To Freeze or Not to Freeze

Photo Credit: CarbonNYC [in SF!] via Compfight cc

Over the Holidays my mom decided she wanted something extra special for Christmas. After watching an episode of Today Show, she shares with me the process of freezing eggs. Having received cartons full of her homegrown chicken eggs on a weekly basis for over 3 years now, I assumed she was telling how to freeze chicken eggs so they last longer. As someone who occasionally worries that I’ve had the eggs in my fridge too long, I thought she was on to something. I intently listened as she described the process of taking the eggs, storing and freezing them, until she got to this part in her story… “then you throw a party, like a baby shower, but for frozen eggs”.Then, I realized that she wasn’t talking about her chicken’s eggs, she was talking about MY eggs!  

I admit. I’m a junkie for ambition. I want to accomplish a great number of things. I’m 32, recently married and working to build a software company from the ground up. I have aspirations to get a doctorate degree, run for political office and continue to be active in my community. Many books have been written to help people like me realize that having children doesn’t mean you lose the opportunity to be an ambitious person. While I believe this in theory, I wonder how true it will really be for me and my husband. I’m grateful for the friends and mentors who have paved the way and continue to remind us that having children doesn’t really indicate “the end of your life”. 

And the classic “have fun while you can” advice isn’t always the case. You can have adventure and be ambitious while having children. But how does all of this really shake out? Are these frozen eggs the solution to following your dreams THEN having kids? 

Turns out the frozen egg cocktail party (what my mom describe as a baby shower) is either an informational gathering bringing together fertility doctors, egg storage companies, and women who are interested or who have experienced the process OR an event where you announce to your friends and family “don’t worry about my ambition, take the pressure off me, I’ve frozen my eggs”.  

Instead of the pressure to hurry up and have kids, I now have the pressure to freeze my eggs. But I’m only 32. Isn’t the 30’s the new 20’s when it comes to having children?  Can’t I just be 32without the pressure of having a kid or planning the future of having a kid by freezing it in a box until “I’m ready”. After all, most people, when giving life advice, also say, “You’ll never be ready”.  So who’s to say I won’t freeze my eggs then wake up when I’m 55 without children but with a container of my 32-year-old eggs that can’t be used?  

Can I not be ambitious while having children? Is this not possible? The assumption is that I will be the one to do the heavy lifting in our family when it comes to raising a child. What if my husband is willing to pick up that load so I can be ambitious and accomplish all of my goals without having to give them up? What if he is ok with being the one our kid runs to every time he/she gets hurt? This blurb from a Guardian article in response to Sheryl Sandburg’s approach in “Lean In” hits the nail on the head. 

“It’s a normal assumption that women will have kids, and that mothers will become the primary caretaker over the father. It’s also normal these days to modify “mother” into “working mother”. But “father” is also a “working father,” yet we don’t seem to use that term very often. It’s normal to see the well-worn media image of a tired, hard-working father loosening his tie as he walks through the door to greet his wife and kids late in the evening, but a woman coming home late from the office is more often a punchline. It’s normal to call a woman neglectful for hiring a nanny, or lazy for taking maternity leave. It’s normal to make wild assumptions about women as a whole, regardless of the wide variety of individuals that the female gender encompasses.

The assumptions must be absent from the beginning. It must be accepted that a woman’s place is wherever she wants to be. The final frontier of gender equality is individualism. Just as a man is allowed to decide where his happy balance of home and work life is, so should women. Women’s place is no longer in the home. We all need to stop assuming it is.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

I don’t have a profound solution on this topic. I’m still wading through the advice and options and deciding if I go with the “kids won’t ruin your life and ambition” or the “I better freeze my eggs in case they do” version. I welcome your thoughts.

Catch up, Gwynnie.

Recently, Gwyneth Paltrow made news by recommending a v-steam on her lifestyle website Goop. Too bad I scooped her on this trend THREE YEARS AGO.

"You're going to have a v-steam...I'm not telling you what that is," says The Other Sarah upon my arrival in L.A.

It's a good thing I like surprises. 

I arrived at Tikkun Holisitc Spa on Wednesday morning and was greeted by the owner Niki Han Schwarz. She was as revealing as Sarah was secretive. 

"You're having a vaginal steam. Are you familiar with the procedure?"

Well... I'm familiar with my vagina and I'm familiar with steam but I sure as hell never thought I'd be putting the two together in the same sentence - much less the same physical space. She politely explained it was an ancient procedure that was performed on Korean royalty and that it would release toxins while increasing hormonal balance. Basically, I pieced together that I would be sitting over a steaming pot of herbs.

She tooks me back to the treatment room and wrapped me in a purple strapless robe that would trap the steam. I sat on a big fancy chair (felt sort of like a throne, which in combo with the purple did feel a bit royal) and she informed me I would sit with the steam for 30 minutes.

Whoa. Thirty minutes!

At this point, I had given her my cell phone to charge during the spa treatments. I smiled. "Is there anyway I can get my cell phone back?" 

No way I was going to sit there for a half an hour getting my vagina steamed without telling half the planet...which I proceeded to do once she brought me my phone. I basically texted every girlfriend I had (as well as Nicholas). Seriously. If we've shared so much as a fun coffee date, you probably got this text from me last week. 

"FYI. I'm currently having my vagina steamed. Just thought you should know."

Nicholas has still not responded. I can't decide if that's good or bad. Here is a sampling of responses from my nearest and dearest:

"Wtf? What does that even mean?" (Actually I got WTF a couple of times.)

"How does one find out about a vagina steam?"

"With what desired result?"

"California is a strange land!"

One girlfriend has even taken to calling me steamy. 

When I wasn't giggling at the steady stream of texts coming my way, the procedure itself was pretty relaxing. The chair itself wasn't super-comfortable but apply heat to an (ahem) substantial part of your body for a long period of time and you start to feel the affects. 

Unfortunately, you have to do a series of steams to really feel the long-term benefits and I don't see this procedure coming to Paducah anytime soon. However, it was really fun and a unique experience I would recommend it to anyone. 

Also, you have no idea how much I've loved dropping this into casual conversation.

"How was your trip to LA?"

"Well! I got my vagina steamed!"

How we talk about vaccines

Photo Credit: PAHO/WHO via Compfight cc

Let's get this out of the way. Both of my sons have received the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella vaccine. Not that I owe anyone that information, but I thought I would make it clear from the beginning considering the current fervor surround the measles outbreak.

My children have received all of their vaccinations but ... on an alternate schedule (except the flu shot). I do not believe that vaccines cause autism. However, I also do not believe that every child should be pushed through a system that treats every child (and their immune system) the same. I'm also not sure just because we can vaccinate that means we should vaccinate (I'm looking at you chicken pox).

I understand that our modern vaccination system has saved millions of lives. Overall, it is a medical marvel that does an incredibly good job at what it is supposed to do—prevent deaths from infectious disease. However, just because it is a good system doesn't mean it's a perfect system. It can and should be improved upon and not just by adding more vaccinations to an already crowded schedule.

For me, I approach vaccinations the same way I approach health care in general. In a nutshell, if we're talking about any kind of medical intervention, I'm going to start at "no" and you're going to have to convince me. If you want to perform a surgery on my child or inject my child or medicate my child, you better have a darn good reason. I'll listen to science and the opinion of my physician, but I'm also going to listen to my gut.

My gut said I did not want anything entering the body of my minutes-old infant except my own breast milk. So, I said no to Vitamin K drops, eye ointment, and the Hepatitis B vaccine. The reasons provided for interventions were just not good enough for me. That's not to say my children will never receive the Hepatitis B vaccine (Griffin already has), but I decided the risk of infection wasn't high enough for me to administer the vaccine at birth.

My gut also says I don't want my child receiving upwards of four to five shots at a time. First, because OUCH!. Would you want that many shots at one time?  Second, side effects are rare with vaccines but should my child have one how the heck would we figure out which vaccine was causing the problem? And third, our immune systems are tricky, tricky things and what I don't want to do is piss it off. (Scientific, I know.)

So, I've decided to follow Dr. Sears alternative schedule, which only allows for two shots per visit. As a result you come in once a month instead of once every two months, but I've decided it's worth it. I also think he does a great job of analyzing the risk of each infection with regards to the child's age and using that information to schedule the vaccines. Therefore, because whooping cough or rotavirus are particularly dangers for infants, those vaccines are given at the beginning, while chicken pox or Hep B are pushed to a later date.

Now, the mere mention of Dr. Sears would classify me for many as an anti-vaxxer worthy of scorn and there has been A LOT of scorn going around with regards to parents who chose not to vaccinate and the recent measles outbreak. 

Honestly, it makes me really uncomfortable.

First, I don't think it's productive. When was the last time someone called you an idiot and you thought, "You know what? They're right! I'm going to really examine where that person is coming from!"

Yeah, that's what I thought. Me either.

Alienating families who choose not to vaccinate their children by calling them names and insulting their intelligence accomplishes absolutely nothing. 

Second, I know a lot of these families. Families who make very different choices then I do and - let me tell you something - they love their children just as much as I love mine. Now, I understand this is not a Similac commercial. My decision to have a home birth or breastfeed or home school doesn't affect the safety of your child. However, my decision to vaccinate or not vaccinate can and does affect your child. 

That's why emotions are high. I'm about to have a newborn who will have no immunity to measles AND not be a candidate for vaccination - believe me, I GET IT. 

However, if the goal is to educate on the science of vaccines and change people's minds, then maybe we should also examine the science of PERSUASION - specifically how it relates to vaccines. 

“Facts and evidence, for one, may not be the answer everyone thinks they are: they simply aren’t that effective, given how selectively they are processed and interpreted. Instead, why not focus on presenting issues in a way keeps broader notions out of it—messages that are not political, not ideological, not in any way a reflection of who you are?”

— Maria Konnikova

So, let's stop insulting one another. As parents, our goal to keep our children safe and healthy but it is not our only goal. We also want to present examples of behavior that include empathy and compassion and understanding - behaviors worth emulating. 

There's a lot on the line but that doesn't mean we need to sacrifice our basic humanity.

Post by Sarah Stewart Holland.

Why You Can't Cancel Christmas

A few weeks ago, I posted this status update on Facebook.

Post by Sarah Stewart Holland.

My poor little serious Griffin was genuinely worried he had been too naughty to get any presents from Santa. Never mind that I had made nary a mention of any Santa-induced repercussions for bad behavior and that we also purposefully described our Elf as the non-surveillance kind, he was still stressed.

So, I let him in on a little secret. Everybody gets presents. I told him I'd never heard of child in my entire life that didn't get presents from Santa. I confessed it was all a big, giant bluff.

Imagine my surprise when earlier this week I encountered the Henderson family - who had indeed cancelled Christmas. After confessing on her blog Over The Big Moon that she and her husband had decided to cancel Christmas, Lisa's story went viral spreading to Good Morning, America and The Huffington Post. 

She explains:

“We have not cancelled putting up decorations, celebrating the birth of our Savior, or any of our other heartwarming traditions. But, we have cancelled presents, Santa, and stockings. Their letters to Santa this year will be asking Santa to find someone who needs their presents more.

Here is why – John and I feel like we are fighting a very hard uphill battle with our kids when it comes to entitlement. It is one of the biggest struggles as a parent these days in middle class America. Our kids have been acting so ungrateful lately. They expect so much even when their behavior is disrespectful. We gave them good warning, either it was time for their behavior to change or there would be consequences. We patiently worked with them for several months and guess what, very little changed. One day after a particularly bad display of entitlement John said, “we should just cancel Christmas.” And, so that’s what we did.”

— Lisa Henderson

In many ways, I'm sympathetic to her struggle. Entitlement is a hard thing and sometimes feels like an uphill battle. I remember one of the first lessons I taught Griffin as a baby was I'm going to eat my FIRST breakfast before you demand your SECOND.

The struggle is particularly difficult during this time of year with the much-bemoaned attention on consumerism. I remember learning a difficult lesson regarding Christmas and kids just a few years ago. I was so focused on Santa getting Griffin exactly what he wanted that I had unintentionally taught him Santa takes orders instead of requests. When "Santa" didn't get it exactly right, he was disappointed instead of thrilled at the new toy he had just received. 

I resolved never again to focus so much attention on getting exactly what you asked for.

We've been careful to dial it back this year as well. When Griffin told me he wanted to ask Santa for a Nintendo DS, I told him Santa had to get my approval and I would not be granting it for a video game system. I explained he was too young and he already had plenty of apps to play on the Kindle Fire his father had recently purchased. He took the news in stride. 

So, while I understand Lisa Henderson's concerns, I must say I don't agree with her approach. 

Gratitude is not a character trait but a daily practice - among both children and adults. It's not something your children "have" but something you work on every single day. For me, the idea that a child would be punished for lack of gratitude by the removal of material possessions seems to put all the focus in exactly the wrong place.

Now, the Henderson family has made it clear they will be using the money they would have spent on gifts for service projects and that their children will be making gifts for one another in an effort to "teach their children to be charitable and grateful." All of that sounds wonderful and definitely something we do every year to make sure we put the emphasis on giving instead of receiving.

However, by linking her children's gratitude to the external motivation of receiving presents I still think Lisa Henderson is missing the point. I don't want my children to be grateful because I'm yelling at them to be. I don't want my children to exhibit gratitude because they're afraid of what I'll do if they don't. 

I want my children to find a space for gratitude in their every day life because I believe it is a source of true fulfillment - all year long, not only in December. I want my children to see the role gratitude plays in my own life and model that behavior because they see the benefits go far beyond what presents I receive on Christmas morning.

After all, I give to my children at Christmas because I feel so grateful to have them in my life and because the act of giving to them brings me great joy - even when their reactions don't always meet my expectations.

Bill Cosby: Can creator and creation be separate?

Like so many Americans, I grew up loving Bill Cosby and The Cosby Show. I listened to an old record of his stand-up on my stepfather's record player and watched the Huxtables and all their spinoffs religiously. Rudy. Theo. Denise. Dwayne. Whitley. I loved them all. 

I remember first reading about the rape accusations against Bill Cosby many years ago - long after The Cosby Show had gone off the air. My memory is murky but I recall reading there were around seven women who told very similar stories of drugging and sexual assault. The stories stuck with me. 

This was around the same time as Cosby's support of respectability politics gained increasing attention. Obviously, I have no firsthand experience with being black in America, but Cosby's scolding of black Americans from a position of privilege always sat very, very wrong with me.

As a result, I began opting out of any Cosby worship. Oprah featured him many times over my years of viewing and I never watched. It's one of the few areas I consciously parted ways with Oprah. He just seemed OFF to me.

Now, after decades of being ignored by the public and silenced by Cosby's legal and public relations team, the internet has successfully revived the stories of those who accuse Cosby of sexual assault. 

And there are a lot of them. 

Seventeen women have come forward publicly and told stories of Cosby exploiting his position of power to get them alone, offer them drugs, and then sexually assault them.

SEVENTEEN.

The stories include incidents beginning in the 1960s and continuing until as recent as 2004 and were recently corroborated by an ex-employee who claims Cosby paid him stand guard outside his dressing room. 

Now, as I argued with Woody Allen and the accusations made against him by Dylan Farrow, no one who choses to accuse a public figure in the court of public opinion should expect to be believed without question or criticism. For better or for worse, that is not the world we live in and I can only assume is also the reason many of the woman have chosen to remain anonymous.

However, neither should Cosby. The fact that he refuses to address the accusations and has attempted to shame reporters who even dare ask the questions speaks to the same egotistical (and delusionary) belief in one's own power that would also lead one to sexually assault women.

And make no mistake - if even a tiny percentage of what these women are saying is true - this is about power not sex. If Bill Cosby wanted to have sex outside his marriage, I can only assume that there were plenty of women willing to have consensual sex with him. And really I don't care. That's between him and his wife and those women and wouldn't have affected my opinion of him in the slightest. 

There are plenty of men - famous men - with sexual appetites exist far outside my own personal ethics whose creative work I still enjoy. I have a friend who attended University of Texas and personally witnessed Matthew McConaughey's dogged sexual pursuit of anything that moved. More power to you Matthew! Still loved you in Texas Buyer's Club!

Rod Stewart. Adam Levine. Leonardo DiCaprio. And - yes - Bill Clinton. All with sexual appetites that would be a huge problem were I married to them but luckily I am not. Human beings and sexuality are COMPLICATED and, if you're waiting for all your favorite stars or artists or politicians, to align with a perfect vision of human sexual conduct well then ... enjoy all those Paul Newman movies!

I'm also not arguing one must reject all of Bill Cosby's work. Drawing a strict line between creator and creation is not always that simple. This scene is perfection. Nothing can change that. However, when the work is so closely tied to the personality of the artist, I find it difficult to leave what I know about the artist behind. This is not Roman Polanski tucked safely behind a camera. This is Bill Cosby, who created an entire show inspired by his family, stars in every episode, and named the show after himself. 

Roxane Gay eloquently summed it up it in her recent essay on Cosby, "His art does not absolve him. Art is nothing compared to humanity, nothing at all."

So, I've lost my taste for all things Cosby. Pure and simple. 

I won't be showing my children reruns of The Cosby Show - even if I could.  

What about you? What do you think about Cosby and the rape allegations?

Why I signed the Duggar petition

The Duggar family - stars of the TLC reality show 19 Kids and Counting - is in the news again and not because they added a 20th child to their brood. No, an internet petition on Change.org is calling for TLC to cancel 19 Kids and Counting because of the family's recent opposition to an anti-discrimination ordinance in Arkansas.

The ordinance - which passed by the way - prohibits businesses and public accomodations from discrimination against people based on the person's sexual orientation or gender identity. 

I signed the petition.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I have never supported the Duggar's particular brand of conservative family values. I watched several of their specials before the family's reality show began and was always struck by how limited the roles for women were within their ideology. 

The family belongs to the Quiverful Movement - an evangelical Christian movement that eschews birth control and believes that heterosexual married couples should welcome as many children as God sees fit to give them.

Now, I do not subscribe to that belief. I believe children are a blessing - a blessing that should be CHOSEN because of the huge psychological, emotional, financial, and physical investment they require. I have children because I want to be fully experience raising them myself. For me, that does not mean a buddy system in which older siblings raise the younger siblings - a system Michelle Duggar has openly endorsed.

I also believe that there is room at the table for every form of family - from homosexual families to single parents to unmarried couples raising children from other partnerships. In fact, I think there is room for people who chose more conservative versions for themselves.

Let me be clear - I have no problem with conservative Chirstians who chose to have large families.

That is not what this is about. For example, my love for the Brown family of TLC Sister Wives fame is well-documented. These are conservative people who believe in a VERY different version of family than I practice in my own life.

However, unlike the Duggars, the Browns do not use their celebrity to limit the choices of other families AND do not proscribe the choices of their own children - especially their daughters. 

I remember one scene in particular during the first season of Sister Wives. Cody Brown was sitting with his eldest daugther with his first wife. The daughter wanted to go to the Air Force Academy after graduation. Currently, she was attending a private conservative Mormon high school. Cody was encouraging her to leave the religious high school and attend a secular public high school, which was accredited, to increase her chances of attending the Air Force Academy.

Let's contrast this with one of the few episodes I've seen of 19 Kids and Counting. Michelle Duggar was sharing how blessed she felt that God had given her all these daughters first to take care of all these little boys. While I'm as big a fan of sibling responsibility as the next person, what if the daughters had other plans. What if they didn't want to spend all their free time caring for younger siblings? What if they want to attend college? 

I know the Duggar children have been afforded great opportunity thanks to their family's reality show but what if they'd also like the opportunity to take a different path? What if they don't want to get married at 18? What if they don't want to have as many children as God blesses them with? What if one of those 19 children is gay?

There seems to be very little room for belief systems outside their own - inside their family and without. And that's what I can't stomach. I am a proud feminist. If you want to vacuum every day in high heels and pearls, GO FOR IT! If you want to have 25 children and let your husband run your life, more power to you! 

BUT don't tell me or your daughters or other families they have to follow in your footsteps because God says so. And don't use your considerable celebrity to promote dangerous stereotypes that limit the freedom of choice among others. 

With great power - which celebrity is - comes great responsiblity, it is my opinion that the Duggar family abuses that power.

That's why I signed the petition. 

P.S. Accusations of Intolerance 

Amal Clooney and why I changed my name

The hard-charging international barrister Amal Alamuddin recently married a movie star and changed her name to Amal Clooney reigniting the age-old feminist debate over whether or not a woman should change her name upon marriage.

My decision to change my name came down to a simple majority vote conducted among my bridesmaids in the car on the way to my rehearsal dinner.

At the rehearsal, my uncle had asked how he should announce Nicholas and I at the end of the ceremony. I stood there paralyzed before finally admitting I still hadn't decided. Suddenly, my friends and relatives were weighing in from the audience.

“It's such an honor!”

“Do what you want.”

Finally, Nicholas yelled above the crowd, “Just say Nicholas and Sarah.”

The vote wasn't because I didn't take the decision seriously. Quite the opposite. I was a newly minted Women's Studies minor and whether or not to change my name seemed like the most serious decision I would ever make.

In fact, I came very, very close to calling off the engagement altogether after a serious fight with Nicholas over the issue. I had been battling the the pros and cons for months when I approached Nicholas with the perfect solution.

We would create a new name!

After all, it didn't bother me that I was changing my name. A name change seemed appropriately symbolic for this new phase in my life. I was changing everything else – my relationship status, my independence, my living arrangement, my location – so why not change my name as well?

What bothered me was that I was the only one changing my name.

I was taking his name. I was losing my identity as Sarah Lyn Stewart, while he got to maintain his. Where was the fairness in that? We were entering a committed relationship as equals so why was I the only one indicating that change to the outside world by changing my name?

So, here was the perfect solution. We'd create a new name! I even had one picked out. A professor at our liberal arts university had combined his and his wife's last names and I loved the ideas so we could do the same. The “H” from Holland and the “art” from Stewart to form Hart. Plus, how perfect that it sounded like heart!

I made my pitch to Nicholas.

He balked. I was devastated. Hours of fighting came down to one simple point. He wasn't asking me to change my name so he didn't think it was fair for me to ask him to change his.

It was a fair point. If he wasn't asking me to change my name, what was the issue any way?

I had talked about whether or not to change my name with my college mentor and women's studies professor. She hadn't changed her name and never regretted it. She even had an insanely common name that led to all manner of mix-ups and clerical errors. Still, she said she never even considered it.

However, she had also recently had a child when the issue had arisen all over again. In fact, that was one of my main problems with not changing my name. It seemed like you just delayed the debate until you had kids.

I strongly disliked it when women who had kept their last names automatically gave the children the husband's name. Something about that set very, very badly with me. After all, you carried the baby, you birthed the baby, then you had to spend the rest of your life explaining that they were yours without the easy societal indicator of the child's last name. NO. WAY.

My professor had decided to hyphenate her child's name, which seemed on the surface like a great idea for any future children. Of course, the reason I decided against hyphenating myself is because I am WAY too lazy (or efficient?) to spend precious seconds of my life writing out an insanely long last name. It seemed unfair to curse my future children to a fate I didn't want for myself.

Plus, what were they supposed to do when they got married and had children? Keep hyphenating forever. I didn't want to merely gift my indecision to the next generation. Thinking about generations is ultimately how I came to make peace with following the vote of my bridesmaids and changing my name.

Not only of future generations but past generations, which I had recently started thinking a lot about thanks to a new found interest in ancestry. I couldn't even begin to imagine how complicated my research would be if everyone had thrown caution to the wind and started making up the name-changing rules as they went. Sure, the practice of a woman taking her husband's name had some troubling and patriarchal history, but – let's be honest – so did marriage itself and I was still entering into that institution willingly.

After all, I felt confident other women in my family felt sad to leave their last names behind like I did but followed the pull of societal rules just the same – at least I'd be in good company. Truth be told, I have a conservative streak. I believe in the rules of society, and, while I think improvements can always be made, I follow a more pragmatic than revolutionary approach.

In the grand analysis, I decided the pros of changing my name outweighed the cons. I purposefully kept my maiden name and use all three professionally. I also get VERY angry if addressed in person or otherwise as Mrs. Nicholas Holland. The day of our wedding my new husband and I were announced as Sarah and Nicholas.

I've been Sarah Stewart Holland for over a decade now and I've built a new identity surrounding that name of which I am very proud. Not to mention, in one instance, changing my name changed the course of my life. Law school sections at my school are assigned alphabetically. As a Holland, I was in Section 2. Had I remained a Stewart I would have been in Section 4. While I know the people of Section 4 to be perfectly lovely, I cannot possibly imagine my life without the friendships I formed that first hard year with Goo, Harper, Halliday, Holz, and Israel (who have all since changed their names – go figure.)

I tell my story to say a lot of thought (and drama) went into my decision and I'm assuming the same for Amal Clooney. She deserves the benefit of the doubt and not to have her very personal decision turned into a feminist debate.

This decision to change your last name isn't an easy one – no matter how famous that name may be.

Did you change your name? Why or why not?

P.S. Why marriage deserves to be celebrated.

P.P.S. Marriage Isn't For  You: A rebuttal

4 Reasons Kids Don't Need Cake

Photo Credit: Theresa Thompson via Compfight cc

A school district in Boone County, Kentucky recently received a great deal of media attention. There were no new test scores or viral videos or even school violence. No, the school board got a lot of attention for a new rule.

While revising the district’s wellness policy, the Boone County school district decided to ban food from birthday celebrations.

That’s right. No more cupcakes. No more ice cream. No more frosting or sprinkles or icing.

And, let me tell you, people are in an UPROAR.

Here’s delightful sampling of some of the opinions our local NBC station’s Facebook page:

Post by WPSD-TV.

The opposition seems to have a couple common complaints.

“Let kids be kids!”

I’m not even sure what this means. Childhood is not synonymous with sugar. Happiness and fun and memories are often linked to food but they don’t require it.

I promise you my sons’ memories of Disney World will not revolve around the meals but rather the experiences. Sure, the Dole Whips were delicious but the fun we had riding rides, seeing shows, and laughing together far outweighed any temporary sugar rush.

Birthdays – at EVERY age – can be celebrated without sugar. In fact, I’ve written before about my concerns that too often we use sugar to celebrate whether it be an important milestone or good behavior. I don’t want to teach my kids that the only way to mark a happy occasion is with a sweet treat.

Happiness doesn’t require sugar and a lack of sugar doesn’t mean unhappiness.

Kids are way more resilient and creative than we give them credit for, so the idea that a lack of sugar is some type of “punishment” sells them very, very short. If you’ve ever seen a child play with a cardboard box, you understand what I mean.

“It’s lack of exercise that’s the REAL problem.”

Is the lack of physical activity among today’s kids a problem? Absolutely.

However, we will not even BEGIN to tackle childhood obesity without also seriously altering our nation’s diet – especially the consumption of processed foods high in sugar.

The recommended daily sugar intake for children in preschool and early elementary school is 3 to 4 teaspoons. The average 4- to 8- year old consumes FIVE TIMES THAT AMOUNT IN A DAY.

I don’t care if your child is doing jumping jacks from dawn to dusk consuming that much sugar is a problem. It’s a problem that has to be addressed on every level - at every meal, snack, and – YES – special occasion.

“It didn’t kill me!”

This one is my favorite lines and I hear this often when I express any opinion that is a shift from the traditional knowledge on raising a child.

First of all, I’m aiming for a smidgen higher than merely keeping my kids alive.

I’d like them to not merely survive – but thrive! In almost every area of health, we are failing. We are one of the sickest, overly-medicated, fattest countries on the planets and our kids are expected to be worse off than us.

I know serious change is hard but serious change is what is required if we want to improve our children's future.

”This is all the government’s/Michele Obama’s fault”

The Constitution does not assure you or your children the fundamental right to sugar. I’m sorry. It just doesn’t.

When the federal government decides to use scientific evidence to change the dietary requirements of school lunches, they are WELL within their rights. When you participate in the public school system, you accept that you will not have total and complete control over every aspect of your child’s life when they are inside the walls of the school.

Believe me, I don’t always like that either but I also have to accept that deep, deep down I don’t always know what’s best for my child. I am not expert in elementary curriculum or early childhood education or how the hell you feed 50 5-year-olds in 20 minutes.

And you know what? I don’t want to be.

So, I say "Go for it, Boone County!" Your new rule is a step in the right direction and I hope other school districts follow your lead!

P.S. Why I hate public playgrounds.

What do you think? Should birthday cake be sacred?

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Post by Sarah Stewart Holland.