"Motherhood will break your heart," advised the extremely chatty 60-ish woman who was standing in the line of mere mortals--to the right of the red carpet--waiting to get into last Wednesday's New York premiere of Motherhood, a new film starring Uma Thurman....

I was getting a bit lax in the eco-friendly arena. But preschool whipped me into shape.

My son just started preschool for the first time a couple weeks ago, and I thought I'd be the dorky parent who sends carrot sticks and soy nuts for snacks when everyone else gets...

Here's what I want to know: Are happy new moms just lucky, or are we also a wee bit simpleminded?

These days, it seems like all the cool new parents complain -- bitterly and hilariously -- about having an infant. In memoirs, essays and blogs, they debunk the cruel myth...

Thank you, Ann Coulter, for shoring up my self-esteem. Just as my life was getting duller and more traditional -- steady job, bad haircut, nightly bubble baths and bedtime stories, weekends at birthday parties and playgrounds, no nightlife, no culture, no sex, out-of-date-wardrobe, thickening midsection, you know, the whole American...

When will fathers start getting some respect? Women may still struggle with the old madonna/whore dichotomy, but men -- as dads, anyway -- often get to choose between paycheck and pervert.

Paycheck: You pay the bills and profess an inability to handle the most basic childcare issues, like changing...

So, can you take the man out of the sperm? Judging from last week's news that Clay Aiken got someone pregnant, you sure can! (Sorry, just couldn't resist the easy joke.)

Last week was sperm central, what with Aiken's news (he's reportedly the known donor for a...

A researcher at the University of New Hampshire just isolated the "inability to do housework or hands-on childcare" gene in men.

Just kidding.

Actually, Valerie Hooper, a graduating senior in sociology, found that men's level of interest in the domestic sphere -- home, family -- probably has more to do...

"There's nothing 'funny' or 'weird' about having a child as a single mother," snapped one solo mom in a sharply worded email to me a couple years ago. I'd posted to a national online list, looking for single moms by choice willing to tell me what had been "hard/good/funny/weird"...

Unwed motherhood is a national disaster, say many pundits, the latest being Slate advice columnist Emily Yoffe. They argue that the uncoupling of motherhood and marriage has devastating effects on the kids, who, according to statistics, grow up poor, have behavior problems, drop out of school, have children out...

I went out of town last weekend and came home, bone tired, to two dead mice. Well, two murdered mice--thank you, electronic traps! The baby had croup, was feverish, and barking like a seal, the 40-pound suitcase was waiting for me at the bottom of three flights of stairs, and...

"Sick" is the new "rad"-- as in, "Girl, those new shoes are sick!" I love it as a slammin' new slang word, but it does introduce some confusion. For example, we can probably all agree that single moms and lesbian moms are, like, totally sick. But does that mean we...

Sure, you can do it all as a single mom -- if you are willing to go over to the Dark Side.

I've been called a lot of names for choosing to have a kid on my own and daring to write a book about it: "selfish," "thoughtless," even...

It's the family so many of us dream of: beautiful, loving mommy, big strong handsome daddy, 2.5 cute, good-natured kids. Perfect. But those perfect, fantasy families get us into trouble when we insist that real life fit into that fantasy mold. Not even the finest family quite measures up.