Career interruptus - two sides to the coin

If you are really, truly, mind-numbingly weary of the Mommy Wars, I suggest you refresh your browser right now.

If, on the other hand, you are one of those mommies like me, who claims to be skunnered on the topic and yet can't resist gobbling up the latest instalment like a bag of Miss Vickie's, you might care about the following.

That is, a few further points I can't stop myself from making about Ms. Bennetts' book. You know the one. Since we last talked about it, several intelligent reviews have come out, including one in last Sunday's New York Times and before that the New Yorker.

Both note two of Bennetts' recurring arguments for why women should not give up the prestige and money of decent jobs to stay home with children. They are:

1) Too many mothers who don't like their jobs are using their kids as an excuse to quit, she says.

2) The high-maintenance years of sleep deprivation, childcare crises and spitup on the power suit pass quickly. Hang in there, Bennetts urges. Hardcore mothering is "a temp job."

I believe both these arguments are true. I just think they cut both ways. In other words, you can use them to make a case for moms who want to stay home, rather than just to pillory them.

Since when is quitting work you hate a bad thing? Are we just supposed to stay with an unfulfilling or stressful job because the title or perks are good? Often those of us lucky enough to hit the career pause button - whether or not children are part of the equation - end up a lot better for it. The result can be a job switch that might never have happened, an entrepreneurial venture from home or an eventual return to the workforce with a renewed sense of purpose.

Bennetts is right about the early years. They represent one short chapter in a lifetime (though you might not believe this in the middle of a February night when your toddler has an earache and the baby is colicky). That's why some parents choose to be the primary caregiver during that period, even if the longterm tradeoff is a mortgage that will never be paid off and no progress on the RRSP balance.

In The Feminine Mistake, Bennetts urges women to respect what we've accomplished, and to honour our hard-earned education and professional qualifications by staying at work and ensuring our financial independence. But you know what? We also shouldn't forget how incredibly resourceful and resilient mothers can be in all spheres of their lives.

When it comes to work and kids, we are mixing and matching, changing lanes, launching businesses, starting new careers and picking up the old ones where we left off. Let's honour the creative and complex choices that mothers are making every day to strike the balance that works for them and their families, instead of judging each other so harshly.

Milk matters

Now that the issue of breast versus bottle no longer merits much discussion, new moms have another question to consider: "Your breast - or mine?"

Wet nursing, cross-nursing and communal breast milk supplies have gone mainstream. Can there be any doubt, now that such topics have made Time magazine? And then today, this.

Sharing the boob (or the milk) was not something people talked much about when my kids were hungry infants. Mind you, nobody was using fancy phrases like "co-sleeping" or "attachment parenting" back then either, even though plenty of folks were doing those things.

To me, anything that promotes the idea of breastfeeding and makes it easier for new moms isn't a bad thing. But the latest discussion is jumbling up a whole bunch of separate issues. First, there are moms who can't nurse but want their babies to have the nutritional benefits of breast milk. So they may turn to a "wet nurse" to breastfeed their infants. Or fill their bottles with breast milk from other nursing moms or breast milk banks. Then there's "cross-nursing" - when mothers breastfeed each other's babies, largely for convenience, or when they're looking after them for an afternoon.

But aside from the health risks, which even the breastfeeding support organization La Leche League has expressed concern about, this issue is about a lot more than nutrition. As someone who nursed four babies, I'm not sure I'd be willing to share those intimate moments with another mother, convenient or not. It's also understandable why a mom who's unable to nurse might not want to hand her baby over to someone who can. Just because a baby drinks milk from a bottle doesn't mean feeding time can't be an intimate time of bonding and closeness.

And here's one more thing. Let's make sure this trend doesn't become one more way to pass judgment on what makes a "good mother." Or to start laying the guilt on moms who decide to skip the milk bank and feed their babies formula instead.

Yes, we know breast is best. But not at the cost of a mother's physical or mental health. Or her right to make this very personal decision.

No need to justify

The following also appears in the Life Section of today's Toronto Star, as part of a regular monthly column.

I have a confession to make. I used to be a stay-at-home mom.

There. That wasn't so hard to admit. Not like the old days, when I would have told you, "Well yes, I'm home with my kids but I freelance, too." As if this would somehow make me more legitimate. Less easy to dismiss.

It was true. I did freelance, for more than a decade. Sometimes a lot, squeezing it into nap times, child care swaps with neighbours and the wee hours when the house was dark and silent. Some years hardly at all.
But let's not kid ourselves. I was Mummy first. And I was at home. Which made me pretty much a you-know-what.

It's not hard to understand why an educated woman with a decent career would end up feeling sheepish, or at least a little apologetic, for wanting to stay at home with her children in the early years.

Those who do are routinely vilified in the popular press and the mom lit for such crimes as: letting down the sisterhood, taking over the PTA, micromanaging their children's lives, hanging out in Starbucks, and most recently in Leslie Bennetts' new book The Feminine Mistake, blithely forfeiting their financial futures.

Bennetts says her book was inspired by exasperation with "the public glorification of stay-at-home motherhood and the failure of the media and other analysts to warn women about the risks of sacrificing their financial independence."

I must have missed something. The financial risks are a valid and important point, and she illustrates them well. But, the Martha Stewartization of society notwithstanding, when exactly were stay-at-home moms publicly glorified? And don't tell me it was in Desperate Housewives.

Typically the ones we read about in the mommy wars books are just like those that Bennetts interviews. They play a lot of tennis, get their nails done regularly, cultivate dependent children who require endless hours of chauffeuring to activities, volunteer like crazy, go to lunch and expect next to nothing from their high-powered spouses when it comes to domestic duties.

Like the Caitlin Flanagans and Lisa Belkins before her, Bennetts has focused her discussion about the merits of working motherhood to the tiny minority of highly educated and affluent women.

Kathy Buckworth, humourist and author of Journey to the Darkside: Supermom Goes Home, dips into the same suburban fountain. Her book spoofs the culture shock of a corporate mom stepping off the fast track into the world of "a strange new breed of Super-stay-at-home moms."
They are aghast at their working counterparts who "hire virtual strangers (probably psychopaths!)" to raise their families and will stop at nothing to ensure their kids win all the school prizes.

This is meant to be funny. And it was – five years ago when Allison Pearson mined the territory in her fictional I Don't Know How She Does It. Now it's just tired clichés. Along with the book's premise that staying at home with kids is "an increasingly brutal blood sport."

So who speaks for the rest of us? The mothers and fathers scraping by on less money, second-hand clothes, no family holidays and hardly any breaks so one parent can be home in the early years. The ones with no extra cash for Baby and Me salsa dance classes or lactation consultants. What about the moms who take in other kids, or do some evening telemarketing to supplement a strapped life on one income? Surely, they can't be that hard to find.

The problem with so much of the working mom versus stay-at-home debate is it is conducted outside the realm of the intense emotional rollercoaster that comes with parenthood. It doesn't incorporate that gut-level yearning that some mothers and fathers feel, to be with their children, even though it can be at times thankless and boring and hard. Or the non-financial rewards that family life can bring.

As writer Joan Walsh of Salon.com wrote earlier this month, the pro-career arguments are often "deaf to the way a child and family-centered life calls out to a lot of women, and to some men."

Other times, it comes down to what your kids are like. Some children need their mothers. Or fathers. Some take early separation in stride. In the words of writer Jane Juska: "As mothers, we know which of our kids is which." And there's nothing that pulls harder than knowing your child needs you, no matter what the price.

The good news is this is gradually moving beyond being strictly a women's issue. Not that you'll see that in the mom lit, where dads are generally portrayed as useless, uninvolved or worse, written out of the whole equation. The newest wave of dads is more hands-on and increasingly willing to adapt their work arrangements around child care needs or their spouse's work.

As San Francisco dad Jeremy Adam Smith, a one-time stay-at-home father and blogger at Daddy Dialectic points out, the working mom versus at-home mom debate is long past stale.

"The much more interesting question is how people are going about constructing new roles for themselves that help them to be better parents and how normal it is these days for parents to ignore stereotypical or ideological ideas of mothering or fathering, that are based on an obsolete sexual division of labor," he says in an email. "The daily practice in homes and on the playgrounds is often very brave and creative."

What's needed now is to bridge the gap between the ideal family and the ideal worker, whose family life is too often overlooked by employers. The real conflict is not between moms and moms, or even moms and dads," says Smith. "It's between parents and employers."

Yes. YES! You really can say "No!"

Here's a sign of the times. A parenting book titled No. With a subtitle: "Why Kids of All Ages Need to Hear It and Ways Parents Can Say It."

And proof that we must surely be the most wimpy generation ever to procreate.

Who would have thought that one little mono-syllabic two-letter word could cause adults so much angst that they require a book of instruction to spit it out. But it does, according to the author, U.S. psychologist and parenting expert David Walsh. So he has come up with this generation's version of tough love, a 293-page manual aimed at helping parents wade right in, screw up their resolve, pry open their lips and come right out with it. Not "uh-uh." Not "nope." But No. NO! Or "EN-OH!" as some of us have been known to holler, after the 24th straight plea.

Walsh says our children, raised in a yes culture and provoking too many headlines about bad manners, entitlement and lack of discipline, could use "a heaping helping" of this itty-bitty word. Whether it's the toddler freaking out at the cashier because he wants an Oh Henry, or the adolescent who insists she's entitled to your car keys and the contents of your wallet on a Friday night.

Which reminds me of one of my favourite bits of wisdom passed through the mothering pipeline. It came from a more experienced one, who had grown weary of hearing about my hapless attempts at rationalizing a decision to an infuriated teen.

"No is a complete sentence," she told me. "Sometimes you can just say No. Period."

Now that's revolutionary.

"Quality time" R.I.P.

The promo for Gymboree that arrived in my Inbox this week seemed like just another innocuous press release. But the marketing strategy caught my attention. The longstanding company is pitching their moms and tots play and music programs as an opportunity for "quality time."

And here I'd been thinking that inane phrase - dreamed up to appease folks riddled with guilt over quantity - had gone the way of those annoying Baby on Board signs.

Gymboree cites a recent University of Maryland study showing that today's moms spend more time focused on their children than mothers did 40 years ago - 14 hours a week versus only 10 hours for moms in 1965. The catch? According to those surveyed, not enough of it was "quality time."

"What's lacking is enough truly engaged time between kids and moms," says Gymboree. (The answer is, of course, to enrol in 12 classes for $200 right this minute, but that's beside the point.)

Is anyone else out there as tired as I am of these meaningless studies measuring parenting today versus 40 years ago (before it had become a verb). After all, it's kind of like comparing playtime in front of Halo to playtime involving Cowboys and Indians.

And what exactly are these 14 hours a week anyway? Does it include accompanying kids on playdates? Doing their homework for with them? Or generally hovering over them whilst they play at things we were kicked out of the house to do? Does it include shared screen time in front of Dancing with the Stars?

I was a 60s kid, and back then moms played a supporting role in childhood, inhabiting a separate adult world for much of the day, and not prone to overthinking the matter. But in the event I needed mine - nightmares, blood, bedtime stories - I got her 100 per cent. That was plenty good enough for most of us, who somehow managed to amuse ourselves and survive a world without tobogganning helmets or childproof caps on the Aspirin bottle.

Many of today's moms, as this story reveals, are determined to second-guess their way through motherhood. God forbid they clean the house or do laundry when they're kids are awake. And what's up with that mom who laments taking her kids on errands and for haircuts instead of playing with them in the snow. No wonder this generation is so damn tired.

In the interests of our health, let's ditch the "quality time" myth for once and for all. Let's just call it paying attention. And you don't have to make a big production of it. You can do it in the grocery store, or the car with the DVD player turned off or lying on the grass looking for cloud shapes. You can do it while teaching junior to dry the dishes or feed the cat.

More to the point, you don't have to spend hundreds of dollars to attend moms and tots music lessons or Gymboree. And people marketing their programs, however fun and healthy they might be, shouldn't insult us by suggesting otherwise.

A baby step in the right direction

Among the more startling hypocrisies in our society is that so many who care for our most precious resource - the children - are not paid according to the importance of their work.

Recent moves by governments in Nova Scotia and Alberta over the past few weeks represent a welcome, if small, step in the right direction.

According to the Canadian Child Care Federation, both provinces have boosted wage subsidies to their childcare facilities, enabling them to increase wages for workers who look after young children.

In a news release, federation president Don Giesbrecht noted that childcare workers across the country typically earn little more than minimum wage and endure difficult working conditions, despite their specialized training and the fact they are looking after children during the important formative years.

This is not the only arena where compensation fails to reflect the importance of the job. Provincially-funded children's mental health centres in Ontario are plagued with high turnover of child and youth workers and social workers, and have a hard time attracting qualified staff because of low wages, which haven't increased in over a decade.

It's not unusual for staff - who make substantially less than teachers or hospital workers - to hold down more than one job to make ends meet, staying in the field primarily because they are so committed to the kids and families they help.

Constant turnover isn't just a nightmare for administration and morale either. It's also devastating for kids who have developed a trusting bond during treatment.

Giesbrecht's message about child care workers should apply to all professionals committed to caring for children and youth.

As he said, "We encourage all the provinces and territories to invest in their child care workforces. The skilled, dedicated men and women who care for children deserve to be fairly compensated. "

Children and their families deserve it too.

Who could argue with that?

Want more babies? Then try helping the parents

How's this for a harsh assessment of all you folks out there in your child-bearing years:

"Moderns are more concerned about careers and possessions than about replenishing the Earth or continuing the species."

So says law professor Ian Hunter in a recent column headlined "A world without children." In it, he laments falling worldwide birthrates and concludes that Canadians "have given up on the future."

Personally, I much prefer Sharon Lerner's discussion of what's behind declining procreation. In this article about motherhood and working, she cites reasons that are a lot less judgmental and a lot more tangible. Such as inadequate social and financial supports for families, and the burden faced by mothers in the work force. Lerner writes:

Could it be, then, that easing a woman's ability to hold a job and raise children simultaneously will nudge her toward having a bigger family? At least 45 countries in Europe and Asia are betting on it, having instituted government programs to maintain or raise their fertility rates. Contrary to the rhetoric of many family-values champions, their example suggests that the promotion of larger families and the promotion of women's careers may go hand in hand.

In the European Union, the solutions include extensive child care facilities and parity in pay and benefits to part-time workers, giving women more flexibility in their work lives. The result: countries that support high numbers of working women such as Norway, Denmark and Finland have among the highest birthrates.

Meanwhile back in Canada, the topic of childcare is threatening to boil dry on the back burner. As Elizabeth Ablett, executive director of the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care, said yesterday "We are still waiting." In more ways than one.

There's no national childcare program in sight since that dream crashed and burned with the last federal election. No money yet from the provincial Liberals who promised $300 million in 2003 to fund additional badly-needed spaces. According advocates, we are flunking out on all counts.

Last month, the Kelly Global Workforce Index reported the situation is hindering productivity of Canadian parents in the workplace. Their survey, which includes 10,000 Canadians, also found that 65 per cent of women and 59 per cent of men would return to work or work longer hours if quality childcare service was available.

Hardly surprising, given what a daunting exercise searching for caregivers can be. And if by chance you've blocked out the memories, or haven't been there yet, stroll on over to Postcards from the Mothership and read Dani's recent experiences. It's enough to make you want to curl up in the fetal position with a pacifer.

Happy International Women's Day.

X-tra doting parents

Just when you thought procreation couldn't get any more high-pitched and anxiety-making than the boomers made it, along comes this story. Generation X parents, it seems, have taken things up another notch and "are willing to pay whatever it takes to be the best parents possible."

"That means, in part, hiring others to do everything from chores to specialized jobs, so mom and dad can spend more time with baby."

Apparently, sleep doulas, "baby whisperers," lactation consultants, gourmet takeout meals, classes from parenting centres that charge fees and sell lots of hip products, and mom and baby yoga are mainstays of the modern parent.

Or, should we say, a certain segment of Gen Xers. Clearly, somebody's keeping all those businesses going. But can the majority really afford sleep doulas at $35 an hour or six weeks of parenting classes for $225?

According to the Coalition for Women's Equality, there are a lot of new mothers out there who aren't exactly flush with cash. (Thanks to Ann Douglas for recently flagging their site on her The Mother of All Blogs).

The coalition notes that maternity and parental benefits are enshrined in federal law:

However, almost one out of every two new mothers is not eligible for EI benefits, either because we are already providing full-time care for other children, we are self-employed or we have not worked enough hours to qualify. And when women do qualify, the benefits that we receive can be low. Benefits amount to only 55% of insurable earnings. Often, minimum wage earners cannot afford to take maternity leave, to which we are entitled in law.

There are also plenty of families in which one parent has taken time off for a few years and who are scraping by on one income.

That said, the trend described among Gen X superparents is worth noting for several reasons. Chief among them, I believe, is it reflects the feeling parents have - and which really took hold with the boomers - that they are increasingly on their own when it comes to childrearing.

Our social policies are not child-friendly. Think childcare, supports for poor and working class families, and the environment to name a few. Extended families are spread out and much less involved than in previous generations. Communities don't collectively raise kids anymore. Children often travel across the city to play sports or go to school. You're lucky if you know your neighbours. At the same time, the pressure on kids to excel and compete as early as possible is stultifying.

So it's all up to parents to look out for their own, give their kids a leg-up. I guess it makes sense that those who can afford it will invest all they can to be available and engaged.

What do you think is causing the current boom in baby-related services and products? Gen X parents, what's your philosophy?

The confines of cool

This post was updated to add the names of mom lit books I linked to.

The conference was called Motherlode. So it seems fitting that I required a period of gestation after it was all over, just to absorb the many thought-provoking presentations and discussions on motherhood that were featured.

Feminism, mom activism, why parents blog and whether dads can mother were just a few of the many topics covered at the four-day event held by York University's Association for Research on Mothering.

I'd like to talk about a few in this space over the next few days. Because though the conference is long over, the issues won't go away.

What better place to start than with Andi Buchanan and her talk on how "The Escalation of Cool" among modern mothers is just another way moms are being pressured to conform. You can read the whole presentation here on her blog.

One thing you should know about Buchanan is she's not afraid to tell it like it is. Or I should say, write it like it is. Three years ago, the Philadelphia writer broke ground with her book Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It, which didn't shy away from how scary and bone-numbingly exhausting and lonely new motherhood can be. And in doing so she warmed the hearts of others who found comfort knowing they were not the only ones feeling lost in a foreign land.

Mother Shock hit the book stores at the height of the so-called "intensive mothering" trend, when the prevailing middle-class notion of the "good mother" was one who happily immersed herself in pureeing prunes, writing her own lullaby lyrics and skin-to-skin contact with baby 24/7 - at the expense of her own identity. Buchanan dared to write the truth about her own ambivalence and the fact that while she adored her infant daughter, life was not all bliss and Kodak moments.

Fast forward to 2006 and suddenly, the downside of motherhood has come charging out of the closet and hijacked the mainstream media. Now, if we are to believe the latest spate of mom lit, it's de rigueur to favour litchi martinis with the girls over reading Dr. Seuss. (See books like Confessions of a Naughty Mommy, Peanut Butter, Playdates and Prozac and Mommies Who Drink to name a few. Or the recent rant by a mom in Britain's The Guardian (oops, the Daily Mail) under the headline "Sorry, but my children bore me to death!")

As Buchanan puts it, "if you aren't a bored mother, a depressed mother, an I-could-care-less mother, a mother who drinks, you are not a mother who is having an authentic experience."

Perhaps the glamourization of the "bad mom" is simply a natural overcorrection by those resisting the earlier pressure to hyperparent. But it still ticks Buchanan off. Because it's also just one more dangerous way of generalizing about the experience of motherhood. As she notes:

What does this mean for mothers who don't have this kind of "cool," "hip" experience - or whose actual experience of addiction and depression is not glamorous and trendy - and aren't they as excluded from the landscape as others were when there was a similarly non-diverse lens aimed at motherhood? And what does this say about the scarcity of our options when it comes to being a good mother?

Whining about motherhood sells. So does sniping. That's why books and newspapers fan the flames. They've done it with the increasingly irrelevant mommy wars between at-home and working moms (See Linda Hirshman, Caitlin Flanagan's To Hell With All That, Leslie Morgan Steiner's Mommy Wars, and Happy Housewives by Darla Shine). And now they're doing it with drinking, partying, naughty and unhappy mommies.

Why should we care? Because by polarizing mothers and turning them into cartoon characters, the authentic stories of the majority who fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum get lost.

You don't have to look far to see the trend is flourishing. The cover of Chatelaine's November issue pitches a story called "Why I Hate Breastfeeding,"  on the heels of an earlier article in defence of the "too posh to push" trend of Caesarean sections on demand.

But read this month's story and you find it's not an "anti-breastfeeding" story at all, or a motherhood whinge. Instead it's an important perspective from a woman who struggled through months of pain feeding her babies and felt abandoned and judged by those who should have been helping and encouraging her. So why the misleading headline?

Because as Buchanan points out, there's something juicy about the image of a bunch of mamas duking it out. Whether it's breast versus bottle, Caesarean versus natural childbirth, working versus stay-at-home, or cool and bored versus happy and matronly.

Shame really. Because it doesn't do most of us perched somewhere between the extremes much good.

Be cool by all means. Or don't be. But let's just stop pretending that one is superior to the other or any more legitimate.

Less talk, more action please

The following also appears in the Life Section of today's Toronto Star, as part of a regular monthly column.

The old adage “it takes a village to raise a child” is something we hear bandied about frequently these days. Along with similar messages from politicians about the importance of family and that children are our future. The sentiments are wonderful. What’s lacking is the follow-through.

I stumbled on yet another systemic problem – one that works against kids - earlier this month in the course of researching the field of adolescent health care. The teen years are a huge development period and a high-risk one too because kids are vulnerable to many risks and influences. An adolescent medicine physician trained to provide both medical and psychological care can make a huge difference.

Yet adolescent medicine, a flourishing field in the U.S., is not even recognized as an accredited sub-specialty of pediatrics in Canada. What’s more, those who take several years of additional training to care for teens may end up making less income because of the way the billing system works. In other words, beyond the passion for the job, there’s no incentive to specialize in this important area.

It’s the same in child psychiatry. More training equals less income. As a result, at a time when mental illness is a leading worldwide health concern and increasing at an alarming rate among children, only about 10 new child psychiatrists enter the field in Canada each year. Social workers and counselors who work in children’s mental health centres are overworked and underpaid. Children and youth with depression, bipolar or behavioural disorders wait months for help.

In the school system, budget cuts over the past decade have hindered teachers and kids in the classroom. But just as important are the sharp reductions in guidance counselors, youth counselors and social workers, which has hurt struggling children, troubled youth and families across the board. A conference in Ottawa last week looked at how research shows an important link between mental health and the arts. And yet music and art are now practically a luxury in most of our public schools.

And then there’s child care. After years of dogged lobbying for the basic right to some decent accessible options, parents are no further ahead. Those who work still have to steel themselves for long searches, high costs and long wait lists. Considering the importance of the job they do, childcare workers are vastly underpaid. And the huge need for after-school care during that crucial 3:30 to 6 p.m. window hardly gets any notice.

In today’s world we have more baby gear than ever before. Retailers are engaged in non-stop marketing campaigns aimed at kids. They want us to buy the message that this is a world enraptured with babies and children. Modern moms can take yoga with their babies, ferry their kids to advanced hiphop for 10-year-olds, or get a tutor before they even start kindergarten. But underneath all that commerce is a lot that doesn’t look too child-friendly.

With a municipal election campaign underway, a provincial election set for next year and a federal Liberal leadership race dominating the headlines, now is a good time to start asking the tough questions. And to try and get a glimpse of the real priorities that lie behind the apple pie rhetoric.

-----

Hit the Motherlode: Grab the diaper bag, clear the deck at work and prepare to head downtown this week if Mom’s your name or parenting issues are your passion.

There’s a special kind of conference taking place and it touches on just about every issue you can think of related to motherhood. Called “Motherlode,” it runs this Thursday through Sunday at the Courtyard Marriott Hotel in downtown Toronto.

It’s unique because where else would you see a keynote speaker step off the podium mid-speech to hoist a hungry babe to her breast and carry right on feeding as she resumes her address. It has happened at this annual event, where the gurgles of infants and the sight of babies crawling lickety-split across the floor are as much a feature as the studied reflections on feminism and mothering.

The conference, sponsored by York University’s Association for Research on Mothering (ARM), was started 10 years ago by professors Andrea O’Reilly and Nancy Mandell.

But O’Reilly says this year’s event takes it to a whole new level. It features 200 speakers from around the world on such diverse topics as teen mothers, raising bi-racial children, post-partum depression, mothering children with disabilities, and mommy blogs.

To O’Reilly, the increased attention reflects heightened interest in motherhood in the world at large. A new wave of moms are seeking recognition for the value of the work they do and they’re savvy about networking and marketing their message. New books are coming out every week, the number of parenting blogs has doubled in the last six months and googling “motherhood” gets you half a million entries.

“I am really sensing a shift, and I think we’re riding the wave of whatever it might be,” says O’Reilly.

You can register at Motherlode at the door or go online to check out the program and sign up. Cost is $20 per session but you can purchase a day pass or various packages.