Thank God For Mommy

Stay at home moms need fair education.

powerfulmothers — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 17:52:43 +0000

Stay-at-home moms: Census shows they tend to be less educated

Stay-home moms defy popular image, U.S. Census finds

WASHINGTON — The first national snapshot of married women who stay home to raise their children shows that the popular notion of high-achieving professional mothers sidelining careers for family life is largely beside the point.

Instead, census statistics released Thursday show that stay-at-home mothers tend to be younger and less educated, with lower family incomes. They are more likely than other mothers to be Hispanic or foreign-born.

Census researchers said the new report is the first of its kind and was spurred by interest in the so-called “opt-out revolution” among well-educated women said to be leaving the work force to care for children at home.

“I do think there is a small population, a very small population, that is opting out, but with the nationally representative data, we’re just not seeing that,” said Diana Elliott, a family demographer who is co-author of the U.S. Census Bureau report.

The report showed that mothering full time at home is a widespread phenomenon, including 5.6 million women, or nearly 1 in 4 married mothers with children younger than 15. By comparison, the country’s stay-at-home dads number 165,000.

Researchers noted that the somewhat younger ages of stay-at-home mothers could partly explain their lower education levels, and that less family income would be expected with just one parent in the work force.

Even so, the profile of mothers at home that emerged is at odds with the popular discussion that has flourished in recent years, they said.

The notion of an opt-out revolution took shape in 2003, when New York Times writer Lisa Belkin coined the term to describe the choices made by a group of high-achieving Princeton women who left the fast track after they had children.

It has since been the subject of public debate, academic study and media coverage. It has been derided as a myth but has never quite gone away in an era when women still struggle to balance work and family, and motherhood’s conflicts have been parodied and probed in everything from Judith Warner’s book “Perfect Madness” to television’s “Desperate Housewives” and “The Secret Life of a Soccer Mom.”

The census statistics show, for example, that the educational level of nearly 1 in 5 mothers at home was less than a high school diploma, as compared with 1 in 12 other mothers. Thirty-two percent of moms at home have at least a bachelor’s degree, compared with 38 percent of other mothers.

Twelve percent of stay-at-home moms live below the poverty line, compared with 5 percent of other mothers. On the other end of the economic scale, about one-third of moms at home had family incomes of $75,000 a year or more, whereas roughly half of other mothers did.

Given this portrait, mothers at home appear to be “the more vulnerable women, for whom I would argue the issue is lack of opportunity,” said sociologist Pamela Stone of Hunter College. “They have a hard time finding a job and finding a job that makes work worth it.”

This may well be illuminating for many observers of family life, she said, because “the attention is always focused on this erroneous perception about the women at the top.”

Stone — who studied successful women who left their careers for a 2007 book called “Opting Out?” — said some shift course and focus on their children but “not at the numbers people think. Even among this advantaged group, there is no upward trend of staying at home.”

The census report was based on nationally representative data from 2007, predating the current economic crisis.

Kathleen Gerson, a sociologist at New York University who studies families and the labor market, said the census figures are a reality check.

Opting out, she said, “is not and never has been and will not be a revolution,” she said. “Far more women are in the workplace than not, and there is no evidence to show that that will turn around.”

For many women who stay home, low earnings and high child-care costs are part of the decision, she said. “Women with less education and fewer job opportunities were always more likely to withdraw or not be in the labor force,” Gerson said. “The economic calculus is different.”

The report did not show a proportionately high number of married African-American mothers staying at home, but Kuae Mattox, a national board member of Mocha Moms, a nonprofit support organization for stay-at-home mothers of color, said she sees “a quiet revolution” of highly educated, professional African-American women choosing to do so.

“I think this is a segment of the population that has been overlooked in the whole opt-out revolution in this country,” she said.

“The Century of Woman” Women’s eNews shaping online women’s journalism.

powerfulmothers — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:44:32 +0000

When I was introduced to Rita Haley Jensen through Facebook by her daughter Ariel Jensen Vargas, she was sharing their recent Women’s eNews annual 21 Leaders for the 21st Century 2009 honorees. I had heard about the celebratory award given to 21 extraordinary female newsmakers (and one man) chosen every year. Nobel Peace Prize winners, writers, journalists, women’s rights activists, are selected from around the globe by non-profit Women’s eNews, for their “demonstrated commitment to creating change on behalf of all women”.

Interested in the organization behind this prestigious, outstanding leadership award, I asked Ariel with whom I could speak to and possibly interview, she lead me to founder and president of Women’s eNews Rita Haley Jensen.

As I researched Rita, read her articles, listened to her interviews, and watched her videos I was moved to my core. This lively international woman with her bright white hair, sparkling ice blue eyes and her enthusiastic sweet voice has shaped woman’s journalism for over two decades. She has inspired, hired, trained and mentored hundreds if not thousands of women journalists around the world. Rita is a former senior writer for the National Law Journal who won an Alicia Patterson Fellowship grant in 1994 and wrote an expose about the role lawyers played in the savings-and-loan scandal of the late 1980s. 1

Her amazing staff of professional women journalists at Women’s eNews; located in the heart of New York City, one block from Susan B. Anthony’s ‘Revolution’ newspaper publishing house (a newspaper for women’s rights in 1868) provides up to the minute breaking women’s news. Their focus at Women’s eNews is “balanced and non-partisan journalism” an electronic news service that distributes national and international women’s issues covering public policy, justice, reproductive rights, domestic violence, rape, trends in business, culture, politics, education, health, law, sports and safety.

Ten years ago, when Women’s eNews first began, they had their small staff and a mission. As Kathryn Rodgers, president of the news service’s parent organization, recounts its genesis this way: “Looking out at the media’s coverage of women, we saw a tremendous void in women’s voices, in women as opinion shapers, and in the coverage of all the things that women do in society. So we decided to show the media what they were missing. Not to go on a blame campaign, but to do the ground work, actually do the reporting, and go back to these media outlets and say, ‘Here’s what we’re talking about when we say you’re not covering women’s issues.’ ” 1

Same Website, New Design.

When I spoke to Rita shortly after, I was inspired by her relentless dedication over the years to women, young and old, speaking to what is possible in their lives. A commitment for all women to have their full rights acknowledged, and a peaceful life. What was Women’s eNews vehicle to reaching women around the world? Their ten year old website, “a model T Ford that got the job done” Rita laughed. Celebrating being online for 10 years as of June 15, 1999, Launched by the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, www.womensenews.org is now getting a cutting edge, state-of-the-art new face August 2009.

Rita is excited about the opportunities their new website will create for everyone. An interactive site, with activities, favorite women blogger’s highlighted, survey questions, polls, and amazing photographs will be coupled with their archive of over 4,000 articles from international journalists. A popular feature; Journalist of The Month will remain. They have an active Facebook with a goal of hitting their 500 Facebook members.2

Women’s eNews has a growing membership and subscribership from major news organizations to small journalist and blog members. In over 120 Nations, everyday 100 of their brave, on-the-front-lines journalists deliver original stories not available anywhere else, each Wednesday, to Women’s eNews. Proudly they offer an Arabic site launched in 2003. The news service’s staff sends a weekly e-mail to some 8,000 newspapers, targeting national editors with a budget describing syndicated stories. In addition, a separate e-mail is sent to op-ed editors offering new commentaries.1

As I browsed through their current site, I was impressed with how much free information they were able to squeeze into their ‘model T Ford’. The current stories they were highlighting while I was visiting were ‘Health Reform’, ‘AT&T Case spotlights Gender issue for Sotomayor’ by Sharon Johnson, ‘Onal Found Remorse Among Turkish ‘Honor’ Killers’, ‘July Promises Femme Films’ by Jennifer Merin, ‘Iran, Dissidence Achieves Gender Parity’ by Soheila Vahdati, Women’s Philanthropy Outpaces the Pack’ by Kayla Hutzler, ‘U.N puts Female Peacekeepers on Display’ by Theresa Braine. Other stories were Iran’s Women’s Rights Activists Are Being Smeared, Influential Women’s Magazine Silenced in Iran, Memoir Goes Behind Iran’s Prison Gates, Black Maternal Health.

Rita and I continued to speak about the current protests in Iran, and she told about the type of women they honor, and support like a prominent women’s rights activist in Tehran, Iranian journalist and Human Rights Attorney Shadi Sadr, whom accepted their Ida B. Wells Award for Bravery in Journalism at the Women’s eNews 21 Leaders for the 21st Century. Ms. Shirin Ebadi, is a Nobel Prize winner, and during the protest she was threatened with judicial prosecution. She has been a respected voice defending human rights, and women’s rights in Iran.

We agreed the importance of being proactive with our children, and young people in creating awareness of what is happening in the world. Women’s eNews goes as far as giving walking tours to young journalism students, groups, organizations and visitors for an hour in their historic neighborhood.

When asking Rita to look back at what expectations did she have in 1999 for women’s news coverage, major media coverage about women, and how her website might influence both areas, this is how she recalls that time:

“It was a hunger, really, to do the journalism

I loved and to present to the other news media—here,

these are great stories. I had hoped the power of

our journalism would inspire them to do the same.”

Furthermore, I asked her what progress has she seen in the ten years she has been offering an e-news service? She recalls; “I see that major newspapers are improving their coverage, particularly of women overseas and feminist is no longer a pejorative and feminism is no longer being declared dead or passé.”

After making huge journalistic progress and contributions over the last ten years through Women’s eNews, I asked her what she thought the next ten years would look for Women’s Rights, including in the media, this is what Rita had to say: “Even with a pro-women’s rights president in office, many battles must be fought—fair employment practices, reproductive justice—the opportunity to have children or not—freedom from violence, just to name three…”

Without really knowing the full global impact Women eNews has truly been for the landscape of fair journalism for women, Rita is remarkably humble. She is truly on the front lines with her dedicated army of professional female journalists. I attribute her character to that of one particular woman who launched a paper called “Revolution” a century ago, fighting for women’s right to vote only a few blocks away from their headquarters.

So, naturally I asked her “Do you believe Women’s eNews has been at the foundation or source of this progress?” Rita’s response: “Women’s News can’t take credit for the entire shift, but I am confident that without us, it might not have happened.”

Rita Henley Jensen is Founder and Editor in Chief of Women’s eNews (www.womensenews.org), an independent daily news service covering issues of particular concern to women, which has won 31 journalism awards, including the PASS Award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency and the Rosa Cisneros award from the International Planned Parenthood Federation, Western Hemisphere Region. Jensen also was named by the New York Daily News one of the 100 most influential women in New York. A former senior writer for the National Law Journal and columnist for The New York Times Syndicate, Jensen has more than 20 years of experience in journalism and journalism education, as well as an armload of awards, including the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Alumni award, the Hunter College Presidential Grant for Innovative Uses of Technology in Teaching, the Alicia Patterson fellowship, and the Lloyd P. Burns Public Service prize. Jensen is also a survivor of domestic violence and a former welfare mother who earned degrees from Ohio State University and Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. She is also the grandmother of four, two granddaughters and two grandsons.

Anyone can obtain permission to republish the material in any medium simply by dropping them a note.Women’s eNews is a project of the incubator program of the Fund for the City of New York, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. For more information, or to inquire about subscribing or to make a donation, please visit www.womensenews.org or call (212) 244-1720.

Bobbi Miller-Moro is the founder of Women Without Borders, is an supporter for Women’s Rights and successful co-parenting; author of ‘Lessons We Learned From Obama’, actress and filmmaker of transformational films, and mother of five children. She lives with her husband and children in Los Angeles.

Nonprofit launches journalism operation to cover women’s issues
Womens eNews Facebook page: Here

Motivational Speaker Leatrice Naylor: “The Billionaire Mom…why not?”

powerfulmothers — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:32:31 +0000

by Bobbi Miller-Moro

One mom went from tragedy to breakthrough invention for women.

During these tough, almost brutal economic times it is easy to just operate from fear. Holding your money close, not taking risks, not starting new ventures or not following your dreams. However, something is happening at the deepest level for many people around the world; they are finding their strength and their most explosive creative forces are waiting to be uncovered. New start-up business and companies, mergers, new ventures are happening and it is exciting. If you are not at the forefront of this collective momentum, it is never too late. Your resources are limitless once you begin to look. One woman did just that, and Leatrice Naylor’s journey didn’t just start in the recession.

When one of her three daughters was discovered to have a golf ball sized tumor in her brain, her life changed instantly. Leatrice and her retired military husband gave their daughter everything they could to help recuperate her back to health after her emergency surgery. Through prayers and support she made a full recovery, but out of this harrowing and painful experience Leatrice discovered a solution to a simple, overlooked problem her daughter was having.

To relieve the experience of her daughter’s menstruation, she invented and developed a new product, Menzies. An attractive disposable panty, so no more ruined undergarments. Made with light, bio degradable fibers that easily dissolves into the earth once it is discarded it is a product who’s time has come. It has a built in pad for extra coverage, and makes for easy wear and coverage. Leatrice had no idea that this product would gain in popularity to the point that where she has been approached by the US Military, hospice centers, labor and delivery hospitals and an international manufacturer.

Out of her strong determination to see her invention go to market, she learned valuable lessons along the way. From how to get a patent attorney, distribution, manufacturing, marketing to pr. She learned the ins and outs of taking an idea to the shelves, all within the process of raising a family. This became a transformational journey for Leatrice, and she has seen first hand how many women and mothers have been in her shoes. Where they have so many ideas and don’t know where to start. She knows how difficult it can be especially right now when everything seems so economically impossible.

Leatrice’s daring attitude to venture into the world of manufacturing has also lead to the most natural and organic part of her realization of inspiring other women, she created “billionaire Moms…why not?” She thought of ‘Millionaire Moms’, but knew in this day and age, Billionaires are the new millionaires and to think really big. The “…why not?” part gives an elegant meaning to the dreams that is possible for everyone.

Leatrice is President of BAC Marketing and a degree in X and went X school, she wasn’t satisfied with the results until Menzies and “Billionaire Mom…Why Not?” was born. Out of overcoming her challenges, her story is heart felt and emotional and she began speaking in churches as a testament to the human spirit. Audiences responses were overwhelming, and from the heart, and they encouraged her to become a Motivational Speaker. And that’s exactly what she did. A mom of three from Northern Virginia, with a dream and a true harrowing story, she now is holding workshops nationwide for women’s organizations to teach women how to ‘manufacture their dream.’

In her women’s workshop, she covers Steps on how Leatrice went from her dream idea for a product, to manufacturing.

How she transitioned from working corporate to CEO.

How to protect and patent your idea.

Get hands-on materials to implement your ideas into reality.
Also available Exclusive Resource Marketing Package.

Her next event will be at the beautiful satellite campus of George Mason University Campus in Virginia. If you are interested in having Leatrice Naylor speak at your church, organization, women’s group or function go to http://TheBillionaireMom.com or info@TheBillionaireMom.com

The New Age of ‘MOM’. Demi Moore Redefining What is Hot and Inspiring Mothers.

powerfulmothers — Mon, 11 May 2009 18:42:37 +0000

I have always liked Demi Moore from as far back as I can remember. I saw her expression of being a woman develop over the years with her ex husband Bruce Willis, to her current husband Ashton Kutcher. Of course with her three lovely daughters. I admired her pushing the envelope in G.I Jane, and it wasn’t until I was a contestant in a reality show in Vericruz, Mexico being trained by her ex G.I Jane Navy Seal trainer Scott Helvenston that I really got a sense of how powerful she really was. I was a mother of three children at the time.

Now, Demi is 47, and her children are almost full grown. I myself have 5 children now with a 17 year old; and there is so much I discovered since then. The number one thing is my attitude and mind set in everything I do. I have busted my butt training in resistant training with The Kennedy System, and run, eat healthy and I feel great. At 36 I would never guess I could feel so strong with five children. I still admire Demi for never letting age dictate to her the way she should look. And I am not talking about plastic surgery.

I am talking about living free without limits and taking yourself to the edge. Living life fully, I have expressed my motherhood also posing nude with a huge 9 month pregnant belly, and I have done adverturous things as a filmmaker and am so grateful for it. Traveling with my children, teaching them how to invent your life, and really make your own rules.

After I founded my Powerful Mothers blog called Women Without Borders, in my research I saw that women everywhere really want to have it all. And the way to have it all in this new age of ‘MOM’ is to define your own life by your own standards. I am fully expressed, and so pleased my four daughters get to grow up without limits. That they can be and look and be however they want at any age.

So Demi is an amazing powerhouse of a woman and mother, and I can completly relate and admire women all around me defying nature, and making their life absolutly their own.

Bobbi Miller-Moro
Women Without Borders

Dr. Jay Gordon Exposes Swine Flu, Tamiflu vaccine, Rumsfield connection.

powerfulmothers — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 17:06:09 +0000

Just wash your hands.

Every year, hundreds of viruses pass through the pediatric and adult community. Many of the bugs are disruptive and keep kids out of school and adults away from work. Some of the viruses have unique signs and symptoms, but most just cause amorphous aches, sneezing, coughing or intestinal upset.

Influenza viruses, especially new ones, trigger more news stories and can be made to seem much more frightening and dangerous than they really are. Government agencies and media don’t supply statistical context and make it sound like you’ve got a “fifty-fifty” chance of contracting this new virus. They then make it sound like a lot of people who get this influenza end up in the hospital and may die. Statistically, nothing could be further from the truth: The chance that the new virus is really dangerous is small. The chance that you’ll get it is much, much smaller, and the possibility that you or a family member will be harmed by the virus is so slim that the news should be on page twenty, not page one.

Swine Flu is a virus for which there is no vaccine, no threat to your family and there are undoubtedly tens of thousands of harmless undiagnosed cases throughout the world. The news stories are probably taking a hundred questionable respiratory deaths in Mexico and guessing.

There actually is a very, very small chance that this virus could cause severe illness and whenever this occurs hospitalization and even fatalities are reported. The likelihood of a pandemic is miniscule, but newspapers, governments agencies and the manufacturers of pharmaceuticals do their best work and make their biggest sales when people are scared.

Tamiflu is recommended for treatment and prevention of this influenza virus. The company which gets the drug’s royalties (Gilead) has as a major stockholder- -previously Chairman–one Donald Rumsfeld.

Local pharmacies are already running low on Tamiflu.

Connect these dots.

http://uk.reuters. com/article/ governmentFiling sNews/idUKN24452 16420090424

http://www.snopes. com/politics/ medical/tamiflu. asp

http://money. cnn.com/2005/ 10/31/news/ newsmakers/ fortune_rumsfeld /

http://www.reuters. com/article/ domesticNews/ idUSTRE53O17O200 90425

http://www.nasdaq. com/aspx/ stock-market- news-story. aspx?storyid= 200904251215dowj onesdjonline0003 19&title=who-says- initial-findings -show-swine- flu-responds- to-tamiflu

The usual boring admonitions apply: wash your hands, stay well-rested and well-hydrated. You do not need to buy Tamiflu. It is an effective antiviral drug but has possible side effects.

http://health. howstuffworks. com/health- illness/treatmen t/medicine/ medications/ tamiflu-psych. htm

As far as our office prescribing Tamiflu, we would rather not, but we will if you insist. I promise you that I personally am purchasing none for my family and would recommend the same to you.

Best,

Jay