Now that I'm pregnant, my husband ignores me: Bad Advice Friday

Real frowns. “But she’s the after-school mom and the cook and the cleaner-upper,” he says. “That would be fine if she didn’t work, but not if you’re both working. What I see happening with guys is ‘Don’t mess with me—I need sleep and R&R so I can fight the dragons for my family.’ But she’s fighting the dragons now, too.” In the old days, he goe

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Unlike other cultures, which treat becoming a mother as a major, traumatic life crisis, with special social rites and rituals, Western societies had been failing to recognize matrescence as a major transition: a transition that involves a whole spectrum of emotional and existential ruptures, a transition that can make women ill, a transition in whi

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I want to drill down on one aspect of the intro, too, because I think it’s essential: how has care “curdled,” for lack of a better word, in our minds? And what have been the implications of that degradation?

Definitely curdled. When I say the word “care” I think it often brings to mind the smell of diapers or that unpleasant combo of urine and disi... See more