Add Hesser-Heffernan, or: Betty Draper lives? And Peg Bracken?

Jette kind of stole my thunder, and grabs takeaway #1 and #1A from the Heffernan-Hesser discussion*:

The thing that interests me about that article is that here are two working moms talking about feeding their families as if they are the sole members of those families who are capable of buying and cooking food. No mention of any kind of team effort with their husbands or even with the kids themselves (although I have no idea how old the kids are so the latter may not be feasible).

Indeed. Amanda Hesser's baby takes the morning train, but so does Hesser -- she gets off at the Times and her husband gets off at the NYer. I got a pitch from the folks at Parade a while back I'd been meaning to share. Parade,  the mag that comes w/ some Sunday papers (Walter Scott, where ya at!) has a supplement of its own:

Here’s a sneak peek at the May issue of dash, the new food magazine from the publishers of Parade. dash aims to help busy moms balance the demands of work and family with the daily “dash” to get meals on the table."  

It's nice that bold, ital, no cap dash is helping "busy moms balance the demands of work and family with the daily 'dash' to get meals on the table." Another thing that can help "busy moms balance the demands of work and family"? Hint: it starts with "D" and rhymes with "plaid." You might expect this kind of outlook from a jawn that still runs The Lockhorns, but you kind of expect a more progressive outlook from a paper that's been printing same-sex wedding announcements for close to a decade. And it's happened before, and elsewhere. There are as many ways to divide the labor of a household as there are households, and it could be that Hesser and Heffernan's husbands are doing more than their share elsewhere, but it seems that even as men "love to cook (showy, spectacular special occasion food, it's still the ladies who make sure the kids don't starve to death between roast chickens. 

That aside, props to Heffernan for delaring she does not like to cook.  And props to Hesser for pointing out cooking or not cooking is not an all-or- nothing deal. Unfortunately, Heffernan clings to her weird binary, insisting  "I’ll never believe that foodie eating is more convenient that hacky eating." 

Thanks, as always, to Penny Pascal for the Peerless Photoshopping of this portrait of noted husband Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

*Side question: if this were a film, would two women discussing how to feed their respective kids pass the Bechdel test?  

Anyway, play us off, Sheena! (Apologies for the ad, but the actual video is BANANAS: her "baby" is an an engineer! On a train! And they ride on it together! All day!)

 

Comments

[Jette]

"Side question: if this were a film, would two women discussing how to feed their respective kids pass the Bechdel test?"

If the kids were all daughters, perhaps?

[vibram five fingers]

There are as many ways to divide the labor of a household as there are households

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