Half Changed World

This week, the new issue of Parenting magazine showed up at our door, addressed to my husband.  Our best guess is that the subscription is a gift from T’s parents, replacing the Money magazine that they’ve given us for several years.  T’s reaction is somewhat mixed.  On the one hand, as RebelDad has been complaining for ages, Parenting clearly doesn’t see fathers as a real part of their audience — the subtitle is "what really matters to moms".  On the other hand, it’s kind of nice to have his parents acknowledge that parenting is the biggest piece of what he’s doing with his life right now, and he takes it seriously.

The funny thing is that I think I’m going to continue the Money subscription. The first year we got it, it helped me catch a major mistake in our taxes that would have cost us several thousand dollars. It hasn’t saved us anything like that since, but it’s generally interesting and reminds me to think about things that I’d otherwise avoid.

Money is also consistently progressive on family issues.  The current issue includes an article on how a same-sex couple can best protect each other and their young daughter, given that Maryland doesn’t recognize their civil union.  In the February issue, a feature on Fix Our Mix helped one of the featured families "save enough so that Mom or Dad can stay home with the kids."  (I see that I pointed out a similar article last year.) In an article on spouses who travel separately, the authors acknowleged that "very few couples earn equal paychecks" and went on to say:

"Frankly, that shouldn’t matter. If one spouse is the sole or majority earner, does that mean he or she should be able to dine on steak and caviar with the gang while the other orders takeout with a friend? Of course not."

What I’m most impressed about is the matter of fact tone in which these issues are discussed.

I also wanted to point out Business Week’s new Working Parents blog, which I also found via RebelDad.  They’re still getting their blogging legs, and the posts are somewhat uneven, but I’m encouraged that they’re giving it a try.  The most recent post is about one of the writers’ battles with their insurance company over her son’s medical bills.  One thing that I hadn’t thought about until I read it was that one of the advantages of employer-based health insurance is that it offers some means of leverage in claims disputes. 

On that note, I do want to point out that Annika’s donations page is now up and running.  It’s through the Children’s Organ Transplant Association (COTA), which makes contributions tax-deductible, and assures that they’ll be spent on medical expenses. (See this post for background.) 

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 26th, 2006 at 10:31 pm and is filed under Magazines and Newspapers, Reverse Traditional Families. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.