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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.)

Blog Entries by Lisa Belkin

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

(10) 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

(36) 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)

(1809) 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)

(50) 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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HuffPost Survey Reveals Lack Of Sleep As A Major Cause Of Stress Among Americans

(118) Comments | Posted April 29, 2013 | 8:43 AM

Americans are stressed.

Ninety-one percent of us felt stressed by something in the month of March, with 77 percent of us feeling stressed “regularly” -- defined as weekly or more. Men and women reported being stressed equally as often, though that stress can be triggered by somewhat different things....

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Connect With Your Child! In 12 Minutes A Day!

(9) Comments | Posted April 26, 2013 | 4:54 PM

Not spending enough time with your children? No worries. A British drink maker has the answer: more than two dozen ways you can “reconnect” with your kids at the end of a long day, each of which takes 12 minutes or less.

Yes, “12 Minutes” just might become to...

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Let's Make Parental Love...Or Not

(6) Comments | Posted April 26, 2013 | 11:18 AM

To every parent who has the inclination, but not the time. Or maybe finds time, but can't find privacy. Or is in the mood, but isn't quite sure they remember the moves...

The smooth romantic stylings of the utterly hysterical Johanna Stein, courtesy of Yahoo!,...

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'The Mommy Business Trip' And Other Silly Insults To Women

(208) Comments | Posted April 25, 2013 | 7:08 PM

Let’s start with the title.

“The Mommy Business Trip” is the headline on Katherine Rosman’s piece in the Wall Street Journal and its tagline is the equally icky “Conferences Appeal to Women With A Guilt-Free, Child-Free Reason to Leave Home.”

It gets worse from there.

...
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Why Do Parents Still Urge Children To 'Clean Your Plate'?

(17) Comments | Posted April 23, 2013 | 3:58 PM

I really thought there was a Clean Plate Club.

Back when I was a kid, the country where kids-who-weren’t-me were starving was Biafra, and my parents regularly told me to finish what was served to me at dinner because somehow that would help those needy children.

...
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Paulette Light Is A Working Mom Statistic, And So Are You

(10) Comments | Posted April 23, 2013 | 2:44 PM

Paulette Light is a statistic. As she wrote on the website of The Atlantic, she is learning that the rich and varied details of her life -- a BA from Columbia, a Masters from Harvard and an MBA from Wharton, years working as a management consultant followed by...

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Boston Mayhem: The New, New, New Normal

(247) Comments | Posted April 19, 2013 | 11:53 AM

I spent much of Thursday night virtually holding my 21-year-old niece's hand -- and she mine. She was alone in her house in Newton, MA, across the Mass Pike from Watertown, and she could hear the explosions and the sirens.

"Is this normal?" she asked as we texted through the...

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Grieving For Boston: We Can't Do This Again

(25) Comments | Posted April 16, 2013 | 11:31 AM

We can’t do this again.

That was, selfishly, overwhelmingly, my first thought when I heard the news from Boston yesterday. Another fiery day. Another cycle of mayhem, and disbelief, and grief. Another frozen moment, then the slow motion familiar march -- the numbers mount; names become linked with those...

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Chasing Rainbows: Saying Goodbye To Gavin Leong, Online

(8) Comments | Posted April 15, 2013 | 5:18 PM

Kate Leong’s virtual circle is mourning with her today, as she prepares to bury her 5-year-old son. Leong has documented Gavin's life and battle with cerebral palsy on her blog Chasing Rainbows since his birth, making strangers feel like family as they’ve followed along online. So when she...

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