a massive campaign to encourage women to work outside the home. Beginning in September, the "Woman Fulfilled in Business" campaign will launch TV ads, documentaries, billboards and a website. One of the posters to be put up around cities compares...

REDDING – A 62-year-old woman gave birth Friday to a healthy 6-pound, 9-ounce baby boy, becoming one of the oldest women in the world to successfully bear a child. The newborn is the 12th child of Janise Wulf, who's also a grandmother of 20 and great-grandmother of three. Wulf and her third husband, Scott, 48, named the red-haired boy, Adam Charles Wulf. He follows just 3½ years behind his older brother, Ian. “I hate to raise one alone, without a sibling,” said Wulf, who was impregnated both times through in vitro fertilization. Wulf has given birth to a total of...

Mother's Day is, to be honest, somewhat of an annoyance. It's manifestly one of those tedious Hallmark holidays wherein everyone is supposed to run out and support the revenue stream of cardboard manufacturers in the name of expressing gratitude to mothers, fathers, grandparents and anyone else to whom we might be related. I imagine it won't be long until Sept. 18 is declared Anonymous Sperm Donor's Day, which will probably be celebrated by giving matching card sets to one's two mommies and lighting a candle for dear old anonymous sperm donor, whoever he might be. Mothers are not only important,...