California NOW

Let's Teach Kids that Beauty is only Skin-Deep!

Yes, that's sarcasm you hear. 

A new children's book, My Beautiful Mommy, is scheduled to be released on Mother's Day (reminder, it's May 11th).  The book allows you to "join a young girl as her Mommy goes through her plastic surgery experience, and learn how the whole family pitches in to help Mommy achieves her beautiful results."

Hooray!  Now young girls can start dreaming early about they day that they can become even more beautiful!  After all, that's what we truly value in our society, right?

If a law firm can do it...

As a working mom, I’m grateful for the opportunity to work from home and care for my child at the same time. California NOW has worked to stay at the front of the pack on worker-friendly policies, but we just got passed by a law firm, and I couldn’t be happier!

The law firm Morrison & Foerster has extended its parental leave benefits for attorneys to 18 weeks for maternity leave and adoption, and 10 weeks for paternity leave. They also allow employees to have a reduced-time schedule for the first year after they return from leave. No wonder they’ve been honored 13 times by Working Mother magazine as one of the “100 Best Companies.”

Now we need to work on encouraging other companies to follow suit, and on expanding these kinds of policies to cover everyone and not just those who choose to be parents! More companies need internal groups like Morrison & Foerster’s Women’s Initiative Committee. I’d also like to see maternity and paternity leave benefits equalized; fathers are full-time parents too!

Mothers in France get 10 weeks and mothers in Germany get 14 weeks of fully paid leave. American parents are left to cobble together some sort of paid leave using sick days, vacation days, disability leave, and employer-provided leave. A full 51% of new mothers lack any paid leave at all.

Whether it’s used to care for a new child, aging parent, or sick relative, paid family leave is needed by most workers at some point in their lives. MomsRising is working on bringing this issue to the attention of the Presidential candidates, and here’s somewhere that Hillary can really shine, since she was a working mother herself. Tell the candidates that American workers need paid family leave!

New Film Exposes Family Court Crisis for Mothers, Children

Kathleen Russell and the Center for Judicial Excellence have released a film on the crisis for mothers and their children in the family courts. Although it centers specifically around the Marin County courts, it is reflective of a nationwide problem. This is the 12-minute trailer of the 42-minute documentary Family Court Crisis: Our Children At Risk.

See more clips of the film here and understand, if you don't already, that this is a serious crisis: perfectly fit mothers lose custody of their children to abusive men regularly in our family court system. You can find out more about this issue, and what you can do about it, on our newly updated Family Law Page.

UNICEF Picture of the Year 2007

The American photographer Stephanie Sinclair is the winner of the international photo competition “UNICEF Photo of the Year”.

This is a photo of an Afghanistan wedding: Mohammed, 40  and is bride Ghulam, 11.  According to UNICEF, there are about 60 million young women worldwide who were married before they came of age, half of them in South Asia. 

Ghulam’s parents needed the money and Faiz wants children of his own.  We can only imagine that this girl will be a mother before the end of 2008.  And even more grave is the realization that these young girls, impregnated too early for their young bodies to handle, will die from complications in child birth.  We extend our gratitude to photographer Stephanie Sinclair who is raising awareness about early marriages.

Guest Blog: Megan Seely

Have you seen this?! 

A friend at work sent me this email from one of his frequented blogs (I think that it originated on feministing).  These are little girl panties for sell at Wal-Mart that say "Who needs credit cards" across the pelvis!  I don't want to take away from feministing who has great comments about the panties and a link to tell Wal-Mart what you think but I figured this was exactly the type of thing that needs shared with as many as possible.  What kind of message does WalMart--our 'family values' store--want to send teen women?  Particularly in light of rampant sexual violence against women and girls, tragically inadequate sex education, and an increasing rate of STDs and teen pregnancy???  Not to mention a culture that readily reinforces the notion that women's physical body is all they have to offer and all they have to gain from.  Let's teach an even younger population now that their vaginas are for sell.

Shocker! Teen pregnancy on the rise.

Statistics just released reflect the first increase in the U.S. teen birth rate in 15 years.  Data shows that the teen birth rate has been declining since 1991, though the decline in recent years (read: Bush years) has been slowing.  Consider also the recent data that showed cases of chlamydia reaching an all time high in 2006 as well as increases in cases of syphilis and gonorrhea. 

Abstinence-only education anyone?  It’s safe to say that we have known all along that not teaching teens how to protect themselves is not going to prevent them from having sex.  Such data provides yet another example of the ways in which the Bush regime has been detrimental to our country.  In this instance young people are suffering because information is being withheld.  Do you think people will finally start connecting the dots?

family law --women and children beware

CA NOW is dedicated to ending the practice of taking custody away from perfectly fit mothers. You can download our eBook Disorder in the Courts.

Disorder in the Courts: Mothers and Their Allies Take on the Family Law System is an electronic (download) publication featuring a collection of essays by experts addressing the critical issues mothers face in contentious custody and divorce cases.  The contributors offer advice, encouragement and personal experiences to other mothers and their allies facing cases of their own, or working to address the crisis for mothers and their children in the family law courts.  With an introduction and afterword by the editors, the collection includes essays by: Phyllis Chesler, Karen Anderson; Dr. Lundy Bancroft; Sharon Bass; Dr. Robert Geffner; Judge (ret.) Sol Gothard; Dr. Mo Therese Hannah; Karen Hartley-Nagle; Paige Hodson; Kristen, Diane and Charles Hofheimer, Dominique Lasseur, Kristen Lombardi, Dr. Geraldine Butts Stahly, Garland Waller, and Trish Wilson.