Sustainable Mothering

U.S. Department of Labor Issues Fact Sheet on New Workplace Pumping Law

Jake — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 16:42:35 +0000

After much speculation on the impact of a new federal law requiring certain employers to give unpaid pump breaks to certain employees (and my advice to Curb Your Enthusiasm), the U.S. Department of Labor has issued a Fact Sheet.

Fact Sheet #73: Break Time for Nursing Mothers under the FLSA restates the requirements of [...]

Could Your Six Year Old Be Arrested, Handcuffed and Shackled in School?

Jake — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 21:36:37 +0000

According to a class action lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) , a six year old boy was arrested and chained because he did not move when his teacher told him to move . No one was being hurt, no one was in danger, no crime was being committed. Little J.W. simply [...]

Hands Across the Sand in North Wildwood, New Jersey

Jake — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 18:47:55 +0000

Hands Across the Sand is a movement with a simple message: NO to offshore oil drilling, YES to clean energy. In the literal wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, there seems no better time to join hands at the waters' edge in solidarity with others who wish to protect the [...]

Boycotting BlogHer Because I Boycott Nestle

Jake — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 01:18:39 +0000

Not long after I first started using Twitter – which was about the same time I finally began this blog – there was a great deal of Tweeting about BlogHer '09. It sounded like the place everybody who was a female blogger wanted to be. There was controversy – something about "swag," excessive freebies that [...]

Will “Gay Friendly” McDonald’s Ad Air in the U.S.?

Jake — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 02:25:24 +0000

It was a surprise to me to find that McDonald's has a history as a gay friendly company. According to Bnet.com: McDonald’s has been building a reputation for tolerance for years. The company is a member of the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce and has supported Out & Equal Workplace Advocates, a national organization [...]

Goodbye Henry Granju

Jake — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 16:49:23 +0000

Henry Granju died yesterday evening. His mother, Katie Allison Granju, author of Attachment Parenting: Instinctive Care for Your Baby and Young Child has been blogging about Henry and the circumstances that led to his death at her blog, MamaPundit.

While I hope to write more about addiction, a condition from which even the most dedicated [...]

According to HHS, the Average U.S. Mom is White, White or White

Jake — Thu, 13 May 2010 20:44:28 +0000

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Department on Womens Health, is having a contest to choose the cover photo for an update of its Easy Guide to Breastfeeding. I popped over there when I saw the notice on Twitter and thought the choices weren't very interesting. They are generic photos, none of which [...]

Curb Your Enthusiasm About the New Federal Workplace Pumping Law

Jake — Tue, 11 May 2010 00:53:59 +0000

The workplace pumping provision of the federal health care bill sounds like great news for women who pump breast milk in the workplace. Who could complain about a federal requirement that all employers give reasonable unpaid breaks to employees who need to pump for their nursing infants? On closer examination of what the law actually [...]

Frontline’s War on Selectively Vaccinating Parents

Jake — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 19:40:53 +0000

A recent episode of the PBS program Frontline was called "The War on Vaccines." The title alone should have been the tip off that the producers' goal was to inflame and incite – to assume this was an entirely adversarial discussion between diametrically opposed viewpoints. But I knew that my colleague Jennifer Margulis, Contributing Editor [...]

St. Patrick’s Day: Sinead O’Connor Raps the Truth About the Famine

Jake — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 20:04:23 +0000

One St. Patrick's Day when I was a little girl, my mother stopped me as I headed off to school dressed in green. She told me that that bit of Irish in my ethnic stew wasn't "green Irish," but "orange Irish." "Orange Irish," she explained, was bad and I should never tell anyone.

Over time I [...]