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Lisa Belkin
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Lisa Belkin is the Huffington Post’s Senior Columnist on Life/Work/Family. She joins HuffPost Parents after a multi-decade stint at The New York Times, where she was variously a national correspondent (based in Houston), a medical reporter, a Contributing Writer for The New York Times Magazine, and the creator of the Life’s Work column and the Motherlode blog.

The author of several books (including “Life’s Work, Confessions of an Unbalanced Mom”) Belkin was also the host of “Life’s Work with Lisa Belkin”, on XM Radio, as well as a regular contributor on parenting topics to Public Radio’s The Takeaway and NBC’s Today Show.

Her own personal life/work balance includes her husband, Bruce, her two sons (who are highly amused that anyone thinks she is a parenting “expert”) and her Wheaten terrier, Riley, (who thinks she is her third child.)

Entries by Lisa Belkin

Pregnant Workers Face Routine Discrimination, Report Says

(464) Comments | Posted June 19, 2013 | 2:21 PM

Heather Myers was fired over a bottle of water.

Myers was seven months pregnant back in 2007, working as a floor associate at a Walmart in Kansas, which meant she stocked shelves and cleaned aisles for minimum wage.

Told she could no longer carry anything to drink in...

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Breaking The Paternity Leave Barrier: Gary Ackerman And The Rest Of The Story

(1) Comments | Posted June 17, 2013 | 9:41 PM

Some articles require more than just a correction. They call for an explanation. That’s the case with one I wrote last week about the first father to receive paternity leave in the U.S.

Originally titled “Jerry Cammarata, First Father To Win Legal Right To Paternity Leave, Speaks...

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Jerry Cammarata, First Father To Receive Paternity Leave, Speaks Out -- And He Isn't Happy

(10) Comments | Posted June 14, 2013 | 1:48 PM

Editor's Note: An earlier version of this story said that Jerry Cammarata sued the New York City Board of Education and won a ruling from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in his pursuit of paternity leave. In fact, he had only considered those options before events overtook him. The headline...

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Harvard Admissions Letter From 1961: 'Married Women Find It Difficult To Carry Out Worthwhile Careers'

(377) Comments | Posted June 7, 2013 | 3:36 PM

It’s useful to remember how far we have come. Sure, gender roles are not quite as equal as they might bein the US right now. And true, we are not close enough to solving the eternal life/work conflict.

But it used to be worse.

Or, at least,...

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Are Men 'Better At Handling Women's Issues Than Women'?

(13) Comments | Posted June 4, 2013 | 7:07 PM

On the cover of the latest Bloomberg Business Week, reporter Sheelah Kolhatkar makes a compelling case that “men might actually be better at handling women’s issues than women.”

The difference, she says, lies in diverging views of balance. Women, as Kolhatkar describes it, believe balance...

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A Work/Life Legacy? Or Just A Prologue?

(4) Comments | Posted June 3, 2013 | 7:11 PM

Last night I received a Work Life Legacy Award from the Families and Work Institute. The fact that I have the deepest admiration of the organization and its founder, Ellen Galinsky, coupled with the fact that my fellow recipients form the backbone of the life/work movement...

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What Esquire Magazine Gets Wrong In New Life/Work Debate Article

(18) Comments | Posted May 31, 2013 | 9:52 AM

Esquire Magazine is acting as though they just discovered the life/work dilemma. Recognizing that there is a problem -- that's a good thing. Not as good is that writer Richard Dorment chose to spend much of his 7000-word epiphany accusing women of whining -- which is not only...

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Should Parents Whine Less? Or Should Everyone Else At Work Whine More?

(89) Comments | Posted May 25, 2013 | 3:29 PM

Karen Grisby Bates calls it “the kid card.” In a Slate essay about how workers with children have to stop assuming workers without children will pick up the slack every time a family moment beckons, Bates, an LA based correspondent for NPR describes parents as constant...

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Parents vs. The Tornado: When Doing Everything Isn't Enough

(2) Comments | Posted May 24, 2013 | 2:01 PM

I would do anything to protect my children.

We all say it. We all mean it. Most of us, blessedly, never have to do it. But this week the world watched parents who actually did. As a tornado churned its way through Moore, Oklahoma, we saw parents do anything,...

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The Tornado in Oklahoma Is This Parent's Living Nightmare

(63) Comments | Posted May 20, 2013 | 8:59 PM

In my nightmares, I can't get to my children.

They are trapped somewhere that should be safe, but has become sinister and terrifying. I am close enough to see their prison, but unable to enter it.

It's the worst of my recurring dreams, a sign to me that...

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Ask The Mayoral Candidates About Money For Childcare and Education

(12) Comments | Posted May 20, 2013 | 6:09 PM

Public money spent on early childhood education pays immediate dividends, in that it allows parents to work, and pay taxes, and provide futures for their kids.

It is also an investment in the future. Nobel Prize winning economist JJ Heckman has calculated that for every dollar...

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The Mother Of The Graduate Looks Back

(37) Comments | Posted May 16, 2013 | 4:05 PM

Not quite four years ago, I dropped my son off at a stately southern campus, gave him a hug and shed a few tears for change that felt like loss. Then I described it all in an essay titled “How To Send Your Son Off To College.” Of...

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Michael Zorek, A Stay-At-Home Dad, Details The Difficulties Of Finding Work

(65) Comments | Posted May 15, 2013 | 11:33 AM

Michael Zorek stood outside the fence of his children's public school on Manhattan's Upper West Side one day this spring, waiting for afternoon pick-up to begin. The assembled grown-ups were mostly mothers or nannies, with the occasional father here and there.

"More men than there used to be," Zorek...

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Disney World Scam: Wealthy Moms 'Rent' Disabled Guides To Skip The Lines (And Shame Humankind)

(1823) Comments | Posted May 14, 2013 | 7:01 PM

It’s a smaller world for some of us than for others, apparently.

The New York Post reports that the latest “must have” for wealthy parents, is a “disabled” guide at Disney World, so that their darling children don’t have to wait on lines for rides. According...

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BRCA1 Gene: Why Allison Gilbert, Mom, Made The Same Choice As Angelina Jolie

(7) Comments | Posted May 14, 2013 | 3:20 PM

Allison Gilbert is feeling a lot like Angelina Jolie today.

Reading the film star’s Op-Ed piece in the New York Times this morning, about the decision to undergo a prophylactic double mastectomy in the face of a family history of cancer, Gilbert nodded...

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Desperately Seeking A Lesson In Cleveland

(4) Comments | Posted May 9, 2013 | 9:54 AM

I don’t know whether to celebrate or mourn.

The news from Cleveland is both every parent’s hope (missing children found alive) and worst nightmare (eleven years of suffering at the hands of monsters.) It leaves me relieved and sickened. As I have done since the day my...

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Mother's Day 2013 Photo Challenge: See Yourself The Way Your Children See You

(2) Comments | Posted May 8, 2013 | 7:42 PM

No one else looks at you the way they do -- with unalloyed adoration. No one else sees you like they do -- as the uncontested center of their world. And there’s no one who watches you more closely -- literally and figuratively -- reacting to your every expression, your...

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Dave Goldberg, Sheryl Sandberg's Husband, Talks About Their Marriage (VIDEO)

(57) Comments | Posted May 3, 2013 | 1:35 PM

Sheryl Sandberg has said that the most important choice any woman makes is who she marries. It should be a man who does his share, she says, adding that her husband is exactly the kind of partner a wildly successful woman needs.

Thursday, Business Insider got her...

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Mom Leaves Message In Her (Grown) Daughter's Lunchbox (PHOTO)

(58) Comments | Posted May 2, 2013 | 10:33 AM

On HuffPost Parents we tend spend a lot of time talking about how we feel about being parents, and far less time on how we feel about OUR parents. Last night, though, we all found ourselves sobbing over a Reddit thread that overflows with grown-up kids expressing love...

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What I Know About Stress In My 50s

(11) Comments | Posted April 30, 2013 | 10:14 AM

I just finished writing a piece about how 91 percent of Americans experienced stress in the month of March. I find myself wondering about that missing nine percent. Stress is such a given in my life, and in the lives of everyone around me, that I would like...

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