Blog Posts by Mira Jacob, Shine staff

Sure they look cute, but on a 2-year-old?Listen, to be honest, I've been pretty over this whole skinny jeans thing for a while now. For one, the only people who can really rock them are prepubescent teenage girls or models. For two, the people I most often see rocking them (myself included) are a far cry from prepubescent teenage girls or models. And now, according a recent post in the Wall Street Journal, even toddlers are being forced into this anorexia-inducing fashion trend.

Yes, that's right, skinny jeans for toddlers. Because that makes sense. I can only imagine what the fashionista moms were thinking when they bought these.

-Extra definition in the diaper area?

-Check.

-Hard to walk in?

-Check.

-Designed to turn a baby-chub-shedding bundle into something resembling a troubled teen?

-Check, but skip the milk for a week if you want her to be able to wear the dark ones with crotch whiskering to her playdate with Lindsay Lohan.

Okay, but seriously: Where are we going with this, people?

Michael Corleone and brother Fredo famously fall into an unhealthy sibling rivalry in Whether it's your mother-in-law hassling you about having another baby or the neighbor down the street hinting that Junior would be better behaved if he had a sibling, there's an assumption in America that only kids make for unhappy kids. Common opinion pegs them as selfish and spoiled, judgmental and lonely, overly adult and much too childish. In other words, they are symbol of everything we don't like about children in general, while children with siblings are generally thought to be more well-adjusted, considerate and well-behaved.

How nice, then, for common opinion to be firmly debunked. In fact, recent articles appearing in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Psychology Today have taken us down another trajectory entirely, one that posits that only children not only turn into happy, well-adjusted adults, but that people with siblings can often suffer lifelong self-esteem issues that revolve around birth order and favoritism. Either way, it seems, whether or not

Yesterday, after getting hit in the head with the jerkiness of one-too-many passengers (not to mention the door of the luggage compartment), flight attendant Steven Slater grabbed the intercom, told the passenger exactly where she could go, and exited via the emergency slide, grabbing a beer for himself along the way. While most acts of blatant anger aren't appropriate in the workplace, we can't help but salute a man whose 20-plus-years in the industry came to a movie-worthy ending. Steven Slater, we hope you get yours. And by yours, we mean another job soon, and another beer whenever you need one.

More: Steven Slater spoofs take over late night television

Elizabeth Carr (now Comeau) with her son. Image courtesy of the Boston Globe. I was just old enough to understand the basics of babies (you know, that they came from a mommies, daddies, storks, and cabbages, and made women really fat in the tummy) when Elizabeth Carr, the country's first "test tube baby" was born. I remember how it seemed to shock, delight and scare the adults around me in ways that I couldn't predict. My father's boring doctor friends? Thrilled out of their scrubs. Mrs. G., the nice neighbor lady who gave me butterscotch candies every time I walked by her house? Pissed off in a way that made me never want to walk by her house again. I'm not sure what she was expecting when she brought up the birth of Elizabeth Carr, throwing in words like "unnatural" and "devil's business." I just remember that in the end, I ended up confusing Judgment Day and New Year's Day, making that year's Christmas one of my most anxiety filled ever.

So I was pretty blown away to read the story from Elizabeth's point of view, published in the Boston Globe just days

"Women do almost as well as men today," Jane Waldfogel, a Columbia University professor who studies families and work, "as long as they don't have children."

In a New York Times article that confirms what many of us had suspected, "A Labor Market Punishing to Women" posits that despite overall gender equality in the job market rising in the last few decades, women who choose to have children do so in an economy that "exacts a terribly steep price for any time away from work - in both pay and promotions."

Oof. Had enough of that? Try this chaser: "People often cannot just pick up where they have left off. Entire career paths are closed off. The hit to earnings is permanent."

The article goes on to cite a University of Chicago study which found that though men and women were making roughly the same amount of money a few years after their college graduation, women were much more likely to take time off to have kids, resulting in them making about 75% less income than men

After seeing what Betsey Johnson did with the Eloise-inspired room at the Plaza Hotel in New York, we couldn't help but think of all of the other rooms inspired by childrens' books we'd like to see. Who could bring the sweet simplicity of Madeline to life? Make a sty worthy of charming Olivia? Put a

Can any other subject get us SO riled up? It seems that when parents weigh in on the issue of spanking, they have a lot of reasons why their form of discipline is the right one. They're also pretty good at pointing out why everyone who disagrees with them is wrong.

As the Parenting editor of Shine, I've started to notice a trend with the spanking debate-mainly that I get a lot of articles against spanking, like this one from Shine user and Parent's Guide to Emotional Coaching Young Children author Kim Blaine, and then a lot of responses from readers who completely disagree with her.

I've also noticed some similarities between the arguments on either side. People who are pro-spanking seem to feel it's the best, most effective way to communicate with a child who is too little to understand larger concepts that require reasoning. They also tend to invoke a time in the past, when life was simpler and parents were in charge and kids didn't act like brats, as Shine user crazysmom

Well, it's official: The Plaza Hotel's most famous pretend resident is finally on the real world map. Unveiling its Eloise Suite on Thursday, the New York hotel has turned Kay Thompson's classic children's book into a beautiful, whimsical bedroom, replete with girly furnishings, a pet turtle, and of course, a bawth. Designed by Betsey Johnson, the suite is actually comprised of two rooms-"one for erstwhile Eloises and one for their parents"-and the cost of renting both together will set you back a cool $3040 per night. Not going to happen for you? Yes, well, join the club, but it doesn't stop us from enjoying this slide show of the Eloise Suite which, even if we can't afford it, looks like a pitch-perfect homage to its insouciant namesake. Long live Eloise! (Even if we can't live with her!)