Mothers

BOSTON -- And so Nancy Pelosi ascends to the speakership with a series of "firsts" raining down on her like confetti. She's the first woman, the first Italian-American, the first Californian, probably the first chocoholic to take her place two heartbeats away from the Oval Office. But maybe there's another moniker worth adding to her r?sum? as head of the unruly House-hold of Representatives: She's the only speaker whose first career was as a stay-at-home mom. There's nothing new about politics itself as a second career.

MOSCOW -- In this land of suffering, a special misery is visited on the Russian mother. As young men reach adulthood here, they come under threat from a sometimes predatory but always indifferent government. The mothers fight back, ferociously, in a way other citizens seldom dare.Natalya Zhukova, once an ordinary woman from the city of Nizhny Novgorod, discovered extraordinary courage when her son was caught up by one of the institutions that most commonly destroys young men: the army.During the first war with Chechnya, Zhukova roamed the treacherous battlefield six times, negotiating with the enemy, tracking down her son and finally rescuing him.Transformed, she decided to fight on, for others.

TITLE YOUR book "Mothers Who Think," and you are likely to start the same kind of fight that starts every time somebody refers to "mothers who work.""All mothers work," is the rebuff you face when you make that gaffe. And then you scurry to correct yourself by saying, "I mean, mothers who work outside the home."Camille Peri and Kate Moses could have bent to that kind of PC pressure in selecting the title to their book, and called it "Mothers Who Think Outside the Box." They would not only have been more correct -- because all mothers think -- but also more right.

It has been a year since the sons of Jill Carter and Christine Neperud were savagely killed in Florida. The pain has not ebbed. On birthdays, on Thanksgiving and Christmas, even while driving or taking a shower, the mothers duel with their emotions while finding ways to cope."

In the national debate about cost, quantity and quality of child care, the voices rarely heard are those of children themselves.Seeking to fill that void, Ellen Galinsky, president of the New York-based Families and Work Institute, surveyed 1,000 children across the country to hear what they had to say about working parents.Among her findings: Only about 10 percent of children in grades three through 12 wish they spent more time with their mothers -- regardless of whether she scoops them up minutes after the school bell rings or a bus ferries them to an after-school program.

LIKE ME, MY FRIEND Kathy is the mother of a 14-year-old boy whom she would happily sell if the market were not already flooded with 14-year-old boys marked for "clearance" by their mothers.Like me, she is thinking about simply leaving her son by the curb for bulk trash pickup. "He treats me as if I am just an annoying little woman," she said one morning over coffee.And I thought it was just me. I thought that some flaw in my mothering, some conflict in our natures, some personality quirk in me, had rendered me annoying, unlike the rest of the hip and capable mothers on the Planet Teen-ager.

Maryland set aside $9.4 million over the past two years to provide drug treatment for welfare recipients and new mothers, but only a fraction of the money has been spent for that purpose, records show.Less than 15 percent of the money -- $1.3 million -- has been used for drug treatment. Most of the rest has paid for job training, foster care and other social service programs.Maryland Department of Human Resources officials say it has been harder than expected to find people in the two targeted groups willing to enter treatment.

FAMILY FRIENDLY is the way Cathy's Creative Kids' Corner in Carrolltown Center is viewed by many in the Eldersburg community, not only by the busy parents whose children enjoy the services there, but also by an organization known as FEMALE.FEMALE will present the Kids' Corner with its annual Family Friendly Business Award today.Cathy Schroeder developed her business around the needs and desires of families and offers many programs for young children. She offers a drop-off service where children can make crafts for an hour or two while parents tend to errands; a once-a-month time from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. when children can be entertained and occupied while parents enjoy a date; and a program geared toward young children for whom a preschool program may not be the right choice.

WHEN tobacco companies claim that studies about a connection between smoking and lung cancer are inconclusive, the public is mostly skeptical, even disbelieving.Similar skepticism should be directed at the recent study showing that children whose mothers work outside the home suffer no permanent harm because of their mother's absence. The study was conducted by the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, a hotbed of liberalism, feminism and co-ed bathrooms.Questionable researchLike those who church shop until they find a theology that fits their lifestyle choices, this study sounds as if it were commissioned for women who think they can microwave their children's lives and dinners at the end of long workdays.

STEVENSVILLE -- Dawn Denny doesn't care how many people she has to talk to, how many interviews she grants, how many times she stops for photographers or video cameras.Six weeks ago, her infant son, Ian, and another baby, Matthew Harrison, died at a Kent Island day care home. Since then, she has mounted a self-described "mission" to tighten the rules governing home day care centers.Investigators have told her they believe the two children were accidentally suffocated by blankets during an afternoon nap. But the state medical examiner has not determined a cause of death.

Roger Nolan said he would tell me about his life and that he would "start from the beginning." He began with 1968, when he was 29 years old and had just graduated from Baltimore's police academy. He didn't, until prodded later, volunteer information about being a Marine (he served in Vietnam), or about his wife (his closest colleagues have never met her), or about his son (who followed him onto the city force), or about policing the streets he grew up on, or even about his dedication to the Boy Scouts.

When my son graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in May 2006, my husband told friends and family that there would be plenty of tickets for the ceremony. Susan and her fellow mothers, he told everyone, will be busy handcuffing themselves to the White House fence in protest against the war. They won't need theirs. He was kidding, but I wasn't laughing. Peg Mullen, the patron saint of mothers of warriors, died earlier this month at the age of 92. An Iowa farm wife whose son, Michael, was killed by shrapnel from an errant U.S. artillery barrage in 1970, she emerged from the Silent Majority and inaugurated the age of distrust in government that was to follow.

Reya Johnson sat in her living room with her 15-month-old daughter Andrea, a bright-eyed child who couldn't stop smiling. They sang nursery rhymes and played pitty-pat, tapping their palms lightly together. Ms. Johnson, 38, was showing Peggy White, a caseworker from Baltimore's Healthy Start initiative, the progress Andrea had made since her last visit. Healthy Start helps pregnant women and new mothers with counseling, medical care and other services. Ms. White watched as Andrea eagerly pretended to read a colorful brochure and recited rhymes with her mother.

I was grousing to my husband about my crazy-quilt days - planning a bridal shower, helping my daughter sort through the benefits program offered by her employer, swapping out cars at the repair shop, not to mention showing up at the office - and instead of offering to pitch in, he said: "Imagine how crazy Sarah Palin's days are." The Republican nominee for vice president talks to People magazine about juggling breast pumps and BlackBerries and the Mommy Wars begin again. This time, however, it is tough to tell which side you are on. Working mothers who champion a woman's right to find fulfillment outside the home are looking at Palin's five children - one on his way to Iraq, one pregnant and unmarried, and one with special needs - and thinking that she can't possibly run a family and a campaign.

BOSTON - One of the expressions my grandmother uttered with feeling and frequency was that "one man should have one baby." I never knew if this was a wish or a curse, but I'm pretty sure she never imagined Thomas Beatie. For those of you who do not watch Oprah Winfrey or read tabloids, Mr. Beatie is "The World's First Pregnant Man." While the title of "first" is in dispute, Mr. Beatie is certainly the most public transgender poster parent to have a baby bump plastered across the media.

They stared, disbelieving, at the electricity bill, as if their scrutiny could somehow force the ridiculous number into a more reasonable form. "Why is it so high?" her husband asked. "Because I'm home all day," answered Jennifer Hart-Walters, who had quit teaching school to be with their two kids, who wanted to sing them the ABC song all day long, who now, faced with that electricity bill and so many other increasing costs, realized that her days as a stay-at-home mother were over. In February she reluctantly left the kids in day care and took a part-time job. "We were noticing much less spending money in our checking account - no money actually in our checking account," said Hart-Walters, 35, who lives in Baltimore's Hunting Ridge neighborhood.

Cassandra Alls' friends thought she was crazy when she said her baby would be wrapped in cloth diapers and be eating homemade baby food. Some thought she would quit after a few weeks of sleep deprivation. Not so. A year later, Alls still makes all of baby Josephine's food and tries to keep processed foods out of her family's Annapolis home. She maintains an organic herb and vegetable garden in the backyard. As for cloth diapers, she relies on a vendor, which has made her commitment easier to keep than in previous days, she said.

Sue Lynn Downes never took off the charm necklace. Never. When she was 16, her mother gave her the gold necklace with a heart-shaped charm bearing the word "Daughter." After her son was born, Downes added a tiny pair of baby shoes, and later her two children gave her a "Best Mom" charm. She wore the necklace through basic training. She wore it when she was deployed to Iraq. And the Army corporal wore it the day a land mine twisted her Humvee like a washcloth, killing two fellow soldiers and leaving her so badly injured that doctors had to amputate both her legs.

C-SPAN is interviewing Roberta McCain, John's mother. Is it true, she is asked, that she threatened to wash her son's mouth out with soap after hearing that he called his captors bad names - four-letter words - while a POW in Vietnam? The smile fades from her face. Her demeanor, for a second, is icier than her pale blue suit. Hands that had been folded primly on her lap ball into exasperated fists. "And I'm still ashamed of him," she says, vexed as if he had just mouthed off, as if he's not 72 years old, as if somehow he hadn't made up for it by becoming a U.S. senator or the presumptive Republican nominee for president.

What's the best place in the world to be a mother? According to Save the Children, which compared the well-being of mothers and children in 146 countries, it's Sweden. On the other hand, there won't be too many happy Mother's Days this year in Niger, which ranked last among countries surveyed on measures of maternal and child health and well-being. Consider this comparison between the two nations: Skilled health personnel are present at almost every birth in Sweden, while only 33 percent of births are attended in Niger.