Tag: Letty Cottin Pogrebin

To Letty and Marlo with Thanks: My Free to Be Grandson

My grandson Nate turned two yesterday.  He loves music.  And, a child of his era, music video.  We are avid watchers of Free to Be…You and Me clips. 

 

This morning, this song, and the others, ran on a loop in my mind as I walked passed strollers and playgrounds in the park.   Not for the first time, I was overcome with gratitude to the two of you and the others who brought these songs to what is literally now generations of children.  It was a major factor in our home when our boys were little; it was even the school play at their elementary school.  Now it belongs to their children.  And, I suspect, those who follow.

It's become my go-to baby present to young families who don't already know it – and sometimes to those who do.  And, within a few bars Glad to Have a Friend Like You or When We Grow Up, can bring me to tears.  

It's everything we wished for our kids when they were little – all of us; it's a myriad of memories of all the hours we spent loving, dancing to and singing these wonderful songs as they became part of us.

And so I presume, for all the moms and dads, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers  and teachers and friends — to thank you one more time, as I enter the third year of the second generation in our family to be "free to be."  

Glad to have a friend like you!

 

 

 

SARAH PALIN II: IS ANYBODY ELSE READY TO THROW UP THAT WE’RE DOING ALL THIS MOMMY TALKING?

Rabbit_hole3
I worked at the TODAY SHOW from 1980 to 1989.  During that time I probably produced, conservatively, two pieces a month on "working mothers", as we were called then.  It was rough slogging.  No matter how many times we looked at it (always from both sides) it just wouldn’t die.  Of course early in that same period we had trouble getting cameramen who would shoot a story including an AIDS victim, so there were tougher issues for sure.

In any case, in that period we talked to T. Berry Brazelton (often), Lois Hoffman, Ellen Galinsky, Dr. Edward Zigler, Phyllis Schlafly, Sylvia Hewlett, activists from Catalyst, NOW, Eagle Forum, David Elkind, Letty Cottin Pogrebin and literally hundreds of others.  We debated every aspect of child development, nature/nurture – you name it, we covered it.  By the time I left at the end of 1989 the issue had mostly been settled – by demographics if nothing else.  Mothers were working.  Many needed to be.  More were on their own, abandoned by or never having had a partner in raising their kids.  What was left of the battle was scraps, remnants and [very important] policy issues dealing with childcare, equal pay and family leave etc.  Working moms were an American reality.

That was twenty years ago!  Twenty years!  And now, artificially or not, the issue has emerged again.  And many of those allegedly "defending" working moms (or at least one named Sarah) are those who, for much of my working mother life, so vehemently opposed the idea of women going out of the home to work.  Sorry.  I know the conversation has passed this issue in many ways but as I read posts and newsletters today, it made me mad all over again.  With all these conservatives defending working mothers, after what I remember, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.  They’re all working now too so some of it is probably genuine but there’s also such an element of strategic hollering.  Anyone else feel like they fell down the rabbit hole?