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Care and Feeding | Slate's parenting show - Squeamish Feelings About a Sex-Ed Book

Slate Daily Feed

Slate

Business, News, Society & Culture

3.91.1K Ratings

🗓️ 25 September 2023

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On this episode: Jamilah Lemieux, Zak Rosen, and Elizabeth Newcamp are joined by Slate writer, Aymann Ismail, to talk about his piece, Closed Book. He tracked down one of the most challenged books—a health and sexual education book called It’s Perfectly Normal—to see why it’s being banned. It’s “particularly blunt and graphic” yet Aymann was surprised at the feelings of embarrassment and shame surfacing as he read the book. They talk about parent’s squeamish feelings when it comes to sexual education, why age-appropriate education is so important, and what these involuntary reactions have to do with book bans. 


Recommendations: 

Zak: Slow-Cooker Cauliflower, Potato and White Bean Soup

Elizabeth: Make your own ‘choose your own adventure’ game.

Jamilah: Connections


Join us on Facebook and email us at momanddad@slate.com to ask us new questions, tell us what you thought of today’s show, and give us ideas about what we should talk about in future episodes. You can also call our phone line: (646) 357-9318. 


If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an ad-free experience across the network and exclusive content on many shows—you’ll also be supporting the work we do here on Mom and Dad are Fighting. Sign up now at slate.com/momanddadplus to help support our work.


Podcast produced by Rosemary Belson and Maura Currie.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0

This episode contains discussion about explicit content that's not appropriate for young years.

0:08.0

Welcome to Mom and Dad of Fighting. Slates Parenting Podcast for Monday, September 25th, the band books edition.

0:15.5

I'm Jamila Lemieux, a writer, contributor to Slates' care and feeding parents in column, and Mom Tanayima, who's 10, and we live in Los Angeles.

0:24.0

I'm Zach Rosen, I make another podcast that's called The Best Advice Show, and I'm dad to Noah, who's six, and Ami, who's three.

0:31.0

We live in Detroit, Michigan.

0:33.0

I'm Elizabeth Newkamp, I write the Home School of Family Travel Blog, Dutch Touch Goose, I'm the mom of three little, Henry, who's 11,

0:39.5

Teddy, who's six, and Oliver, who's nine, and we live in Tokyo, Japan.

0:44.0

On today's show, we're going to be joined by Ami and Ismail.

0:48.0

He's a Slate writer, longtime listeners may remember he filled in his hosts while Dan Coist was on Book Leave.

0:54.5

Essentially, he's one of our absolute favorite friends of the show.

0:58.0

We're going to talk about his latest piece for Slate, about book bands, then we'll wrap up with a round of recommendations. Don't go anywhere.

1:06.5

Amen. We're so excited to have you back to talk about your new piece, Close Book.

1:13.5

But first, can we have a family update? How are Moosa and Noon? And I didn't know you had a second baby.

1:20.5

Oh, surprise. I have a second baby.

1:23.5

Yo, the babies are great. This is actually kind of weird because today's the first day that they're both in daycare.

1:30.5

I have an empty house for the first time in a long time and it's weird.

1:35.0

It's like quiet and I'm getting stuff done. It's like totally nice, right?

1:40.0

Yeah, it's like, I feel like I'm doing something wrong. I should be cleaning something up.

1:44.0

No, the kids are great. Moosa just turned two a few months ago. Noon just turned nine months, ten months, something like that.

1:52.5

There's all kind of blending together. You know, one thing that I've recently learned that sort of changed everything from my whole parenthood outlook

1:59.0

was that I'm really starting to just appreciate that I get to spend this much time with them at all.

2:05.0

And all this stuff, all this pressure to like get work done, to clean up, that's all starting to feel less and less important every day.

...

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