Blog Posts by Mommy Tracked

Read more Funny Papers on Mommy Tracked

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Funny Papers is an exclusive, weekly cartoon in glorious color about the serious silliness (and occasional stickiness and stinkiness) of modern motherhood.

Betsy Streeter, mother of two, is a veteran cartoonist and creator of " Brainwaves ," a single-panel feature about the absurdity of everyday life. Her pen and ink musings can be found in syndication at gocomics.com and in dailies, weeklies, monthlies, quarterlies, and in quite a few psychology textbooks (go figure). She's also published two Brainwaves books. Between cartoons, Betsy teaches drawing and cartooning to kids, watches sci fi movies and listens to every genre of music.

by Leslie Morgan Steiner (Two Cents on Working Motherhood)

DC is buzzing about Elena Kagan, President Obama's latest Supreme Court nominee, whose confirmation hearings begin in June. Senators, opinionistas and media makers have all weighed in on whether Kagan, our country's solicitor general and former dean of Harvard Law School, will make a worthy Supreme Court justice when she's never actually been a judge.

What's generated the most surreptitious buzz, however, is the question of whether the never-married, non-mom Kagan can fairly represent the interests of American women when she's never had the experiences of being a wife or mother - plus some snarky speculation about why she's not been married in the first place.

Predictably, there have been cries of bias and prejudice and double standards for women. Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus dug deeper with "She's not gay, okay?" in "A Smart Woman With Fewer Choices." "The brutal fact is that a never-married woman tends to

by Risa Green (Tales from the Mommy Track)

6:15 am. I am awake, people, and I have to pee! Which is why I am putting my paws on the side of your bed, and trying very hard to get my tongue to reach your face. I know you don't like it when I pee on your carpet, but seriously, if you don't get your lazy ass out of bed in the next thirty seconds, I am going to have no choice. NO CHOICE, do you hear me?

6:16 am. Oh, goodie, you're up. But hold on. I have to scratch myself and then lick my penis.

6:18 am. Wow, that felt good. I could do that all day. Where was I going again? Oh, right, I have to pee.

6:19 am. Actually, I think I'll just lie down in the hallway now and totally ignore you while you call my name and beg me to go outside, and waste precious minutes that you could be spending getting dressed and making lunches. [Laughing] Really, this NEVER gets old.

6:25 am. Okay. Now I definitely have to pee. Wait, do I smell eggs?

6:26 am. Oops. My bad. But hey, at least

by Meredith O'Brien (Moms in Pop Culture & Politics)

When CBS' The Good Wife commenced its first season this fall, it began with Alicia Florrick -- who'd left the legal profession for more than a decade in order to raise her two children and support her husband Peter's political career -- being compelled to return to the work force. Her husband had resigned his state's attorney post in disgrace and was in jail on corruption charges. She'd had to sell their home in the suburbs and move to an apartment in the city where her mother-in-law was helping her look after the children.

After enduring a series of put-downs about her decision to leave the workforce, Alicia was offered a temporary position at law school buddy Will Gardner's law firm. But there was a catch. The firm only had room to hire one full-time junior associate, so Alicia would have to compete against a cut-throat, unattached, fresh-from-law-school twentysomething named Cary for the open spot.

For the entire

by Leslie Morgan Steiner (Two Cents on Working Motherhood)

My sophomore year in college, flush with feminism, I negotiated my first pay raise. My employer - a dorm mom with a new baby - was as shocked as I was when, after three hours caring for her baby, I blurted out that I expected to be paid $8 instead of the $6.50 per hour she handed me. Flustered, she handed me a pile of quarters to make up the difference. I felt an odd mix of emotions -- shame for asking for more money, and exhilaration that I'd gotten it.

Twenty five years later, good news from the 'Equal Pay' front lines. Although stubborn gender discrimination means on average, working women earn only 79 cents for every dollar paid their male colleagues, a small subset of women make vastly more than their male counterparts.

The group? The 16 female CEOs in the S&P 500, according to a new report on 2009 salaries from Bloomberg News. Carol Bartz, the CEO of Yahoo!, has a pay package of $47.2 million. Kraft CEO

Kate Thorp is just 40 years old but her resume lists a dizzying number of titles, awards and companies for whom she has been an evangelist of the Web. In fact, the daughter of actors Chad Everett ("Medical Center") and Shelby Grant ("Fantastic Voyage") likes to joke that her quick climb to the top of corporate ladder made her parents "nauseous." She began her career as a television reporter and as a U.S. congressional aide before joining CNET (where her title was "VP-Crusader"), which launched her into the world of online media and marketing. She co-founded the Internet Advertising Bureau, did a stint at a venture capital firm and founded her own digital communications company, Lot21, at age 28. In 2007, she started Real Girls Media network, whose popular Web site, DivineCaroline, offers women a voice on the Internet.

As a mom to three - a daughter who'll be 10 this summer, and twin 7-year-old boys - there are two things that help her manage her career and family life - she's a

by Risa Green (Tales from the Mommy Track)

My son is a big thinker. And by "big," I don't mean that he thinks often. I mean that he thinks on a large scale. He's one of those kids who has entire worlds going on in his head - give him a stick, or a rock, or a cheap action figure, and he can entertain himself for hours. I've always loved this about my son; he's creative, he's a non-conformist, and he always sees the big picture. But lately, his ideas have started to become, well, too big for me to handle, I guess, and it's starting to cause me some serious parenting angst.

It started about two weeks ago, when he came home from school and declared that he wanted to make a video game. Not play a video game, but make a video game. I tried to be encouraging, and to direct him more towards coming up with ideas for a video game, as opposed to creating an actual video game. But he was not having it. He insisted that he wanted to make a video game, which he could then play, on the

Read more Funny Papers on Mommy Tracked

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Funny Papers is an exclusive, weekly cartoon in glorious color about the serious silliness (and occasional stickiness and stinkiness) of modern motherhood.

Betsy Streeter, mother of two, is a veteran cartoonist and creator of " Brainwaves ," a single-panel feature about the absurdity of everyday life. Her pen and ink musings can be found in syndication at gocomics.com and in dailies, weeklies, monthlies, quarterlies, and in quite a few psychology textbooks (go figure). She's also published two Brainwaves books. Between cartoons, Betsy teaches drawing and cartooning to kids, watches sci fi movies and listens to every genre of music.