Washingtonian Best of Issue

Linda Perlman Gordon is included in the Washingtonian Magazine list of Top Therapists, July, 2009 in the Washington metro area.

Are Dads Spending More Time With Their Kids?

With some many fathers out of work and so many mothers working is the division of labor shifting? While the amount of stay-at-home dads is not large enough to say it's a major trend, fathers are spending more time with their children. The ghost of traditional fathers is hard to ignore, yet many young dads want to participate more in the day to day needs of their young children. Katherine Mieszkowski talks about dads and kids in an article for Salon. She interviews Jeremy Adam Smith about his new book, The Daddy Shift.

Another Phrase for Grandmother could be Allomother

Leave it to the apes to explain what we know from our everyday experience. There is a review of Sarah Blaffers Hrdy's new book, Mothers and Others in Salon Magazine. She posits that the reason human females to go on living for so long after menopause is because of the special help and provisions that these old women could provide to younger kin, their younger daughters and nieces who were still reproducing. Pretty cool. Women have an important role to play in survival of the species after we are finished reproducing ourselves.

Good News if it's true.

The era of hyper parenting may be coming to an end. It seems that parenting philosophies are as fickle as fashion. Each generation puts its own stamp on their children. Now it may be that young parents are reacting to all the pressure to create little Einsteins and many parents want to let their kids be kids. Lisa Belkin wrote an article for The New York Times about a new trend in parenting. If this is true, we can all take a deep breath and relax!

MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS

Women on The Web aka WOWOWOW posts an interview with the author Elizabeth Berg about the relationship between Mothers and Daughters. She is very candid and I loved when she admitted wanting her pregnant daughter to have a girl so she could experience the eye rolling and the slammed doors.

Our new book Too Close For Comfort? Questioning the Intimacy of Today's New Mother-Daughter Relationship will be published by Berkley Books in Sept.

Is this an era of obsessive parenting?

This s a provocative article in Newsweek written by Leonore Skenazy about how overprotective we are with our children. In generations past children had much more freedom to walk to their friends, make their own plans, and organize their free time. How can they learn self reliance when parents aver so invested on the minute details of their lives? What is the downside for kids when we fail to give them the autonomy they crave?

Michelle Obama's Brand of Feminism

In The Washington Post, Naomi Wolf, discusses how feminism has progressed through the years from Betty Friedan's 1963 bestseller "The Feminine Mystique" to Helen Gurley Brown's "Sex and the Single Girl" and how Michelle Obama's generation represents a synthesis of the two. In the past two versions of independent women emerged. This article helps make sense of the "Sex and the City" woman who doesn't see men as the oppressor.

Are we praising our kids too much?

Parents are so focused on building self esteem in their children that they are in danger of over-praising them. Too many empty compliments can backfire. A recent article in the StarTribune discusses why parents need to avoid over-praising.

Mothers, don't criticize your body in front of your daughter!

Moms need to be mindful about the messages they give their young daughters about body image. Girls learn their lessons about body image from us. When we are self critical and chronically unhappy with ourselves, we send a poor signal to our daughters. Mothers need to resist the urge to focus on their own weight. Comments like, "I can't eat that, it will land on my hips!" are not lost on our daughters. They hear everything and see it all as well as absorb non verbal cues of our personal frustrations with ourselves. If you want to give your daughter a healthy attitude about her body, it has to start with you. In a Washington Post article by Jennifer Huget, she offers some advice for mothers.