By Josie Cox| July 30, 2020

"As the epicenter of Covid-19 continues to drift around the globe, leaving death and depression in its wake, it’s become increasingly difficult for even the most naive to defend a whimsical assertion favored by the privileged in the early days of the pandemic. Coronavirus is not a great leveller. It never was. 

​Data made available to The New York Times earlier this month shows that Latino and African-American residents of the U.S. are three times as likely to become infected as their white neighbors. Black and Latino people are almost twice as likely to die from it. 

Other figures show that states with the highest level of income inequality have had a larger number of Covid-19-related deaths than states with lower inequality. And the gender divide is marked too.

As the epicenter of Covid-19 continues to drift around the globe, leaving death and depression in its wake, it’s become increasingly difficult for even the most naive to defend a whimsical assertion favored by the privileged in the early days of the pandemic. Coronavirus is not a great leveller. It never was. 

Data made available to The New York Times earlier this month shows that Latino and African-American residents of the U.S. are three times as likely to become infected as their white neighbors. Black and Latino people are almost twice as likely to die from it. 

Other figures show that states with the highest level of income inequality have had a larger number of Covid-19-related deaths than states with lower inequality. And the gender divide is marked too.

​Almost half of all mothers surveyed felt “rushed and pressed for time” more than half of the time during the lockdown, and 46% felt nervous and stressed more than half of the time. Only 15% of mothers said they had managed to set clear boundaries between work and family, largely on account of the closure of schools and childcare facilities. 

“It is clear that parents in particular need more support during school and childcare closures,” says Dr Heejung Chung of Kent’s School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, who led the study.

“There are signs that the increased workload and conflict between work and family has negatively impacted parents’ mental wellbeing, especially mothers,” she adds. “We need a thorough gendered analysis on the economic impact of the lockdown and more resources and policies are needed to support parents especially mothers' labor market attachments.”

Biggest Setback in a Decade 

​This research adds to reams of existing evidence underscoring the extent to which the pandemic has chipped away at hard-earned progress towards both greater gender equality and women’s economic rights, while exacerbating an already terrifying mental health crisis.

Sofia Sprechmann, Secretary-General of humanitarian agency Care International, recently described Covid-19 as the biggest setback to gender equality in a decade. Research conducted by McKinsey has revealed that women’s jobs are 1.8 times more vulnerable to this crisis than men’s. The consultancy concluded that because of Coronavirus’ “regressive effect on gender equality”, global GDP growth could be $1 trillion lower in 2030 than it would be if women’s unemployment simply tracked that of men in each sector."

By: Katelyn Denning

"When was the last time you felt overwhelmed? Last week, yesterday, earlier today? My guess is, it probably wasn't that long ago. If your triggers are anything like the moms I work with, overwhelm can hit you at any point and in any situation.
Sometimes it's in the middle of the workday when the responsibilities and stresses of the job get to be so much that you think there's no way you'll ever climb out of this hole, let alone your inbox.

Sometimes it's in the evenings when you look around at the mess in your house, a pile of laundry and no certain plan for dinner that you feel like you've let your family down and what you should really do is quit your job so you could actually stay on top of all of it.

Sometimes overwhelm shows up when you're surrounded by two children who are wallowing in their own overwhelm of emotions, crying and whining, that you think life will be this way forever. And you're overwhelmed by the fact that you are the adult here.

Or sometimes, overwhelm waits to hit you until the craziness of the day has ended and you have your first quiet moment to yourself. When you finally sit down, exhale a big sigh of relief, and think about doing it all over again tomorrow, the crushing weight of overwhelm sits on you making it hard to breathe.
Can you relate?

No matter how it shows up for you, overwhelm feels heavy. It creates the feeling of being out of control in terms of practically everything you can think of. And like the temper tantrums we often witness in our children, it can be hard to snap out of.

Trust me—we have all been there and some of us probably more frequently than we would like to admit.
​
But just like we're taught how to approach and calm a toddler who is stuck in an emotionally overwhelming moment which often manifests as a screaming fit, there are things that we can do to help ourselves snap out of it, too. Things that can help us stop spiraling into that feeling of being out of control, and instead, grounds us in the present moment.

You will get through this.

Everything is not lost.

This is only temporary.

You've got this.

So the next time you feel that feeling, you know how it goes—your breath becomes short, your head starts to feel heavy, you can't see past your own nose and you just might break into tears if anyone asks you if you're okay—try one (or try all) of these things to catch your breath and reset."

By David Dodge| April 17, 2020

"This guide was originally on October 11th 2019 in NYT Parenting."

"From the time they began dating as teenagers, Rita and Erikson Magsino, now 39 and 43, talked about the family they hoped to have together one day. Almost immediately after marrying in 2005, they tried to make that dream a reality.

But parenthood would have to wait — Magsino learned she had an aggressive form of endometriosis that made it difficult for her to become pregnant. For over a decade, the couple tried everything to conceive — including fertility drugs and advanced treatments like intrauterine insemination and in vitro fertilization. Twice, Magsino became pregnant, only to miscarry late in the second trimester. “After we lost twins at 20 weeks, we decided enough was enough,” she said. A generation ago, the couple’s attempts to have a biological child most likely would have ended there. Instead, thanks to improvements in reproductive medicine, they welcomed a baby boy into their home in May with the help of a gestational surrogate.

Surrogacy has also created an avenue to biological parenthood for thousands of others who can’t conceive or carry children on their own, such as same-sex couples and single men. As a gay, H.I.V.-positive man, Brian Rosenberg, 54, figured biological fatherhood was forever out of reach. But thanks to surrogacy, and a technique known as “sperm washing,” which prevents H.I.V. transmission, he and his husband, Ferd van Gameren, 59, welcomed twins, biologically related to Rosenberg, in 2010. “It’s still hard to believe,” Rosenberg said. “I thought this was a door that was shut to me.”

Still, would-be parents need to be prepared for a process that is far longer, more expensive and emotional than many people expect — it’s called a “surrogacy journey” for a reason. For this guide, I interviewed the types of experts you can expect to encounter during a surrogacy journey, including two fertility specialists, a lawyer, a psychologist and an agency caseworker."

The mother-son duo made up after the adorable incident

By Kelli Bender| February 28, 2020 1:10PM

"Its a familiar scene: a mom trying to do her best with a tired, whiny kid refusing to budge from their spot on the floor or a public place. 

This time the tantrum didn't play out at a shopping mall, grocery store or playground; it was at the Pairi Daiza Zoo in Belgium.

According to the Daily Mail, three-year old orangutan Berani didn't want to leave playtime when mom Sari came calling. when mom tried to move the little primate from his spot, the kid threw a bit of a tantrum. 

Instead of giving in, Sari, a skilled and doting mother, literally took matters into her own hands, grabbing Berani and dragging him to a different spot in the zoo exhibit. 

The relatable moment was captured by photographer Koen Hartkamp, who also witnessed the mother-son duo make up after the silly incident.

"Just like all small children, Berani still has to listen to what mum says even though he's getting a bit more independent. ..and judging by the picture he didn't like it," the photographer told Daily Mail." 

​By Sarah DiGregorio

"If eating is about pleasure, at least for me, cooking is about control. Knowing how to make onions sizzle gently in oil and start to go limp, then transparent, then light brown, then sweet and dark. It’s a transformation that’s entirely predictable, a product of muscle and sense memory. If I pay attention in the kitchen, if I am careful, nothing goes wrong.

When I was pregnant, I worked at Food & Wine magazine. Editing recipes, the biggest part of my job at the time, is a meticulous and satisfying exercise in imagining all the mistakes that could be made in a kitchen and then trying to prevent them.

It was 90 degrees out as my stomach started to swell, but in the office we were cooking and tasting crunchy escarole salads, potato gratin, roasts and gravy, butter cookies and layer cakes. Summer at a monthly cooking magazine is about Thanksgiving, and then the holidays.

I liked to think of my daughter growing plump and happy and smart on everything I ate. Though I’d cut out alcohol, raw fish and cured meats, I ate everything else the test kitchen produced, imagining that this was the embryonic beginning of giving her a healthy, pleasurable relationship with food and her body. “Eating for two” is an irritating phrase, but I saw it as the first benefit of being alive that I could share with her.
Despite my well-laid plans, it turned out the placenta was failing.
​
My daughter was not, actually, living the fetal high life. My body was keeping all that good food for itself — the snow-white slice of coconut layer cake, the bitter sautéed winter greens. First she fell off her growth curve and then, a fetus slowly starving, her body ground to a halt. She was not safe inside me, so the doctors took her out nearly 12 weeks early, an emaciated, shivery bundle, a 1-pound 13-ounce creature of skin and bones."