Back To Work and Back To School

Care and Feeding | Slate's parenting show

Slate Audio

Parenting, Society & Culture, Kids & Family

4.4 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 12 September 2019

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On this week’s episode, Rebecca, Jamilah and Dan answer listener questions from a mom who is worried she won’t be able to do it all and a mom who wants to keep her parents from putting her kid into a gender box. As usual, we share our triumphs and fails and offer up some recommendations. For Slate Plus, the hosts share their favorite parenting books. Sign up for Slate Plus here.

Recommendations:

Dan recommends a hilarious and thoughtful obituary.

Jamilah recommends the super-fun game of Heads Up.

Rebecca recommends making some puff pastry desserts.

Join us on Facebook and email us at momanddad@slate.com to tell us what you thought of today’s show and give us ideas for what we should talk about in future episodes. Got questions that you’d like us to answer? Call and leave us a message at 424-255-7833.

Podcast produced by Jess Jupiter.

Hosts Rebecca Lavoie, Jamilah Lemieux, and Dan Kois

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The following podcast contains explicit language.
0:06.1	Hello and welcome to Mom and Dad are Fighting, Slate's Parenting podcast for Thursday, September 12th, the Back to Work and Back to School Edition.
0:14.7	I'm Dan Coise. I'm an editor at Slate, and I'm the author of How to Be a Family, which comes out next week. So I'm also
0:21.9	currently 100% an insane person. Also, I'm the dad of Lyra, who's 14, and Harper, who is 12.
0:28.3	I'm Jamila Lemieux. I am a writer, a cultural critic. I'm also one of Slate's Karen Feeding
0:34.0	parenting columnist, and I'm the mother to Naima, who's six.
0:55.0	I'm Rebecca LaVoy. I'm a journalist and podcaster in New Hampshire, and I am mom to Henry, who is 18, my son, Teddy, who is 16 and a half, and my stepdaughter Lily, who is 19. I'm excited to say that Jamila is here in the D.C. studio with me. Happy homecoming, Jamila, you're back to D.C.
0:56.3	I'm back in D.C.
1:11.8	Just for one week only, but I'm going to treasure it. Today on the show, we've got a question from a mom who's about to go back to work and is freaking out just a little. Plus, a question about how to keep grandparents from going all gender essentialist on your baby.
1:16.3	Of course, we'll have Triumphs and Fails. We'll have recommendations. And let's start today with some triumphs and some failed. Jamila, what do you have today? A triumph for a fail?
1:21.1	I'd like to say that I have a triumph. Wouldn't we all?
1:25.9	I've been back and forth between new york and los angeles uh quite a bit this
1:32.5	summer and it's finally coming to an end uh i have an actual move date of uh september 30th so i will be
1:40.5	living in the same city in the same house 50% 50% of the time, with my actual child.
1:46.5	So I can really be a parenting podcaster because I'll be parenting again for the first time in a while.
1:52.2	But I just got back, actually, from a few days out in L.A. hanging out with a kid.
1:58.2	And she's happy and healthy and whole.
2:07.4	And I'm giving myself a triumph because we had such a really great visit.
2:14.3	And I leave each time feeling sad and conflicted and, you know, was this the wrong thing to do?
2:17.4	Should I have been out there at the same time as her dad and her stepmom?
2:23.9	But she really seems to be adjusting to life and she's happy and she still loves me.
2:28.1	So I just feel like I'm giving myself a general triumph. Like I am successfully parenting as of this moment in history.
	...

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