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Moms Running For Congress Can Use Campaign Funds for Childcare, FEC Rules


A snippet of video on Twitter suggests Liuba Grechen Shirley’s kids had a pretty good time at Thursday’s Federal Election Commission hearing.

Their mom, though, may just have had a better one: In a groundbreaking unanimous decision, the commissioners of the FEC ruled Grechen Shirley can use campaign funds to defray the costs of child care as she pursues her run for a New York congressional seat.

“The ruling came in just in time for Mother’s Day, which is pretty incredible,” the Long Island Democrat told reporters on a conference call following the hearing.

“I will now be the first woman to ever spend federal campaign dollars that I am raising on a babysitter. And I’m hoping that I’ll be just the first,” she added. “I’m hoping that this decision inspires thousands of women — and fathers, parents of young children — to run.”

Grechen Shirley, a community activist, is the 36-year-old mother of two — Nicholas, 2, and Mila, 3. She says she now pays a sitter $22 an hour to watch the children during an approximately 20-hour work week.

If she wins, she’ll become part a very small group of congresswomen who balance their public office with being moms to very young children. First, of course, the consultant would have to defeat both a Democratic primary opponent, DuWayne Gregory — who has objected to her FEC request — and incumbent Republican Rep. Peter King.

Grechen Shirley says she thought hard about undertaking the race at all considering how young her kids are, but in the end, she had some A-list support for her push to use campaign cash to underwrite her childcare.

In April, Hillary Clinton’s lawyers wrote a letter arguing in the candidate’s favor. They noted that the childcare expenses existed specifically as a result of the Long Islander’s run for office; she had looked after them herself before launching a “rigorous campaign schedule.”

And in May, 24 members of Congress — women and men — signed a letter backing Grechen Shirley’s FEC request.

“Women and working parents face many barriers in running for public office, including meeting childcare obligations during campaigns that require frequent travel and evening and weekend events,” the lawmakers wrote. “As we work to build a political environment that is fair to candidates of all backgrounds, the Commission has a role to play in fairly enforcing and administering federal campaign finance laws.”

In addition, the campaign said more than 2,300 people nationwide signed a petition on Grechen Shirley’s behalf.

“It’s a groundbreaking decision that will remove a major financial obstacle for working families and mothers at a time when women are increasingly considering elected office,” Grechen Shirley said on the call.

The candidate said she hoped the ruling, which applies to political hopefuls who specifically incur babysitting costs as a result of embarking on a campaign, would foster more socioeconomic diversity among the ranks of future candidates.

Right now, she said, women candidates — who traditionally take a lot of convincing to get into the fray — are often inclined to put off a bid for office until their children are out of school: “We desperately need working women in Congress who understand firsthand what it’s like to balance a checkbook while raising children,” she said.

“We’re missing that critical voice.”

FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub echoed those sentiments, tweeting that she was glad to be part of the decision and predicted it would “expand – and diversify – the pool of people who will be able to run for federal office.”

At the same time, the FEC made clear that the decision still sets limits on how campaign cash can be spent.

Even as she savored the FEC victory, Grechen Shirley allowed that running for the House as the mom of toddlers is definitely no game of pattycake, even with help.

“It is definitely a struggle. It’s a juggling act every day,” she said.

“I take conference calls while nursing my son, while my daughter is running around and playing,” she said.

“I was there this morning to testify in front of the FEC with both of them, and they were running around and, you know, being chased by monsters,” she said of her two young charges. “Running for Congress with two small children, it’s become a family affair.”





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Let's Stop Gawking at Moms Over 40


News circulated Friday that actress Rachel Weisz, 48, is pregnant. The actress made the announcement in a profile by Maureen Dowd in The New York Times. Weisz is married to Daniel Craig; he has a 25-year-old daughter and she an 11-year-old son, both from previous relationships, but this baby is headline-worthy. There’s a special kind of rubbernecking we reserve for pregnancy past 40, and it’s tinged with judgment and fatalism.

It’s disappointing that famous women still have to be Times-profile calculated about their pregnancy announcements, and annoying that nonstop speculation about their famous bodies essentially robs them of the ability to do anything else. It’s no accident that Weisz mentions that she’ll “be showing soon” in the Dowd interview. But the way we talk about older mothers, especially—the very existence of the term “geriatric pregnancy”—always seems to take on a lurid sheen.

“People tell me I’m lucky a lot, but that’s true,” says Terry Ward, a freelance writer in Tampa who had one child at 41 and another at 42. All the same, “I was asked last week if I’m the nanny.”

The public dialogue is constantly policing the “right” way to mother, clucking its tongue at images that don’t conform. Whether that’s wondering aloud whether older mothers harm their children with their age, or a general “honey, don’t wait” attitude toward other women’s plans.

Instead of this moralizing, let’s congratulate Rachel Weisz on her happy news, and as a baby gift, desist from asking her things that are simply none of our business: How did she get pregnant? Is it even responsible for women over 40 to have babies? How will she possibly do it all, with a new baby and bustling career? Does she wish she did this sooner? Will she breastfeed exclusively for a full year? Has she thought about how she’ll lose the weight?

No, instead, I will congratulate Weisz on the good fortune of gestating in the same era as our noble regents Beyoncé and Senator Tammy Duckworth, who just became the first to cast a vote on the Senate floor with a newborn baby in tow. As a fellow parent of a newborn, I also heartily congratulate each of them on being able to get farther than a grocery store’s distance from home.

Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie noted after stealth-birthing her own child in 2016, “I just feel like we live in an age when women are supposed to perform pregnancy. We don’t expect fathers to perform fatherhood.” We certainly don’t expect them to reveal their news “with a radiant smile” to Maureen Dowd in order to outrun headlines about whether they’re pregnant or just fat.

The biological clock, as critic Moira Weigel notes in her book Labor of Love: The Invention of Dating, is “a story about science and sexism,” a cultural construction erected to make women feel guilty and ashamed, yet again, about their choices. No one—celebrity or civilian—owes us information about their fertility or family planning, and Weisz’s age doesn’t change that.

In fact, it’s quite the contortion we expect of women, especially those in the public eye, like her: to look 20 years younger than she is, to work all the time during her fertile years, and then to get out in front of her own late-in-life baby story. And this cultural anxiety extends far beyond Hollywood.

“I had my second kid at 41, and even though I think I look pretty good, I’ve had a few people ask (or assume!) he’s my grandchild,” says Kate Tuttle, a writer based in New Jersey. “It hurts.”

When we reduce our stories about women to public entitlement over their reproductive choices, we flatten them into tired stereotypes: Old Mom, New Mom, Good Mom, Bad Mom, Barren Witch. In the Times interview, Weisz herself argues for female complexity: “I can’t bear just really good, idealized characters.”

She also notes that, in many of the scripts she’s read, “Contradictory characters or illogical things about women are often taken out, and they’re simplified to either all good or bad and they’re never allowed to be just layered and complex.”

The gag is, it is not complex, contradictory, nor illogical for a woman to have a job and have a baby, at any age. We’ve been multitasking for millennia—stop interrupting our grinding.



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Pink Has the Easiest, Best Advice for Self-Critical Moms Everywhere


Pink‘s music has always carried the message of embracing your flaws and finding power in your imperfections, and the way she lives her personal life is no different. Pink and husband Corey Hart are the parents of 6-year-old Willow and 1-year-old Jameson Moon, and she seems totally upfront on social media about all the messiness and difficulty that comes with being a parent. As it turns out, she’s been an inspiration to at least one other mom out there, according to a message she posted on Twitter early Wednesday morning.

“A really sweet Mama came up 2me tonight at the grocery store and told me some nice words about how she gets strength from my parenting cause I’m not afraid to fuck up in public. We cried together. It’s so hard. Y’all. I wish us mamas could give ourselves and each other a break,” she wrote on Twitter.

The story has already gained more than 5,500 retweets and 63,000 likes, showing just how much this powerful message of patience and honesty resonates. Many Twitter users responded with similar stories of times when strangers publicly allowed for a little messiness from kids.

Pink’s Twitter also has a gem of advice for parents who want to help their kids deal with their emotions in a healthy way, too. She recently retweeted a video of a dad explaining to his daughter how to honor and move past bad feelings without holding on to them.

And just like parents need to be kind to kids and kind to themselves, they should also probably be kind to one another. Khloe Kardashian, pregnant for the first time, is already being mommy-shamed for working out, and her kid isn’t even born yet. Wouldn’t parenting be a little easier on everyone if we all trusted each other to be doing the best we can?

Looks like things are definitely working out for P!nk’s adorable family, at least:

Related:
–Pink Reveals She Once Went a Year Without Having Sex With Her Husband
–Pink Regrets Saying She Was ‘Team Taylor’





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Serena Williams Is Asking Instagram Moms for Teething Pain Remedies for Her Daughter


In what might be one of her most relevant Instagram posts yet, Serena Williams is asking moms on Instagram and Twitter for help. It turns out that little Alexis Olympia is having teething troubles, as many babies do. Williams reached out on social media to enlist the support of other moms who have been in the same position—and goodness, did they have some advice to share. After all, it’s not an unusual situation, as difficult as it might seem to the parents trying to calm their children.

“Teething- aka the devil – is so hard,” Williams wrote. “Poor Alexis Olympia has been so uncomfortable. She cried so much (she never cries) I had to hold her until she fell asleep. I’ve tried amber beads… cold towels…. chew on mommies fingers…. homeopathic water (lol on that one) but nothing is working. It’s breaking my heart. I almost need my mom to come and hold me to sleep cause I’m so stressed. Help? Anyone??”

Instagram moms chimed in with lots of help. Several suggested frozen waffles, others frozen teething rings or rubber toys or chilled celery sticks.

“Once she is a bit older I found clove oil works well!” another commiserated. “I pop it on my sons teether! At first he thought it was spicy- now he loves it as recognizes the relief! ?”

Williams posted the same request for advice on Twitter in a two-part message, and she received a ton of support.

“This is every single new parent,” one user wrote. “We’ve all been there. It is so tough and it is completely okay to want your mom and to want sleep and to want to cry for a hundred years. And if you haven’t consider calling your paediatrician and talking the best way to use baby pain relief so she can get a little sleep (ie alternating types etc) and so can you.”

Practical advice also came in spades: “Rubbing her gums helps with the pain of teething. Also try some harder foods, like a chilled carrot because that will also help ease the pain. If nothing helps, children’s Motrin or any ibuprofen for babies should be okay.”

And when all else fails, Mom is always there to help.

Related Stories:
–3 Ways to Get Back in the Dating Game as a Single Mom
–Scott Disick Says Khloé Kardashian Doesn’t Need His Parenting Advice
–The Greatest Athlete in the World Is Now a Mom





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This Incredible Bubble Bath Was Made for Hard-to-Please Moms


At the risk of sounding like a horrible daughter, finding a present for my mom is a challenge. The subtext to that sentence is, it’s a frigging nightmare. I blame genetics. I got my mom’s sense of humor, stubborn hair, and absolute hatred of change. We know what we know, we like what we like, and that means we’re almost impossible to buy gifts for. That said, we’re not monsters. My whole family has honed a very genuine, heartfelt “thank you! I love it!” response, before we quietly stash things in the closet for years to come. So when a gift comes along that lands in constant rotation? Oh, the glory, the sweet victory, the unadulterated pride as I wrap it up. It’s a failsafe. It’s the bougiest bubble bath in the world.

Everything about Laura Mercier’s Crème Brulee Honey Bath is over the top. There’s the name (Crème Brulee Honey; when they use an “è,” you know it’s luxury), and the brand’s directions, which tell you to “step in and escape from your daily worries.” That’s usually impossible, but the elaborate process takes you away from your phone for five minutes, and I count that a win. You start by dunking the wooden honey dipper into the Crème Brulee Honey Bath, then twirl—you must twirl—it under running water. The description of its smell is a work of art. “The Crème Brulee scent is a rich caramel and crème,” the brand writes, “with subtle nuances of French Vanilla beans and white musk.” The scent sticks to your skin all day, and it reads musky and rich, sweet but not cloying. Those subtle nuances! For all of those reasons, this bubble bath sets itself apart.

As much as I love my $4.89 jug of Dr. Teal’s Foaming Bath (and I do), this bath is an experience, the very thing that marketers are always talking about millennials loving. Throw that stereotype to the wind. My mom’s a Boomer, and generation regardless, people love a bubble bath. The mental picture paints itself. There they are with their Crème Brulee Honey Bath, their subtle nuances of French Vanilla beans and white musk. Add some wine, a book, and a phone on silent, and you’ve given the gift of alone time, elevated.

Thanks to her Midwestern upbringing, my mom would never spend $45 on bubble bath (one trait I haven’t inherited, oops). But the price tag’s worth it, because on top of actually wanting to use the bath, she’ll feel bad letting it waste away. Guilt, leading to joy and relaxation? It’s the perfect mom present.

Laura Mercier’s Crème Brulee Honey Bath, $45, sephora.com.

Related Stories:
–25 Gift Ideas and Beauty Presents for Every Mom
–The Best Gifts to Give From Ulta Beauty This Year
–20 Perfume Gift Sets You Can’t Go Wrong With



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The Moms of 'Stranger Things' Are So Important, but Nobody Ever Talks About It


As we eagerly anticipate season two of Netflix’s hit series Stranger Things, can we just take a minute to appreciate how great the moms are? One of the running themes of the show is the necessity of mothers and mother figures for kids, but we don’t talk about that enough! And yet, it was one of the best aspects of the first season.

But first, let’s back up. In case you haven’t seen Stranger Things (in which case, why are you reading this?), there are two main moms on the show: Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) and Karen Wheeler (Cara Buono).

Joyce is the mother of Jonathan, an artsy outsider, and Will, whose disappearance is the inciting incident that sets the first season into motion. Joyce is equal parts nutcase and badass. An overworked single parent, she still provides a supportive and loving home for her two sons. But she kinda loses it when Will disappears—understandably so. She’s shaky and bug-eyed the way only Winona can be; and in her grief and confusion, she refuses to believe that Will is dead, even when she sees his body with her own eyes. Joyce even figures out a way to communicate with Will through the famous alphabet light wall. It’s Joyce’s stubborn determination to find Will that gets police chief Jim Hopper (David Harbour) involved. She doesn’t give a shit that people think she’s crazy or bothersome; she’s finding her son, and that’s that. By the end of the season, she’s in another dimension getting Will back from a creepy monster. That’s what moms do.

Her foil—or more accurately, her counterpart—is Hopper. We see in flashbacks that his young daughter contracted an illness years earlier and, despite all his fatherly love and care, she died. Now, I’m not suggesting that dads aren’t as strong as moms or that cancer and being sucked into the Upside Down are somehow comparable. Nor, I think, is the show. But the pairing of these two parents of “lost” children still sets up a situation in which Joyce, essentially through sheer force of will, did the impossible thing Hopper was unable to do, and it’s a powerful moment. Despite all the sci-fi equipment, super heroics, and technical knowledge of basically every other character, Mama Byers is the biggest secret weapon in Hawkins.

Then we have Mrs. Wheeler, a more traditional ’80s housewife and the mother of popular and studious Nancy, AV club member Mike, and toddler Holly. Her husband is more or less just a guy around the house, and we find out from Nancy that they married when Karen was young and her husband was…not so young. Her whole thing is being a wife and mother, and she’s essentially a good person—Karen is sympathetic to Joyce when others aren’t, tries her best to deal with teenage Nancy, and is firm but not harsh with Mike and his friends. Sure, there’s a lot she doesn’t notice; most obviously, that her son Mike is keeping Eleven as a guest in their basement for, like, a week. And no, she’s not as overtly “badass” as Joyce. But her motherly super heroics are of another quality: The measure of a parent isn’t always the parent’s behavior, it’s the kids’, and Karen has raised incredible kids. Despite the rest of the town’s somewhat comic apathy, Nancy will not rest until she finds out what happened to her best friend Barb. And Mike doesn’t just let Eleven stay at the Wheeler house, he feeds, clothes, and comforts her. Mike and Nancy are incredibly caring and tenacious, and I don’t think they learned it from their dad. That’s all Karen’s doing.

In fact, Mike knows this. He knows that because of his warm and loving family—held together by his mother—he is safe, safe enough even to take risks and help others. When Eleven is hurt, he tells her, “Just hold on a little longer, OK? He’s gone. The bad man’s gone. We’ll be home soon, and my mom…she’ll get you your own bed. You can eat as many Eggos as you want.” He’s echoing what almost every young kid thinks at some point or another in their life: Everything will be OK because Mom will fix it.

PHOTO: Netflix

Karen Wheeler (Cara Buono)

Which brings us to Eleven, a case study in being unmothered. She’s skittish, deprived of human warmth and contact, and, with only her cruel “papa” figure (Matthew Modine) raising her, totally cut off from her femininity. Her hair is short—the first person she meets outside the lab takes her for a boy—and she’s enchanted by the sight of herself in a wig and dress. It’s not because, as some have interpreted, the show wants to enforce a rigid idea of what it means to be a woman. It’s because being a “girly” girl was never even an option for Eleven. She never had anyone to show her. To her, that dress means normality—even freedom.

Eleven is the third lost child of the series, and we get to meet the women who lost her: her mother and aunt. Eleven’s mom was told she miscarried the daughter in her womb but, like Joyce, refused to believe her child was truly gone. Eventually, it’s implied, that frustration, plus drug use and possible interference by the evil lab, drove her out of her mind. She now spends her days half-asleep in front of the television, while her sister takes care of her. (It’s female compassion all the way down on this show.)

Eleven never gets to meet the woman she was stolen from in season one, but she does, finally, get a mom. For her whole life, she has been subjected to traumatizing experiments in sensory deprivation tanks by men who see her as a powerful tool, not a little girl. But to help rescue Will, she agrees to go into another makeshift tank. This time, though, something is different: Joyce is there. As Eleven prepares to get into the tub, Joyce tells this silent, feral child, “You’re a very brave girl. You know that, don’t you? Everything you’re doing, for my boy, for Will…for my family. Thank you.” Then, she takes Eleven’s hands and leans in close. “Listen, I am gonna be there with you the whole time,” she says. “If it ever gets too scary in that place, you just let me know, OK?” Eleven has never known a mother’s love in her young life—now she’s got one telling her she’s allowed to feel fear, that she’s supported and brave. When Eleven starts to whimper in the tub, Joyce whispers, “It’s OK, it’s OK, it’s OK. We’re right here, honey. It’s OK. I got you. Don’t be afraid. I’m right here with you. It’s OK, you’re safe.” It gives Eleven the courage to continue. Eventually, she delivers this message from Joyce to Will: “Your mom, she’s coming for you.” Can you imagine a more comforting message? When Eleven finally comes out of her trance, she cries in Joyce’s arms, who tells her, “I got you. I got you. I got you, honey. You did so good. Are you OK?” For the first time, Eleven might actually be OK because Mom is there. It’s my favorite scene.

So, as you dip into the wild world of season two, be on the lookout for incredible acts of maternity. They are there, tenfold, but I won’t spoil it for you. Just promise that when you finish, you’ll remember to call your mother. She’s worried sick about you!



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