Because I'm the Mom

How mothering pervades all relationships in life.

Pamela Cytrynbaum is on the faculty at Oregon State University's new media communications department. See full bio

June 30, 2009

Stop Forcing My Daughter To Eat!

The tyranny of the Clean-Plate Club. Here's the note I must write, as I did yet again this morning, and tuck into my daughter's lunchbox, every single time she starts school, camp or any place new where people force her to finish all of her food: Read More

June 28, 2009

Kid Steals Blog! Reveals Truth About Mom!

The following post was dictated to me with great precision and thought by my 8-year-old daughter.
She suggested the title: "Will My Mom Listen or Not" Read More

June 28, 2009

The Big Reveal: Stop Your World for Graceless Moments of Grace

Push yourself back to the present to be open to those unpredictable moments when someone reveals their truth.

We've been trained well by Oprah and then by the relentless revelations on "reality" TV to be audience to people speaking their Big Truth. Releasing life's big-ticket secrets about money, sexuality, infidelity, identity requires the Big "Reveal." Read More

June 8, 2009

Landing the Hovering Mothercraft

This essay first appeared in Chicago Parent magazine in August 2004. My daughter was 3 years old, starting preschool. Now she is in her last days of 2nd grade, a world away, and yet not really. She is still teaching me the dignity and grace of differentiation and I'm still the Hovering Mothercraft I've always been. But I'm learning. I'm better. Read More

May 30, 2009

Waiting for your REAL life to begin? The artifice of the 'realness' impulse

Waiting for your REAL life to begin?

Who are the real psychologists?
Who is the real mother?
Who, or what, is your real self?
Is this my real life, or hasn't it started yet? Read More

May 26, 2009

The Better (Than You) Mother: Fact or Urban Mother Myth?

Who is your Better Mother?

You know the one. She gets pregnant when her husband sneezes. She loses the baby weight within 48 hours of her precisely-as-planned at-home water birth; nurses the twins simultaneously; makes her own organic baby food from her garden; always shops in bulk. Read More

May 20, 2009

My Daughter, My Selves

Many, many Goodnight Moons ago, when my Mom was often mistaken for Joan Baez and I was in pigtails, I was instructing my Mother - yet again - on a more effective parenting strategy that would result in increased audience buy-in regarding bedtimes being actual times. Read More

May 18, 2009

In Celebration of the Good-Enough Day

Wake up early. Consider taking the dog for a run. Reconsider.

My daughter eats cheese popcorn for breakfast. She brushes her hair and teeth.

I brush my teeth.

Sign the permission slip. Forget to put it in her backpack. Read More

May 16, 2009

Good parenting gone wild: How telling her the truth implanted big ideas in my little girl's head

Lauren wrote to ask if this is what Disney is teaching our daughters.
I know it's tempting to blame all of the irrational, loathsome, impossible images of girlhood and women that we fend off like swarms of gnats every day - I fear this one may be on me.
(Because I'm the Mom, most things are, indeed, my fault.) This actually might be. Read More

May 15, 2009