A mother has lashed out at 'Karens' for accusing her of neglect after she shared a photograph of her daughter's newly decorated room on Facebook.

New York Times bestselling author Glennon Doyle is unequivocal in her opinion on modern parenting.

In her new book Untamed, she describes how parents receive a ‘terrible memo’ from society as soon as our kids are born.

This memo says that our kids are our saviours and parenting them is akin to a religion. We must give them every opportunity possible and most importantly, we must never allow anything difficult to happen to them.

According to Glennon, not only does this disastrous memo make us parents feel exhausted, neurotic and guilty; but it is also the reason why our kids suck.

Ouch.

The reason our kids suck, she says, is because we no longer allow our children to learn how to lose, or to struggle, or to be rejected.

Gender reveal parties are a form of domestic terrorism

One dead grandmother-to-be. A downed plane. An incinerated car. Several terrifying explosions. An altercation at Applebee’s. A massive wildfire that burned 47,000 acres of Arizona forest and resulted in an estimated $8m worth of damage.

All that’s just a small snapshot of the manslaughter and mayhem unleashed by gender reveal parties over the last couple of years. And that’s before you factor in the latest nightmare ignited by the terrible trend: the El Dorado fire in California. The fire, which was caused by a “smoke-generating pyrotechnic device” set off at a gender reveal party, has burned more than 13,000 acres of forest so far and prompted the evacuation of 3,000 residents.

It’s worth pausing here for a moment to fully absorb the fact that, as well as resulting in a woman’s death, gender reveal parties have destroyed at least 60,000 acres of land in the last three years. (To put this in perspective, the area of Manhattan is around 14,600 acres.) We all know that the police are fond of a bit of profiling; based on these statistics alone they ought to be implementing stop-and-frisk tactics on all heterosexual couples who come within five miles of a heavily wooded area. If the woman’s got a baby bump and the man’s got a dad bod then law enforcement should search them for explosives, stat.

“Ohio’s decision to condone attacks on the health of its nearly 400,000 LGBTQ+ residents was widely opposed by the state’s medical community. It’s plain that this law only serves to discriminate,” said Assemblyman Evan Low, D-Campbell, who wrote California’s travel ban law. “We will never put Californians at risk of falling victim to the same toxic standard by supporting the use of taxpayer dollars for travel in places where anti-LGBTQ discrimination is the law of the land.”

Sexual harassment is rife in the restaurant industry. And as it often goes, the most precarious workers — those who rely on tips, and who get paid as little as $2.13 an hour in direct wages — are also the most vulnerable. Two-thirds of tipped workers are women, and many are women of color. In addition to routine harassment from male co-workers and supervisors, they may also face unwanted advances and sexual comments from customers, with little hope for recourse: If they speak up, they could risk losing their tip, which for many doesn’t feel like an option.

“Pull that mask down so I can see if I want to take you home later,” reads one comment. Another person who participated in the survey wrote that a male customer cut a hole in the mouth of his mask, and asked one of her female coworkers “if she sat on his face, would he get COVID.” When workers tried to ignore or refuse unwelcome advances, many customers responded aggressively. “When I told him no, I’m not allowed [to remove my mask], he became more insistent, saying things like ‘No one will notice,’ or ‘I want to see the face of the girl that gave me the great service,’” reads one comment. Another wrote that she’s constantly called a “whore” for asking people to wear a mask.

We have two adorable grandchildren, 4 and 6, on the other side of the country. Their parents, our son and daughter-in-law, are struggling with debt and living in a one-bedroom apartment. The financial problems are related to their own bad decisions and to serious medical problems, which are mostly resolved but may recur. Our son works remotely, but he needs to be at work, not caring for high-energy rambunctious kids who get very loud and excited playing video games or watching TV. Our daughter-in-law just got a job that involves a lot of overnight travel.

They have decided that the way to get ahead financially is to give up their apartment and move in with us for three months this summer. They would save on rent and child care. At first we were thrilled. We have plenty of room to put the four of them up. But then we faced the reality that they are counting on us for day care. We are both in our 70s and excited about being retired and finally doing the things we couldn’t do when we were both working full time and raising children. We also get overwhelmed after a few days of nonstop child care (which they have counted on us for in the past so they could escape). Putting the kids in day care for nine weeks, which assumes we would take them full time for one week a month, would cost them over $5,000, on top of the cost of storage and moving the four of them and the dog across country. I think they would save about $6,000 in rent over three months. At first I wanted to lay out the math and tell them to rethink their assumptions about free day care.

But we have savings we could use to pay all or part of their day care over the summer (which would still leave us the recommended cushion but little more). We would treasure the time with the children. But part of me thinks we should just let them figure things out. I am sorely conflicted.

—Is This a Good Idea?