Marguerite Kelly - The Mothers Almanac

A previous edition of this book was published in 1992 by Doubleday It is here reprinted by arrangement with Doubleday.

The Mothers Almanac, Revised Copyright 1975 and 1992 by Marguerite Kelly and Elia Parsons All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher For information, address: Broadway Books, a division of Random House, Inc, 1540 Broadway, New York, NY 10036

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First Broadway Books trade paperback edition published 2001

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has cataloged the previous edition as:

Kelly, Marguerite
The mothers almanac, revised / by Marguerite Kelly and Elia Parsons : illustrated by Rebecca Hirsh
p cm Includes bibliographical references
1 Child rearingUnited StatesHandbooks, manuals, etc 2 MothersUnited StatesHandbooks, manuals, etc I Parsons,
Elia II Title
HQ769 K367 1992
649 1dc20

91-28592

eISBN: 978-0-307-83317-4

v3.1

To Tom
and Kate and Mike and
Meg and Nell

To Dick
and Ramon and Nadia
and Amalia

This revision is indebted to Karen Van Westering, the same remarkable editor who nurtured the original edition of The Mothers Almanac as well as The Mothers Almanac II; to John Duff, for guiding the manuscript through production; to Rebecca Hirsh, for more of her whimsical art; to Heidi Almy, Claudette Best, Maria J. Burrington, Beverly Lemmon and Martha Mechelisthe five splendid mothers whose thoughtful comments helped to update this edition; to Tom Kelly, who is as fine an editor as he is a father to our children (and he is a very fine father), and to Kate, Mike, Meg and Nell, for keeping so closely in touch with their parents, and for bringing Steve Bottorff, Madelyn Greenberg and Tony Rizzoli into our family. Finally, a special thanks to Emily and Marguerite Bottorff and to Sally Rizzoli, who let us relive our yesterdays even as they enliven and delight our todays. Its nice to know that life can get even better.

Marguerite Kelly, 1992

T he updating of this book was a long time coming, and brought some real surprises. So much had happened in seventeen years, and so much had stayed the same.

We must have mentioned the record player a hundred times in the first editionfor tapes were fairly rare when it was published and CDs were nonexistentand we talked more about the car harness and the car bed than the car seat. In those days, that was just a lightweight contraption that hung over the front seat, so a little child could see better.

Even the grammar was different then. In the first edition we used the standard he, his and him as our generic pronouns; in this one the gender alternates from chapter to chapter. As we said then and repeat again, however, our advice applies to both boys and girls in almost every case. Any boy should be able to play with dolls or cook or take modern dance without anyones doubting his masculinity, just as any girl should feel comfortable with hammers and worms and trees to climb. As new studies are finding, sexual choices depend on genetics and body chemistry, not on the way children play or even the way their parents treat them.

Although children havent changed, theyve come under much tighter scrutiny. Hyperactivitywhich seems to get a new name every Tuesdayhad just been invented in 1975, and allergies, though long recognized, were seldom considered the cause of it or any behavioral problem.

There have been other changes. Natural childbirth is more popular with mothers than it used to be, C-sections are much more popular with doctors and breastfeeding is increasingly popular with both. Although mothers milk was once the choice of only the very educated and the very poor, today most mothers at least try to nurse their babies, and this deserves a big hurrah.

Lifestyles have changed most of all. By the end of the seventies it was clear that motherhood was still a full-time job, but appliances and processed food had turned housekeeping into a part-time responsibility, and not a very satisfying one at that. Women still had a need to accomplish, but they didnt have the chance to be fulfilled. It was hard, they found, to get that excited about dust.

Their dissatisfaction, as well as the high cost of livingand the urge to live bettersent mothers out to work, but nothing sent them faster than divorce. The divorce rate in 1975already too highsoared in the next fifteen years, and the experts are only just reporting what the children of divorce have always known: the pain is terrible. Today were on the cusp again, as more and more couplesand more and more therapistsare trying harder to make marriage work and now the divorce rate is finally beginning to subside. This deserves another hurrah.

Working mothers brought many changes to the workplace and the home too. Although many women worked in 1975, the number was much smaller and their husbands usually didnt help much around the house or with the children eithera situation that is blessedly beginning to change. Hurrah No. 3.

Working mothers, whether single or married, have also made day care commonplace and preschool almost a necessity, but now day care often starts in infancy and preschool begins before their babes are out of diapers. Today we have play school for the one-year-old, rather than the two-year-old, and nursery school for Twos and Threes, instead of Threes and Fours. This leaves the Fours in Pre-Ka year of schooling which sprang up out of nowhere. Its all part of the rush to get children ready for todays more academic kindergarten, a class that seems more and more like first grade every day. Oddly, the more children are pushed ahead, the more old-fashioned their clothes have becomewhich probably doesnt have anything to do with anythingand the more their test scores have dropped in later years. This must have something to do with something, but nobody quite knows what, or how long the problem will last.

Most things are much the same, however, in life and in this book, with only a tuck here and a new paragraph there. Some mothers still see television as the great babysitter, and others see it as the great threat, but today they can be much more discerningand so they are. Parents now choose fine, commercial-free videos in place of bad television, and teaching shows like Sesame Street, rather than mindless cartoons. The payoff is great. Good tapes encourage good books and Big Birds emphasis on the ABCs makes reading seem easier, which has brought a boon to the publishing trade: the childrens book market is growing lickety-split.